iGame Radio

ETA: I misread the press release. Call of Duty Deluxe Edition is for both PPC and Intel Macs. This is just the first time that it is available to Intel Macs. I originally posted it incorrectly.

Aspyr Media announced today the release in digital form of Call of Duty Deluxe Edition. Featuring the combination of the original Call of Duty and the expansion, Call of Duty: United Offensive, CoD Deluxe Edition is available as a digital download from Game Agent.

In the war that changed the world, no one fought alone. Experience the cinematic intensity of World War II¹s epic battles including D-Day, the Russian Charge at Stalingrad and the Battle for Berlin.

I’m worried about Aspyr’s continued support of Mac gaming, actually. They’ve been a big supporter of Mac games, porting a large number of PC games over to the Mac over the years. In 2007, they released eleven games, I think (half of which were Sims 2 expansions), whereas in 2008 that number dipped to something like three. This year, they’ve announced two retail releases of deluxe editions of games that were already released several years ago and one expansion release, Guitar Hero: World Tour. But Guitar Hero: WT won’t be released until this summer. The last game released for the Mac was Guitar Hero: Aerosmith in October of last year. That means eight or more months between releases.

Reviewing the site, there is no indication from their calendar or anywhere else that they are planning on a release for the Mac anytime soon (I guess Guitar Hero: WT doesn’t merit the space). They mostly focus now on PC, DS, and Xbox 360 games. I suppose I shouldn’t blame them so much…they just had some layoffs in late 2008. Ya gotta make decisions. I wish them luck.

Virtual Programming announced last week that The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena is coming to the Mac. Think Vin Diesel. Think anti-hero. Think a website that buffers way too often. There’s a lot to be excited about regarding this game…it’s really two games in one (featuring Pitch Black as well as Assault on Dark Athena).

But I’m also interested in the system requirements. The recommended CPU speed for the game when it came out is a 1.8 GHz machine. Will they be able to keep the CPU speed there, or will it get raised up a bit? At least most Macs released the past year or two match or beat those requirements.

Also, Dark Athena requires at least a GeForce 6800 or better, but recommends an 8800GT. Past experience with game ports like this tells me that the video card will be more of a factor than the CPU speed, and “recommended” sometimes becomes more of a “required” for decent play. With all of the Macbook Pros having an 8600GT card in them for the past couple of years until just earlier this year (the Macbook until late last year), it means that most Macbooks and Macbook Pros will be at minimum system reqs for the game. The iMac at least had the minimum ATI card and speed back in 2007…but its update recently hasn’t updated the card. So what that all means is that most people who own Macs will be at minimum system requirements for the video card…assuming that the port doesn’t increase those requirements. Joy.

 

Episode 74 is posted. Cory Tamas and I chat about the state of Mac gaming. Plus, a review of Justin Ficarrotta’s award winning game Laserface Jones vs Doomsday Odious, and Transgaming’s PuzzleQuest: Challenge of the Warlords for the iPhone.

Laserface Jones vs. Doomsday Odious by Justin Ficarrotta


PuzzleQuest: Challenge of the Warlords for the iPhone by Transgaming

I’m just finishing up writing a review of Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones (yes it took a while…I’ll tell you about it during the review), and one of the things that struck me is that this game was released for the PC in December of 2005, but for the Mac in October 2008, just about three years later. Now Prince of Persia (no relation content-wise to the original 1989 version that was released on the Apple II) has been released for the Mac, only about three months after the PC release in December 2008.

Now, beyond being simply awesome in and of itself, we are seeing a logarithmic scale here. First it was three years, then three months. If the scale holds, the next game in the series would be released for the Mac merely three weeks after the PC version, and the one after that just three days.

I believe in math.

ETA: I discovered you can opt-out of interest-based advertising on Google AdSense. Read here for more info.

I don’t have any ads currently on my iGame Radio website, but I’ve dealt with Internet ads for a while, and intend to be displaying ads when I relaunch my new site design soon (don’t forget the Logo Contest!) And I have been working with Google AdSense for a long time, especially on MacRadio.

So, when I received an email the other day from Google AdSense informing me that Google would be launching soon a new AdSense technique, called interest-based advertising, I thought, hmm, I should check this out. Especially since it would require changes to my privacy policy. I was quite distraught by what I read.

Interest-based advertising uses cookies that Google AdSense will drop on your browser to keep track of what sites you go to. Then AdSense will develop a profile of you, which it will place into one of several pre-existing categories, such as “sport’s enthusiast”, or “travel enthusiast” (what, no “porn enthusiast”??). Then it will deliver targeted ads to whatever site you go to that serves Google AdSense ads…ads based on other sites you have gone to already.

Now, some might consider that this is a great idea. Google is targeting ads more specifically by what your interests are, and delivering those ads directly to you.

Let me point out to you the innumerable problems with this.

First, consider that you are probably going to end up seeing a set number of ads that are targeted to you, and after a while, you will get really tired of seeing them. I mean, doesn’t that already happen at many sites now? The ads are targeted based on the content of the site, which doesn’t change a huge amount beyond a certain extent, and eventually you’ve seen all of the ads in the rotation. If you are dropped into a category, you’ll experience the same thing…only, it could be worse, because even though a site could eventually evolve, your category won’t.

