WolfQuest Shutting Down

Five years ago, a little game made by a small group of programmers who work for the Minnesota Zoo. It showed how the wolves survived out in the wild, how they interacted with other wolves, and in later updates actually let you mate and take care of wolf pups. It was funded through grants provided by the National Wildlife Foundation and through people buying merch through their online store. The game was called "WolfQuest" and was kind of ambitious with updates every couple months, multiplayer servers, all while teaching you about wolves without coming out and saying, "Here's a biology lesson!"

Now jump ahead to just a couple days ago when this email was sent out:

As of today, it’s been five years since WolfQuest, episode 1 was released,
and wow, it’s been an amazing journey. Thanks to the National Science
Foundation, Best Buy, and other grants and donations, what started as an
idea for a free, basic educational wolf game has led to four WolfQuest game
releases and over 500,000 registered members worldwide. The WolfQuest Team
would like to thank you for your support over the last five years; it’s
been quite the experience for all of us.

Because of generous donations, store purchases, and forum ad revenue, we
are able to continue to keep all facets of the game and Community Forums
running much longer than expected. However, we no longer have grant
funding so this e-mail is to let you know of upcoming plans for WolfQuest.


WolfQuest Games: the current version of WolfQuest (Survival of the Pack)
will be available for download and gameplay for as long as we can afford
the server. We will eventually remove the multiplayer lexicon so only
phrased chat and no chat options are available, but we hope this phase
won’t take place for many months to come.

WolfQuest Store and Donations: the WolfQuest store will continue to remain
open with clearance sale prices and the current stock of inventory. Once
items sell out, they will not be replaced, and all proceeds will go to the
Minnesota Zoo. Because we will no longer be offering game updates, we have
also stopped accepting donations for WolfQuest. If you’d like to donate to
a worthwhile organization, we recommend looking into wolf and other
wildlife education and conservation organizations.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to log in to the
WolfQuest Community Forums (www.wolfquest.org/bb) and post on the
announcement or the Tips, Hints, and Help section there. This e-mail
address is not monitored. From the entire WolfQuest Team, thank you to
everyone who has played the game, participated in the forums, and otherwise
put in so much time and energy into this project- it’s been quite the
thrilling ride and we’re glad it can continue.

It's sad to see this little game go, but I guess it was inevitable. WolfQuest will be missed. You can still download the game here.

TL;DR: WolfQuest is leaving the internet due to grants from the NWF being cut. Downloads will be available for a limited time.

the Apocalypse for Gamers

Guess what? the world ended yesterday! And now we're either trapped in our own limbos because we're dead without realizing it or nothing happened at all.

Anyway, due to the doomsday weekend, I decided to look upon all the things that make gamers feel the true power of fear. These are some of the many things that would make gamers have their own apocalypse:

1. BLACKOUT

Despite the joke pic of character "Blackout" from the Transformers (2007) film, the idea of power being completely gone with you having nothing to do about it would make any gamer cry. The only way that this would suck more is if the power goes out during the middle of playing a game. Can you imagine encountering a major boss in a game like Devil May Cry and as soon as you start playing the battle the TV suddenly goes blank? Horrifying!!!

2. CRAPPY SEQUELS

You don't have to agree with every game shown above, but when sequels are long anticipated and end up becoming buzz kills to the overall franchise, it will haunt you forever.

It's even worse when you've been a long fan of a particular franchise, like Duke Nukem or Resident Evil, and you sit there as you watch your favorite thing slowly kill itself with an abundance of bad or just plain unworthy sequels, spin offs, prequels or whatever else. In my opinion, Sonic the Hedgehog had it the worst. He seems like the kind of guy that tries almost too hard to both return and relate to modern games of today but this ends up making things even worse. While the character(s) will always be loved by gamers who know him, his days seem to be slowing coming to an end, which is scary. Possibly the slowest Game Apocalypse to date.

3. CANCELLATION

What's could be worse than bad sequels and blackouts? How about cancelled games? The idea of any games announced like Bioshock Infinite or Metal Gear Rising getting cancelled would be a heart attack for gamers, especially if they pre-ordered the darn thing months or years before its release.

One game in particular that fears gamers is Last Guardian. Holy Hell! Never have I seen a game with more problems being released in my entire gamer life!!! At least Aliens Colonial Marines had simple reasons for being delayed again and again and again, and even again! This is not to say that Last Guardian will be cancelled, because the game is still in Sony's playing field, but with all the crap this game is going through to be released i'm surprised that they haven't yet.

4. RIP LOCAL

Everything in the gaming world seems to be leaning more towards online playability more and more by the years, you either hate it or you don't. I personally hate because of my own personal Apocalypse fear.

Can you imagine if a future E3 show (E3 2016?) announced that there will never be local Multiplayer or Co-op playability anymore, and the only way you can is through online in completely separate rooms? I would hate that! look, I know many games now a days are online as it is and that the local is bound to die soon, but I've always been a local kind of guy. Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare (above) is one of my favorite local multiplayer experiences in my life. Me and my father and friends would always hangout to play it on the weekends and such. But what if that were to be gone forever? Can you imagine Nazi Zombies having no option of playing with a buddy sitting right next to you? Can you tell that I hate online???

What else would be considered the "end of days" for gamers? let us know and I hope no one took this post too seriously...

Online Cease Fire Scheduled for Dec. 21

In light of the recent shooting in Newtown, CT, Antwand Pearman, editor-in-chief of GamerFitNation.com, has called for a 24-hour cease fire for all multiplayer shooters on Dec. 21. The group isn't meaning to associate virtual violence leading to real-life violence, but rather to allow the gaming community to show their support for the lives lost on Dec. 14. If you'd like to join the event, here's the Facebook page.

