Game developer Valve Software announced on Thursday that law enforcement authorities have arrested several suspects for allegedly stealing source code for the highly anticipated game "Half-Life 2."

Valve CEO Gabe Newell said in a statement that arrests were made in several countries. He credited customers with helping identify the suspects.

"Within a few days of the announcement of the break-in, the online gaming community had tracked down those involved," Newell said. "It was extraordinary to watch how quickly and how cleverly gamers were able to unravel what are traditionally unsolvable problems for law enforcement related to this kind of cybercrime."

Valve did not offer any information on the identity, nationality or legal status of the suspects and referred all questions to the FBI's regional Cyber Crime Task Force in Seattle. An FBI representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNET News.com. The agency told GameSpot, a News.com sister site, only that it had made some arrests in the case.

Newell confirmed in October that hackers had broken into Valve's network and downloaded the entire source code tree for "Half-Life 2," which was later redistributed via online forums.

The game is a sequel to the popular shooter "Half-Life" and was originally due out late last year. The theft posed numerous security risks for the online game and forced struggling publisher Vivendi Universal to delay the release, now set for an unspecified date this summer.

The timing of the arrest announcement lends credence to reports in German technology publication Heise Online and other venues that the "Half Life 2" theft may be tied to Agobot, the destructive Trojan horse. According to Heise, a German man recently arrested in connection with Agobot boasted in online forums of hacking into Valve.

In the early 1980s, when he was 25 and working on the arcade games Defender and Robotron 2084, Eugene Jarvis wasn't sure video games would last.

"There was a fear that everything would just kind of die," he said recently. Video games were new and seemingly impermanent, vulnerable to business convulsions that made him fear that he was involved in a faddish "digital Hula-Hoop" and that ever improving graphics would render early games obsolete. There were even wild theories that spaceborne alpha rays could cause arcade machines to decay.

Cosmic rays and other forces have not yet gotten the best of Jarvis' creations, which are among the most popular in the thriving market of retro games. As players age and '80s nostalgia reinvigorates interest in old games, an industry that has long focused on the present and future has become eager to herald its past.

"Retro's very popular now," said Perrin Kaplan, vice president for marketing and corporate affairs at Nintendo of America, which is introducing a classics game line. "We are part of the initiative that's happening across fashion, music and otherwise."

Last month, Saturn introduced a commercial featuring its Vue sport utility vehicle rolling through a town, absorbing dots to the officially licensed sounds of a grazing Pac-Man. Billboard magazine's Hot 100 singles chart includes "Game Over (Flip),'' a song by the rapper Lil' Flip that contains a beat built from the sounds of Pac-Man.

GameSpy is partway through a week-long feature celebrating the 10th anniversary of seminal FPS Doom: 'Ten years ago today, Jay Wilbur uploaded an executable to the overloaded University of Wisconsin FTP that pretty much changed first person shooter games forever. He was having trouble because it was packed with rabid DOOM fans, slavering over the demo's imminent release. Eventually Wilbur had to have them all kicked off, and only then did he manage to get the roughly two-megabyte file online.' GameSpy's Doom timeline is pretty interesting, and Doomworld has also started a special anniversary feature. Happy birthday, Doom... and thank you, id software.

Hello everyone. My name is Toby Ragaini (aka Auberon) and I am the MMP creative director at Monolith and the lead designer on The Matrix Online.

On behalf of everyone involved in this project, I would like to welcome you to The Matrix Online community website.

For me, working on The Matrix Online has been a dream come true. When the folks at Monolith asked me what property would be best suited to an MMP, my answer was obvious. The Matrix is a natural fit for an MMP, because the Matrix IS an MMP.

But at the time, this seemed like idle daydreaming. Clearly some big corporate publisher would get the rights to the license. There was just no way a small, independent developer like Monolith could secure the rights. Stuff like that just doesn’t happen, right?

Wrong. A few months later, I was anxiously sitting in a waiting room, ready to pitch the game proposal to Larry and Andy Wachowski, the writers and directors of the Matrix films.

