How to get a beta invite for SimCity 2013

I have been following the new SimCity with excitement as I have always been a fan of the older SimCity games.

Not that I was ever very good at them. In fact it seems that most of my SimCity games ended up with my town imploding in a cesspoll of crime, lack of electricity and abundance of pollution.

Still there is something incredibly cool about being the master of an entire little society and I have been looking forward to getting a new chance at this with SimCity 2013.

There was much rejoicing then as I checked the official SimCity website today and saw a shiny new button added with the wording "Beta".

So how do you then get to be chosen to have beta access?

Well for now it seems that all you have to do is sign up and keep your fingers crossed while waiting for the mail that will hopefully come.

To register you will need to login with an origin account so if you do not have one, you will need to create one first and if you are one of those people who refuse to have anything to do with EA and Origin, well then I guess you are out of luck. (Especially since SimCity 2013 is bound to require an Origin account to play as well).

But if you are like me and you only have the "I hate EA, they are the devil in disguise and I will never ever pay a cent for any of their games as I would be helping them build their evil empire" opinion until they launch a truly awesome game, then I would advice you to get on the site and sign up for beta. Hopefully access to testing out the game will allow me to carry through until the release in March!

Good luck to everyone out there hoping to geth into the SimCity beta program. :)

Mistborn video game and movie adaptation

Not only is today awesome because it is Saturday and weekend. No! I managed to stumble onto something that got me very, very excited.

You guys hopefully know Brandon Sanderson? If not, then it is time to start reading some proper fantasy novels! Not only is he the guy who was asked to finish Robert Jordans Wheel of Time series, but he has also written some amazing books on his own.

The Mistborn Trilogy is one of the most innovative and intersting fantasy books I have read. The universe is quite unique and the characters interesting and believable. I highly recommend grabbing these if you have room in your busy schedule for some proper fantasy litterature.

Anyways, what made me so excited on this January Saturday?  I was thrawling the Internet and came across an article mentioning Mistborn: Birthright. Yup, that is right, they are making a game that is supposed to follow the Mistborn novels.

There is very little information out on the game yet, but I am hoping it will be amazing!

That is not all though, while browsing around for more information about the Mistborn game I came across this blogpost by Mr Sanderson himself, talking about a potential Mistborn movie.

Now I don't think there is any novel or universe out there I would rather see make it to the big screen so I was a bit disappointed to read that they are still looking for a studio willing to back the project. However, they have made a mood video (made by editing clips from other movies together in order to show the feel of the movie they would like to make) which you can watch below and I figure that if we can make some noise about this project and share it enough, it might grab the attention of some of the studios out there.



My only fear is that it will end up as badly done as Eragon, however if that is the case, there is still the game right?

The games that define our age

I had a conversation today with a colleague who is 10 years my junior. We were discussing games and as the conversation progressed I started feeling increasingly old.

Many of the games I mentioned he had never played, let alone heard of. It got me thinking, what are the games that define my age?

Games like Mario and Zelda might have been around since my childhood, but they do not define my age as the many seequels have made them belong to several generations of gamers.

PacMan isn't a good example either as it, along with Space Invaders and Pong is such an iconic game that no gamer generation can really lay claim to it.

What then? Which games can I mention that I played as a budding gamer in the making that shaped me into the geek I am today?

With the risk of losing readers already I have to say that from my very early childhood the first game that comes to mind is the Commadore 64 Donald Ducks Playground. A Disney game created to inspire learning in children. This of cause was not why I played it, I just loved the mini games and building my Playground. I do remember continously getting run over by the train when trying to cross the tracks to get to my playground, but still I absolutely loved the game as a young child.

Another classic from my youth is Commander Keen, mention this to anyone younger than 25 and you will see their eyes glaze over with lack of comprehension, but the rest of us remember pogo sticks, weird snails and a pixelated guy with a yellow helmet.

But what really defines my video gaming age are games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein (which I played with my cousin taking turns of 5 minutes at a time, strictly meassured by my aunts egg clock), the original Settlers by Bluebyte before they were affiliated with Ubisoft and their incredibly annoying DRM and Warlords, Baldurs Gate and Diablo I.

These are the games that I can talk to my long time gamer friends that share not only my love for gaming, but also my age and nostalgia.

These are games that you pitch at younger gamers, urge them to try because you don't want them to miss out and then get met with objections about the graphics, the difficulty and other such ridiculous complaints.

Anyways, these are the games I look back at with fondness and that I believe shaped the type of gamer I am today. I know if I mention these games to anyone who has been around for as long as I have in the gaming world, they will nod knowingly and we will have hours of nostalgic topics to cover.

Which games define your age?

Steam sale in a nutshell

Forget about shoe sales, forget about clothes shopping sprees, when you are a female gamer, what you really have to look out for is the Steam Sales that pop up unexpectedly, like this years 2012 Autumn Steam sale.

Black Friday 2012 was started off with cheap video games and not just random low quality games either. Skyrim is on the Steam Sale list for half price and so was a bunch of other awesome games like Terraria, Magic the Gathering: Duels of the  Planeswalkers 2012 and many, many more.

If you haven't already check out the deals, the Steam Sale is on until the 26th of november and if you are anything like me you will find a lot of great games that you have wanted for ages, but held off on buying due to the price tag.

Happy Steam Sale everyone