By Kieron Gillen on March 10th, 2009.
You say “gaming podcast” and what you’re probably thinking of is “a bunch of nerdy guys sitting in a room around a shitty mike and/or yabbering over Skype about what games they played this week”. It’s certainly what we do. It doesn’t have to be like that, as the scarily well-done Audio-Documentary approach of Robert Ashley’s A Life Well Wasted proves.
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By Kieron Gillen on March 10th, 2009.
Alec’s written about the Beta before, but it’s worth knowing that in Tilted Mill’s browser-based incarnation of Children of the Nile, Immortal Cities: Nile Online has gone live. While none of RPS have had a chance to play it yet, a browser-based management/construction game with a casual bent certainly sounds far less likely to lead to soul sapping (and 4000 word post-game analysis and/or heartbreak) than Travian. Also, we can make pyramids. We like making pyramids, though I suspect if RPS were living Gods in the Nile basin we’d make Pyramints. We digress. Anyway, it’s free to make an account, and you can do so here.
By Kieron Gillen on March 10th, 2009.
Now, we’ve done a big ol’ Dwarf Fortress Tutorial link before. Which was all very well, but they were video tutorials which are trickier to actually reference in play. Which is lucky that I picked up TinyPirate’s series of DF tutorials for total newbs from Qt3 which he’s finally completed. Full index to all thirteen (count ‘em!) DF tutorials beneath the cut.
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By Alec Meer on March 9th, 2009.
A trawl through the latest squirming haul from the RPS inbox turns up Magrathean Technologies‘ bold attempt to be all things to all PC gamers. Incognito is (deep breath) Elite meets Quake meets Battlezone meets Command & Conquer meets Mass Effect meets System Shock meets Bioshock meets Anachranox meets The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. And probably a couple of dozen others: Incognito is a very much a PC game, and one that wears its love for this old platform’s heritage on its sleeve. In other words, it’s a massively ambitious genre-blender – all the more ambitious because it’s the work of just three people.
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By Jim Rossignol on March 9th, 2009.
EG have posted an enormous interview I did with one of CCP’s designers, Noah Ward, about the forth-coming “Apocrypha” update to Eve Online. It includes information about wormholes, tech 3, the new-player experience, and the general enhancements within the game, as well as some more detailed thoughts about how the development team actually produces patches. That last bit perhaps goes some way to answering the age old Eve-patch question of “why did they fix x when they could have fixed y?” The answer being because X actually has a team dedicated to working on it…
Anyway, go read.
By Jim Rossignol on March 9th, 2009.
Massive Entertainment have released quite literally several videos showing in-game action from current World In Conflict relaunch-and-not-expansion-as-such, Soviet Assault. As you’d expect from this most beautiful of real-time strategies, it’s heaving with detonations and incinerations. Having spoken with project lead Mr Jansen over the weekend, I’m actually pretty keen on getting this out again around the time of the next patch, and getting some multiplayer going. Anyone find the love in WiC multiplayer games?
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By John Walker on March 9th, 2009.
Regular as a giant clock that only bongs every now and then, the Rock, Paper, Shotgun Electronic Wireless Show returns. This time Jim and John gather before the microphone to discuss our mother games. The Path and Eve get a good going over, followed by discussion based on the tweets we received – what kinds of gamers are we, and what is the future of user-generated content. We conclude with the announcement of the winner of our RPS Jingle Contest. It’s a short but sweet podcast this time, and can be downloaded from here. iTunes here. And it’s own site here. Please to enjoy.
By John Walker on March 9th, 2009.
The New Zealand government’s Chief Censor, Bill Hastings, has suggested that parents who buy games for under-age children should be prosecuted. Describing the policy as “shock value”, he told New Zealand’s The Dominion Post (reported by Stuff.co.nz), “It would send out a message that the enforcement agency means business.”
Any time government officials start trying to get involved in videogaming matters, the response is quick and angry. “Get off our lawn!” cry out the gaming community, afraid of the vote winning moves in response to rumours and ignorance. But here’s a thought. Maybe Hastings is right.
By Jim Rossignol on March 9th, 2009.
In this interview World In Conflict lead Magnus Jansen talked to us about how Soviet Assault is more like a relaunch or “director’s cut” of the original game than a traditional expansion. He discusses how online RTS games need “silent communication” and announces that all WiC players will receive an big content update to bring everyone in line with the new materials from Soviet Assault. Read on for a tip of the hat to Ground Control, and the inside perspective on Soviet Assault.
By Tim Stone on March 8th, 2009.
The badly-mauled Mughals got some respite on Friday when I popped over to Dusselfurt to attend the Third German Sim Awards. Held in a disused schnapps distillery and hosted by eighties balloon squanderer Nena the event proved just as predictable as last year. Of the 709 awards only three went to dark horses…
By Kieron Gillen on March 8th, 2009.
Sundays are for sitting in a pristinely clean office. For the first time ever. And now, on my clean keyboard on my clean desk in this clean room, I sit and – with my dirty mind – compile a list of interesting game-related reading from across the week, while desperately resisting trying to link to Falco Ex-McLusky’s new single.
