Press Conference
The highlight of the day was going over to the Uber-Pretentiously named “Red Dot Museum” which used to be the HQ for Singapore traffic cops until they moved somewhere else, and it got taken over by the Media Whores. Basically designers, advertising people and anyone else that tries to use art to make people buy things has taken up residence in the place, so it seemed like the perfect place to hold a press conference announcing that that a government group known as the IAH, or Infocomm Asia Holdings, has managed to acquire the rights to distribute two potentially big online games in Southeast Asia and Australia.
That in itself was spectacularly boring, but the cool part was I got interview Bill Roper, the creator of Hellgate. This may not mean much to most people, even most gamers, but it should when I say he’s also the guy that created Diablo, and broke away from Blizzard because he wanted to make more Diablo games and… well, at the moment, Bilzzard can’t do much of anything outside the monstrously successful World of Warcraft.
Still, it was a kick to talk him and ply his brain with questions about Chinese Gold Farming and how Blizzard has become a victim of its own success in terms of what projects it can now pursue.