The creator of Grid Wars, an excellent Geometry Wars clone has spoken with Eurogamer about Bizarre’s request he take down his clone and gives us a little insight into some of his design choices. It appears that public opinion swayed him into making the game actually more of a Geometry Wars clone than he really anticipated, proving once again that the customer isn’t always right.

Read more: Grid Wars creator reflects | Grid Wars creator asked to remove clone

As a follow up to our previous post regarding Bizarre Creations asking that bedroom-developer Mark Incitti cease development and distribution of his freeware Geometry Wars clone, Grid Wars, Bizarre has released a very thorough statement clarifying their position.

As it’s quite long, check the whole statement after the jump..

Read more of ”Bizarre Creations clarifies position on Geometry Wars clones“

American McGee is one of gamings absolute rock stars. Not only is his name unique enough to stick in the hearts and minds of gamers all over the world, but McGee has created some of gamings most unique titles, from his early work at id, to Alice with EA and most recently Scrapland. Turns out, in an upcoming interview, McGee is quoted as saying, “The only truly next-gen console out there is the Wii. Everything else is just a video card and processor upgrade”, taking a pretty rough swipe at the XBox 360 and upcoming PS3. Being the Nintendo fans we are, we can’t help but agree. Could it be possible that McGee’s new development studio he’s opening in China will be working on a Wii title? McGee’s next game, Bad Day LA, will be released later this year for the XBox 360, ironically enough. American McWii anyone?

Read more: American McGee slags off PS3, 360 @ Eurogamer | American McGee @ Wikipedia

Artist Aram Bartholl is obviously a fan of Valve’s first-person shooter Counter-Strike. Back in 2004, he created several life-size replica crates from the Counter-Strike map “de_dust”, complete with pixelated textures to match the legendary in-game cliché of including crates throughout a games level design. He then placed these crates throughout the city of Berlin, transforming an object whose original use was to complicate space into a fully functional part of the city landscape, giving Berlin not only a little bit of game-related variety, but also taking German gamers one step closer to living out their ego-shooter fantasies on the streets of Berlin.

Read more: Counter-Strike crates on the streets of Berlin | Video game clichés @ Wikipedia

The creator of the excellent Geometry Wars clone, Grid Wars, has been asked by Geometry Wars creator Bizarre Creations to remove all links for downloading Grid Wars from the creator’s site (whew, say that 3 times quickly). Although I admit, the clone DID hit a little too close to Bizarre’s home, it is a bit sad that a freeware tribute to an excellent game which isn’t even being sold commercially or sold on the same system has been shot down without an official version to replace it. Best wishes to the developer and here’s to hoping he comes out with some new shooters to replace Grid Wars, or at least get a job offer from Bizarre to help with the next version of Geometry Wars.

Sorry folks… I’ve had to remove the link to the download.

Email from BizarreCreations:
“We’re beginning to feel the effects of the Geometry Wars clones on our sales via Microsoft now and are beginning a process to begin to more robustly protect our copyright and intellectual property. Therefore, I’d like to ask you in an amicable fashion to stop infringing our IP and pull the game ‘Grid Wars’ from the internet for download. I hope you understand and are able to do this without us having to take further steps.”

Read more: Mark Incitti’s Blitz creations | Grid Wars review

In a very interesting move, Linden Labs are starting a service-wide shutdown of their external user-forums, in order to transition communication and sharing of information in-world, through the use of in-world blogs, forums, and new communication channels being developed. Forums were already set to members-only, however, Linden Labs admitted that significant resources go into the maintenance of external forums and rightfully state that those resources should focus on the Second Life world, rather than external gossip and drama. The closures will occur over the coming months, so forum junkies won’t all be cut-off from their stuff at once.

Read more: Linden Labs starting shutdown of Second Life forums

Taking time off from closing development studios, (reportadly) bleeding talent from their various studios and throwing wild hipster parties in New York lofts, Rockstar Games have released the debut trailer for their upcoming school days meets GTA meets negative press magnet, Bully. The trailer plays more like an animated after-school special, but the quality of the voice acting and art are refreshing as always. Even though half the gaming world hasn’t seen a lick of gameplay from the title, the ‘normals’ are already all up in arms, naturally being lead by our lord and saviour Jack Thompson, with calls for banning the game from stores in order to keep kids from playing a game which is probably tamer than their everyday school lives to begin with (dear parents, most kids in school today are horrible people, go browse YouTube and MySpace for a little while for more information). So, uhmm, yeah whatever, when’s the next GTA coming out again?

Watch the video premiere of Bully after the jump..

Read more of ”Debut trailer of Rockstar Games’ Bully“

As if anyone cares after I just posted a story about World of Warcraft, Acclaim has announced a new MMORPG titled 2Moons and directed by video game legend, Dave Perry (Shiny Entertainment). 2Moons is reported to be a brutal massive multiplayer for the 18+ market, bearing the tagline “No mercy for the weak, no pity for the dying, no tears for the slain”. Ewwwwwww, chilling! Based upon Dekaron, one of the most popular MMOs in Korea, the game features brutal PvP with narrative which highlights the player’s quest to reach a level 100+ warrior and an arcarde style fighting system, letting a player dive right in and go hand to hand with enemies. The most exciting information for the release is that the game will be free to play, though I’m not quite sure if it will be ad-supported, as I’d imagine a brutal fantasy M-rated massive multiplayer with ads for Coke might feel a bit odd for a player, no?

Read more: 2Moons homepage | 2Moons press release | Dave Perry @ MobyGames

“Breaking news” everyone, there are people addicted to World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs. Shocking, I know. Those of you with subscriptions to an MMORPG (especially you WoW players) could be suffereing from computer game addiction and not even be aware of it (although, most of the addicts I know happily admit to it). Orzack is a clinical pyschologist and also happens to run one of the few outpatient clinics in the US that provides specific treatment for video game addiction. Believing that over 40% of World of Warcraft players are addicted, Orzack goes on to say that there is little difference between drug use, excessive gambling and gaming addiction.

Read more: Interview with Dr. Maressa Orzack (Via Joystiq)

Created by Flash games developer Mark Caswell-Daniels, Goggles is a brilliant browser-based flight simulator built using Google Maps images and Flash technology. In the game, users are able to fly a top-down 3d biplane rendering through major cities around the world, such as New York City, San Francisco, Tokyo, London and even the Planet Mars, using images captured from Google Mapping services. The developer seems to have gotten a little flack from people concerned about the games’ ability to allow ‘terrorists’ to crash the plane into buildings, but, common sense hopefully prevails and people see it for what it is, a fun an innovative use of web technology to create a neat little casual flight sim.

Read more: Goggles – Google Maps flight-sim