And the biggest miracle of all? They liked it. In fact, the Brothers had already been envisioning something very similar to our proposal. You see, they’re gamers and they understood everything we were describing, and then some.

Most licensing deals rehash content that’s already been depicted in a movie or on TV. But the Brothers are beyond that. They view each Matrix product as part of the Matrix continuum and create stories that uniquely suit each medium.

In this case, they recognized that they would be turning over to their fans the very world that they created.

In the coming months, we’re going to be exploring a lot of ideas here. We’ll be asking questions, taking polls, and making announcements. But our single biggest priority here is listening to you.

Why? Because we recognize that you’re the experts here. You know what kind of game you want to play, and it is our responsibility to bring that game to life.

But remember, we can only show you the door. You're the one who has to walk through it.

According to Ananova.com, a Chinese gamer is believed to be suing Korean-based JC Entertainment, after losing in-game items in the PC MMO title RedMoon Online. As well as the return of his lost items, he is also seeking over $1200 for 'mental anguish'." The article explains: "Li, from Beijing, had built up his stock of virtual weaponry while playing RedMoon over the last two years... When he discovered all of his awarded equipment had disappeared, he contacted the provider for help, but the company refused to take any responsibility for the loss."

Just a quick note to let you know about a new online game top 200 list that has recently been established, gamers200. At present the site contains top lists for EverQuest, Diablo and Ultima Online, with the aim of expanding into a portal for many more MMPOG's in the not too distant future.

These lists can be found at http://www.gamers200.com.

Features:

• Automatic FREE banner display in listing for the number 1 site on every list.
• Votes reset on a monthly basis, subject to change at a later date. The rational behind such a long delay is that it will hopefully provide more accurate site stats in terms of hits in / out than would be possible with a daily or weekly reset. Newer sites will be at a slight disadvantage their first month, however users can be certain that the site statistics are true and accurate over a reasonable period of time.
• Maximum of one vote per user per day to prevent spam voting.
• Powerful site search capabilities and various sorting capabilities on the user end other than simply votes in. Eg unique hits, total hits etc.

As a kickstart we will be announcing some promotional offers on our main site. Feel free to check us out now and start listing!

Richard Garriott can't speak with you today, the publicist's e-mail read. The man who created Ultima Online, the first commercially successful online role-playing game, was on the way to the hospital -- having just bashed himself in the head with a two-by-four while working on his medieval castle.

The message didn't seem strange, because I'd just finished reading Dungeons and Dreamers: The Rise of Computer Game Culture From Geek to Chic, a forthcoming book on the evolution of gaming culture by CNET's John Borland and Wired News contributor Brad King. Due for release Aug. 19 from Osborne McGraw-Hill, it documents the manically creative lives of gamers by tracing the career of eccentric "Lord British," as Garriott is known to millions of fans, and panning out to explore the social anthropology of computer game culture.

The book profiles people who evolved gaming from paper to pixel, through 1970s Dungeons & Dragons roots, to MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games) like EverQuest, to bloodstained shooter mods like Counter-Strike. But along the way, it weaves those character sketches into a living record of community, exploring the industry's impact on the broader evolution of computer hardware, software and networking technologies.

Like his Lord British alter ego in the virtual worlds he creates, Garriott really does live in a castle. Built just outside Austin, Texas, the estate is periodically transformed into a site for infamously large, adventure-themed bashes.

When I reached Garriott a day later, with a fresh lump on his head, he was finishing props for an elaborate Fourth of July treasure quest. Guests would navigate through 70 acres of wooded land, escape through hidden elevator shafts, swing from high tree-trapezes and drop into dark, lost caves.

It's no accident that this mirrors what you'd find inside one of his labyrinthine online gamescapes: Dungeons and Dreamers introduces readers to an array of thrill-seeking players and developers who, like Garriott, "live the game" as obsessively offline as they do online.

