iGame Radio

According to a Gamasutra article, Mythic Entertainment now wants to be referred to as Bioware Mythic, sticking to its need to redesign it’s name every few years.

Though having merged with EA last year and merged with Bioware, the company still referred to itself on websites and to the public as Mythic Entertainment after a brief stint as EA Mythic. But, according to Joystiq, internally Bioware has been referring to them as Bioware Mythic for a while now.

The company has gone through a number of name changes since its founding in 1995, including Interworld Productions, Mythic Entertainment, EA Mythic, and now Bioware Mythic.

Despite the name change, Bioware’s GM Ray Muzyka says that Mythic will continue to support Warhammer Online, and retain its brands, corporate culture, and other projects. There are also hints that Mythic…’scuse me, Bioware Mythic…could co-develop future titles with one or more of Bioware’s other three studios.

Wolfire Games has posted a wonderful discussion regarding the OnLive streaming game service that launched officially (for some definition of “officially”) yesterday at 6PM PT/9PM ET. Jeff from Wolfire Games has been participating in the Beta for OnLive, and had some very good and smart insights into the service that detail the merits and downfalls of OnLive well.

However, during the post, he let slip an interesting tidbit that lead to some exciting thoughts.

From the OnLive FAQ:

Unfortunately, because of licensing restrictions, we can only offer Mass Effect 2 for play under Windows. So, if you do not have access to a PC, your only option to play it on a Mac is under Windows using Boot Camp or a similar system. We apologize for the inconvenience. OnLive has no other games in the pipeline that are Windows-only, and we do not expect to have any others.

This is ridiculous on so many levels and a great example of why OnLive is so fascinating and controversial. I might be able to virtualize OnLive in Parallels, so that I would be playing Mass Effect 2 through OnLive on Windows running inside of Parallels virtualized on Mac OS X. It feels bad enough when publishers don’t make the effort to support Mac OS X and Linux, the fact that EA has actually gone out of their way to make ME2 inacessible to Mac OnLive users is worth examining in its own blog post.

Worth examining indeed. So I’ll beat Jeff to the punch and examine it now. Why would Mass Effect 2, amongst all the other games available on the OnLive service (such as Assassin’s Creed 2, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction from Ubisoft, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Just Cause 2 from Square Enix, etc) be unavailable on the Mac through OnLive?

I think it’s because EA, or a Mac publisher in conjunction with EA, has Mass Effect 2 for the Mac in the pipeline right now.

OnLive right now is still an experimental service. Let’s face it, most of the people who are going to sign up for it are early adopters (like me) who can’t wait to try out something new and cutting edge. My neighbor next door isn’t going to try it out now (Mac user though he is). And certainly my older friend whose laptop I just helped fix won’t. It’s going to be another year or more before this service is going to be anything other than early adopter fodder.

We early adopters are also the biggest source of revenue for a new game on the Mac that requires a higher end Mac. Like Mass Effect 2. If EA were to bring Mass Effect 2 to the Mac in another 1.5 years or longer, those “higher end Macs” would start to become lower end Macs. A wider audience would be picking the game up.

Except that biggest group would have already played it. They’ve played it on their boot camp partitions. They’ve played it on their Parallels/VMware Fusion/Crossover virtualized Macs. They’ve played it on their PCs (horrors!). If any buy it at that time, it’s for nostalgia and because they want to see what it’s like to run a native game on their Mac.

Why wait if EA can get in the high-end, early adopter range to buy the game now, from OnLive? Then they could bring the game to the Mac natively later, if they still want to, for the lower end machines.

That would work…only if they didn’t have a Mac version in the pipeline now.

I dunno…maybe I’m dreaming. But this certainly seems to be the most logical answer to that question to me.

The next expansion in the Sims series by EA, Sims 3: Ambitions, lets you control the career path of your Sims. Will they be heroes, fighting fires or policing the riff-raff? Will they become bumbling mad scientists or ghost hunters? Or maybe they’ll live on the edge as tattoo artists…wait, what? A tattoo artist is “living on the edge”?

Well, be that as it may, for the first time, you get to put your Sims to work making money. Your Sims can find jobs through the job and opportunity tracker, fill their experience bar, then get better jobs as they climb to the top of their career. They can even find jobs the traditional way, through the newspaper or locations around town. Keep track of your Sims professional progress under their Career tab, and even check their mailbox for articles on clothing and work related to their profession.

