Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab is intended for clever types to make clever games, and look, they done gone done that with Improviso. It’s a 2D multiplayer acting game, where you take on a role, play it, improvise, and use your own dialogue chat and even props in the game world. A neat enough idea, but the actual purpose of the game is a bit deeper, as Gambit explain: “The longer term goal is to train an AI system with data collected from thousands of people telling stories together with the same characters, sets, and props. Once trained, this AI system will be able to play the role of one or more characters that can converse and interact with other AI- or human-controlled characters.”

Makes you wonder how many other games could actually be crowd-training AI for specific tasks. Anyway, go take a look.

Hungry-hungry news hippos VG24/7 have posted the date for the climactic last piece of Mass Effect 2 downloadable content, which will supposedly pave the way for Mass Effect 3. In case you missed it in the headline up there, beaming out at you like some kind of… big… date, it’s March 29th. You want details? I’ve got details.
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This week Quinns managed to get some hands-on time with Dungeon Siege III, leaving the poor boy equal parts confused and excited. He quickly hunted down the only other RPS contributor to have played DS3 – one Richard Cobbett – for a chat. Their ruminations on combat, consolisation, breasts and coca-cola follow, and at some point or other they talk about the game, too.
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Valve decided to make their own TV commercial for Portal 2. This was because, said marketing VP Doug Lombardi, “We’ve had many creative kick-off meetings with agencies over the years, and you’d be shocked by the treatments that have come back. Copycat treatments. Cliché treatments. Treatments that reveal the agency wasn’t listening in the initial meeting.” So instead Valve opted to make their own advertisment, in an eight week project.

It’s cute. And embedded below. The game is out in the 21st of April.
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Mea culpa. Last month, in reaction to Ubisoft’s confusingly worded statement about their change of DRM for Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, I launched into a lengthy rant about how it still wasn’t good enough, based on my own misunderstanding. I understood that it would require an online authentication every time it was launched, whereas it appears to be the case that it’s only the one time after it’s first installed. So I think I owe Ubisoft an apology. It’s important to note that Ubisoft have not contacted us regarding that article at all. They are stoic. And it’s also important to note that I’m not saying that I believe that one-time online authentication DRM is acceptable either. I am not stoic. But I do not like having misrepresented the facts, and as such want to make my mistake clear.

If you never got around to trying indie tower defense / multiplayer combat hybrid Monday Night Combat then you’d better just hold on to your hat, and if you’re not wearing a hat then go and get one and clutch it in both hands like you would a comfort blanket. As of right now MNC’s undergoing one of Steam’s excellent free weekends, and not only that, if you do decide to buy it then you’ll get a hefty 33% off. MNC’s been amassing plenty of positive reviews, and the trailer below should hint at why.
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Chain World, the secret Minecraft game that we first posted about here, has already encountered a difference of opinion that threatens to tear it apart. On the one side, you have the supporters of Chain World’s original intentions – for the world to stay closed, relatively mysterious, and for it be passed on from player to player with reverence.

On the other side you have the second custodian of Chain World, Jia Ji, who has elected to bend the rules and, rather than simply handing the USB stick with the world on it to someone who “expresses interest”, turn it into a charity auction. With the auction to be third inhabitant of Chain World ending in a matter of hours – head over now if you want to bid – we spoke to Ji about exactly why he’s so controversially changed the project and what he intends for it next…
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Want to hear me, Rob Zacny and Julian Murdoch talk about Men Of War, and specifically Men Of War: Assault Squad, for almost an hour? No, okay. Well if you do know anyone who does then they can tune into the latest episode of the Three Moves Ahead podcast right here. We talk about Men Of War. A lot. I think I repeat myself, and probably lose the thread a bit, before saying something profound. (No tea for an hour!) It’s a fun time.

There’s some lovely comments from Volition‘s studio manager, Eric Barker, over on Eurogamer. Discussing why it’s always worth developing for PC when creating cross platform titles, and how Volition will no longer be using external developers for their PC versions, he drops this gem of a comment that I’ll be quoting for some time to come.

“I don’t think [piracy] is something at the forefront for us. First and foremost, we want to make sure we’re making a game people would want to pirate. Let’s make a game that’s worth stealing, and then we’ll worry about making sure they don’t.”

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The Headlines:

New ‘Locked Box’ DRM demonstrates 100% success rate against piracy

Developer spends too much time on mediocre soundtrack, inaccurately believes it merits CD release

New poker hand introduced as games run out of titles

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Next week will see many hundreds of Eve Online pilots flocking to Iceland for the Eve Fanfest, which will feature drinking, lectures, tournaments, more drinking even more and – I’m thrilled to announce – a Chessboxing match.

Yes, 3D artists Björn “Left Rook” Jónsson and Daniel “Pretty Boy” Þórðarson are going to engage in that most noble of sports, which basically amounts to alternating 4 minute rounds of chess with 3 minute rounds of boxing. The promotional video they’ve put together for the match is quotable, eminently deadpan stuff. I can’t quite get over the following: “It would be a devastating tradgedy for this extremely ancient man to immediately fall down.”
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