This week gaming blogs are cluttered with E3 news. Most of the games profiled aren't of much interest to me, but here are three that caught my eye from various sources:

1. Tom Chick reports on King's Bounty:

Don't be fooled by the fact that this is based on the curiously irrelevant license for an ancient Sega Genesis game; this is a full-blown modern RPG with turn-based tactical combat, addictive army management, demons in a box, queen dating, and classic character leveling on a skill tree, all set in an expansive fantasy world.

Looks potentially very cool. Website here.

2. Rock, Paper, Shotgun has been running coverage of Champions Online all week.
One of the main draws of City of Heroes — the existing super-hero MMORPG — was the superior character customization. Sounds like Champions Online will excel in this area. I'm excited, even though MMORPGs are hopeless time-sinks by nature.

3. Via Bill Harris at Dubious Quality, a tip about Hinterland, a RTS/RPG:

Features
–Fantasy role-playing and character development
–Party-based tactical combat, including item use
–Base building, including building upgrades
–Innovative combat stat leveling system
–Random world generation for maximum replay
–Folklore / fantasy setting
–Intimate scale

Definitely worth a look.

I like the Fallout series, and I like Oblivion, so I'm really looking forward to Fallout 3. Here are some developments.

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Via GameSetWatch, I see that the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) named its top ten indie games out of a strong field of contenders. Though puzzle games seem to predominate, there's some good stuff from other genres as well. Check it out.

Via Kotaku and Scorpia, I was very happy to hear about Good Old Games, a project by the makers of The Witcher. Good Old Games will be selling games from the '80s and '90s — and, I suppose, this decade — for less than ten bucks, via digital distribution, with no intrusive copy protection, and best yet tweaked to be compatible with XP and Vista. It's a classic gamer's dream. I haven't seen anything approaching a complete list, but the site shows the Fallout games, which bodes well for their selection. There's a lot more information in this interview..

Nerdvana.

Whatever sort of foolish nanny-state won't-somebody-think-of-the-children Jack-Thompsonesque video game censorship bullshit we have to put up with here on occasion — at least for a few months until a court strikes it down — we're far better off than our Aussie friends. Down there something with the charming name "Office of Film & Literature Classification"* can effectively ban a game by refusing to classify it. That's what they are doing in the case of the much anticipated Fallout 3, apparently because in the game — as in previous Fallout games — your character can take various drugs and medications. Most sensible thing, really, what with StimPacks and RadAway cutting a tragic swath through Down Under youths.

*Now, properly run, this could be the best government job ever:

Bureaucrat 1: OK. The end. Turn it off. Now, how would we classify that one?
Bureaucrat 2: Chick flick.
Bureaucrat 3: Totally. Pffft.
Bureaucrat 1: No it wasn't! It had action! That guy got shot!
Bureaucrat 2: Yeah, but there were, like, consequences.
Bureaucrat 3: And feelings.
Bureaucrat 2: Total chick flick.
Bureaucrat 1: You guys have classified the last ten movies we saw as chick flicks, and one of them had zombies.
Bureaucrat 2: Zombies with feelings.
Bureaucrat 3: Can we move on to classifying literature now? I've got some new terms for these "Left Behind" books.

edited to add some key words because I am a dumbass.

Gizmodo reports on some new Wii remotes that would not be legal in the 11th circuit, if you catch my drift.

You probably don't, because that's ridiculously obscure. They're dildos. They're Wii-controlling dildos. There, now you don't have to click on the link for the very mildly NSFW picture.

So a group of people in the office is talking about young kids and their hazards and trying to freak out the recently married people. We're talking about the sleeping habits of our kids. So I say:

Babies must sleep. Babies must rest. Wise is the one who does not waken them.

. . . and get a lot of blank, uncomfortable looks.

Please note I had the good judgment not to complete the quote.

Geeks — including gaming geeks in particular — are not any more or less dysfunctional, on average, than the general populace.

However, as with any group, there is a core subset of uber-geeks who take games very very seriously and get very upset about sequels to their cherished games — sequels which cannot possibly live up to the image of the game said geeks have constructed in their head. Hence when a company like Blizzard announces that it's producing Diablo III, latest in an insanely popular clickfest crpg-lite, many Diablo fans react roughly the way Al-Qaeda would if you published a cartoon in which Muhammad wins a hot dog eating contest.

