Well, that wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it was going to be. I logged in, dinked around with my skills a bit, and ambled over to check out a dynamic event in which some centaurs had occupied a human settlement. If I had five silver for every time that happened in Guild Wars! In the occupied settlement, I found three other players working on the event. They invited me to a party and there went the rest of the evening. I had been playing a necromancer based on debuffing enemies, which is a bit of a finicky way to fight a battle. However, I was able to easily rejigger her into a more accommodating pet class. Let my bone fields, blood fiends, shadow fiends, flesh golems, explosive bone minions, and adorable little jagged horrors get in there for the fighting while I get reacquainted with what’s what. It still got a bit chaotic. At one point, I didn’t even notice my party had moved on. Hey guys, wait for me and my army of freaks!
Crafting, on the other hand, looks like it’s going to be a nightmare to relearn. I think I’ll just let that sit for a while. As for the player vs player stuff, I can’t help but feel the allure of the new skill system for the world vs world larger-scale multiplayer. That was already a hole you could fall into for days at a time. Now it looks big enough to fall into for weeks at a time.
The worldwide event currently in progress, Dragon Bash, involves smacking dragon pinatas, burning dragon effigies (pictured), and some minigames that I have no desire to play, including bird race betting in the capital. A huge illusionary dragon presides over the capital, which seems like it would be unnerving for the people who live there. A series of new missions are playfully styled as fantasy noire. Unfortunately, I think they’re above my necromancer’s level (level 33 out of 80), as I’m being tasking with finding a suspect in an area with level 55 monsters. I’m not sure I’ll be able to progress into the next stage of the event, which begins tomorrow. It’s something about sky pirates. I’m tempted to call in the big guns (i.e. my level 80 engineer).
Tomorrow’s update also includes what ArenaNet calls the “largest balance patch ever”. What better time to relearn how to play?
One of the surprise announcements at E3 was that World of Tanks, the free-to-play PC juggernaut, will be coming to Micrsoft’s consoles. Xbox has struggled with the free-to-play concept, so how would Wargaming’s tank warfare MMO work with Microsoft’s notoriously difficult console game pricing and certification schemes?
Wargaming’s CEO Victor Kislyi spoke to GamesIndustry International about how they plan to “educate” the stodgy console industry.
“Everybody knows Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are traditional console companies which are huge in their own merit. They have lots of divisions, lots of departments, lots of regulations. We respect that, and whining and complaining about that structure does not help,” says Kislyi. “We’re now working hard with Microsoft’s people as a team to build this and to break a couple of rules inside Microsoft.”
“We as a company are definitely insisting on breaking all the rules. That’s the definition of free-to-play. Free-to-play has to be transparent, right? And Microsoft traditionally, as a retail boxed business model, has a lot of restrictions – technological, legal, and whatnot. For them and for us this is a big move forward and it’s quite risky,” offers Kislyi.
Kislyi said that he realizes that some compromises will need to be made on Wargaming’s side to bring the game to a console audience. He insists however that console companies need to adapt to the new realities of the F2P model or find themselves in “hard times.”
Ellen Page wants you to know that she is in a videogame, but that it’s Beyond: Two Souls, and not The Last of Us. Page participated in Reddit exchange over the weekend in which she expressed her displeasure that Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us may have originally based the Ellie character on her likeness.
“I guess I should be flattered that they ripped off my likeness, but I am actually acting in a video game called Beyond Two Souls, so it was not appreciated.”
When Naughty Dog first revealed their fungal zombie apocalypse videogame, one of the consistent comments in previews was that the character of Ellie looked a lot like movie actor Ellen Page. Ellie, (as seen in the image above) did originally look more like the star of Juno before she was redesigned by Naughty Dog. The developer told IGN in May that the change was done to make her more closely resemble her motion capture actor Ashley Johnson and to make her a slightly younger character.
After Ellen Page’s comment in the Reddit chat, Naughty Dog creative director Neil Druckmann tweeted support for Ashley Johnson.
Sometimes a rollback happens in an online game and it’s no big deal because you weren’t playing and didn’t lose anything. Most times, it’s one of those things that happens to other people.
Oregon-based Fullbright Company posted on their blog today that they will not show their game at PAX Prime in Seattle despite securing a spot in the coveted Indie Megabooth showcase. Gone Home, their game currently in development, will not be part of the convention and Fullbright Company members will not attend the event.
Studio co-founder Steve Gaynor cited numerous reasons for not participating at PAX. The issues center on what he considers to be the ethical failings and gender insensitivity of Penny Arcade creators Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins.
We believe that people’s opinions and actions on social issues and business ethics are important. We believe that agreeing to pay the organizers of PAX over $1,000 for booth space, and to present our game on their showfloor for four days, provides explicit support for and tacit approval of their publicly demonstrated positions on these subjects. And we have finally come to the conclusion that we cannot support Jerry, Mike, and their organization by participating in this event.
