What if there were a world where all of the world’s logos lived and breathed? Logorama, the brilliant animated short that is nominated for an Oscar this year, answers that question brilliantly. Featuring over 25,000 logos, this is a true labor of love, an wonderfully conceived work of art.

There is some NSFW language in this film:

A small group of loyal King’s Quest fans have been toiling away on a fan-made sequel to the classic adventure series for eight years. Eight years! At one point, Vivendi, the IP rights holder, got all uppity and made an attempt to shut the project down, but an agreement was reached that allowed the team to continue working on the project. Known as “The Silver Lining”, the team hoped to release the game, for free of course, at some point in 2010.

Unfortunately, Activision recently came into possession of the King’s Quest IP and are now acting like big, throbbing dicks. That’s a technical term, look it up. Activision has demanded that all materials relating to King’s Quest be removed from The Silver Lining Website, in effect destroying eight years of dedication and labor…and for what? They weren’t going to make any money from this project. The Silver Lining was made for fans by fans. No threat whatsoever to Activision’s license.

A sad turn of events that makes Activision the Darth Vader of the gaming industry, at least until the next corporate snafu comes along and pisses me off.

Statement from The Silver Lining Team:

To Our Fans:

In 2005, Phoenix Online Studios received a Cease & Desist letter from Vivendi Universal, the owners of the King’s Quest IP, in regards to our work on The Silver Lining. We complied with the request, and over the months that followed, we were able to work out a non-commercial fan license with Vivendi that allowed us to continue our work on the game.

We have spent a lot of time recently reworking the material of The Silver Lining into episodic releases, with the first out of a planned five episodes completed, and submitted for review, and had hoped we would be able to bring our game to you, the fans, in the Spring of 2010.

Recently, however, ownership of the Sierra IP changed hands and became the property of Activision. After talks and negotiations in the last few months between ourselves and Activision, they have reached the decision that they are not interested in granting a non-commercial license to The Silver Lining, and have asked that we cease production and take down all related materials on our website.

As before, we must and will comply with this decision, as much as we may wish we could do otherwise.

We cannot say enough how much we appreciate the support we have had over these years from our fans. Without you, we would never have gotten this far. There would be no game to develop, and no one to develop it for. You have been amazing and steadfast, and we will always remember that and appreciate it more than we can say.

Sadly, after eight years of dedicated work and even more dedicated fans, The Silver Lining project is closing down.

What the future holds for us, as individuals or a team, we cannot say. We have an amazing development team, however, filled with talented and hard-working individuals, and we hope the teamwork and rapport we’ve developed won’t go to waste. We hope that when we do know what the future holds for us, our fans will be there to enjoy what we can give them still.

Again, thank you all so much for everything. This has been a long and crazy road, full of more twists than we could’ve anticipated, but more triumphs and wonderful memories than we could’ve ever hoped for. And for that, to all of you and to everyone on our team, we will always be grateful.

Thank You,

The Silver Lining Development Team

Concept Art for Kings & Castles

Can we call Chris Taylor the “legendary Chris Taylor” yet? Does his gameography merit such a title? Mr. Taylor goes all the way back to the Hardball series of baseball games, but most known him for one of the best Real-Time Strategy games of all-time, the aptly named Total Annihilation. If RTS isn’t your thing, then you no doubt know of Chris Taylor’s work in the form of Dungeon Siege, a popular 3D RPG that spawned a sequel.  His most recent effort, Supreme Commander, a return to the RTS genre, didn’t meet with much success with critics or gamers, but that isn’t stopping a follow-up effort from imminent release.

Now, with Supreme Commander II nearing release, Chris Taylor has unveiled his next project. It is called Kings & Castles and will be an RTS. Mr. Taylor says the creation of the game will be very transparent with gamers able to follow the design of Kings & Castles via Facebook and Twitter.

As Mr. Taylor puts it in the press release: “Synergy will be leveraged, and paradigms will be established. More importantly, buzzwords will be utilized.”

True to his word, Mr. Taylor has already posted the first entry in his video blog, which you will find below.

Further information about Kings & Castles can be found at the newly launched website.

Press Release:

Gas Powered Games Announces Chris Taylor’s Kings and Castles

Acclaimed developer to take fans behind-the-scenes of  the development of its all-new real-time strategy  game

REDMOND, WA (FEBRUARY 15, 2009) – Gas Powered Games announced today that work has started on Kings and Castles, an epic real-time strategy game for the PC and next-generation consoles. This one-of-a-kind experience will let players take on the role of one of three powerful kings who are vying for control of an all-new, original fantasy world.

“We’re doing something different this time around,” said Chris Taylor, Creative Director of Gas Powered Games.  “We want to take our fans on a great adventure with us. They’ll get to go behind-the-scenes and watch the game come to life from start to finish.”

Using the game’s website (www.kingsandcastles.com) and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter (follow DeathBot9, Chris Taylor’s personal account), GPG will give its fans a (mostly) unfiltered look inside the development process of Kings and Castles. “Synergy will be leveraged, and paradigms will be established,” said Taylor. “More importantly, buzzwords will be utilized.”

GPG will be posting regular updates about Kings and Castles on its website. The first video blog went live today. It contains graphic scenes of wood chopping, chickens, and the obligatory horse biting.

Future installments will take fans step-by-step through the design process, discussing the creation of prototypes, the work that goes into creating the visual look and feel, while others will cover the proper care and feeding of chickens.

Kings and Castles will utilize the state-of-the-art RTS technology that Gas Powered Games has pioneered with its previous titles. Key features include the ability to zoom to any level, incredible maps, and eye-popping visuals that will run on a wide range of systems.

“We also promise to gouge evil from its shell at least once, or maybe twice,” said Taylor. “But not three times. That would be weird.”

For more information on Kings and Castles, please visit www.kingsandcastles.com. Send your feedback and horse care tips to crackedout@gaspowered.com.

If you’re a hardcore PC gamer then you are used to hearing excuses as to why certain games only appear on consoles. Usually, these reasons take the form of “limited funding”, “not enough time”, or the ever-popular “PC games don’t sell like the console counterparts.” All valid excuses. So when Remedy, the creators behind the flashlight simulator Alan Wake, made it clear their game wouldn’t be coming to PC rigs, their excuse struck me as downright bizarre:

“Some games are more suited for the intimacy of the PC, and others are best played from the couch in front of a larger TV screen,” states Microsoft. “We ultimately realised that the most compelling way to experience Alan Wake was on the Xbox 360 platform, so we focused on making it an Xbox 360 exclusive. Both Microsoft and Remedy have long histories in PC game development. This decision was about matching this specific game to the right platform.”

Errr, what? All this time, I’ve been playing my Xbox 360 wrong. I have it hooked up to HDMI inputs on my widescreen PC monitor, flipping back and forth as the need arises. I had no idea I was draining the “intimacy” out of games by not playing in my living room.

Remedy’s reasoning lacks any semblance of logic. It just comes across as an utterly strange thing to say. Honesty would have worked just fine here, something like “Piracy is an issue on the PC.”

Probably doesn’t matter anyway. My gut instinct tells me Alan Wake will debut to a chorus of yawns. Has that certain stink that precedes a lackluster debut.