But he has found an interesting way to market his campaign. He has set up a bogus Twitter account called bruceongames2 and made tweets to it pointing to websites that support his hate campaign. Then comes the clever bit. From this account he then followed the followers of my legitimate account. Each one then gets the follow notice, and then if they click through to find out why I’ve apparently started another account they get to see all his hate tweets.

My legitimate Twitter account is Bruciebabe.

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Feel free to join and add your thoughts:  http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=295181985789&

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Next week is the fourth London Game Festival. A collection of 12 events during the week, a format that seems to be working nicely. Here is a list of all the events:

• Wednesday October 21
  The BAFTA Annual Video Games Lecture, in Association with GAME: Peter Molyneux Wednesday 21 October 2009 18:30 BAFTA, W1J 9LN, £7.50
• Saturday October 24
  London MCM Expo 2009 Saturday 24th – Sunday 25th October 2009 09:00 Excel London, E16 1XL, Adult Ticket (15 years old & above): £10 l Child Ticket (11 to 14): £5 l ‘EARLY ENTRY’ Tickets £13 Per Day
• Sunday October 25
  London MCM Expo 2009 Saturday 24th – Sunday 25th October 2009 10:00 Excel London, E16 1XL, Adult Ticket (15 years old & above): £10 l Child Ticket (11 to 14): £5 l ‘EARLY ENTRY’ Tickets £13 Per Day
• Tuesday October 27
  London Games Conference Tuesday 27th October 2009 16:30 BAFTA, W1J 9LN, £229
• Wednesday October 28
  Emergent Design for Playful Engagement Wednesday 28th October 2009 09:30 Graduate Centre, N7 8DB, £20
• GameHorizon presents ‘Best of British’ Wednesday 28th October 2009 11:00 Kings Place, N1 9AG, £150 + VAT
• Friday October 30
  Eurogamer Expo 2009 Friday 30th – Saturday 31st October 2009 Old Billingsgate, EC3R 6DX, £6
• GamesIndustry.biz Career Fair Friday 30th – Saturday 31st October 2009 Old Billingsgate, EC3R 6DX, £6
• Golden Joystick Awards 2009 Friday 30th October 2009 ,
• Playful Friday 30th October 2009 Conway Hall, WC1R 4RL, £40
• Saturday October 31
  Eurogamer Expo 2009 Friday 30th – Saturday 31st October 2009 Old Billingsgate, EC3R 6DX, £6
• GamesIndustry.biz Career Fair Friday 30th – Saturday 31st October 2009 Old Billingsgate, EC3R 6DX, £6

I will be going to two of these. The Best of British on Wednesday 28 October has a very promising programme of speakers:

Then on Friday I am going to Eurogamer Expo. A consumer event with lots of games, development sessions and a career fair. And which is sold out!

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As regular readers will know Evony are trying to sue me for libel in an Australian court. So we have a plaintiff from country A trying to sue a defendant from country B in country C. They can do this because judgements from Australian courts are enforceable in England. And they are trying to say that because internet content is available globally they can sue me in any country they feel like. Obviously they have chosen Australia to create the maximum difficulty in my defending myself, they are misusing the Australian legal system to censor the internet.

They are going after me because I exposed Evony to the harsh light of publicity. The Guardian newspaper did the same but they are not taking the Guardian to court because the Guardian have the resources to defend themselves from such spurious claims.

Libel is incredible expensive to bring to court, some cases end up with legal costs of over a million pounds. To get my case just to the first day of court in Australia should cost me over £50,000. You can see why freedom of speech is threatened here. Because my case is setting a precedent my lawyers have agreed to act on a no win no fee basis with no win no fee. In other words they will try and extract costs from Evony for bringing a frivolous case before the courts. But in the mean time there are a lot of costs to cover in putting the case together.

Obviously I can reduce myself to penury and send every penny I have to them. This seems a little harsh for just telling the truth. I have already sent them a substantial sum, as much as I can reasonably afford. So I have created a way that you can contribute to the fighting fund with the PayPal donate button at the side of this article. Anything would help, £1 even. It all adds up. So please help with a donation. And a big thank you to those who have already donated, it is much appreciated.

For those who live in the UK, a letter to their MP may help. Here is a draft that could be used:

Dear MP,

As you know there is a significant threat to freedom of speech with lawyers practicing reputation management on the internet. They threaten libel action against the authors of content that their clients don’t like, whether it is the truth or not. Those authors are then forced to withdraw that content because of the massive costs of defending their, often truthful, position. Obviously this mechanism is used most frequently by those with the most to hide. The libel law is thus being used against the interests of your constituents.

In a further twist we now have a Chinese video game, Evony, with a recently incorporated Delaware front company, sueing a British blogger, Bruce Everiss, in an Australian court. They are indulging in this extreme libel tourism firstly because Australian libel judgements are enforceable in England and secondly in order to make it as difficult as possible for Mr Everiss to defend what he maintains to be a truthful position. If Evony succeed it will open the floodgates of undefendable action being taken against British people in Australian courts.

As your constituent I would like to know what you are doing to maintain the freedom of speech on the internet. Also I would like to know what the government are doing to prevent the total abuse of the legal system that is happening in the case of Mr Everiss and Evony,

regards, etc

So there we have two ways that you can help. Please do so because what Evony are doing is a threat to every one’s freedoms.