Sim career choices can also affect their town and other Sims. And your Sims can earn Simoleons to buy that perfect house, car, or outfit they’ve been wanting.

There are 16 careers to choose from, including firefighter, ghost hunter, tattoo artist, and owning a junkyard. You can even be self-employed, cause your Sim doesn’t let anyone tell her what to do (well, except you).

The Sims 3: Ambitions for Mac is available by Transgaming for pre-order for $39.95, and will launch as a digital download on June 1st.

System requirements:

• Mac OS X v10.5.7 Leopard or higher
• Intel Core Duo Processor
• 2GB RAM
• At least 6.1 GB of hard drive space, with at least 1 GB additional space for custom content and saved games.
• ATI X1600 or Nvidia 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100 (This game will not run on the GMA 950 class of integrated video cards)
• The SIMS 3 for Mac required

The iPad games lineup is getting long and luscious, so we thought we’d post about some interesting titles that you can get your hot hands on come April 3, otherwise known as “Saint iPad’s Day”.

• Plants vs Zombies HD: PopCap’s fabulous casual zombie tower defense game munches its way onto your iPad. PopCap promises exclusive features and functionality for this version, including the Buttered Popcorn mini-game wherein players touch zombies to “butter them up” for attack and four new achievements. The game will go for $9.99. Enjoy our tongue-in-check exclusive preview of Plants vs Zombies HD from yesterday’s podcast!
• Pangea Software Five Game Line-up: Pangea Software is releasing five of their iPhone games for the iPad, including Enigmo Deluxe, Cro-Mag Rally for iPad, Bugdom 2 for iPad, Otto Matic for iPad, and Nanosaur 2 for iPad. Game improvements include more enemies, improved graphics, customization of controls, and improved physics controls. Enigmo Deluxe includes a level editor and over 400 extra free levels. Each game will be available for $9.99.
• Ace Omicron: The survivalist space shooter by ProRatta Factor that will be available for both iPhone and iPad. A 3D update of Asteroids, complete with 3 modes of play and upgrades to your ship. The game is $2.99 for both platforms.
• We Rule: ngmoco’s city-building MMO for the iPhone/iPod Touch now comes to the iPad. Hopefully, the server problems won’t come too. But hey, it’s free!
• CastleCraft: Freeverse’s city-building MMO for the…wait, what? Hey, doesn’t this sound like We Rule? Didn’t these guys merge recently? What’s going on here?? Well, regardless, we reported that CastleCraft was coming to the iPhone/iPod Touch because, well, that’s what info we got, but we also mentioned on the podcast that the site only listed iPad on the screen above (despite the trailer saying otherwise). Today the developer now says “exclusive to the iPad”. And it’s…free.
• Warpgate HD: Freeverse announced Warpgate months ago, even had a contest about naming a planet in the game’s systems. Then we heard nothing. It was always assumed that the game would come out for the iPhone, but suddenly we have the announcement and it’s coming out for the iPad first. The iTunes blurb does say that the game will be coming out for iPhone/iPod Touch later. But there’s no indication of whether there is any multiplayer functionality to the game. The game runs for $7.99
• PartyPad: a new twist on the classic game of marbles from GameHouse. Three modes to choose from, including Space Mania, the classic game of marbles, Table Tactics, which involves more strategy, and Monster Picnic, a more fast-paced game involving feeding a marble munching monster. The game features real-life physics and up to four players can play. $4.99
• Hangman RSS HD: As if the news headlines aren’t damaging enough, now you can hang someone while reading them. Introducing Hangman RSS by Finger Arts, wherein you try to guess the headlines of your RSS feed before you hang the dude. We say that there’s no better analogy for reading the daily news. The iPad version automatically updates the newsfeed over WiFi, then allows the player to access either a summary or the original webpage of the news article when the puzzle is completed. The game sells for $3.99.
• Mirror’s Edge: This is the first of several Electronic Arts titles that are coming to iPad. Mirror’s Edge for iPad will include exclusive head-to-head gameplay in split-screen PvP mode with friends. The price is heftier than any of the other titles mentioned so far, coming in at $12.99. We’ll see if the game lives up to the price.
• Need for Speed Shift: Need for Speed Shift needed to swing large things farther, so the price is $14.99. For that, we’d better be getting a significantly awesome racing game, EA. So far, the screens bear that out, as well as the exclusive features like 8 cars on the iPad you don’t get on any other platform; physics-based, accelerated graphics; and the ability to utilize and access controls and mirrors in the car.
• N.O.V.A.: Gameloft’s highly anticipated game (certainly anticipated since everyone saw a preview of the game on the iPad at the device announcement last year), this SciFi FPS follows the story of the Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance as it seeks to protect Earth from evil invaders. The game utilizes the iPad’s touch-screen technology with 2-finger throwing for grenades and multi-touch targeting for multiple kills. The screens look great, the price lower than I would expect (especially considering EA’s intro prices), at $9.99.