Star Wars Galaxies has attracted more than 125,000 users in its first week, an all-time MMORPG sales record, and something LucasArts call "..the single most successful introduction of an MMO to date." This PC MMORPG is thus far proving extremely popular, despite teething troubles, and the press release also mentions the development team "..is working on a variety of new features, such as player-owned ground vehicles and player cities, along with substantial new content to be added on a regular basis throughout the coming months."

The popular PC MMORPG Ragnarok Online was hacked recently, causing private user information to leak to the public. The hack occurred on June 20 and hit the Gravity Corporation's international servers in California. Gravity reacted by rolling back the game's data a day, as a number of users had created items with game-master privileges. While Gravity did not reveal the reason behind the rollback, users were compensated with extra experience points and items.

However, the hacker attack became a more serious problem on June 21, as a full list of user IDs and passwords was leaked to the general public. The list, which apparently had no encryption to begin with, included the login data of all users beginning with the beta test preregistration in April, allowing anybody to gain access to any user account. Numerous players reported being logged in by other users, losing items and experience points, and other problems. While Gravity promptly sent e-mails to users for account certifications, the damage had already been done, and users who could not check their mail continued to be victimized. The servers are currently closed, and no date has been set for the resumption of services.

Aside from the users' login information, it is unknown if any other private information, such as credit card numbers, was leaked in the attack. Gravity has not yet officially commented on the attack.

Vice City antihero Tommy Vercetti snarls with the voice of Ray Liotta, but that’s only half of what brings the character to life. Meet the body: Jonathan Sale is a 29-year-old New York-based actor; you’ve seen him on everything from Law and Order and Ed to the soaps Guiding Light and As the World Turns. He’s also acted in independent films, off-Broadway shows and TV commercials. Jonathan graciously answered some of our e-mail questions about what it’s like to be Tommy Vercetti’s body.

You did motion-captures for the main character, Tommy Vercetti. Did you provide motion for any others?

Mo-capping Tommy was a full time job. The one scene that I wasn't in, they made me a waiter.

How'd you get the job?

The audition came to me through my fantastic commercial agent Doug Kesten at Paradigm. I had to act out a scene, do some improv and some pantomime.

How were the scenes acted out? Was it just you, or you and other actors? Did you act out the script, to get the various motions just right?

It was much like shooting a movie. We had the entire script. We rehearsed for two weeks and shot for one week. We shot all of the cutscenes ... with up to four actors at a time. The computer could not process more than four motion capture actors at a time. The days were long; lots of scenes to shoot. All of the dialog was memorized.

Funny thing is, with all of the money they spend and make on (Vice City), the set pieces we used were very basic. The getaway car that the lawyer uses to help Tommy escape at the beginning after the coke deal goes bad was just four metal folding chairs, a Fisher-Price steering wheel (literally) and a wrestling mat covering the 'back seat' so that I didn't hurt myself jumping in.

Tony Soprano can keep Jersey (who wants it, anyways?) A new family is movin' in on unclaimed turf -- online.

An underground group known as the Sims Shadow Government has taken over the fantasy world that is ``The Sims Online,'' meting out mob justice.

It's a violent twist for ``The Sims,'' the dollhouse-inspired computer game that has long been portrayed as the antithesis to guns-'n-gore bestsellers like ``Grand Theft Auto.'' The emergence of a seedy underbelly in the online game may reveal more about the dark fantasies of middle-aged suburbanites than anyone suspected.

Turns out, everyone wants to be Tony Soprano or Don Vito Corleone.

To hear the ersatz mob boss, Piers Mathieson, tell it, it all began innocently enough, with the desire to impose order on the chaos that is ``The Sims Online.''

The game's designer, Will Wright, deliberately created a blank stage on which players could act out their fantasies.

To Mathieson, the lack of a government to lay down laws in virtual online communities like Alphaville -- let alone cops to enforce the rules -- resulted in anarchy. ``Grievers'' arose -- players who delight in creating misery for other players -- stealing money, trashing houses or even appropriating another's online identity.

