Star Wars "A New Hope" in a Facebook Thread

Watch StarCraft II Being Controlled By An iPhone

In August we told you about an app that would let StarCraft II players control the game using their iPhone or iPad. Now we're showing it to you.

Dan Hellerman's RTS Gameboard for StarCraft II was supposed to see release last month, but missed the mark due to some play testing and optimization. Now it's due out sometime this month, and Hellerman has released a video of the app in action to give players something to look forward to.

Is it worth looking forward to? It's definitely technically impressive, but as many have pointed out it's pretty useless when it comes to fast-paced competitive play. So far the most impressive feature, according to one of the players that regularly orbits Kotaku Tower, is the ability to add a unit to a specific group in a speedy fashion, rather than selecting a group, adding a unit to the selection, and then resaving the selection.

The app definitely speaks of the potential of future interactivity between the PC and devices like the iPhone and iPad.

Edit: A reader pointed out that holding down shift instead of CTRL when creating a group merges the new group with an exsiting one. Our StarCraft II playing friend's response: "FML."

RTS Gameboard for StarCraft II [Official Website]

World's Highest Gamerscore Reaches Half A Million

Stallion83 holds the Guinness World Record for the highest gamerscore in the world, and he's just reached 500,000 gamerscore points. Think you can catch up?

After a day filled with Xbox 360 and Xbox Live Arcade games, Stallion83 finally hit the 500,000 gamerscore point mark by scoring a 20 point achievement in episode 4 of Telltale's Wallace & Gromit series of downloadable adventure games. Achievement unlocked: halfway to his 1,000,000 point goal.

Over at the 1 Million Gamerscore Blog you can read a full account of Stallion83's day, from "7:00AM — Miss Mittens woke me up by meowing her face off. She better make the coffee today," to "3:38PM — Video posted."

Will he rest on his laurels, or continue the good fight? As I write this, he's online playing Karaoke Revolution. What a trooper.

500,000 Gamerscore [1 Million Gamerscore - Thanks Seto!]

Halo: Reach Rank Cap Should Be Lifted In November

The latest update from the minds behind Halo: Reach says the game's rank cap, currently limited to Lieutenant Colonel Grade C, will be lifted once the game's community completes 117 million daily and weekly challenges.

That is quite a lot, but then, quite a lot of people play Halo: Reach, and so Bungie expects that goal to be met sometime in November. They're going to put a thermometer on the Bungie.net homepage and inch it up as the community gets closer. Once they bust the cap, new ranks and armor are available to all, provided they have the requisite experience.

If you're currently at Lt. Col. Grade C, don't worry, all that experience you're earning will transition once the cap unlocks, meaning you could zoom ahead more than one rank when it does.

Loads more details for the Halo: Reach-minded at the link.

Bungie Weekly Update: 10/15/10 [Bungie

Blizzard Suing Starcraft II Cheat Makers

Remember those 5000 people Blizzard busted for cheating in Starcraft II? Well the developer is going after those responsible with a vengeance, taking three men to court for creating the hacks those users employed.

"Just days after the release of Starcraft II, Defendants already had developed, marketed, and distributed to the public a variety of hacks and cheats designed to modify (and in fact destroy) the Starcraft II online game experience", the suit reads. "In fact, on the very day that Starcraft II was released, representatives of the hacks Web site advised members of the public that 'our staff is already planning new releases for this game.'"

The three men - "Permaphrost," "Cranix," and "Linuxawesome" - are being accused of "multiple counts of copyright infringement", with Blizzard seeking not just damages but also a cut of the money the three received selling the hacks. The first two are from Canada, the third, Peru.

They also stand accused of encouraging others to infringe upon Blizzard's copyright, because "When users of the Hacks download, install, and use the Hacks, they copy StarCraft II copyrighted content into their computer's RAM in excess of the scope of their limited license, as set forth in the EULA and ToU, and create derivative works of StarCraft II."

Despite the overseas location of the three men, the case will be heard in a Los Angeles US District Court, as stated in the game's Starcraft II's end-user license.

Blizzard sues Starcraft II hackers [GameSpot]

Warcraft movie pushed aside - Report

The World of Warcraft franchise has been a hot-ticket item for news this week. On Monday Blizzard Entertainment nailed down a December release date for the game’s third expansion, Cataclysm. And yesterday the publisher announced that the World of Warcraft subscriber base has climbed to a new high of 12 million. Now, franchise fans are getting some not so great news.

