eGameFame has taken a left-turn down character lane. And with this, we will take you down and deep into the rabbit hole. eGameFame will embrace the world of videogame characters, where heroes like Mario and Solid Snake laze around before saving the princess.

The man who brought life to the gaming industry when it was dying; the man who catapulted Nintendo from a near financial disaster; the man who entertained millions; the mascot of Nintendo, and a whole generation of gamers: Mario, a damn plumber.

Mario is a creation of Shigeru Miyamoto, the man who is also the father of Zelda. Because of his two iconic creations, Miyamoto has earned himself the title “Father of the gaming industry”. Furthermore, Mario is ranked as the number one best selling gaming franchise in gaming history, and it has truly earned itself the right to be forever immortalized by being remade a dozen, and more, times by Miyamoto.

The original concept behind Mario, who at that time was still known as “Jumperman”, was to create a character with human features that would not be too taxing on computers of the time. And so Miyamoto set out with the help from fellow employees to create the iconic character. The designers chose bright colours for Mario’s costume as they wanted it to stick in people’s minds, and this seemed to be quite successful. The reason behind the fat moustache is that it was too hard to replicate a mouth, so for once, hair solved the problem. The hat was added because hairstyles weren’t yet invented for game characters.

The infamous game character is voiced by Charles Martinet, a guy who pitched up late for the audition. In a recent interview when in South Africa, Martinet said that he tried something different with the voicing for the character and it was a massive hit with the producers.

But, less about his conception, and a little bit more about him. Basically, Mario is your “average Joe” who ended up with Princess Peach. In the Mario game, Mario is sent on an epic journey to save Peach from Bowser, the evil turtle who kidnapped her.

Bowser is Mario’s number one enemy, and he’s a massive turtle that breathes fire and throws axes. Bowser feels an undying need to kidnap the princess for unknown reasons. After Mario saved Peach for the first time, he was stuck in an eternal curse of having to save time her and time again.

The point of the Mario series is for the star to save the princess. He does this by travelling through dungeons, fighting mushroom people, turtles, and jumping across lava. Whenever he’s at the castle to find his beloved Peach, he is told she isn’t there. Between jumping from flagpoles and eating mushrooms to grow, Mario seems a little unstressed.

Mario’s extramural activities include tennis, golf, driving sports cars, and more. His powers include Invincibility and Fireballs. Sometimes he can fly, when he wears his flying suit. Mario also has a brother named Luigi who wears green opposed to the bright red covering Mario.

Alongside being a hero who constantly saves Princess Peach by fighting off mushrooms and turtles, he also is a TV star. Mario has appeared on not one or two, but rather four different TV shows airing in both English and Japanese languages. Being the superstar that he is, Mario has his own candy line, shampoo line, t-shirt line and more. The general portrayal of Mario in TV and film has been quite diverse as he has played a carpenter, medical physician, archaeologist and even president of a toy making company.

The man who unleashed one of the craziest characters, and also one of the most badass heroes in gaming history. Meet David Jaffe, the creative director at Sony Computer Entertainment America for the God of War franchise.

Unlike others stars who mostly knew what they wanted to be in the computer industry, in some part, David Jaffe actually had other interests. Jaffe originally sent an application to the film school, but was turned down, so instead, he sought further education at the University of Southern California. After being turned down for film, Jaffe turned his sights onto video-game design. With his debut into video-game design being Mickey Mania for the Genesis, things started changing as every new game was more violent of nature when compared to Mickey Mania in 1994. Soon after this Jaffe started on Twisted Metal, the franchise that would be the turning point of his career, in many positive ways. Twisted Metal ranked around 160 on the bestselling video-game franchises as it sold over 15 million times in North America alone. After the aforementioned hit, in 2005 Jaffe once again struck it big with God of War.

David Jaffe worked on the original God of War, God of War 2 and God of War: Chains of Olympus, where after this he left Sony. Jaffe had no connection to God of War 3, however he did play the game and Moby Games did credit him for the title.

The original idea behind God of War, as stated, is that the conception of Kratos was an attempt to create a character who was brutal but different from standard Greek heroes. His thoughts on the final character design were that, even though costume-wise Kratos would not really fit in Ancient Greek, he is a character that people can really nuts with by unleashing blood filled fantasies.

Before Jaffe left Sony in 2007, he worked on a game called Calling All Cars. Once this game was launched, a reviewer said some really bad stuff about regarding the game and this lead to Jaffe sending out blasts and rants which brought about questions such as: Is it right for developers to pressure reviewers with regards to their work? Once Jaffe left Sony he formed his own company called Eat, Sleep, Play Inc. who signed a contract with Sony to produce his Twisted Metal franchise for the PlayStation platform.

Unlike most developers, David Jaffe loves to stay in contact with fans and followers by continuously posting on his Twitter account and blog. In January of this year Jaffe felt the need to close his Twitter account down after someone sent him a game idea which he feared could result in legal problems later on. Since the re-opening of his account, Jaffe asked that people do not forward game ideas. His Twitter account is the source of interesting media attention as he often posts about relative, or controversial, things in the industry, such as the the “Taliban” in EA’s new Medal of Honour game. Jaffe also posted that Sony should sue companies like Microsoft and Lucas Films regarding a game called Scrap Metal and a movie called War of the Gods, by each company respectively. Jaffe feels that it is an insult from Microsoft to make a car combat game called Scrap Metal after the fact that Sony already have Twisted Metal. And well, Lucas Film’s War of the Gods is just a play on God of War — in his opinion. David Jaffe does however clarify that further in that Sony should not own the genre per-se, but having these companies choose names very similar is not cool.

Alongside all the ranting, David appeared on the PlayStation Network reality TV show called “The Tester” where he judged contestants competing to become a game tester for Sony.

To date, David Jaffe is currently divorced and has two children. He comes across as a chilled guy, and he likes to voice his opinion which is a good thing. Lastly, the new Twisted Metal is not too far off, and it’s going to be exciting.

If there is one game that stuck in our heads from childhood, it has to be Mortal Kombat. The legendary MK brought all the guts, gore and action we needed to a nearby arcade. Notable was the praise that critics showered upon it, the passion with which fans played it, the money developers made off it, and lastly, the venomous hate that parents directed at it. And now, the man who is credited with being the lead programmer on the game up to today: Ed Boon.

After graduating from the Loyola Academy in Illinois — a religious institute for Catholics — Ed Boon went to study at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, one of the most impressive campuses in the University of Illinois system. With his BSc in Mathematics and Computer Science, Boon went off to start working.

Ed Boon soon landed a job at Acclaim Entertainment where he started doing most of the voice work and programming for a video-game called Smash TV. Smash TV was just the beginning before he started work on Mortal Kombat. It was said that Mortal Kombat was originally based around Jean-Claude Van Damme who then, due to other commitments, couldn’t come through. And so, Mortal Kombat was born.

Even though Boon worked at Acclaim Entertainment on the Smash TV game, he mainly resided in the home of Mortal Kombat, Midway Entertainment. Boon worked on MK for over 15 years as it evolved with more modern technologies and different graphics.

But what does Ed Boon do beside design video-games? Well, it seems like he is an avid musician who listens to rock, and plays the piano; he plays sport–mainly basketball and golf–and he enjoys watching TV/Movies, namely 24 and the Goodefellas.

Boon said that even though the original game was supposed to be based on Jean-Claude Van Damme, it turns out that he would really love to have Bruce Lee featuring. On the topic of favourites: His favourite arena is Falling Cliffs, and his favourite fatality is Sub-Zero’s spine and head rip off.

At the moment Boon is working on the latest Mortal Kombat, a version which should be better than all the rest.

Besides the fact that he is a game programmer, he also is the voice actor for Scorpion in two of the movies as well as the game. Another easter-egg most people don’t know about is the one where you take the surname of both him and his partner (John Tobias), and reverse them; this will give you the name of a secret character called Noob Saibot. Also, he named two of the original characters after his sisters, Tanya and Sonya.

PolarfluKe are at it again. They have just made an announcement that they will be hosting another tournament. With the success of PolarfluKe Released,  and most recently PolarfluKe 10/10/10 under the belt they are now proud to announce PolarFluke Overmind Overmatter.

The tournament will follow the standard rules that they have been using in their previous tournaments. The most important thing to take note of is that the tournament will be taking place next week Saturday and Sunday (6th and 7th of November).

• You can register here
• Find more info here.

Creator Neverwinter Nights, a game that pioneered the way we play with other people online. One of three people to receive the Technology & Engineering Emmy Award. Programmer, game designer and producer. His name is Don L. Daglow, and he has created the foundation upon which most modern MMORPG’s are based.

Unlike most people who started programming or developing games at an early age, Don only ventured into this field while studying playwriting at the Pomona College. In essence playwriting formed the foundation for game creation as Don aims to build stories as well as create characters that people can relate to and connect to, on a higher/deeper level.

After writing a few lesser known games he struck gold when he created the first baseball game ever. While playwriting might not offer the creativity of a baseball game, Don simply loved the sport and thought that it would be a good idea to create a game about it. Don’s baseball game has been recorded in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

Before Don was able to work in the corporate and development world, he created Dungeon; the first game to be based on the widely acclaimed role playing game Dungeons and Dragons.

And all this lead to his successful future.

After Don left college he started working at Intellivision where he worked on games for a console they were  developing. Intellivision was said to have a console that, if released, would have gripped the market by beating Nintendo to the United States. Essentially this project would keep the company alive, however the videogame crash of 1983 came and the project disappeared.

After Intellivision went under, Don Daglow moved to Electronic Arts where he took on the role of a producer for about five years. While offering service at EA, Don had in important role in the creation of games such as: Lords of Conquest, Super Boulder Dash, World Tour Golf, Earl Weaver Baseball and Return to Atlantis — to name a few.

And then Don set off to strike it on his own. In 1988 he founded Stormfront Studios as a means to get back to hands-on game development. In the 20 years he spent at Stormfront, Don himself worked on titles such as: Stronghold and Neverwinter Nights. However Stormfront Studios, in its entirety, was quite successful as they worked on titles such as NASCAR Racing, Madden NFL, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Blood Wake and Demon Stone. But then on March 31,2008 Stormfront studios closed their doors for business.

Originally, Stormfront was founded as Beyond Software however the trademark Beyond was difficult to enforce, therefore they changed.

Despite all the above work, Neverwinter Nights deserves a mention as it was the first online role-playing game to display graphics. Which, as simple as it sounds, is very important as it affects the entire industry. Nowadays every video-game we play online has graphics which allow you to see and interact with other players, or characters, easily. Furthermore, Neverwinter Nights was run online on an America-Online (AOL) server, and was given 4 out of 5 stars.

Another game which deserves a mention is Blood Wake. Developed  Stormfront Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios, Blood Wake was an Asian themed fictional title where by some long story you are required to fight other ships. Story aside, Blood Wake should be applauded for being a game which required you to blow other ships up. When it was released in 2002 it reached the number four position, and then the number one position in the rentals category for video-games.

Some of Don Daglows awards and achievements include:

• National Endowment for the Humanities New Voices playwriting competition in 1975
• Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards and at the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Interactive Achievement Awards
• CGE Achievement Award for “groundbreaking accomplishments that shaped the Video Game Industry.
• The first sim game
• The first game to use multiple camera angels (Major League Baseball, 1983)
• The first mainframe computer role-playing game
• BA in Writing from Pomona College and an Ed.M. from the Claremont Graduate University

At the moment Don is part of the Board of Directors of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, he is also on the advisory board of the IGDA (International Game Developers Association) and lastly, he the joined GDC Europe.

Don also likes to go around the world as a keynote speaker/lecturer/panellist at developers conferences.

An artist in many fields, a man with many talents: From voice acting to scripting he has done it all. This is Chris Metzen and he works for Blizzard Entertainment.

Chris holds the position Vice President of Creative Design at Blizzard and this means that he is in charge of the main visual and audio elements for Blizzard titles. Besides the fact that he is in charge of the storyline, and that he has done voice acting for some characters; he is an artist offering valued insight into projects.

Let’s take a look back to the road he trod to get to where he is now. A suggestion from a friend saw Chris join Blizzard as a graphic designer back when the company was still known as Silicone and Synapse. Originally Chris thought that he was joining a graphic design company, when in fact he was joining a video-game studio that would go on to become one of the biggest, most prestige, video gaming companies in modern times.

His first work for the company was with the game Justice League Task Force, where he offered artwork and character animation. He then contributed to Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, Diablo, and Diablo II. In 20o2 he was the creative director for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, where in 2004 he offered help with World of Warcraft, however his work was not as exclusive in this title.

Obviously slowly working his way up the ranks to where he now stands, we cannot forget his contributions which ensured pretty games, and arty manuals. Not to mention in-game concept art and animation.

Besides his career at Blizzard he also wrote a few novels set in the different Blizzard universes, where in 2005, using his fame, he announced that he would be working on a graphic novel series independent from Blizzard. The series titled “Soldier 76″ follows a Super Soldier of sorts in the year 2010 as the Second American Civil War rages on around him.

Like most people who work at big video-game companies his office is a colorful ode to fantasy and science fiction filled with a lot creativity. A scale model of Darth Vader’s head oversees a distracting array of figurines, art and publications. Besides the fact that he enjoys World of Warcraft, he is an achievement junkie to a great degree, where in-between work he tries to get as many exploration challenges as possible.

Chris is also an avid comic book geek, so much so that he started creating his own little comic worlds from the age of six, drawing influence from Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons. However, other inspirations include: Walter Simonson, Larry Elmore, Alex Ross, Jim Lee and Keith Parkinson.

Alongside his comics, Chris also rolls around under the handles Thundergod and The Bourbon Cowboy for different scenes. Among other things, his favourite heroes include: Captain America and Thor, where Han Solo is his favorite character from Star Wars.

And the family, Metzen has a wife and two children.

Other strange facts include his Top 5 movies:

• The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
• Star Wars
• Braveheart
• Ben Hur
• Highlander (original)

To end off: Words of Wisdom from Chris Metzen:

• “Never mix whiskey and vodka.”
• “Never spit into the wind.”
• “When in Russia, never whistle on crowded subway trains.”

Just a reminder: If you have anyone you would like to see us feature, then use the email provided below. And by the way this is a reader request.

The first weekend of October, year in and year out, see’s the biggest LAN happening in South Africa, if not Africa. With around 2000+ gamers converging for a weekend of gaming, socialising and sharing and caring, the rAge NAG LAN is no joke.

Every year more and more seats are being added, where the tickets continue to sell out faster and faster. The ticket sales keep setting a new record for how fast they disappear. This year about 2085 tickets were sold in 36 hours.

Friday morning had me packing the car and leaving at 8:00 AM to arrive at the LAN, where there was a long queue of people lined up. Luckily as I was walking to the back I managed to snag a trolley which made it a whole lot easier to lug my PC up and down the line. After waiting in the line for about 45 minutes, management snatches the trolley away — just a tip: organise better ways for people to move their PC’s. At long last I finally reached the front, had my PC checked by the “Power” crew, collected my goodie bag and got strapped with my orange LAN band. Entering the LAN area at around 9:40 or so I was greeted by a sea of gamers in the designated area.

