You hear that? That is the sound of the cable news channels all stampeding towards Ubisoft's Call of Juarez: The Cartel -- they can smell a controversy from miles away. 

News Blips:

Call of Juarez: The Cartel brings the series into modern day L.A. and Mexico for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC this summer. After the stunning success that Rockstar had with the western-themed Red Dead Redemption, you would think that every publisher with a cowboy game on the books would drag their IP back out in hopes of cashing in on the craze. Instead, Ubisoft is updating their wild-west game into something completely bold and exciting. The name, The Cartel, suggests that this Call of Juarez will focus on the U.S./Mexico border war that has erupted to control the drug trafficking that exists between the two countries. This is a hot topic, and developer Techland will have to take great care to come out with a respectful product -- after all, dozens of people have been brutally killed by "the cartels." 

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood's script wins an award from Hollywood's Writers' Guild of America. The WGA has given out this accolade for a few years now, but it has lacked credibility in the past. The nominees for the previous years never quite matched up with what gamers were expecting. For example, this year, Mass Effect 2's script was not nominated. The reason for these oversights usually falls at the feet of the publishers. "The first year, several games which people believed should have won our award were not eligible because the developer didn't bother to credit the people who wrote those games," claimed the WGA's Micah Wright in a column written for Gamesindustry.biz. The WGA wasn't about to give award a publisher who wasn't willing to give credit to the writer. Thankfully, that wasn't the case for Bioware -- they simply didn't submit a script to the WGA for review. However, considering that the script is so large it could kill a man, I think the guild should consider themselves lucky.

Nearly 12 to 15 percent of Harmonix's work force is laid off. According to Joystiq, this is a step toward bringing the studio "into alignment" with the current rate of new game production. Obviously, the audience for Harmonix's music games expanded at an extreme rate, before the market became inundated with similar products which reduced the demand. In other words, the bubble has burst and now it is time to salvage what they can. It is unfortunate that the studio who developed Dance Central -- the game widely heralded as the best Kinect launch game -- still has to cut jobs. It is unclear what the studio is working on now, but they continue to create add-ons for Rock Band and Dance Central.

Double Fine's big boss Tim Schafer thinks that games would be funnier if developers would stop censoring themselves. "There are a lot of funny people in the games industry," Schafer said in an interview with CVG, "and [they seem to] think of the funny thing, and then say: 'No, I can't do that. Let's cut that out because someone might be bothered by that.'"  It is true. Already, I've cut several very funny jokes about Mexicans, homeless people, and your mother -- all because I'm afraid of upsetting the readers. It is unlikely that publishers of multi-million-dollar productions will suddenly open up and say to their development team, "Hey, guys, you know the people paying money to play our games? Go ahead and insult their sensibilities." Which is why it makes sense coming from Schafer -- a man who is about to release his second download-only title in a row.

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