It’s come a long way since Rob and I started it as one of the first podcasts over at The Geek Media, and we’ve enjoyed every single episode so far. We’ve had a lot of special guests on with us as well, everyone from David from the Festival of Blood cast to Matt Hillyer from The Stealth Mac, and we hope as many of those guests as possible show up tonight to be with us for the cast.

It’s hard to think about it being over, for now. It really doesn’t fit too well with me because I’ve done R&D almost every week for nearly the last three years, and I want it to come back as soon as possible. With all things though, we must move on, and taking Rob and Dan’s place while we’re on hiatus is going to be CrossFaction with myself and Almighty Farseer, and Player One, a new video cast that’s finishing up development as we speak.

I would implore everyone to go over to http://www.macharbor.com/rnd/podcast.xml and listen to all the old episodes of R&D to experience the goodness that we’ve had over the past couple years.

Tonight will start EARLY, be around the irc and watching your twitter early tonight, I’m probably going to do an impromptu Player One on my livestream page at http://www.livestream.com/letonator and we’ll have some fun with that before we get to R&D tonight. Have fun tonight guys!

Go over to OMFG.FM tonight to hear the fun!

Opening up, we’re spending some time on some rapid fire news, get it out of the way with the few minor things going on in the gaming world. The news that Valve is putting everything out with Mac-friendly formats is a major subject for tonight. We’ll also hit on a few other things, like the top 10 games so far in the month of March.

All that and more news, opinions, and a whole lot of banter coming up tonight on R&D, live at OMFG.FM!

Opening up, we’re going to go over what we know about the Infinity Ward vs Activision situation that’s been developing over the past day and a half. We’ll try and sort out what exactly’s going on, who’s gotten the can, and what kind of legal ramifications this event will have.

Next up will be picking apart the recent uproar with the new PORTAL patch. We’ll try to figure out what Valve has up their sleeve and what we’ll be able to look forward to. There may even be a crackpot theory or two up for grabs!

All that and more news, opinions, and a whole lot of banter coming up tonight on R&D, live at OMFG.FM!

Go over to http://stickam.com/bigbaldbroadcast to listen live, or hit up http://the.newgeekorder.com to hear the podcast!

THE IOWA HAWKEYES HAVE WON THE ORANGE BOWL!

I had to yell it somewhere, that is all. Go back to your regular lives.

I’m very interested to see where this ends up leading us to.

There’s one thing that I don’t like about Kotaku though. They tend to go a bit overboard with things. One major recent example of this is their most recent comprehensive article on Star Wars: The Old Republic. The article as a whole isn’t bad, but their opening to it really turned me off to it as a whole because of the horribly negative opinion of what a Sith Inquisitor actually is versus their confusingly good thoughts on the Jedi Consular…

I get that they’re (The Sith Inquisitor) supposed to be a more badass version of a Sith Warrior with different ranged abilities. But if that’s the case, wouldn’t all players playing as Sith Warriors graduate to Inquisitors after playing long enough?

Is the Kotaku writer, AJ Glasser, who hasn’t had a great track record already in my opinion, not intelligent enough to see that they’re simply taking different archtypes in the Star Wars universe? It’s almost as simple as saying the Inquisitor is like playing as a young, even more psychotic Emperor Palpatine. I don’t like putting it in that simple of terms, but that’s a very good way to set things up for people that don’t pay attention to any extended universe or pre-movies Star Wars material.

I’m not about to take a big, steamy dump on the quality that Kotaku gets out, or say that I don’t use them on R&D for a good chunk of news, but I am willing to say that THIS article really rips on the Sith Inquisitor in a way that turns me off from the article right off the bat. It’s a tragedy because the article’s not bad at all, besides the fact that he spends a LOT of time talking about boobs, but oh well.

Maybe Glasser felt that the actual in-game mechanics were simply similar between the Sith Warrior and Inquisitor, which is very understandable considering the first few levels in any mmo seem very generic and similar between most classes, even in an extremely well-developed MMO such as World of Warcraft.

It’s unfortunately true, Geocities is finally shutting down, leaving millions of websites without hosting. What will come of this? Who knows, we’ll be talking about it on the next R&D though for sure.