One thing to note is the variation in pricing. They are all over the place. Expect that the pricing will continue to fluctuate for the first month or so as companies feel their way around what the right kind of pricing is for apps on the iPad. Those prices will rise or fall depending on consumer purchases. We will be interested to see where that pricing bottoms out, but don’t expect it to be anywhere close to the iPhone pricing.

Some of you may know the history behind the use of the word “Edge” and the hated name Tim Langdell. CEO, sole employee, and founder of the company Edge Games, Langdell owns the trademark for the word “Edge” in the context of video games, and has aggressively protected it throughout the years of his ownership (since 1990). This despite the fact that he himself hasn’t developed a game since 1994 (looking at the Edge Games website shows game in development that have been so for a long, long time).

Langdell’s most recent claim to fame, as it were, was in threatening legal action against MobyGames and other iPhone game developers for the use of the word in their games. Many buckled before him, but MobyGames fought back for a time. Then Langdell made the mistake of messing with EA and their Mirror’s Edge game. EA subsiquently filed a petition with the USPTO to have the trademark canceled back in September 2009.

A tweet combined with a document filing may lead to a clue about the final closure of this entire mess of two decades or more. Develop has reported that a document in circulation may show that Langdell is on his way to losing this trademark. The title of the document, “AMENDED CONSOLIDATED PETITION FOR CANCELLATION” points towards a pretty good indication that the cancellation is on it’s way to approval.

A tweet, since removed, by Dice employee Johan Andersson, also indicated that this was the case:

“Yay! We (DICE & EA + friends) have finally killed the idiotic ‘Edge’ name patent!”

If this trademark is canceled, does this mean that Tim Langdell will no longer be a threat to the game developer community? That’s hard to say, since someone with Langdell’s tenacity will always find a way to make an impact in the way that he chooses (cough::Thompson::cough). But I would say that his days of living the life of a Trademark Troll will be over.

Just this morning, EA has announced that Dragon Age: Origins is coming to the Mac! The game will be released on December 21st as a standard or digital deluxe download version only. The game is being ported via Transgaming’s Cider technology. The download will include The Stone Prisoner and the Blood Dragon Armor DLC. The deluxe version includes a collection of wallpapers, in-game bonus items, the game’s soundtrack and the Warden’s Keep additional content.

In Dragon Age: Origins, players take on the role of a Grey Warden, one of the last of an ancient order of guardians. Now, as an evil blight threatens to destroy all life, it is up to players to unite the shattered lands and slay the corrupted dragon known as the Archdemon.

Minimum specs are already available on the Bioware website:

• Mac OS X 10.6.2 Snow Leopard or higher
• Intel Core 2 Duo Processor
• 2 GB RAM
• ATI X1600 or NVIDIA 7300 or greater
• At least 17 GB of hard drive space for installation
• This game will not run on PowerPC (G3/G4/G5)-based Mac systems, or Intel GMA class of video cards.

This game will run on an Nvidia 7300?? Um…I’m gonna have to see that to believe it.

Via Macworld Magazine, the news is that Rock Band for the iPhone will be hitting the App Store. Including hits from Lynyrd Skynyrd, Motorhead, The Pixies, Rise Against, and the Smashing Pumpkins, the game will feature a multiplayer experience by providing access to gameplay for two to four players. You can make that connection via Bluetooth, or sync through Facebook. In-game chat will be enabled to check on your band’s status. Rock Band is using iPhone’s push notification for making invitations.

You can choose to play as a drummer, guitarist, bassist, or vocalist at any one of three difficulty levels. I’m still trying to figure out how you’d be playing drums on an iPhone, though. Or even guitar. Imagine trying to hold that thing.

Podcast Episode 76 is now available. Great episode wherein I rant about Australia’s regressive gaming classification, expound upon the new Warhammer Online Mac client, wax nostalgic about possible new games from old Bullfrog IP, and bounce about over Deathspank and Insectoid!

