Activision and Blizzard Entertainment Sued for “Copyright” Infringement!

Joystiq.com

Both Activision and it’s subsidiary Blizzard Entertainment are being sued by Worlds Inc. for patent infringement due to its World of Warcraft and Call of Duty series. The patent apparently copyrighted the use of player interaction in virtual worlds. This is not the first time that World Inc. has sued over this same claim. In 2008 they said that the gaming company NCsoft violated their patent and they ended up settling for an undisclosed amount in 2010. Although this lawsuit was not as big of a deal as World Inc’s current attempted lawsuits, it may give them the edge in winning their new lawsuits. Their past lawsuit success may convince a jury that they are entitled to a certain amount of Activision and Blizzard’s profits from their so called “copyrighted” material.

I Personally feel as if World Inc. is overstepping its boundaries with this lawsuit. Although their patent does cover some aspects of how the real time online multiplayer of both World of Warcraft and Call of Duty operate, these are features that can be found in a multitude of other games. Their patent seems to be too broad to actually fairly target any one company.

That is just my opinion. What do you guys think about World Inc’s lawsuit against these huge video game companies? Do you think they are in the right here and are just collecting their dues or are they acting out of line? Let me know in a comment!

My Team

I’m not exactly proud of it, but I got pretty sucked into the Pokemon on my PC. and considering my gaming time has been limited at best, I decided to do a post about it.

This time around I decided to go with one of the most well rounded teams I could think of, while still throwing in a few of my favorites where I could. My favorite Pokemon of all time being Charizard.

It has been very fun having a completely original season Pokemon team, since the original Pokemon designs were by far the best.

So what do you think of my team, Pokemon, or games in general? Let me know in a comment!

Facebook Buys Instagram for 1 Billion Dollars!

Pulse2.com

Today it was announced that Facebook was buying Instagram for 1 billion dollars. For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past year, up until last week Instagram was an iPhone exclusive app that allowed users to take pictures, apply filters and upload them for sharing. This app has exploded with popularity and accumulated over 15 million users since its release. Facebook’s motive for purchasing Instagram for such an outragious price was to make sure that they control the photo sharing aspect of social media. They want to make sure that Facebook remains the only necessary outlet for social media. Instagram’s large user base attracted Facebook because they managed to do something better than Facebook.

Facebook creator and CEO Mark Zuckerberg commented on the fact that this was Facebook’s biggest investment as a company, saying, “We don’t plan on doing many more of these, if any at all. But providing the best photo sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together.” Sharing information is the key principle behind everything Facebook is, and Instagram is just another way to share things with the world.

Facebook does not plan to completely dissolve Instagram into Facebook, but instead will keep it as its own stand-alone application. Users can still share photos with people who are not their Facebook friends and can also share them to other social networking sites.

In the end, it is hard to tell if Instagram will really be worth the 1 Billion that Facebook has invested into it. This would mean that every one of Instagram’s 15 million users are worth 16.6 dollars to Facebook, despite the fact that the App is completely free to download. What do you guys think about Facebook buying Instagram? Do you think it was a good investment on Facebook’s part or do you wish Instagram had stayed its own company? Let me know in a comment!

Simple Games, Simply Fun

With my recent desperate boredom of most games, I have turned to replaying classic games from my childhood. Which have surprisingly yielded much entertainment.

So my friend was recently in town from his boarding school and was practically in love with my Alienware computer. One thing he proceeded to do was download a Gameboy emulator on my computer and few Pokemon games. This worried me, I did not want to get sucked into Pokemon games again. Despite the fun they are, their just not very cool or complex. So I made a mental promise to myself if I was going to replay these games I was going to do it my way, plan everything out from the beginning and just destroy everyone with strategy. This entailed using the emulator’s built in Gameshark to capture the team I wanted very early on. And if I couldn’t get that to work I wouldn’t play.

