WTF physics

This is what happens when IT( )E members get tired, drunk, or bored:

Call of Duty: Legal Warfare

G4TV has been all over the beheadings at Infinity Ward, and it seems the entire gaming press has been glued to the site for days.

For starters, Jason West and Vince Zampella walked (or were escorted) out the door at IW, and went straight over to the legal offices of O'Melveny &; Myers.  They're suing Activision for the royalties they're owed, apparently, and for the IP rights to the Call of Duty Modern Warfare part of the franchise:

'Activision has refused to honor the terms of its agreements and is intentionally flouting the fundamental public policy of this State (California) that employers must pay their employees what they have rightfully earned,' said [attorney Robert] Schwartz in [a press] release. 'Instead of thanking, lauding, or just plain paying Jason and Vince for giving Activision the most successful entertainment product ever offered to the public, last month Activision hired lawyers to conduct a pretextual 'investigation' into unstated and unsubstantiated charges of 'insubordination' and 'breach of fiduciary duty,' which then became the grounds for their termination on Monday, March 1st.'

In response to the suit, Activision has released leaked some details on its investigation into West's and Zampella's alleged misconduct.  An internal legal memo says the company wants to get its hands on:

• Documents regarding past, current or future IW projects, including but not limited to any and all businesses analyses of future projects (e.g. Modern Warfare 3)
• Documents regarding any potential 'spin out' of IW, including but not limited to any communications with IW employees, West or Zampella regarding forming a new studio independent of Activision
• Documents regarding West and Zampella's communications with Activision's competitors, including but not limited to Electronic Arts

Although Activision says it's still "searching" for this information, they've already got it in one form or another.  This leak is just their way of presenting their argument to the public without actually discussing pending litigation. It also sort of looks like they're firing a warning shot over EA's bow, in case the latter has any notions of hiring someone to make a Modern Warfare game.

Don't expect this to be resolved in our lifetimes.  Activision has every incentive - and the financial resources - to make this litigation as slow and painful as possible.

Culling the herd

From Blue's News:

G4tv.com reports on drama at Infinity Ward that includes the apparent departure of studio heads Vince Zampella and Jason West amid allegations of "breaches of contract and insubordination." The story began with G4 reporting that a bunch of "bouncer-types" showed up at the Call of  Duty developer's offices following a meeting Activision held with Zampella and West (reportedly the pair were not seen in the offices following the meet). This was followed by Kotaku showing a shot of Jason West's Facebook status reading "Jason West is drinking. Also, no longer employed." Likewise, Jason West's LinkedIn Profile now lists his tenure at Infinity Ward as January 2001 – March 2010. Details on exactly what went down are still vague, but the most significant clue seems to be in an Activision SEC filing stating: "The Company is concluding an internal human resources inquiry into breaches of contract and insubordination by two senior employees at Infinity Ward. This matter is expected to involve the departure of key personnel and litigation. At present, the Company does not expect this matter to have a material impact on the Company."

You might recall the names, as West and Zampella were the two IW employees that took it upon themselves to be the biggest douches when the dedicated server news broke back in October. The pair out-douched even Mackey McCandlish and Ryan Lastimosa, who served up the "not balanced for lean" bullshit - with a side of "yes, we think you're all stupid" - in the now-infamous Best Buy webchat.

Jason West is (or was) was Infinity Ward's Chief Technology Officer, President and Chief Operating Officer. Zampella is (or was) Infinity Ward's CEO and CFO. Given that both were significant players in the billion-dollar boondoggle that is Modern Warfare 2 (West in particular is credited with being the game's writer and director), Activision's decision to fire them is rather stunning.

At the same time, though, the claim of "insubordination" should hardly come as a surprise. West and Zampella are two of the most arrogant twats in the business, and it's natural that their open contempt for a segment of their customer base would eventually translate into open contempt for their benefactors at Activision.  I'll be fascinated to see whether they'll be able to land jobs with another developer.

UPDATE:  the plot thickens.

James Walker at bingegamer.net apparently has a few sources at Activision who've dished some additional revelations:

1.) Infinity Ward has yet to be paid a single dime in royalties for Modern Warfare 2, which has earned Activision over one billion dollars in revenue. (NOTE: To clarify, everyone who spoke with me mentioned this. Whether or not IW and Activision had an agreement in place for royalty payments is unknown at this time. It’s just curious that everyone brought this up.)

