Fallen London, one of the best games of last year, is mostly a text adventure. But now the developers at Failbetter Games are experimenting with pictures. They’ve just launched a Fallen London comic book, but they’re only releasing two pages a day. It’s an odd way to read a comic book, but I guess it recreates the experience of playing Fallen London, where you only get a certain number of turns a day. And like the short snippets of narrative in the game, this comic book is only six pages long.
It starts here, but if you wait until Wednesday, you can read it all at once.
Now that Guild Wars 2 developer ArenaNet is committed to a schedule of new content every two weeks, I’m committed to working (i.e. playing) extra hard to keep up. Today is the start of the Bazaar of the Four Winds, which I presume means the end of the Dragon Bash festival. At least that’s what I was worried was going to happen as I was looking over the achievements for the festival and I noticed I wasn’t far from earning the Holographic Shattered Dragon Wings, which you can attach to your armor for a cosmetic effect. I’d seen several people running around with the wings. Naturally, it had occurred to me they’d look pretty nifty on a necromancer’s frilly outfit. Like princess faeries wings, but edgier. However, I wasn’t about to grind the achievements to earn them. I don’t care that much about looks. I mean, sure, I’ve colored my blouse and skirt with a tastefully coordinated combination of heather and strawberry cream. And I had to consider carefully whether I wanted the trim to be sea breeze or summer thistle. But I only did it because I had some time to kill while shopping for town clothes on the trading post.
So, sure, why not grab the wings before the Bazaar of the Four Winds started. To earn the last few achievements, I scarfed down a bunch of taffy, pausing occasionally to vomit, and finished the backstory dialogue with the members of the Ship’s Council, who were helpfully lined up in a row in the center of Lion’s Arch. All that was left was 18 more matches of Dragon Ball, which isn’t so bad. It could be worse. It could be 18 matches of keg brawl, which is like rugby, but with spells so that you spend even more time knocked down. But Dragon Ball is a straightforward Unreal Tournament style team deathmatch. You play on a simple map strewn with jumping pads and powerups. You start with only a single attack. Grabbing powerups earns you up to four more attacks. 18 matches would be easy enough. On the 14th match, I noticed that the wiki said Dragon Ball doesn’t apply to your wings achievement.
And that’s how I ended up running all over Guild Wars 2 to track down 41 dragon effigies that needed burning. Because it was either that or betting on moa races, and there’s no way I’m going to burn 50 silver a bet on something that’s probably rigged anyway.
The Writers’ Group Film Corp. has announced, that they have purchased Amiga Games Inc. including the licensing rights to the full library of over 300 classic video games. The content distribution company paid $500k for the acquisition and plans to continue making the games available through other publishers and developers.
Eric Mitchell, Chairman and CEO of Writers’ Group commented, “We are pleased to be working with this well-managed game developer and distributor, and we are excited that we are participating in their growth story through this acquisition. We believe Amiga Games has an established value proposition that can enhance both revenues and returns to our bottom line.”
Many Amiga titles are already available on iOS, Android, and PC digital stores.
If you watch Defiance, the Syfy sci-fi show, you might see a wanted poster in the background. If you peer closely, you might see the image of the character model of a player who won a contest in the online game. That’s not really much of a prize. By my count, that contest winner still has 14 minutes and 58 seconds of fame coming to him. If you want that coveted spot in season two, what are you doing reading this post? You’ve got your work cut out for you:
The ten Ark Hunters who complete the most Major Arkfall events between July 8 (10am PDT) and July 30 (10am PDT) will compete for a chance to have their character written onto the show. These ten semifinalists will be fleshed out with a backstory written by the show’s writing staff, which will be featured on Facebook, where Defiance fans will choose their five favorites. From this pool of five finalists, a member of the Defiance team will select the final winner to appear in season two of Defiance.
Never mind that the writers of the show are going to come up with the backstory for someone else’s character, and that it’s going to be consigned to Facebook. And never mind that appearing on a wanted poster is a pretty poor excuse for crossover. I certainly didn’t believe any of the transmedia bill of goods we were sold about the game affecting the show in any meaningful way. That’s just not how TV works.
What bothers me about this whole thing is the actual contest. There is no way on God’s green earth that you or I stand a chance to be among the top ten players who do the most major arkfalls before the end of the month. I simply don’t have that kind of time and I seriously doubt you do either. This contest is only for hardcore fans with hardcore catass levels of commitment. Major arkfalls are time-consuming exercises that involve standing in a mob of swarming players all shooting at a massive bag of hit points until it pops, at which point you get not much of a reward. It’s one of the least interesting ways to play Defiance.
