Tag Archives: online play

Employees at online gaming company Bigpoint have voted to install an employee organisation to represent them. German public services trade union Verdi has assisted the move and will manage working conditions.
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Former Microsoft game user research head Bill Fulton – who previously worked on games like Shadrowrun for the company – reckons the general behaviour of many gamers online is “drastically reducing our sales”.

“Of all the ways I spend my free time, playing games online is the only one I would describe as ‘frequently barbaric’,” he said. “Insults of all kinds, including racist and homophobic slurs, are commonplace.

The women I know who play online avoid anything that would identify them as female – including voice communication – in order to avoid the unwanted, and frequently negative, attention. And that’s just how players are intentionally insulting – what some people do while playing online can also be aggravating.”

Not sure where he’s getting this from. All our online gaming involves pleasant chit-chat and flowers. More rather sobering quotes through the link.

Following plenty of complaints of less than reliable server connections in online Super Smash Bros. Brawl games in the US, Nintendo has made a statement saying sheer weight of numbers is putting its system under pressure.

“As with the launch of any online-enabled game, especially one as popular as Super Smash Bros. Brawl, everyone wants to play at once,” said the company. “This puts a strain on the pipeline.”

Nintendo of America confirmed yesterday that the game was the fastest selling in its history, having moved 1.4 million units since it launched on March 9. Buy some bigger servers, Nintendo. Still no date for Europe.

EA Australia has confirmed that the Australian version of Medal of Honor Heroes 2 for Wii has had 32-player online play removed and is offering a full refund to anyone that’s bought the game since it launched last week.

“Medal of Honor Heroes 2 for Wii does not support online functionality in Australia,” said a statement from the publisher. “We made an error in the documentation and marketing materials. We are very sorry to have caused confusion for our customers. We will provide a refund to anyone in Australia who wishes to return the game to EA because of the lack of online functionality.”

EA didn’t explain why multiplayer had been removed from the Australian version, while it’s included in the European and US release.

Following Thursday’s news that EA was shutting down the online portion of the Burnout Paradise demo to create a better service for those who’ve bought the full game, the publisher appears to have had a change of heart. Demo users are going to get another two weeks of online play before it’s switched off.

“As you may know, Burnout Paradise is built to provide the ultimate in freedom and discovery online and offline. The demo did a terrific job of providing players a taste of that,” an EA spokesperson said here. “Seeing how the social online multiplayer gameplay is such a huge part of Burnout Paradise, we’ve decided to keep the multiplayer demo functionality on for a bit longer.”

According to this, Tiscali is blocking online play of Call of Duty 4 (CoD4) during peak times. It seems the problem’s being cause by the ISP severing P2P connections during busy periods. CoD4 and other online titles use these connections for game-matching, rendering online play impossible. That report relates to the PS3 version of the game.

Whoops. Said one disgruntled user, “If they do not sort this problem out, they are on the verge of losing a new customer that only joined them three days ago. Tiscali sort the problem out or lose a lot of business. Simple choice really.”

Tiscali has made no official statement on the matter.