Walking to the end I finally found a spot and setup my PC only to experience network problems. Last year we were given Static IP’s, however this year it was automatically assigned. After a bit of difficulty and with some help from the very helpful VC crew, I was up and running. Turns out that there was a slight problem with the DHCP server which was sorted out soon enough. After this it was mostly smooth sailing.

One thing that made me feel slightly out of place was the fact that I barely saw any “Play” energy drinks. Last year Play was on site in full force giving out drinks. We even had people making pyramids out of empty cans.

At any given time you could find couple a hundred people playing games. DotA, CoD: MW, CoD: MW2, CS 1.6, CSS, HoN, and a ton of other random games. Besides the official CoD 4 tournament there was an unofficial DotA tournament that was a whole lot bigger than last year’s one. The other competition which a lot of people anticipated was the Do Gaming championships, however it was dropped.

With all that was going on we cannot forget the Guinness record that was being set. The record required at least 100 people to be playing for 40 hours which is no great feat for the gamers at NAG LAN, as that is what they are already doing. I just ponder over whether DreamHack (The biggest LAN in the world) thought about setting the record also, but we might have the record for the time being. At the moment the documents are being adjudicated by Guinness.

Overall the LAN was valued over R4-million. There were 12 Intel 6-core Xeon dedicated gaming servers, and everything ran smoothly. The switches and servers ran far below maximum capacity allowing for smooth sailing. It was said that about 540TB of data moved through the switches at the event, and this doesn’t include direct data between individuals.

This is the man who coined the term “deathmatch”. And created Doom, Quake, Heretic and Wolfenstein 3D. All of these games are legendary in their own right where each spawned a following. Furthermore they improved the way we kill each other, be it locally or online.

Without further ado, meet John Romero — a man attached to many notorious games throughout gaming history.

Entering the gaming area of development and design in 1979, John mostly worked on mainframe computers before moving onto the Apple II. Unlike other eGameFamer’s who graduated from college or university with a fancy diploma or degree, John is a self taught programmer, designer and artist. He draws a lot of his inspirations from the likes of Nasir Gebelli, Richard Garriott, Bill Budge and Tony Suzuki.

However the above mentioned years were his indie days when he was still growing, developing his skills and nurturing his talents. After that period, in the year 1989, he moved to Shaveport, Louisiana and joined Softdisk as a programmer in the Special Projects division. In 1990 while working at Apogee — a publishing firm — he contributed to one of the most famous Commander Keen series. Following this is the story on how he was almost poached from Softdisk.

After seeing John’s work on Pyramids of Egypt, Scott Miller was enthusiastic about working with him – and so the poaching began.

In an attempt to counter poaching, Softdisk was screening their employees mail, however Scott was aware of this and sent four letters in regular mail; all pretending to be a person who played the game. Scott wanted John to write back so he tried to lure him out with lines such as: “I think I found a bug, write back!” or “Please write back – I’m 67 years old!”. And it’s worthwhile to note that all the names were different, but the mailing address was the same.

Sadly John ignored all of the letters, until one day he was reading a PC Games magazine and he read an article about Scott and Kroz games, where at the end of the article there was a mailing address which seemed familiar. John had an OMFG realization. Those past letters weren’t fans, but rather someone who wanted to contact him. By knowing that, he contacted Scott.

In Feburary of 1991 things started to turn, and using the experience from the two start-up companies which had published 17 games, John recruited John Carmack into the department, from his freelancing in Kansas City; moved Adrian Carmack into the division from Softdisk’s art department, and persuaded Tom Hall to come in at night and help with game design.  With his plan ready, he founded id Software and all aforementioned people left Softdisk to work full time at id Software.

id Software could be regarded as John’s golden years. While working at id Software John created three of the greatest franchises in gaming history: Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein 3D. All three of these games changed the path that the gaming industry took.

First up was Wolfenstein 3D which seemed to be a turning point for id Software in terms of their products. The game was violent, and in 3D. Furthermore it was something new, with better graphics. But despite the graphics and violence, one main aspect from Wolfenstein 3D kept throughout the company was the key mapping of W, S, A ,D — keys which most FPS games still use to this day.

Following Wolfenstein 3D came, probably, one of the most influential games for the 1990′s: Doom. With the success of Wolfenstein 3D, id Software were amped to create a new game that would be even better. Surprisingly the inspiration behind Doom came from Star Wars, as they took the concept of rooms not being super shiny and rather dirty. With Doom released, and tons of people happy, there was bound to be controversy — and boy was there. Doom sparked controversy throughout America when it was found that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold — the two who committed the Columbine High School massacre in 1999 — were avid players of the game. Till today the gaming industry will continuously be criticized for the amount of violence and sexuality in games.

We can continue to expound on every game John worked on, and how it affected the industry, but it’s time to move on — just like John did. Therefore, John moved onto Ion Storm where he worked with Warren Spector on the cult classic and golden oldie Deus Ex, where after that he worked on Daikatana, which was mostly a bit of a fail.

After this John stopped working on really big games and started to focus on Facebook games. From 2005 till now (2010), he has been working on an MMO at Gazillion Entertainment (Slipgate Ironworks) where he is the co-founder and executive Vice President. This is where he feels the future of gaming lies, and because of this he has six MMO’s in production.

Besides being a programmer, he also is an advocate of pro-gaming and has supported the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) by being the Chairman of the board for 10 years. With his position on the board, he also started development on a game called Severity which would have been exclusive to the CPL.

John’s life hasn’t always been about games and game development, as he has been married twice.

John met his first wife while working at Burger King, and his second wife while working at Softdisk. Not forgetting the fact that in between the marriages he dated Stevie Case, a famous female pro-gaming figure at the time.

So, what does he do with all the oodles of money he has coming in? Well he has a few awesome cars and some houses here and there. However, to buy one of the cars he had to sell two others, but it was said to be a special buy as his laptop could plug right in and control the audio-visual system.

Lastly, John’s ideology on management was that employees of a company should have their bonuses tied to the success of a game — similar to id Software.

Meet Mike Morhaime. A man well known and fondly remembered for his announcement of StarCraft 2 back in 2007. For those of you unfamiliar with Mike Morhaime, he’s the co-founder and CEO of Blizzard Entertainment.

After receiving his Bachelor’s Degree from UCLA in 1990, he and his fellow cohorts–Allen Adham and Frank Pearce–founded Silicon and Synapse, a firm now known as Blizzard Entertainment — and a firm which is now part of Activision.

Morhaime and Co. actually named the company Chaos Studios, but due a conflict with another firm they had to rename. After a few random names they settled on Blizzard Entertainment, and in the same year they made it really big, before being acquired by Davidson and Associates for around $10 million. Their acquisition was due to the release of Warcraft: Orcs and Humans.

With Mike at the helm of the Blizzard ship he took it from strength to strength. Blizzard has reached the point where he, as the CEO, earns around $4.5 million with benefits and stock options each year.

Being the CEO of Blizzard does have its perks, and this includes a trove of specialty items sitting in his office. Besides posters and copies of every game, and battle chests of each franchise, he has a replica of the Frostmourne sword hanging on his wall–making him the Lich King?–and a frame with World of Warcraft credit cards inside of it. Despite this, his most important novelties include the sword and shield hanging on his wall which represents his service to Blizzard. Mike received the sword for five years of service at Blizzard, and the Shield for 10 years of service. Furthermore he has a ring that he wears, and this represents 15 years of service.

While other companies say that their games are special–because of “blah and “blah”–Mike can boast that one of his games has done something no other game has done before: Gone to space. In 1999 an astronaut by the name of Daniel Barry took a copy of the original StarCraft into space on Space Shuttle mission STS-96. This game now resides in the Blizzard Museum.

Alongside all of this, an animated version of Mike appeared on the South Park titled “Make Love, Not Warcraft”, which won an Emmy award. Following this, he also has been honoured in 2008 at the Technology and Engineering Emmy awards for the creation of the grossly popular MMORPG World of Warcraft.

If this isn’t interesting enough, well then, you’d want to know that Mike plays for a band started which was started for Blizzard employees. Mike plays bass in the band which is known as “The Artists Formerly Known as Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain”, abbreviated to TAFKAL80ETC. Now before you get too excited, they play in game and tour the WoW universe. His in game nick is Mai’Kyl — yeah, all you stalkers can go and find him now.

And no Mike does not spend all his time in doors working on game related, and business related, things. Mike spends most of his time in the air, travelling around, going to conferences and meetings. With the odd game of poker here and there. In 2006 he participated in the DICE celebrity poker tournament where he made to the final round, however after a dramatic 45 minute game he lost to Ray Muzyka, CEO of BioWare corp.

Overall we need to thank this man for bringing us the StarCraft, WarCraft and Diablo franchises. And WoW, if you’re into that.

PolarfluKe are becoming popular with the local Starcraft 2 scene as they are currently host loads of tournaments with cool prizes to win. With the date 10/10/10 incoming, they have officially announced a special tournament.

The tournament will follow their standard rule set and have the normal nine map pool. Do take note that even thought the date of 10/10/10 has been set for the tournament, it will officially kick off on the 9th. Reason being, is so group stages can be played out and the finals–which is single elimination–be played out on 10/10/10.

Register Here

More Info can be found here

The Sims, a game that with its sequel and expansions has sold around a 100 million copies, was created to offer simulation and evolution in gaming. With this in mind we bring to you Will Wright, another one of the most influential game designers in gaming history.

At an early age his father passed on and he still managed to work his way through this tragedy to go on and become the success he is. His father had a plastic company in Atlanta which was fairly successful, where his mother was an actress and magician. With dreams like all other boys out there, Will was quite normal. He attended Baton Rouge Prep School where he said that he was unable to find a fixed/rigid education system that worked for him.

Similar to most famous people, or a lot of really interesting people, he didn’t really get a degree — even after spending five years in college. Studying architecture and mechanical engineering before ending up in robotics and electrical engineering,  most of what Will knows is self taught and this is what he believes makes him such a good game designer.

Will decided to pursue the idea of game design as computers allowed his imagination to run wild. And with this being said, his first game ever created was in 1984 for the Commodore 64 and it was called Raid on Bungeling Bay. This game required the player to eliminate factories on an island, where failure to do so would result in the enemy getting technology and weapons which would soon destroy your chopper.

Things got more serious in 1986 when he met Jeff Braun, an investor, at what he called “the world’s most important pizza party”. Following this Will formed Maxis with Jeff and in 1989 they released SimCity, a game which soon became an instant hit. Then over the next few years Will went onto release another ton of Sim games–from SimAnt to SimCity2000. From the success of Sim City 2000, Maxis was soon purchased by Electronic Arts.

In the April of 2009 Will left EA to form a gaming think-tank called Stupid Fun Club. With an investment from Electronic Arts, the Stupid Fun Club is able to develop games that spring from the tank. And in this tank he currently resides thinking about games, and how to make cool new ones.

All this aside he is a quirky fellow. Something most people don’t know is that he loves carebears, and he knows a damn lot about them. Suffice to say it will surprise you. Other random facts about Will include: his favourite artist is Stanley Kubrick, and he participated in the U.S Express–a illegal cross country race which he won. A more interesting snippet is that he collects leftovers or scraps from the Soviet space program; he has a 100 pound hatch from a space shuttle, a seat from the shuttle Soyuz and control panels from the Mir shuttle to mention a few.

With all his quirks he still manages to lead a normal-ish lifestyle. During his summer break from college he met his wife Joell Jones, an artist who resided in California. Joell and Will have a daughter together, and the daughter likes technology too.

Will has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at Game Developers Choice Awards in 2001, where in 2002 he became the 5th person to be inducted into Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences’ Hall of Fame. In 2007 BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television) awarded him a fellowship, making him the first game designer to win this award. He has also received the new “GAMER GOD” award.

This weekend saw “fluKe” hosting the very first online StarCraft 2 tournament with prizes. With over 100 people registered and over 300 games needed to be played this looked to be one of the most epic weekends for the local Starcraft 2 scene.

The tournament was run by fluKe and Alcardu with bLuuMz helping them administrate the tournament. The tournament was run extremely smoothly over IRC, as it was online. Anyone could play, and prizes were up for grabs. The top 4 spots won AMD CPU’s where 5th till 8th won 10GB Afrihost internet accounts. Also 3 spot prizes were handed out to people who completed their group matches and were not from the top 8 finalists.

Like all online tournaments, there were no shows but thankfully they did not cripple the event. The tournament saw many favourites going through with the public opinion that it would be either Shase (Bravado Gaming) or ANGRYAFRICAN (Ventus Gaming) winning the tournament. With ANGRYAFRICAN and Shase both motoring their way through the tournament from the groups and into the knockouts they were ready to rock.

With ANGRYAFRICAN coming out on top of his brother at the Megarom event, there was definitely something to prove in this game. With all his practice ANGRYAFRICAN managed an easy 2-0 win over Dreamer. Using his marine push with medivacs–which people are now calling the bio ball–he steam rolled Dreamer who tried to do a four-gate in the first game.

On the other end of the semi final round we saw Shase going up against Kreef Lewer. Both matches were played on Lost Temple, and it was interesting to see a base trade where Shase took out Kreef Lewer’s base and Kreef Lewer took out all of Shase’s probes. Shase keeping up the pressure, he managed to win. The second game was a fairly quick game with Shase finishing with a four-gate push.

After this ANGRYAFRICAN and Shase were ready to once again meet in the final round. With ANGRYAFRICAN bringing the raw power of the Terran to the table and Shase bringing the mysterious powers of the Protoss, it was bound to be epic.

The first match saw ANGRYAFRICAN meeting Shase on Lost Temple where he went with his Marine and Medivac push, but Shase managed to build a High Templar to counter the marine push. This left ANGRYAFRICAN surprising Shase with a hellion rush (five hellions rushing the High Templar) and cleaning up the rest with his Marines.

Thereafter the map choice went to Shase who opted to battle it out on Kulas Ravine. Unfortunately he lost to the “bio ball”.

On Metalopolis, the third map, Shase managed an early warp prism harass followed by a Colossus army — resulting in his first win.

ANGRYAFRICAN decided to take him back to basics by requesting a Lost Temple match-up. With Shase giving the four-gate push another shot, ANGRYAFRICAN pulled out some skillful micro-management with his workers resulting in a successful defense against the attack. Once the attack was over, ANGRYAFRICAN didn’t waste time by trying his luck pressurising Shase. After pushing in, Shase tried to hold off the attack with force-fields, however this could not last forever. Soon enough ANGRYAFRICAN breached and it was havoc.

Congratulations to ANGRYAFRICAN for winning the tournament.

For replays and brackets head on over to PolarFluke

The local Starcraft 2 scene just seems to be exploding. After last week’s Megarom exhibition tournament which featured tons of prizes, it’s safe to say that the local scene is growing.

