iGame Radio

Though this actually occurred back in June, information is only just beginning to become public about the extent of the massive bank fraud perpetrated on the largest bank within EVE Online, EBank. Apparently one gamer, Ricdic, who was the bank’s CEO, decided that he needed a down payment on a house in this world (as well as some cash for medical bills), so embezzled about 200 billion ISK (EVE Online in-game currency), and exchanged it for about $5000 in real-world cash.

Now, interestingly enough, the embezzlement isn’t the real problem…even though when the news broke in the game it caused a huge run on the bank and a major crippling in trust in the bank with the bank’s members. No, the real problem was that he exchanged the ISK for cash. This is actually a violation of the game’s EULA. Ricdic, who’s real-world name is currently unknown, has been booted from the game as a result.

EVE Online is a MMOG pitching giant corporations against each other, so I suppose it’s no big surprise to see something like this happen. There’s a fascinating write-up in Massive regarding the impact this has had in-game, and how the players are reacting to it. You can also see how bank executives are dealing with this in the game’s forums.

iGame Radio launched its new redesigned website today and invites one and all to visit and participate. The site includes the new logo by Thomas Filipiak that won first place in the iGame Radio Logo Contest in June.

The redesigned site includes social networking links to the iGame Radio Facebook page, twitter feed, and Flickr accounts, where gamers can keep up with the latest minute by minute updates of Mac gaming news and see game screenshots and trailers. Users can also sign up for the iGame Radio newsletter, read the latest blog posts and tweets, and listen to the latest podcasts that have posted.

“I’m really happy about the final redesign,” said iGame Radio host Omaha Sternberg. “We spent a lot of time creating it and integrating the new logo into it. My thanks go out to Thomas Filipiak and his team for the logo design, and Elf M. Sternberg for the design of the website theme.”

Omaha also hinted at more features to come for the site, including a location for screenshots and trailers of Mac games, and a page for supporting the porting of games popular on other OSes to the Mac.

For more ideas, join the rest of us at the new redesigned iGame Radio. There you can read Omaha’s blog posts and comment on them, listen to the episodes, and subscribe to the RSS feed for iGame Radio.

Nope, I didn’t invent the term. Michelle Maltais of the LA Times did, but it is quite appropriate to describe the iPhone 3GS battery lifetime feature. Apparently, Apple’s promise of extended battery life in the 3GS is, well, more of a promise than a reality. Even when turning off most all battery draining features (features which make the iPhone an iPhone) you still lose your battery life before then end of the day. So, imagine what it would be like to play a game on this thing, especially games that want to take advantage of some of these battery draining features. Michelle is hoping that the 3.1 software update will improve the performance of the battery life.

I saw the headline about this yesterday, and my immediate reaction was WTF?? I mean, what are you going to do with a movie about a game about shooting simple line-drawn rocks floating aimlessly in space? Must be an Uwe Boll film for sure.

Anyway, Wired has an exclusive scene from the movie, and a snippet from the script. But be warned, if you click on the link, Joe Bob will probably fire on you! Either that, or you’ll splatter your soda all over the place, so make sure to put that down, too.

Blizzard has announced that LAN (local area network) play will not be a feature of Starcraft II. Blizzard cited piracy concerns as one reason for their decision, and said that Battle.net would offer an appropriate alternative.

From Gamespot:

“We don’t currently plan to support LAN play with Starcraft II, as we are building Battle.net to be the ideal destination for multiplayer gaming with Starcraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games,” a Blizzard representative said in a statement. “While this was a difficult decision for us, we felt that moving away from LAN play and directing players to our upgraded Battle.net service was the best option to ensure a quality multiplayer experience with Starcraft II and safeguard against piracy.”

The problem with this, of course, IMHO is that LAN play offers something that Battle.net does not…the ability to game with folks that are in the same room with you. I can’t stress enough that gaming together, physically, is an important aspect of family, and community, gameplay. Not just for the ability to game with people who are there with you, but what you do before and after gaming as well (like going out for pizza and soda to chat about the game and other things). It’s something that you just can’t do long-distance.

Ganked from TouchArcade Forums, courtesy of the iPhone Games Bulletin: This game seems to be one of the first to use the iPhone 3GS compass in gameplay. SurrounDEAD is a zombie game where you physically turn 360 degrees to view the entirety of the iPhone screen. It seems to have alternate tilt controls for this as well, for older iPhone models. Also, a very cool and immersive soundtrack.

I viewed the YouTube trailer and it looks really fun. I’d rather you be able to tilt up/down to reload your gun because I think touchscreen reloading will become tedious over time and interfere with the ability to fight the zombies. But we’ll see what happens. According to the post, they’ve just submitted it to the App Store for only $.99 (seems worth more than that to me). You should see it if approved within the next week or so.