By Quintin Smith on September 7th, 2010.
Up till now, browser game The Bible Online has escaped the unsettling gaze of RPS. No longer! The public beta went live yesterday (you can sign up here), so I figured I’d have a nose and see what it was like. And, well, this may be stating the obvious for anyone familiar with the Bible, but the most surprising discovery I’ve had so far is how violent it is.
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By Kieron Gillen on September 7th, 2010.
Mags closings are always a sad thing. I recall walking along a brisk beachfront in Tenby reading the final issue of Amiga Power and discovering I’d had my eyes pecked out by birds. If you’ve been sniffling over the final issue of PC Zone, perhaps you want something to remember this fine organ? Well, they’re auctioning off their office on Ebay. And, in an uncharacteristic move for PC Zone, rather than spending the proceeds on tasty booze, they’re giving the proceeds to charity. Gamesaid, to be precise. You can go and see their fine collecting of gaming malarkies here and if you fancy just giving some money without cluttering your house up with PC Zone’s junk, you can donate here. Go kindness! Go!
And, in case you missed it, here’s ex-Editor Will Porter’s tribute to PC Zone. We will never see its like again.
By Kieron Gillen on September 7th, 2010.
Eurogamer has found Gas Powered Games’ Chris Taylor in characteristically bullish mood arguing that thanks to the enormous explosion in Steam, he thinks the PC version of Dungeon Siege III will compete with the console ones, noting that “every major player in the world buying a PC gaming company” and leading to an exciting future. Example quote…
It’s a matter of time before you’re playing a game of the quality of a triple-A game that we know and love, like a Supreme Commander 2 or a StarCraft II, in a browser experience,” Taylor said. “There’s no reason that won’t happen within five to eight years. That’s one of the reasons PC gaming breaks out in that space. No installation. No grief. No reading the box and wondering if you have a 7000 or 8000 series video card and DirectX what? It just plays. It works. Wait till that happens full on.
Lots more excitement here. We’ve got our own Chris Taylor interview forthcoming soon. Soon-ish. Whenever Quinns transcribes it, anyway.
By Jim Rossignol on September 7th, 2010.
The beta for intriguing MMO RTS Ministry Of War is opening up, and you guys can get your access to this phase through this link – specially for RPS readers!
For a browser-based RTS it’s looking pretty complex, featuring a number of historical factions with their own hero characters, player-driven trading economics, PvP and Guild vs Guild battles, and the ability to travel about with your merchants, trading as you go. Developers Snail need as many people as possible for this next stage of their testing, so go give it a look.
By Kieron Gillen on September 7th, 2010.
While Spyparty and Monaco were rocking PAX as hard as their mighty indie thews could manage, Jonathan Blow wanted to do something a little subtler. In a corner of the Spyparty/Monaco booth, with no fanfare or sign-age whatsoever, the Braid-creator set up the Witness and let people come and play. Why unveil his work in such a way? As opposed to the general melee of a show, he “wanted to do something that is subtle, and a surprise — if you notice it, and decide to investigate, you find something unexpected”. Also, let people play as long as they want. Among them was Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo who wrote up some impressions and took some cam-footage…
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By John Walker on September 7th, 2010.
In the early days of the Earth, in 2009, Jim posted about a demo for a cute point and click adventure, Drawn: The Painted Tower. Now, in the space year 2010, a sequel has been released: Drawn: Dark Flight.
By John Walker on September 7th, 2010.
EA’s Rod Humble, as we well know, likes to turn his hand to artistic expression through games. The first of these was The Marriage, which attempted to express something of the nature of a relationship through simple abstract shape and movement. Brett Douville has responded, some years later, with My Divorce.
By Alec Meer on September 6th, 2010.
In what is hopefully the final word on the sorry release saga of Elemental, Stardock bossguy Brad Wardell has issued another remarkably frank public mea culpa, following the weekend’s awful news that several Stardock staffers were to lose their jobs and a future project may be axed as a result of poor reviews and lower-than-hoped revenues for the roleplaying strategy game. While it’s by now scarcely any secret that the man’s publicly holding himself accountable for the release of a rickety game, the sum total of information and apparent self-flagellation offered has been extraordinary.
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By Alec Meer on September 6th, 2010.
An micro-inter-RPS debate today was this august publication’s coverage of one W. Spector Esq. Leaving aside issues of platform prissiness, how justified are we in continuing to cover the bepullovered fellow’s words? He has moved to Wii development for the time being (although platforms for Ninja Gold, his still-unseen kicksplode collaboration with John Woo, remain undeclared), but at the same time there’s a big, tall, wobbly chance that RPS simply wouldn’t exist had the games Spector is most commonly associated with never come to pass. He’s a hard man to ignore here.
So let’s tip the collective hat one more time, mouse ears or not. Here’s Warren holding forth at the PAX conference, providing entertainments other than Duke Nukem’s thrusting denim-clad crotch. The question of the moment: why won’t gamers accept games for non-gamers?
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By Jim Rossignol on September 6th, 2010.
Well, not really a tax, more of one-off fee, but it’s still causing no end of problems for South Korean indies. The problem is that the Korean government have decided to set up a ratings agency for games, and consequently all games published in South Korea under any format – and that includes slinging them up on the web – must now pay their own age rating (by the megabyte, illogically) or be classed as illegal naughtiness. Okay for the big corporates, but a nightmare for the indies who are trying to make it on their own, where a couple of hundred dollars is just too much, and frankly ludicrous for the amateur coders releasing stuff for free. There are few sources running with this story, but it seems to have emanated mainly from this post on Reddit, where the facts of the issue are defined for us in broken English. Meanwhile, TIGSource are debating what they can do about it over here. We presume it has knock-on effects for indies outside Korea, selling internationally over Steam and so forth, too. In fact, yes, here’s a story on that. Thanks.
We will add our voices to those saying “Boo, that’s not on. Give those guys a break, please, South Korean Government. Granted, you are a sovereign state and there’s nothing we can really do, but some kind of consideration would be nice. Cheers then, bye!”
By Kieron Gillen on September 6th, 2010.
You remember Outerlight? Creator of ahead-of-its-time Multiplayer sleuth-assassin game The Ship, who you suspect is influential on both SpyParty and Assasin’s Creed: Brotherhood? Well, their new game Bloody Good Time was revealed at PAX and is bringing its 8-player multiplayer to Steam later in the year. It’s another quirky multiplayer game, where a number of actors compete – murderously – to be cast in a film. As well as weapons (from standard to somewhat stranger – rat-bombs, frying pan) there’s also the promise of environmental traps. It’s even a little progressive, in that there’s 50:50 ratio of male to female characters*. Except all the female characters are hot, so not that progressive really. The teaser trailer follows…
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