CD Projekt RED and Fantasy Flight Games have announced a boardgame version of everyone’s favorite white-haired monster slayer. The Witcher Adventure Game will let players travel across the land, kill monsters, and possibly have lots of steamy sex. Okay, maybe the sex won’t actually be in the game, but the site boasts that veteran game designer Ignacy Trzewiczek “knows how to create memorable tabletop experiences.” Going by what happens if you Google Image search for The Witcher, players remember the sexy bits the most.
You can choose from any of the four characters: Geralt of Rivia, Dandelion, Triss Merigold and Yarpen Zigrin. Each character has unique abilities and their own deck of Development Cards. As a result, each time you play you can discover something new by trying out varied characters and experimenting with different builds.
A version of The Witcher Adventure Game is planned for iOS and Android tablets.
ArenaNet set a blistering pace for updates to Guild Wars 2 in 2013. With a new Living World chapter released every two weeks, the downside of playing was just trying to keep up. Now that Wintersday has ended, ArenaNet released this video to get everyone caught up on the lore. Who is Scarlet Briar, and what is her master plan? How did that tower get in the middle of the map? Where did all my time for playing other games go? The developers promise to wrap up the storyline in the next four updates, along with a climactic event that will permanently change the game.
Since Sony’s purchase of Gaikai in June 2012, analysts have predicted that they would use the streaming service to somehow let PlayStation customers play games through the power of the cloud. Sony didn’t have much to say about it at E3 last year, other than mentioning that something was coming, but they’ve finally announced their streaming service at CES 2014. PlayStation Now will leverage the infrastructure they invested in to stream games to the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PS Vita, televisions, tablets, and smartphones. Sony will allow people to either rent games a la carte, or subscribe to the service for open-ended gaming. Beta testing will begin soon.
Sony also announced that the PlayStation 4 has sold 4.2 million units as of December 28th 2013.
Where do you go with the Aliens license after last year’s disasterous Aliens: Colonial Marines? Sega and Creative Assembly think you should go back to basics. Alien: Isolation puts the player into Ellen Ripley’s daughter’s shoes and sets her in gameplay more akin to Amnesia than Call of Duty. Amanda Ripley goes in search of her mother’s fate and ends up in a hide & seek game against a xenomorph with her life as the prize. Design lead Jon McKellan told Joystiq why they chose to make a more intimate game than previous Alien efforts.
“The original film: everyone loves it, we all loved it, we were all really big fans,” McKellan said. “It is a survival horror film, that’s what’s it is. It’s just crying out to be a survival horror game, and we couldn’t really understand why no-one had done it, [so] we took it with both hands.”
Alien: Isolation launches on Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3 and PC in late 2014.
That’s the new trailer for Daylight from Zombie Studios. It seems to check all the boxes for the horror genre. Abandoned hospital? Check. Jump scares? Yup. Limited lighting that depends on the player scavenging for batteries? You better believe it! The game’s claim to infamy may be having Jessica Chobot, formerly an embedded reporter on the Normandy SR-2 in Mass Effect 3, credited as the writer. It does bring one new concept to the table in that the game features procedurally mixed levels so the layout of the hospital is different with each playthrough. Maybe that will be enough to get it past all the bad cliches.
Polygon reports that the MLB 2K series is dead. The websites for the baseball games have been pulled offline and the games are no longer available for purchase through digital stores. A representative of 2K Sports explained that the franchise will not be renewed.
“We have decided not to renew our MLB 2K series for 2014. We are very proud of the achievements made by the MLB 2K team and look forward to their contributions to our future titles, including NBA 2K – our industry’s #1 rated and #1 selling basketball franchise.”
The MLB 2K series has its roots in Sega’s World Series Baseball which started in 1994. Sega contracted 2K Games and developer Visual Concepts to take over the series in 2001 with the Xbox version.
The second part of The Washington Post’s interview with Gabe Newell of Valve highlights the company’s relationship with its customers. It’s an uneasy mix of adoration and capitalism. When fans can make up to six figures of income from creating Steam Workshop items, the normal company-to-customer dynamic has to be modified. It’s not all business, though. According to Gabe, his fans like to get more touchy-feely in person.
“And they hug me when they run into me. I’m not a hugging person, but that’s what they want.”
I imagine many hugs end with “Hey man, where’s Half-Life 3?”
Historically, being an emperor came with its own set of rewards. The guy sitting on the throne got unlimited power, the adulation of his subjects, and access to special perks like getting seated first at the local Cheescake Factory. In The Elder Scrolls Online, getting crowned Emperor in the player vs player portion of the game will give the victorious character a true advantage over everyone else. Game director Paul Sage explained to OXM why people may want to take over the Imperial City.
“Players who become Emperor will get a full skill line that they keep throughout the rest of their lives in The Elder Scrolls Online. It won’t be easy to become Emperor, but we think people will be glad they worked for it.”
The Elder Scrolls Online is scheduled to launch on April 4th for PC, and in June for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
Gabe Newell spoke to The Washington Post about Valve’s history, how they work, and what makes their unconventional organization perfect for them. Valve famously has a fluid structure that allows anyone there to take the reins of a project. Decisions on what to do next are driven by the marketplace. For Half-Life fans waiting on the third installment, that means they may be waiting a long time. As long as free-to-play multiplayer remains wildly profitable, why create a singleplayer game with little to no recurring revenue stream?
So, if somebody becomes the group manager of X, they’re going to really resist it when X is not what you want to do in the next round of games. You don’t want them to sort of burrow into that – you want them to recognize that being really good at Half-Life level design is not as nearly as valued as thinking of how to design social multi-player experiences. You’ve had them feel like they have an organization and title tied up to something when the key is to just continue to follow where the customers are leading.