Mathieson, 34, who lives in Las Vegas and promotes bands, said players turned into racketeers.

``They show up at your house and they request protection money. `You have to pay me 100,000 simolians if you don't want your house torn down.' It's technically harassment.''

For years Slashdot has had an abundance of game related content. Unfortunately, we've also had limited space to post those stories. We strive to cover a wide range of tech news, and this often means passing on a good game story because something else is more important. But today I get to announce the creation of games.slashdot.org, where we'll finally have a home for all the gaming related content that might otherwise have been rejected. Keep reading to learn more.

As you have probably already read on your games related site, we're working on a GTA3 Multiplayer Mod, called GTA3: Multi Theft Auto. We're currently working and also testing very hard and here's a list of features of the first (early in development) release of GTA3:MTA, of course not pretty much... but this is just to show you that it's working.

• Currently there are only 2 players supported yet
• Players on foot can't be seen yet, so you can only see each other while driving in a car :)
• For now, GTA3:MTA uses a so called 'previous-car method', which means that your previous car belongs to the other player.
• Car-models are not working yet, so you don't see the car where the other player is driving in (you're seeing just your 'previous' car driving), but the car is tuned and drives like the car where the other player is driving in (mass, max. speed, etc.)
• There is some sort of (very simple) synchronisation implemented in the first release
• GTA3:MTA runs on the background, so you have to connect to your server with GTA3:MTA, run GTA3 and start playing! It's not implemented in GTA3 yet, we're working on that :)
• In the next release: code is rewrited, that means that the program is more stable and running faster, new layout, using pedestrian-method instead of previous-car method (so it might be possible to see each other then). Keep checking this site for the newest releases!

The hardest part to comprehend," RCMP Corporal Pierre LeMaitre said, "is that the victim was just a young man out with friends, enjoying himself early in the evening -- at 7:30 p.m. -- and he was a victim of this kind of violence."

Mr. Kwee's death has drawn attention to the darker side of Internet cafés and violent computer games. "It seems that something from the imagination has been taken to the next level and made into reality," Cpl. LeMaitre said. The young men who were defeated by Mr. Kwee may have been so wound up that they crossed the threshold between imagination and reality, he said.

The ProGamer Internet Cafe, in a small shopping mall in the suburban Vancouver community of Coquitlam, has black walls, dim lighting and row upon row of 19-inch computer screens. For $2 to $3 an hour, players match their wits against others in the café or on the Internet.

Counter-Strike is by far the most-popular game at the café, ProGamer employee Jason Ngai said in an interview.

Is there such a thing as too much fun on the Internet?

Today's debut of "The Sims Online" will help the $12-billion game industry answer that question. Based on the hit series from Electronic Arts Inc., it promises to be one of the most popular online multiplayer games in the relatively short history of the genre.

Yet analysts are fretting that the red-hot market for online games is quickly becoming saturated. A slew of upcoming titles is threatening to overwhelm a relatively small pool of game junkies who may not have enough hours in the day to play them.

"There are way more products being launched than the market can support," said David Cole, president of San Diego-based DFC Intelligence, a market research firm specializing in games. "They're all going to just sabotage each other's market share."

The patch presented to the public through ESO by Ensemble Studios needs to be recalled. Plain and simple - it sucks.

The largest problem being that it just crashes to the desktop without any warning. It is NOT our video cards, our chipsets, or programs that we are running... It's AOM. We do not need to call Microsoft, or our hardware guy, or anyone else EXCEPT Ensemble Studios. The boards are crawling with people who are pulling out their hair trying to figure out why their game keeps crashing. And while the patch makes AOM totally unplayable for the majority, AOM Heaven and Ensemble Studios continue to act as if nothing is wrong.

Why is it that Age of Mythology Heaven has become so commercialized that it won't even report to the users - on it's main page - that problems do exist with the patch? For the last four days since the patch the boards have been screaming about the TWO major problems: Crash to desktop and ESO Uploading Stats Error 2,4.