Thank you for your usefulness and function over the past two decades, you will be sorely missed.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the Kotaku.com article, Stephen Totilo talked about the supposedly fraudulent use of the word Exclusive by Bethesda and Microsoft to describe their releases of not only Fallout 3, but the DLC for the game that continues to follow. He makes a decent point of it until he quotes a former Kotaku.com member, now a member of GTTV, says that the meaning of the word Exclusive has changed slightly in the past couple years, to mean that the release or premier is exclusive to a certain system or consoles. This completely negates the entire article, because it’s a perfectly reasonable explanation as to the change of the use of the word in this day and age.

The article splits hairs, as I’ve been known to do and sometimes enjoy. I think, although, this is unreasonable to the point of being annoying. Words change and evolve over time, and it’s best to just accept change and change with them.

These random thoughts have been brought to you by your local CEO and closet writer, Leto.

There are two sorts of men in this world: the sort with blood pouring out of a hole in their heads, and the sort holding the Ambassador. It has the ammo count of a revolver and the pinpoint accuracy of a sniper rifle, even at long range. (But remember, a gun that packs this much heat needs to cool off between shots, so make every shot count.)

With its rosewood grip and likeness of your enemy’s mother (please send photo) engraved on the barrel, the Ambassador is eight motherloving pounds of steel your enemies won’t want to negotiate with.

I want to play a spy just to try and get this massive piece. That’s the spy/sniper update, save for one last sniper weapon, which we’ll hopefully get tomorrow!

You might think we got crazy at GOG.com, but we have just released Heroes® of Might and Magic® and we’re selling it for a special introductory price for only $5.99! Until Thursday, May 21 at 11:59 p.m. EDT you can save $4.00 USD buying this great classic.

Our good friends over at GoG.com have also provided us some great prizes that we’re going to be giving away soon, so keep your eyes peeled to www.TheGeekMedia.com and get on on some classic gaming goodness.

The Sniper Class has been revealed to be what will receive the next upgrade. And the first weapon has been revealed to be…. uh…. bow and arrow?

What could the simple, majestic bow do for a class that already has a high-powered rifle? Well it’s quite simple, stick stuff to walls! Also, any headshot is guaranteed to be a critical hit.

This is one attempt in a long series of attempts since Thompson’s disbarment last year, and he’s still not giving up. He was quoted as saying…

I have four more options, all better than this one. This was the longest of shots. All four of the others are much, much shorter shots.

With hope still in his sights, and much hilarity in everyone elses, we all wish him the best of luck, as to give us more prime material to post about here on this website.

“It’s about Damned time!” Are the words on many World of Warcraft players lips today as Blizzard has released the long-awaited 3.1 Patch, and with it many improvements and additions to the game. Besides the obvious answer of Ulduar, the brand new raid instance that has a lot of people talking, you also have access to dual-specializations, the Argent Tournament, and a host of new specialization changes that are being implemented. You can find the patch notes, as well as a nifty video introducing Ulduar right here.

Here’s an excerpt from the article,

Sources said that the Mortal Kombat team has become increasingly “frustrated” with the handling of Midway’s bankruptcy filing. MK staffers also expressed irritation from being in the position of delivering million unit-selling titles on time and on a bi-annual schedule while other projects at the company languish in development.

Midway representatives, when contacted for comment, opted not to discuss the Mortal Kombat team’s plans, saying that the team was in “good shape.” They did, however, want to stress that Midway itself is not withholding any owed payment to the Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe developers.

It’ll certainly be interesting to see how the Mortal Kombat team evolves and moves onto being a full fledged game developer.

I’ve been pushing the sheer joy that appears to be oozing out of screens and videos of Jumpgate: Evolution for a good six months now, and I still believe I’m right. I recently posted up a boss fight walkthrough video up on www.newgeekorder.com that had been put out, and just today I stumbled upon a video hosted by Kotaku.com that’s more or less a short promotional video for Jumpgate: Evolution. The only reason it’s worth mentioning is that it promotes the beta at the end, quite distinctly.

The Beta for this game is close, I can feel it in the force young padawans. Multiple promotional videos released in the same week, displaying different themes for the same game across the internet that’s been widely touted as the spiritual successor to Earth and Beyond? That’s proof something’s brewing I think. Keep your eyes peeled for Jumpgate: Evolution beta invitations in your email boxes soon, and if you’re not signed up for it yet then get on the internet and get that done, because being left out of this is something any good MMO gamer is going to regret.