According to a Deadline report, the film set in the Warcraft universe won’t be released any time soon. When confirmed director Sam Raimi dropped out of his directorial position on Spider-Man 4, many expected that would free up time for him to work on the Warcraft film. However, according to the report, that’s not the case, and the director is instead working on Disney’s Wizard of Oz reboot.

Announced at the 2006 Electronic Entertainment Expo, the Warcraft project remains largely under wraps. Chief details known about the project include Raimi’s involvement and that Legendary Pictures, the production company behind The Dark Knight and the in-development Gears of War film, landed the project. Warner Bros. is slated to distribute.

The most recent mention of the flick came Raimi mouth in June. He said the film was moving forward, but its script still needed attention.

"We're still working on the story," Raimi said in June. "We have a 40-page document that needs a lot more work…we're finding the characters and through the characters we're finding the story…we're trying to create realistic characters that can live in the world of Warcraft, as though you were in the game itself."

In October 2009, Raimi revealed that Saving Private Ryan and The Patriot screenwriter Robert Rodat was on board with the project. The Internet Movie Database is listing the film as arriving in 2012, but no official date has been released by Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures, the companies distributing and producing the film.

Raimi is the director of the multibillion-dollar-grossing Spider-Man films and the horror cult classics Evil Dead and Army of Darkness. His most recent effort was the recent Drag Me to Hell, a horror thriller that won critical acclaim despite a PG-13 rating and so-so box-office returns. The Warcraft film will be produced by Atlas Entertainment's Charles "Chuck" Roven, Legendary Pictures' Thomas Tull, and Raimi producing partner Joshua Donen. Blizzard Entertainment's senior vice president of creative development Chris Metzen will coproduce.

Next Starcraft II due early 2012?

Source: See below.

What we heard: Today at GDC Online in Austin, Texas, Battle.net project director Greg Canessa took the stage to talk about the future of the encompassing online service Battle.net. Following his presentation--a complete write-up of which can be found here--the former PopCap games executive took questions from the audience.

One inquiry may have led Canessa to tip Blizzard's hand about the release date of the first expansion to Stacraft II: Wings of Liberty, Heart of the Swarm. When discussing such future Battle.net features as trading replays, broadcasting replays, and upgrading profiles, he said they were "a main area of focus we're going to be seeing on the Starcraft [II] side over the next 18 months between now and Heart of the Swarm." (Emphasis added.)

Such a time frame would have the expansion arrive in either March or April, 2012. Heart of the Swarm is the second installment in the three-part Starcraft II saga, the first of which, Wings of Liberty, focused on the human faction. Heart of the Swarm will concentrate on the Zerg faction of the real-time strategy, while the third installment in the real-time strategy trilogy, Legacy of the Void, will focus on the sinister Protoss faction.

The official story: A Blizzard representative stressed to GameSpot that there is no announced released window for Heart of the Swarm. However, he did say that the game would not be featured as part of Blizzcon 2010, which will take place in Anaheim, California from October 22-23.

Bogus or not bogus?: Not bogus. Blizzard typically takes its time between expansions, as evidenced by the nearly two-year gaps between the World of Warcraft add-ons The Burning Crusade (January 2007), Wrath of the Lich King (November 2008), and Cataclysm (December 2010).

League of Legends tops Game Developers Choice Online Awards

AUSTIN, TEXAS--As the Game Developers Conference Online reached its apex Thursday night, the event's organizers held the inaugural Game Developers Choice Online Awards. Like the Choice Awards held during the flagship Game Developers Conference in February, this counterpart show was devised to let the creators of online entertainment laud each other.

While dozens of games were honored, online game creators were apparently quite taken with Riot Games' League of Legends. The free-to-play hybrid of real-time strategy and role-playing games took home five awards for the night, including the Best New Online Game category. It even won the Audience Award, narrowly edging out Wizard101 from Austin-based Kingsisle Entertainment. The only category in which League of Legends was nominated but failed to win was Best Live Game, an honor claimed by EVE Online at the expense of other high-profile competitors like World of Warcraft and Farmville.

