Pentagon Confirms It Sought To Build A 'Gay Bomb'


(CBS 5) BERKELEY A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.

Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subsquently rejected, building the so-called "Gay Bomb."

Edward Hammond, of Berkeley's Sunshine Project, had used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of the proposal from the Air Force's Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.

As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, "One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior."

The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.

"The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soliders to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistably attractive to one another," Hammond said after reviwing the documents.

"The notion was that a chemical that would probably be pleasant in the human body in low quantities could be identified, and by virtue of either breathing or having their skin exposed to this chemical, the notion was that soliders would become gay," explained Hammond.

The Pentagon told CBS 5 that the proposal was made by the Air Force in 1994.

"The Department of Defense is committed to identifying, researching and developing non-lethal weapons that will support our men and women in uniform," said a DOD spokesperson, who indicated that the "gay bomb" idea was quickly dismissed.

However, Hammond said the government records he obtained suggest the military gave the plan much stronger consideration than it has acknowledged.

"The truth of the matter is it would have never come to my attention if it was dismissed at the time it was proposed," he said. "In fact, the Pentagon has used it repeatedly and subsequently in an effort to promote non-lethal weapons, and in fact they submitted it to the highest scientific review body in the country for them to consider."

Military officials insisted Friday to CBS 5 that they are not currently working on any such idea and that the past plan was abandoned.

Gay community leaders in California said Friday that they found the notion of a "gay bomb" both offensive and almost laughable at the same time.

"Throughout history we have had so many brave men and women who are gay and lesbian serving the military with distinction," said Geoff Kors of Equality California. "So, it's just offensive that they think by turning people gay that the other military would be incapable of doing their job. And its absurd because there's so much medical data that shows that sexual orientation is immutable and cannot be changed."

(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

My thoughts

I've enjoyed reading this thread and I think there are a lot of valid points and views here.

(Disclaimer: I've also been following the threads on the WoW Forums that are similar and wanted to respond there but the forums are down!)

I think there is some nostalgia going on here though. Either that or we're watching a textbook case of the "grass is always greener" going on. In WoW 1.0, we faced many complaints about the lack of raiding options. We were often criticized with coming out with new raid content "at a snail's pace." In fact, I challenge anyone to find a thread from Winter 2005 where people are talking about how awesome the pacing of the raid content was.

Some other things to remember. You *could* skip some of AQ 40 in your progression if you wanted to. This was viewed as an interesting debate (having options is a good thing, yes?). Not a design flaw. We're always looking to give players options -- from PvP (multiple arenas, battlegrounds), to 5 mans to raiding. My biggest criticism of our 10 person raiding game right now (I have a few) is that there are no options beyond KZ. We're fixing that. But you get my point. Players need options.

I'll go ahead and make a controversial statement to illustrate a point. Let's pretend for a moment that Burning Crusade never came out and we were still in vanilla WoW land. The community, as a whole, would have eventually screamed bloody muder over the difficulty of the Four Hoursemen. The Four Hoursemen were considered one of our best tuned encounters in the game. But I'll argue that's because so few people actually progressed to the point of needing to beat them. And the ones who did beat them, were ok with going to extreme measures to do so (consumables, world buffs, server transfers for tanks in 4 peice dreadnaught). A fight that requires 8 tanks is *not* acceptable to the raiding community as a whole. A fight that requires 8 tanks was acceptable to the bleeding edge only (and their fans) and only because it seperated them from the rest -- not because that's what made a *fun* raiding experience. How fun was it for the hunter who got benched for Warrior #8? How fun was it for the guild who lost their main tank when he server transfered to be a part of one of the World Firsts?

For the place and time, Four Horsemen were great. They were beatable and mostly bug free.

While we're on the topic of Naxx, I want to remind everyone that during it's initial opening, almost ALL of the bosses died within the same period that the BT bosses are dying. People forget that because of the Four Horsemen wall. If raid content is tuned correctly, it will die relatively fast (UNLESS it requires some sort of progression check -- Onyxia Cloak, resist check). Even straight up gear checks are very dicey. More often than not that lead's to excessive raid stacking rather than a true gearing up.

Another thing to keep in mind is the PTR. In order to release the highest quality encounters, we put the content on the PTR. This happened with Naxx as well. It's not surprising that the three EU guilds who have progressed the furthest in Black Temple are also the guilds that spent the most time on the PTR. While it's "only taken them 2 weeks" to kill most of the content in BT, we've been watching them rep on the dungeon for 2 months now.

