October 2008 Archives

By Agence France-Presse OTTAWA -- US software behemoth Microsoft has doubled a cash reward for information on the whereabouts of a Canadian boy who ran away from home after his father took away his Xbox game console, it said Tuesday. Brandon Crisp, 15, took off on his bicycle from his Barrie, Ontario home on October 13 -- Canada's Thanksgiving holiday -- and rode east along an old rail line. He has not been seen since. His father told local media he had removed Brandon's Xbox, built by Microsoft, after noticing changes in behavior since Brandon started playing "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" online. The boy started skipping school, stealing money and ignoring his studies, his father said. A local newspaper, the family's Internet service provider and Child Find offered a 25,000-dollar (19,500-dollar US) reward for information leading to his return. Microsoft topped it up with another 25,000 dollars, the company said Tuesday in an email to AFP, "hoping for his swift return." "Like everyone, we are deeply worried about the disappearance of Brandon Crisp," the company said. Exhaustive searches have not turned up a single clue beyond the boy's bicycle, found last week with a flat tire. Police are said to be examining who Brandon played with online. "Law enforcement has contacted Microsoft about this matter and we are cooperating fully with them," said Microsoft. On Sunday, 1,600 volunteer searchers packed up their reflective vests and ended their efforts to find him, while police stopped their air and water search. In an interview with the daily Globe and Mail, the boy's father, Steve Crisp, said he had not known how important the gaming system was to his son and how he would react when it was taken away. Experts commented that gamers may form bonds with fellow online players. "This had become his identity, and I didn't realize how in-depth this was until I took his Xbox away," Steve Crisp told the Globe and Mail. "That's like cutting his legs off." "This is such an issue that hits every parent out there, with video games that are starting to control our kids' lives," he said. "I just took away his identity, so I can understand why he got so mad and took off. Before, I couldn't understand why he was taking off for taking his game away." Now, Brandon's father says he just wants his son to come home.

By Izah Morales INQUIRER.net MANILA, Philippines -- Having been a costume player for six years, Ricah Baltazar admitted that costume play or popularly known as “cosplay” has influenced the way she dresses today. Baltazar, 21 years old, considered her black punk outfit during the interview as an everyday wear. Being an anime fan influenced her to join cosplays. “From anime, na-introduce ang cosplay. Then, from cosplay, na-open up ang iba’t ibang klase ng fashion sense [Cosplay was introduced through anime characters. Then, cosplay opened opportunities for other fashion],” said Baltazar. One of the fashion styles that influenced Baltazar was Gothic Lolita. Japanese Lifestyle defined Gothic Lolita as a Victorian style fashion sense among Japanese adolescents and noted that the style is a subculture that began in 1997 and was later turned into a clothing genre in 2001 as it became available in major department stores. At 15, Baltazar began joining cosplays. She remembers saving up P3,000 for a costume. But now that she is working, she spends P6,000 for a tailor-made costume. “Kung maraming details, mas mahal. I am a very detailed cosplayer kasi kaya as perfect as close to the character as possible. [If the costume has a lot of details on it, it’s more expensive. Since I’m conscious with the details of the costume, I want it to be close to perfect to the character as possible],” explained Baltazar. Dressed up like an anime character or wearing a gothic Lolita outfit with red hair -- which she dyed a number of times for 4 years -- Baltazar said she still gets mixed reactions from people she meets. “Minsan unkind yung mga comments like stereotypes, emo, fantaserye. Some of them are friendly. Depende na rin un sa kung alam kasi ng tao ‘yung ginagawa namin. The more exposure, the more that they know, the more that they will understand. [Sometimes, I receive unkind comments like I am being stereotyped as an emo or a character in a fantasy series. Some are friendly. It depends whether the person know what we’re doing. The more exposure that costume players get, the more people will be informed. Hence, they will understand.],” said Baltazar. For six years since Baltazar started joining cosplays, she has collected 11 costumes, two gothic Lolita outfits and six wigs. Cosplay is about having fun and making the characters come to life, added Baltazar. “We just want to have fun. We enjoy cosplay, copying characters. Just a hobby really,” stressed Baltazar.

