The DORK Club is now a games developer. If Nibris can get away with being classified as one in the eyes of the gaming “press,” than consarn it, so can we. We’ve got a $100 game engine and everything!

We’re setting the bar high with our ambitious first project: An MMO based on Stephen King’s cherished library of award-winning novels and short stories. Being good friends with Mr. King, I secured the rights for just $19, meaning I got a much better deal than J.J. Abrams.

While the game is obviously still in the very earliest stages of development as we look for cheap out-sourced programmers, today I will reveal the first details of this tentatively titled project, and give you an overview of some of the game’s most exciting and innovative features.

Players can choose from one of four playable classes as they pledge allegiance to The White in the ongoing war against The Red. Gunslingers dual wield deadly six shooters and command cunning hawk pets. Elderly Jedi can teleport short distances as well as control others and lift heavy objects with their minds. Impossibly Mature 12-Year-Olds use their wise-beyond-their-years maturity to outwit enemies four times their age. And finally, Popular Artists Trying to Escape Their Past walk a thin line between hating and embracing post modernism. Possible expansion classes include the Mildly Racist Magical Negro and the Gentle Retarded Mongoloid.

As players level up (wait until you hear our ding sound!), they will actually transcend to higher levels of The Dark Tower itself, gaining access to more and more of Stephen King’s “other worlds than these,” including locations as diverse as Derry, Maine; Castle Rock, Main; and Haven, Maine.

While our planned partnership with Microsoft fell through with the cancellation of their DC Universe MMO, we’re proud to announce that we’ll be partnering with Turbine to help make our Stephen King MMO the best possible game it can be. Players will be able to transfer their characters between our game and Turbine’s upcoming Harry Potter MMO, and vice versa, at no extra charge.

Our partnership with Turbine also allows us to present every aspect of our game in terms of The Lord of the Rings Online. Ka-tets (like fellowships in LotRO) will allow players to forge everlasting alliances and friendships that grow over time. Using our robust music system (similar to the music system found in The Lord of the Rings Online), players can play brief snippets of popular songs that best represent their current situation. Players will even be able to temporarily take on one of Randall Flagg’s many persona – the hard case, the walkin’ dude, the dark man, the ageless stranger – and fight against their former allies (not unlike LotRO’s monster play).

Like The Lord of the Rings Online, we also have some exciting raid content planned for our upcoming MMO. Planned raid bosses include Stephen King’s alcoholism, Stephen King’s drug addiction, and Stephen King’s head on a stick (like the last boss of Doom 2—a reference to The Lord of the Rings Online). Stephen King fans will also be excited to hear they’ll be able to face off against the Crimson King himself, standing idly by as a previously unmentioned NPC quickly and easily defeats the game’s ultimate evil. Following the final boss fight, players can enter The Dark Tower and begin the game again at level 1, but with an additional, class-based musical instrument.

I hope everyone who reads this site will be free for GM duty when the game finally ships. We can all hang out in Stephen King’s virtual house, the game’s equivalent to GM island, and ban any player unfortunate enough to find it.

[EDIT: Bango "vector_black" Skank was here<---]

You probably noticed, but I’ve been neglecting this place. Consider it yet another oscillation as I alternate between completely ignoring this site and treating it as the center of my universe. I’m not entirely sure what, if anything, I’ll do with this space “going forward,” but were I betting man, and were there options to bet on, I’d go with “sit idly by and watch the latest news post become increasingly out of date.”

At this point, I’ve been “working” in the “games industry” for six weeks, “I guess.” Basically, my day-to-day responsibilities involve a lot of forum posting, a lot of e-mailing, and a whole lot of copy-pasting the same damn thing repeatedly.

One of my primary duties, though it’s mentioned nowhere in my job description, is to act as a sort of PR liaison between the mysterious unnamed company where I work and the websites we so desperately need to cover our products. This mostly involves letting them know when new stuff gets added to our games, and explaining exactly what all this new stuff is. Because I’m not about to write a press release, instead I relay this information in e-mails that closely resemble dorkclub.com-style blog posts, often pooling information from various forum posts that aren’t quite fit for public consumption.

At no point did I expect every single site that receives these updates to just blatantly copy-paste my information word for word and post it under someone else’s name. Literally every single site that I’m in contact with, with the exception of one exceptional site that has linked to this very space in the past (HINT), simply re-posts my email and pretends they wrote it themselves, seemingly unaware that half a dozen other sites are doing the exact same thing. I wonder which one will blame one of the others of plagiarism first.

Now, we all know the “journalism” in games “journalism” is in quotation marks for a reason, idiotic publisher-press post-Gerstmanngate conspiracies aside, but I never realized so many sites are so blatant about their complete lack of ethics.

This is, unfortunately, an industry where GamesRadar, pandering mess of shame and retardation that it is, actually has relatively high standards.

