Company of Heroes Lead Designer Dies in Car Crash
Brian R. Wood, a lead designer at Relic, was killed in a car crash on Whidbey Island near Oak Harbor in Washington State on Friday night.
"A Washington State Patrol spokesperson said Saturday that the driver of the Blazer, Jordyn B. Weichert, 21, of Oak Harbor, was believed to be under the influence of drugs at the time of the accident.
According to the spokesperson, the crash was triggered when Weichert decided to take off her sweater or jacket as she was driving north along the two-lane highway.
The remains of the crashed Blazer at the scene.Weichert's front-seat passenger, Samantha R. Bowling, 22, of Oak Harbor, held the steering wheel while Weichert removed the article of clothing, the State Patrol said.
During the maneuver, Bowling lost control of the Blazer. It swerved across the centerline, then back into its own lane as Bowling over-corrected, then back across the centerline, crashing into the Subaru, the State Patrol said.
Activision Claims Call of Duty Hasn't Peaked Yet
Call of Duty's European general manager says that Activision's goal with Call of Duty: Black Ops is to break the record it set by its predecessor.
Carmine's Fate Sealed, $150K Raised For Child's Play
Voting has officially closed for the Gears of War 3 Fate of Carmine charity event, a campaign that allowed fans to purchase shirts that would determine the fate of another Carmine, which historically never ends well for those bearing that name. Though, it seems last we checked that fans were pulling to keep him around. Weird.
Epic's Cliff Bleszinski and Rod Fergusson appeared at the G4 panel to let everyone know the shirts raised $150,000 for Child's Play. So what's going to happen to Carmine?
"Although the fate of Carmine has been sealed, we can't tell you right now," Bleszinski says. Guess we'll have to wait until Gears 3 comes out.
Borderlands Getting Free Level Cap Increase
When details of the latest Borderlands DLC, Claptrap's New Robot Revolution, were announced, there was no mention of a level cap increase. Fortunately, one is coming -- and even better, it will be coming free of charge to all owners of Borderlands on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.
When he wasn't busy discussing the return of Duke Nukem, Gearbox co-founder and CEO Randy Pitchford spent some time at PAX revealing that, around the release of the Borderlands Game of the Year edition (scheduled for October 12), Gearbox will update the game to increase the level cap by eight, bringing it to 69.
Square Enix Devs Discuss Secret AAA Title and What They've Learned From the West
Why are Western game protagonists always bald, macho space marines? Why are Japanese protagonists always effeminate dandies? Those are two of the questions many developers discussed at this year's CESA Developers Conference (CEDEC) in Yokohama, Japan.
At the conference, Yosuke Shiokawa and Yuki Matsuzawa addressed these queries in a presentation titled, "First Time Japanese American Joint Development: Observations on our experience of taking direction from both countries." While both developers live in Japan, they are currently working on an as yet unannounced title that is being jointly developed in Japan and America. They claimed that this title will be a AAA title with a 90% plus metacritic score. Despite this, Shiokawa and Matsuzawa said they looked down on Western games. This attitude is still not uncommon in Japan, where until recently, the phrase "Western games are crap games" was taken as a self-evident truth by both fans and game makers.
