Kotaku: Forums

Public Safety Notice: Games PR Are Watching You Post

Luke Plunkett — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 04:30:00 MDT

Sorry, that was a little alarming. You, of course, knew that already. It's not as if games PR types sit around in ivory towers getting their information from carrier pigeons and whispers on the wind. They find out what you like, don't like and go "eh" about their games by, yes, trawling through your favourite forum, and reading up on what you - Average Joe - thinks about their games. Same goes for developers as well. Keen to hear more about how it all works? Please, hit the link below for the full 1UP feature, which features chats with, among others, PR reps from 2K & Capcom, as well as NeoGAF owner Tyler Malka.
Chairman of the Boards [1UP] [Pic]

Warcraft III Patch Rap Battles

Mike Fahey — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 11:20:10 MST

This could be the beginning of a huge trend. Eagerly awaiting news of a patch for Warcraft III, official forum poster TowerPowerNerf was getting increasingly frustrated. When the Blizzard RTS Community Manager Karune posted news that there would be no WCIII patch before 2008, something inside TPN broke, and he did the only thing a man with nothing else to lose can do. He created a rap video. Not a particularly good rap video mind you, but he certainly put a lot of effort into, breaking out his best approximation of the English language to make sure his point was heard. Imagine if all heated forum posts eventually jumped from flame war directly to rap off! The internet would be a better place, especially if the company's employees started responding in kind. Karune did. Total class right there. Not only does Karune get points for matching artists with TowerPowerNerf, he gets bonus points for giving a damn good reason why the patch isn't done yet in the form of his lovely singing partner. Ladies and gentlemen...this is the future of warfare. Tom Clancy's DJ 6: Compton can't be far behind.

Karune Debuts as YouTube Rapper — Phear'em Eminem! [Blizzplanet via Evil Avatar]

Hackers Join Next-Gen HD Format Wars

Mike Fahey — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 15:00:11 MST

In a sense, the next-generation HD battle of blu-ray versus HD DVD closely parallels the current generation console battle between Sony and Microsoft. Both have clear advantages and disadvantages over the other, and every time I try to choose between the two, something happens to cloud my judgment. Transformers on HD DVD. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Over the holiday season the battle grew more heated, as both formats tried to out special deal the other and forums broke out into the verbal equivalent of fisticuffs, escalating to the point where hackers threw their hat into the ring, redirecting visitors to Blue-raydisc.com to HD DVD's "The Look and Sound of Perfect" website. Nasty! The hack was quickly fixed, but the message is clear. This is still very much a war, and perhaps "Hack the Planet!" Makes you wonder if all industries have fights like this, and somewhere on a craft site a knitter is calling a crocheter a little bitch. F***ing crocheters.

Hacks and smack-talking make hi-def format war even uglier [Ars technica]

Dead Island Website Lives

Mike Fahey — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 12:00:37 MDT

Techland dropped us a line to let us know that the official website for Dead Island just went live. Sure to be your number one source for Dead Island info, the site contains links to press stories, screenshots, videos, and community forums so you can politely discuss the game with like-minded fellows, or call them asshats. You can sign up for the newsletter via the site as well to stay up to date on important Dead Island news, such as website openings.

Dead Island Official Website [Techland]

Correction's Officer Brags About Brutality On CoH Forums

Mike Fahey — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 08:40:32 MDT

One Portland Oregon corrections officer is in desperate need of correction, if his posts on the City of Heroes forums are to be believed. In a piece for the Portland Tribune, reporter Nick Bundick exposes the forum postings of David B. Thompson, which range from musings on the joy of tasering people to outright bragging about brutally beating a prisoner and then charging him for attacking him.

He also wrote, "I crushed a dude's eye socket from repeatedly punching him in it, then I charged him with menacing and harassment (of me)." Trafalgar then added, "he took a plea to get away from me. He shoulda picked somebody else to try and fight."

The article contains multiple links to CoH forum posts by Thompson, who reportedly only accesses the forums from his work PC, where he has posted 1,738 messages since January.

A great deal of what Thompson has stated in the offending posts could be simple internet bravado, though the case of the eye-punching has been corroborated by police officials as an actual event involving a prisoner named David Michael Baker who wound up pleading guilty to attempted assault of a police officer.

Sheriff Bernie Giusto has launched a probe into the forum posts and related incidents, and if the police department doesn't discipline Thompson, Department of Public Safety Standards and Training director John Minnis is waiting in the wings.