Alexander Villafania INQUIRER.net MANILA, Philippines -- The online game business in the Philippines is heating up with online game publisher Level Up! leading the pack with a triple-treat launch of games. During the recently held Level Up Live! gaming convention, the company announced that it will be carrying the games Hello Kitty Online, Emil Chronicle Online, and Rohan Online. However, no further details have been provided as to the dates of the start of the beta testing and commercial launch of the games. Level Up! Multimedia Head Joey Alarilla told INQUIRER.net they will be releasing new information about the games for the local market very soon. Level Up! had previously launched two other games this year, Crazy Kart and Grand Chase, both of which are targeted at much younger players. Hello Kitty Online, developed by Sanrio Digital, can also be considered as a casual game due to the use of the popular Japanese toy line of the same name. As such, it mostly focuses on resource collection and social interaction rather than battles. Nevertheless, Hello Kitty Online is categorized as a massively-multiplayer online game. Meanwhile, Emil Chronicle Online is another MMORPG and is developed by Headlock. It also has resource collection elements but also focuses on battles. There are a total of 12 classes from three races that can be chosen as playable characters in the game. Rohan Online, made by YNK Korea, is a heavy hack-and-slash MMORPG. It allows open PvP (player versus player) and lower guilds can attack ruling guilds for the right to control towns.

By Alex Villafania INQUIRER.net MANILA, Philippines -- Game publishing company Asian Media unveiled a new casual game that will be the company's first free-to-play. Asian Media sealed a partnership with Korean game developer NCSoft to launch the game Exteel in the Philippines. The game is an anime-themed, third-person shooter. Players control "mechanaughts" or armored robots over huge futuristic maps. The mechanaughts can be armed with various weapons including swords, spears, submachine guns, rifles, rocket launchers, among others. The mechanaughts' features can also be customized with booster packs, body armor, and even warpaint. Despite Exteel being identified as a casual game, its graphics can be compared to many hack-and-slash type online games. Exteel requires a minimum 800 Megahertz processor, 256 megabytes of memory and a 128 Mb videocard. In an interview, Asian Media Chief Operating Officer Ronald Allan Aquino said they might start closed beta test of the game in Singapore, the Philippines and Malaysia by the first quarter of 2009. He also explained that the decision to go free-to-play was due to the huge market for such games. In contrast, Asian Media started out selling boxed games and pay-to-play of Lineage II. For now, Aquino said the local website for Exteel is still being developed, though enthusiasts can visit the game's official site.

By Alexander Villafania INQUIRER.net MANILA, Philippines -- Thailand remains the undisputed champion in this year's Ragnarok Online World Championships (RWC). Thailand is followed by South Korea and Indonesia in second and third place, respectively. The Thai team is composed of Ratchasak Kanchanasapha, Mana Pattharavilaloet, Minlawat Tararuthai, Somporn Sinsanguan, Hatsakan Santitaweechai, Ekkasit Nimket, and Narin Sukwisutthichot. This is the second time the Thai team won in the RWC. They won in last year's RWC held in their home country. The event was held at the World Trade Center in Pasay City. The RWC is held in parallel with Level Up Live!, the annual gaming convention of game distributor Level Up! Level Up! Is also the distributor of Ragnarok Online in the Philippines. The Bozanian Beastfighters who represented the Philippines fell to fourth place. It is also the same team that represented the Philippines in the Ragnarok World Championship 2007, held in Seoul, South Korea. The team took third place against 10 other countries. There were 12 teams from 21 participating countries. These included Korea, Philippines, Japan, Thailand, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Turkey, and Austria. Thailand wins US$15000, while Korea and Indonesia win US$7000, and US$5000, respectively.