2.)  Their current contractual obligation expires in October, which could explain why Activision has (allegedly) been looking to dump Modern Warfare 3 off to another developer. The probem with this is that Infinity Ward still technically owns the rights to the Call of Duty franchise (at least partially). Some people close to the situation see Activision’s current actions as a power play to try and bully Infinity Ward into either staying with Activision in one capacity or another (buyout or contract extension) or to at least acquire the Call of Duty name.

(ED NOTE: If the above paragraph makes zero sense, I apologize. It was 4am EDT, I was writing short-hand and half of what was being told went way over my head. The short of it: There’s a contract in place regarding Infinity Ward’s principals that expires in October. Basically IW, while technically owned by Activision, is autonomous in the same way Blizzard is. That’s what the “contract” talk is about. Again, sorry for any confusion.)

Nvidia Forceware 196.75

Nvidia just released the Forceware 196.75 driver for Windows XP, Vista and 7, for GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200 and ION series cards. The release notes are below the fold, but the most important news is that the driver should provide performance improvements - and add SLI and multi-GPU support - for Bad Company 2, among several other games (EDIT: that includes Mass Effect 2, which also gets anti-aliasing support).  

[release notes]

BC2 in 5040x1050

I won't call it "cheating," because diverse hardware configurations inevitably lead to vast FPS and latency discrepancies.  That said, it's hard to understate the advantage this provides:

BFBC2 pre-load

If you bought the game through the EA Store or Direct2Drive, you can start downloading now. If you bought the game through Steam, not so much.

As of the time stamp on this post, we're a shade under 17 hours away.

AvP dedicated server beta released

From Sega's forums:

The dedicated server will be available via the “tools” tab of the Steam client. If you already have a copy of the full game installed, it will simply add the dedicated server executable to the install folder. If you do not have the full game installed, it will need to download approximately 15GB of data.

One install is required per machine, and multiple instances of the server executable can be run simultaneously – the server currently requires the Steam client to be running, only one steam client/log on is required per machine regardless of the amount of instances you run, and the Steam account used to log on does not need to own a copy of the full game. Please refer to the dedicated server readme for more information and help, in particular the known issues section. A server command guide is also available in the installation folder.

Destructoid reviews the latest Borderlands DLC

In case you missed it, Gearbox recently released "The Secret Armory of General Knoxx," the third DLC for Borderlands. Destructoid has a review, for those who didn't uninstall the game two months ago.  Money quote:

Unfortunately, Atlas isn’t finished on Pandora. They’re miffed at Mordecai and co. and have put a bounty on their heads, dispatching General Knoxx and a band of elite assassins to stockpile munitions for a renewed hunt for the Vault -- if a few Vault Hunters die in the process, so be it. Thankfully Athena, one of Atlas’ assassins, has gone rogue and wants to help you.

And this is a low point for “General Knoxx.” Gearbox didn’t make much of an effort to explain who Athena is or what motivates her, and any semblance of narrative is just an excuse to send you traipsing to a different part of Pandora. “General Knoxx” is clever and funny as always, and Borderlands real appeal lies in shooting people in the face, but it's certainly a narrative step backward, especially since the "Dr. Ned" pack was so strong in this department.

Wait...what?

A few details on NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 480 GPU

Hexus.net grabbed some info from the card's retail packaging:

NVIDIA remains tight-lipped over the card's specifications, but we can confirm from the box that it will have 1,536MB of GDDR5 memory.

The rear outputs will comprise of twin dual-link DVI-I connectors and a mini-HDMI port (v1.3a). No provision for DisplayPort, then?

The power requirements are such that it needs more juice than twin 6-pin plugs can supply, and the setup is the same as a Radeon HD 5970's.

A chunky PSU is recommended, pitching in at 600W - 42A on the 12V line - for a single-GPU system. Add at least 250W for a second card.

And then there's this, from Digitimes.com:

Second-tier graphics card makers are unlikely to start mass shipments of their Nvidia GeForce GTX 480/470-based (Fermi) graphics cards until April despite that Nvidia plans to announce the GPU on March 26 since most of the them have not yet received complete reference board designs, according to sources from graphics card makers.

"The sources expect Nvidia will give supply priority to first-tier makers or makers that only produce Nvidia cards. Listings offering cards from XFX and PNY with GTX 480 models priced at around US$679.99 and GTX 470 at about US$499.99 were briefly available at some online retailers, but have since been taken down. PNY contacted Digitimes to stress that it is not offering pre-orders for Fermi cards at this time, which implies that the listings were the result of miscommunication in the company's channel."

Some market watchers originally expected AMD to drop its graphics card price to counter the launch of Nvidia's new cards, but since the prices of Nvidia cards are higher than AMD's existing cards, watchers now believe any price war between the two chip makers is unlikely to start until after May.