Archive for March, 2004

AVG gets New CIA Chief

The Alphaville Government has replaced its CIA Chief Fans, who left the game recently following altercations with noted scammer and opponent of the Alphaville Government, Mr. President Bradley. In his press release, the new Director, named Alex Sanchez, promises to be a much tougher customer. He has already thrown down the gauntlet to the “Enemies [...]

Full Story

Mob Hits get Serious: Former Soprano Member gets the “Moe Green Special”

by The Teflon Don Many have heard of the term Moe Green Special before. On the Sopranos TV show perhaps? Maybe on The Godfather where the Moe Green Special originated? For some of you, you have heard it somewhere else. Whispers of a tactic in the game that can take everything you own and love [...]

Full Story

New York Times Picks up Alphaville Elections

The New York Times article on the Alphaville Elections is now up athttp://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/01/technology/circuits/01sims.html?ex=1081400400&en=e5984c6cc0bf6db8&ei=5062. There is a cute picture of Ashley Richardson on the online version. I noticed that the article used the term ‘gievers’ instead of ‘griefers’. Perhaps the most significant revelation in the article is that they now quote EA as saying that TSO [...]

Full Story

On Running Multiple Accounts on One Computer

by The Phantom It happened again just the other day. There was an innocent question on Sims Stratics, asked by a customer who wanted to know why mere discussion of running multiple accounts on one computer were banned from Stratics, even though the actual practice is not obviously against the rules (or he couldn’t see [...]

Full Story

Maxis Plans Customer Humiliation Joke for April Fools

I decided to move this up from an earlier thread, because it deserves a topic of its own. Tomorrow, as an “April Fools joke”, all avatars in TSO will have monkey faces, and when you try to type out messages your sim will blurt out (in chat) some stuff about bananas and parts of a [...]

Full Story

More Promises Promises Promises Promises Promises….

Following are some more promises and declarations of the urgency of introducing custom content, and in general “putting as much creativity as possible in the player’s hands.” Indeed, there were even plans to allow custom content to be pulled into the game through the workbench (e.g. someone could skill at your place and get some [...]

Full Story

Evolve: The Game Developer’s Conference

Hey, thanks to our reporter Atlantis, for posting this report from the Gave Dev Conference in San Jose. There are also blog entries listed on Terra Nova, Including Mia Consalvo (memorycard.blogs.com), Ian Bogost (www.watercoolergames.org), Gonzalo Frasca (www.ludology.org), David Thomas (www.buzzcut.com); Jurie Horneman (www.intelligent-artifice.com/2004/03/live_from_gdc_2.html) and GameDevNet (www.gamedev.net/columns/events/gdc2004). –Uri

Full Story

A Free Gamer’s Manifesto

by Elias Artista A specter is haunting the world of online roleplay gaming. That specter is the free gamer – she is the rogue gamer that rejects the narrow thoughtless rules of play imposed upon her by the Corporate Monoliths that claim to own the games. She collaborates with her friends to create her own [...]

Full Story

Alphaville is *not* big in Japan

Big in Japan-alright, pay! Then I’ll sleep by your side Things are easy when you’re big in Japan–Alphaville, “Big in Japan” Well, for weeks we’ve been told that the Japanese players would be here soon. And a week or so ago the game opened to the Japanese market with its Japanese language chat interface. The [...]

Full Story

EA’s Jeff Brown Speaks Out!: Sex in TSO is impossible!

Jeff Brown, infamous smack talker, cheetah deleter, midlife crisis poster boy, and EA’s Director of Corporate Communications has circulated a press release to a number of media outlets (including CNN and Tech TV). In it he argues that cybersex in TSO is impossible and that simoleans have no real world financial value (hence cyber-prostitution is [...]

Full Story