—

Tonight, October 13, 2008, around 7:00 pm, Steve “Tarthos” Greenbaum passed away after a long, painful battle with brain cancer.

His wife Linda called me about 9:45 pm to give me the bad news. Many of you gamed with Tarthos during the beta, and you know what a truly wonderful man he was. He was always fun to play and just an all around nice guy.

I was lucky enough to actually get to meet him for a day last year when he and his wife swung by my house on their way home back to PA from a recent road trip they’d been on. They didn’t get to stay long, only a few hours, but it was a wonderful few hours. We sat and talked like we’d known each other forever and had a really good time.

Although neither of us have had much time for gaming lately, we’ve still kept in contact via Xbox.com sending messages through our friends list, messages on IM or on the telephone. I had just talked to him about a month and a half ago and he sounded great, said he felt great, everything was going good….then…bang, it hit him…hard. You never realize how fragile life is, or how important it is to keep in touch with your friends until something horrible happens.

I’m so glad I was able to keep in contact with Steve and that he knew how much I loved him before he passed away.

Once I found out he was extremely ill I started calling every day and was able to talk to him a few times till he got too sick to be able to speak. We talked about “the good ol’ days” of beta testing Shadowrun, and how much fun he had, and how much he loved all his beta buddies and missed them. His wife said every time someone mentioned any of us too him he smiled, even when he couldn’t speak any more. The thought of his beta friends made him happy even in the end and that speaks volumes about how you don’t have to “meet” someone to make a connection, sometimes just being a decent human being, if even from a distance, is enough to make a lasting impression. Steve was smart, he was funny and it didn’t matter what kind of mood I was in, he could always make me laugh. I’m not glad Steve is gone, but I am glad his suffering is over because he didn’t deserve to suffer the way he did.

I’ve been passing on the well wishes I’ve gotten from everyone to his wife and she greatly appreciates it. She know’s how much we all meant to him and it makes her happy to know the he meant just as much too us. For all of you that have donated money to buy a graveside bench for Steve’s grave, I greatly appreciate it. I know times are tight right now for everyone and that makes the donations we’ve gotten even more special. I want to thank Bryan (bry4) for the idea of getting the bench and for organizing that effort and starting a special PayPal account especially for it, that’s a lot to take on and I appreciate it. I also want to thank Eric (EA) for posting about Tarthos in his blog so we could better get the word out to maybe some people we’ve lost contact since the beta, again, I appreciate it.

Now I think I’m done for now. I’m sorry for rambling. Now that I’ve got that out there I have to go now because I need a good cry. Thanks to all of you again, and remember he’s only truely gone….if we forget him.

LuLu

Donations may be sent here: The Tarthos Fund

—

Thank you to the former FASA studio members for sending the love out to Tarthos. We are not surprised.

UPDATE: A sad update about Tarthos can be found here.

Tarthos was one of the most popular Shadowrun beta testers and one mean Troll. He was a student of the game and when that particular game is Shadowrun, then that’s saying a lot. But above all that, he was a great person. You could just tell it. While most of us never met Tarthos, we knew that he was a mature, responsible family man, and the kind of guy that we would all like to be around. It was people like Tarthos that made testing Shadowrun such a blast. Tarthos, it was a pleasure getting to know you - even it was only through a game console, some software, and an internet connection.

Over the past couple of days, I have been getting messages from other Shadowrun beta testers that Tarthos is losing his battle against brain cancer. Barring a miracle that science can’t explain, Tarthos will likely die within in the next week or two. Here are messages from fellow Shadowrun testers:

“Just wanted to let some of you fellow SR beta testers know…please pray for Tarthos…he’s losing his battle with brain cancer and his wife told me today he doesn’t have much time left. Please keep them in your prayers.” - Oct 7, 2008, Lulu

“For those that don’t know Tarthos is real bad off right now he wife has told us that the docs said he have one week left. I am trying to collect enough money from all of us to buy a graveside bench. If you can’t we understand and its not a problem.” - Oct 10, 2008, Bry4

“Just an update…Tarthos doesn’t have much time left. His wife said today that he can’t even speak now. He can open his eyes and look at her, but he can’t respond at all. Please keep him in your thoughts and/or prayers.” - Oct 12, 2008, Lulu

I was not surprised that one Shadowrun beta tester is leading an effort to collect money from the community to help Tarthos’ wife. If you feel lead, please donate money through PayPal to the Tarthos Fund. The money will be used to buy a graveside bench from the Shadowrun gaming community. If any money is left over after the bench is purchased, then that money will go toward paying for Tarthos’ funeral.

Please keep Tarthos and his family in your prayers.

Donations may be sent here: The Tarthos Fund

—
Eric Atkins, rapture
Hushed Casket Administrator

—
UPDATE: A sad update about Tarthos can be found here.

—

I am disabling comments on this post. Please go to this post if you would like to make comments. Thank you.

Shadowrun is going for cheap on Amazon right now. Click the images above to be taken to an Amazon store with the games at a heavily discounted price.

Did you hear that? The “next Shadowrun product”. Sweet!