By Agence France-Presse LONDON -- One of the most eagerly-anticipated games in the history of the Sony PlayStation has been delayed because of concerns some of the background music may offend Muslims, the game's developers said Monday. LittleBigPlanet, in which gamers can customize the rag-doll protagonist Sackboy and allow it to roam through an interactive world filled with different challenges, had been hailed by video games website IGN as "nothing short of astounding" and given a review rating of 9.5 out of 10. But its release date has been put back after one of its background music tracks, a song by Mali-born artist Toumani Diabate, was found to have included expressions from the Koran, which could be interpreted as an offense to Muslims. "We're sure that most of you have heard by now that one of the background music tracks that was licensed from a record label for use in the game contains two expressions that can be found in the Koran," a statement on the game's website read. "We have taken immediate action to rectify this and we sincerely apologize for any offense this may have caused. "We will begin shipping LittleBigPlanet to retail in North America the week of October 27." According to a separate statement on the website of Media Molecule, the British-based developers of LittleBigPlanet, they were "shell-shocked and gutted" by the delay to the game's release. "We learnt... that there is a lyric in one of the licensed tracks which some people may find offensive, and which slipped through the usual screening processes," the statement read. "Obviously MM and Sony together took this very seriously. LBP should be enjoyable by all." A post on a Sony public Internet forum alerted developers to the issue, noting that Diabate's "Tapha Niang" included two expressions from the Koran that could cause offense to Muslims. The forum user, who identified himself only as "yasser", said that "Muslims consider the mixing of music and words from our Holy Quran deeply offending (sic)," in a post on Thursday. The delayed release was welcomed by some Muslim commentators, with Manzoor Moghal of the Muslim Forum think-tank telling the BBC that the game's developers should be praised for "taking decisive action by withdrawing these games immediately, and releasing a version that is not offensive to Muslims." Sony was forced to apologize in June 2007 when it emerged that one of its video games, "Resistance: Fall of Man", featured a violent shootout inside a building that resembled an Anglican cathedral in Manchester, northern England. The news was condemned by Anglican leaders, who demanded that the game be removed from store shelves, a request Sony refused. In 2005, the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, deemed blasphemous in the Islamic world, in a Danish newspaper sparked outrage and violent protests in several countries. The caricatures were then reprinted earlier this year by several other Danish newspapers.

By Alexander Villafania INQUIRER.net MANILA, Philippines-- Filipino-owned company Ubersoft Inc. has started offering an advertisement-wrapped mobile game download service called Swoopin. The service allows users to download as many free mobile Java games as they want to their mobile phones via Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) and only pay for the corresponding phone network fees. The ad-wrap feature will become available whenever mobile phone users start playing games. There are also 850 Java games in 14 available categories ranging from racing, action, puzzle, sports, casino, arcade, among others. More games are being added every week. All of the games in the Swoopin website are also available on Swoopin's Facebook and on Swoopin's official wapsite. In an interview, Ubersoft CEO Vince Yamat explained that there will be two to three advertisements showing up before and after a downloaded game is played. However, the ads will only connect to the Swoopin server on the first and fourth attempt to play. Essentially, the game is already been paid for by the advertisements. Yamat said the advertisements will not appearing during gameplay so as not to disturb the mobile phone user's playing experience. "Whenever Swoopin games connect to the Internet the charges will be very minimal. Much of the revenue we generate in this service will come from advertisements. What we realized is that the preferred payment for players is free," Yamat said. Swoopin will target all markets and not just the Philippines. Thus, initial advertisements will come from foreign firms, such as Amazon.com and Best Buy. Yamat said they are already in talks with advertising resellers and distribution channels in the Philippines to promote the service. "There is a huge market for advertising on mobile games in the Philippines. We only need to look for the right channels," he said.