And let’s talk a little bit about that site content targeting, too. Google has not yet detailed, as far as I know, whether the interest-based advertising will be working in conjunction with, or replacing, site-targeting ads. The information so far seems to imply replacing, so that’s what I’ll go with at the moment. Which means that you could be a “sports enthusiast” because you spend about 75% of your time on sports-related sites, but then you go to a relationship site because you want to read some article to help with your relationship with your spouse…and see sports memorabilia ads all over it. Yeah, that makes me feel like the site is streamlined and tight. Or, consider that you are using a public computer, at a library, or worse. Go to a cooking site…and see porn ads.

But the real issue for me is privacy. The moment I read it I had visions of portfolios of my browsing habits kept in secret computer files. Think about it. Google will now be collecting a file of each and every one of us about every single website we’ve gone to…how long we were there, how often, what IP address we used, etc. And we can all believe that Google would never use it for anything other than the AdSense program even…until the government issues their illegal warrant demanding the information for “security purposes”. Telecom redux, anyone?

If you look at the Google AdSense blog announcing it, my fears are not singular. I would say 75% at least of the people who have posted in this blog have issues regarding Google’s decision, and many of them are privacy based. It’s a popular issue, because unlike most of Google’s other posts in this blog (which usually range around 10 to 30 comments) this post has blown to almost 100 comments.

I don’t foresee that Google is going to just drop this launch. I am expecting they are going to test it out in the limited beta that they mentioned, and hopefully will see that, no, really they need to make some changes. Changes which I hope will include an opt-in option (although an opt-out option will work…right now there isn’t any option to be removed from the program at all other than disabling cookies).

I hope that Google understands that “Do no evil” really does include “Don’t invade our privacy”.

 

Host Omaha Sternberg continues her Gaming Macworld 2009 series, covering Macworld Expo 2009 from a gamer’s perspective. Featuring an interview with Joy Kovaleski and Jeff Muncy of Psyclops, the online music creator that will soon allow teenagers to enter their avatars in music and dance competitions. Also, an interview with Blair Yakimovich and Lucas Smithen of Transgaming. We talk about what it’s like to port games to the Mac using Cider, City of Heroes, OpenCL and OpenGL 3, and the future of Cider technology.

Check out the podcast by clicking the player above or downloading from the rss feed.

 

I welcome special guest co-host Corey Tamas to the show this week. Also, an interview with Mark Batten of Red Marble Games. Plus, an editorial of The Wrath of the Lich King.

Sorry I’m a little delayed in mentioning that Episode 65 had posted. We found that the podcast was so long, though, that we had to carve out the game reviews! I am in the process of finishing up a special Game Review Edition for those…that’ll be posted shortly. When it is, I’ll not just post about it, I’ll also tweet about it! Yup, I’ve got a twitter feed not just for me, Omaha, but also for iGame Radio now. So, go join up to get the latest info on when a podcast posts and when cool Mac game stuff happens. :D

I had everything prepared. The lights, the candles, the flowers, the mood music…

Okay, no mood music. But really, I did have everything set up. I’ve finished reviewing all of the games, and almost finished writing the reviews. I’ve got the guest interview at 1 pm…shouldn’t take too long to edit. Then my super secret special guest co-host had to push back our recording from today till Monday.

Wait, you say. Super secret special guest co-host??? WTFBBQ?? Read more

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and have finally decided to change the days on which I post my podcast from Monday to Thursday. I’ve been posting them on Mondays, but this is actually a holdover from the old Gamesome Mac days when we broadcast the show live on Mondays. I have the ability to decide when I want to post my podcasts that don’t depend on a broadcast schedule, and have for a long time. I’ve just stuck with Monday because…well, because.

But, Mondays are becoming an increasingly difficult day to post on, for a variety of reasons. I have a hard time getting motivated on Mondays (don’t we all). I’m grabbing news from the past week (with two non-news days in between) rather than the past few days. With two non-work days, I find it hard to drop back into my work groove again (back to the motivation thing again). I basically decided that several days of work leading up to the post would suit me better.

Anyway, I’m going to try it out and see how it works. Starting this week I will start posting my podcasts on Thursdays. So, my next podcast will be Thursday, 2/21.

MacRadio is listed on Blogger & Podcaster Guide, and has been participating in their online The USA TODAY special which I highly recommend. Basically, if someone does a search for a podcast through the Blogger & Podcaster Guide search tool at the bottom of USA TODAY, they can find you.

You can get involved in it as well right now, including a free month in The USA TODAY through Blogger & Podcaster Guide.

There’s no catch other than after the first month there will be a charge if you want to continue promoting to the USA TODAY’s audience. However, they’ve also arranged a 20% discount for you if you find value in the program and choose to continue on.

To get started, here’s all you need to do:

1. Go to http://www.bloggerandpodcaster.com/usatoday
2. Select “New User” and go through 6 Step registration process
3. In Step 2 be sure to select Option #4 and enter `BP’ in Coupon Code box.

They’ll notify you well in advance of the date you’ll be billed, so you don’t need to be worried about unexpected charges.