Here’s the video that was posted recently on Kotaku.com…

It’s April 1st, and tons of practical jokes are all over the flowing, yet strangely dump-truck like intertubes. One that really caught my eye involved a very well put together, serious looking game promotion that featured none other than head-Valvist CEO Gabe Newell and gaming expert Robert Krakoff. Here’s a little excerpt from the promotion:

Enter Onyx Rift, a biogenetic research lab, where you must make the choice of taking control of the wise-cracking street smart lab technician, Gabriel Newman who can never catch a break or the ex-special forces badass security guard, Rob Krakowski with a quick temper and a heart of gold. Lock and load as you are thrust into the middle of a level 4 biohazard when the lab’s centralized super computer goes haywire and blows up one of the viral research containment wings releasing the deadly triple helix S.N.A.K.E virus upon the lab’s unsuspecting work force.

To make matters worse, the military has been called in to forcefully contain the lab before the super computer controlling all function within the facility can do anymore damage. Cut a swath through your colleagues and coworkers as they succumb to the infection and violently turn on you. You must contain the outbreak and regain control of the lab before a tactical nuke does it for you.

This is an amazingly well done April 1st gag. Valve has always had a great sense of humor, and Gabe Newell himself has been a big player in the internet gaming culture that has spawned around the large retinue of Valve products that stock the shelves of Steam. One part of this article stands out though, it’s at the very, very, tiny bottom of the page. A little except about a collectors edition for the game, here’s what it said…

…a limited edition 12” talking plush toy of either Gabe and Razerguy (batteries not included) armed and ready to take your heart by storm!

All I have to say is…. I WANT A PLUSHIE GABE NEWELL!

UPDATE: We have a petition up to get us a Gabe Newell plushie or action figure. Sign it! This Petition here!

I first heard about this over on Kotaku, and followed the internet paper-trail through the internet tubes around in hopes of finding something of substance. I didn’t, of course, as most rumors don’t have much of a basis.

People, please, please I know you’re intelligent (you read this website on some basis), so stop the rumor mongering here. If anyone asks about a possible 5th IP from Blizzard, tell them that there isn’t any concrete information at all on this. It’s not worth the time talking about. When Blizzard Entertainment DOES release any information regarding their next IP, you’ll bet you can find it right here, but it’s not here yet.

Now back to your regularly scheduled blog posts and podcasts.

-Dan “Leto” Hahn, your neighborly CEO

We regret to inform you that due to the current economic conditions we are forced to indefinitely suspend the FileFront site operations on March 30, 2009. If you have uploaded files, images or posted blogs, or if you would like to download some of your favorite files, please take this opportunity to download them before March 30th when the site will be suspended.

We would like to give a warm thank you to all of you who have been part of the FileFront communities we have built together. Your support has had a meaningful impact for all of us here at FileFront. Again, we want to give you a sincere “thank you” for your support over the years and wish you all the very best.

Keep gaming alive,

FileFront Management and Team.

Contact_us@filefront.com

TGM wishes them the best, and hopes that a service can step up and fill the void that we’re sure will be left after March 30th.

As it stands, the current graphics coming out of the CryTEK DPs are already over the top of what the everyday system can handle. It stands that Crysis still won’t run on my system on it’s lowest settings, and I can currently play World of Warcraft on it’s highest settings without any hiccups or issues. With that kind of benchmark, I really scratch my head and ask myself what CryTEK wants to do by advancing their platform, graphics, and tools even more. I understand they’re out to sell copies of their software and prove they’re the premium game developer that they feel they are, but seriously? More powerful graphics? Do they want no one to be able to play their games? This is silly in my opinion, you have to let the general public catch up with what you’re putting out.

This has been a random opinion from your neighborly CEO, Leto.

This will affect the atmosphere on every server in a major way, more than anything because RvR, or Realm versus Realm, is the dominating feature of the game. Low population servers will lack a lot of the RvR activity, while highly-populated servers have an abundance of RvR.