Properly tuned and accessible raid content will die. It's ok. We'll make more. That's what we do for a living. What's really important is for the content to be enjoyable to do for more than just one clearing. Because after all, your priest wants his shoulders off of Boss X or your tank wants that shield off of Boss Y. It should be epic to kill a boss like Illidan or Kael. But it shouldn't be epic because no one is doing it because they are overtuned or bugged out.

My opinions on Black Temple? Najentus is tuned perfectly -- we wanted a "reward" boss for getting in. Akama is a tad easier than we had hoped but he's a really cool, fun fight so it works out. Reliquary of Souls is just where we wanted it to be -- it's very hard. Teron is a hard fight until people know what they are doing at which point it becomes easy. The more guilds that kill Teron, the easier the fight becomes for everyone.

I think the raid game is in a very good place right now. Raiders of all skill levels and time commitments have a variety of options. There *are* some extremely challenging and rewarding fights in the game (Kael, Reliquary, Archimonde, Illidan). Raid tuning walks the razor blade. Things that make raids *seem* more challenging (trash, raid stacking, consumables, resist checks, attunements, limited access, limited tries) are usually perceived as tedious or "progression blockers" and the complaints fire away. But I'll reiterate, a well tuned raid boss -- even a very hard and complex one -- will die quickly if it's tuned properly and bug free.

I'll leave you guys with a question. How many people posting in this thread that the Black Temple is too easy have killed a boss in Black Temple?

Brewing is in! Farmers can now purchase recipes and materials and grow crops necessary to produce beer. Yay beer!

CSM support for player names in chat window
You can now right click player names in any chat communication and get a CSM (context- sensitive menu).

Broken Sword Movie Begins

A motion picture of the popular video game series "Broken Sword" is under way. Legendary video game creator Charles Cecil ("The Da Vinci Code," "Beneath the Steel Blue Sky") and his Revolution Software are teaming with a Hollywood production company to transform his adventure games into live action films.

The exciting task has been given to action/adventure producers Jay Douglas and Nav Gupta ("Level 7," "Quantum Heist," and the upcoming "Stonehenge: Rise of the Druids" franchise) and their CastleBright Studios production company. Gaming expert Justin Kaplan united Cecil with the company and will join to produce.

Beginning with "The Shadow of the Templars" (released the U.S. as "The Circle of Blood"), films will follow the adventurous duo of George Stobbart and Nico Collard as they battle evil forces across the globe for ancient relics of power.

Specific details of the storyline are being kept under wraps, but filmmakers promise to stay true to all of the fan favorite elements. "'Broken Sword' is the kind of complex story every producer dreams about, rich with mystery and adventure, so for me, this is a real honor." said Douglas.

As for who will helm and adapt the novel-like video game, initial talks have begun with leading directors and screenwriters from such films as "Harry Potter," Casino Royale, "X-Men" to name a few.

Discussion about creating a film swirled early in the year, and after the recent success of "Broken Sword 4: The Angel of Death," a plan for a live action adventure went into full swing.

The Hub of All Blame: A Postmortem
This is the transcript of an interview with Brad McQuaid via telephone which began at 1:40AM and finished at 3:09AM on May 17th, 2007. As before, I am adding no personal comments to this article outside of what is presented in the interview.

f13.net: What was the relationship in the office between Microsoft and Sigil prior to the split?

Brad McQuaid:: As I've posted a number of times, there was a regime change at Microsoft where they reorganized a lot of their game studios. The people who were in charge of the Vanguard project on the Microsoft side went elsewhere and a completely new group of people were put in place. In that new group of people, the upper management side were also in charge of getting the Xbox 360 out the door. So, the PC games at the time were not receiving a lot of support and I don't blame Microsoft for this at all. When you've got billions of dollars spent trying to launch a new console and millions on the PC titles, you're gonna make sure that the Xbox 360 kicks ass - I think they did a good job of that. The lower level people were put in charge of our project were people who didn't have any MMO experience. They had done Zoo Tycoon 1 & 2. We tried very hard to bring them up to speed and with open arms to show them the differences and similarities between developing an MMO and a single player game - the scale and things like that. That just didn't seem to work. Previously, the people who were dealing with us committed to us - verbally - that they, Microsoft, wanted and were determined to launch a AAA Massively Multiplayer Role-Playing Game - and to do whatever it took to make sure that happened. While that's not down on paper - as no company ever would put down on paper - that was our understanding. Under the new regime, that commitment, nobody remembered it.

When games like WoW were getting heavily into development and dollar amounts on games like EQ2 and WoW were becoming public - we said it would always be our understanding and agreement that we would compete with these guys. They backed down off of that and said that it was no longer their goal and at that point, the money started drying.

f13.net: So, Microsoft simply wasn't ready to compete and they had previously failed projects...

