Welcome to Beyond Co-Op, a weekly piece that talks about industry stories that may or may not be related to co-op gaming.
The stories for this week:
- Blizzard Institutes RealID on Their Forums, Reverses After Outcry
- Dead Space 2 Prequel Coming to XBLA/PSN
- Civilization V Special Edition Detailed, Layoffs at Firaxis
- Project Mercury Unveiled at Comic-Con
- Dragon Quest IX and NCAA Football 11 This Week
Blizzard Institutes RealID on Their Forums, Reverses After Outcry
Earlier this week Blizzard made the announcement that in order to post on their official forums or use cross-chat discussion between Blizzard games on Battle.net 2 that you would have to use your real name and not a nickname. Of course the internet exploded over talk of privacy concerns, especially for female players out there who may be stalked or other nefarious things happening all around with access to someone’s real name.
During the day on Friday Blizzard decided to step back from instituting that, although if you want to use cross-chat between games you’ll have to use your full name. Who knows if they might back off of that as well because I’m sure people still have a problem with it.
I was a bit shocked about how many people went up in arms about this. I’ve been using my real name for years now when tied to posts (like this one) both here and at Colony of Gamers. You can also Google my name or nickname and probably find out my real-life job and if you dug deeper you could probably find out where I live as well. So far in those years I haven’t had any crazy people hunt me down or anything *shrug*
Source: me
Dead Space 2 Prequel Coming to XBLA/PSN
EA and Visceral Games announced that a prequel called Dead Space Ignition would be coming this fall to XBLA and PSN. It will be based around the initial Necromorph invasion and have four possible endings that will flow into Dead Space 2 when it is released early next year. Sounds interesting.
Source: Colony of Gamers
Civilization V Special Edition Detailed, Layoffs at Firaxis
The Special Edition of Civilization V has been detailed and will be out for $99.99 when the game releases on September 21. Also announced this week was news that about 20 people being laid off at the developer Firaxis. Here are the details of what is in the Special Edition: five metal figurines based on in-game units, a two-disc CD soundtrack, the "Behind the Scenes at Firaxis on Civilization V" DVD and a 176-page hardcover art book Picture is below (thanks to Joystiq):
Source: Joystiq
Project Mercury Unveiled at Comic-Con
Studio 38, a developer created by former baseball pitcher Curt Schilling, will be showing off their first game (currently codenamed Project Mercury) at the San Diego Comic-Con later this month. Although Studio 38’s MMO game will not be shown, subsidiary Big Huge Games’ game will be shown. Comic artist Todd MacFarlane, creator of worlds R.A. Salvatore and game designer Ken Rolston along with Schilling will be showing the game off. This game is being produced by EA Partners as well.
Source: Joystiq
Dragon Quest IX and NCAA Football 11 This Week
Dragon Quest IX on the DS and NCAA Football 11 on multiple systems will be out this week. Nothing too exciting unless you like intense JRPGs or college football games. I love both and hopefully will be checking them both out.
Source: me