Worth Reading: 05/11/2012

That Betascript Publishing re-purposing Wikipedia articles and selling them on Amazon makes me sick to the stomach and absolutely furious. How dare they. That is absolutely disgusting. I work for a reputable publisher and it makes me livid to think there are bastards like that out there leeching off other people's hard work. I'm sickened Amazon would even allow them to sell on their site.

Must be cooler up there in SF...too hot in the South Bay to have a damned cold! Going to be 89 tomorrow. Pat needs to get out in the sun and burn it out of him.

One of the pivotal events that taught me a dark aspect of the Internet was when Something Awful turned on it's own Eve guild for shits and giggles. Ostensibly it was because the Something Awful guild had mutated into Something Un-Awful like, but I kind of got the impression it was just sanctioned bloodletting. You weren't going to lose $20.00 over it while you screwed over a targeted fellow member. I lost what little interest I had in that site that I was wanting to have before. I never understood all that, though Eve has little value to me. The game sounds like very occasional exciting stuff buried in tedium and labor thats incidentally set in outer space. You might as well be doing it in a corporation cubicle.

@Leptok said:

This is basically propaganda, but it makes a great read as well:

Sins of a Solar Spymaster #78: The Extortion of Empire

An outbreak of rare peace across nullsec has unleashed upon New Eden a wave of macro-level market manipulations that have already begun to reshape the power relations between hisec and nullsec. Five critical events have coincided with this peace, two from CCP and three from nullsec blocs: the mineral supply changes in the Escalation patch released April 24th, a crackdown on botting and RMT by CCP’s security division, the creation of OTEC - a price-fixing cartel which controls the Technetium supply - the Sack of Jita, and the newly bloc-sponsored Hulkageddon .

So: the Sack of Jita was only the tip of the iceberg, the birth-scream of a new economic era that was only hinted at during the Ice Interdiction. Nullsec now sends gankers into hisec to disrupt an already thin mineral supply and bankrolls freelancers via Hulkageddon to destroy miners en masse; each exhumer destroyed can only be replaced by production that requires cartelized Technetium, which goes right into the pockets of the very people bankrolling the gankers. A tremendous amount of uncertainty now hangs over the head of every hisec trade hub and each producer within it, as if Jita can be sacked, perhaps Amarr, Rens, or Dodixie could be next - and that uncertainty drives prices up still more. I can state affirmatively that there will be more ‘burns’ of trade hubs by nullsec alliances, but future attacks will not come with two months of warning - if there is any notice at all.

http://www.tentonhammer.com/eve/spymaster/78

Those are quite possibly the illest two paragraphs I've ever read.

Someone in the community should just craft a novel out of all this economic and corporate intrigue. I'd read that in a heartbeat, 'cause there's no way I'd EVER play EVE Online.

Patrick, I love your Worth Reading segments. LOVE LOVE LOVE.

I've lost count the amount of times I have toyed with the idea of playing EVE Online...

Haven't listened to much Passion Pit, but this is possibly one of my favorite mashups ever.

Jebus, the story about Free Radical is super tragic. What a shame.

The reviews section for the wikipedia article bit.trip "book" seems to suggest that these are getting put up and priced to take advantage of people trying to search for actual games - if you accidentally hit "buy it now" on that because the price and the title looked right, I guess you'd be out the ~$60CAN. That said, was there EVER an actual box release of BIT.TRIP.BEAT (besides that 3ds bit.trip collection)?

Just looking at the description Against the Wall sounds a lot like a first person Pushmo. That's neat I guess.

@Mumrik: Sonya. coughcoughcoughcoughcough

The rumor about Kano and Sony being playable via glitch took on legitimate life at my arcade,

Sony?

Thanks once again for all this shit to distract me from doing my job, Patrick! And no, that wasn't sarcasm.

This is basically propaganda, but it makes a great read as well: 
 

Sins of a Solar Spymaster #78: The Extortion of Empire

     An outbreak of rare peace across nullsec has unleashed upon New Eden a wave of macro-level market manipulations that have already begun to reshape the power relations between hisec and nullsec. Five critical events have coincided with this peace, two from CCP and three from nullsec blocs: the mineral supply changes in the Escalation patch released April 24th, a crackdown on botting and RMT by CCP’s security division, the creation of OTEC - a price-fixing cartel which controls the Technetium supply - the Sack of Jita, and the newly bloc-sponsored Hulkageddon .   
 

So: the Sack of Jita was only the tip of the iceberg, the birth-scream of a new economic era that was only hinted at during the Ice Interdiction. Nullsec now sends gankers into hisec to disrupt an already thin mineral supply and bankrolls freelancers via Hulkageddon to destroy miners en masse; each exhumer destroyed can only be replaced by production that requires cartelized Technetium, which goes right into the pockets of the very people bankrolling the gankers. A tremendous amount of uncertainty now hangs over the head of every hisec trade hub and each producer within it, as if Jita can be sacked, perhaps Amarr, Rens, or Dodixie could be next - and that uncertainty drives prices up still more. I can state affirmatively that there will be more ‘burns’ of trade hubs by nullsec alliances, but future attacks will not come with two months of warning - if there is any notice at all.