Hence a furious and interminable argument about the art direction and visual style of the newest Diablo, culminating in a hilariously entitled and irritable online petition to Blizzard complaining that the new game will be just too fucking pretty.

It has a list of demands headed What we want. It also has a list of complaints:

Outside scenarios with vivid colors, beautiful forests with colorful vegetation, shinny and beautiful waterfalls where even rainbows take place.

Oh, won't someone think of the imps?

So it turns out that Variety, that venerable journal for people who like to use the term "The Industry" in a non-ironic fashion, has a video game blog called "The Cut Scene" written by one Ben Fritz. Now, you might expect that this is like a meat-packing journal having a column for reviewing tofu burgers. Fie! Come not with such preconceptions. I'm sure it's a serious enterprise.

Well . . . sort of.

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A couple of weeks ago I posted about the curious tale of Majestic Studios, which was caught ripping off backgrounds from a bevy of quite well-known games for its own new game, the lamely titled "Limbo of the Lost." The story created a minor and short-lived internet meme showing other games Majestic Studios might have ripped off.

Now Majestic's devs — strangely silent since the story broke — have emerged, professing to be shocked, shocked, that third party independent contractors provided them with stolen art:

In response to the shocking notification that some alleged unauthorized copyrighted materials submitted by sources external to the development team have been found within the PC game Limbo of the Lost, we (the development team) have given our consent and full cooperation to both publishers who are recalling all units from all territories immediately.

There are two problems with this excuse. First, it's impossible to believe that no one at Majestic — a company which must be familiar with modern games — recognized any of the highly recognizable art from popular and big-name games like Oblivion and Thief. Second, a tipster at Kotaku points out that the game's developer took credit for the game's art backgrounds in a forum post in 2004.

Betcha he forgot about that one.

Saddle up the lawyers and grab the neosporin, boys. This one's gonna hurt.

A few gaming odds and ends for Friday:

• "Hooray! A XX! That's a critical hit on the Gaul, Gaius Maxiumus!" Were the Romans d20 gamers? It would appear so.

• Via Rock Paper Shotgun (a must-visit for any crpg fan), a cautionary tale: if you're going to rip off art from a game, don't make it a well-known and popular game with a huge online fan base. That's what Majestic Studios is finding out as it gets nailed for ripping off substantial art from Oblivion.

• Via Kotaku, an interview with the author of a book that looks fun for gamers: This Gaming Life, about the author's exploration of online gaming culture in London, Seoul, and Reykjavik.

• Finally, the new Neverwinter Nights 2 expansion looks promising, particularly the portions that allow full party customization (I don't care for in-party NPCs, a leftover of my days playing Wizardry) and fairly free exploration.

Tales of the Rampant Coyote has a great roundup of indie crpg news. Check it out.

We've drooled previously over the upcoming indie crpg Age of Decadence. Now via Scorpia I see that RPGWatch has put up its third playtest AAR. This one showcases NPC interaction and multiple solutions to quests. Still very much looking forward to this one.

Jack Thompson: American Hero of Freedom.

Wait, what?

You heard that right. Jack Thompson, crusading (constantly) lawyer (for the moment), whose batshit insane antics we've frequently discussed here, is going to be honored as an America pro-freedom hero. The award is to be bestowed by something called America's Freedom Festival in Utah.

The purpose of the festival is to commemorate our Day of Independence and celebrate the spirit of America by creating festivities that instill a deeper sense of patriotism in the hearts of those involved.

Jack Thompson's purpose, on the other hand, is to file frivolous lawsuits, insult judges, file legal briefs comprised primarily of rebuses, demand the indictment of public officials who disagree with him, blather about loyalty oaths, and invoke Jesus Christ in an effort to ward off his imminent disbarment.

Those things are totally patriotic. A lot of our greatest Americans, icons of patriotism, were complete vexatious litigant whackjobs. Abraham Lincoln? Clinically depressed lawyer. Joe McCarthy? Paranoid-schitzo drunk. And so on.

So best of luck to the good citizens of Utah in celebrating Mr. Thompson. Make sure none of the carnival games encourages violence.

This one, written in 2004, was lost with a prior iteration of Popehat; I was inspired to dig it up from another site when I noticed someone following a now-dead link from Kotaku to find it. It concerns "Saga of Ryzom," a MMORPG (that is, for non-gamers, a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing game, like World of Warcraft) that went off-line for good early this year. Here it is, after the jump:

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