Is AOM Heaven so in bed with both Microsoft and Ensemble that they dare not mention that there is an actual problem with the patch and nobody is admitting it?

What happend to Heaven Games??? They used to be a site where you could get indepth information on any aspect of Age of Empires. Bugs in patch? Front page news... Problems with ESO? Again - FRONT PAGE NEWS.

All that AOM Heaven is now is a gigantic advertisement for both Microsoft and Ensemble Studios - just to sell the product. Pretty statisticals... Pretty pages... "Oh and guess who reviewed AOM?!!"

How about giving us some REAL NEWS.

And the product AOM - while fantastic - has major issues that are not being addressed. Ensemble Studios and AOM Heaven would do well to address the issue on the front page. Stop the myriad of users who are perplexed by the latest patch and what is wrong with their game. Tune into the customers who have purchased your product - some for $50 dollars or MORE - before these customers starting buying elsewhere.

[QUOTE]The reason 'AoM Heaven' 'acts as if nothing's wrong' is because for the most part, nothing is. A minority of people are having technical problems. Just because you are doesn't mean every single person who bought the game can't play it, because I can iterate with strong authority that there are hundreds of people playing it online at this moment and enjoying it. So this is a technical help forum. So what? Every post is going to be about problems, that stands to reason.[/QUOTE]

Hello? Scan this board, scan the general forums, scan the forums of other sites who are also having problems. It is not the "minority" it is the MAJORITY. One guy here even formatted his system (after backing up onto multiple CD's) just to try to get it to work. Just because there are 1000 people playing on ESO right now does not mean that the "Majority" is not having critical issues.

[QUOTE]AoM Heaven doesn't exist as an advertisement for Ensemble. We exist as a source of information for people interested in the game, and a community where people can meet and discuss it. And plastering the front page news with 'Triox can't run the game even though he patched it!!!!!' really doesn't constitute a good source of information about happenings related to AoM.[/QUOTE]

The fact that AOM or ES will not even admit there is a problem angers me. And to write an assanine post such as yours shows your lack of understanding of the issue at hand. I did not ask that you write that "TRIOX CAN'T RUN HIS GAME", I asked that you post that a large percentage of users CAN'T RUN THE GAME. Is that so hard to understand? Is it so hard to comprehend that there is a major flaw in the program causing a vast number of users to be unable to play at all? A single post stating "YES, THERE IS A PROBLEM" would stop those poor SOB's that back their system up onto 28 CD's, format and re-install their systems just to get it to work. Why don't you post their name with a header "can't run the game even though he patched it!!!!!"

So turn the message around and point the finger at me, just as many other mornoic users of this forum do. Do I have to personally go back through your own forums and point out every message and every user that is having the same problem?

It just goes to show how clueless you are and how clueless ES is. Blame the user, don't blame the product - especially when AOM is sleeping with ES - how dare you even mention a problem with the product... SELL! SELL! SELL!

I have installed on my system Red Faction, Dune, Half Life, Alice, Soldier Of Fortune II, GTA 2, GTA 3, HL-Counter Strike, No One Lives Forever, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Clive Barker's Undying, Age of Kings, Age of Conquerers, Age of Empires, Jedi Knight II and probably three or four others that I can't remember off-hand. The common thing between them all is that THEY ALL WORK. None of them crash to desktop every time you try to play. ONLY AOM.

But because AOM Heaven and ES consider me a "minority", my concerns are summed up to an irate customer who obviously doesn't know his own hardware or how to post an effective message to get help. Nice to be treated like a minority.

[QUOTE]If you want tech help, then post about your problem. Explain what you've tried. Detail your technical specifications. Say what's happening. Don't just whinge about how you're not happy with the game, or you waste the time of everyone who reads your thread.[QUOTE]

And then of course you lock the thread - because you can. And you call this place tech help? After countless messages stating that the product fails to work - countless messages by other users - finally I write a frustrated message - and you call it whining? Why you pompous...

