Culture

Eidos is famous for hiring sexy English models to portray Lara Croft and then send them over to various game conventions and promotional events.They have been doing this for over 10 years now and have just hired their newest model, 23 year old Alison Carroll. However these models are strictly for eye candy; they have never actually participated in any of the Tomb Raider game development. They have never been the voice of Lara Croft nor handled any of the motion capture for the character.

That is not the case for actress-model Melinda Cohen, who showed up at Penny Arcade Expo last weekend to promote the upcoming Replay Studios-Gamecock stealth action game Velvet Assassin. Cohen was there as a booth model but she is also handling the voice for the character of Violet Summer (in both English and German versions) in the game itself. She's also doing motion capture work for the character in the game. all of which puts her several steps ahead of any Lara Croft model. Velvet Assassin is currently scheduled for release late in 2008.

[Via Destructoid]

You may have noticed that the trailers for the upcoming movie version of Remedy's Max Payne game series don't have a rating yet, even though the movie is a little more than a month away from release. That's because the Twentieth Century Fox production is trying to get a PG-13 rating for the ultra-violent film. However the MPAA ratings board has slapped an early cut of the film with an R rating which will almost certainly lower its potential take at the box office.

Das Gamer has a chat with the film's director John Moore who expressed frustration over the ratings fight with the MPAA with Max Payne. Moore states, "They said to me, the movie feels R. And I said, "What the f*** is that, a group therapy session?" You can't do that. They're meant to judge content, not intent. They said the movie felt dark." Max Payne is due in theaters on Oct 17.

You may remember that a week ago Electronic Arts took over a gas station in Los Angeles to give out free gas to anyone that showed up. It was a neat little promotion for their now released open world action game Mercenaries 2. Well, EA tried to do the same promo stunt in a UK suburb of London but had their efforts shut down by local officials.

According to the UK based Telegraph web site, the promotion caused a massive traffic jam as hundreds of cars got in line to get the free petrol. Local politican Lynne Featherstone stated, "Whilst a lucky few might have got some free petrol, hundreds of local residents have faced misery on their daily journeys this morning. They deserve an apology for being the victims of such an ill-thought out media stunt." Not everyone feels this way. Local resident Donna Lashley waited 40 minutes to get her car fueled for free and stated, "I think it's a brilliant promotion. I don't see it becoming a full-time thing, but I think it's a great idea - I'll be telling my sons about the game."

[Via GamePolitics]

Last April, Ziff Davis, then in the middle of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy, announced that it was shutting down its Games For Windows print magazine. The mag, which had changed its name only 18 months before its shutdown and was previously known as Computer Gaming World for 25 years beforehand, had Jeff Green as its long time editor in chief. At the time of the magazine's cancellation Green minced no words when he said on his blog, "This is tough. This sucks. I'm not going to pretend to be in a good mood." Green and the rest of the Games For Windows staff (minus their art team) moved onto the 1Up.com web site to cover PC gaming.

Now 1Up.com has posted up word that Green has decided to leave Ziff Davis after a total of 17 years to get into game development. Specifically Green will be working for Electronic Arts' Sims brand of games. Ironically Games For Windows' last print issue had Sims 3 as its cover story. There's no word yet on what Green's new specific job will be like.

A while back we mentioned that the DirecTV satellite TV service would be offering exclusive HD coverage of this October's Blizzcon event via pay per view. This week DirectTV announced the details on how new subscribers to the service would be able to get the Blizzcon coverage for free.

Simply put, any new DirecTV customers who sign up for the service by September 30 will be able to get the Blizzcon pay per view for free. Existing customers will have to shell out a whopping $39.95 for the same privilage. That pay per view will offer at least eight hours of HD coverage per day of Blizzard's sort of annual event on October 10-11. Anyone who orders the pay-per-view will also get a cool World of Warcraft in-game item; a polar bear mount with a murloc that waves a Blizzcon flag.

Games from Blizzard Entertainment not only have great gameplay and terrific CGI cut-scenes they also have some of the best music soundtracks in the industry. Earlier this week we reported that a free song from the Diablo III CGI trailer has been made available for free on iTunes and today Blizzard announced that soundtracks from a number of their older games have now been made available via Apple's music download service.

Some of these tracks have only been available until now in collector's editions of Blizzard games or on sale at part Blizzcon events. Six soundtracks are currently available for Starcraft, Diablo II, Warcraft III and three World of Warcraft soundtrack albums. Blizzard's podcast can also be downloaded via iTunes.

Last week Yahoo debuted the final US trailer for Max Payne, the upcoming action movie based on the Remedy developed game series. But you haven't seen anything yet. Yahoo's UK division has the international version of the trailer available to check out as well.

This new version has a number of scenes that were not shown in last week's US trailer and still looks plenty cool with lots of supernatural-like elements, great looking fire effects and plenty of shooting, glass shattering and the like. Can Mark Walhberg make us forget that the studio making Max Payne, Twentieth Century Fox, also made the very crappy adaptation of Hitman last year? We will see when the Max Payne film heads for theaters on Oct. 17.

The Penny Arcade Expo has just finished up and the E For All Expo is coming in early October but across the pond the folks at the Eurogamer web site are hosting their own consumer game show on Oct 28-29 in London. The first annual Eurogamer Expo will be part of London's annual Games Festival.

