This is a look at what Game History student, Justin Kline knows about the past ten years of Game Industry History.
Created by JKline81 on Oct 20, 2010
Last updated: 10/20/10 at 08:53 PM
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Question 1: What were the details of the event?
OnLive breaks months of speculation and unveils further details for its release date of June 17th.
Question 2: Why was the event important to the industry?
With this cloud computing based service, the burden of processing is placed on the OnLive servers rather then your computer. This technology effectively allows Onlive to use any Intel-based Mac as a high-end gaming machine.
http://www.macworld.com/article/150710/2010/06/onlive_e32010.html
Question 1: What were the details of the event?
An experiment into indie DRM-free digital game distribution was released with great success under the name Humble Indie Bundle.
Question 2: Why was the event important to the industry?
It provides yet another avenue for indie game developers to release their games onto the market. Also, it helps provide a very charitable contribution to important charties.
http://www.wolfire.com/humble
Question 1: What were the details of the event?
BlizzCon tickets sold out within 30 minutes of going on sale.
Question 2: Why was the event important to the industry?
It solidifies Blizzards Entertainment dominant role in the MMO market and shows other avenues of producing revenue for gaming companies. After the previous years of ticket sells, Blizzard started to offer pay-per-view as well.
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/05/17/first-round-of-blizzcon-2009-tickets-sold-out-in-under-30-minute/
Question 1: What were the details of the event?
EA announced an agreement with Elevation Partners to acquire VG Holding Corp., the owner of both BioWare Corp. and Pandemic Studios.
Question 2: Why was the event important to the industry?
EA starts to amass key companies to position themselves more competitively in key genres in interactive entertainment: action, adventure and roleplaying games.
http://www.elevation.com/EP_news.asp
Question 1: What were the details of the event?
Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive are sued by the Los Angeles attorney’s office over the Hot Coffee mod.
Question 2: Why was the event important to the industry?
Although the mod was cut from the final product, since the code was still in the game modders were able to quickly discover it and utilize the code. Take-Two is still having repercussions to this day from this event. Other video game companies were fast to take any unused coding out of their games to avoid the same mistake.
http://www.1up.com/news/take-two-settles-hot-coffee-lawsuit
Question 1: What were the details of the event?
Blizzard Entertainment response to the LGBT debate on WoW: "To promote a positive game environment for everyone and help prevent such harassment from taking place as best we can, we prohibit mention of topics related to sensitive real-world subjects in open chat within the game, and we do our best to take action whenever we see such topics being broadcast."
Question 2: Why was the event important to the industry?
This is one of the first major lawsuits blurring the lines between the real world and virtual one. Game developers are having to be more cautious with the management of their virtual worlds.
http://kotaku.com/153075/wow-blizzard-gets-gay-rights-warning
Question 1: What were the details of the event?
Correspondent Ed Bradley reports, “ Can a video game train someone to kill?” on the TV show 60 Minutes.
Question 2: Why was the event important to the industry?
It brought in the question of needing more censorship in the video game industry as ESRB was still trying to find the new medium. New ratings were brought out in 2005 to deal with much of the controversy sparked by this and many other reports.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/04/60minutes/main678261.shtml
Question 1: What were the details of the event?
EA purchased exclusive licensing deals with the NFL for five years in response to Sega’s ESPN NFL 2K5 successfully taking market shares away from EA’s Madden NFL series during 2004.
Question 2: Why was the event important to the industry?
EA took notice of its shortcomings with the Madden NFL series and took precautions steps to give them ample time to produce a better product. This marks one of the first occasions that a game developer bought out exclusive licensing to produce a better game rather then to buy out the market.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/12/13/news_6114977.html
Question 1: What were the details of the event?
Valve releases the first stable version of Steam, which replaces the WON system that has been used for Counter Strike and other Valve games.
Question 2: Why was the event important to the industry?
The Steam client opened up the market for smaller independent software developers to sell their merchandise without the need of going through retailers. Steam is considered to be the largest digital distribution market for video games with nearly 70% of the market.
http://www.giantbomb.com/valve-corporation/65-1374/
Question 1: What were the details of the event?
Sega of America has officially announced a drastic restructuring strategy to become a multiplatform third-party software publisher
Question 2: Why was the event important to the industry?
Sega proved that companies could restructure and still bring innovative ideas to the industry without going out of business.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2680518.html
Question 1: What were the details of the event?
In March of 2000 Sega of America, Inc., Electronic Arts Inc., and Nintendo of America, Inc. filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Northern District of California against Yahoo!, alleging that Yahoo! knowingly aided the sale of counterfeit video games on its Web site.
Question 2: Why was the event important to the industry?
Although the lawsuit was fully dropped in 2001, it helped to establish much needed policy and regulation on piracy issues.
http://www.finnegan.com/resources/articles/articlesdetail.aspx?news=f9f4e849-253c-4e2d-adfa-0eb26258faf8
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