This weekend will see “Fluke” hosting his PolarFluke tournament online. With over 80 people already registered and entries still coming; it looks to be one of the biggest local tournaments yet.

There will be sponsors for the tournament, and this includes the top 4 places winning an AMD CPU, where 5th to 8th will win a 10GB Afrihost Internet Account. Also, there will be a random prize for one of the player’s who make it out of their group.

So for those interested, head over to PolarFluke and click on the tab at the top marked Registrations.

Hailed as the creator of one the greatest franchises in RTS history, his name is Sid Meier and he started the Civilization franchise — a game that pitted the player at a very early age having them create empires from scratch.

Sid Meier is one of the innovators in the RTS-world with his original creation of the Civilization game. Born in Ontario, Canada in 1954 (about 56 this year), Sid grew u playing a lot of board, and card games, where he liked reading a lot of history. We can only suggest that this piqued his interest in games orientated on strategy and history.

When Sid went off to college he caught the “computer bug” — opening doors for success. The Civilization creator decided to merge his two passions where he created computer games. As he says: I was playing computer games even when it was illegal.

The term illegal has been used loosely because it was only illegal in the way he went about playing. See, he was using a university computer to play Tic Tac Toe which was supposed to be used for all different algorithms.

In 1982 Sid formed MicroPose with his friend, and colleague, Bill Stealey. It was at this point that he first conceptualized and developed the idea into the game we now know as Civilizations. For the record, Sid only worked on the original Civilization before leaving the company.

In 1996 he left MicroProse to form Firaxis Games where remains today. At Firaxis he developed Alpha Centauri which many consider to be the spiritual successor to Civilization, as it included multi-player and also had a few plot tie-ins. Sid currently holds Creative Director at Firaxis Games.

Sid is famed for creating other games such as Sid Meier’s Pirates, a few flight sims, and the famed Railroad Tycoon series. One common aspect in all his games would be that they are all enjoyable and fun to play. In fact, Sid has shelved projects purely because they aren’t fun enough, when compared to previous work.

Following the aforementioned titles, Sid is also credited with early flying sims like F-15 Strike Eagle, a title that sold well over one million units worldwide.

Amongst the honors he has received he is the second person to be inducted into the  Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences’ Hall of Fame right after Shigeru Miyamoto. His induction to the Hall of Fame shows that his work is an Art or a Science, not just a piece of work.

Just looking at his career and life in general, Sid has a lot going for him. His un-official title of father of the gaming industry comes from taking RTS turn based games to a whole new level, while still being inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences’ Hall of Fame.

While the above is definitely impressive, and time consuming — Sid is married, and has a son named Ryan Meier who attends the Michigan State University where he runs Wolverine Soft (the computer club with a fancy title). Ryan is part of the organizers for the annual 48 game development contest — an event where you are given a theme and have to build a game in 48 hours.

With the new Civilization V coming soon and a Civilization Network being developed for Facebook, it looks like Sid Meier is still going strong and has a clear vision as to where he wants to take gaming.

For those who do not know Starcraft 2 has been going around like wild fire. Being a new game and with everyone’s interest in it companies are stepping forward to sponsor it. With the local Starcraft 2 scene having a shot at competing internationally due to the new network’s framework we are producing skilled players who can probably face off against European players and who knows maybe come out on top.

All this aside, to honour the launch of Starcraft 2 Megarom in association with ASUS and Do Gaming are hosting an exhibition tournament this Saturday (tomorrow) in Johannesburg at the Sound Room in Kyalami. To just show the scope of things first prize gets a G60 laptop (yes, the same one we reviewed) and R3000 not mentioning the Razer goodie bag and SC2 CE. The total prizes are as follows:

1st Prize
G60Jx Gaming Laptop
Starcraft 2 Limited Edition Game
Razer Gaming Bundle
R3000 Cash Prize

2nd Prize
ASUS Geforce ENGTX 470 Graphics Card
Starcraft 2 Game
Razer Gaming Bundle
R2000 Cash Prize

3rd Prize
ASUS ATI EAH 5850 Graphics Card
Starcraft 2 Game
Razer Gaming Bundle
R1000 Cash Prize

Being an exhibition it is by invitation that players were selected. The original line-up featured Dreamer, Shase, Angry African, McNoob, Alcardu, Kreefler,Rubilac and Jaxx but due to unforeseen circumstances Jaxx could not make it and as such Azul another local player will take his place. The original 8 were picked according to their seeding in South African rankings and as such are the 8 best in South Africa, for more info on the players and the seeding you can head over to 4pooled where you can find bio’s on the players and info on tournaments not forgetting replays of local players.

At the exhibition we have been promised to have a Starcraft 1 section for old players to go and get nostalgic and screens setup around the venue through which players can view the games and listen to shout casting which will be provided by Shadowthief and ZeeOne 2 locals who are actively involved in the Starcraft 2 scene.

If you can’t make it to the event have no fear as we will have all the information and hopefully a ton of pictures loaded onto the site for you to enjoy. Just a caution for those that did not get an invite please sign up at Do Gaming for your invite or as I am led to believe you might be stuck outside the venue.

To celebrate the launch of StarCraft 2, we are doing this weeks eGameFame on the popular title. Where did it come from and what made it a masterpiece?

StarCraft is one of the greatest Real-Time-Strategy games ever made and in 1995, when Blizzard announced that they were working on Starcraft, few knew that it would be the beginning of an eternal epic. An epic saga which tells the story of the Human’s (Terran) expansion into space. Followed closely by their freedom were wars. As everyone tries to vie for power they fought ignorantly unaware of the fact that they are not alone in the universe. And so as the mindless Zerg and the mysterious Protoss made their presence known it was time to fight a new threat. One that would unite the Terran against common foes.

But behind every epic thing is a long epic journey – and Starcraft is no different. In 1996 at E3 when they outed Starcraft, the build of the game used a modified Warcraft 2 engine. What was the response of people? Meh, some fans dubbed it Warcraft goes purple (not black) and Orcs in space. With such a bad response, by the end of the convention most of the screens that were supposed to be showing Starcraft were now showing Diablo. Under such negative feedback Bob Fitch, the lead programmer of Starcraft at that time, promised a new engine in a month. And he did not let down. Where the old engine lacked the ability to allow units to cloak and burrow, his engine had it all. With an engine they could use to create the game in the way they envisioned they now went to work. One thing that is constant in the development of all Blizzard games is change. From names of units to mechanics, all was put under the hammer until deemed worthy for customers. At one point the Zerg were even called the Nightmarish Invaders. With the team slaving away for up to 80 hours a week to get the game ready for launch, the date drew nearer.

With the final product ready and launched the question was: did they make a great game or just another average game? With people all over ranting about the game being one of the best they have experienced and the numerous Game of The Year Awards, I think it’s safe to say it’s a great game. Bringing in cinematic’s (I still rate their CGI department could make blockbuster films and make a fortune) and an immersive storyline that captured players from all over, the story was so immersive and epic that in a 2003 poll held by GameSpot, Starcraft’s ending was rated the greatest finale in gaming history. So without a doubt in my mind I can say they achieved their goals for the game. A success and one that fans loved and still play 10 years later.

But what really made Starcraft such a legend was the fact that it had multiplayer via Battle net. Allowing people to face off and decimate each other and at the same time draw people together, it became a game that spawned online communities around map creation and competitive gaming. And so began a whole new era for the face of e-sports. With Blizzard sponsoring the first tournament with a total prize value of $20 000, people were amped and everyone was ready to take the prize home, but to do that you had to bring it (bring the skills :D). And so began the 10 year competition to see who is the best. With each race having different strengths and different weaknesses players had to learn to create play styles to counter and eventually win them those oh so important matches.

For those out there wondering if I am just hyping it up, you are wrong. Just a year into the release, what was the number of accounts on their servers? 4,5 million active users and that is just one year after release. Many American players have moved to South Korea to take up a living playing Starcraft professionally. Players who are good enough make up to $300,000 a year from endorsements and prizes, if not more.

Certain things only hold so much influence, but that was not the case with Starcraft. Influencing a range of novels and manga allowing players to connect and understand the characters on a whole new level. TV stations in Korea that are dedicated to gaming actually started broadcasting official games due to the popularity and demand. And don’t get skeptic again with me, in one instance over 124 000 flocked to a tournament in South Korea to watch the pros duke it out.

And then came that fateful day. In the year 2007 at the BlizzCon World Wide invitational where Mike Morhaime announced Starcraft 2. The elation might have reached phenomenally high but not as  high as the day they heard Starcraft 2 got a release date, which many doubted was real (ha-ha, Blizzard proved you wrong all you haters). Most people had one thought on their mind: Hell, it’s about time.

After the release of Warcraft 3 the team went to work on Starcraft 2, but they learned one lesson: go with a new engine to reach heights that were not possible in 1998. And so in early 2010 the beta began, a beta so closed and in demand that people were willing to pay up to $400 for a Battle Net key. Most people are wondering why it took so long, and this is because of the main seven years it took to produce the game (plus three till it was fine tuned and ready for the public), a year or so was taken up with work on World of Warcraft.

And finally we reach today, 27 July 2010. A day that will be remembered in gaming history. This is the day that the first part of the saga is officially released. With fans fleeing to get their standard copies, and Collectors Edition of the game.

The Collectors Edition:

The collector’s edition comes with an artbook which is 176 pages and A4 size, a 2GB flash drive modelled after Jim Raynor’s dog tag with the original StarCraft and Brood War expansion preloaded, a behind-the-scenes DVD, soundtrack, comic book, and redeemable codes for downloadable content which includes a unique World of Warcraft pet — a mini-Thor.

Creating games such as Dungeon Siege, Populous, Black and White and the famed Fable franchise, this man is no small figure in the gaming industry. So, without further ado we would like to present Peter Molyneux.

As the story goes he was one of those humble people who worked at the bottom selling videogames on floppy discs. He had the idea that all you had to do in those times was to slap a name together and you could sell 50 million copies of a game, but it didn’t work like that. Peter created a text based business management game called Entrepreneur which he hoped would become a success. Thereafter he went to the degree of getting a bigger mailbox to accommodate orders. Shockingly he only received two orders — which he suspected were from his mother.

Luckily for us, he did not take this as a defeat. Instead, Peter started a company called Taurus Impact Systems which revolved around office database-related stuff. Some time after this Commodore mistook Taurus Impact Systems for another large firm and offered him six free Amiga PC’s, where instead of being a law abiding citizen and correcting them on their mistake, he accepted the deal. However, the deal was fixed and the program created was moderately successful.

Using the profits from the program he went on to find Bullfrog Studios, with Populous being the first game they worked on.

What is Populous?

Populous is the first “god game” for PC’s, allowing you to control a small village and bringing war onto other villages. The game was a success, selling over 4 million copies–which in those days was a big deal. While at Bullfrog Peter also worked on titles such as: The Syndicate series, Theme Park and Magic Carpet to name a few.

After working on Dungeon Keeper he left Bullfrog. To quote, Peter left and said: “one of the good things about me leaving Bullfrog, is that it will allow many of the talented individuals there to start getting the limelight and credit they deserve.”

Starting yet another company, this time using money from his personal funds (about $6 million), he funded Black and White at Lionhead Studios. Black and White was released to extremely high ratings and a happy audience. It was a game that portrayed a battle between good and evil, and it could be played anyway the user liked. To date Black and White is one of 3 games to ever receive a 9.7/10 on IGN.com.

And then came Fable. A game which delves into a slightly different genre from which they were used to, but it managed to come out on top. Peter received a lot of negativity after the release of the game as he over-hyped the title promising things that never even made it into the game.

Where does he stand after working almost three decades in the gaming industry. Well, to be fair fame is pretty far reaching despite the fact that he is known for promising and over hyping things without delivering. He’s also been presented with the Interactive Achievement Award in 2004.

Let’s hope Fable 3 will not be over-hyped.

Many consider this man, who to this day still continues to influence the gaming industry, to be the father of the FPS genre.

“Who is he?” you might ask?

His name is John D Carmack and he resides in Mesquite, Texas where id Software (the company he founded and works at) is situated.

As usual we will have a look at his past.

As a general rule of thumb most legends have humble or very rough beginnings. Whilst growing up in the Kansas metropolitan area, at an early age he became interested in computers, but as things go he could not get his own computer at that time. As they say “Where there is a will there is a way”, one weekend he broke into the school to try and steal an Apple II but he got caught and was sent for psychiatric evaluation. As it turns out he was asked by the psychiatrist if he were not caught would he do it again? He answered probably but luckily for him the psychiatrist did not include that answer in his report (the psychiatrist probably saw potential in him) which saw him being released and then going to the University of Missouri for only 2 semesters before leaving to work freelance.

One statement he made about his youth is important on his outlook on life:

“I looked back and I was an arrogant little jerk when I was a teenager. I matured over the years and when I look back now, I don’t think THAT highly of myself as a teenager. I mean, I was really smart, I was already programming computers in a lot of ways. But I was amoral at many times.”

Whilst working at Softdisk in 1990 is where he met John Romero and Adrian Carmack (no, they are not related). Doing their job they came up with Commander Keen which is not a FPS but was a hit in its day. Leaving the company he and his afore mentioned partners grouped together and founded id Software where they attained legendary status.

id Software is credited for creating the Wolfenstein, Quake and most importantly Doom series which to date is one of the most important games in gaming history. It even got its own movie made which was regarded as a flop mostly but personally it was ok.

What did John think about it?

He chose not to even involve himself in the movie so that he would not be disappointed, but he said the movie was decent and not a complete disappointment.

John himself is an advocate of free software and as such has been pushing for companies to not patent software which he equates to mugging people. In his attempt to show his support he has released the Quake 1-3 engines and has announced that the Doom 3 will also be made available under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

In a move similar to Grubby he met his wife through games. He met her when she visited id’s offices in 1997 where they held a bet. The bet was if she could get enough female competitors for a Quake tournament he would sponsor it. I think she actually got it done because in 2000 they were married and in 2004 a baby had emerged.

“The situation is so much better for programmers today – a cheap used PC, a linux CD, and an internet account, and you have all the tools necessary to work your way to any level of programming skill you want to shoot for.”

But not all geek

Oh, wait this next part makes him more of a geek. He has a liking for rockets and launching them so he founded a company which participates in competitions and things like that. In Armadillo Aerospace (his aerospace company) he takes on the role of lead engineer since he taught himself aerospace engineering. You are probably thinking , hey this is what rich people do, make a company just for fun and as a way to take part in things. Well his rockets as it turns out are actually pretty good. They have participated in the NASA Lunar Lander challenge and have earned around $850,00 through it.

Time for some trivial trivia

• He gave one of his Ferraris to Dennis Fong, the winner of the Quake “Red Annihilation” tournament.
• He got the idea of developing for mobile phones when he was on holiday with his wife and while playing games on phones he realized how bad they are.
• One quote of his I just have to mention though do not agree with since story to-me-is everything in a game:

“Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It’s expected to be there, but it’s not that important.” I still have the lingering feeling he looks like Jacobs Pitts from Eurotrip.

