wall-street-journal posts

Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that Blizzard's upcoming sci-fi RTS sequel StarCraft II had a production budget of over $100 million. As it turns out even the Wall Street Journal can make a huge mistake. The newspaper's web site has now posted a correction to the article that states it " ... incorrectly said the company spent more than $100 million to develop the game; that figure referred to its "World of Warcraft" game."

Developer Blizzard has not said anything about the specific budget amount for developing the game and is likely not to reveal that info for some time, if at all. In addition to spending money on the game itself, Blizzard has likely spend a lot on marketing and promoting StarCraft II for its July 27 launch. It's also spend some funds on developing the revamp of its Battle.net online multiplayer service which StarCraft II will use first.

Download the HD version of StarCraft II: Ghosts of the Past trailer at Big Download

Hollywood is getting interested in not only the game industry but the people who play games as well. Variety reports that Universal Studios has acquired the rights to a 2007 Wall Street Journal article about the "online fantasy role-playing world and its detrimental impact on the real lives of players." Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski has been picked as the director.

The script from Steven Knight is based on the WSJ article written by Alexandra Alter. The article itself is about a 53 year old man who plays online games 20 hours a day. Verbinski is already attached to direct the movie adaptation of 2K Games' action title BioShock.

In what might prove to be the most meta post ever, I'm going to talk about gaming journalism and how it's changed in recent years. Now, the mainstream media -- by which I refer to traditional magazines like Time and Life, and news outlets like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times -- have always worked diligently to maintain a high-quality standard for themselves. As a collective, they follow the rules set down in regulatory tomes such as the Chicago Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook. Of course, every publication has its own house style to which its writers must adhere, but by and large there are many generally accepted guidelines concerning tone, editorial slant, and the like.

As video games grew as a phenomenon, it quickly became evident that the mainstream press wasn't going to give it the coverage its enthusiast audience demanded. Typically adopting an outsider's approach, traditional news outlets left their coverage at "Here's a new trend. It's kind of strange and we don't understand it, but the kids seem to like it." This journalistic void left the field wide open for a new generational voice to inhabit.