News

First of all, thanks everyone that took part in our little CoNtest. We had around two dozen entries, with some of them surprisingly close and some of them hilariously off-course. In any case, we had two entries in particular that came awfully close to a perfect four for four. So, I hereby offer heartiest of congratulations to...

Zeromus_X and Nytecrawla!

Both users guessed two correct and had a third guess that was one of the four fakes in the wrong place. No users had more than two correct answers. Still, in any case, both Nytecrawla and Zeromus_X each earned twenty dollars in the form of an amazon.com gift certificate! If there had been a single winner or if the winning entries had been more correct the prize probably would have been greater, but hey, it's twenty bucks! What's not to love?

Also, the staff members of Caves of Narshe would like to thank all of the participants and other interested parties. We had a blast conducting this CoNtest (mostly laughing at the antics of the four fakes) and you can probably expect a new CoNtest sometime next year, but not one like this. Seriously, we'll probably never be able to pull this off ever again now that all of you have experienced it.

And yes, I know what you guys want to hear. Who exactly were those four? Which staff members went incognito? Well, we'll let them tell you themselves. Keep an eye on this thread for the final posts of chou, kimono==kitsune, Inque, and Green Mage for the truth!

You probably didn't need a news post to realize this, but the two simply don't mix.

Should online gamers start keeping better track of their game-world assets? They might have to if World of Warcraft loot morphs into taxable income. The government hasn't made a move in this direction yet, but economic analysts claim that it's a matter of when, not if.

Thanks to the real-money market that has grown up around online games like Ultima Online and Second Life, there's real money to be made by farming game products to sell to other players for cold, hard cash.

Unfortunately, any new tax legislation would not merely tax the people making a real-life living--if it's potentially worth money in the real world, then it's taxable, regardless of whether or not the player ever chooses to take the fruits of his labor out of the fantasy and put it on the market.

Source: GameSpot

In other news, a suspected PlayStation 3 thief was shot to death in his apartment by officers who may have mistaken a game controller in his hand for a gun. The teenager, who is believed to have been behind the robbery of two PlayStation 3 consoles as their owner unloaded them at a campus apartment, did not come to the door promptly enough as officers kicked it in. Also killed was his dog, a German shepherd.

You'd think police officers everywhere would be cautious before unloading into a suspect on the off-chance that he might be armed after the big stink in New York City over the unarmed groom-to-be who was shot by police...and that's only the most recent in a long line of itchy trigger fingers. But a game controller looking like a gun? I guess we have to assume that he was playing his hot PS3, because, otherwise, the trailing cord should have been a dead giveaway.

Source: IOL (among other news outlets)

Of course, even bureaucracy has its moments. The state of Michigan has recently been ordered to pay the court fees accrued by the Entertainment Software Association in its legal battle over the state's restrictions on selling games to minors. Michigan's law is only one of several in recent years to be declared unconstitutional by various state courts; the laws generally impose punishments or special restrictions prohibiting the sale of adult-rated games to children.

Wait, my bad. That was the courts having a moment of clarity--the government bureaucracy is still responsible for this huge waste of taxpayers' dollars over a free speech issue in the first place.

Source: GameSpot

The Caves of Narshe forum community has seen a number of very interesting and amusing new users. There's the Kimono^_^Kitsune the Japanophile, The Green Mage the aspiring author, Inque the capitalizer, and chou the obnoxious jerk. Just one thing you should know about those four....

Each of them was a staff member posting in disguise.

This is where the contest comes in - we will be awarding Amazon.com gift certificates to anyone who can correctly guess the true identity of those four users. Each of them is one and only one unique staff member - no staffer did more than one fake, and no staff member shared a fake with any other staff members. The prizes will be Amazon gift certificates ranging from $20 to $30, depending on how many perfect entries we receive, but we will guarantee that at least one user will win one, even if no one gives a perfect entry. We'll stop accepting entries and determine the contest winners two weeks from today's date. If you aren't sure who's a staff member and who isn't, then check the staff link here - any current staff member on that list is a possible candidate.

To enter, just send an email to [email protected], with a subject line of "CoNtest". Your entry should clearly and concisely show who you are and what your guesses are, sort of like this:

laszlow's guesses

chou is Rangers51
Kimono^_^Kitsune is Tiddles
Inque is Neal
The Green Mage is Mr_Thou

Now, I'll give you an extra hint and say that the above entry isn't 100% correct. Aren't I generous? Anyway, have fun! You guys didn't actually think chou was for real, did you?

With the holiday season rapidly approaching, Sony is pouring their efforts into selling the console they can actually stock: the PlayStation Portable, or PSP. Their lagging foray into the handheld market currently dominated by the Nintendo DS will be bolstered by a new marketing campaign that, oddly enough, mimics features the DS has had in place for a while.