By Alexander Villafania INQUIRER.net MANILA, Philippines -- While waiting for the upcoming World Cyber Games Finals in Germany, the organizers of the WCG Philippines tournament has started the WCG League in an effort to spur continues training of gamers hoping to get into the annual WCG Finals, local organzer eSports said. The WCG League starts on October 18 and will be held at the Cyberzone of the SM Mall of Asia. For now, two games will be highlighted and both are for the Microsoft Xbox 360. These are Guitar Hero III (GH3) and Soul Calibur IV (SC4). For GH3, the game mode will be one-versus-one and will be set on expert. There will already be a selection of songs including "One" by Metallica, "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns N' Roses, the extremely difficult "Through the Fire and Flames" by Dragonforce, among others. SC4 will also be on one-versus-one mode in best-of-three rounds. Each round will be 60 seconds long. Players must also use the same character throughout the game. The top winners of GH3 and SC4 will take home P10,000 and P8,000 respectively. Second placer winners for GH3 will get P5,000 while for SC4 it will be P4,000. The WCG League will also play host to a cosplay event. The first and second placers in the cosplay will take home P15,000 and P10,000, respectively.

By Alexander Villafania INQUIRER.net GADGETS Magazine Editor John Nieves will head to Hong Kong at the end of the month to represent the Philippines in the first Intel Asia PC Gaming Showdown, which is a competition open to gaming journalists and amateur gamers. Nieves will be facing off against game journalists from Thailand and Malaysia. Nieves won the top prize in the Philippine leg of the competition, which pits gaming journalists in three games from Electronic Arts; Crysis, Need for Speed Pro Street and FIFA 2008. In an interview, Nieves said he has already been practicing on FIFA 2008, the only game that he is not strongly familiar. "Crysis plays much like most first-person shooters that I've played before so it's easy to pick up and I've been playing the Need for Speed series since it came out. Soccer games are more difficult for me because I'm not much into sports games," he said. The grand winner of the Hong Kong finals will take home an high-end Alienware gaming PC powered by an Intel Core 2 Extreme processor while the second place winner will be awarded with a Creative Gigaworks S750 gaming speaker system.

By Alexander Villafania INQUIRER.net NO, they're not the infamous beast from Voltes V, a famous and classic Japanese anime about a super robot. It is a seven-man team that won in the recently held Ragnarok Online Philippine Championships. The so-called "Bozanian Beastfighters" will represent the Philippines in the upcoming Ragnarok World Championships in Manila on October 18. Members of the Bozanian Beastfighter are Frederick Banaag, Cris John Dimaunahan, Emmanuel de Leon, Ralph Christopher Magbag, Mel Bryan Unera, Jeffrey Custodio, and Miguel Luis Angeles. They beat the teams Renegade and Demented who were in second and third place, respectively. The event will also coincide with the annual Level Up! Live annual convention at the World Trade Center in Pasay City. This year’s winning team is the same team that represented the Philippines in the Ragnarok World Championship 2007 held in Seoul, South Korea. The team won third place against 10 other countries.

Editor's Note: Corrected quote and dates. By Alexander Villafania INQUIRER.net AFTER almost a year, online gaming publisher MyGame.ph will be introducing its first massively multiplayer online game. The game, Fiesta Online, is also the company's second game after Special Force Online. Fiesta Online, developed by Korean firm Ons On Soft [spelled as is] is also a fantasy-adventure game set in the world of Isya. A battle ensues between the primal force called Legel and gods that he created to watch over the land. There are four character classes in Fiesta Online: the Mage, Fighter, Cleric, and Archer. Each one has special attributes and special items. In an interview, MyGame.ph Marketing Manager Paul Buencamino said they will be starting closed beta testing in the middle of October for at least two weeks before moving on to open beta testing. "Commercial launch could be in mid-November. We're still perfecting the game," Buencamino said. The game will be primarily targeted at younger generation of players from ages eight to 15, but Buencamino said the game will still be playable by adults. The graphics is in full-3D and "cartoony" giving the impression that it is kid-friendly. The button configurations are also fairly simple with large, easily identifiable icons for different aspects of the game. Buencamino said that it was time for MyGame.ph to launch a new game to cater to a different market. He said that their first game, Special Force Online, has been enjoying a good player community of around 150,000 per day.

