These days, nothing seems to strain the relationship between developers and gamers like digital rights management. But when your customers are as infatuated with your work as the millions who've been drooling over Blizzard Entertainment's Starcraft sequel, I guess you're willing to risk it, especially if your parent company is Activision.

That's right, after almost 20 years of shipping consistently tight, expertly crafted strategy blockbusters and online juggernauts, Blizzard is adding DRM to its repertoire, starting with Starcraft 2.

Mindful that intrusive DRM can cool the ardor of even the most devoted fans, Blizzard promises a lightweight scheme that will only require users to connect to Blizzard's servers once and sign up for a Battle.net account.

In an interview with Incgamers, which broke the news, VP of game design Ron Pardo notes that "piracy really historically has not been that bid of a deal for us." Though there have been a few examples, Pardo said that "for the most part we can shut down those services."

But if Blizzard's combination of fan loyalty and savvy use of online components to boost the value of buying a game spare it the ravages of theft, why the move to DRM?

The tongue-in-cheek answer to that question rests with Blizzard parent Activision and its Papa Smurf, Bobby Kotick. After bemoaning piracy rates for Call of Duty 4, Activision seems to have gotten much more serious about copy protection. And with chief Kotick publicly wishing for even higher game prices, the publisher is going to need some protection from outraged gamers and their pirate backlash.

The Halo movie torch has passed from a giant to a juggernaut, if a report from IESB.net is to be believed.

According to IESB, which swears that it's thrice confirmed the news with studio execs, cinematic custody of Bungie's Master Chief has shifted from Peter Jackson to none other than Steven Spielberg.

IESB says that after reading G.I. Joe scribe Stuart Beattie's spec script "Halo: The Fall of Reach," academy award collector and Bloom Blox creator Spielberg got a jones for making the movie. And when Spielberg joneses, the film industry stands at attention.

Here's the skinny:

Stuart Beattie, the writer behind the new concept that Spielberg loves, was quite busy during the 2007 writer's strike when he wrote the script on spec based on the storyline from Eric Nyland's prequel novel to HALO, THE FALL OF REACH. Beattie is also hot off the summer hit G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA which he co-wrote with director Stephen Sommers and others. During the promotional tour for that film, he told Scifi.com that the HALO story is, "an amazing story about this child that no one cares about and who cares for no one else, who kind of ends up saving all of humanity."

In April, Latino Review broke first word of Beattie's spec script, which is the first part of a trilogy and stands out for not bringing the alien Covenant mix into the picture until the middle of the second act:

The script is, first and foremost, a character-driven story about a soldier named John who was kidnapped or "conscripted" by the UNSC when he was just six years old, and then brutally trained to become an elite Spartan warrior known as Master Chief 117.

The script then takes us through the horrific first contact with the Covenant hordes on the doomed colony world of Harvest, and then climaxes with the spectacular fall of the UNSC forward base on Reach, during which every other Spartan is slaughtered.

The Halo movie was thought all but fragged after Peter Jackson and "District 9" director Neil Blokamp were unable to give the flick the attention it deserved. Now that the movie has respawned under Spielberg's guidance, the big question is whether the master of the modern blockbuster will helm the picture himself or simply take on production duties.

Even if Spielberg doesn't direct, his golden touch puts Halo in a good position to gun for the Citizen Kane of gaming movies. He's got competition, however, from Sam Raimi, who's got World of Warcraft in his craw and would no doubt love to pull an Orson Welles of his own on Azeroth.

With the very pinnacle of contemporary filmmaking jockeying for the chance to put pixels on celluloid, it seems game makers may not need to worry about crafting their own "cultural legitimacy." The movies seem intent on doing that for them.

[via IESB.net]

San Francisco, LA, Austin, Raleigh, Montreal...these are game cities. Philadelphia, not so much. But a passionate fivesome, including an audio engineer, a developer, a local game exec, a lawyer and a professor have banded together to make the City of Brotherly Love into the "Hollywood of Gaming."

It's a tall order to be sure. Part of the inspiration for their mission stemmed from a tough choice 24-year-old developer Hardik Bhatt (right, above) found himself facing after graduating from St. Joseph's in 2007 — stay in the city he adores or pursue the career he was born for, elsewhere. The dilemma stewed until he took a trip to GDC, where he presented a controller-less game he'd made called Maxwell's Demon. At the Developers Conference, Bhatt noticed a slew of municipalities and states luring studios to set up shop and wondered, "Where is Philly?" When he got back home, Bhatt got together with audio engineer Mike Worth (left, above) and started the Videogame Growth Initiative.