With that we bring this to an end. As he mentions many times over that if you want to develop games in this modern environment it is not hard. You just need the will to do it an a little resources from the internet.

When I heard about the Asus G51 being the younger brother to the very impressive G71 I had thoughts that it might lack power where it would not be able to compete with other gaming laptops. At heart, however, I knew that this was wrong.

After sitting down with the G51 laptop I can only say that it will probably beat most of the desktop PC’s currently being used by to read this review. So with all my doubts at ease, we can move on.

Before we start on the G51, we’d like to remind you that Asus is the creator of this powerful machine. Asus is famous for their Republic of Gamers motherboard brand, and high end graphics cards. With this in mind, they have taken this knowledge and put it into one place. Say hello to a series gaming of laptops.

The Powers within

What does this laptop have to offer in terms of gaming performance? With the target market being gamers, it has to be able to run games of all levels to the best, or highest, levels — at the very least. But we always need to keep in mind that a laptop targeted at gamers has to have something to make it look cool, seeing as it will be used at LAN’s.

Specifications:

• Intel Core i7 Q 720 @ 1.60GHz
• Intel PM45 + ICH9M chipset
• 15.6″ WUXGA FHD LCD display at 1366*768, 120Hz
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M 1GB GDDR3 memory
• Intel 5100AGN Wireless
• 4GB DDR3 (2GB x 2)
• Two 320GB Seagate 7200RPM Hard Drives
• DVD SuperMulti
• 120W (19V x 6.32A) 100-240V AC Adapter
• 6-cell 53Wh 11.1v 4800mAh Lithium Ion battery

The i7 is a beast and it is empowered even by the GTX 260 display card, and a set of 4GB DDR3 RAM. Power like this is a gamers dream, not to mention that they can take it anywhere they want.

The purpose of the Asus G51 is mobile gaming and it achieves its goal with and good performance, despite the short battery life. However, laptops shouldn’t ever run of battery as performance fails. Battery power should be last resort, try to plug it in at all times.

So, so pretty

Moving on to the aesthetics area. Aesthetically it is pretty well done to say the very least. The sample we had was a blue top, but there is a model with a white top. The smooth matte finishes and the Asus ROG’s logo is tacked in at certain areas, where lights on the top as bling to attract attention towards the device.

With your common gaming keys (W, A, S and D) being highlighted, you’ll notice that when gaming in dark, or dimmed, area’s you’ll be able to see your keyboard. Following this, the touch pad is pretty good and it has good tracking with almost no lag while playing games. But then again, you’ll use a mouse to play games — not a touch pad.

Visuals and Audio

The G51 only boasts a 15-inch screen which maxes out at 1600×1000 pixels. Most new laptops feature 17-inch monitors, but Asus’ approach for a 15-incher revolves around weight reduction. The colour and brightness on the monitor is perfect, where it sports high performance, entertainment and power saving modes too.

On the sound end we have 2 x ALTEC Lansing surround sound speakers built in to the laptop. Quality wise, the system is exceptional and it’ll be useful if you want to sit and watch a movie in bed. For LAN’s you’ll want to purchase a headset.

2D, 3D what’s the deal with this?

The main attraction, or gimmick, on the G51 is that it’s one of the only 3D laptops out there. 3D works for almost everything on the laptop. There are 3D videos (you need to download or obtain special videos and to be played on a special Nvidia 3D player), 3D pictures (they look pretty cool, but we know what certain people will do with it), and finally 3D gaming — which is a different experience to say the least.

With only about 7 games properly supported by Nvidia, 3D is not yet that popular.

Accessories

As always Asus gives a nice assortment of accessories with their products. With the laptop you get a laptop carry bag; which is pretty snug, a Razer gaming mouse; which is a must have, and last but not least, an awesome set of Steel Series gaming headsets. For gamers this package will should be popular.

Scoring

We ran Futuremark’s PCMark Vantage and it scored 6121. That’s a nice number to see.

The Verdict

As I end this review, I think about owning one and how much simpler gaming would be. With a retail price of around R18,000, it’s costly but if you can afford it, it’s well worth it. The G51 does the job it was made for and will last you at least 4/5 years of hassle-free gaming.

My only real concern is the 3D gimmick, with the news of standalone 3D screens the question arises: you really want to wear glasses to get 3D when certain screens are released without needing this?

His name is Warren Spector and to that say he is the founder of FPS RPG is not going overboard. Yes, I know I said that Shigeru Miyamoto is the father, so in tune with that statement I will say that Warren would therefore be the son who might have achieved something to rival his “father”.

So what’s this 54-year-old guy’s deal? Well he’s 55 on October 2, 2010 — but that’s not it.

Entering the games industry in 1983, he worked on pen-and-paper adventures for Steve Jackson Games as a low level guy (all legends began at the bottom or near the bottom). Working his way up slowly–doing whatever he really needed to succeed. Becoming the Editor-in-Chief for the aforementioned firm, he created strategy related role playing games. But all this random information aside, we’re going to tell you why he was chosen as the target for this weeks eGameFame.

Mr Spector is first credited with creating/working on Wing Commander which was a lot different from the standard formula for games at that time. Taking a whole new perspective on Space combat at that time, where everything, or most everything, had an effect. This formed the basis for games like System Shock and Deus Ex — which are two of his more influential works.

So, how do the choices you make in Wing Commander effect the game? Well, if you go beyond the call of duty, you would be awarded medals. It’s also important to remember that, not only your actions but also, the cockpit effects game play. Okay–less talk about Wing Commander and more about Warren Spector.

And then came System Shock. It has been said that, until today, it continues to influence modern RPG Sci-Fi games. System Shock is said to be the game which everyone could play and enjoy (how true this is I am not sure–just saying). Unlike other games of its time, System Shock featured 3D environments which were mostly unheard of at the time. However, it was the RPG elements, and game-actions, which had consequences. These two dynamic elements made System Shock a highly acclaimed game. In the years following its release, it had been inducted into many Halls of Fame as it was very influential in the gaming industry.

And yes, I have to mention Deux Ex. I know I spoke about two games already, but this is the game I played as a child and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Deus Ex allow you to become a hacker or a combat specialist, or whatever. This was the game where, at the end, you would not regret going one route, opposed to another, as the final boss could be defeated by using different methods.

Just so you know – Deus Ex 3 is on it’s way.

But Warren isn’t all geek/dork/nerd (all three are there because each has a different meaning). He has a wife, and her name is Caroline Chase. She is real and he met her at a comic book store in Austin, Texas. We use the term ‘real’ loosely because she’s a fantasy writer..

Another titbit which Ultima fans would probably know is that Warren has made several cameo appearances in the different versions, and he also has a character modeled after him in Deus Ex. For the Deus Ex fans, the cheat iamwarren refers to him and it causes electronic devices in the vicinity to malfunction.

One of the reasons stated in interviews, with different people, for starting a new studio would that he was tired of working for other people. He wanted to go out and make his own mistakes. And obvioulsy the success would then be his, and his alone.

So, Warren Spector created many of the elements that are currently being used in modern RPG styled games. To date, he is still active in the gaming industry doing his own thing, as he loves including himself in his games. He started a company after leaving Ion Storm (where he created Deus Ex), and it’s called Junction Point.

One last bit on games:  he has announced that he is making a new game called Epic Mickey. Of all the games he could have created, he chose to make a Disney game. I have no idea how it will turn out.

This week we bring to you the creator of the Zelda franchise and the father of modern platformers–to a degree. His name is Shigeru Miyamoto and he is a legendary game designer who resides in the Nintendo palace creating all sorts of things.

As with most great people, he had humble beginnings and thus deserves the height he has reached. But the question is where, and what, are these beginnings?

He was born in the Japanese town of Sonobe, Kyoto on November 16, 1952 and this is an important piece of information behind his story. How would that be? Well, the area surrounding his house was filled with forestry and a cave–yes, the bases of a Zelda game. It turns out that when he found the cave at first, he was apprehensive to go in. But then he entered the cave, and that is how he had the basis for a game, in his head. However, having an idea and transforming into a game are worlds apart.

Starting at the bottom as a designer, he worked on designs for the coin-operated arcade. To Nintendo’s demise — and Shigeru’s luck — Radar Scope kind of failed, leaving them with thousands of machines on-hand. To improvise, Nintendo told Shigeru that he can use the same machines to modify around his needs. The catch to this would be that he would need to use the same box and button configuration as Nintendo did not want to waste money on enhancements for a failed machine.

It turns out that Nintendo America hated his first creation because he did not conform to a maze or shooter game, however when the game was released–presumably through Nintendo Japan bosses–everyone loved it…

And so we saw the birth of Donkey Kong.

Working hard at transforming Donkey Kong and attempting to put his concepts into actual code was another story. But he pulled it off, and Donkey Kong rose to fame. Thereafter it became one of the most awesome games of its time. This, however, was just the starting point. It was essentially the building blocks for his next project.

And so his next great success came–in the form of Super Mario Brothers.

It changed the face of gaming once again, it introduced our favourite plumber Mario, who jumps on enemy heads and leaps from spot to spot. These features soon became platformer canon. For those that are unsure, Mario’s objective was to save Princess Peach who was being snatched by Bowser, over and over again. When Mario was launched it took everyone by surprise. The game was, and still is, a big hit. Everybody loved it, and various versions are still being played by thousands of people every day.

Being the devoted man that he is, he did not stop with 2 successful franchises. Instead, he went to break the barrier again. This time he created Zelda, an RPG that introduced elements which were never ever seen before. From the big empty forest, to the caves full of monsters and puzzles. Shigeru created an atmosphere and a world which enraptured everyone.

Shigeru Miyamoto usually overlooks the staff at Nintendo, however Super Mario Galaxy saw him once again take charge.

A famous trend of Shigeru would be that he always continues to release a game multiple times, in different scenarios, and redone in various ways. They will always be engaging and fun. For example Donkey Kong has been released 19 times.

To date, it has been said that, Shigeru has over 80 games to his name and thousands of thousands of fans following him to the degree that they actually made a shrine for him on the internet. Following this, he was also one of the first people to be honoured with a star on the Walk of Game–San Francisco’s equivalent of Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

When Shigeru was shown that he has a shrine on the internet.

As one of the big shots in the videogame industry he surprisingly did not break away from Nintendo and form his own company but rather humbly kept working at Nintendo as royalty.

His name is Manuel “Grubby” Schenkhuizen and he is one of the best Warcraft 3 players in the world. Hailing from Netherlands  rival to Moon, he is probably the best Orc player in the world. His fans termed him the King of Orcs and rightly so.

His rise to fame and introduction into the eSports arena began in 2003 at the age of roughly 17 and has been playing games professionally for about 8 years which is about a third of his life. His breakthrough into the scene would probably have been in 2003 wherein he took part in the Cyber X games which took place in Las Vegas. Manuel took 1st place in 2 tournaments in the same year, which is a pretty decent deal. The year 2004 saw him taking more and more tournaments, but more importantly he joined up with 4Kings (one of the oldest gaming organizations).

His run with 4Kings was a legendary one, and one that had him not only playing solo games but also becoming a legend in 2v2′s. He rolled with this group garnering the team the following achievements:

• 1^st Place – Clanbase MCL Season 1 (2004)
• 1^st Place – ESL WC3L Season 4 (2004)
• 2^nd Place – ESL WC3L Season 5 (2004)
• 1^st Place – ESL WC3L Season 7 (2005)
• 1^st Place – ESL WC3L Season 8 (2005)
• 2^nd Place – ESL WC3L Season 9 (2006)
• 1^st Place – ESL WC3L Season 10 (2007)
• 2^nd Place – ESL WC3L Season 11 (2007)
• 3^rd Place – NGL-ONE Season 1 (2006)
• 3^rd Place – NGL-ONE Season 2 (2006-2007)
• 3^rd Place – NGL-ONE Season 3 (2007)

Thereafter in 2008 he went onto join with Meet Your Makers for a year where he played alongside his rival Moon as teammate. When Meet Your Makers decided to close down their Warcraft 3 division, Grubby made the shift and moved over to Evil Geniuses where he currently rolls.

Unlike Jang “Moon” Jae Ho his famous rival who took a dip in his gaming career, “Grubby” did not slack off but instead continued on a roll taking tournaments continuously. At times he may not have been at the top, but always in the top 5 — which technically is the top.

At the age of 24 he has earned around $164193.00 (from 2003 to 2009 and since the year 2010 has just begun his earning potential could be substantially higher), but do keep in mind that this is prize money and not sponsorship money. Also he has been nominated for best eSports player and best Warcraft 3 player, which is an accomplishment.

Unlike most gamers out their Manuel “Grubby” Schenkhuizen is not your typical lonely geek hiding in a basement and playing games only, but instead on the move constantly. More importantly he just got married this year to Cassandra on a beach (how awesome is that?). Cassandra is also a gamer and they met through eSports. The best bit is without a doubt is that in true gamer style he proposed to Cassandra at Blizzcon last year. He did this by walking off stage toward her before going on his knee (obviously) to propose.

He has also been heavily featured in the documentary Beyond the Game, which portrays his early beginnings and his competition with Fredrik “MadFrog” Johansson one of the most legendary Warcraft3 players in history (not that the list is that long). At least he has a documentary which features him heavily, how many of us can say that?

As the year 2010 goes into full swing I just ponder his future. Why? Well, the question is will Warcraft 3 still have plenty sponsors behind them? The answer is most probably yes, but at least he has earned himself a nice amount and can always retire to do something else with safe the knowledge that he was the best. Being the only pro-gamer in the world who has both ESWC and WCG titles, Manuel “Grubby” Schenkhuizen is arguably the most accomplished Warcraft III player.

SK-Gaming, one of the top MGO’s in the world, is the topic of today’s discussion. Before your brain goes into overtime trying to figure out what SK stands for, I will tell you. It stands for Schroet Kommando. Now that you know what it stands for, you’re probably wondering what it means exactly and how they came up with something, well, like Schroet? It seems that Schroet means Shrapnel and it seems that they would scream it out whenever anyone got their hands on a shotgun. SK-gaming started in Germany in 1997 by four brothers and three of their friends primarily as a Quake clan.

The original clan played Quake, and only Quake, though, in their defense, they did play all of the Quake’s. Playing Quake, Quake 2 and Quake 3: Arena competitively (obviously) and later getting other teams on board. They are the first organisation to have an all female team (yes, they beat Fragdolls and Fnatic and all the others). But all this only got kick started in the early 2000′s when Andreas “bds” Thorstensson joined the group and took over the site management wherein they became the first site to charge subscribers for premium content (known as the “SK insider”). Alright, less talk about management and more about the group, so let’s move on.