Brad McQuaid:: You have to understand how Microsoft works - and like I said, I don't blame them. They're given different marching orders from a corporate level when it comes to large expenditures. If you go back to Xbox 1 there was a lot of concerns. Can it handle Nintendo and Sony and Sega? Microsoft, you're big, but you can't have the console arena. Microsoft said "we're gonna do it, whatever it takes." The Xbox 1 was ok, and the Xbox 360 is doing great - and that, well, that was their mandate: To do whatever it took to start dominating the console market. They may not be there yet, but they're a lot farther along than they were with the Xbox 1. They had made that decision at some level to look ahead at online gaming and really do the same thing with MMOs. The day or the day after I left Sony, Ed Fries - I think the general manager at Windows Gaming - and other publishers called me, EA and NCSoft, but I had known Ed from before and had a relationship with him. I just knew that Microsoft, when they put their mind to do something, there's no stopping them. They were ready to make the next big MMO. A couple years into the project there was a significant change - the gaming group - and that was no longer the mandate. It took several months to really figure that out. When you have the Zoo Tycoon team assigned to you and the upper manager is in charge of your project and in charge of launching the 360... he must have had ten seconds a day to bother thinking about Vanguard. As there are - and I don't want to sound bitter - in large corporate entities, they make changes. When that change occurred, our relationship started going downhill. We knew what we needed to be competitive with World of Warcraft was in jeopardy.

f13.net: People have said that Microsoft were completely hands off in the development...

Brad McQuaid:: Well, before the transition, they weren't completely - but we were working hand in hand. It was a fantastic relationship. After the change they became completely hands-on.

f13.net: What did that do with the game?

Brad McQuaid:: It slowed down development significantly. Managing the game from their perspective, well... We tried to explain how MMO development is different from Zoo Tycoon and that explanation just wasn't being agreed with or understood - one of the two, I'm not sure. They wanted detailed schedules going out for months that were fairly inflexible. The more artistic a project is, the less schedulable it is down to the long term. I'm all for scheduling - but you have to be flexible. What if a technology doesn't work out? What if you find a better way to do something? You have to be flexible. Especially in pre-production. They wanted everything systematically and that it would take exactly this amount of time, this amount of art assets, and this amount of people to make, say, a dungeon. Are we talking about a premiere dungeon? A level 30 dungeon? A raid dungeon? A dungeon for core gamers? A dungeon where we can reuse certain art assets? Are we talking one where new art is used? There are a lot of variables there. There's not a lot of flexibility there. Our interpretation of that early on is that they don't understand MMO development. Later on, we determined that the decision was made that this is how the studio would be run regardless of the game.

f13.net: I was told that Microsoft actually came in and set a firm release date when you all were somewhere between 55 and 65 percent done.

Brad McQuaid:: Before the regime change, they had committed to us that they would adjust budgets and time frames to make sure it was a AAA game. These things take a long time to develop. Changes are happening, getting more expensive and customers are expecting more. We went back a couple of times together with [the managing team] to increase our budget or increase our time here and there. They were totally cool with that and understood that it was necessary to remain competitive.

After the regime change, that was considered "we were late" or "mismanaging" or "not adhering to strict schedules." It was looked upon not as staying competitive or making a AAA WoW-level game but rather that we were doing something wrong. They frowned upon us needing more time or money. When we'd ask for it, it was considered that we were making errors. Each time that occurred the micromanagement would increase. More and more Microsoft people would come down and try to analyze what was going on. Where we were "messing up." What they could do to "help us." Until finally they flat out said no. No more money, no more time. Your release date needs to be in the July 2006 time frame and that's it.

They didn't have their MMO people anymore really, and they had a major priority of getting the Xbox 360 out which cost billions and billions of dollars. Our ability to petition this to higher-ups and get any attention just really wasn't there.

I don't want to appear to negative here... but this happens with large corporations. There are changes and changes in mandate and focus, and clearly the Xbox 360 is doing very, very well. It has great titles and Microsoft is sitting fine. It's not like they made a catastrophic corporate error. I very much respect Microsoft as a whole and there are a lot of great people there and I'm definitely not one of those "I love Linux and hate all things Windows guys." I understand that all these things happen. Unfortunately it happened to us.

f13.net: Right after the split and before the tragedy the other day, that's when people claim you started to be in the office... not quite as much. Can you explain why?