If Trion had instead framed the contest as a drawing among people who completed major arkfalls, I could see myself popping online to do arkfalls a few times in the next month. More importantly, the committed but not quite hardcore enough fans might actually care about the contest, because they would have a chance of winning. There’s a reason people play lotteries, buy raffle tickets, and enter drawings. Whereas the best contests sell hope, Trion simply demands grinding.
Fans of smashing undead bobbies with cricket bats won’t be doing it again on the Wii U anytime soon. Ubisoft’s ZombiU was not profitable enough to warrant a sequel according to CEO Yves Guillemot. Speaking to GamesIndustry International about the Wii U console, Guillemot revealed that the innovative title featuring a zombie apocalypse set in London performed below expectations.
ZombiU, one of the most popular launch titles for the system with players, was not profitable, he says. Not even close. As such, he says, there are no plans (or even desire) for a sequel.
It was, in fact, because of that game’s performance that Ubisoft decided to make Rayman Legends a multiplatform game.
ZombiU was favorably reviewed on Quarter to Three.
Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto told shareholders during an annual meeting that the company underestimated the amount of work needed to create HD visuals in games for the Wii U console. In the translated text of the 73rd Annual General Meeting of Shareholders Q&A posted by Nintendo, Miyamoto offers this explanation for the delays in shipping new software like Pikmin 3.
When it comes to the scale of software development, Wii U with HD graphics requires about twice the human resources than before. Please allow me to explain that we may have underestimated the scale of this change and as a result, the overall software development took more time than originally anticipated just as we tried to polish the software at the completion phase of development.
Miyamoto went on to say that the company was building a “Nintendo Web Framework” to facilitate development. The network will allow teams to share resources and use open web technologies to assist in creating assets for Wii U software production.
In a desperate bid to avoid seeing The Lone Ranger, we backed up a few weeks to see the apocalypse stoner comedy, This Is the End. One of us liked it! Then this week’s 3×3 is about prostitutes in movies. It starts at the 43-minute mark in case you want to avoid This Is the End spoilers.
Hold on to your ironic John Deere hats. Farming Simulator is coming to the Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles and Giants Software is adding the Stars & Stripes to the mix!
An entirely new American backdrop has now been added to the extensive European environment familiar to PC players, which will double the size of the gameplay area in Farming Simulator. Inspired by typical American farms, this new and monumental terrain represents a total change of scene, with new locations, fresh development opportunities for your farm and even bigger fields suitable for the largest agricultural machinery available in the game.
Farming Simulator for consoles is releasing in early September.
Blizzard is experimenting with an in-game transaction store for World of Warcraft. The Enduring Elixr of Wisdom, a consumable potion to double XP, has appeared in the public test server with the note “In Game Store.” When asked, a Blizzard representative confirmed on the Battle.net forums that the consumable is part of an ongoing test for an in-game shop.
We are currently exploring the possibility of adding a way for players in certain regions to make purchases directly within the game. As part of this process, elements related to this will be appearing on the PTR. We’ll provide additional updates on our plans as development progresses.
Blizzard already offers in-game products like mounts and pets through a web store, but this would be the first public acknowledgement of a store being built into the game to offer player buffs.
As the staff of Quarter to Three goes home for the long holiday weekend, we’ll leave you with a touch of our own fireworks in the form of an annual half-year list that may or may not include The Last of Us. Why else would there be a picture of it up there?
After the jump, the ten best games of the year so far.Continue reading →
Among the many useless things in Guild Wars 2 is the above pet I found during the Dragon Bash ceremony. It popped out of one of the dragon chests that normally has candy and fireworks. He’s a sort of winged reptilian holograph thing that I enjoy watching flap around at my heels. He’s called a “knight”, but he looks like a dragon to me. He doesn’t do anything, but that doesn’t stop me from liking him.
It’s the same with Guild Wars 2’s score system, which is a running tally of points for all the achievements you’ve completed, like your gamerscore on Xbox Live or your trophy level on the Playstation Network. The score doesn’t do anything, but that doesn’t stop me from liking it. Especially since my score is so much higher than Jason McMaster’s or Nick Diamon’s. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m a better person than either of those guys, but it does mean I’m a more committed Guild Wars 2 player. Actually, in some circles, that probably does mean I’m a better person. Fair enough.
