Zoe Quinn has a critically lauded game called Depression Quest. It’s a minimalist interactive fiction game in which the player takes on the role of someone living with severe depression. It’s mainly just a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure game with super downer options. The interesting thing is that Quinn’s game will present options that a person without depression might choose, like “go to a counselor” but then strikes them out as invalid because a clinically depressed person would not be able to that. I thought that was a good way to put players into someone else’s shoes. I spoke about it on one of my first Quarter to Three podcasts.
Recently, Depression Quest was submitted to Steam’s Greenlight program. That’s when the harassment started. Apparently, the idea that Zoe Quinn’s work could someday be sold as a game drew the ire of some people that thought it wasn’t worthy. Unfortunately, since this is the internet, the people that were opposed to her game decided to focus on Quinn and women in general instead. Indie Statik captured some of the “discussion” amongst these jewels of the web.
The harassers sent insulting tweets to Quinn and negatively voted on her Greenlight page. The campaign progressed to the point that Quinn allegedly began receiving sexually graphic and threatening phone calls from the harassers.
Here’s the kicker. This is the second time this has happened to Zoe Quinn. Depression Quest was submitted to Greenlight before and Quinn removed the game due to the harrassment.
The good news this time around is that Quinn has decided to stand her ground and fight. She refuses to remove the Greenlight listing.
If you’ve checked out your favorite “Let’s Play” channel on YouTube recently, it’s a good bet that you’ve seen the infamous “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim” notice. These copyright takedowns were common enough before, but there’s been a marked increase of them recently. What happened?
Cliff Harris of Positech Games made a game about managing a country by winning over an electorate, promoting policies, and generally being a competent modern leader. Democracy was popular enough that he was able to make Democracy 3. Unfortunately, what he couldn’t do was convince the people running the marketing arm of a “major US games site” that the advertisement for his game wasn’t some subversive political statement.
“I apologize, but we can not promote any politics as this is a sensitive topic.”
Was it the star on the guy’s hat? Did it just look too much like the communist star of yore? Maybe it was the black ballot box with the 3 that reminded the marketing department of some penny-ante dictatorship. Whatever the reason, we salute this attempt to bring enlightenment to the oppressed people of gaming!
The PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One launch sales figures are in, and it’s a dead heat. Black Friday madness is over and the next-gen console makers are crowing over how well their products have sold.
Microsoft says the Xbox One sold through (that’s a measure of how many consumers actually bought an item versus the sales to the retail outlet) over 2 million units worldwide in the 18 days since launch. According ot their data, 1000 Xbox One’s were ordered a minute on Amazon.com during the peak.
Don’t fret Sony warriors! The PlayStation 4 sold terrifically as well. According to their numbers, the PlayStation 4 sold (no word on whether that’s sold through to customers or sold to retailers) 2.1 million units since its launch. Keep in mind that unlike the Xbox One, Sony’s newest console launched in the US and Canada first, followed by other markets after two weeks.
Pop the cork and celebrate, console fanboys! You all win! You can wrestle over Christmas numbers after the New Year.
It’s been twenty years since Doom put players knee-deep in the dead on Mars. Imps, zombie sergeants, Pinky Demons, and the BFG9000 exploded onto gamers’ computers and forever changed the landscape of videogames. Do you remember the first time you stepped into Doomguy’s boots? What about the first time you dragged your PC over to a buddy’s house to play some multiplayer? John Carmack, former guru of id Software, spoke to Wired about Doom’s anniversary. The one tidbit that stands out is this thought from Carmack regarding id’s infamous “when it’s done” motto.
The worst aspect of the continuing pace of game development that we fell into was the longer and longer times between releases. If I could go back in time and change one thing along the trajectory of id Software, it would be, do more things more often. And that was id’s mantra for so long: “It’ll be done when it’s done.” And I recant from that. I no longer think that is the appropriate way to build games. I mean, time matters, and as years go by – if it’s done when it’s done and you’re talking a month or two, fine. But if it’s a year or two, you need to be making a different game.
Trying to imagine an id Software that didn’t work on an extended development cycle all throughout the 90’s up until their buyout by ZeniMax is almost impossible. Waiting for Doom 3 was as much an experience as playing the game.
Okay, all you whiny Steambabies, listen up. Race the Sun, the endless runner that’s way more than just an endless runner, is now on Steam. That’s one less reason for you not to play it. It’s only ten bucks, and it’s even got achievements and some lovely trading cards, if those are your thing.
And for those of us already sold on the game, we can log into our Flipfly accounts here to get our Steam keys.
Rockstar will begin letting people create their own multiplayer content today in Grand Theft Auto V’s online mode. The Content Beta will allow players to set their own deathmatch areas, plot race routes, and generally go nuts Trevor style with some of the same tools the developers used. Player created content will be shared through the Rockstar Club site, where other open-world mayhem aficionados can check them out. The best content may even get chosen by the developers to be shared community-wide.
The Deathmatch and Race Creators will come to you via a free update, and you’ll need to have a Social Club account that is linked to your Xbox Live Gamertag or PlayStation Network ID to use them.
Rockstar also announced that the addition of a capture the flag event is planned for a later December update.