As an ex-Eve Online player, the only real way to understand player fueled events is to talk to a bunch of the factions and try to puzzle piece it together. Ain't easy imo.

Passion Pit is pretty dope.

Yay, I always enjoy these. The civilization of my Friday afternoon is dictated by the wall of Worth Reading. Worth Reading does not talk, it does not speak, but the Worth Reading is life, is everything.

Ok, maybe not quite that much.

Colds are the worst. You gain a legitimate excuse to lay around all day, but the effort needed to do anything makes it a moot point.

I’m battling through a mild cold right now, and I’ve re-written this opening sentence more than a dozen times. It’s unclear whether each time was because the sentence wasn’t any good or I just can’t tell anymore. I guess it doesn’t matter. Not like I can tell.

Worth Reading has been going for a little while now, and I’ve been pleased by the reception. It could always be better, though, and I’m introducing a new feature at the bottom. Whenever I feature a game or story, it’s featured because I’ve taken the time to read or play it. I’m constantly taking note of games and articles all week, though, and it seems a shame that I’m not able to share any of them because I ran out of time.

As always, let me know what you think, and keep sending me game and article recommendations!

Hey, You Should Play This:

• Against the Wall

Designer Michael Consoli is onto something with Against the Wall, a first-person puzzler that imagines a chaotic civilization where the world is dictated by an omnipotent wall. The wall does not talk, it does not speak, but the wall is life, is everything, and in order to survive, you must push and pull the wall, and hope your jumps are well-timed along the way. Against the Wall has been in Consoli’s pet project for the last year, and he’ll attend NYU Game Center later this fall because of it. Against the Wall might be put on the backburner during that time. Maybe we can convince him otherwise? You can find out for yourself, since early versions of the game are available for download now.

And You Should Read These, Too:

• Black Undead Damnation by Jason Johnson for Kill Screen

I’ve become obsessed with watching The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time speedruns, as players discover and manipulate different glitches within the game that allow them to finish it in absolutely astonishing times (the last one I saw was 22 minutes!). Glitches give rise to myths, and myths can be powerful toys for the imagination. The arcade near me as a kid was one of the Midway testing grounds, and we constantly received updated versions of Mortal Kombat long before the games came out. The rumor about Kano and Sonya being playable via glitch took on legitimate life at my arcade, since new revisions were always coming through. Jason Johnson heard about a haunted house in Red Dead Redemption, and went about investigating. His lesson? Be careful what you wish for. Mwhaha!

The ghost hunt was a bust. More curious than the mansion itself is why videogames generate urban legends in the first place. I have my own theory on this. It shows that a game has been assimilated into culture, to the point where people are willing to make up bullshit about it, which might be the highest achievement of all for a game. In the classics, this sort of rumor mongering happens all the time.

• Observing the “Burn Jita” Player Event

You’ve heard us talk about EVE Online before, and it won’t be the last time the space drama is mentioned on Giant Bomb. I’m still not sure how to tackle covering EVE Online. When even Dave can’t find a way to break through to the game, I’m willing to admit defeat up-front. Right now, I’m searching for an EVE Online ambassador--a guide, if you will. In the search for captivating stories, however, EVE Online is full of them, as the “Burn Jita” event recently underscored. “Burn Jita” was a massive attack on the economic infrastructure of EVE Online, headed by the group “Goonswarm.” Developer CCP Games has published a blog about the “Burn Jita” event, which includes a fascinating breakdown of the technical logistics involved with scaling and maintaining such a large player event.

Since the "Burn Jita" event was announced well in advance and CCP wants to support player-driven events (as long they are within the rules of the game), we reinforced the Jita solar system on our beefiest hardware, further reinforced all neighbouring systems and set out to monitor the event and provide the best experience we could to willing (and unwilling) participants. Then things started to unfold a day earlier than announced on Friday morning. We gathered data and fine-tuned the systems and as CCP Veritas put it: "It's okay, didn't want that Friday night anyway."

And Some Other Stuff:

• Passion Pit’s new single isn’t game related, but I’ve been listening to it while writing about games, so...
• Before Crytek picked up Free Radical, some crazy shit went down with LucasArts. Amazing story.
• It's been a while since GeoHot, but we barely knew about what happened. David Kushner solves that.
• You've heard me lament about horror games before. Frictional Games gives me hope.
• People were pretty up in arms about the EA "indie" bundle, but what do the developers think?
• I've been told the best way to understand design philosophy is to make a board game. Matthew Burns did.
• Can someone explain why this Wikipedia article about Bit.Trip costs so much money?
• An article about gamification that doesn't talk about gamification to avoid pre-conceived notions. Hmm.