April Fool's Day and Gaming

As a gamer, I come to both welcome and dread April Fool's Day. While many go out and perform some sort of prank (such as YouTube and their flipping their videos upside down), I feel that those in the gaming industry are the ones that go all out.

Kotaku compiled a list and sorted it by how they felt the pranks were for this year. I'll go into a few that I remember and came across, as well as some from the past. I'll also delve into my own opinion near the end.

Out in the Cold

One of the kings of April Fool's Day, I feel (and am not really alone in feeling, either) are the guys working for Blizzard. Every year they've put out a prank of some sort. Some years the prank is quite detailed, even going so far as to fool some people (for example, they convinced some people that two-player controlled two-headed ogres were going to be playable in World of Warcraft).

This year it seems like they went even more all out than usual. Not one, not two, but FOUR pranks. On the American WoW page, they put forward their Dance Battle System (also probably poking fun at their promise of users being able to customize new dance moves in game but, thus far, being unable to code it in). On their European page came P1mp My Mount. Their Starcraft 2 page showed the Terra-Tron. And finally, their Diablo 3 page had the introduction of the Archivist class.

Truly, I think Blizzard is in a class all its own when it comes to April 1st.

Turning the Valve

Valve also did a good job this year. They've been releasing updates to each class in their popular Team Fortress 2 game, and they made it seem that the Sniper's turn was up (it actually is, but this was a fake update all the same). The page reads for itself, I think.

Not Even Trying

I didn't come across any news items this year that made my blood boil, but the Kotaku list I linked to has a list of a few at the bottom. Go check those out.

Thoughts

As a gamer, I've come to expect things like this to come out on April 1st. Pretty much any gaming news I hear that day I take with a large grain of salt. Still, it is a good day for some fun. And I think the more po'ed I get over some news (well, over prank news that's actually done well), the better the prank.

I do wonder how many people fall for some of this stuff. The fallout from the fake ogre announcement really had me wondering a while ago.