Edward Snowden’s classified document leaks continue to show that gaming is a growing target of intelligence surveillance. In the latest batch of documents, it was revealed that the United States National Security Agency and the United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters have monitored Xbox Live interactions, sent virtual undercover agents to infiltrate World of Warcraft and Second Life, and made a “vigorous effort” to exploit gaming data.
The NSA document, written in 2008 and titled Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games & Virtual Environments, stressed the risk of leaving games communities under-monitored, describing them as a “target-rich communications network” where intelligence targets could “hide in plain sight”.
Games, the analyst wrote, “are an opportunity!”. According to the briefing notes, so many different US intelligence agents were conducting operations inside games that a “deconfliction” group was required to ensure they weren’t spying on, or interfering with, each other.
Blizzard denied that they worked with the surveillance agencies in the documents to monitor their games and said that any spying was done without their permission. Both Microsoft and Second Life’s Linden Lab declined to comment.
To the agent that monitored my Live chat on September 12th of last year: I was totally kidding buddy!
Telltale Games announced two episodic games during the Spike VGX awards this weekend. The first game, (previewed in the above video) is a collaboration with Gearbox and will take players back to the world of Vault hunting and Claptrap. One of the strongest components of Borderlands 2 was the writing, so a point & click dialogue game of the type Telltale excels at making seems to be a good fit.
The second game, announced in this very short teaser, is going to be based on the popular Game of Thrones property. It remains to be seen how much sexposition we’ll get out of a Telltale game, but I look forward to the QTE.
Frozen Endzone, the new game from Mode 7 Games, has just entered beta. You can purchase it on the official site now and experience some simultaneous turn-based future robot sports in an unfinished state. Think arena football, or Warhammer’s Blood Bowl, but crossed with Mode 7’s previous game, Frozen Synapse. The matches take place on hovering platforms with randomly generated obstacles scattered about.
Gamasutra spoke to Mode 7’s Ian Hardingham about how they went from a tactical shooter to robot football.
“The key thing that I wanted to do differently from Synapse was, there was a lot of detail work in Frozen Synapse. You really had to spend a lot of time thinking about the angles, refining your plan to a really large degree. And that was awesome, but I wanted something I could play when I was a bit more hungover and [that played] a bit quicker.”
Ouya is accepting Bitcoins as a method of payment to purchase the Android-powered console. Using a tweet, the company announced the official Ouya store now has the option of using Bitcoins along with more common methods of payment like credit cards and Paypal during the check out process. Purchase an Ouya without the interference of those dirty Illuminati run banks!
Bitcoins are the virtual currency that uses peer-to-peer computing to generate money that exists as magic, or something. Bitcoins have gotten a bit of an unsavory reputation thanks to market volatility, recent trading house robberies, and their frequent use by people conducting illegalactivities. Because the virtual coins are difficult to trace, people trading in firearms and drugs have taken to using them in place of regular money. Bitcoins have also been criticized for being limited in usefulness and for being easy to steal because most banks do not recognize them as legitimate currency.
Now that I think of it, Bitcoins might be an Illuminati plot!
Dominions 4, the bonkers strategy game from Illwinter, is now available on Steam. If you purchased the game already through Desura or GamersGate, then congratulations! You’re a good person that deserves applause and maybe worship. You’re also now able unlock the game from Steam by using your game’s serial key.
If you haven’t purchased Dominions 4 yet because you won’t buy PC games unless they’re on Steam, or because you thought it looked like a low-budget indie game with no gameplay, then a pox on you for being a terrible person. You can purchase the game at the introductory price of $29.74 and save a few dollars off the normal cost. You can also start reading the nicely written manual which is 295 pages long and growing!
No, really. You need to read the manual to play this game.
Ashley Burch, the voice of Tina Tina from Borderlands 2 and international Youtube superstar, is coming to Saints Row IV. The Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin’ Pack adds Ms. Burch, Anthony Burch, and their father to the already outrageous open-world game because why not?
“Volition’s writers wrote all our dialog, and it’s really funny, and the ‘look out shorty, hit that dinosaur with your dildo laser’ line from one of our episodes is actually in the game now and ahhhh nothing makes sense anymore.”
The Mountains of Madness is a free expansion for Minor Key Games’ Eldritch. The DLC will add new weapons, tools, enemies, and 10 more levels of randomly generated Lovecraftian spelunking. Giant penguins! Awww. Everything is so dang cute!
Mountains of Madness will launch on December 19th.
Arma III’s second free campaign DLC, Adapt, will be released on January 21st of next year. Bohemia Interactive’s announcement for the episode explained that the DLC will feature less traditional modern warfare scenarios. Jaroslav Kasny, the content lead for Arma III, said the developers are trying to use more features of the game’s sandbox design.
“Players will find more open and unorthodox scenarios, and with the help of guerrilla warfare, set out to defeat a much stronger enemy.”
Along with the campaign release, Bohmeia revealed that the independent faction (that is totally not a future game version of the Greek army) will be getting a major force upgrade. A new main battle tank, infantry fighting vehicle, and reconnaissance helicopter will be added to the Altis Armed Forces. These assets will be available for use by all scenario makers in the sandbox editor on December 11th. Courageous soldiers can get the new military assets now by signing into the dev branch of the game on Steam.
Bohemia promised to release three free DLC updates for Arma III when it was announced during the beta that the game would launch without a traditional story campaign.