Brad McQuaid:: We need to back up a little bit. After we split from Microsoft - because obviously we couldn't ship the game in an unready state - we had to go out and do something. Find money to make the game that we could and all dreamed about. We cut a deal pretty quickly so that we could get into SOE's E3 kiosk. We ended up having to meet payroll and to pay the bills. We needed to raise money. We went out and found some people who specialized in venture capital and I worked with those people immediately following the deal coming together. I started working with them on putting a deal together to fund the game to completion and fund the company post-completion and to possibly start a second title. It was basically "get money that we needed." So I started working with these people, it was a learning experience - I'd never really been in the private investor/VC world - and we started that process. I was in and out of the office quite a bit. Demoing the game, showing it to potential investors and putting together the documentation. All sorts of stuff you have to do for that kind of money.

f13.net: So that time being out of the office was business?

Brad McQuaid: It was a bummer. Even going back to SOE, I want to make games. The executive producer side of things is more fun than the CEO business side of things. But it had to be done, right? So it was a bummer leaving a lot of that behind and it simply had to be done.

f13.net: The SOE-speak was vague in their press release, what are you doing on the game now?

Brad McQuaid: Pretty much what the press release said. It will become more clear and more announced in the future. I'll be posting on message boards, working with the creative/marketing team on Vanguard, perhaps future things... projects, and working as a consultant in that area. Which are some of the things I really enjoy like posting on message boards.

f13.net: Like FoH?

Brad McQuaid: If that had gotten to me, I'd have gone under in 1998.

f13.net: I don't know. You refuse to post on f13, even though you said you "read us daily."

Brad McQuaid: No offense, it looks like a lot more people read FoH and I was posting on there to get the word out about the game. I had no intention to argue or or debate about the game. It was to show people that there was a difference. F13 is a smaller group of guys that really gets into MMOs - the analysis of MMOs and what makes them work. I enjoy reading it, it just doesn't seem like the same type of forum [as FoH].. On FoH, some people would say - "Oh Brad, you're just here promoting, go away." I say, "well, if that's your feeling, let me know." A bunch of other guys say "stay" and well, as long as I'm welcome here that I would. I was simply too engaged with other stuff to get into the more esoteric and more philosophical parts of MMO design which f13 is a bit more focused on...

f13.net: Well, it's irrelevant these days since everyone links to everyone else.

Brad McQuaid: This is true.

f13.net: For everyone involved, do you have a Google Alert on "The Vision?"

Brad McQuaid: Hm. No. I have it on McQuaid and Sigil I think. I should probably put one on "The Hub of All Blame" as well.

f13.net: Actually, 9 out of 10 people believe that "The Hub of All Blame" is Gilbertson and Fisher. Do you even want to comment?

Brad McQuaid: No. They're great guys, personal friends of mine and I can understand why people can be upset with them. While I understand it, I disagree on a professional level. Going further would have to wait for an SOE interview.

f13.net: Do you think some of that contributed to some of the eventual problems that arose?

Brad McQuaid: I can't answer that, but when a company grows and you start being a manager, it's worrisome to hire somebody from outside though. So your inclination is to hire from the inside, your downside to that is that. Growing a company really, really fast is tough. I certainly made my share of errors and there are books written on it. It's not something easy. It goes back into something I said earlier about how quick this industry is expecting more and more - Everquest cost 8 million dollars, WoW cost 80 Million. Jesus. That's in a period of how many years?

Evendim will be the first of many significant expansions for Lord of the Rings Online when it arrives sometime this month.

It will add a vast new area for players to explore, Evendim, which will offer more than 60 quests to get stuck into, plus lots of content for players over level 30 - including the first major raid in the game.

There's also a spattering of new skills to enjoy, enhancements to the Champion class, as well as a handful of new monsters and a fresh storyline to get stuck into.

You see, Aragorn needs your help to scour the ancient city of Annúminas for the powerful relics within, so that he can repair his uber sword. Typical royal behaviour. You'll also get to meet an Ent who is roaming the hills in search of some missing Entwives.

It's just the start of the ongoing support Codemasters Online Gaming will offer the game, according to product manager Ed Blincoe, who insists the publisher has huge plans for the future.

"The Lord of the Rings Online has had a great launch. We're please to welcome the hundreds of thousands of people that have already signed up to play the game," Ed Blincoe told Eurogamer. "We have huge plans for content updates going forwards and the arrival of The Shores of Evendim just a few short weeks after launch highlights this perfectly."

The Lord of the Rings Online is a massively-multiplayer online role-playing game that is actually pretty ruddy good. You can't play as Aragorn and the Fellowship cronies, but you can interact with them on crucial storyline quests.

Head over to our Lord of the Rings Online review to see why it's one of the best MMOs out there.

Alternatively you can follow Frodo into our Book 9: Evendim gallery to see what awaits you in the first major update.