At first I couldn’t get the codes to work, but, for better or worse, I persisted and eventually got the codes to work. And that is the story of how I got sucked into playing Pokemon games again.

What do you think of Pokemon games? Do you think they’re incredibly lame, or that their simplicity makes them great? let me know in a comment!

Nintendo’s New Console the Wii U!

Nintengen.com

Nintendo’s new console the Wii U was announced at E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) earlier this year and thus far it has had a very mixed reception. A while back I posted my review of the original Wii, which you can read here, and overall I gave it a relatively positive review. That being said, it is hard to say if this console will be anywhere near as successful as the first Wii.

In my opinion, the most important upgrade from the original Wii is graphical. The new Wii will be able to support full 1080p hi-def graphics, which may not seem like a big deal but if you recall how poor the graphics are on the original Wii it is easy to see the importance of this update. Along with a graphical update, the controller has also been modified. The Wii U will feature one “home” controller, which has complete control over all of the parameters in the game and will also have a screen attached to it for increased control and varied styles of gameplay. When a player is playing single player they can view information on the controller’s screen such as tutorial information or H.U.D. data, leaving the TV screen fully available for gameplay. In multiplayer games the player in control of the match setup will have the “home” controller which has more parameter options, while the rest of the players will have standard Wii controllers.

A wide variety of games of been announced for the Wii U, including a new Zelda game which I am personally very excited about. Other than new games and improved graphics, this new console does not seem extremely appealing to me. It is hard for me to say weather or not I will buy it when it comes out next year. I am not completely blown away by Nintendo’s upgrades and it seems that they are failing to keep up with the competitive nature of other gaming consoles such as the Xbox and PlayStation. I know that the Wii is meant to be more of a family console and is less focused on the serious aspect of gaming and more focused on the community aspect, but I just can’t see myself really wanting to buy this console.

That is just my opinion on the Wii U. What do you guys think about Nintendo’s new console? Will you buy it when it eventually comes out or are the new features just not worth it? Let me know in a comment!

Snipers In the Grass

I used to be kind of into air-soft guns, and I would have fun battles with some of my friends. Our typical battleground was this open lush field type thing. I’m not exactly sure what it is, it’s found in the middle of a neighborhood but its a fairly large secluded oasis of lush vegetation. It’s not a park per say, but I digress.

Given our leafy green battlefield, I found it appropriate to purchase a guile suit. It served its intended purpose a few times, but you would be surprised how useful it is to have a guile suit lying around. Combined with my pizza bag, I used it as a last-minute Halloween costume. And then one time, I had a good amount of friends over at my house, I pulled out the guile suit to show them. Next thing you knew we were all causally talking in my room, while one of my friends was sporting a guile suit. I’ve also used it for school plays.

So yeah having a guile suit has been a fun experience, and has proven to be a surprisingly useful piece of attire.

Have you ever gotten something that has proven to be much more versatile than first expected? let me know in a comment!

Registered Sex Offenders Banned from Online Gaming!

TechSpot.com

As of Yesterday, the state of New York has officially taken the initiative to protect young and vulnerable gamers from dangerous sexual predators in the world of online gaming. This action was named “Operation: Game Over,” and was an arrangement made between New York state officials and the major gaming companies in the U.S., including Microsoft, Sony and Apple as well as many other content creators. Because most major gaming platforms require their gamers to submit personal information when they sign up for their services, such as their email address, billing address and other key information pertaining to their identity, these gaming companies can cross reference this information with the record of registered sex offenders in New York and then ban confirmed accounts linked to offenders.

Since this operation took place, 3,580 gamers online accounts have been banned. This event is significant because it is the first occurrence of the law interfering with online gamers directly when concerning the safety of the players in real life. Although this is an overall improvement for the general gaming community as there are so many young kids who play games online and who need protection from possible predators, this may end up negatively changing the way the gaming world operates. If the government can step in whenever it wants and censor online gaming, it could cause a chain reaction that might put the freedom of the whole gaming world at risk.