If you happen to be in town for those two days the first annual Eurogamer Expo will have a number of upcoming fall titles like Prince of Persia, Far Cry 2, Mirror's Edge and many more. The best thing is the admission price. No, it's not free but they are asking for a mere GBP 5 donation to UK videogames charity GamesAid. That's a pretty good deal to see a bunch of upcoming fall 2008 titles.

Fans were impressed by the Mercenaries 2 TV commercial, especially its incredibly catchy theme song. This video, set to the full song, demonstrates how that commercial was made. You can download both HD video and song right now, then get straight to blowing things up.

Download the HD Making of Mercenaries 2 TV Spot Video (54 MB)
Download the "Oh No You Didn't" Full Song (3 MB)

If you ask pretty much everyone, the 2008 edition of the invite-only E3 Media and Business Summit was a huge letdown. Many people have been wondering for years why the owners of E3, the Entertainment Software Association, don't make the show open to the public like the Tokyo Game Show does.

Well, Kotaku is reporting through unnamed sources that a proposal for a public E3 has now been put forward to the ESA's board for consideration. Of course, even if this is true it sounds like such an idea is in the very early stages and could be vetoed for another fomat. However if it goes though that would likely be the last we will hear of the E for All Expo (both E3 and E for All are organized by IDG World Expo). A public E3 could also affect both exhibitor and attendee interest in Penny Arcade Expo which has surged in attendance and importance in the game industry following the switch to an invite only E3 in 2006.

Update: Big Download contacted the ESA for comment and received this response from its senior VP Rich Taylor: "As we do every year, the ESA solicits feedback and direction from exhibitors and attendees on how best to adapt and evolve the E3 Media & Business Summit to ensure it meets their needs. Each element of the Summit is opened for discussion and that process is ongoing to execute a productive and efficient experience. Regarding today's published reports, the ESA does not comment on rumors and speculation and will make an announcement about the details and logistics of the 2009 E3 Media & Business Summit at the appropriate time."

Arguably, video games are all about making you, the player, feel like a hero. You're meant to overcome incredible odds, employ every ounce of skill at your command to win through, defeat the villain, and triumph in the end. The denouement should be satisfying, and provide a cathartic sense of closure. You should feel as though you've been on an amazing journey, and no matter how difficult it was, or perhaps because of the difficulty, it was all worth it in the end.

However, massively multiplayer online games are a rather different beast. To wit: can you still feel like a hero when the journey never ends, you're only one of thousands, and there is no closure?

Mercenaries 2 is out for consoles now and should ship for the PC later this week but commercials for the Pandemic-Electronic Arts open world action game are running on TV as we speak. The spots feature a cool little ditty of an original tune called "Oh No You Didn't" that's actually quite catchy.

Pandemic must have figured that fans would want to hear the whole song instead of just a 30 second portion so they have provided a free download of the full 3 minute version of "Oh No You Didn't" on the official Mercenaries 2 web site. You can also download a behind-the-scenes movie showing the making of the TV commercial but oddly enough the commercial itself cannot be downloaded. Weird. Both of those downloads are now available from Big Download

Download the full "Oh No You Didn't" Mercenaries 2 TV commerical song at Big Download
Download the behind-the-scenes on the Mercenaries 2 TV commerical movie at Big Download.

It's almost a certainly that we have many, many, many months before the release of Blizzard's fantasy action-RPG sequel Diablo III but at least you can get a free listen to some of the music created for the game ahead of time. Apple's iTunes download service has offered up the "Diablo III Overture" as a free download as part of their Discovery Download program.

The theme, credited to the Russell Brower and the Eminence Symphony Orchestra was used as the music for the cinematic Diablo III trailer that was used to introduce the game last June. Of course you can check out that trailer right here at Big Download which also happens to be free. The wait for playing Diablo III is, of course, priceless.

The Spore Community Site has been busy with brand new prototypes for fans to play with. Prototypes are tools the developers use to help test theories and explore design directions. The public normally never gets to see these prototypes, but the Spore developers decided to pass them out for fans to try out and toy around with. We have all the prototypes available for Spore fans to try out. Remember that EA does not support these prototypes, they've never been tested, and many aren't easily explained. All prototypes are less than 1 MB.

Click "Continue" to read the descriptions of each prototype.

Download the Spore GonzagoGL Prototype
Download the Spore Waterboy Prototype
Download the Spore NetCity Prototype
Download the Spore Gaslight Prototype
Download the Spore Crowd Prototype
Download the Spore SPUG Prototype
Download the Spore Space Prototype
Download the Spore Cell Culture Prototype
Download the Spore City Maze Prototype
Download the Spore BIOME Prototype
Download the Spore ParticleMan Prototype

Independent Minds aims to take various aspects of indie gaming and present them to you each week. From game round-ups to design elements to interviews with prominent members of the scene, it's an exploration of what makes indie gaming great as well as what makes someone an indie.

It's a phenomenon normally only seen in amateur communities, among people that do not have the drudgery of a nine-to-five job in their field. The freelancers and visionaries, the next great creators of the future. From writing, to art, to movie-making, competitions are not so much the realm of professional-level creation but rather for those that can crank out a prototype, an early draft, or a short movie in a single weekend. For these competitions, none seems to be as interesting as those created by the independent game development company.