I cannot fathom why I am wasting my time with a product that does not work as advertised. Wait... Yes I can... Because I've been purchasing Ensemble products from day one and I USED TO BE a valued customer.

I am returning the product to the place of purchase this Saturday morning. I will buy it again in six to eight months when and IF they have solved the problem - and the price comes down from $50.00 US. And I will be quite weary of Ensemble Studios products in the future.

Triox - Who will now most likely be banned.

This entire message will be reposted on http://www.smithysanvil.com where it cannot be banned or locked.

The average age of a gamer is now 28. The video gaming industry (both PC and console-related - hardware and software), at well over US$15 billion, is larger than the movie box office business. Super Mario, the Wall Street Journal reports, has sold more software on the basis of his mustachioed mug than Mel Gibson or Schwarzenneger have sold tickets at the box office. This being said, revenues related to online gaming have been, to date, negligible, but this may be small change if online gaming really takes off.

We have always had online gaming, but it has been limited to strategy games that can be played on dial-up connections, such as chess. This is changing. The world's largest online gaming company, South Korea's NCSoft, generated a net profit margin of 41% in the first half of calendar 2002. Its top game, Lineage, has over 4,000,000 subscribers, and one man recently passed away after playing the game continuously for 86 hours without food or water. The television show "48 Hours" recently profiled a number of online addicts to Sony's online adventure game, EverQuest, which boasts 450,000 subscribers who pay US$13 per month for the privilege of playing the game. EverQuest players control characters that acquire possessions and skills that can be bartered in the game or 'sold for real money' on sites such as eBay. Amazingly, EverQuest, the game, has established a real economy outside the virtual world.

"Unfortunately, not every situation so clearly casts Blizzard as the good guy. Recently, Blizzard found itself embroiled in controversy over the creation of a program innocuously titled “bnetd.” The bnetd program was created by a group of individuals who wanted to set up their own servers to play multiplayer Blizzard games without using Blizzard’s proprietary battle.net server system. One side effect of the program (or main goal, depending on whom you ask) was that it eliminated the need to enter the CD-key that Blizzard uses as a security device against pirated versions of its games."

"Of all the games in the world, the group loosely classified as "massively multiplayer" or "persistent world" games have the most unexplored potential. They're among the oldest of multiplayer games; the very first networked computer users played adventure games similar to EverQuest, but comprised entirely of text. And with the advent of graphical interfaces, these massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs for short) may someday change the way we live and communicate online!"

"The suit alleges that Mythic representatives spurred eBay to shut down several auctions of DAOC accounts being conducted by CamelotExchange's founders, saying the auctions infringed on Mythic's copyrights. The plaintiffs charge those actions constitute an unfair business practice and interfere with "prospective economic advantage" to the plaintiffs. BlackSnow sells game currency and characters at a fixed price on its CamelotExchange site and also sells in-game items through eBay. "

"Lawyer Steven Krongold of Arter & Hadden filed the suit on behalf of BlackSnow. He said the action is the first of its kind and could have far-reaching implications in the game industry, where some companies permit out-of-game sales of characters but others block them on grounds of copyright infringement. "

"It's basically seeking a judicial declaration as far as the rights of online gamers to trade outside the game," Krongold said. "

"Mr. Carmack demonstrated the new Doom at the recent QuakeCon event in Mesquite, a Dallas suburb best known for its rodeo. He told a faithful crowd that the new Doom will have images comprised of 250,000 polygons, compared with only 10,000 or so in Quake III. That's not far away from the 1.5 million- polygon characters in the animated film Shrek, which set a new standard for realism for computer-animated cartoon characters.

Much to the audience's delight, the new game looks like a horror movie. Demons jump through glass windows, baring their hideous fangs. Zombies leap from shadows. It looks like the type of game that is so thrilling to play that gamers will do so over and over again, even though it lacks a narrative plot. "

"Approximately 5,000 beta testers will be chosen randomly from the pool of qualified applicants. Applicants must be U.S. or Canadian residents and must be 13 years of age or older. Testers that are chosen to participate in the beta test will be notified by e-mail."