SK-gaming are notably known for their Counter Strike and their DotA teams. Both teams had been highly successful in competitions. Since the organisation was started primarily as a Quake group, they had no other teams and Counter Strike was on the rise. And so the recruiting began – they recruited Ninjas in Pyjamas (NiP) who, at the time, were the kings of Counter Strike after just having beaten X3 in the CPL finals. The DotA front saw them taking in Team T_T to form their DotA team.

The Counter Strike team, which was originally Ninjas in Pyjamas, were in blind when SK-gaming took them under their wing. They had no real sponsorship and not much going for them even though they had just come out first in CPL. Once signed up with SK-gaming, they had the finances to go all over the country, participating in different tournaments. At their prime they were probably the best Counter Strike team in the world. At the end of their contract they opted to not re-new it as some of the players were unhappy with the prize money distribution and a few other things. Here comes the ironic part, they left and reformed NiP, but not even a few months later a few of the members left NiP and went back to SK-gaming. The Counter Strike team visited South Africa in December 2008 to play an exhibition match between them and Bravado. Bravado held it together mostly in the first map, just losing, but then the second map came around and they were slain (just goes to show we do have skills in S.A, to a degree).

SK in S.A

The DotA began with the inclusion of Team T_T into SK-gaming’s roster. The team roster had legends such as Kim “Drayich” Larsson, Jonathan ‘Loda’ Berg, Tommy ‘toMpa’ Andersson, Edvin ‘KwoM’ Börjesson, Joakim ‘Akke’ Akterhal, Bogdan and Gustav ‘Renji’ Bergström. During their time at SK-gaming they won Prime Defending 10, DreamHack Summer 2008 and ESWC Paris 2008, which was probably the height of their success at SK-gaming. Afterward things seemed to go downhill, where they kept coming second to their nemesis MYM, and after roster changes March 10th 2009 saw the end of SK-gaming’s DotA division. A point of interest is when SK-gaming came to South Africa back in December 2008, where they wiped the floor with Bravados DotA squad (which was the national side). From full performance to hangover mode they could not be stopped. At that time it showed the difference in skill between South Africa and overseas, but in recent times it seems that they have grown for the better (the scene on a whole).

The organisation featured console players for Call of Duty 4, Pro Evolution Soccer, Guitar Hero, sports, racing and Gears of War 2 and Halo 3. On the PC end they had FIFA and even World of Warcraft players. Most of this has been having ups and downs and most are closed down (it is a numbers game). With only a few of those divisions remaining, I guess the performance was low and thus had to be shutdown.

A really interesting controversy was in June 22 2009, where they suffered quite an embarrassment. Their Starcraft: Broodwar roster that they recruited turned out to be a no-show as the team manager failed to tell them that the players were already contracted to another team. Speaking of contracts, they were also one of the first FPS clubs to contract their players, and then go on in May 18, 2004 to be the first team to receive a fee for a player transfer – after rivals Team NoA bought SK.swe player Ola “elemeNt” Moum out of his contract that is.

Every group needs money, and this organisation is no different. They get about 85% of their income (according to research) from sponsors and the remainder from their SK Insider subscriptions. Their sponsors include: Acer, SteelSeries, Kingston, gamed!de, Creative, Western Digital, Bigben, Inferno Online, Themraltake, Cool IT and many more.

With the year 2010 just about halfway through, I wonder, what does the future hold for SK-gaming? With recent roster changes and no move yet to move on to HoN or Starcraft 2, I wonder if they are planning to rely on other squads to continue ahead. With many firsts to their name and plenty success I think they have done pretty well for themselves.

If Meet Your Makers are known for a game, it has to be Warcraft 3. More specifically, their original Warcraft 3 squad, which was rated as one the best Warcraft 3 teams in the world. They were also one of the highest paid teams in the world.  MYM held Warcraft legends such as Grubby, Moon, Remind, LucifroN and DeMuslim.

Meet Your Makers was formed by Mark Peter “Mercy” Fires  in Copenhagen, Denmark. Originally it was meant to be a Counter Strike team but it seems the organization grew its own mind and subtly led to the creation of Warcraft 3 and DotA teams.

The organization was pretty strong and the teams held their own till the parent organization went bankrupt in March 2009. But before we go into these dark times lets have a look at the good times. The years 2004-2008 could be termed the golden era for MYM. It saw them taking tournaments apart and reigning at the top. In August 2009 after the dark period where the parent company closed, they announced that they will be re-forming a new team that will participate in eSports and this would include a Counter Strike team — MYM’s original idea.

With MYM back in action the teams were re-organised and ready to go.

Most notable was their DotA team which was regarded as one of the strongest squads around. They had streaks of nonstop winning.

With Jacob-Toft “Maelk” Anderson as the captain and leading the team he garnered them many victories but sadly it came to an end. The squad had a few changes and has always been in the scene but nowadays not so domineering. These hallowed MYM hallways were home to legends such as Lasse ‘slahser’ Malver, Levent ‘LevenT-’ Isyapar, Ben ‘Merlini’ Wu (currently playing for Nirvana.int), Kuro “KuroKy” Salehi Takhasomi (currently playing for Nirvana.int), etc.

Although MYM currently have a strong side, the introduction of Heroes of Newerth and with the news of IceFrog working on a title for Valve, the question is how much longer will DotA be played and will they make the switch?

On the Warcraft 3 end, the organization disbanded the team in March, with Remind and Lucifron leaving completely and DeMuslim moving into the StarCraft 2 world, it saw an end to the division which reigned at the top for very long at the top. But as one division dies out so another is born and with DeMuslim reigning as one of the top SC2 players at the moment MYM was wise in letting the Warcraft 3 division go.

A great injustice would have been perpetrated if we do not mention the Counter Strike team. This is the roots of MYM and even though they mostly are not headline news like their (other/brother) squads they have ranked up medals and prizes. Participating in ESWC, Dreamhack and CPL is no small feat but even better is the fact that they took top 3 in these tournaments.

As we take a final look at this gaming organization I know that the players will be able to adapt to a different game should they need to switch to HoN or StarCraft 2.

This week we will take a look at one of the top ranked gaming organizations in the world. Who are they and what do they do, you might ask? Well, their name is Fnatic and they are similar to Frag Dolls, but as you would imagine: no glitz and glamour — just plain bad-assery.

Fnatic was originally founded by Sam Mathews with the help of Joris Van Laerhoven and Anne Mathews (A woman was a founding member of this group, which is an awesome step to bring women into gaming). Sam is probably the driving force/real creator of Fnatic, where Anne brought sandwiches finance knowledge and Joris just fits in there somewhere (as yet to be decided :D).

They have, arguably, one the best CS 1.6, World of Warcraft and Warcraft 3 (shifted to StarCraft) teams in the world.

From last week’s response to the Frag Dolls piece, I thought that it would be interesting to add that Fnatic also has a girls only team. The team plays Counter-Strike and is made up of 5 females.

The nicknames include: Zainab “zAAz” Turkie, Irene “iRene ” Sanchez, Anette “Cazzidy” Skarderud, Sophie “inzane” Regnér and Mayra “IpSa” Perez.

Mostly a booth-babe thing, but at least they got some skills to be proud of, which have brought them to very near the top (2nd in a recent tournament only getting beat by SK-gaming).

Onto more serious business. The other teams are mostly strong and can hold their own (actually I think they give out a hiding on occasion also) in gaming tournaments — be it online or offline. Fnatic consists of the following teams: Counter-Strike, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty 4, QuakeLive, Heroes of Newerth, Halo and Starcraft (2 probably, but then again they need to update their site to show us that for Starcraft 2).

The teams:

Counter Strike: The counter strike team has been around long enough and have stayed together (mostly), with the odd addition here and there. They have stayed strong with one set of players since around 2006 and have really come together and formed a bond that only forms on battlefields. With giants such as F0rest and Get_right slipping in between the ranks, you do not want to meet them in a tournament.

World of Warcraft: With some of the best rogues in the roster they are set. I will not lie, I have no idea how they compete in this, but it seems to have rankings of all degrees and with Fnatic ranking high they must be doing something right.

Call of Duty 4: This team features a roster with legends or legends in the making. From Stevy, one of the deadliest snipers, to LINQAN, who, with his SMG, is a cannon ball you let loose on the enemy to cause maximum chaos.

Quake Live: A successful roster so far, who play mostly as a team. Knowing that your team-mates got your back allows you to go all out and slaughter the enemy. Even though they are newly formed (probably since Quake Live is mostly new) the players have surprised many on the scene and everyone anxiously waits to see how they will surprise us next.

Heroes of Newerth: A recently formed division to take advantage of the fact that there are not that many professional teams. More so the fact that Dreamhack has announced that HoN is one of the games for this year.

Starcraft: This division is the former Warcraft 3 division with a mix of players. They mainly play 2v2′s so they do not end up playing against DeMuslim and Nazgul (which is good, seeing as no one knows what would happen to them) but, all taken into consideration, their 2v2 combo’s are brutal and efficient.

Halo: The Halo squad has a mix of super-aggro-in-your-face berserkers with intelligent snipers sitting and waiting for the mark to take the bait – proving they are a top notch squad not to be taken lightly.

A point of interest: October 2008, when MSI decided to sponsor Fnatic. The sponsorship deal included decking out the whole team with MSI GX720 laptops which, at that time, was a sick piece of hardware. This was a really good deal, because every time you peaked at the scoreboard Fnatic.msi would be at the top or, at the very least, near the top. Essentially giving MSI a very big billboard and subliminally putting there name in your head (I own a MSI motherboard). That is not the sole sponsor, otherwise they would be lacking a lot, they also have sponsorship from SteelSeries and Bigfoot networks. I would like to go into how they do the whole sponsorship thing, but really, we came here to read about gaming related things and not how to get a sponsor (hmmm, might show you later on).

On the whole, this just shows how gaming organizations can achieve great things. Of course having sponsors helps a lot, but the main ingredient in this case is lots of kick-ass skills and the will to win. How long Fnatic last on top is another story for another day, but for now they are doing just fine. Something I noticed on their site is a podcast area, which is cool, because many other MGO’s do not do this. I think that podcasts offer fans a way to feel connected to the team they follow.

Fnatic are making money and playing games every day. They might just be living the dream (depends on whose dream it is).

*I would like to apologize on behalf of myself and eGamer for the previous article which was not up to scratch. Thank you, we hope you enjoy reading.*

Valve has announced that they are launching an extensive update to Counter-Strike: Source. This update is in beta and you can go give it a try.

So what does this beta have in it? Well they have included 144 new achievements for you to go and try to collect ‘em all, a new domination and revenge system (thinking this might be similar to Call of Duty: MW2), player stats, and more.

The beta will obviously run for a period after which the update will be deployed and all Counter-Strike: Source owners will get it for free via Steam (of course).

In a world where “bitch, get back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich” is a common sentence to girls; the main question is, what did they do to receive such abuse? Well, simply put: they are girls that step into a mans world by, most of the time, playing games. However, more importantly some of them are girl teams — opposed to individuals — who play professionally. And yes, they will kick all our asses.

Awhile back we did a piece on Jonathan “Fatal1ty” Wendell, a professional gamer. Now instead of individual players, we’re going to be following a few teams over the coming weeks. This brings us to the main point on who are we dealing with, and how did they come about?

Formed, and backed, by Ubisoft — with the original founders being mostly employees from Ubisoft itself — we have the Frag Dolls. Rhoulette was the real founder of the American Frag Dolls team where after hosting an ad on Craigslist, the project launched. The initial team of seven started out playing in tournaments, and in different online leagues. The idea behind the team was for Ubisoft to obviously gain more media attention. And it seemed to have worked, as there are now three teams, the U.K team, the American team and the French team.

All of the girls are in their 20′s, and I do not want to go in to a description of their appearance — in fear that I might lose you for the rest of the paragraph. Let’s just say that they were selected on appearance, with gaming being their second best feature.

Simply put, the Frag Dolls are paid to play games, attend events and blog about their experiences.

So, just what do they do at these events? Well, frag people. Thereafter they make their opponent wish that they never challenged the pretty girl for her number. Financial backer, Ubisoft, uses them as ambassadors for gaming and this entails all sorts of PR stunts. But all-in-all, they are “booth babes” that rock a couple of games here and there.

The idea behind having a team of girls playing games was to raise awareness, which isn’t bad, but the problem appeared with how they went about it. Some might say, it’s well — unfair, evil or damn — she’s hot!

In the original advert they sent out, Rhoulette actually asked applicants to be good at gaming but also include 15 pictures from varying angles. Obviously the founders are after the marketing, but come on, trying to get the best women they can get, versus, an average women who’s better? That’s not fair.. Unless your project is all about looking good.. and not really gaming? Well, looks like sex sells after all.

The original team has mostly broken up and moved to other ventures. For example, Eaglemeare and Vixen went off to their former team which was gender-neutral. These two always made a concerted effort to actually upload pictures and videos of themselves, so that’s cool.

As I conclude this piece, I just ponder over the effects of the idea and driving force behind the group. Will it actually bring the two genders together, or will it make us just objectify them all the more?

Now. Where’s my sandwich?

Full image link here.. Just in case you want a closer look.

When Bungie announced that May the third would see the beta opened up a bit more tons of people got very excited. Just how many is that tons of players is the question. To show just how happy they are they have released stats for the first 24 hours of the beta. And here they are:

1,170,112 total players playing the beta, which is as they said almost more then they had for the whole Halo 3 beta.

157,972,986 Kills which is almost and average of 15 kills a person but I really wonder how the feeder stats are looking.

936,864,266 Seconds Spent Playing, which equates around 29.67 years if one person had to play all that alone.

All these stats are care of RocketMoose their stats guru.

Want to really see it? Go here

Ettienne believes that if it’s stock, it ain’t good enough. His desire and passion has made him one of the best modders in South Africa. His full name is Ettienne “Daejavoo” Venter and he is 23 years old. Hailing from Pretoria in Gauteng.

Behind every great person is a story, and here we’ll delve into his life. A persons passion is like dry wood, just waiting for the right spark. This was the case with Ettienne, reading one article in a UK magazine called custom PC. The article revolved around a mod called the Orac. The Orac mod, at the time, was one of the best. After seeing the Orac article, a quick spark lit Etienne’s passion and so began the desire.

His 1st mod is simply stunning and one of the best in the local scene. Termed Project Epiphany, a design which used a simple clear case. Etienne modified every aspect of it, resulting in one simply stunning case. But being his first case it was the hardest. Going in with no tool, no experience, no knowledge and no materials did not make it any easier for him.

Ettienne’s path of modification was extended after an accident which grounded him to his bed.

Once into the scene he was completed immersed. He began working on modding everything from notebooks to keyboards. Of his many mods, one included a notebook with a touch screen.

One of the greatest perks for this job would be sponsors. Sponsors send you all the tools and materials you need. If you have to ever cough up a little money, it’s just lunch.

Modding is not the be all and end all for Ettienne, he is interested in skateboarding, and  solving Rubik’s cubes. A simple deduction: Ettienne likes a challenge.

