Following the anonymous release of a letter complaining about unfair labor practices at Electronic Arts, it seems the law firm Schubert & Reed LLP in San Fransisco is beginning proceedings for a class action suit, according to GameSpot, to represent employees of EA who it is claimed have been incorrectly classified as exempt from overtime payment.
Taylor Whitfield of the Paly Voice, the online paper of Palo Alto High School in Palo Alto, California, has a rather interesting figure quoted in their article on Halo 2 midnight madness:
"This is definitely the biggest turn out we’ve ever had," said Tyler Durden, manager of Game Stop."
Sounds like a lot of people have been breaking the first two rules of Halo Club. Thanks for the heads-up to vector40.
The NetNinja Bee Log notes today that at 17:00 EST on Sunday, November 7 there will be an IRC chat with the Puppet Masters of the I Love Bees alternative reality game on the server irc.chat-solutions.org in the #apocalypso channel. The chat will be logged and moderated. For those without IRC clients, Unfiction also has a Java-based web client.
Today's Penny Arcade looks over the smoldering ruins of IGN's review of Killzone, a PS2 shooter once billed as a "Halo killer". While hostile to what they called the "repetetive" nature of Halo 1's campaign, Gabe and Tycho have warmed to Halo 1's multiplayer and to the promise of Halo 2. They had this to say about the hype around Killzone now that the game is out:
Looks like ILB is well and truly coming to a close; the NetNinja Bee Wiki is reporting that the ILB site is now updated with new text, where Melissa reveals that both the Queen and the Sleeping Princess were aspects of her own personality, brought back into union and sharp focus through the actions of the players.
The I Love Bees Alternative Reality Game, scheduled to end on Halo 2's release day, may be getting closer to finishing up. Louis Wu at HBO writes that the 404 page at ILB.com is now instructing players to gather in certain cities on November 4 for a "training exercise", which some fans speculate may involve... playing Halo 2.
Slashdot recently interviewed author Neal Stephenson, and his response to a question about the merging of novels with games turned up information on ILB:
It has already happened in the form of the I Love Bees alternate reality game, which, as many of you must know, is a promotional campaign for Halo 2. I know the people who did it, but I have lost track of what I promised not to reveal publicly, and so will shut up for now.
Slashdot today discusses a Washington Post article on teens coping with video game addiction.
Lo-Down posted in our forum that he's got some Gmail Invites he's willing to spread around. Come to think of it, so do I. So, if you're interested, post in the Gmail Invite Thread.
The San Diego Union-Tribune is carrying a story quoting notable directors Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis as saying they expect that like music videos and television before, video games will have an increasing influence on Hollywood films. They key, as Jason Jones has said himself, is that playing a game is about telling a story:
Eric Trautmann of Halo Bible fame got married. Congratulations from Rampancy!
IGN has an interview with Greg Thomas of Visual Concepts; they develop the ESPN branded sports games for Sega. In the interview, he mentions that MS is introducing LSP (Live Server Protocol) next year that will allow developers to host their own servers with Xbox Live, something that stopped Electronic Arts from bringing their industry-leading sports games to the XBL service when it launched.
I know that the money to run this site has to come from somewhere and I do not have any problem with the adds along the side of the page, but how exactly is "Defect and Microstructure Analysis by Diffraction (International Union of Crystallography Monographs on Crystallography, 10)" related to Halo? I have seen other books such as one about moding an xbox and that makes perfect sense, but who gets to decide what products are advertized? To whoever it is, "Defect and Microstructure Analysis..."
Mat "shunji" Noguchi's latest blog entry is all about contradicting John Carmack's statement at GDC that the problem of game audio will be "solved" within a couple of years. A bit technical, but definitely worth it.