While League of Legends dominated the awards, it had to share the spotlight with a pair of online pioneers. The first was Ultima Online, which was named as the first inductee into the GDC Online Awards Hall of Fame. Original Ultima Online developers Rich Bogel, Starr Long, and Raph Koster were on hand to mark the occasion, with each offering a few words of thanks and appreciation for all the players and developers who have touched the game over the last 14 years.

"I remember bringing my baby daughter into the office in a baby carrier to work on the game," Koster said. "She's a teenager now and doesn't want to talk to me."

Long offered specific thanks to former Electronic Arts CEO Larry Probst for signing a $100,000 grant approval on the back of a napkin to get the project started and to the player who assassinated the Lord British character during the game's beta phase, making it clear who was really in charge.

The other pioneer honored was Dr. Richard A. Bartle, who received the Online Game Legend Award. One of the original designers of the massively multiplayer online game predecessor MUD (multi-user dungeon), Bartle said he was honored, thrilled, humbled, and surprised to receive the award.

"I guess the reason I won it is because most of the other people who could've won it are on the nominating committee, and of the remaining ones, I'm closest to death," Bartle joked.

Most award categories were for games launched in beta or full versions between May 2009 and May 2010. Nominees for Best Live Game--which honors currently operating titles--had to have launched in North America at least 12 months prior to May 2009 and distinguished themselves with exceptional new content since then. Nominees in the Best Community Relations and Audience Award categories only needed to be currently operating.

Categories and Nominees (Winner in italics)

Hall of Fame inductee
Ultima Online--Electronic Arts

Online Game Legend honoree
Dr. Richard A. Bartle

Best Online Technology
Aion--NCsoft
Champions Online--Cryptic Studios
Global Agenda--Hi-Rez Studios
League of Legends--Riot Games
Love-Quel Solaar

Best Social Network Game
FIFA Superstars--Playfish
NanoStar Siege--Digital Chocolate
Nightclub City--Booyah Inc.
Social City--Playdom
Treasure Isle--Zynga

Best Online Visual Arts
GodFinger--Wonderland Software/ngmoco
Papermint--Avaloop
League of Legends--Riot Games
Star Trek Online--Cryptic Studios
Love--Quel Solaar

Best Audio for an Online Game
Aion--NCsoft
Champions Online--Cryptic Studios
Music Pets--Conduit Labs
Nightclub City--Booyah Inc.
We Rule--Newtoy/ngmoco

Best Community Relations
EVE Online--CCP
Free Realms--Sony Online Entertainment
Guild Wars--ArenaNet
Wizard101--Kingsisle Entertainment
World of Warcraft--Blizzard Entertainment

Best Online Game Design
Champions Online--Cryptic Studios
Dungeon Fighter Online--Neople/Nexon
League of Legends--Riot Games
We Rule--Newtoy/ngmoco
Zoo Kingdom--Blue Fang Games

Best Live Game
EVE Online--CCP
Dungeon Fighter Online--Neople/Nexon
Farmville--Zynga
League of Legends--Riot Games
World of Warcraft--Blizzard Entertainment

Best New Online Game
Dungeon Fighter Online--Neople/Nexon
FIFA Superstars--Playdom
League of Legends--Riot Games
Nightclub City--Booyah Inc.
We Rule--Newtoy/ngmoco

Audience Award
League of Legends--Riot Games
First runner-up: Wizard101--Kingsisle Entertainment

Xbox 360 getting IPTV November 7 - Report

At the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft announced with great fanfare that the Xbox 360 would get IPTV, in a partnership with AT&T. Now, nearly four years later, it appears the console will finally be getting the functionality, according to a report on Engadget.

Citing several leaked slides and screenshots, the tech blog is reporting that starting November 7 Xbox 360 owners will be able to use their consoles as set-top boxes for AT&T's U-Verse IPTV service.

There is a catch, however--two catches, to be exact. Engadget's sources say that to use the service, there must be at least one DVR already in the home and activated to the service, which can provide up to four streams of HD video. Also, only Xbox 360s with hard drives will support U-Verse.

The addition of IPTV will come on the heels of the fall Xbox Live update, which will go live sometime before November 4. Features included in the update are Netflix search, ESPN 3 TV, and more lifelike avatars. The new avatars will be redesigned to better mesh with the Kinect motion-sensing system, which also goes on sale on November 4 for $150.