Based on a reporter's characterization of Trafalgar's posts, Minnis said, "it sounds similar to other cases we have reviewed and successfully prosecuted (for law-enforcement decertification)."

Now I understand that tensions can get high in an environment like a maximum security prison, but you don't needlessly beat people, and failing that you don't brag about it on the internet. They say forums bring out the worst in people, and if the allegations presented in the article prove to be correct, that saying has never been more accurate.

Jail worker investigated [Portland Tribune via Game Politics]

GoW Definitely Not Coming to PS3

Kim Phu — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 11:40:00 MDT

The best way to get into a full-blown fist-to-cuffs fight these days to go around speculating which games are going to be exclusives and which ones are not. For those who still believe in the Tooth Fairy, just thinking about having of one of big three games rumored to get ported onto a foreign console will have you collecting enough teeth off the ground to pay next month's rent.

Well, one game can be removed from that list. On a forum called Sony Protection Group, an unlucky PS3 fan posted that Epic had planneed to port Gears of War over to PS3, and went as far as saying that Cliff Bleszinski was quoted as wanting to threaten Microsoft in order to leverage developer rights over the content of the game as well as the DLC.

Although it's a forum, and most people take each piece of information with will a little grain of salt, let's just say Mark Rein at Epic wasn't thrilled when a link to the above post made it onto a thread called "Gears of War coming to the PS3?!" on the Gears Forums on Epic, to which he replied, "This story is complete bull****. I emailed the site and asked them to take it down. We're very happy with our relationship with Microsoft. If it weren't for them Gears wouldn't be the huge hit it has become."

He also happen to write the PS3 forum a message:

Please remove that complete b******* story about Gears going to PS3. Cliff Bleszinski has NEVER been quoted as "threatening Microsoft to port over Gears to the PS3". We're very happy with our relationship with Microsoft and are extremely grateful of everything they've done to help make Gears the huge success it has become. Part of that success came from being an Xbox 360 exclusive FIRST PARTY title and Microsoft getting behind it in a huge way. They're the publisher of Gears of War and, unless they say otherwise, there is no chance Gears is coming to PS3. For PS3 we have Unreal Tournament 3 and it's going to be fantastic.

That's a solid enough answer for me to believe that Gears won't be on a PS3 anytime soon. Anything to keep my pearly whites. Kim Phu

Epic: Gears to PS3 is complete BS [Deeko News]

Rumor: Mod Proof Wiis in Japan

Kim Phu — Wed, 30 May 2007 09:40:00 MDT

Looks like after you upset Nintendo Europe with all that mod-chip talk, it went crying to mommy and told on you. Unhappy modders on the forum, Hacken.cc have recently found out that the newer version of the Japanese NTSC/J Wiis have had the three pins removed that enable mod chips to be attached. There has been no news of the US versions having the pins clipped, but of course, it's still so difficult to get a Wii, how would anyone really know for sure.

Obviously it's in the rumor bin because it's from a forum where only one user has experienced this "problem". If it is true, all that you can do is make a trip down to Home Depot to buy some fancy soldering irons and find some one with some very tiny, steady hands. Kim Phu

Nintendo Shipping Mod-Proof Wiis in Japan

New Lite Cracks Inspire Droll Repartee

egauger — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 19:40:51 MDT

With Nintendo gracefully acknowledging the Lite's hinge cracks and fixing them left and right, I felt justified in my choice of keeping my ol' reliable fatty on hand. And alas, a new crack seems to have reared its crackity head.

The new crack, which may or may not be epidemic (weigh in, Lite owners), seems hinge-related, and "may render the DS unplayable".

The best part of this is not the post itself, or the documentative photographs, but rather the extremely effete snarking in the comment thread where the image at right was originally posted.

Originally Posted by 51|RandoM Things break. Portable things tend to break even more than things that just sit there. Portable things with moving parts break even more.
Welcome to reality, perhaps you should've stuck with the matrix where nothing ever breaks.

[Mason says:] Stirring.

I don't think the issue anyone has is with the impermanence of forms, but rather how frequently these rather expensive forms are demonstrating their impermanence.

Well spoken, Mason. Tycho would be proud. Eliza Gauger

The New DS Lite Crack [Game Break]
Forum thread on the new crack [Evil Avatar forums]