We’ll be looking at the situation on the merged servers, as a total of 63 servers are being closed or merged together. You can find out more about these changes at WarhammerOnline.com

It’s a long letter, probably two or three standard pages worth, so be ready to sit down for ten or fifteen minutes and digest this instead of just skimming over, just click the read more tab to see the letter in it’s entirety. Credit to Kotaku.com and their network for posting this.

An Open Letter to Utah’s Parents and Leaders
March 6, 2009

As you read this, Utah legislators are preparing to pass legislation that risks, perhaps unintentionally, putting an end to hugely successful efforts to prevent children’s access to video games intended for older audiences. I write today in the hopes of averting this grave mistake, and to propose a more responsible course of action instead.

Legislation expanding Utah’s existing Truth in Advertising law (H.B. 353) would require that if a video game retailer promotes its adherence to a policy restricting the sale of video games rated M for Mature – which, like the R rating for movies, indicates it is recommended for those ages 17 and older – and then sells an M-rated game to anyone under the recommended age, they could be subject to a lawsuit, fines and/or the payment of additional costs and legal fees. In fact, all major retailers of video games currently have such policies, which they have put in place voluntarily and with which they are in compliance the vast majority of the time. According to a recent audit, Utah video game retailers enforce their store policies regarding the sale of M-rated games an impressive 94% of the time – without any laws or requirements that they do so. That level of compliance took many years to achieve, and speaks to the strong commitment of video game retailers to do the right thing.

So why is this bill likely to put an end to those very efforts it seeks to support? On its face such an amendment makes good sense; after all, if a retailer says they’re going to do something, they should do it, right? While the intent of this legislation would be to hold retailers accountable for compliance with their stated policies – presumably in that negligible 6% of instances where they fail to comply – the unfortunate reality is that it would introduce a liability that will likely force many retailers to seriously consider abandoning their voluntary policies and ratings education programs, undoing years of progress made on behalf of parents and their children.

It’s worth noting that when the Federal Trade Commission first began measuring retailer compliance with video game sales policies nationwide in 2000, a scant 15% of underage customers were turned away. However, the most recent such study reported in May 2008 found that national retailers refused to sell M-rated games to customers under 17 a remarkable 80% of the time, far surpassing the comparable rates of compliance for movies, DVDs, or music CDs rated for a mature audience. The unraveling of this substantial progress would be a tragic consequence, depriving parents of the assurance and control they currently have with respect to deciding which games their children can purchase and play.

Utah State Representative Michael Morley, the chief sponsor of this new amendment, was recently quoted in the Deseret News stating that, “if they’re one of those places that thinks, ‘Well, as long as they have a heartbeat and some money we’ll sell to them,’ then this won’t have any impact on them.” That statement reveals exactly why this law would
be so destructive. It would effectively penalize responsible retailers that have policies, and provide safe harbor for retailers that refuse to adopt a responsible policy in the first place. That is downright senseless. If the goal is to make sure our children are playing age-appropriate games, there is a better way.

The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), of which I am president, is a non-profit organization created in 1994 to help parents determine which computer and video games are appropriate for their children. Most retailers only carry games that have been rated by the ESRB, and game consoles and handheld devices include settings that parents can activate to block games by ESRB rating. Elected officials across the country, including Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, and groups like PTA have joined ESRB in helping educate the public about the rating system to great effect. The FTC recently reported that 73% of parents regularly use ESRB ratings when buying games for their children; 59% “never” allow their child to play an M-rated game, and 34% only do so “sometimes.”

The bottom line is that parents are more than capable of utilizing tools like the ratings to make the right choices for their families. And there is broad support of ESRB ratings from major retailers and the game industry alike. The proposed legislation is looking to fix a system that is not broken. Instead, we should all be focused on figuring out ways to encourage parents to use the excellent tools already available to them to make informed choices about the media their children consume. Punishing retailers for promoting responsible sales policies is irrational and counter-productive. I write in the sincere hope that Utah chooses to empower its parents with information rather than undo the substantial progress made by retailers to date to serve the best interests of Utah’s children.

With warm regards,
Patricia E. Vance
President

As for what we know on the topic, there isn’t much that hasn’t been slathered over the internet already. We know that a Director in BoB, on an alt, got suckered into a recruiting ploy by GoonSquad (as they’re known to do on a regular basis). Instead of cussing them out and walking away, the director asked if he could stick around. He showed GoonSquad the private forums for BoB as a good will gesture, and began talks with how to eliminate BoB. Plans were made and, in the end, almost all of the major assets that Band of Brothers had are now in the possession of GoonSquad.