By Alexander Villafania INQUIRER.net MANILA, Philippines – The Philippine team took the top prize at the recently held RAN Online Global Tournament, beating Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Korea and Taiwan. RAN Online is one of the online games published in the Philippines by IP e-Games. The Philippine team is composed of Vincent Van Amado, Carlo Angelo Magcalas, Martin Joseph Buday and Kevin Medina. They won US$5,000 (P237,400) in cash prize. The RAN Global Tournament 2008 was held at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City. It was the first time the Philippines hosted the said event but it was the second RAN Global Tournament IP e-Games Vice President for Marketing Ed Pasion said that the team to beat for this year was defending champion Thailand. Surprisingly, Thailand did not make it to the final three. Pasion noted that the Philippine team lost its first two matches before recovering to get into the finals. He credits the team's consistent practice sessions since Domination in April, e-Games' annual gaming event. Pasion said they will start the next round of preliminaries in January, leading to the next RAN Online Global Tournament in 2009. As with their selection system this year, Pasion said the team set up will be chosen through regional eliminations and the top four players will represent the Philippines for the next global tournament. The Malaysian team won second place and took home US$3,000 (P142,000), while the Hong Kong team won third place and US$2,000 (P95,000).

By Anna Valmero Inquirer.net The creators of the comic series Aporia as well as Kraust and Ninja Girl Ko! all share one thing: passion for comics. Comics, as a medium, convey stories with fewer words and instead, make the best use of panels, lines and drawings to convey stories. These features contribute to the uniqueness of comics as artwork. A comic lover myself, I see comics as the mother of animation (and increasingly of live action titles as well). For Mangaholix, comics provide an avenue for their interpretation of art. The roots of the Mangaholix team can be traced from BlitzWorx, a high school comic club that later formed Mangaholix, under Groundbreakers Inc. In the local comic industry, pricing is a big factor so to be sustainable the then high school enthusiasts tied up with a corporate house and the rest is history, according to Emmanuel Javier one of the founders of BlitzWorx and now senior VP and editor-in-chief of Mangaholix. To promote comics as medium for artful story telling, the group entered the local market last year and at present, is eyeing to gain inroads in the international market as well. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to limit yourself to the local industry, especially if you are a pure comic book artist,” said Ian Cang, president and senior art director of Mangaholix. “It’s always a very challenging industry and it’s nice to be always open to cater to other markets as well.” It is no question that the Filipino comic artist is world-class. Artists such as Whilce Portacio, Lan Medina and Eric Canete have worked under big international comic houses and have proven the Filipino talent worldwide. As for Mangaholix, Cang shared an anecdote in which they promoted the Mangaholix magazine at Singapore and it was actually thought of as comparable, if not equal to Japan-made comics. This shows huge potential for the Filipino comic artists to make it big internationally. I believe aggressive campaign is needed for this. The Mangaholix team does its share of helping budding comic artists via free workshops. High schools and colleges can contact them via email. Cang said, it is their way of thanking its followers as well as promoting their magazine, the seventh issue of which is set to be released soon. During the afternoon that I tagged along with the Mangaholix crew, I’ve learned that to survive in any industry, it is important to have passion for what you do and to not lose sight of what you want to be.

