Acclaim Games has announced that BOTS, their free MMO action game, has entered the open beta stage. Players do battle with custom built robots on a wide variety of colourful maps, seeking levels and loot. The current release supports solo, co-operative, PvP and "PvP Base" modes and has a level cap of 99.

Rather than charging monthly fees, or even selling the game client, Acclaim has committed to making BOTS free to play, with revenue being raised through advertising and the sale of special in-game items. These "Money items" are not yet available, and will not be activated until the game is officially released.

This marketing scheme where publishers sell in-game items to players is becoming increasingly popular, and has already been adapted by other online games such as Bang! Howdy and EverQuest II, though one could argue that Sony's financial situation is not comparable to Acclaim's.

The increasingly talkative Warren Spector has given a speech entitled "Gaming at the Margins" to students at Austin Community College. It covered many of the issues Spector's been vocal about since leaving Ion Storm (RIP) in late 2004.

Game financing, Hollywood, E3, innovation and some requisite doomsaying were all topics of conversation, but it wasn't all pessimistic. Part of the speech was a call to arms for the students in the audience to take charge of the medium:


Unfortunately, the Deus Ex designer still offered no clue about what Junction Point is up to, except to again confirm their game will be delivered over Valve's Steam platform. One thing's for sure: with all this talk about a lack of innovation in the industry, Spector's putting a lot of pressure on himself to ship a very special game.

Spector's opinions are covered in much more depth in his lengthy article for The Escapist online magazine: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4.

Atari has announced the sale of the Driver franchise to Ubisoft for US$24 million, as well as most of the assets of Driver developer Reflections. Atari said the move was part of its plan to refocus its franchises and streamline its cost structure.

In other words, Driver wasn't making enough money, which is no surprise to anyone following review scores. While the series started off strongly, Driv3r was very badly received, and Driver: Parallel Lines had a lukewarm reception at best. Rather than try again, Atari has cut the series loose.

In a media release, Atari CEO Bruno Bonnell said the company was narrowing its focus.



Atari is certainly putting a lot of faith in the upcoming pseudo-MMO Test Drive Unlimited. In a recent New York Times article (registration required), Atari's VP for sales and marketing, Nique Fajors, revealed the game has been delayed four times to ensure a quality title. It was originally planned for release last November, but Fajors said Atari "will ship it when it's ready and not before, which is what is done for all the truly great products." It's a nice idea in theory.

As for Driver's future, that's in Ubisoft's hands now. Will they repair it or salvage the parts?

With the shareware version already available for several months now and, in fact, featured upon the cover CD of our first issue, most of you will have formed your own firm conclusions about Duke Nukem 3D by now. But, I dare say there might just be a couple of people out there slightly slow on the uptake (or perhaps, he says optimistically, simply waiting for the definitive review), who have yet to experience the singularly brutal charm of this superb game. So, in the interests of fairness to everybody, I will assume none of you have seen it and start right at the beginning.

The classic Half-Life mod makes a comeback

Great news! For anyone that played the classic Science and Industry mod for Half-Life, the development team have just announced the long awaited sequel for Half-Life 2 called, funnily enough, Science and Industry 2.


Check out the Science and Industry 2 website for news, concept art, and media for the upcoming sequel to the classic Half-Life mod.