NAG Magazine's Ancient History: A Weekly Replay on Scrolls

Be honest. Show of hands: how many of you are still on track with your New Year’s Resolution? To those who kept their hands down, thank you for being honest. Now that we have all gone back to our old ways, it’s time to go back to some old NAG mags too! If you’ve been following the series for a while, you would know that I had already visited the oldest magazine in my collection: January 2008. But I decided to try and go even more ancient. For that, I needed to consult some elders, people born in the 20th century. I bought some mags off Sensei Sock, whose grey beard and dust on his joints did remind me of a draugr in a dungeon. Nonetheless, I thanked him for his eternal wisdom and procured the NAG magazine October 2007 issue (imagine when I visit Len. Those old NAGs might still have been printed on scrolls). In this edition, Clive Barker’s Jericho had us all excited and frightened at what horrors came out of his mind, especially after Undying. The Boks were also well on their way to bringing home the Webb Ellis. In 2026, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser is due to terrify (or turn on, if you saw the trailer), and our rugby team is still firmly grasping the trophy. Maybe the world is finally healing! Stop! You have violated the law! There was one other un-epic thing that usually happens at Epic Games: lawsuits. Unfortunately, this is something that is part of our industry, full of proprietary software and intellectual property. And just like other lawsuits, you need to know when to pick your fights. Silicon Knights had been developing a new ARPG called Too Human on Unreal Engine 3, with promises from Epic that a development kit and other features would become available. According to Silicon, these features and tools came six months later than expected, thus harming their sales. Their claim was that Epic unfairly held onto these features to assist them in developing their “fluke” game (if you know, you know), Gears of War. Epic countered by basically saying “nuh-uh”, alleging that Silicon knew full well they would only distribute everything when available and infringed on their IP rights and stole their source code. After a 5-year-long process, Epic won the case, but the ramifications for Silicon were far-reaching. They were instructed to destroy all their code and unsold retail copies of not only Too Human, but also anything else that used UE3 code. Not long after, Silicon Knights filed for bankruptcy. Epic Games has also, over the years, had suits against Google and Apple and even won the former. I wonder what would happen if they and Nintendo got into a scrap? That might just be the Amber Heard v Johnny Depp of the gaming world. To Ubi or not to Ubi Acquisitions of other studios have been going on far beyond modern times (hell, just go look at the cemetery that EA built). In late 2007, there was huge speculation of SCI/Eidos being sold to a third party. The names in the rumour mill were EA, Ubisoft and Warner. What made it doubly interesting is that at this time, EA had owned a 15% stake in Ubi, and that stake had doubled its voting capacity thanks to an obscure law (somehow, the conniving French connived themselves). It had even been described as a “hostile” takeover by Ubisoft itself. Thus, EA had to ask themselves: to Ubi or not to Ubi? In the end, everyone drew blanks and put the money back in their Scrooge McDuck vaults. EA decided to go kill off BioWare instead and sold its Ubisoft shares back, while Eidos was snapped up by Square Enix in 2009. Tencent might just start another takeover of the French company, however. In late 2025, they would buy a minority stake of about 25% (lots of ten cent shares), and a new Ubisoft subsidiary called Vantage Studios would go on to control Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Rainbow Six. And to think only one of those franchises was something when EA had its stake… Oh, it’s Uwe I knew there would be something off about magazines this far back. Like when you are walking barefoot in your garden, and you hear a squelch under your foot, followed by the smell. Uwe Boll decided to make everyone fear video game movie adaptations for the next 20 years by releasing rubbish such as Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead, Far Cry and Postal. The criticism of the last movie rubbed a certain someone, particularly the wrong way (you could say they went postal). Uwe went on a tirade about how writing a bad review about his movies was “trendy”. Ja neh. Uwe, jy praat nou n Boll tjol. Edits exposed! This is why schools told us that we were never allowed to use Wikipedia. An American student had invented a software called Wikiscanner, which allowed edits to be cross-checked with IP addresses, determining who was making all the changes to the pages. It turns out that companies were actively wiping out all the negative press about them. Shocker, I know. Particularly interesting ones include EA deleting any content underlying their business practices and employment policy. They were also deleting studios, which underlines their business practices and employment policy. Sony had also made comments about Blu-Ray a glossier while telling people that Halo 3 would not be shinier than Halo 2. Apple and Microsoft would send lovely messages on each other’s pages, while MySpace would deny it was hacked. Honestly, all these businesses editing a Wikipedia landing page about themselves to save face is truly embarrassing and downright sad, noble and should be done more. Bonus: Yarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! Whether everyone at NAG was drinking the good rum or just hyped about Pirates of the Caribbean back when it was good, there had been an interesting decision to reply to all the letters this month in Piratespeak. All I can say to this is: Ahoy, matey! Welcome to the WPC! What are ye wastin’ yer time fer, buying games at full price? Game pass prices going up? More subscriptions piling on like a ship hull full o’ barnacles? Sail the seven seas and be free! On our sites, you will find all kinds of booty, and I’m not just talking about the free games. As put so beautifully by our first mate at the WPC, there are “large and annoying ads everywhere, especially ones of nubile babes shaking their curves at you”! What are ye waiting for? Grab the eyepatch, saw off your leg for a wooden one and join the crew! YARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!