Rejected ENN – April 28, 2010
April 28th, 2010

Posted by Jeremy

Every week, Paul, Graham, Kathleen and I get together to write ENN. Over the week, each of us actually writes stories separately, then we commune on Fridays to choose what to use, what to revise, etc. Sometimes the stories we throw out aren’t very good; other times, they are too obscure for a wider audience. Even so, very good stories are occasionally rejected because there is just not enough space for them in the episode. Here are several such stories from this week’s episode:

Roll Call of Duty

Activision is rolling out its plans for new Call of Duty Games, announcing three new games in the next 2 years. Call of Duty: Van Halen, Call of Duty: Rocks the 80s Iran Contra Style and Call of Duty: Army Food Service Operations Specialist Hero are all due for a 2011 release.

While the news here was that Activision had definitely confirmed two CoD titles for 2011, following this year’s Call of Duty: To Be Announced this Friday on Game Trailers but Will Probably be Called ‘Black Ops’ and be Set During the Cold War and developed by Treyarch, this was already pretty much expected, and, indeed forecast in a previous episode. That said, the joke is nuanced and its loss is a tragedy.

Fallout Fallout

Fallout 3 developer Bethesda is continuing to fight a legal battle to stop the series’ original creators, Interplay, from making a Fallout MMO. The conflict has exploded with a statement on Bethesda’s website citing that they clearly called “no takeses backses” and Interplay contending that while they did sell the Fallout intelectual property, they most definitely never said “simon says”. More on this story as it develops.

This is one of the rare instances where the news changed dramatically between when the story was written, and when we had our meeting to workshop it. By the time we spoke about this story, a settlement was already in place, and the Fallout MMO was reconfirmed as going ahead. This is actually way better than the nightmare scenario, in which the news changes dramatically between when we shoot the story and when the video goes live.