After shrouding themselves in a "cone of silence" for three years since the company was formed, Kings Isle Entertainment revealed themselves to the public for the first time.

Game Daily tells us more and checking their website shows an impressive cast of actors... er... developers on the commander's deck.

Creative Director Tom Hall's flagship games include: the Commander Keen series, Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny, DOOM, Rise of the Triad and Anachronox. Other credits include Congo Cube, Hyperspace Delivery Boy and most recently, Area 51.

Todd Coleman (Director) and Josef Hall (Technical Director) both hail from Wolfpack Studios, developer of Shadowbane.

They have studios in Dallas and Austin, and of course... they are hiring!

Seldom do you hear of Hackers being rewarded, so this was a surprise enough that I thought I'd blog about it.

CNN Reports that Bernie Peng reprogrammed Tammy Li's favorite video game, "Bejeweled," so a ring and a marriage proposal would show up on the screen when she reached a certain score.

Li reached the needed score -- and said yes.

The word of the romantic feat last December filtered out after Peng, a financial software programmer, posted details on his blog. The reprogramming was a tricky task and took him a month.

What's unusual is that PopCap is flying the couple out to Seattle where their headquarters is located, for their honeymoon, and giving the couple copies of "Bejeweled" to give out as part favors at their wedding.

Hmm... I figured out resident Age of Conan expert (fanboi) would have been all over this. Funcom announced this morning that they will be partnering with GameSpot to play AoC - specifically to test their PvP functionality.

Details Here on the FunCom Site.

In a highly exclusive event, 15,000 gamers from across the world can log in and play Age of Conan, non-stop, from Friday April 18th to Sunday April 20th.

To make the weekend even more interesting Eidos and Funcom also includes the engaging Age of Conan character creation system, allowing players to create avatars with strong personalities. All 12 classes in the game, including the barbarian, can be picked and tested, with Funcom transforming each character into a fully specced level 20 death machine. In PvP lobbies players can then chat and socialize, prior to entering PvP matches. Participants are urged to test different classes, and offer any feedback on the forums. There will also be forums on GameSpot.com where people can talk about the event, and Funcom staff will be present to gather feedback.

You have to be a registered GameSpot member of course... but here's the link where you can sign up: http://www.gamespot.com/test/ageofconan/

Have fun and tell us all about it!

When this article was pointed out to me by Bruce of MMOGCharts, my comment to him was... Ah well, there goes the replacement mag I was receiving in place of Massively Multiplayer which went belly up together with Computer Games Magazine.

Ziff Davis, which owns and operates the 1UP Network and its publications (including Games for Windows), filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month. But 1UP Network content VP Simon Cox said that GFW's online-only transition had little to do with parent Ziff Davis' financial troubles.

We are moving all media online at an alarming rate and "scoops" are not a day or a week as they are in the print world, they are by the split-second. Will we soon be in a world where we really have no time to stand and stare?