Congratulations!
To the new 2008 MobyUsers that have made it to ...
The 2008 Top Contributors Hall of Fame:

Kyler.ural. Ukrainian member since Feb 26, 2008 with 2581 points;

Jenny Bee. German member since May 10, 2008 with 2414 points;

SimonG. German member since Jan 26, 2008 with 2168 points;

airshark. U.K. member since Jul 23, 2008 with 1961 points.

The MG 2007 Hall of Fame consist of:

12 Americans (-1);
8 Germans (+1);
5 Swedes (+3);
3 Brazilians (0);
3 Brits (+1);
3 Russians (+1);
2 Belgians (+1);
2 Canadians (-5)
2 Dutch (0);
2 Poles (0);
1 Australian (-1);
1 Greek (0);
1 Mexican (+1)
1 Ukrainian(0);

One Argentinian, Czech, Israeli, Portuguese, unidentified from the 2007 list, demoted. Still no Indonesians, Klingons or supermodels.

Top #1 Game Contributors 2008:

New Game Entries: Big John WV submitted 335 games and their descriptions;

New Game Credits: Sicarius submitted 117 credit entries;

New Game Cover Art: joyvalley submitted 3970 cover art;

New Game Screenshots: Macs Black submitted 4550 screenshots;

New Game Reviews: vicrabb submitted 39 reviews;

New Game Trivia Items: PCGamer77 submitted 183 trivia;

New Game Alternate Titles: Klaster_1 submitted 611 titles;

New Game Attributes: joyvalley submitted 1378 tech info/rating system;

New Game Hints: James Evans submitted 24 hints;

New Company Release Info: Sciere submitted 6042 release info;

New Game Release Info : Klaster_1 submitted 1153 release info;

New Game Product Codes: Jeanne submitted 1724 codes;

New Game Ratings: Kaminari submitted 434 ratings;

New Game Ad Blurbs: DreinIX submitted 594 ad blurbs;

New Game Related Websites: DreinIX submitted 1222 sites;

New Game Corrections: Kabushi submitted 457 corrections;

New Game Overlays: ImagicFan submitted 5 overlays ;

New MobyRanks: Wizo submitted 28337 MobyRanks.

Additional info: 4 confirmed females; 46 unconfirmed males (half of which are wanted for spamming and trolling :p); 20 approvers; 2 admins, 9 gold star members and one suspected unlicensed gigolo.

Expect a 20% error margin since the contributor can't count very well, has serious memory issues and apparently no life. :p

2008 E.M. Forster Prize winner John Lanchester tackles the difficult relationship between games and art in the London Review, approaching the subject from different angles.

There is no other medium that produces so pure a cultural segregation as video games, so clean-cut a division between the audience and the non-audience. Books, films, TV, dance, theatre, music, painting, photography, sculpture, all have publics which either are or aren’t interested in them, but at least know that these forms exist, that things happen in them in which people who are interested in them are interested. They are all part of our current cultural discourse. Video games aren’t. Video games have people who play them, and a wider public for whom they simply don’t exist. (The exceptions come in the form of occasional tabloid horror stories, always about a disturbed youth who was ‘inspired’ to do something terrible by a video game.) Their invisibility is interesting in itself, and also allows interesting things to happen in games under the cultural radar.

[full article]

Merry Christmas to all our fans... you guys are the ones that make the site so great. Thanks for all the hard work all of you have done to the site.

Spread the word about site to those that enjoy video games. If you happen to have a Facebook page consider supporting MobyGames by becoming a fan of the site here... http://www.facebook.com/pages/MobyGames/34233131826

By now I guess everyone heard about Black Mesa; the full-fledged remake of the original Half-Life with all the power and beauty of the Source engine.

Well, this has been on the making for quite a while now, but at least the developers were constantly keeping us posted via blog posts and screenshots and whatnot, so we didn't believe the project went down the drain or something.

A few days ago, they finally released the very first proper trailer for the game. To be honest, I was in expecting another showcase of empty locations... and boy was I wrong. To cut it short, seeing so much sweet, sweet live action caused my socks to blow right out the window. And the window wasn't even open.

How is it that Valve hasn't signed these guys for their sweatshop already, escapes me. I mean, if these kids put as much effort on the rest of the game as they did on the silo tentacle scene alone (you'll know what I mean once you've seen it), Half-Life 2: Episode Two might be in serious danger of being overshadowed by this. Which would be an irony of universe-imploding proportions, I guess.

Enough babbling, then, go watch the trailer. It's definitely worth your precious couple seconds.

Kabushi, one of the most active contributors to the site, has just hit 40,000 points in five years and five days after first joining the site. This tremendous achievement is largely due to his work with release info items and an endless amount of corrections where he manages to locate the correct development studio for often obscure games. Another vast area where he lends his expertise in the credits section, with no less than 1174 individual credit listings, which makes up for more than 17,000 points alone. He is also the most active Swedish contributor and currently holds the eighth place on the overall ranking.

Congratulations, and to many years to come!