EA has extended and expanded their 2006 license agreement with Epic Games, allowing the publisher to use Unreal Engine 3 in more than five upcoming titles currently in development. At present, EA is keeping their mouth shut as to what any of those five titles may be.

Since licensing the engine in 2006, EA has used UE3 for Medal of Honor Airborne and the recently-released Army of Two. Clearly, the publisher is more satisfied with Epic’s engine that other developers.

In fact, Frank Gibeau, President of EA Games, said, “With the largest and most talented studio operation in the world, it’s critical for us to give our studio teams the best tools they need to make great games. This agreement reflects our commitment to Epic’s technology which, in combination with our own cutting-edge systems, allows us to create ground breaking hits.”

Epic, EA Announce Unreal Engine 3 License Extension [Gamasutra]

Penny Arcade and Hothead Games, the developer behind the upcoming Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, have teamed up to launch Greenhouse, a digital distribution service for independent game developers eager to share their creations with Penny Arcade’s massive audience (the Penny Arcade website draws 55 million page fews a month). When it launches, Greenhouse will be the only place to get the PC, Mac, and Linux versions of Penny Arcade Adventures which, aside from an unannounced Hothead Games title, is presently the only game planned for the service.

Rather than combat other digital distribution services like Steam and GameTap head on, Greenhouse would focus solely on indie games, with Penny Arcade’s Gabe and Tycho serving as an approval board of sorts, ensuring only high quality games end up on the service. “The games have to go through us before they get to Greenhouse, or we submit them to Greenhouse ourselves,” says Jerry “Tycho” Holkins. Additionally, Greenhouse would not require an application to download and install, but would instead function more like an online store.

Holkins also promises to give indie developers a larger financial stake than other distribution services, saying, “I think that most publishing arrangements are full of shit.” (For more on Gabe and Tycho’s thoughts on the new service and to hear about their failed deal to get their upcoming game onto GameStop’s shelves, be sure to check out Wired’s exclusive interview.)

Full disclosure: The Penny Arcade Gang and The DORK Club Extended Family aren’t exactly on speaking terms after some World of Warcraft-related incidents, but even I have to admire a service that gets more independent games into more gamers’ hands.

Penny Arcade Harvests Cool Indie Games for Greenhouse [Game|Life]

Not since The GIA shut down on April 1, 2002, has there been a more unfortunately timed announcement in gaming. Yesterday a representative from Stormfront Studios confirmed the developer will be closing shop after a prolific twenty-year run.

Best known for the Gold Box series of Dungeons & Dragons games and co-developing the original AOL Neverwinter Nights, more recently Stormfront Studios produced last generation’s Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Bloodwake, and Demon Stone. They also developed the original PC version of Madden NFL.

The anonymous Stormfront rep told Next Gen the reason for the developer’s closure. “Frankly, we didn’t get pitched, and the project [we were working on] made no revenue. The economy is such that the projects that we weren’t winning, ended.”

Stormfront Studios to Shut Down After Twenty Years in Gaming [Gaming Today]

Capcom now wholly owns Japanese developer K2, best known for its work on the Tenchu series, having developed four entries in the stealth ninja series in as many years. More recently, K2 has been working with Capcom on Lost Planet: Extreme Condition. Capcom acquired the company through an exchange of stock in order to “make it possible to allocate development resources more efficiently in response to shifts in market conditions.”

While they had their checkbooks out, Capcom also bought the exclusive worldwide rights to publish games based on the MotoGP motorcycling championship for the next five years. Namco Bandai had previously published MotoGP titles for the PlayStation while THQ published MotoGP games for the Xbox 360 and PC.

Clearly, a new Mega Man R game featuring an official MotoGP license and stealth sequences is in the work. After the recent Street Fighter and Bionic Commando revivals, Mega Man R was the next logical choice. Bravo, Capcom. Bravo.

Capcom Acquires Tenchu Z Dev, MotoGP License [Gamasutra]

Take-Two Interactive’s Board of Directors unanimously voted that EA’s buyout offer of $26.00 per share is “inadequate in multiple respects and contrary to the best interests of Take-Two’s stockholders,” urging stockholders not to sell any of their shares to Electronic Arts in order to fight a hostile takeover.

Strauss Zelnick, Chairman of the Board of Directors, said EA’s offer provided “insufficient value,” reiterating the Board’s responsibility to “maximize stockholder value.” Like the other members of the Board, Zelnick sees EA’s buyout offer as “opportunistically timed to capture the value of the upcoming Grand Theft Auto IV launch at the expense of our stockholders.”

The Board plans to explore alternatives to “maximize value for stockholders,” including a possible merger with a third party, following the release of Grand Theft Auto IV on April 29, feeling they would be in the best position to review their status at that time.

Take-Two Interactive Software Board Rejects Electronic Arts’ Offer As Inadequate [Take 2 Games - Investor Relations General Information]