Today, Bhatt and company are working to prize incentives out of the city to make Philly more attractive for game development. It's a tough pitch for a city in the midst of a financial crisis. Nonetheless, Worth insists that Philly is an ideal place for making games. Highest on the list of attractions is a very low cost of living. Plus, the city is home to four Ivy League schools, including the only Ivy to offer a game development program, the University of Pennsylvania.

Regardless of how well the Videogame Growth Initiative fares in Philly, the moral of this story is the power of networking amongst gamemakers from different regions. The growth of national conferences like GDC has not only raised the profile of gaming on the national stage it has also exposed budding entrepreneurs and developers to a whole host of new business models and funding strategies. While player community building is an important part of making successful games, developer community building is critical to the success of gamemaking itself.

[via Philadelphia City Paper]

On inauguration night, the event that marked the official admission of the Wii to the White House, First Lady Michele Obama wore an ivory, one-shouldered gown crafted by Jason Wu. Turns out the haute coture Wu has a bit of a thing for the Wii as well.

The 26-year-old fashion wunderkind cites Japanese culture, Tokyo in particular, as his chief inspiration, embracing its multi-textural blend of ancient simplicity and its epitomization of modern techno sapiens.

Naturally, then, that includes games. A lover of the Wii, Wu says zombie blast-fest House of the Dead triggers a flood of childhood memories every time he fires up Miyamoto's cash cow.

Games and fashion are nothing new, but when a hotshot designer starts spitting game references in the same breath as Bottega Veneta bags, Van Cleef & Arpels jewelry and vacations to Turks and Caicos, it's worth noting.

[via Huffington Post]

When I was a kid, mornings before school were a sugary ritual involving several bowls of Lucky Charms (peppered with Wheat Germ per mom's orders) and back-to-back episodes of "Star Blazers". Of course we had games back then, but starting the school day was still all about TV, which was banned from the dinner hour.

While the quest for a glucose buzz is still undoubtedly a part of the school-day startup, The New York Times finds that social networks and videogames have replaced TV as the techno-jolt of choice among students eager to start their day right. Of course, the kids aren't alone; their Gen X parents are right there with them.

In addition to several anecdotes about kids spending some quality time with consoles, snatching their parents' iPhones, or going online for a quick fix before heading off to class, the piece offers some interesting evidence of the early morning techno-trend.

According to Arbor Networks, which analyzes Internet use, Web traffic in the U.S. gradually declines from midnight to around six in the morning. But come 7 a.m., "It's a rocket ship," says Arbor's chief scientist, Craig Labovitz. Web content delivery giant Akamai sees a similar spike in the early hours of the day, and Verizon Wireless saw the number of text messages sent between 7 and 10 a.m. surge 50 percent in July, compared with traffic just a year ago.

That's what the networks get for taking "Star Blazers" off the air.

[via New York Times]

Spokesman Peter Sunde may have resigned, and The Pirate Bay itself may be changing hands, but the notorious torrent site's founders are due for a reunion in Dutch court. And this time the date with a judge is their idea.

Ernst Louwers, representing The Pirate Bay Founders, told reporters this morning that his clients will file a summons by the end of the month for a new trial in the Netherlands. Last week a district court in Amsterdam ordered the site to "cease infringing the copyright members" of Sticthting Brein — a trade group representing the Dutch recording industry. Although a 30,000-euro a day fine was waived in the judgment, the court ordered The Pirate Bay to immediately block access to the site from Dutch IP addresses.

According to Louwers, the site's Swedish founders are moving for a new trial so that they can "present their side of the story." Given the crew's distaste for court appearances, it seems likely the request for their day court is, at least in part, a public relations tool designed to maintain the spirit of their brand while negotiating the sale of The Pirate Bay to Global Gaming Factory. GGF has been very public about its intentions to acquire the torrent provider and make an honest file-sharing service of the enigmatic site. Last week, GGF announced it was close to a deal with a "major" record label that would allow it to sell the label's new releases and back catalog online.

The zeal of The Pirate Bay founders to appear in Dutch court is a striking turnaround. In June the trio were so difficult to reach that Stichting Brein resorted to issuing court summonses to Sunde, Fredrik Neij, and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg via Facebook and Twitter.

[via AFP]