Connect Gaming

We've started discussing and contemplating moving the individual sites of the member clans of The Group Thing, to subdomains under The Group Thing's domain, www.thegroupthing.org.

In effect this means that today's www.connect-gaming.com will be accessed via connectgaming.thegroupthing.org. The same will be applied for all the individual member clan sites of course. What we need to take note of, is that we may move the entire forum to the clan forum in The Group Thing boards, a totally different forum software, and thus shut this forum down.

This is still only under open discussion and planning, so we have no set time span, nor have we looked very much into how we're going to migrate our posts and users successfully and without trouble, to The Group Thing's community.

Your thoughts?

We're starting to get a little anxious around here.
To be frank, it looks as if the new installment in the Call of Duty franchise may be well worth getting.

Treyarch's Call of Duty: Black Ops looks to have everything CoD4: Modern Warfare and CoD: Modern Warfare 2 had, and more! Now only 8 days away from release, the release trailer hits the internet, and it further backs up the suspicions of awesomeness.

If the game is as awesome as it looks, we might even forgive Activision for some of their silliness regarding the infamous IWNET and Steam-only stuffles and such.

So, without any further yapping, we present the launch trailer:

Check out Treyarch's official YouTube channel for more of their awesome CoD: Black Ops videos.

It’s time for our quarterly update on TGT’s activities and to encourage you lot to part with your hard earned cash.
TGT has been a thriving community of gamers for almost four years now, we’ve seen some awesome games and some fun times and enjoyed them together.

TGT is a productive community, we have a collection of talented and creative people on board who have produced unique things for our community.
Haunted Mod for L4D and L4D2.
Game reviews written by our members.
Gamers Call, offering in depth and regular reviews of games we wouldn’t otherwise hear about.
A fully functional portal site, offering everything from forums through to site games and rankings.
Customised and easily available game servers free for our members to use whenever they want to game.
Our own dedicated quad core server ‘Deep Thought’ providing game servers and FTP for custom maps.
Competitions to win games and prizes.
Occasional opportunities for members of the community to speak with and meet with the Game Developers of some of our most cherished games.
Voice Comms servers, maintained and administered by the community.
Our first TGT gather, which was a huge success and saw many friends meet for the first time in the flesh.

There’s more coming in the future. In coming months you can expect to see.

An exclusive interview with Dmitry Glukhovsky, the creator of Metro 2033, Game & Book and a chance to win both as a package prize.*
A competition for two lucky winners to win copies of the much anticipated Brink on pre-order.*
Competitions to win Brink Paraphernalia, including T-Shirts and Posters.*
A Gamers Call competition.*
Zombie Night, a TGT gather being held to watch zombie films on Halloween weekend.
Regular game reviews from Gamers Call.

So, what do we want from you in return for all this awesome community goodness. Two things; Keep on gaming and posting in the TGT forums and send us as much as you can spare so that we can keep the gears of TGT turning for everyone.

Remember TGT is staffed and run entirely by volunteers, everything you see and enjoy in our community has been created by the community with the support of our sponsor partners such as Alpha Networks and Splashdamage.

Keep on gaming guys, and click the paypal ‘Donate’ button so that TGT can keep on being awesome.

Yesterday we announced over at The Group Thing that we're looking to sponsor a new team for pro/semi-pro gaming. This team, if there is interest, will be formed from within The Group Thing's own ranks, or The Group Thing will announce the sponsorship offer to other teams.

This is the real deal, folks. If you're looking for a chance to get started in the competition scene, The Group Thing is your step stone. The Group Thing has all the means available to you to get started with servers to practice on and much, much more.

Read the original entry here.

Jason West and Vince Zampella, previous heads of Activision developer Infinity Ward, has founded a new studio and signed an exclusive deal with Electronic Arts.

The said founded studio, very fittingly called Respawn Entertainment considering the drama and unfair firing of West and Zampella from Infinity Ward and Activision, seems to be heading in the direction we all hoped Infinity Ward would go for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2; "we can ensure that the fans are treated as well as they deserve", West says.

The deal Respawn Entertainment has with Electronic Arts is a special one aswell. While Electronic Arts is the exclusive publisher, Respawn Entertainment will retain full ownership of the IP they create. A deal they will benefit greatly from, and unlike the deals with Modern Warfare/Call of Duty franchises Activision sadly retain full control over.

"Respawn Entertainment marks a fresh start for Jason and me," Zampella says. "For the past decade we led a great development team and poured our hearts into creating an epic game franchise. We're very proud of what we built; and proud that so many millions of fans enjoyed those games. Today we hope to do it all over again; open a new studio, hire a great team, and create brand new games with a new partner, EA."

Official website: www.respawn.com (In development)