Who are these two handsome devils?

Protip: You should come to Games Day Baltimore.

Somehow, I managed to forget to draw your attention to the fact that I am now – officially – a rock deity:

From WAR-Misc

That’s a picture of our office “garage band” – The Hamtouchers – hanging out with members of Blue Öyster Cult (they of “More Cowbell” fame) in our local recording studio.

Why, you ask?

Because we were recording a track together. An EPIC track. A track dedicated to Warhammer’s Slayers (newly added to Warhammer Online).

You can download it here, but be warned – it may melt your face off with ALL THE AWESOME.

ROCK.

At the following link.

[EDIT] This post is deeply “meta”, apparently. Which is just fine by me.

Sam Houston from GamerDNA put this together.  It’s a list of Game Devs and studios on Twitter.  I found a fair number of interesting folks who I hadn’t been following previously.  Definitely worth a look!

So it seems I’ve been derelict in my duties.  Why?  Because I’ve failed to point out the most-excellent “Age of Blogging” event that the folks at Blog Warhammer are organizing (and that OODLES of sites are participating in).

Some quick advice to bloggers new and old:

We love constructive criticism. Let’s face it – if you’re running a WAR blog you’re part of the most passionate, “plugged in” part of our community. You represent an important part of the “voice” of the community and part of that relationship means voicing concerns. While I usually won’t read ranting or aimless whining, but I’ve always got time for even-handed, considerate criticism of what we’re doing. Be tough, be honest, be fair.

That being said:

It’s okay to be a fan. I like reading about people having fun with our game. While it’s fun for Devs to read about people enjoying their work, it’s actually also an important feedback mechanism. Just like constructive criticism helps us know where there’s room for improvement, positive feedback helps us know what people are enjoying the most and, thus, what sorts of things they’d like to see MORE of.

Make sure we can contact you. We really DO read most of the WAR blogs we’re aware of and sometimes that means we have questions to ask or feedback to offer that don’t belong in blog comments.

So… yeah. Get out there and blog! If you start a new site, make sure to let me know!

A handful of lunatics are playing the Desert Bus portion of the old (and unreleased) Penn and Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors game non-stop, raising money for Child’s Play.  For those who aren’t familiar with Desert Bus, allow me to shamelessly steal from Wikipedia: 

The objective of the game is to drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada in real time at a maximum speed of 45mph, a feat that would take the player 8 hours of continuous play to complete, as the game cannot be paused.

The bus contains no passengers, and there is no scenery or other cars on the road. The bus veers to the right slightly; as a result, it is impossible to tape down a button to go do something else and have the game end properly. If the bus veers off the road it will stall and be towed back to Tucson, also in real time. If the player makes it to Las Vegas, they will score exactly one point. The player then gets the option to make the return trip to Tucson—for another point (a decision they must make in a few seconds or the game ends). Players may continue to make trips and score points as long as their endurance holds out. Some players who have completed the trip have also noted that, although the scenery never changes, a bug splats on the windscreen about five hours through the first trip, and on the return trip the light does fade, with differences at dusk, and later a pitch black road where the player is guided only with headlights.

As you can see, volunteering to play this game non-stop for 120 hours straight is an act of benign holiday madness. So you should make sure to donate. After all, how often can you do something good while ALSO causing a stranger to suffer?