Also:

• A review of Black & White 2, ported to the Mac by Feral Interactive. Gorgeous graphics, fun puzzles, tries to do too many things for too many people. What kind of game was it again?
• A review of Baseball Slugger: Home Run Race 3D, the next Baseball iPhone game from Com2Us. The best baseball batting game for the iPhone out right now.
• An interview with Ariella Lehrer, CEO of Legacy Interactive, about their new Game Share and Compare service on Facebook. Tired of trying to figure out what the rankings on the App Store actually mean? GSC wants to make them mean something real.

I downloaded PopCap’s Plants vs. Zombies game recently, and I’ve been running through the game (will have a review shortly). At it’s heart, Plants vs. Zombies is a tower game. Create your towers (in this case, many different kinds of plants and plant materials) and bring down the waves of the enemy attacking you (in this case, zombies). And it plays on the big fashion for the past year…zombies.

The gameplay that I’ve seen is solid. You have a selection of tools to use against the zombies, but after a certain point you can never use all of the tools you have obtained, so you have to learn to pick wisely for each wave of zombies you have to fight against. However, you continue to gather more tools level after level. Just as the game continues to throw new zombies at you as time goes on. Makes you strategize and think, as the hardcore gamer loves to do. At the same time, the game is not so overwhelmingly hard that casual gamers are turned off by it.

This is part of the reason why PopCap will make a ton of money off of this game. But it’s not the reason why PopCap will rule the world.

PopCap will rule the world because this isn’t really a game so much as a performance. Every little aspect of the game feeds into the meme of Plants vs. Zombies. You want to keep playing…not just because you want to see if you can beat the next wave of zombies, but because you want to see what kind of zombies show up. What new plants the game has in store. What Crazy Dave is going to say to you. What the zombies will try to bribe you with next.

And PopCap went beyond the game in their performance as well. When I received my media package for the game, it included Brain Ooze (an energy drink), sunflower and pea-shooter seeds, and dirt in which to plant your zombie defense seeds. Now, that in itself is not necessarily unusual…I’ve received these themed media packages before, but usually they are for high priced hardcore games. PopCap also released a viral YouTube video, a music video of the game. My youngest flipped over it, and still sings the damn song.

And most importantly, all of this marketing feels, well, honest. It’s as though the folks at PopCap sat around trying to figure out how to market the game, and you could just imagine that they had as much fun coming up with the ideas for the marketing as they did for the game design itself. That the marketing is not just to get you to buy it, but also to *join in their fun*.

Maybe I’m just downing the wrong pills, but there’s an honesty, as I said, that you don’t always see or hear from other companies. I mean, witness what EA did at E3 with Dante’s Inferno. They had to pay a company to create a fake protest of the game with actors. I mean, doesn’t that just make the game feel like a fraud?

If you believe in your game, put your heart and soul into your game, then put that fun and joy and show that in your marketing scheme. Cause if you can’t show your joy when you market the game, then how am I supposed to believe that you had any joy in making it? And that can result in a game with no life.

According to Macworld Magazine, EA launched The Sims 3 simultaneously for the Mac, PC, and iPhone/iPod Touch. The Sims 3, the latest in The Sims franchise, promises unprecedented customization and choices for both your sims and their homes, while removing tedious micromanagement, like sending them to the toilet and the shower (excuse me??? I liked doing that…er, I mean…uh…). And microtransactions have found a home in The Sims 3 as well, with a store that allows you to buy items for your sims and their homes. You’ve even got the ability to create movies of your sims and email them around to others because, well, your sims mean so much to you.

In any case, a game that many, many gamers, both core and casual, I’m sure are going to enjoy playing for a long time. And it was really nice of EA to allow us Mac users to share in the fun, sort of a token gesture on their part to recognizing that we still breathe oxygen and are capable of pushing buttons on a keyboard and mouse. Oh, and that we have a few dollars.

Because apparently we don’t have enough dollars, button pushing ability, or oxygen to share in any other fun with EA. Such as FIFA 10, Mass Effect 2, Battlefield 1943, APB, Crysis 2, or The Saboteur (even though Dragon Age: Origins doesn’t specify Mac, I do know that the intention is to bring it out for the Mac as soon as PC development is over…we’ll see if that actually gells into reality tho). Ooh, ooh, but we get Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince! Weee!

I guess I shouldn’t be all that cynical. I mean, out of the 27 games that are mentioned in the list, nine actually are coming out for the PC…a third. Man, that pill tastes damned bitter, don’t it. Well, welcome to the club.