David Pittman, developer of Eldritch, has published a post-mortem on his game’s development and sales performance. In it, Pittman reveals that the Lovecraftian rogue-like game was a modest success for his fledgling company, generating about $215,000 in revenue. There were some bumps in the tale. Most notably, Pittman admits that he should’ve explained the roadmap for development to purchasers during the Early Access phase of the game.
What I could have done better is to effectively communicate that the game was content complete. In this age of early access games and perennial updates, calling Eldritch a “beta” while presenting a Minecraft-inspired aesthetic invited players to misunderstand the state of the game and my intentions for it. (To this day, some users still mistake Eldritch on Steam for an early access game!)
Pittman also says that the sales revenue generated by his free expansion based on Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness were not as robust as he had hoped. He theorizes that the timing of the release may not have been the best since it was so close to the Christmas holiday. Still, Pittman is positive about the performance of the game overall. He is now considering whether to move on to his next project or spend a little time adding minor features to Eldritch.
Did you play any of Activision’s recent games based on Marvel Comics? If you didn’t, you’re probably not missing much. The licensed games didn’t get stellar reviews. Unfortunately, if you were curious and wanted to pick them up on a discount, you may be out of luck. Deadpool, Spider-Man: Friend or Foe, Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, Spider-Man: Edge of Time, X-Men: The Official Game, X-Men Destiny, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, have been removed from all digital storefronts. According to Activision’s community manager, Dan Amrich, the games were delisted due to licensing contract end dates.
“For those asking about it: Marvel Activision titles are no longer available for digital download. Contracts have dates. Whatchagonnado”
Capcom has also removed their Marvel-licensed titles from digital storefronts. Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 have been taken off Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network. Marvel videogame fans can still purchase the games via retail channels, but it’s likely supplies will dry up quickly. Excelsior!
Garry Newman’s Rust is probably the most hardcore of the current crop of survival games. When you log in to the persistent servers, your character starts bare-naked with nothing more than a rock for protection in a hostile environment. Craftable items can be stolen. Buildings you make can be destroyed by anyone. When you log off, your in-game character lies down and goes to sleep – easy pickings for other players. Players that survive long enough, can eventually craft powerfully unbalanced weapons, such as the submachine gun in the above image. Despite these unfriendly mechanics (fans say it’s all part of the fun) Newman revealed on Reddit that Rust has made $5.5 million in the three weeks it’s been available on Steam’s Early Access program.
Unfortunately, the popularity of Rust combined with its griefer’s paradise gameplay attracts a certain amount of attention from self-styled internet activists. Over the Christmas and New Year’s holiday, Rust experienced distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks from hackers, allegedly based in France, that wanted to call attention to issues in the game they felt were being ignored. Newman responded by updating the server and client software to close the holes the hackers were exploiting and by appealing to the community to help track down the troublemakers.
If the attackers want to contact us on the above address to work with us to fix exploits then feel free…but please don’t expect anything in return. Attacking us is not the way to get what you want. In fact, it’s a pretty good way to guarantee that the opposite will happen.
Although intermittent server issues persist, users report that the DDOS attacks have lost much of their effectiveness. Connectivity failures appear to be mostly due to the high volume of players trying to play the game at the same time.
Battlefield 4 continues to have multiplayer issues across platforms even after multiple patches as noted on DICE’s official issue tracker. Players continue to experience problems connecting to servers, random desynchronization, hit detection, drops in framerate, and other errors. A new notice on the Battlog page notes that a special double XP event has been postponed presumably due to the intermittent connectivity issues.
The end of December 2XP event for premium members has been postponed and will be run at a later date. Stay tuned for more information. We apologize for the inconvenience.
The issues in Battlefield 4 have gotten severe enough that two separate lawsuits have been filed on behalf of EA investors.
Capcom says that the core fanbase of Resident Evil is aging. In a special feature on the venerable action-horror series for investors, Capcom revealed that the average age of the Resident Evil fan is trending into the 30’s and 40’s. The publisher says that the growing maturity of the audience could be an issue for the health of the series as players age out of the marketplace. Younger players need to courted in ways that appeal to them like fashion magazine articles and themed restaurants!
Therefore, we have created opportunities for receiving coverage in fashion magazines by collaborating with fashion brands which are popular among young people. We are also actively working on spreading name recognition among non-gamers through expansion in other industries, including the “Halloween Horror Night” event in alliance with Universal Studios Japan (USJ) and the opening of the “Resident Evil Cafe and Grill S.T.A.R.S.” (a “Resident Evil”-themed restaurant) in Shibuya PARCO, Tokyo. These collaborative events are opportunities to be enjoyed by non-gamers as well, so it is important to plan them so that anyone can enjoy them and not aim them at a section of our core gamers.
I remember a time when everyone wanted to play Mumbledypeg and Checkers. It’s all about the Jacks and Hopscotch now. Also, where is my M.U.L.E-themed hot dog stand?
If you like Gran Turismo 5 multiplayer, you’ll need to upgrade to Gran Turismo 6 before May 20th, 2014. That’s when Sony is turning off the multiplayer servers for that game. According to Sony’s updated support page, other PlayStation titles are getting the online axe as well. On March 28th, Resistance: Fall of Man, Resistance 2, and Resistance 3 will become strictly single player games. Unfortunately, if you’re a fan of MAG or SOCOM: Confrontation, then you should be concerned that these multiplayer only titles will be useless after January 28th. Get your gaming in while you can!