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Best Games Magazine

Games TM – Imagine Publishing
Edge Magazine – Future Publishing
PC Gamer – Future Publishing
Retro Gamer – Imagine Publishing
Official Xbox 360 Magzine – Future Publishing

Best Games Website

Eurogamer.net – Eurogamer Network
VG247.com – videogaming247
Gamespot.com – CBS Interactive
Videogamer.com – Pro-G Media
NowGamer.com – Imagine Publishing
Incgamers.com – IncGamers

Specialist Writer (Print)

Jon Blyth – Freelance (PC Zone)
Tom Francis – PC Gamer
Matt Handrahan – Games TM
Matthew Castle – NGamer
Darran Jones – Retro Gamer
Gillen McAllister – Official Xbox 360 Magazine

Specialist Writer (Web)

Dan Howdle – Nowgamer.com
Wesley Yin Poole – Videogamer.com
Pat Garratt – VG247.com
Ellie Gibson – Eurogamer.net
Chris Schilling – Gamerzines
Simon Parkin – Freelance (Eurogamer)

Games Coverage in a Mainstream Magazine

Zoo Weekly – Bauer Consumer Media
Nuts – IPC Media
Shortlist – Shortlist Media
FHM – Bauer Consumer Media
Front – Flip Media

Games Blog

Rockpapershotgun.com
VG247.com
Ukresistance.co.uk
Guardian Games Blog
Nowgamer.com

Coverage in a National Paper

The Guardian
The Daily Telegraph
Daily Star Sunday
The Independent
The Sun
The Daily Mirror

Games Broadcast/Podcast

One Life Left – www.onelifeleft.com
Eurogamer.tv – www.eurogamer.tv
Game On – BBC Radio 5 Live
Start/Select – uk.gamespot.com
Games Weasel – www.gamesweasel.com
Johnny Minkley – BBC Radio 1

Rising Star

Neon Kelly – Videogamer.com
Samuel Roberts – 360 Magazine
Matthew Pellett – Xbox World 360
Chris McMahon – Games TM
Graham Smith – PC Gamer
Mike Channell – Official Xbox 360 Magazine

Regional Games Columnist

Ross Wilkinson – Press Association
Dave Cook – The Scotsman
Steven Fox – Metro
Dan Slingsby – Games Addict
Ian Crump – Southern Daily Echo

Games Media Legend

The winner of this award will be named on the night

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A part of the broader Edinburgh Festival, this presents games as a intrinsic part of our culture, a position I have always enthusiastically supported.

“Edinburgh Interactive Industry Conference
The Edinburgh Interactive Festival Conference will deliver a lively schedule from a wide range of industry sectors including video games, social networking, mobile entertainment, education, music, film and television. The two-day industry conference runs from Thursday 13th until Friday 14th August.  Participants will share and gain knowledge and insights into innovations, trends and the coolest possibilities. Keynotes, panel sessions and presentations makeup the key components of the festival conference.
Conference delegates will be able to relax and network in an intimate environment during the conference and at the various Festival Networking events.”

Here is the conference timetable:

Thursday 13 August 2009

Friday 14 August 2009

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Yesterday you saw the first interview in Bruceongames. Ed Vaizey, shadow Minister for the Arts told us some of what Conservative policies will be towards games when they take over government  0f the UK within the next year. The idea now is that this will be the first of a series of regular Tuesday interviews. The interviewees will all be people who are very important to the games industry. And the questions, based on my 30 years of industry experience, will try and elicit interesting and useful insights. So in future readers of this blog will not only be getting the benefit of my world view, they will also be seeing things through the eyes of some very informed people.

Coming up:

• Tuesday 4th August. Philip Oliver, CEO of Blitz Games Studios, one of the world’s biggest independent game developers. Philip works tirelessly to improve the industry. Just recently he had breakfast with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, where he was able to effectively communicate a wide range of industry views. Next week you too can benefit from reading his views in his own words.
• Tuesday 11th August. Jez San OBE. Game designer and developer, book author, microprocessor designer and highly successful businessman. Jez is famous as the author of the 1986 game Starglider, but these days he is a business angel, investing in a number of companies related to the games industry. So he has a wide ranging and highly informed perspective on many elements of gaming.

As you can see we are off to a brilliant start and I have promises of interviews from some impressive game industry leaders. I am really looking forward to what they have to say. I hope you find it interesting too.

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Yet another free MMO. They sent me the following:

We are working on a casual MMO called Faunasphere that is currently in beta, but is scheduled to launch August 2009.  I wanted to reach out to you to extend an exclusive beta invitation and to find out what you think of the game.

Faunasphere is a casual MMO social game created by the lead-designer of Asheron’s Call.  Players adopt lovable, quirky creatures and collaborate to create and explore shared virtual worlds.   For more information, check out the media kit and images attached or visit Faunasphere.

If you’re interested, please let me know and I’ll get you into the beta right away.  I’m also happy to issue beta invites for your readers.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Jenny Park-Chan

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Gameleon.net is a new social networking hub for both professional and volunteer members of the video game industry’s press corps and other videogame related professionals.

I just joined.

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Pure speculation this, but more than eminently possible. Apple went from being a computer manufacturer to a consumer toy maker with the iPod. They then morphed into also being a phone manufacturer with iPhone. And in the process they have seen the massive profits that can be made by owning a proprietary gaming platform standard. Having seen what Apps store is making for them, they obviously want more. One obvious route this can take is to join Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo in the home game console market. Apple certainly have the technical expertise to do this.

It costs billions to launch into the console market, as Microsoft will tell you. Fortunately Apple have $29 billion in the bank. Yes, that’s right, $29 billion. You could buy a country or two with that. Also you need management who know what they are doing. Well Apple’s management seem to have had all the right ideas thus far. But that is not stopping them currently recruiting some of the top management in the console game industry.

Then there is the strongly rumoured takeover of Electronic Arts. Apple could very easily afford this and it would give them the guarantee of lots of content as and when iConsole is launched. In fact it wouldn’t make much sense unless Apple were launching a game console.

But the best thing about an Apple game console and the thing that makes it most likely is that it will allow them another opportunity to take on the old enemy, Microsoft.

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