"What is a role-playing game? Very likely the first thing that comes to mind is Dungeons & Dragons, a game that has been practically synonymous with role-playing since it launched the hobby nearly thirty years ago. Since then, the game has been reworked into several different products and gone through numerous revisions. It has been translated into more than a dozen languages and sold in 50 countries. It has inspired books—including several New York Times bestsellers—10 different comic book collections, two magazines, a television series, a feature film, toys, action figures, and countless computer games."

• New weapons, including a chain saw and a sniper rifle. The chainsaw is useful for creatures that do not shoot at you, but useless against others. However, combined with new powerups like "Sam Speed" and "Super Sam Damage" it rocks. The sniper rilfe is good for picking off flying Harpies as it kills them in one shot. One may also find it useful for those out of the way creatures stuck up on high pillars. But for the rest of the monsters, it is totally useless.
• New monsters, including some that look like they are straight out of Doom 2. There is a fat guy with huge tusks sticking out of his mouth, he has plasma cannons. There is a chainsaw carrying redneck with a pumpkin for a head (as explained by the docs that Mental went into earth's past and pulled the creature out of Earth's early movies).
• New graphics for explosions - such as the suicide bombers explode with flying sparks and what not.
• New level effects - like gravity sloping floors where the level twists back on it'self, or the floor rolls up the wall, and then back down again. This was only seen once in Episode 1 in the secret room with a huge blob floating in the middle of it.
• Cool Mayan theme this time rather than Egypt. (But I thought the whole story line was wrapped around the Egypt thing...)
• Menu system and engine appears to be exactly the same as Serious Sam 1. All configs are exactly the same making it an easy transition and easy to set up (for those who have played Serious Sam 1 that is...)

• The new level effects are cool, such as the swamp lands with lush foilage, bushes, trees and whatnot everywhere. But I couldn't help feeling like I was in Serious Sam 1, with new levels and a few new monsters. It has a few new monsters and a few new weapons, new graphics and lighting, and tweaked levels... But it feels like Serious Sam 1 with all new levels.

"In undertaking development of Jedi Knight II, Raven themselves will be constantly overseen by the watchfully creative eyes of Lucas Arts; ensuring that the game matches up to their high standards for this crucial Star Wars outing. The technology behind the game will be supplied from the great gaming-engine-factory of id Software and their uber-techno geek John Carmack, the impressive Quake 3: Arena engine being employed to bring George Lucas’ world to life. If the stunning Return to Castle Wolfenstein is anything to go by, then Raven have made a fine choice in id Software’s codings; as that game really shows the power and versatility of the technology. As do the initial screenshots from the game, I hasten to add. Raven have added to the technology themselves too, doubling the polygon count of characters and enhancing the reflective surface capabilities available."

"This is the first of a multi-part series on getting a job in the game development industry. This installment will cover the basic in-roads to what can seem like an impossible field to penetrate, including commentary from various developers about how they got their starts. Future articles will break down the various types of positions available at game companies today and the best ways to go about developing the skills you will need to acquire those positions. Finally, it'll look at education, resume writing, and job placement, and all articles will include tips from developers on how to break into the industry."

"[sic]because of the functional anonymity that is part of today’s online universe, we no longer have to worry about getting a black eye for the random insult, because it’s rather tough to reach through a phone line and smack someone. And boy-o-boy, do people, especially young gamers, take advantage of that; they’ll make insults to people online that would never be said to a person’s face, because it would start a fight instantly. All the bigotry and racial slurs kids learn at home or from friends, all the rude behavior and lack of consideration for the feelings of others, all the gay-bashing and play-acting out violent crimes on people’s anatomy, it comes in buckets. If you enter into a game chat room, your chances of seeing an exchange of these insults is pretty high. It isn’t exclusively the province of kids; there are plenty adults taking advantage of the new situation to do all the acting-out they couldn’t do as a kid. But it is far more prevalent where kids hang out online."