Gaming News

And we're not referring to the gameplay here. The Salon put up a nice article ('ad-powered' for non-subscribers) on Professor Peter Ludlow, who has been playing The Sims Online until recently.

You've probably already heard it by now: Interplay was worried that some of their employees might not have enough time to spend with their families over the holidays and spontaneously decided to lay off a number of developers. Basically closing down Black Isle Studios and putting an end to the development of the game known under the working title 'Van Buren'.

I saw over at Slashdot Games and HomeLan Fed that Sega is suing EA over the game Simpsons: Road Rage. Sega took out a patent over thier game Crazy Taxi and claims Simpsons: Road Rage violates this patent. Take the time to read the patent. Ready to punch something yet? They patented NPCs jumping out of the way of the car. How the hell did they get away with that?

Female RPG characters are obviously becoming poorer and poorer. Already indicated by the majority of the genre representants in the past, the box cover of Ascaron's Diablo-alike Sacred provides another shiny example of this phenomenon. The archeress apparently could only afford a tanga, protectors, a helmet, some 'thing' attached to her back and a bra.