This in turn has caused a chain reaction over the past few hours, chaos has ensued all over the galaxy in Eve as former allies and members of Band of Brothers have begun all-out assaults against known GoonSquad holdings. The Massively article describes it in detail, but in shorthand, there are no battle lines anymore, and even innocent bystandards are being dragged into the warzones.

One of GoonSwarm’s stated motivations from their early days as an alliance was to punish what they viewed as the arrogance of Band of Brothers. If they’ve held true to that ideal, stealing the alliance out from under BoB effectively means GoonSwarm has accomplished what they set out to do years ago. To add insult to injury, The Mittani has stated he’ll be publishing the archived BoB director forums he gained access to for everyone to read. In the meantime, GoonSwarm and many other enemies of Band of Brothers are absolutely storming BoB’s home systems in Delve, and chaos reigns. The political lines in EVE Online have been completely redrawn, and we suspect that the ensuing drama is far from over.

From Massively.com.

At first I thought she was just saying that it looked like a Mii in the picture that was used, but no. This is a Mii, an actual Mii from the Wii gaming system, used as a mugshot to help find a criminal. A Mii, for those that aren’t Wii fans, is the avatar one can make to go along with a player profile, stats, and other options that you have with the Wii.

The article doesn’t say whether the Mii is the actual perps, or just a composite the police put together using a Wii, but either way it’s a sign that people are using new technology in innovative and creative ways. You can read the original article here!

Chief Executive Steve Jobs stunned shareholders and the tech world by announcing that he was taking a leave of absence until the end of June due to health reasons.

“During the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought,” Jobs said in an email to Apple employees.

This comes on the heels of Jobs not giving the keynote at the Macworld expo in California, and only a week earlier, it was revealed as to what his medical issue actually is.

The news came just a week after Jobs revealed that a hormone imbalance was at the root of weight loss that has prompted speculation about his health.

Will any luck, hopefully Jobs will recover speedily and continue to lead one of the most successful and popular tech companies to ever have existed.

You can listen and watch more Stealth Mac goodness over at thestealthmac.com!

As with any new technology, and with anyone who’s used the Wiimotes, they aren’t exact but they get the job done for gamers. The question that CNN raises is will they be accurate enough for the US Army to use with bomb detonating robots? A prototype should be ready in a year, and active service of the combat Wii-mote could be as early as three years from now.

I’d also like to take the time to thank all our affiliates that have stuck with us so far, as well as the new ones we’ve brought on board in the past few months, especially within my area that I’ve been able to meet in person, it’s an honor and privilege to continue to work with every single one of you. Without you all, as well as our fans, we wouldn’t be here doing this.

Hopefully you’re celebrating with family today, opening presents and enjoying time off, and I also hope that if you’re going through hard times, which much of America and the world is right now, that you take heart in what we can do for and with each other. In union, as a geeky community, we have the chance to look at what’s happening right now and say we have a place where we don’t have to worry about that kind of thing, that we have a bright spot in our days to look forward to, and maybe we even made someone laugh and smile thanks to what we do best. That best is geekyness at it’s finest.

In hopes you’ll keep that geekyness close to your heart, and to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Winter, here’s Samwise from Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers film, with a great quote that sums up all we have to be thankful for this year.

“The shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, And when the sun shines it’ll shine out the clearer! Those are the stories that stay with you, that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think Mister Frodo, I do understand, I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, but they didn’t, they kept going. Because they were holdin’ on to something.” “What are we holding on to Sam?” “There’s some good in this world Mister Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for!”

Interested in getting him something to celebrate Rob’s slow aging process? Don’t worry about getting him any presents (I already supplied him with Mana Potions), instead consider donating to TGM at the Chip-In button at the top right of the screen. Even a donation of two or three dollars is greatly appreciated, as we’re very thankful for every dollar we’ve received to help keep TGM going.

Rob does a lot of work around the station here, everything from head tech to manager to accountant. Happy Birthday Rob, thanks for doing the heavy lifting and allowing me to be a part of this great experiment we call The Geek Media.

-Dan “Leto” Hahn