Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Minecraft developer Markus ‘Notch’ Persson is “Hiring some people, getting an office, and all that!” He recently blogged to say that he’d be continuing to work on phenomenal co-op building game Minecraft, while at the same time starting another project with a close friend. Not only that, but he’ll be doing all the other stuff associated with running a studio, too.

I will be the main developer, and I will keep working on it just as I have now, but there will be people supporting me, such as an artist, a web site developer and a business guy to help sort out all deals and make sure that things like the Creeper plushies actually happens.

Splendid news.

Gamesindustry.biz revealed yesterday, that according to the research of a University of Liverpool Phd Student, between 2006 and 2009 the percentage of female staff in the videogame industry fell from 12% to 4%. The reasons forwarded by the British Sociological Association lean towards the long hours of working and inflexible working practices (with 10% working more than 56 hours a week) rather than mass female-to-male gender realignment operations. You can question the sample-size if you want (450), but this is an interesting spin on the standard debates, which have always focused around the industry’s inability to attract female staff. This paints it in even blacker shades, with the industry proving incapable of actually keeping the staff it has.

After the big immersive sim interview we did, Ex-Deus-Ex-er Harvey Smith’s latest game is somewhat smaller than we were perhaps expecting. As small part of his MFA homework, he’s just wrote a short Interactive Fiction and lobbed it online. Really slight but emotionally true, I link mainly because much like Rod Humble’s art-projects, it’s interesting to see what mainstream devs do in their downtime. Play here.

Error! EA say not. Oh well, at least we can expect it to cost $15.

ORIGINAL STORY: Our hawk-eyed chums over at Eurogamer have spotted that Battlefield 1943 has turned up on the US EA store for $15. (Actually, can we have confirmation of that, American readers?) No sign of it on the EU store at the time of writing, but presumably it’ll be a long in another year or so. Only joking, it’ll probably out.. uh… Look, a bee!

Anyway, the game has been pretty popular in console land, so perhaps it will find its audience here, too. I’ll pick it up and have a play as soon as I can get my doughy, sweaty, shivering hands on it.

UPDATE: Blizzard are a-fixin’ it, claiming the deactivation thing is an ‘issue’ rather than a decision, and will be sorted in an upcoming patch.

ORIGINAL: While we all knew Battle.net’s careful weaving into StarCraft 2′s fabric meant Blizzard’s latest wasn’t something to be played in an entirely offline vacuum, it allowed the less bewebbed players amongst us to have some singleplayer fun without being chastised. A quick nod to the Blizzardian mothership every 30 days was required, but other than that, carry on Zerging. That may have changed, with the game apparently now losing its activation every time you turn your PC off.
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We’re awaiting our copy of the Mafia II DLC, Jimmy’s Vendetta, which we’ve heard makes the city a little bit more lively. It’s a series of assassination missions, taking place in the streets of Empire Bay. Something that might have gone a long way to satisfying all those who got very cross that the world wasn’t open enough, had they included it in the original game. We’ll let you know how it is as soon as we receive our code. In the meantime, know that it’s out, and there’s a trailer below to show it off. You can read my review of Mafia II here.

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Telltale has a little bundle on at the moment, collecting together six adventure games, and giving 25% of the price away to a series of charities. Which seems like a jolly decent sort of thing to do. It’s The Great Adventure Bundle 2010. The quality of the games in the deal are mixed. None is exceptional, and one is dreadful. However, it’s for a very reasonable price at $20. It contains: Penny Arcade Adventures, The Whispered World, Jack Keane, Puzzle Agent, King’s Quest Collection, and if they sell 5,000 bundles, Sam & Max Season 2. For two more days.

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I’d been interested in Ship Simulator Extremes since I heard about it at GamesCom. It’s a ship simulator, but with whole campaigns of relatively extreme missions that see you performing rescues, putting out fires, and even harassing other vessels as a pesky Greenpeace unit. Could I – a man – with no experience in ships – hope to succeed?

Since Ship Simulator Extremes came out a couple a weeks ago, I’ve found out the answer is a very firm “No.” The kind of no the bouncer of a fancy club tells you if you’re not wearing shoes at all. That said, my failure didn’t happen quite the way I was expecting. Put on the life jacket located under your seat and click through the jump for an account of my first few missions.
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What would it be like if Dragon Age’s Morrigan and Mass Effect’s Liara T’Soni met? I fed that question into the RPS supercomputer and it spat out the above image. I don’t think it was trying very hard. Anyway as of yesterday both ladies have received their very own DLC, with DA’s Witch Hunt and ME2′s Lair of the Shadow Broker both available for download RIGHT NOW. Witch Hunt costs $7 and adds about an hour of play time (according to the Dragon Age wiki), while Lair of the Shadow Broker costs $10, lasts about two and a half hours and lets you have sex with Liara. One of these packs is a better deal than the other, I feel.

Oh my. It’s been a week of mod development soap opera. Below the jump you’ll find the whole Black Mesa sorta-leak explained, along with a collection of mod-related gubbins from across the past days.

I’m hugely excited about the prospect of Amnesia: The Dark Descent mods. While I’ve only played a preview build and the demo so far, it seems like John’s Wot I Think last night is pretty much spot-on. So I was delighted to note – albeit apparently months late – that a full SDK will be available soon. I do remember watching a timelapse video of Frictional’s level designers working on a room, and the tools seemed very intuitive. I’m eager to try them out.
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It’s been fascinating to watch the MMO scene evolving over the past couple of years, and seeing the various players stepping away from traditional models. Now it seems to be Cryptic’s turn. After City Of Heroes, Champions and Star Trek, they are now looking at creating something a little different: Neverwinter, a D&D game that appeals to both the adventurer and the Dungeon Master, relying as it does on an amalgam of Cryptic’s own content and user-generated dungeons for its ongoing adventures. Cryptic’s bossman Jack Emmert has already spoken in interviews about how he felt that Champions and Star Trek lacked polish, and in this interview he speaks about what that realisation means for Neverwinter, and why this game represents a new era for the company that originally set out to make MMOs.

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