This would not be the first time that actions from Penny Arcade’s creators have caused issues for their PAX event. In 2010, there was a controversial comic which some people objected to and the ensuing Twitter war between Krahulik and rape survivor support groups got ugly. A boycott of PAX was organized, but attendance records were still broken.
In response to this latest incident, Krahulik posted an apology on the Penny Arcade site, vowing to remain silent on issues outside of his immediate realm.
Microsoft has published its Games for Gold schedule and the news is good. From now until the end of the year, Xbox Live Gold subscribers will be able to download – and keep – a free game on the 1st and the 16th of each month! We like free, right?
The current game available in the Games for Gold program is Fable III. At the end of the month, Fable III will no longer be available for free, but one of the July selections will take its place. The games being offered in July will be Halo 3 and Assassin’s Creed 2.
Unlike the free games offered with PSN Plus, the Games for Gold program allows members to keep the downloaded games even if their subscription lapses. Once it’s added to your Live account, the game is yours to download again and play at a later date.
The Arma series was once explained to me as games that try to simulate every aspect of being a soldier on deployment, including the confusion, boredom, and plain unfairness of being a low-level grunt surrounded by machines and men trying to kill you. This is no Call of Duty or Battlefield. This is a series that takes great pride in the fact that you can be killed by a sniper a kilometer away and there’s nothing you can do about it because sometimes the other guys just have better toys.
Bohemia Interactive’s combined arms military simulator Arma 3 Alpha has been available on Steam Early Access since March, but the developer announced that the Beta will officially begin on June 25th. The Beta adds a Green faction to the game’s current Red and Blue forces, as well as new vehicles, weapons, and missions. Owners of the Alpha can get the Beta now by participating in the development branch. Just set your Steam game properties to opt in the Beta.
Having just showed off the Beta for Arma 3 at E3 2013, we are keen to get it into gamers’ hands quickly. Bringing some heavy firepower and additional transport options will allow for more diverse scenarios in both singleplayer and multiplayer. We also can’t wait to open up the Steam Workshop scenario publication, which will make content-sharing with other players much more convenient.
One of the ten new vehicles being added is the Ghosthawk, based on the highly classified officially-does-not-exist stealthy helicopter made famous by the US military’s raid on the Bin Laden compound. You can see some in-game video of it in action here during a pre-E3 event.
When the Beta goes live, the early access price will increase from $32.99 to $44.99, so get it while you can if you want to take advantage of the discount. If you’re one of those people that wants to give more money to the developer, there is a Supporter Edition available at the developer’s store.
A mod for The Witcher 2 wouldn’t normally be notable, but the Full Combat Rebalance 2 Mod was made by Andrzej Kwiatkowski, who works at CD Projekt RED as a game designer. The game may be more than two years old, but Kwiatkowski apparently just couldn’t stop working on the gameplay. The mod completely overhauls the combat in The Witcher 2 to make the main character more mobile and responsive.
– Up to 80% increase in responsiveness per Geralt’s animations.
– Up to 50% increase in responsiveness per NPCs animations.
– Added strafing while being locked on an enemy and walking.
– Geralt can block while moving.
– Geralt automatically parries enemy sword attacks and deflects incoming arrows.
– Geralt and his attackers are no longer bouncing off parry.
– Monster attacks still cannot be parried with a sword.
– While using Guard Stance Geralt channels an active Quen shield.
– Decreased importance of rolling in combat.
There are a lot of other balance tweaks which are listed in the notes.
You won internet! Congratulations! Microsoft is reversing their DRM and online verification policies for the Xbox One. There will be no required 24-hour online check. Singleplayer games can be played offline. Your disc-based games can be sold, lent, traded, or gifted with no restrictions.
We appreciate your passion, support and willingness to challenge the assumptions of digital licensing and connectivity. While we believe that the majority of people will play games online and access the cloud for both games and entertainment, we will give consumers the choice of both physical and digital content. We have listened and we have heard loud and clear from your feedback that you want the best of both worlds.
Enjoy your victory internet! The race for console supremacy just got heated.
EA Sports’ FIFA and Ultimate Team trading card feature has had some ugly issues with security. One of the more popular techniques involved unscrupulous folks accessing other players’ Xbox Live accounts and using the saved credit card information to buy hundreds of dollars worth of points. The thieves would then transfer the points to another Live account to buy Ultimate Team trading card packs. We had a few forum members of Quarter to Three that were hit with variations this exploit.
With the next-gen consoles’ emphasis on a cloud-based future, one can imagine that the bad guys are already thinking up ways to foil the system. EA told Eurogamer that they are thinking very seriously about this issue.