We know the Shadowrun IP has been sold to a former FASA founder. We can’t wait to see what’s coming next.

We’re going to be closing down the Shadowrun forums in about two weeks. As many of you know, the old FASA crew has mostly moved on to other roles within Microsoft, and that means we don’t have enough people to monitor and respond to posts here for the coming year. We’ll eventually close down www.shadowrun.com and transition it to the folks working on the next generation of Shadowrun products.

For those wanting to continue discussing the game, check the Shadowrun forums on Xbox.com, or feel free to suggest new meet-up places in the forums here before we wrap up the show. Thanks to everyone who’s made the Shadowrun community one of the best in which I’ve ever had the pleasure of participating.

original post

Who knows this means? The news blurb on the Smith and Tinker website is very vague.

An announcement on Smith & Tinker’s website revealed the news today, which had few details other than the licensing of the aforementioned properties from Microsoft. “We’re not quite ready to announce our plans for each property, but please be assured that our goal is to surprise and delight old fans, while welcoming new fans to these fantastic worlds,” the announcements reads.

A prolific entrepreneur, Weisman founded the original FASA role-playing company as well as the video game offshoot FASA Interactive, toy company Wizkids, and alternate reality gaming venture 42 Entertainment. His newest venture, Smith & Tinker, aims to pursue projects as a an interconnected amaglam of media types, spanning toys, games, books and movies.

Microsoft acquired the electronic rights to FASA properties when it acquired FASA Interactive in 1999 and formed FASA Studio. Microsoft closed the studio earlier this year after the poorly received Shadowrun (PC, X360), a first-person shooter based on the titular RPG.

Entries accepted until January 16th.

Major League Gaming held their Shadowrun championship tournament in Las Vegas this past weekend. EnragedGnome and his team (Secret Weapon) were disappointed to only finish 3rd after having a very strong team. First place (and $8000) went to TsK and second place went to StK.

News, archived video, and coverage from the event can be found here: http://www.mlgpro.com/gamechannel/shadowrun

Microsoft has been making the rounds on the internet sending a word that an update for Games for Windows - Live is on the way. Major Nelson says:

Version 1.2 will “continue to add numerous end-user benefits to the service, such as support for offline Achievements, so gamers can continue to rack up Gamerscore when not connected to the internet, the ability to see whether your friends are “joinable” in games, along with additional UI features.”

Unfortunately, my Top 10 list of Things Wrong with GfW-Live is a little outdated, but almost entirely true…still. I have no faith that this next update will bring the major changes needed to GfW-Live. However, it’s got to be a step in the right direction.

Here’s hoping that Gears of War for PC will bring more users and more pressure on Microsoft and their Games for Windows - Live platform.

Yesterday FASA announced that they’ve officially closed the doors. But some weird stuff also started happening to Shadowrun yesterday.

Gamers in Shadowrun were seen as playing “Shadowrun EPD Service” on their gamercards. Their gamer status was no longer displaying the maps in which they were playing. “EPD Service” was now appearing in their profiles. You can surf Google and find remnants of the EPD Service.

Additionally, there are reports that cross-platform play (Shadowrun is the only Games for Windows title to do this) is not working. A response from a FASA dev says:

We are aware of this problem and are looking into the cause.

FASA also states that these errors are not related to FASA closing:

The game runs on the the Xbox Live / Games for Windows Live service. These services aren’t reliant on anything FASA does day to day. Once we give them a build / update, it simply runs on the service. The last update we posted was TU3, which was a while back.

Fall (who is a member of the Shadowrun team, btw) is looking into why this is happening, but it’s not related to the FASA closure.

It’s certainly odd that now of all times these errors are happening. Is FASA throwing out a hint? Is EPD Service the “something big” that is supposed to come to Shadowrun? Is “EPD Service” the name of a newly formed game studio? Did a disgruntled employee cause cross-platform play to end?

Oh the drama. Hey. Where’s the rest of our gamerpics?

Dear Friends,

It is my sad duty to announce that FASA Studio has officially closed its doors. Today was the official last day of employment for those of us who had not moved on to other positions within Microsoft Game Studios. While the rumors have been circulating forever, we chose to wait on an official announcement because we didn’t want people’s attention distracted from our last product, Shadowrun, a game we love.

As a testament to the team’s commitment to Shadowrun, we released three title updates to improve the product even after the team learned we were losing our studio. We have kept our Community Manager and Technical Support Manager on the job to aid and support you and will continue to do so while people continue to play our game. I am pleased that about half of us have found great positions elsewhere in MGS and Microsoft where they can share their experience and passion with the great people there.

But now, as the last of us say our goodbyes to each other, I’m saying goodbye to you on behalf of a group of talented and dedicated professionals who busted their humps for the love of the game. I am proud to have worked with and represented them to you and know that wherever they go, they will continue to kick ass.

I can say that being a part of the public beta test team was one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had from home. That was FASA to me because that was all I knew. The FASA devs interacted with the community daily, sometimes hourly. They have no problem admitting that the beta testers directly impacted the development of Shadowrun. We have no problem admitting that we are sad to see FASA dissolved.

Best of luck to the devs.