Should be fun. Challenging, but fun. Once again I’ll be asking friends to help out with production and equipment, as I did with the first pilot, but I’ve already bought the game in question and it should arrive in the next few days. Exciting!

If you haven’t done so already, watch the pilot, and if you like it please consider pledging a few bucks to help make the full season a reality. World of Warcraft and Batman: Arkham Asylum voice actor Dino Andrade has thrown his weight behind the project, agreeing to send signed pictures of his various characters to anyone who pledges $50 or higher. Thank you.

I don’t often ask this, but if you could please reblog this post (or otherwise help spread the word) that’d be just super-duper. Thanks to everyone who has supported this project so far.

Writes a reader who emailed me this morning, “I knew Kotaku would somehow try to tie the Oslo bombings to video games. I dreaded it, even as I accepted its inevitability. But I just hoped it would take them more than 24 hours.”

A to Jump - Saturday June 18th, 12:30pm-1pm PST [ Listen on PC ▪ Listen on Mac ]
Ben Paddon and Nick Simberg inexplicably find themselves in a parallel dimension where someone of worth has agreed to be interviewed for the show. Listen, perhaps in terror, as Ben and Nick talk with voice actor Dino Andrade (Batman: Arkham Asylum, World of Warcraft, Brütal Legend, amongst others) about pretending to be someone else for a living.

SPONSORED BY: Dark entities lurking just beneath the skin of the universe, waiting for their chance to break through and bring about the Eighth Day - the end of all things. Also Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

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That’s something of an exaggeration, but nevertheless my stance on whether or not patch notes count as news has not wavered over the last few months - patch notes, despite what VG247’s Joe Anderson may think, are not news. There’s an exception to that rule for most console games, where it isn’t always readily apparent what’s been changed, but I think insofar as MMOs are concerned posting the patch notes as news is largely redundant.

Why might that be? Well, I’ll tell you why that.

This is the Launcher for Star Trek Online, my current MMO of choice. You’ll notice that within the main Launcher window there is a button that says “Release Notes”. Clicking this button displays a list of patch notes, as you can see. I recall a similar system being used during my time with World of Warcraft, Guild Wars and City of Heroes/Villains, although it’s been a fair while since I played any of those games. I also recall the 360 version of Final Fantasy XI displaying release notes upon booting up the game.

I also haven’t played DC Universe Online so I’ve no idea if they’ve gone to the trouble of including such information in their own launcher, if indeed they even have one - feel free to let me know one way or the other (and definitely let me know if this stuff displays on the PS3 version).

Often patch notes for games like Team Fortress 2 or Left 4 Dead are posted as news despite the fact that such information is available from within Steam itself, which will often present you with an option to view update details from the “Downloads” menu. Here’s the latest TF2 update, for example.

So why do these things get posted as general news? There’s such a narrow band of gamers who are actually interested in this and, as already illustrated, they already have access to it where they’re most likely to see it. If it were a console game I would understand - 360 games don’t usually tell you what their updates do, and few PS3 games display their patch notes - but for PC games it’s just not necessary, and it comes across as little more than an attempt to pad your daily news output.

Is it necessary for DCUO, a console-based MMO? I don’t know. I can’t imagine it would be - I don’t see a developer willingly hiding important information about changes to the game from a chunk of its audience.

Nevertheless, posting patch notes as news? No sir, I don’t like it.