The Cow's Brain - Keeping it Simple.

Back in June before I moved the website to fatcow I wrote the article " Things to do While you Wait for Diablo 3 " That wait may be over before long however. According to Diablo's Tiwtter feed they have a big announcement coming on August 1st which may or may not mean the beginning of Beta sign ups or a release date.  The official statement reads:   

 We've invited press to Blizzard HQ to help us make some important announcements on August 1st. What features do you hope/think we'll reveal?

Of course it could also be more information on how the Battle.net service will work. According to some Uber Diablo fan sites, fiscal reports stated that the aim was to have Diablo 3 beta begin in the third quarter of 2011 and ultimately release the game in December 2011 or early 2012. Here's hoping that it is the start of beta though!

Additionally I have changed the Comment feature so that you need an account --an Open ID one works as well. While I don't mind people commenting anonymously, spammers were taking advantage.  

Recently I wrote on the ability of games to tell stories in a whole new way. While I still think games are entertaining  and an emerging art form; games like " SS:NAT2012 " (School shooter North America Tour 2012) take story telling to a place that is perhaps better left unexplored.

The game is actually a mod for half life 2, where you take on the role of a school shooter and attempt to kill as many teachers students --and apparently even yourself-- before the swat team gets you.  According to an Escapist interview with one of the developers " SS:NAT2012 isn't about why school shootings occur. It's not about the impact they have on the families of the victims. It's just a game. "  Though SS:NAT2012 is not the first game to portray school shootings, it does seem to be the first that uses more realistic scripting and graphics .Super Columbine Massacre, the name says it all, was created using RPG Maker, a top view Super Nintendo-like game editor.

A few weeks ago I posted an article about a new security policy in the United States, It came at a time when many high-profile targets had been hit by hackers.  One of these groups, Lulsec, has been getting a lot of media attention  recently. While the core group of Lulsec has apparently disbanded --coincidentally one week after the arrest of Ryan Cleary, who has been charged in connection to the attacks-- others from Lulsec have allegedly joined the group Anonymous. Lulsec has posted thousands of login names and passwords as well as credit card and address information. In their 50 days of activity they're largest attack seems to have been Sony, however they have also launched attacks  against many other gaming and government sites.  Thus far the following sites and applications have had confirmed or probable but unconfirmed attacks against their systems:

A couple of weeks ago Steam released its first free to play games, now Valve, the creators of Steam have released their very own Team Fortress 2. Since its Free-to-Play release Team Fortress 2 has become the most widely used game on Steam(June 25/2011 See here). For those who have yet to play it, Team Fortress is a first person cartoon shooter, which is inspired from early modifications to the original Quake in 1996. The move seems fitting as Team Fortress debuted several years ago and has had declining sales, but still maintained a large player base. Valve will most likely introduce a micro-payment system for Team Fortress 2, similar to the other free games on steam.