geekosystem

It's a good day to be a human! Not only are we at the top of the food chain here on Earth, but according to a recent study by researchers at the Royal Observatory of Edinburgh, we Terrans would totally run the show in the StarCraft universe if it were to actually play out in real life.

Google is rather fond of hiding little easter eggs in their search page, but today's is a doozy. In an homage to Blizzard's StarCraft series, if you search for "zerg rush" your screen will be filled with innumerable attackers that you must destroy. The perfect way to waste time on a lazy Friday.

It certainly seems like major league gaming and eSports has, of late, received its share of press. Whether that’s good, bad or some strange gray area of press, there’s been a relative glut of news relating to it and its players recently. There are certainly more folks keeping a closer eye on things than before. That in no way means to imply that this is a recent thing. eSports have been around longer than the term used to describe them. The exact kind of competition has varied over the years, depending on the game’s genre, among other factors, but it hasn't been any less intense than the recent bouts. In fact, some franchises have long been known to be hardcore.

Internet addiction clinics aren't exactly a new thing, but South Korea has found the problem of Internet addiction to be so pervasive that they have set up a clinic not to deal with addiction, but to prevent it. StarCraft is a huge deal in South Korea to the extent that it is a professional sport, and it seems that this national obsession, in conjunction with the Internet at large, is having a negative affect on the nation's youth. The children at the camp who show warning signs of becoming raging internetaholics spend their time playing reality-based games, taking hikes, reading books and going to counseling sessions, all without the aid of internetahol. Because large-scale Internet connectivity and personal computers are relatively new to South Korea, many parents are simply at a loss to help their children find a healthy balance.

This. Changes. Everything. (via /r/starcraft)

2010 has become a year of a comparatively tame Blizzcon, and it's hard to blame Blizzard for it. After all, last year they had World of Warcraft: Cataclysm to announce. This year, it's coming out in a month. 2008's Blizzcon was a showcase for the then-fairly-recently announced Diablo III, now the game is nearing fruition (for Blizzard, anyway). And StarCraft II is less than a year old, with its second installment not due until 2012. And so, given the quietness on the western front, there was a low current of expectation that we might even see something about Blizzard's fabled Questing Beast of the last three years: their mysterious unannounced new MMO.

The good news is players don't have to wait another fourteen years for the next installment in the StarCraft franchise. The bad new is that they've got to wait until at least 2012 As a World of Warcraft player, I am fairly inured to the Blizzard definition of "soon," but now all my StarCraft loving friends can get a taste. From Gamespot UK:

When discussing such future Battle.net features as trading replays, broadcasting replays, and upgrading profiles, [Battle.net Project Director Greg Canessa] said they were "a main area of focus we're going to be seeing on the Starcraft [II] side over the next 18 months between now and Heart of the Swarm."

Kotaku reports that South Korean authorities have been cracking down over the weekend on unrated games, and this may mean considerable bad things for Korean Steam users. Korean law states that all games available to the public must be rated by the Game Rating Board. That's all well and nice, except that game makers must pay to get their game rated, and many cannot afford the price. When South Korea says all games, they mean all games. Tiny indie games, flash-based or mobile whatsits, big blockbusters, and everything in between. Team Liquid, a StarCraft community site, reports that Steam games may even be in the sights of Korean authorities.

Video game sales data is in for the month of July, and we all know what to expect: complete and utter StarCraft II dominance. Unsurprisingly, that's what we got. Blizzard sold more than 700,000 retail copies of the game in the last five days of July, causing an 103% increase in US PC game sales from June. Overall, Blizzard says it sold 1.5 million copies in the game's first 48 hours.

No, I haven't bought a copy of StarCraft 2 yet.  Even if I had, I'm leaving tonight for parts unknown and won't be back until the second week in August, so I wouldn't get to play it. /sigh It's going to be excruciating, not playing StarCraft 2 whilst sitting on a California beach with a good friend that I hardly ever see anymore.  I'll just have to watch this to tide me over.

This past week, the single most important story in geekdom has been the unfolding of Blizzard's Real ID saga, which concluded this afternoon when Blizzard announced that players would not be required to use their real names on future Blizzard forums, which, if implemented, would have affected millions World of Warcraft and StarCraft II players. Blizzard is one of the 800-pound gorillas of the gaming world, and had they gone ahead with this, it would have changed the culture of gaming, and, arguably, the Internet. But ultimately, Blizzard backed down.

The wait for the new StarCraft II ad was supposed to last until tonight during the fourth game of the NBA finals (an odd event to choose for a gamer phenomenon), but apparently not even the people at Blizzard could stand the anticipation, as the trailer is now available on YouTube, and thus also available below. Things look to be epic, and while the new ad doesn't offer much in the way of gameplay innovation, it promises to up the intensity and the graphics exponentially from the first game. And yes, I know that exponentially doesn't work with only two points, but that's how awesome it should be. It defies logic. Without further ado:

This anime still comes from what I would call an unlikely source. Or at least a source with unlikely inspiration. The image comes from Dante's Inferno: The Animated Epic, a series of anime shorts inspired not by Dante's original Divine Comedy, but by the video game Dante's Inferno.

Also mysteriously in existence is Halo Legends, an anime series based on the Halo franchise. Because when someone says "film adaptation of the Halo franchise," the first thought I have is "anime."

And now this morning brings the announcement of yet another anime adaptation of a western video game: Dragon Age. Like all these other game animes, it'll be direct-to-video, with a 2011 release date.

While I find this trend to be downright odd, there's undoubtedly some potential. Halo, at least, has a sufficient fan base that there could be an audience for the anime, and it's not a stretch to guess that there would be overlap in the anime and Halo markets. But Dante's Inferno and Dragon Age are each a bit of a stretch to justify. But who knows, they might be great.

Which brings us to the bulk of our exercise. Here are 10 Western games that I know would make for sweet anime adaptations, ranked from how much I would salivate over it, in ascending order:

If you were gunning to get tickets to this year's BlizzCon, the odds are pretty good that tonight was not your lucky night: The first batch of tickets for Blizzard Entertainment's eagerly anticipated two-day event were snapped up almost as soon as they were let out of the gates at 10pm EDT / 7pm PDT, with a ticket queue of 10,000 already formed just moments after they went on sale. WoW.com reports that as of 10:23pm EDT, all of the $150 tickets had already sold out.

Blizzard announced today that its ongoing revamp of the Battle.net service will introduce one pretty scary optional feature: Facebook integration.  Battle.net is the online matchmaking service that has grouped up players of Starcraft, Warcraft, and Diablo games for thirteen years.  It received a major face lift last year, in preparation for taking an even larger role in the lives of Blizzard's players.  The new service will basically be a gaming social network the likes of Xbox Live, or Steam, instead of just a tiered matchmaker. From the official press release:

"We're pleased to be working with Facebook to integrate their platform with Battle.net to enhance the social-entertainment experience for our players," said Paul Sams, chief operating officer of Blizzard Entertainment. "This new functionality will make it easier than ever to connect with friends on Battle.net and play StarCraft II and future Blizzard Entertainment games together."