The new PSP Download Stations will allow PSP owners to visit and download content via a wireless connection. (Sound familiar, yet?) Available content will include demos, movie trailers, videos, and game sharing. Sony is also launching a new advertising campaign pushing the PSP.

Unfortunately, Sony isn't doing the thing that fans have been most hoping for: lowering the PSP's $200 retail price as an added incentive for people to buy.

Source: GameSpot

Really, I don't see how Sony thinks that the PSP can possibly win in a head-on battle with the DS. Sure, it can show movies (if you can find anywhere to buy them), but, when it comes down to it, the PSP is just a Playstation you can take with you...but with shorter games and inferior graphics. The DS has innovation on it's side, not to mention the fact that the DSLite retails for only $129.99. In fact, if you're really on a budget, a refurbished DS will cost you only $80, compared to $170 for a used PSP. Then you factor in the complaints about dead pixels on the PSP's screen (which Sony claims are not a true defect and hence not a reason for repair or exchange), and it's really not hard to figure out why I don't own the only handheld to feature a Katamari game.

Of course, lowering the price would have gone a ways toward putting the PSP back in my ballgame, and doing so right before the holiday season could have done nothing but boost sales.

I don't think I need to call Sony an arrogant corporation this time. They pretty much speak for themselves.

After long waits and much anticipation (though, oddly, not as much as for the PS3), the Nintendo Wii has finally made it's North American debut.

Nintendo's newest console made it's official debut at 12:01 this morning, though many chains that opened for midnight launches for the PS3 forced gamers to wait until normal store hours.

Another marked difference from the PS3 launch was the attitude of the fans. While anxious PS3ers aggressively guarded their places in line, the Wii lines were more quiet and orderly, with some customers even displaying attitudes of friendliness. One Manhattan man and his friends even brought previous Nintendo consoles to the line and invited other hopefuls to play while they queued.

Furthermore, the much-anticipated Virtual Console is officially up and running, with games from all pre-Gamecube Nintendo consoles as well as the Sega Genesis system currently available for download. More titles are promised by year's end.

The Wii launch was marred by none of the violence and crime that affected the PS3 release. Were video game fans simply tired out after a weekend of camping out on sidewalks for the two new consoles, or was the Wii's relative abundance responsible for the calmer atmospher? Whatever the case may be, despite reports of Wii availability being as much as ten times greater than initial PS3 availability, stores still sold out within minutes.

Source: Gamespot

Finally, my personal story. I dragged my husband out of bed at six o'clock to take me down to the local Target while he went to Best Buy. He was number 69 in a line for 63 available Wiis, and I wound up being just three people too late. However, one of the earlier people in line kindly sold me his ticket for a mere $10. ($10 for two hours of standing in line that I didn't have to endure? Well worth it, in my opinion.) So, I walked out of there with my very own Wii and a copy of Twilight Princess.

So far, I'm loving the new console. All of the reports about the Wiimote being incredibly responsive, intuitive, and easy to use are absolutely true! The Mii feature is highly entertaining (my plaza is already populated with the Mario Bros., Link, Zero Suit Samus, and a few others of my own creation), and Twilight Princess is looking to be the best new Zelda game since A Link to the Past, way back in the SNES games.

Am I a Nintendo fangirl? Up until this morning, I would have said I was primarily a Sony fan. But, as far as I'm concerned, the Wii might have just won my heart. We'll see if others feel the same way--this just might be Nintendo's coup in the console war.

After numerous delays and much anticipation, the PS3 has finally reached the American market, greeted by cheering crowds, overt displays of capitalist greed, and, of course, muggings.

Patrons of Sony's flagship epnoymous store in San Francisco were treated to a grand display of the console's arrival as a flashy SUV guarded by armed security pulled up to make a delivery. Of course, the actual product was already waiting inside the store, but that didn't stop the crowd from going wild.

In New York City, where hopeful fans had been waiting in line for days, line cutters and rainy weather tried the patience of many. Celebrities entertained the crowd, but the real fun came when the doors to the SonyStyle store opened: everyone admitted knew they were guarenteed to walk away with a PS3.

And, of course, if you missed your chance at one of only 400k consoles, you could always try eBay, where American entrepreneurship has led some of your fellow citizens to sell for well over $2000--more than three times the price of the $599 tricked-out version.

Unfortunately, some of your fellow Americans saw launch day as nothing more than an opportunity to line up exciting new crime. A Gamestop in Elk Grove, California, was robbed of several PS3 and XBox 360 consoles by a pair of armed men, and line-waiters in Connecticut and Oregon were mugged.

Source: various Gamespot