Through a series of hilarious misunderstandings, I somehow ended up as a guest on this week’s Van Hemlock News Podcast (while a renowned games journalist found himself leading a group of mercenaries staging a coup d’état in a Central African state, but that’s another story). There’s gripping live Sony reportage, analysis of the massive drop in World of Warcraft subscribers and a third section that I won’t spoil by revealing the content. There is definitely no suggestion that Blizzard may have been responsible for any attack on Sony that might have affected SOE games as a desperate response to a fall in WoW subscribers, certainly not, there’s no evidence whatsoever for any such allegation.
If you don’t subscribe to the Van Hemlock podcast you really ought to, it’s quite splendid.
That was a very entertaining podcast.
With respect to spoilers in general:
a) Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to.
b) “Ignorance is bliss” is an old saying for a good reason…
c) No one can tell your secret if you don’t tell anyone your secret…
d) loose lips sink ships – so shut it you lot! (directed @ every game developer… everywhere.)
It’s rather mind-boggling to me the vast quantity of whinging that goes on about “early reveals” from game developers when the solution is rather simple; only release the information you want revealed – when you want it revealed and not before.
From a conspiracy theorist viewpoint, it could also be pointed out that this sort of shenanigans only leads to further conversation about the game (*cough* on podcasts and blogs *cough*) which is, in fact, sort of the whole point of the operation in the first place. Methinks they doth protest too much…
Sorry to be so blunt about it but, well… there ya go…
Does this mean we can look forward to hearing Tim and Jon on Kiasacast?
@ArcherAvatar: Interesting thoughts. It seems that Blizzard have managed to keep project Titan pretty much under wraps, so perhaps it is in some respects down to the nature of the studio as to whether these things are leaked. On the other hand, you can’t always cater for the rogue disgruntled employee who has an axe to grind.
@Stabs: To be honest, getting ourselves on the podcast is a minor miracle, but perhaps one day we’ll be feeling extra adventurous.
@ArcherAvatar With regard to not telling anyone your secret, with the number of people involved in big games it gets difficult to stop a rogue disgruntled employee as Melmoth mentioned, or someone wanting to show friends some cool stuff that gets forwarded, and forwarded, and forwarded. I don’t think it’s a major problem when spoilers are clearly labelled and people can avoid them, for many films and TV shows there are bands of enthusiasts posting filming reports, any scraps of scripts and dialogue they can get etc., but if they start seeping into “general knowledge” so you get a headline in Google Reader of “X does Y in Modern Warfare 3!!!” it can definitely spoil things; probably not so much for Modern Warfare 3, but for a more story-driven game.