He has had his work featured in PC Format, and more, but more interesting he is currently working on a mod for NAG magazine. The requirements will see him build a specially modded case to be given away, alongside the dream machine, at this year’s rAge.

DaeJaVoo hopes to see the local scene grow due to the easy access to materials of plexi and aluminium, where services like CNC work and laser cutting are not too hard to find. The local scene was very active a few years ago but sadly it dropped, he hopes to see it re-grow as he was also one of the people who went silent for a period.

We received a email from Valve stating that Steam will be landing on Macs on the 12th of May. Not much else is said in the press release except that everyone should stay tuned.

We have no idea how valid or real this list is but it has been making it’s rounds on Twitter.

What seems to be certain from that list to appear at this years E3 is the following:

Killzone 3 (This will be one really sick announcement)
LBP2 (Curious to see the successor to the first game and how it turns out)
Dead Space 2 (The space-horror game that everyone sits with baited breath anticipating)
Guitar Hero 6 (Well this is just another GH but really wonder how well it will be received)

Some things that are likely to appear at E3
Call of Duty: MMO (the Sledgehammer project, perhaps. Since the Vietnam one is out soon.)
Mass Effect 3 ( This is a bit sudden but I guess it is just an announcement and not a release date.)
MotorStorm 3 (Not much too say about this.)
A slight possibility at E3:
Bad Company 3 (given BC2′s success, it is similar to the Mass Effect 3 announcement.)
Road Rash HD ( I would love to see this if it is the same one I used to play as a child)

And lastly the stunners:
Fahrenheit 2 (Successor to Fahrenheit something I thought that would not come with the release of Heavy Rain.)
God of War 3: Afterfall (I guess this was partially inevitable that someone would decide to make money.)
Omikuden (Only cause no one has heard of it before).

I just hope that this list is true and that we get too see these titles at E3 this year.

The war on piracy. A war that been waged for decades, if not centuries. When the word piracy is mentioned most people do not think of an evil act, but rather swashbuckling Johnny Depp and his humorous antics. This creates the wrong perception about the topic; the biggest problem with this is that it becomes a form of glamorous activity which people are then not afraid to participate in.

What is electronic piracy? No, it is not the same as the piracy practiced during the Golden Era of Piracy (the late 1600’s to the early 1700’s) wherein you would raid people and steal/raid all their belongings. But rather to copy a piece of software without proper permission, thus resulting in copyright infringement. This is a criminal offense in many countries.

What I would like to highlight in this article is not the criminal offense but rather the pirates themselves and their mentalities. Most pirates that download games do it because they want to have the latest games to play, and they would like show to their friends. I have come across, in my experience, many people who have pirated tons of games yet due to the sheer number of games they pirated they cannot simply play them all. They indirectly caused somebody who wanted to buy the game jump through ten DRM loops. We need to understand is that every action of ours has an effect directly or indirectly to the costing and DRM.

Looking at action and reaction, Blizzard, due to fear of piracy, have not included LAN play in Starcraft 2. They have opted to rather exclude it in favour of making connecting to the internet a must. Other companies that have opted to introduce a stronger DRM include Ubisoft and EA. Ubisoft are a lot more intense as they make it a necessity to be connected at all times to the internet when playing. From this we can see how badly it impacts those that opt to buy games and not pirate them.

But what I really want to highlight is the life of a pirate. Most pirates actually pirate game on the mentality and with the understanding that they will be the Alpha dog in their group. I know many a person that pirates game and actually just store them. Yes they do not play them but rather let them just sit and gather dust. The amount of quality games that are being released are phenomenal and it is almost impossible to play every game that comes out. It doesn’t bother pirates that they will not finish the game, nay; not even finish the single player.

What this in effect creates is a pirated library which would cost the same amount as a few great games minus the actual enjoyment of playing and finish a game. All I ask pirates to do is not copy games for a month and finish a few of their own which they have. And just see what an amazing effect it will have, you will get a warm fuzzy feeling every time you finish a game and not just sitting around with an empty hollowness.

As I stealthily sneak my way towards the target, I spot 2 bogey’s ahead of me with a floodlight covering the front. I slowly mark my prey in the order that best protects me. I then execute it. With a flourish and in a blur of movements the targets are dead and I am bathed in darkness.

Splinter Cell: Conviction marks a new era for the Splinter Cell franchise, and for Sam Fisher himself. Previously we saw Sam Fisher sneaking around in high tech gear and using super gadgets with Third Echelon backing him up. We now see Sam Fisher all alone in the cold with no backup, and a really furious mindset towards the people he used to work for. The game is a big conspiracy in the making, so prepare yourself for twists and turns.

The question is what are the events that led us, or rather Sam, to this point? It seems that evidence has turned up that Third Echelon may have been behind the events that three years earlier resulted in the death of his daughter or the events around it. Convictions is built around 2 story lines: the first one is when you play in the single player and the second is the one you play in co-operative mode with a friend. After learning about this feature I was impressed as most games wouldn’t bother creating a different storyline for co-op, as they would rather have a new storyline. with new characters which we could see being used in later games — if the creators decided to use them.
An interesting addition is the over head narration done by one of Sam’s old military buddies. And as happy as I am that Sam’s got friends we have an Iraqi stage, a really nice one. But more importantly, this stage creates a very important link between Sam and his friend.

Name: Splinter Cell: Conviction
Genre: First Person Shooter with loads of stealthy bits
Players: 1+
Multiplayer: couch co-op
Platforms: Xbox 360, PC
Developers: Ubisoft Montreal
Publishers: Ubisoft
Release Date: 16 April 2010, for South African stores and April 30 for PC
Reviewed on Xbox 360

1, 2, 3 — BAM.

The story-line is exciting enough to keep you interested, and thus allowing you play until the end. The most important addition to this game is the introduction of Mark and Execute. Mark and Execute allows you to select a few targets and then execute. You fire off 1 shot for each target marked. This results in quick succession, leaving you walking through a lot of dead people. But more interestingly this addition is the ability to mark objects which will help you out. For example a light chandelier hanging above 2 guys. You do the math. You’ll now have to enter and pop the last guy for optimal killing.

Certain weapons can be upgraded to include more reflex markers allowing you to tag more people. If you can do this early in the game, I suggest that you do.

While Mark and Execute makes the game really simple, the developers have forced you to use hand-to-hand abilities to get past a few situations. This essentially stops you from walking in and blasting away before winning the game. Overall this features means you’ll be a real ninja — getting up close and personal.

The only problem when getting up close and personal sometimes is when your button doesn’t work. I mean I am going forward, I press the melee button and alas, he won’t throw his Krav Maga moves. However this usually happens once you have been spotted, meaning it might mean that they are on guard.

Am I going colour blind?

This is interesting piece of art (if we can call it that). Shadows have always played a crucial part in the Splinter Cell franchise but in previous games being in the shadows did not do anything graphics wise. Obviously you were invisible to do your thing, but that’s different. Conviction features something called Greyscale, it applies a grey shade when you are in the shadows, allowing you to know when you can walk past the enemy right next to you, or when you should not be moving an inch. Shooting lights creates a lot of area to move around in, but doing so makes the guards slightly a bit more alert and switch on their flashlights, however as long as the light does not hit you — you should be fine.

Unfortunately greyscale gets irritating as you don’t get the richness from normal graphics. I had thought they would go with the original idea of having a light blue edging around the screen which would have made those bouts in darkness a whole lot more bearable.

A fourth wall? Is there one in this game? Yes, there is but the game attempts to break it by displaying your objectives onto the walls and as you clear areas. It will throw a black and white video onto the walls for you to watch. These videos are mostly memories of the past, and past events, that are of importance.

Wasn’t he there a minute ago?

One of the many interesting additions to Sam’s arsenal of moves is something known as Last Known Position. If you did not understand what that meant then I guess I better break it down for you. If you fire a non-silenced weapon or someone spots you then a silhouette is placed over that location. Enemies will swarm to that area giving you time to flank and create opportunities to eliminate or vanish from the enemy.

Simple and effective — if used to your advantage.

How much firepower do I need?

You carry your sidearm and a secondary weapon. All of your sidearm’s — except one — can be silenced, as this is the one weapon you spend 90% of the time. Your secondary weapon is in case you blow your cover and you need to handle the crowds. Pop this bad boy out, and start spraying. There are an array of gadgets which can help you out in various of ways. You have Flash bangs, Frag grenades and an loads of EMP devices.

Between portions in the level you get access to a weapon stash and this allows you to change your load out and upgrade weapons. All weapons have 3 upgrades which either increase damage, range, reflex mark or sound. The upgrades are set so that you can only use the 3 assigned to that weapon, meaning you could not put a silencer on your AK47 or a x4 scope on your Uzi sub machine-gun.

Pull your punches

The piece of the game that caught a lot of fans attention was the bathroom interrogation scene. At many times you get to interrogate people along the way. The interrogation allows you to interact with objects to make the scene more vivid. It looks nice and all, but the objects just don’t do much except add glitter to the scene.

Will the real Sam Fisher please stand up.

If you want to prove that you are the real Sam Fisher then you need to prove your stealthy skills. You need to be able to do the P.E.C challenges. In other words, you need to complete all the challenges that are in the game. They are not easy challenges, but they are interesting,

Bring it on we stand together

Single player is not only the thing that has a story line, as said above. The co-op has its own storyline and it is a prelude to the single player events. Co-op follows Archer from Third Echelon and Kestrel from their Russian counterpart. The missions are fully centered around the co-op experience. From distracting a guard so your partner can get to him to double teaming a door to get in.

While similar to single play, co-op just seems a lot more fun.

Black Ops or Deniable Ops

You say potato I say patahto. Jokes aside, this is the where all the excitement is at. The modes can be played alone or with a partner. There are 3 modes:

• Hunter – Eliminate all the enemies in a progressive sweep of the map.
• Last stand - Defend the EMP against waves of enemies.
• Face-Off-  Adversarial mode of spy versus spy, with hostile AI thrown into the mix.  (2 players only)

Hunter is awesome, in that you get to test your skills as a team in how stealthy you can be. If you set an alarm off you will get almost double the amount of enemies to deal with. Always carry a nice assault rifle as you are bound to set an alarm sometime along the mission.

Last Stand is simply a mode where you defend against wave after wave of enemies. Pretty standard stuff, a couple of frag grenades and some flash bangs will take you a long way.

Face-Off, no it is not the movie, but rather a mode where you play against another spy (human) with security guards patrolling and other security devices. This makes it way more complex as you need to dodge other players and security cameras to get to the other spy.

Final thoughts

If the game has left me with any feeling it is of one of satisfaction and the feeling that if anybody gives the game time be it a first timer or seasoned player they will both enjoy it. I thoroughly enjoyed the game and feel the game play was long enough, some people complain it is not long enough but when you think about it the Deniable Ops adds a whole lot more game play.

Score: 9.3/10

Yes, you read it correctly. Korea’s Games Rating Board could mean that Blizzard sells only millions of copies of the sci-fi real-time strategy game as that is the adults and people that are categorized as adults (kids that are just over 18).

Blizzard needs to act fast as they have 30 days to appeal that decision. They would ideally like sell to all the other little kiddies, as everyone is dying to start microing/macroing their armies.

We’re expecting Blizzard to appeal since Korea is the land of StarCraft. This is all coming in like a massive wave, first the no gaming after 12 rule now this. Who knows what to expect next?

Source: Korea

In South Korea Starcraft is a way of life and one of the most followed sports. Players are paid to play the game for example Jang “Moon” Jae Ho. Since the sport is played professionally and broadcast on national television and it is so widely followed there was bound to be something bad happening sometime. And it has come out that there has been a betting scandal going on. The competition has drawn a crowd of people who are illegally gambling on the sport. This may not be bad but it seems top level players are involved in this scam.

The police are investigating the accusations wherein top ranking players and famous players are accused of throwing matches and leaking team replays. Teams that are involved are trying to oust the players involved and more serious offenders to retire.

Follow it on Liquid

In WarCraft if you wish to succeed you need to be able to micro manage your units and their abilities. Jang Jae Ho took micro management, and the Warcraft 3 game in general, to a whole new level. If you don’t know him he is currently ranked at number 4 on Gosu Gamers and some would say he’s actually number 1 in the world. Jang Jae Ho dominates all competition under the nickname “Moon”, or “Spirit_Moon”.

For most people in Asia (Korea, China, etc) WarCraft and StarCraft is the equivalent of cricket and soccer. It is no surprise to see some of the best players, in these fields, come from these parts of the world. As they say Asian micro is endgame.

His first claim to fame came in 2003, just a year after the game was released wherein he beat Jung Hee “Sweet” Chun. This tournament happened to be a televised league — I mentioned how important this and StaCraft are to the Asians. By January 2004 many players were making the switch to The Frozen Throne, which became the new battleground. At this point in time Moon was regarded by many as one of the greatest players of the game. Not competing in tournaments outside of Korea meant his exposure to the world was very limited, but that was all soon to change.

2004 saw him building his momentum and force. However, 2005 is considered to be his golden years; wherein he dominated the leagues and won the MBCGame Prime League V. This was also the year wherein he was set to make his international appearance at the World Cyber Games in California.

Many considered Jang to be the one who would win the event, but surprisingly, he was stopped in the 16th round by another player from Korea, playing a race he never lost to before (televised matches). The match was against Tae Min Hwang, and his choice of race was Orc.

2006 was not so great, and it is widely rated as his slump. The world of e-Sports is where it all went down, as the first half of the year up to that point, was relatively easy and he trumped almost all his competition. Sadly, losing was bound to happen.

He faced up against Manuel “Grubby” Schenkhuizen. Many consider this greatest rivalry till today in Warcraft 3 history. Jang lost the match 1 – 3 to Grubby in the semi-finals, thereafter losing again in the loser finals to Xiaofeng “Sky” Li. Unfortunately, his game went down from here.

On a good note, his dry spell ended in October 2006 when he won the Global Gaming League’s Digital life in New York City. Jang once again faced off against Grubby again in the “SuperFight” series where he won this time round. Manuel Schenkhuizen commented afterwards: “I think the old Moon, the Moon from 2005 is back.”

Shortly after going back to think about his bad play, he came back as a superstar. He shot to fame, signing on with many big names and just generally dominating the scene. Obviously with a few losses here and there, but that is what made him even more famous.

One of the high points in his career would be the contract with WeMadeFox, for 3 years. It was worth total of a $500, 000, thus making the highest paid Warcraft 3 player ever. This was a bonus to previous winnings from other tournaments as well.

Having been called the best Night Elf player is no small feat, but an even bigger feat is the fact that in his competition history he has placed in the high-seat over 30 times. His play style has been best described as The Fifth Race. For the record, there are only 4 races in Warcraft 3  — Humans, Orcs, Elves and Undead.

Our big question is, will we see him move to StarCraft 2, a game which incorporates a lot of micro from WarCraft 3.