Wilson told us that Microsoft and Sony are re-architecturing their networks to increase security, adding double authentication among other things. As for EA, Wilson said the company has started investing in a brand new ID system to be built on top of the first-party networks that will be rolled out this year. “That should make gamers feel better,” Wilson said.
“We haven’t had any major or serious attacks. You never say never, but we understand the value of information and privacy and the value of maintaining the integrity of the data. We are investing heavily – I mean heavily – in that and I believe first parties also are.”
Both Microsoft and EA maintain that none of the Live account breaches involving FIFA were the direct result of hacking. They point to phishing and user error as culprits. EA hopes that its next-gen approach to security will help solve the issues.
2K Marin and Take-Two Interactive announced that buyers of the Xbox 360 version of The Bureau: XCOM Declassified will get access to an exclusive chunk of DLC. This as-yet unnamed DLC pack will be narrative-driven. Morgan Gray, development director at 2K Marin, says that the XCOM setting provides ample material for many stories.
“The alternate 1962 universe that we’ve created for The Bureau is vast and there are many more stories to tell about the early days of XCOM. We’re excited that our stories will provide a new perspective on the war effort, much like how our critically acclaimed Minvera’s Den DLC for BioShock 2 allowed us to present a unique perspective of Rapture.”
If you PC or PS3 players are jealous of the exclusive content your Xbox friends get to pay for, you can always one-up those guys by preordering from one of the retail chains offering the Codebreakers pre-order DLC. That will show them!
Devolver Digital’s Hotline Miami got players’ blood pumping with frenetic pig-masked killing action tuned to a pulsing soundtrack. Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number promises more violence and mystery.
Step into the murderous mind of several distinct characters – each with their own motivations and methods of execution – as storylines intersect and reality slips away into a haze of neon and carnage. Blistering combat, an unmistakable visual style, and a powerfully intense soundtrack will once again push you to the limit and questioning your own thirst for blood.
Devolver Digital is aiming for a late 2013 release.
The stealthy 2D side-scrolling cat burglar indie game Gunpoint recouped its development costs in one minute and four seconds according to Suspicious Developments. Tom Francis, lead designer of Gunpoint, posted some results of his indie game launch.
So, I quit my job.
In fact, I think I have quit jobs, as a concept. I started Gunpoint as an audition piece to get myself a position at a developer, but designing it has been so creatively satisfying that I no longer want one, and so commercially successful that I’ll never need one.
I haven’t been retweeting praise or flaunting any actual sales figures, but if it’s not going to sound too horribly braggy, I’ll share the one part of Gunpoint’s success that you might actually care about:
I can now make games full-time for the foreseeable future
Francis did specify that he was only counting the purchase price of the development software in his calculations. It’s likely that the cost of labor would’ve extended his time to profitability by at least a few more minutes. Either way, Francis says he’s pleased with the success of Gunpoint and plans to continue working on it.
The quick tease of Mad Max at the Sony pre-E3 presentation had tongues wagging, especially when it was revealed that Avalanche Studios would be developing it. They know explosions. They made the Just Cause games, and if there’s one thing those games do well it’s making things explode in satisfying ways. They also know accents. Tom’s favorite Just Cause 2 character sports an alluring speech pattern that makes a man weak in the knees.
But where is Max’s Aussie accent? He just has a generic American videogame voice in the trailer. Avalanche’s Christofer Sundberg told IGN that this game is about more than just a location.
“We treated this as a completely new property and that was really the only way for us to take on a licensed game. It’s the first licensed game we’ve ever taken on. And we wanted to treat it like an original IP. The setting – where it is in the world – has really nothing to do with the Mad Max video game. It’s really a game to do with the relationships between different people in this world.”
The game was originally going to be a direct tie-in with the upcoming Mad Max: Fury Road movie, but it’s been confirmed that this is now a separate story in the Mad Max canon.
Vince Zampella, General Manager of Respawn Entertainment must’ve had a good time at E3. Respawn’s Titanfall had a well-received showing at Microsoft’s pre-E3 stage presentation and everyone seems suitably impressed by the game’s mechs versus humans premise. Speaking to IGN, Zampella discussed the relief of finally showing off his project and how Microsoft’s cloud computing effort drove Respawn forward.
It wasn’t until the cloud functionality that Respawn realized what it could do with Windows 8 and what would become Xbox One. “It allowed us to think of the game a little differently,” Zampella explains. “That was the perfect solution.” Offloading artificial intelligence and dedicated servers to the cloud guarantee a smoother experience with smarter enemies in a game that blurs the line between single-player campaign and competitive multiplayer.
Vince Zampella didn’t rule out the possibility of the game coming to other platforms, noting that it was a “solvable problem.”
