News

As many of you may already know, we're adding a new affiliate today, Heroes of Ivalice. You all know I'm not a big fan of pen-and-paper or text-based RPGs, but Kairo's concept is so good, and he's so passionate about it that I wanted to share it with everyone via CoN. Of course, I can't explain it properly, so check out his thread to learn more.



Also, those of you who follow our fanart galleries often may recognize the name Lindsay Cibos. She's a very talented artist who has an image in our Fanart Hall of Fame. Well, now she's got another claim to fame - Tokyopop has recently published her shojo manga "Peach Fuzz." When you can read about an artist in your local newspaper, who has donated to CoN, you know she's getting to the big time. Check her out at her own site and learn more.



Finally, I've heard a rumor that another artist at CoN is iin talks for a publishing deal and is close to closing a contract up. I won't say who because I don't want to jinx it, and I don't want you all to guess for the same reason. But keep your fingers crossed anyway.

The Washington state legislature announced on 1 March that they will seek a bill this term to hold video game companies responsible for any violent acts perpetrated "in any part due to playing video games," according to Seattle's KOMO (with secondary reporting by Games Are Fun). We've seen similar rumblings before over the years, of course, so this is merely presumptive at this point. However, the bill is currently in committee in the Washington State House of Representatives; upon approval - which is not at all unlikely - from its committee, it will be brought to the floor of the full House for a vote. (For more, locate a torrent of that one episode of "Conjunction Junction" that everyone's heard of.)

The implications of this Washington bill are potentially far-reaching. After all, two of the big three console manufacturers/first-party developers, Microsoft and Nintendo, find their American headquarters in Redmond. Whether the presence of these juggernauts is a contributing factor to the emergence of the bill is currently and will likely be forever unknown - however, if the developers can be held responsible for the actions of the gamers who play their games, it stands to reason that those who sell the platforms on which the games are played could be next.

Video game censorship and regulation has been an issue ever since games truly broke into the forefront of the American culture, over twenty years ago. So while it's easy to say that this bill is an offshoot of the swing toward conservatism in the last election, it's hard to make that case when the bill arose in the perennially blue state of Washington. Without a easy target for the issue, then, what potential reasons are there to introduce this legislation?

This time it's Fanart. We've got new fanart from another series of artists, including Aora, Ashe, bratkitty, riceNoOdleZ,
Silverfork, and SilverMaduin. Again, thanks to The_Pink_Nu1 for his help in preparing this new batch.

And, again, I plan to have another wad of Fanart ready to go in just a few weeks.

As you might recall from a previous news post, I promised a pretty good chunk of new media coming your way. Finally I got around to doing it.

Here's what you'll find:

• Final Fantasy I Official Art
• Final Fantasy IV Official Art
• Final Fantasy V Official Art
• Final Fantasy VI Official Art
• Final Fantasy I Downloads, including NES hacks, ROM editors, wallpaper, and audio files.

I took quite a bit of time assembling these sections, so I hope you enjoy them. Thanks also to Neal, Djibriel, Kappa, and others for their help in sourcing content.

As reported by NPR on Morning Edition this morning, a class action lawsuit has been filed by several employees of Electronic Arts against the company. At issue is the matter of unpaid overtime, the amount of which has led the plaintiffs of the case to charge that EA fosters a poor work environment. The story articulates the extensive work hours and health problems caused by the game industry's "dirty little secret" - exploitation of their developers. The class action suit articulates that other California creative employees are entitled to overtime when the employees in question do not have control over the "creative vision"; that is to say, the employees create only what they're told to create; the suit seeks that the developers be treated the same as orchestra musicians and workers in the cinema industry.

The counterpoint is that EA, and other game developers, do only what they have to in order to sell games and give gamers what they want. Budgets are tight to keep the games at certain price points in some cases; timelines are nearly always tight, as people expect their games to be available for the Christmas season, or at the beginning of the sports season for sports games.

The questions for gamers, really, are these: Are we willing to pay more for games so that the developers are compensated for overtime on months of 18 hour days, six days a week? Are we willing to accept that we might get the new Final Fantasy, or Tekken, or Madden, or any game developed in the US, a little bit later than what we hoped? Do the developers, as salaried employees, really deserve to be paid overtime; would the quality of the games be enhanced by adding this provision? It's clear what the developers think - we'll have to wait and see if the courts agree.

The story is 6:35 long, and can be streamed via Real Media or Windows Media Player 9. You can reach it at NPR's archive.

After a long downtime, we have some new media to share with you! First off, we've got new fanart from several artists, including lizsama, Kame, Rujuken, Silverfork, rikacmo, and Ashe. Thanks to The_Pink_Nu1 for his help in preparing this new batch.

Also up is some new Final Fantasy VI media. Thanks to Dong0, we have a Japanese commercial advertising (I presume) the re-release of Final Fantasy VI for the Playstation over there. It's MPEG and about four megabytes, so pick it up!

We hope to have some more media updates soon, so keep hounding us to finish.