The BanMan, a South African, has setup a local South African website for Starcraft 2 players to use. The website is rumored to be possibly setting up a league for local Starcraft 2 players. More importantly this website allows players to upload replays giving other local players a chance to learn and see other talent. It also provides a platform to organize tournaments for local players who want to play against each other even though there will be leagues and similar things run by Blizzard.

So once you get an invite head on over to Starcraft2ZA and register – or you can just go there now, register and see what is going down there.

If you do not remember back in December we did a review on Zombie Driver and we loved it. Now take a second to ponder over this, a game that costs 10$ (about R74) gets DLC. How much would this DLC be sold at? Well EXOR studios have announced that they are releasing a DLC pack and to add to the joy they are having the game on the sale on Steam, Gamersgate and a few other gaming portals at half price including the DLC into the deal. So for a total of $5 (R37) you are going to get the game + DLC. This is a discount if I ever saw one and you cannot complain about bandwidth problems seeing as the Bandwidth wars are ongoing and Bandwidth is pretty cheap.

For those that don’t know Modern Warfare 2 is free this weekend to try out. Only tryout meaning after the weekend it will not work out. So who is doing this? Well it seems that Steam has decided to allow people to try out Modern Warfare 2 for free this weekend for those that have not tried it out online. So if anyone wants to have a LAN this would be the best weekend.

His name is Jacob Toft-Andersen and he rolls under the nickname of Maelk. If that name doesn’t strike any chords then you are really out of touch (to a degree). He is the DotA legend who has lead MYM, at the height of their success, to many victories.

Hailing from Denmark at the age of 23 he is one of the best DotA players on the planet. Born on the 18^th of June 1986 in the Norfolk Island; a place somewhere between Australia, New Zealand and New Caledonia. His first break came in 2005 when he was part of a team known as Boomtown Odense, after 3 more wins with this team in 2006 he joined up with Meet Your Maker. For the next couple of years he has been with Meet Your Maker till he formed Ravens.

We intend on becoming a little personal, so let’s look into his life: What does he enjoy? Well for starters he is a reader and his favourite book is “The rule of four” while probably eating a steak and drinking a Cherry coke. His favourite player (besides himself – duh) is TaZz.

Besides being known as one of the greatest strategist’s in DotA, he actually does other things. Surprisingly, he goes out and has a girlfriend. And yes, he goes out into the sun and on the beach. But, with a lot of care, because apparently his skin is highly sensitive to sunlight for prolonged amounts of time (lots of time indoors does that, or UV rays..).

Bizarre Creations is releasing Blur, which is not an entirely a new genre of racing but rather a revamp of a fore mentioned series. It has been done before in games like Super Mario Kart, but in the creation of this game the studio at first seemed unsure as to whether they wanted a realistic racer, like Project Gotham Racing, or if they wanted a casual fun racer, like Super Mario Kart, and this caused it to end up being neither. Recently they decided to go in a completely new direction. To quote what was said: “In the new Blur ‘power-ups win you the race’ – and thus they made their mind up it would seem.

Give me the power

If you think this is a realistic racing game, wherein you think you can win by simply driving like a professional, and you won’t need those pesky little powerups, you are sorely mistaken…and will get eaten alive.

The power-ups range from the Shunt all the way to the famous Nitro. They are obviously what make the game more fun but also more arcade-ish and thus appeals to the casual crowd who enjoy this sort of thing.

The power-ups are:

Shunt – This is your basic rocket kind of move, it shoots a bolt out which knocks the car ahead of you out of the way, allowing you to blow past your enemy.

Mines – This is obviously a mine, which helps you by allowing you to blow those pesky enemies that are on your tail, so you can keep the lead and come on first.

Nitro – The classic nitrous, giving you that energy boost so you can run like a panther and leave all those slow losers behind you.

There are more power-ups out there which you will be able to use, like a fake power-up, etc. If you ever find the opportunity to use then, go ahead otherwise you will be dead meat.

Cars and places to go

There are over 50 licensed cars and places to race in, ranging from L.A to Japan. Since all of the cars are being created to the best they can be, there are very realistic-looking cars featured in the game. Each location will have you dealing with different racing cultures, be it Rat, smooth, tuner or import.

Socialise, socialise and socialise

YouTube and Facebook should be familiar to you, but if they aren’t, well, then you are not up to date with the times it would seem (:D). Anyways, YouTube is a website used for sharing videos and Facebook is a social networking website. These concepts have been applied in this game and instead of those names (obviously) you have Racebook, which will allow you to know when and where races are happening, and a YouTube kind of a site wherein I presume you will receive video messages from friends and rivals.

Bring ‘em on

And last, but not least, what makes you really enjoy these games, the multi-player. First off we have been told of the basic 4 player couch co-op, but even though it is there you will not be able to use it online apparently, which is really sad. Nevertheless once you go online you will not go back. Points are awarded to you for performing stunts which you can use to unlock mods. You can have a max of 3 mods ranging from defensive, offensive or just really useful (like the car cloaking model).

On a final note this is something I’m really looking forward to trying out. For those who have access to an Xbox360 and an internet connection, go get yourself a beta code from Gamespot ASAP!

After hitting many stone walls on who to choose for this week’s pick I decided it would be a person who did something drastic. And well one person sprung to mind and his name is George Broussard; if you don’t know his name then shame on you, because he is the duke of dukes who let us down. He is famous for the 12+ years spent on the development of Duke Nukem Forever (which really felt like forever for it to release).

He is the brains, and owner, of the company 3D Realms. The story all began in the late 70’s when Broussard met with Scott Miller and together formed a company called Apogee, which would go onto become 3D Realms in the year 1994. Before this they used to be the geeks of high school (the Geeks will rise and inherit the earth) sitting around in the computer labs and programming clunky games. Then one day, the teenage phase passed and the need to make money set. This saw Miller and Broussard both forming their own companies.

Miller formed the shareware model; which is that you get a first portion of the game and then you have to pay/buy the rest of the game to continue playing. Where Miller was the brains and strategist behind the company we could say Broussard was the personality and creative impresario.

What really gave him and his partner the funding to develop games was their early success with Wolfenstein 3D, which was developed by id software (which was really small at that time), and sold over 200 000 copies and went from just another game attempt to a gaming legend. It did not end there as it went on to sell a further 3.5 million copies. We could say that this was the basis for Broussard’s creative spur wherein he decided to start designing his own game. With the idea in mind, he thought that while other games are gloomy and self centered, his would be funny and colourful with a mixture of Rambo badass-ery in it.

Another factor that really helped in the development of his game was the ability of the duo to find talent in individuals, and then cultivate it. They found such talent in a 17 year old that would develop the 3D engine for their game (did most of the hard work). It was the previously mentioned that the creative skills of Broussard that produced a fun experience wherein you got to enjoy racy humour, and this included strippers which you could tip and they would reciprocate (special favours). Lastly the portrayal of cops as pigs, a common reference in rebellious youths and just general people who are against the system.

The success of Duke Nukem 3D left Broussard feeling that it was necessary to announce the successor to the game, and thus came the brain-destroying announcement which would consume the next 12 years of his life. Duke Nukem Forever.

His constant need to have the best game, along with his financial situation, made him arrogant and not worried about the many delays he issued to his game. On the first point; he wanted his game to have all the latest graphics and features. The second point; due to the success of their previous game they had enough money not to worry about a publisher on their head constantly nagging. At times this may be good, but what it did was make Broussard not have a care in the world as to when his game came out.

Then came the fateful day of May 6 2009 after being denied funding he closed down development of the game. Moving on with his life but not without consequence, lawsuits were filed against him and pending those suits we will see where he goes.

As I sit down to write this piece I ponder over whether I will play Starcraft 2 online. We still have to wait for it to come out, but the thing is, when it does comes out will Battle.Net’s promise of matching you with people on a similar skill level be fulfilled? I for one do not anticipate an online experience where every game I end up playing is on my still level, as they might worlds ahead in skill from the first game. Obviously someone will say practice, replays and all that stuff, but when it comes to the crux of the matter, playing with people on similar skill level help you. First you need to get the grips, and only then should you want to play against stronger opponents.

Another factor is that Starcraft 2 might have no LAN play in any form. There is the possibility that they will include a form where you first log onto Battle.Net to authenticate, and only then you can play a LAN’ish style. This defeats the purpose for me partially, as I might be at a LAN without internet access. Well, in our case it seems we can now only host LAN’s at a persons houses where an internet connection (damn MW2 had to have no dedicated servers) is running in full force. It seems a lot of games are slowly following this growing trend.

Most recently Command and Conquer 4 said that you would have to be online at all time to be able to play the game, whether be it single player or multiplayer. This is going to be really irritating, but nevertheless I guess developers are trying to protect themselves from piracy to a degree.

I guess that almost all companies are going to be jumping onto this, and it feels slightly unfortunate for those without internet. Furthermore, one company that went a bit different was, Ubisoft and their DRM system which stated that you must be logged in permanently to their server to be able to play and save. ISP’s will obviously enjoy the fact that more bandwidth will be sold, but I wonder if they will be able to keep with the growing demand.

On the topic of bandwidth and gaming, I really take solace in the knowledge that some ISP’s are thinking of the consumers. Other vendors have hosted local gaming servers which are nice but still require you to buy local bandwidth whereas WebAfrica has launched bandwidth free gaming. Bandwidth free means that if you game, and update your games, on their servers you will not use any of your cap, as it falls into their FreeZone. They have gone a step further, and in conjunction with the Twilight team setup, a DotA bot that allows hosting (the bot is controlled by WA customers).

It is with fear and angst that I sit here writing this column looking to the future, an age that may see us all connected to the net at all times (might be a conspiracy to track us) but hopefully we will have affordable prices thus allowing us to game on and not just fade away.

Ok, I won’t lie to anyone I will be playing the Starcraft 2 beta as soon as I get a copy in my hands and once it is you better run (I hope so).

I thought in this week’s eGameFame we could pay tribute to someone whose hard work has made millions and millions of people’s lives easier. Who is this person and what did he do you may be thinking about right now? His name is Martin Cooper and he is the creator of the cell phone. Yes, you heard me right. He invented the device that makes our lives and our work so much easier.

He truly had a humble and hard beginning; he grew up in Chicago during the great depression a really sad time and hard time, even more so compounded by the fact that his parents were Ukrainian immigrants. Working hard he received his Electrical Engineering in 1950 from the Illinois Institute of Technology but this is where things got interesting.

Martin Cooper then went onto join the Reserve Officers Training Corps and served on a US Navy destroyer during the Korean War and later on a submarine stationed in Hawaii. Here we have a military man with a degree in electrical engineering. Luckily he did not die in the war, otherwise who knows when we would have actually got a cell phone concept.

After the war he went to work at Teletype a subsidiary of Western Electric. 1954 is where things really started to form the basis for his work, he left Teletype and went to Motorola. While there he would take night classes to earn his Masters in Electrical Engineering, where after he also taught classes at the same university.

What really made him a move and a shaker was when he corrected a problem in their design and was there after made the lead in charge of the car phone division by John F. Mitchell. He decided what it would be like to have a rather smaller more mobile version and thus in 90 days they created a prototype. They made history by making the first call on a handheld cell phone prototype on April 3, 1973, in front of reporters and passers-by on a New York City street. That first call, placed to Dr. Joel S. Engel who was the head of research at Bell Labs, began a fundamental technology and communications market shift toward making phone calls to a person instead of to a place. It was the product of his vision for personal wireless handheld telephone communications, distinct from mobile car phones. It is not true, although widely reported; watching Captain Kirk using his communicator on the television show Star Trek inspired him to develop the handheld mobile phone.

After that he formed a couple of companies which delved into technology related things which were focused on cell related things which are running till today.

Some trivia, he received an award in 1995, Cooper received the Wharton Infosys Business Transformation Award for his technological innovations in the communication field. Cooper is also a member of Mensa. Martin Cooper was mentioned in Red Herring’s Top ten Entrepreneurs of 2000. In 2009, he along with Raymond Tomlinson was awarded the Prince of Asturias award for scientific and technical research. Cooper was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in February of 2010.

So there you have it, the birth of the cell phone  — and I think we have to congratulate the creators of Star Trek as they may have indirectly influenced the creation of the cell phone.

source:Wikipedia

We have seen a rise in super hero games or rather good super hero games. With the release of Batman: Arkham Asylum and the success that it garnered, the question is what super hero are they going to do next? (That question is not for you). What our question for you is, what super hero would you like to see re-created in a good game (maybe on par with Batman Arkham Asylum)?

I would probably like to see a really good spider-man game or an awesome Captain America game. Or how about they re-enact the whole Marvel Civil War? Would be beyond awesome if done properly. Anyways let us know who you want to see in a decently created game.

Gamers love him, publishers hate him and games tremble in fear of him.

First off before we move onto the target, or rather, this enigmatic personality I just would like to say the South African Pillars series is not canceled, but from next week it will be running on Wednesdays and Thursday’s alternating.

With that out of the way we can move ahead.

Most people will know him for creating the Zero Punctuation series but he is a multi-faceted person. His skills do not only stop there they continue to grow and he has already made himself pretty well known in many circles. If you haven’t guessed who this guy is well his name is Ben Croshaw (WHAT YOU STILL DON”T KNOW?) aka “The Yahtzee”.

It all began one stormy night in the year of 1983 due to very strange occurrences a baby was born. Obviously the events surrounding the birth are still unknown but we do know this that 20 years later the people of England rejoiced as he left the country moving to Australia. All that nonsense aside except the bit about the places and the dates and time frame (which are true) we can now move to the really interesting bits. He really moved up from the not well known status to being one of the most talked about gaming personalities.

Anyways less useless nonsense (what isn’t in here) and moving onto more pertinent information (not sure what is in context of previous box). Ben is not just a gamer, he is a developer and not one that started really really late in the game but rather when he was young. While in High School he created his first game and since then has gone on to make many more games. His games are written and created by himself (all the bits except the music). Most of them are created using Visual Basic 3 and MS paint (the earlier ones) and later on moved to Photoshop and Adventure Game Studio. This is from where his early comedy can be seen developing also his first game “The Arthur Yahtzee Trilogy” but what we find more importantly in here is his alter ego/persona manifested which most people know as The Yahtzee. All in all he has created over 12 games (counting the trilogies as one) which is a feat in its own right. So from here we see is fame shooting up in the AGS community and in the indie game creation industry exponentially.