However, the era of your score in Guild Wars 2 not doing anything is nearly over. From this official post:
In the upcoming release, we’re adding a reward structure to achievement points. As you complete achievements and increase your achievement score, you’ll unlock new, exclusive rewards for your account. Don’t worry — the system is retroactive! Every point that you’ve earned while adventuring across Tyria will count towards exciting rewards…
The rewards includes consumables, titles, exclusive armor and weapon models, and account-wide boosts for earning resources. The reference to “the upcoming release” means the July 9th Bazaar of the Four Winds updates, at which point my score of 1390 will mean something new.
Tom Chick talks with State of Decay designer Richard Foge about the past, present, and future of Undead Labs’ brilliant zombie apocalypse game. We discuss the combat, the scavenging, the stealth, the character builds, the economy, the storytelling, the march of offline time, and more. And what’s the deal with co-op plans? What are the challenges Undead Labs faces with the upcoming sandbox mode? And in the event of a world culture reboot, find out which three movies Foge would pick to preserve zombie mythology for future generations.
The one thing gamers are in agreement about regarding the Xbox One is how much they love Kinect being sold with every console and required for the full TV surfing experience. Who doesn’t like waving at their TV to change channels instead of pushing a button on the remote? Microsoft is giving gamers a legitimate reason to love the all-seeing-eye of Kinect by officially confirming to Polygon that 25-digit codes could be a thing of the past.
“As confirmed by Marc Whitten on Twitter, Kinect on Xbox One will allow our customers to redeem QR codes and confirm digital game downloads,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Polygon. “The technological advancements of Kinect for Xbox One allows for a much deeper integration on our platform and we’re excited to share more about new Kinect capabilities in the coming months.”
The original Tweet from VP of Xbox Live, Marc Whitten, was in response to a Reddit comment about letting gamers use Kinect to scan codes instead of fumbling with long sequences of numbers to redeem tokens on the Xbox 360. Hooray for Kinect!
QR codes are those crazy squares on ads that your smartphone owning friends scan to get more ads. Theoretically, you could use QR codes with the Xbox One for more than just making gamers’ lives easier. You could, for example, have QR codes on a product that gamers could hold up to Kinect to enable a more dyanamic ad on the TV. Hooray Kinect?
According to a Bloomberg report, Julie Larson-Green may be the next head of Microsoft’s hardware efforts, including the Xbox division. Larson-Green has been with Microsoft since 1993 and has previously worked on development of Office 2003, Office 2007, Windows 7, and Windows 8. She was a vocal champion of the Ribbon interface for Office.
If Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer chooses to place Larson-Green in the position of overseeing hardware engineering, she will inherit the embattled Xbox division just before one of the company’s most important product launches. The next-gen Xbox One PR has been hampered by DRM backpedaling, stiff competition from Sony’s PS4 showing at E3, and the recent departure of former head Don Mattrick to Zynga.
Before Don Mattrick left, it had been rumored that he would’ve been the pick for the position that may ultimately be given to Julie Larsen-Green in the upcoming reorganization.
The problem with ragequitting is that it’s hard to sustain rage, which makes it hard to sustain the quitting part. Especially when you’re trying to quit a game you really like. For instance, I had no problem quitting SimCity. I didn’t even like it enough to ragequit it. I sadquit it. Sadquitting is easy to sustain.
I ragequit Marvel Heroes because of an ill-timed server rollback (ill-timed in that I lost a rare drop). But two things brought me back in last night, both announced in an email insidiously sent to those of us who’ve played the game. The first thing is the beginning of rebalancing for almost all the characters’ skill trees. Initially, this means boosting defensive powers so characters bear up longer under attack. I’m playing Iron Man and it’s like I’m tanking. Which, frankly, feels kind of right. The patch notes include plenty of details, but since the rebalancing is an ongoing thing in its early stages, the notes convey a slightly insipid “pardon our dust/work in progress” vibe with “design notes” such as:
The Punisher has many improvements this patch and will continue to get improvements until he is extremely fun, has multiple builds and is the ultimate killing machine!
And:
Wolverine has been training in the Danger Room and has come out much stronger. He will continue to train until he has reached the max level of fun and powerful.
Also, speaking of tanking with Iron Man, he went on sale. That was the second thing mentioned in the email. All the characters in this free-to-play game are on sale to varying degrees. It’s about time. The only thing more ridiculous than Gazillion charging $20 for Iron Man is some sucker paying $20 for Iron Man. But now that he’s on sale for $15? Heck, I spent that much seeing Iron Man 2, and I didn’t even like that movie! So now, as the owner of a level 12 Iron Man who sits inside an energy shield and lets rip with a repulsor barrage that gratifyingly melts away the bad guys, I’m keenly aware ragequitting and sheepishreturning often go hand-in-hand.
