By John Walker on July 6th, 2011.
Firefall devs, Red 5, have revealed that their Tribes-a-like online shooter has its story written by Orson Scott Card, he behind the SF novel Enders Game, and other games including the exquisite Shadow Complex. Some will greet this news with enthusiasm, as it means the already promising action MMO will have something deeper than “the man shoots the other man” as a backstory. Others will start scrawling protest banners.
By Jim Rossignol on July 6th, 2011.
Yes, submissions for this year’s Eurogamer Expo Indie Arcade are open, and the final batch will be judged by the Hivemind of Rock, Paper, Shotgun. It’s true! This year’s event, as last year, will be officiated by the men of this website, which will result in LIFE CHANGING PRIZES (tbc) for the winners. The details are here, but basically you need to get in touch with David Hayward with the details if your game before the 19th of August, and it would need to be in some kind of playable state for the event on 22nd of September. So if you are making in indie game and want awesome coverage, applying is a good idea. A very good idea. A mandatory idea.
Speaking of Expo stuff: the early entry tickets are now all gone, but there are some day tickets still available for the event, which will feature games, Games, GAMES! And we’ll be there doing hi-fiving and PC stuff. So you should come along.
By Jim Rossignol on July 6th, 2011.
German computer-games investigators Gamestar got a chance to talk to EA’s Patrick Söderlund, and you can see that interview embedded below. It covers a number of issues, but most tellingly reveals that DICE have no current plans to produce modding tools for the game. Söderlund claims that that modding would be “very difficult” due to the complexity of the levels and features like destruction.
Ah, yes. The modding community: famously confounded by complexity and difficulty, only able to get their heads around the simplest of game technologies… But seriously, not producing modding tools is surely going to be a commercial decision, and I almost wish that were the reason given.
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By John Walker on July 5th, 2011.
There are rumblings in the world of PlanetSide. The worldside of PlanetSide? While we know PlanetSide 2 is in production, all they’ve shown so far has been the odd model of a vehicle, which men like me are too handsome to care about. What I want is Hard Gaming Fact. Could that be nearby? It seems possible, with Sony adding a shiny countdown timer to the official PlanetSide 2 page. There’s also a new Facebook page (sigh), which makes it even more clear that Planetside 2 news will be appearing on the 7th of July, at 7pm. I think that’s this year, rather than 2077. Oh, and it seems it’s called PlanetSide 2 now, not PlanetSide Next. Which was a really stupid name.
By John Walker on July 5th, 2011.
By Alec Meer on July 5th, 2011.
Hey, anyone remember demos? They were this crazy thing game-makers did when they wanted people to play their games but expensive pre-rendered trailers that said absolutely nothing about what a game was actually like hadn’t been invented yet! The crazy fools. What was the point in that?
Star Ruler is like the last half-decade didn’t happen: a thoroughly PC-only space 4x game, and it has a demo. An actual, honest-to-god demo! I haven’t played it yet, but I could hug it to death for that alone.
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By Alec Meer on July 5th, 2011.
The PC: home of shooting men, stabbing men and making men build things, but very rarely about punching men. The early-90s flood of side-scrolling man-thumpers pretty much passed the PC by, probably because we are too busy trying to find where we’d left our Monkey Island code wheels and desperately blowing dust off broken floppy disks in the hopeless hope they’d magically start working again. The Asskickers has, I must confess, a name that makes me wince (curse my terribly British language sensibilities), but I kinda like the high-res, hand-drawn and oh-so-very-French graphics.
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By Lewie Procter on July 5th, 2011.
OK Cliffski, you’ve got our attention. The one man powerhouse behind Positech Games, best known for Kudos, Democracy and Gratuitous Space Battles, has been teasing a new game, currently titled “GTB”, for the last few months. We want to know: What is it? There’s some clues and details already revealed, but not enough for us to piece the whole thing together yet. Here’s what we know so far: Read the rest of this entry »
Digital Sales Riding High
By Lewie Procter on July 5th, 2011.
Photo by NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
There’s change afoot in the games industry, as a recent survey suggests the shift towards digital in full swing right now, with £330m coming in for downloads, compared to £450m at retail. First spotted over at MCV, market research firm Newzoo have revealed some of the results of their extensive survey of over 20,000 people across 12 countries, to find the latest in gaming market trends. And they’ve since sent us some exclusive glimpses of their findings. It turns out, there are gamers everywhere. Own up, are you one of them? Maybe someone you know is? Let’s put on our statisticians helmets, and dive into the data.
By Lewie Procter on July 5th, 2011.
Oh dear. Oh deary dear. All is not well between L.A. Noire developer Team Bondi and publisher Rockstar. Rockstar Leeds are busy working away on the PC version, but a report by GamesIndustry.biz, indicates Rockstar have no intention of working with Team Bondi again. Here’s the grisly details:
Greed And Failure
By Alec Meer on July 5th, 2011.
The plan: a document of ultimate triumph in Realm of the Mad God. Culminating, no doubt, in a climactic mano-a-mano encounter with the titular Mad God himself, Oryx.
I have plan. I will execute it. I will document it. I shall not waver. It will be flawless. I will be legendary.
The reality: a pathetic non-saga of greed and failure.
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