What do you guys think about this event? Is the law overstepping its boundaries by enforcing restrictions on online gaming or is this an important step towards maintaining a safe and enjoyable online environment for gamers of all ages? Let me know in a comment!

The Endeavor to Obtain My First Car

Today my car arrived from Denver Colorado on one of those giant car transporting trucks. Why did it come from all that way when I live in California you ask? The short answer is, because my parents are bad at thinking things through.

It is a very nice car and I am very excited to start diving it. It is a ford escape. I actually feel very strange getting a new car for my first car, but hey, I’m not complaining.

So anyway as I said the car arrived from Denver, and I will try to tell this tale as quickly as possible. My older sister lives in upstate New York, and for Christmas my parents bought her a car, and sent it all the way there on one of those giant trucks. The car was under my dad’s name, and unfortunately she wasn’t making the payments on the car. Thus my dad’s credit score began to drop.

To solve this problem my family and I, flew to New York, fully payed for a new car for my sister, and then started driving back to California in my sister’s old car, which would now be mine. My family couldn’t exactly handle driving across the country, so I flew out from St. Louis (as not to miss school), and my parents flew out of Denver (as they were fed up with driving). So we put the car on another moving truck from Denver to California. And that is the story of the many adventures my first car endured.

What do you think of my first car or the story that accompanies it? Let me know in a comment!

The Possible Release of a New Xbox!

Kitguru.net

After nearly 7 years, rumors of a successor to the Xbox 360 have finally surfaced. The Xbox 360, the sequel to the Xbox Original was officially released in November 2005, and since then gamers have been eagerly awaiting the release of a next generation gaming console from Microsoft. As of Monday, rumors from the depths of cyber space have surfaced saying that this might soon become a reality. Although Microsoft has not officially released any statements regarding anything about a new Xbox, it is possible that it will be released in time for Christmas 2013. Although this seems far off, you have to keep in mind that the Xbox 360 has already been around for 7 years so one more year is really not all that long on the timeline of Xbox release dates.

Although this new Xbox is exciting, it may not be everything that everyone hopes it will be. Some rumors say that this console will force gamers to register their game with their console. In order to do this, Microsoft may also have to force players to be connected to the internet through their console, even if they do not plan to play online. This would completely end the resale of used games because once a game is registered to a console it cannot be played on any other console. Companies such as GameStop would lose a huge portion of their profits, which are generated solely from used games, and companies such as GameFly would completely go out of business.

Also, this new Xbox might end support for older Xbox games. Although the current Xbox only supports certain games from the original Xbox era, the new one may drop this feature completely. This would mean that if you ever get tired of playing new releases, you won’t be able to scavenge your shelf for that old Harry Potter game you used to play as a kid and waste countless hours finding your away around Hogwarts in the land of 2004 graphics.

It is important to remember that all of this is still only rumored, but it will be interesting to see if Microsoft makes a move to confirm or deny this information in the near future. I personally think that a new Xbox would be great, but with the current limitations that it is rumored to have such as no support for old games or used games, I don’t know if it will really be an upgrade or a downgrade from the current Xbox.

So what do you guys think about this new Xbox? If it really is as limited as it is said to be, will you still buy it? Let me know in a comment!

My Buddy Peter Griffin

Right above my couch chills a cardboard cutout of Peter Griffin.

I am a person who enjoys his family guy very much, so when I went over to my sister’s house for Christmas and I saw had gotten me a cardboard stand up of Peter Griffin, I was ecstatic. But over time, his cardboard legs began to give in. So I salvaged his top portion and stapled it above my couch. Peter has been there so long it hardly even notice him anymore, that’s why I hadn’t thought to do a post about him until just now. But every time a friend sees my room for the first time, they are really surprised to see Peter Griffin staring at them.

So what do you think of family guy or my cardboard cutout of peter? Let me know in a comment!