Now the bit most of you probably have been waiting for, yes you got it; it is Zero Punctuation time. ZP’s roots are humble ’ish, they began when Ben Croshaw reviewed a demo of The Darkness and Fable: Lost Chapters. But what really sparked this was as he was watching YouTube videos (obviously blasting away at people in his mind) he struck on the idea that what could I do without real video equipment and just stills and narration. And thus ZP was born with the first episodes airing on YouTube thereafter The Escapist contacted him and contracted him. A lot of the attraction around his review style is his critical view and the way he can rip a game to shreds. Few games rarely receive a good review from him but games that have include s Silent Hill 2, Left 4 Dead, EarthBound, the Thief series (“The Thief series are the only games that have done stealth well”), Saints Row 2, Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Painkiller, Infamous, Prototype, Call of Duty 4, Psychonauts, Assassin’s Creed 2, and The Orange Box (more importantly Portal being one of the games he enjoyed). Those are just a few of the games; those are 70%-85% of the list. Onwards and forwards, a recurring character besides the Yahtzee character is the imp. The imp became a recurring character after The Darkness demo review; they are portrayed as minions or sometimes as a sidekick. Michael Atkinson the attorney general of Australia has been bashed by almost every gaming journalist for his stance on gaming and Ben Croshaw is not exempt from that list. He cites Charlie Brooker as the main inspiration behind his style and if you ever watched him you would understand what he means, another reviewer that he watches and really seems to enjoy is Noah Antwiler who runs the Spoony Experiment (go ahead and watch something there, we can wait).

And his talents do not stop here they go even further. He has created a few comics but what is of more interest is his book that is set to be published by Dark Horse books in August this year. The book’s name is Mogworld and is about a boy who is wrenched back to life 60 years after his death by a necromancer.

The last piece I would like to touch on is his 2 latest ventures. The first being a gaming show that he and his mates (make him feel at home should he read this, oh the presenters names are The Yahtzee, YUG and Matt) are trying to get launched. The show is called Game Damage which is their take on all gaming related things and from what the trailer/pilot has shown it is set to rock. Let us just sit here and hope that this gets picked up.

The second thing is Mana Bar, no he I am not talking about games but rather the fact they are opening and designing a gaming bar. Do not be surprised if you see potions as drinks as it is targeted at a gaming audience but not the hardcore type. It will be a casual place for people to chill out and game with friends.

Just a random bit of trivia he won 2 awards for his journalism. The Screwattack Gaming’s 1337 award for Best Reviewer and the Sun Microsystems IT Journalism award for Best Gaming Journalist.

So this brings me to the end of this review, I still feel that I have not done complete justice to this personality. He is extremely talented and I wish him the best in all his endeavors. On a final note this is not the last you will see of him on eGamer as I sit here and hope to do an interview soon (hope it materializes soon).

Well, I am so proud to say that I had the opportunity to do a interview with Chris Delay of Introversion. He is the creative director at Introversion, and one of the main people behind the vision which games see. He is a really cool guy and although there were a few moments where “no comment” popped up, nevertheless, this was a really awesome experience. Getting to know him was really something great and I hope to interview them again sometime.

Diving Straight In There:

1)      The hype is, at the moment centered on Subversion with the release of recent screenshots everybody is expecting something legendary. For those out there that have no idea what it is could you elaborate a bit on this project?

Sure – Subversion is going to be set in a modern High Tech environment, with you taking “mission control” over a team of skilled operatives in a hostile High Security building. You will be using Sabotage, Social Engineering and Grifting, custom Electrical and Mechanical devices, Distractions, Hacking, Stealth, Acrobatics, Precision demolitions, Trickery, whatever gets the job done. In the best case scenarios your enemies will never know you were even there. When things go wrong, a well prepared escape plan and well timed precision violence will get you out of a tight spot – or maybe not.

2)     “Social Engineering” has been mentioned as a tool that can be used in your mission, how would this be implemented as it is effectively trying to mimic human stupidity which is very hard.

Yep – we’ll figure it out though.  We’re being very tight lipped about many things in Subversion at the moment.

3)      You are having cities procedurally generated would this be along similar lines like Uplink where you would be able to break in to computers or in this case building just for the challenge or as a distraction?

We’re not sure yet – probably a little bit of both. We’re big fans of subturfuge and mistrust and I’m sure those themes will make it into subversion.

4)      Would the city be aware? I.E would a building notice if the one next to it was robbed (if you go in loudly) and thus adapt making you adapt your strategies.

No comment

5)      How far will the A.I be in making you make decisions versus electronic security?

No comment

6)      What are the creative influences for you in this specific game?

We tend to take a lot of our inspiration from movies that really touched us when we were growing up.  I remember (in a very immature way) deciding that I had enough of movies, everything I’d seen over the last few months had been really bad and I went to the cinema for what the 15 year old me decided was the last ever time.  Then I watched Sneakers.  This showed me what I wanted to be when I grew up and restored my faith in Hollywood.  Sneakers is a big part, but so is Mission Impossible, Leverage, Oceans 11, The Sting.  Grifitng heist style movies have had a lot of attention in the movies, but now it’s time for us to make a game out of it.

7)      Any challenges that you are currently facing that you would like community feedback to help out on?

Lots, and we’ll reach out when we are ready!

8)      Anything else you care to share on the game?

Not at this time, your honour.

9)      For those that have no idea at all (the clueless) could you explain to them what Darwinia is and what your vision of it was?

The world of Darwinia is a virtual themepark, running entirely inside a computer network and populated by a sentient evolving life form called the Darwinians. Unfortunately Darwinia has been overrun by a computer virus which has multiplied out of control. Your task is to destroy the Viral Infection and save the Darwinians from extinction.

10)   We saw the release of Darwinia+ on XBLA in February how has the sales been going and in general how has the reception been of the game.

We’ve been really pleased with the critical response.  We’ve had lots of fantastic reviews and the press were really keen to receive us and run features and competitions regarding the game.  I can’t go into too much detail regarding the sales numbers, but we hit our minimium sales target so we are happy enough with that.

11)   Previously your team has not worked with a publisher thus had no other guidelines except those you set for your game, what were challenges you were faced with when working with Microsoft?

Microsoft were actually very good to work with – they did have problems with aspects of our designs, but they always used evidence to help us understand where the problems were and worked with us to produce designs that both parties were happy to run with.  The biggest issue was that we had no idea how much work we were going to need to put in to bring in the finished project.  Microsoft were much more concerned about the whole experience – things like the menus and intro-sequence were much more important to them then to us, and it took us a long time to get on the same page.  My advice to any developers working on XBLA for the first time would be to make sure that there are approved designs for everything agreed upon at the start!

12)   After this experience are you willing to work with other publishers or are you on the fence regarding publishers?

It depends on what you mean by publisher.  I see Microsoft, Sony and Valve as platform holders that deliver customers.  If you want those customers to play your games (which we do) then you have to work with them, but I don’t see a problem with that.  A traditional PC publisher that pays you money up front for a game – that’s a different entity and we’d be more wary about working with someone like that – but never say never and every deal is different.

13)   How does it feel to be finally done with Darwinia after almost 8 years?

Ha!  It actually feels great – we are done with the little stickmen now!

14)   Will we be seeing anything happening with Defcon anytime soon?

DEFCON PSN is coming up, but we’re not sure when yet.

15)   What challenges did you face in the designing of Defcon?

DEFCON was actually enjoyed the easiest development process.  Chris came up for the idea of DEFCON and wanted to make it in 24hours.  He missed that target and decided to see if he could finish it in 7 days – he pretty much got the core game in there, but it still took us another year to put in the networking code and other technical areas.

16)   How did Introversion come in to existence?

Well it all began back in 1997 when four of us met at Imperial College in London.  After four years of gruelling study we were about to be released back into the community, when we saw that there was a competition to win 10k for the best written business plan.  Chris had been working on Uplink (our first game) in his spare time and we decided that we would write a plan involving us burning our own CDs printing labels and taking credit card orders over the web.  We submitted the plan, got an “F-“, but did it anyway.  We sold more copies then we could have hoped, brokered a UK retail deal followed by an ill-fated US deal and we just went from strength to strength.  Darwinia, DEFCON, Multiwinia all followed and eventually we were able to sit back and relax, safe in the knowledge that we were gaming superstars (if only that last part was true ;)

17)   What were some of the greatest challenges you faced to date regarding your company and its growth and development?

I think that we have over-reached and expected too much of people.  To do a project well you need to focus your minds and get good solid designs up front.  We’ve made the mistake of thinking that things like ports were purely technical challenges that could be delegated to some senior programmers without much help.  We’re trying to work much more as a team now with all of us focussed on all our projects.

18)   The company has grown from strength to strength; do you ever fear that you could become a soulless corporation?

Nah – we’ve got too much personality for that!

19)   Where do you see Introversion going and what games do you want to create?

We don’t really have a particular style or genre of games that we want to work with.  We like to have ideas and then turn those ideas into reality.  We have some ideas for the next game after Subversion, but we wouldn’t ever try to create a whole portfolio of stuff – that’s what’s exciting about working here!

20)   If hypothetically you were given a Modern Warfare 2 sized budget what type of a game would you create?

I’m not sure – Subversion is our current project so we would possibly think about how we could improve it with a bigger budget.

21)   And the last question, will we ever see an Uplink 2?

To be honest, probably not, but we think Subversion will satisfy that particular desire anyway ;)

And thus concludes the end of this interview. Stay tuned for more which should be coming some time soon. You can probably wait with baited breath but you might either die or end up with really really sore lungs.

This is my first video attempt — be kind please. Anyways, moving on. This is the first video done for eGameFame and hopefully there will be more. Alas I used only 2 inferior-ish programs but have updated my arsenal and will be better next time (I hope).

The South African Pillars might go on for one more week then I will make an announcement whether I will be doing it or how I am going to be doing it. Just a reminder please use the fame@egamer.co.za to send in your ideas of people you want to see featured in eGameFame.

Now go watch the video.

I got the opportunity to speak to Garry Schyman, even though it was a brief few moments, we thought we would share it with you guys. A quick rundown for those that do not know who he is; he is the composer behind some of the greatest scores I have come across, but more recently he is the man behind the fantabulous Bioshock 2. Speaking to him with my limited knowledge on musical scores, we got the following results.

1) What got you into composing music and at what age did you start?

Though I had played piano from an early age I didn’t started composing until my first year of college.   I loved it and decided to major in music composition at USC.

2) What inspires you while doing your work? Seeing as music is an art form and a lot of artists derive their inspiration from different sources be it a object/person/song/feeling?

I draw my inspiration from the project I am working on.  I try to inhabit it and make it my own.  I look at it as I listen to the creative folks I work with and then I just start writing.  A lot of creativity comes from just diving in, deeply concentrating and working very hard on something.  It begins its own inspiration.

On a practical note there is nothing so inspiring as a deadline!

3) Did you have any formal schooling in this field or is just something that comes naturally to you?

As mentioned earlier I went to USC graduated with a degree in music composition.  After that I studied for three years with an amazing composer and teacher George Tremblay.    Mostly I studied a rather complex form of music called serial composition or 12-tone with him – but he really matured my style and approach to composing.

4) What has been the project you enjoyed the most to date? And why?

I have enjoyed many of the projects I have worked on.  If I had to pick one, in retrospect, I guess I would say BioShock – perhaps because of all of the awards and appreciation I got afterwards.  But even while composing the score I found that what I was doing was very interesting and rewarding.

5) What are the challenges you constantly face as a composer and more so in the games industry?

It’s always a challenge coming up with something very fresh and different.  I have been asked to write very different music.  Often tasked to write something unlike any score ever heard before and that’s a pretty daunting challenge.  Not that I don’t like being challenged but it is a lot of work and it’s very easy to fail if you’re not careful.

6) BioShock 2 and Dante’s Inferno are games which people are going to be playing for a long time. What are the challenges you faced in avoiding repetition and making the scores interesting over a long period?

I would say that the music needs to be interesting – always interesting and with as little repetition as possible.  Of course all music has to have some repetition or it will make no sense to the listener.  So it’s a balancing act.  I rely on my gut or intuition and if I had to say one thing that a good composer needs (once they have the proper training), it is a good intuition as to what works musically.  If you have a lot of technique and a strong intuition then you’re golden.

In this weeks eGameFame we are going to be touching on the life of a local Warcraft 3 legend. He was the best Warcraft 3 player in South Africa at the height of his success, and if you don’t know who he is, go and read your local Warcraft legends book.. Or just continue reading. The question is what spurred him to reach these heights? Sorry, deviated there rather the question is who is this legend? Well his name is Travis Weedon, but he also answers to Shase.

Travis began his humble beginnings being beaten by his elder brother (in gaming is something very hard to accept), which led to him practicing more and more. This intense rivalry is what made up a lot of his practice (like Michael Western says: the best karate you learn is from fighting with your family). Before his days as a Warcraft legend lays a portion of him hidden away from public. He was a CS groupie, having managed to shake that evilness, and where he entered the RTS world.

Shase started with the likes of Total Annihilation, Command & Conquer series and Red Alert to name a few. After competing not once or twice, but rather 3 times in overseas competitions he decided to give it a rest. The question that plagued me as to why would anyone give up something of this nature? And the answer I received is one that satisfied me to a degree, and gave me an understanding of what happened.

He talks about the fact that in only being able to compete locally, he never had a chance to play against international players and challenge their strategies which counts for plenty. At one point he came as close as 1 point to leaving the groups stage, but alas it was just not meant to be.

Thus began his decent from RTS legend, but not to leave him no other avenue to go, with the downturn of his RTS passion so grew his passion for FPS.

Taking up Quake he soon rose to the heights of legendary ph4ntom (not me ^_^), and this even took him overseas to Dreamhack. Again, a genre plagued by similar problems but not totally; seeing as other teams have made it against international opponents with lots of practice. Speaking on it, he mentions problems he faced leading up to the event. The game was released only 2 weeks or so prior to the event in S.A. Having to move also resulted in long stories, but to shorten it he was so distracted by the time he applied for Visa, it ended up coming on the day he was leaving. He still plays QL (Quake Live) and will be participating in local tournaments.

Dreamhack, like any competition, is ruthless and due to not having much time to practice, followed by little sleep after his super long flight, he was thrown into his first round against someone who already played a game. Note: His first opponent ended in second position.

On a more hilarious note, he tells the tale of a CS player who was with them. It begins as they arrive at the station where they were waiting at the stop. The CS guy decided it would be a great idea to buy a chocolate from the vending machine, just as he pulls away the train pulls in and with a 4 sec window all hop aboard. When the train leaves, the question is asked “Hey where’s CP?”. What we learn? Do not mess with European efficiency, as it will leave you running behind the train with the most horrified face ever.

Though we might see him rise as the prodigal RTS legend with a subtle comment he made. Travis said that, at Dreamhack, he managed to get time to play Starcraft 2 which he hopes will allow S.A players to compete internationally (the unified Battle.net system) which might just tempt him, if our bandwidth problem works out to rejoin the RTS generals.

Nowadays he sits around playing poker online and earning a living through it (been proved that RTS players are better at poker then others). He still jams other games, and just he’s generally looking for a path in life. It does not look like this is the last we have seen of, Travis so be on the lookout as he could pop up somewhere doing some random thing and you could miss out because you did not recognise him.

It’s pretty safe to say that Travis is a star gamer.. He’s done well in everything he’s played. Congrats, buddy!

This might or might not be the last of the South African pillars series, stay tuned.