Black Ops poised to set preorder record

Last year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was one of the most hugely successful games of all time. It raked in over $1 billion at retail, helped the franchise move 20 million downloadable content map packs, and continues to be a top-played game online. However, the next Call of Duty title, due out next month, might set new records.

According to GameStop, Call of Duty: Black Ops is poised to surpass Modern Warfare 2’s tallies and break the retailer’s all-time preorder record.

"GameStop is tracking to all-time, record reservations on Call of Duty: Black Ops,” said Bob McKenzie, senior vice president of merchandising at GameStop. “We are ahead of where we were with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 last year, which previously set the industry standard.”

Specific numbers were not provided, but GameStop’s comments echo the preorder assessment Pacific Crest analyst Evan Wilson made in July.

If preorders are indicative of total sales (and they often are), Black Ops will fall in line with Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick’s thought that each entry in the Call of Duty series will outperform its predecessor.

However, Wilson doesn’t think Black Ops will break Modern Warfare 2’s sales records. He has pegged Black Ops to sell 12 million units in the holiday season. Modern Warfare 2 moved 16 million in the same period.

Call of Duty: Black Ops, with 3D support, goes on sale for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii, DS, and PC on November 9. For more on the shooter, check out GameSpot’s most recent hands-on coverage.

An ‘Every Village,’ Awash in Misery

Often the damaging environmental effects of industry don’t feel real to faraway consumers. The carbon dioxide that spews into the air from power plants is invisible even to those who are close at hand. When the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster began last spring, few could see the impact a mile under water, conveyed only belatedly by cameras when BP decided to release the footage.

But in an otherwise obscure corner of southern Hungary, polluting caustic red mud literally flooded into people’s living rooms this week, and onto television screens in the United States and Europe. The wall of a huge sludge waste reservoir from a nearby alumina processing plant broke, sending the goo downhill into nearby villages. The story led newscasts featuring some of CNN’s and the BBC’s higher-ranking correspondents.

And yet, as dangerous waste goes, red mud, the caustic byproduct of alumina processing, is not particularly toxic; there are far worse actors. And while the advancing slime devastated hundreds if not thousands of lives in villages like Kolontar, its impact on the larger ecosystems of the Danube area is so far looking relatively limited.

As I report in Friday’s paper, the local stream, which still is clogged red with muck, emptied into progressively larger rivers that emptied into the mighty Danube. The authorities added acid upstream to counteract the red mud, a substance that is as alkaline as lye.

By the time the pollutants made it into the Danube near a city called Gyor, their presence was detectable mostly as a trace of white foam, some people said. By the time it reached Budapest hours later, its diluted presence could be measured only by a pH meter.

What made this disaster so frightening for many was not its geographical scope, but that the pollution was, well, so viscerally stunning. It flowed through people’s front doors! And the village of Kolontar seemed like an Every Village many of us could easily identify with, with daily lives driven by routines like driving to work, taking the kids to school, mowing the lawn, uncorking a bottle of wine over dinner with friends.

The photographs are vivid, yet it’s hard to adequately describe the scenes and smells there now.

Residents’ skin, clothes, homes and pets were stained red. At least four people died, and those who had prolonged contact with the muck were hospitalized with severe burns. But most were left homeless, dirty and angry, struggling to figure out how to rebuild their lives.

Yellow stucco houses with tiled roofs and carefully tended flowerboxes of geraniums now sit abandoned. Rooms are covered in thick red muck even though they have been washed by fire hoses. Peek in front doors, and you see meals that were left on carefully set tables when tragedy arrived at lunchtime on Monday.

One man who was at work when the accident happened on Monday described bitterly to me how his wife and toddler clung to a fence with the dark red muck rushing by them, waiting to be rescued. The child is fine (physically at least); the mother is recovering from burns in the hospital.

As a reporter, it is sometimes easy to leave stories behind. But it was hard leaving Kolontar on Wednesday night. The women with young children had retreated to the homes of friends and relatives. The local pub was filled with men who were were living in the part of the village that was higher up and hadn’t been flooded. Outside, emergency cleanup crews continued their work.