By Alexander Villafania INQUIRER.net THE FORT, Taguig City – Dekaron, the latest massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) from Mobius Games, has finally gone commercial. Mobius distributes Dekaron in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore. The game was in close then open beta test for the last three months. A downloadable version of the game's installation client can be found in the company's website. Dekaron is developed by Korean firm GameHi. Its original name is 2Moons. It is set in a magical fantasy world of Trieste and humans are fighting against two gods (the two moons referred it he original title) and demons from the Abyss. The surviving humans are preparing to battle against the might demon Karon. Players of Dekaron can choose six types of characters, each one having different attributes, weapons, armor and magical items. Players can collect in-game currency called Dil that they can use to trade or buy items in the game. Dekaron is also one of the few online games that feature graphical blood and gore. Mobius Games Marketing Director Eric Roceles said that along with the commercial launch, the company also opened its D-Shop, the in-game store where players can buy premium game items.

By Agence France-Presse SAN FRANCISCO -- Free computer game play that is all the rage in South Korea is taking hold in a US market dominated by videogames sold on packaged disks or by online subscriptions. Seoul-based "free-to-play" computer game titan Nexon on Wednesday blasted into the US videogame arena with a "Combat Arms" online first-person shooter title that makes its cash from optional "micro-transactions" by players. "Combat Arms had a great beta run, with players of all levels loving the fast-action FPS game play and in-game community features for ranking and challenging other players," said Nexon America spokesman Min Kim. The game makes its money from players that buy animated helmets, outfits, emblems or other virtual items to customize in-game characters. To keep the battlefield even, players earn experience or advanced weaponry by skill so people essentially can't pay for power. "People can't buy uberguns to get a tremendous advantage," Kim said while demonstrating the game for AFP in San Francisco earlier this year. US videogame powerhouse Electronic Arts (EA) has started investing in free play and is putting the finishing touches on a "Battlefield Heroes" war game supported by in-game transactions instead of up-front purchase prices. "We expect it to be the world's largest PC (personal computer) action game," 'Battlefield Heroes' franchise executive producer Ben Cousins said while showing AFP the game recently at EA's offices in Northern California. "It's a Web project as much as it is a game project. It's what you love and are addicted to about Facebook and what you love and are addicted to from 'Battlefield' smashed together." Free online shooter games encourage multiperson play in which people form teams, share performance rankings and fight with or against each other. In a bit of turnabout, EA is tailoring a version of "Battlefield Heroes" for the South Korea market. Early last year EA paid 105 million dollars for a 19 percent stake in Seoul-based online gaming company Neowiz. Nexon introduced its hot online offering "Maple Story" to the US in 2005 and saw annual revenues here triple after it began selling pre-paid game cards in US stores two years later. Kim says people prefer prepaid cards to tying credit cards to ongoing subscriptions to online role-playing games as is the case with popular "World of Warcraft." Kim says personal computers have become a natural gaming forum as people spend massive amounts of time online at social websites such as Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. "As people live more in front of their computers they are looking for other ways to interact online," Kim said. Free games are reportedly played by more than a third of South Korea's population. "I don't think we are going to get more than a third of North Americans playing our games, but I think there will be some pretty big numbers," Kim said. "We have those big boys taking our business model and fleshing it out in a Western way." EA says it believes "Battlefield Heroes" will be a "cross-over game" that lures new people into videogames. Startups and established game makers including Japanese goliath Sony are venturing into the free computer game market, according to DFC Intelligence analyst David Cole. "It looks like it could be very big," Cole told AFP. "It's one of the things everybody seems to be looking at. The challenge is it is a very new model and it remains to be seen whether customers used to a free model will be tight when it comes to actually spending money on it." The free play model is tempting in a US market where packaged video games typically sell for 60 dollars each but has to compete with gamers devoted to consoles, according to Cole. "Obviously Nexon has been the biggest success with the model so people are looking at them as a potential leader," Cole said. The free play model "changed everything" about designing a computer game because the program needs to be simple enough for typical machines and inexperienced players, according to Cousins. "The game needed to be easier to get into," Cousins said of 'Battlefield Heroes.' "It's a bit more forgiving than a 'Call of Duty 4' where you go around a corner and get shot dead. Packaged goods are great, but we also need to modernize."