Opinion:
I have a couple things I'd like to get out on the web about this event. I think it's a pretty awesome idea that someone is willing to make an event like this. After all the shootings that have happened recently, it was kind of inevitable that this would come around. However, I think it's kind of a dumb thing that they aren't attributing this at all to video games as a cause.

I know, I'm gonna sound like some politician from the 90's saying Mortal Kombat will poison your kids' minds, but bare with me for a second. Even though there's no real proof that video games are directly correlated with real violence doesn't mean that there's no link at all. Especially with new games coming out like Hitman: Absolution and Farcry 3, you have to admit video games are getting a hell of a lot more violent than the stuff we had back in the day with Doom and Mortal Kombat. Graphics and gameplay are getting more realistic by the day with all the fancy hardware of the PC and with the help of real military operatives lending a hand on video games. Even though video games are never admitted as a cause, they usually do have some impact on that. With all the forms of media out there as violent as video games such as TV, movies, books, and art, how many of them make you pull the trigger?

Whatever happened to games like Sly Cooper and Ratchet & Clank? Every game that comes out these days is either a first-person shooter or the gritty reboot of X. I want the uprise of the platformer/cartoony violence, but I guess that won"t happen knowing that cartoon violence also causes people to become aggressive. Knowing how things are going these days though, it would just be a game where Fox McCloud crash lands on an uncharted planet and gets covered with dirt and mud while struggling to press the 'A' button to escape his burning ship before it explodes. Then he has to hunt for food using his blaster, but gets raided by some alien dudes. He then has to beat them to death with a stick by mashing 'Y' cause his blaster got knocked away in the confusion. Oh, and slow-mo. Lots of slow-mo to show the detail. I can see it now,"Starfox: Absolute Revenge Mission".

Anyway, that's enough of my pointless rambling. Go enjoy some Final Fantasy on the 21st.

a STAT and GeekBeerz teaser for 2013

Here is a teaser for a secret project for a comic series in 2013, to celebrate our new GeekBeerz and STAT partnership:

Want to see Next-Gen Graphics? Well now you can!!!

Daniel Vavra, the former Mafia developer, has shown off his next game using next-generation engine from his new Warhorse studios. This show off is for an unannounced Midieval RPG game. Check out the work and detail they put into the woodwork of the cabin(s), the glorious details in the trees and plants, and that fabulous and wonderful mud!craziest part? This is shown running on an old laptop using a Nvidia 555m graphics card! Is this Cry Engine 3 you may ask? No, not really THAT but it is a modified proto version of it according to Eurogamer Czech, you gotta start somwhere to improve graphics right? Is this for PS4? 720? Both? High-end PC? Hopefully we'll get more input in the years to come...

Star Ocean 5 Teaser Site

      Square Enix has put up a teaser site for their next big game, a galactic picture in the background, the words secret title 2010.12.12, and the words STAR       BORDER WAR GALAXY DIVIDE      AMBITION what could this mean?

      There are many out there who have an idea of that it would be and that speculation has spread, Star Ocean Ambition, supposedly the next big game coming out from Square Enix. The last Star Ocean game came out for the 360 in February of 2009 its been four years since the fourth game with four words describing the game and a four day countdown until its announced, coincidence i think not.

      Star Ocean Teaser site here.

GBP 11 - Assassin's Creed is Confusing

NOTE: The audio got desynched toward the end. Nothing I could've done to fix it. Hopefully we can find a way to fix it later on.

In this episode, we all finished the Assassin's Creed series is and can't stop talking about how messed up the plot is. Also there's some Dishonored and Metro 2033 talk somewhere in the mix.

Games Disscussed:
Batman - 2:15 (spoilers between 9:45-10:39)
Brutal Legend - 10:45
Assassin's Creed: Revelations - 13:45
Hitman: Absolution - 23:00
43:44 break
Ghostbusters - 45:05
Assassin's Creed series - 49:33
Playstation Allstars Battle Royale - 58:23
Metro 2033 - 1:03:19
Doom 3 - 1:18:30
Dishonored - 1:21:45

Music Used:
Portal 2 - Smooth Jazz
TuXe - Look Out Here Comes Tom
Ghostbusters Theme
Ken Ashcorp - 20% Cooler

Download or subscribe to us on iTunes.

Sony Patents A Controller That Splits In Half

With the Playstation Move dying due to lack of software and intrest, it looks like Sony is making one final effort to keep the hardware afloat. How you ask? Simple: Make a controller that splits in half.

Yup, you read that right. Sony may possibly be making a controller with the functionality of a Move controller, but put it into a more familiar form. The controller will have an accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, vibration capability, and a speaker. According to the filing, it will be really light-weight, but you'll still need to pick up a Playstation camera. Oh, not to mention double wrist straps.

Source: Kotaku, Sony Patent

GeekBeerz Podcast episodes and Retro Ramblysodes will be "Back and Forth"

This was something we had already planned but I guess it's something to bring up to everyone's attention since no one else knows.

We have to manage a GeekBeerz podcast episode but also the new Retro ramblysodes as well, so how do we do it? We planned it out to e back and forth, to switch from one to the other and back. Example: We just recorded and finished episode 11 a couple days ago, so when we meet up again we'll be doing the second ramblysode instead. This is mostly to bring more to the table and hopefully help bring out more episodes in the months to come. It's also a way to give us time to bring more into our episodes so that we aren't struck dumb when we finally get to recording them.