At the edge of the village, we gingerly removed our slime-covered boots and placed them in a plastic bag by a rubbish bin; it was not wise to take them home so contaminated. We coughed on the three-hour drive to Budapest, our lungs and throats stinging from the residue of acrid red mud. We took long hot showers to rinse it all off for good.

The villagers of Kolontar cannot. In the long term, it is unclear who will pay to relocate them or decontaminate their homes or restore their sense of well-being. George Soros is said to be sending them $1 million in emergency aid. The Hungarian government is saying that one part of the village may simply be bulldozed.

I hope the residents of Kolontar will find a way to recover from this unthinkable disaster. For the rest of us, their anguished story lends a human face to environmental problems that are too often out-of-sight, out-of-mind.

AT&T increases upgrade fee to $200 for some smartphones

If you're still feeling the sting from AT&T jacking up its early termination fees earlier this year, then you aren't going to like this latest bit of news. AT&T will now charge $200 for anyone that upgrades to a new smartphone model "early," before their original two-year contract term is up. This fee will definitely affect those that change handsets more often than every two years.

Previously, the company typically charged $75 to upgrade early if you qualified, though it has charged many iPhone 3G users the equivalent of $200 to upgrade to an iPhone 3GS after one year. In some cases, however, the company made exceptions based on how long a contract had been in effect or whether a customer had a more expensive voice and data plan. For the launch of the iPhone 4, AT&T even allowed some customers to upgrade without any fee at all.

In a memo to AT&T sales staff, the company noted that the change was necessary due to the increasing prices of smartphones like BlackBerrys and Androids. The pricing change does not apply to feature phones, which will still carry the $75 fee for early upgrades. It also doesn't apply to the iPhone, which, as we mentioned above, AT&T often treats as a special case.

"This change to our exception pricing is necessary to maintain our ability to provide customers with the best selection of devices," the company wrote in the memo. As long as consumers still expect to get smartphones for $200 or so with carrier subsidies, we'll have to expect these kinds of fees for the foreseeable future.

FBI busted tracking student, demands GPS spy gear return

Several days ago a 20-year-old Santa Clara, Calif. student discovered a GPS tracking device hidden on his car. After his friend posted a picture of it online, speculating about its its ties to a secret FBI investigation, the feds themselves came a-knockin', according to Wired.com. They wanted their toy back.

Based on the discussion with the six FBI agents who arrived at his doorstep, Yassir Afifi believes he'd been under surveillance for three to six months. When Wired asked an FBI spokesman about the case, he did not acknowledge ownership of the device, but said that there was an "ongoing investigation."

Afifi says that he cooperated with the FBI and, according to Wired, "did nothing to merit attention from authorities." He is a U.S. citizen who attends Mission College in Santa Clara.

Afifi's father, an Islamic-American activist, died a year ago in Egypt. It is not clear what the circumstances of his death were, or if this was the reason for the FBI's investigation of Afifi.

The gadget itself — a GPS receiver identified as a police-issue-only Cobham Orion Guardian ST820 tracking system, connected to a battery pack and radio transmitter — was magnetically attached to the car. A shot of it made its way around the blogosphere on Monday, after appearing on the community news site Reddit. After Afifi spotted an antenna sticking out during an oil change, the garage owner offered to yank it out. It apparently popped off quite easily.

The question of whether or not sticking a GPS on a car is legal is actually in the middle of a hot debate right now. One federal court recently said that it was legal, while another said that tracking for an "extended period of time" would in fact require a warrant. (For more on this, here's a great piece in Time written by lawyer and tech journalist Adam Cohen.)

Legality aside, the tactic itself might have been carried out with something less than precision. Simply put, tracking devices shouldn't be so easy to find. Wired talked to an agent who said that not only is the tracking device out of date, but state-of-the-art snoops hardwire the stuff directly to the car's electrical system, avoiding the need for a battery.

What's impressive is how quickly Afifi got an identification of the gadget by crowdsourcing it on the Web. On the flipside, that kind of exposure isn't good PR for the FBI. Surely the revelation of the magnetic tracker will cause many people to check under their own cars. Like many noble efforts to keep us safe from terrorism, this one may be turning out to not be so effective. After all, those who already know they're involved in illegal activity probably check their cars every day, rain or shine.

For more details on the Afifi story, read the report at Wired.com.