By Jim Rossignol on September 7th, 2011.
Spiral send word that they have a new video out, this time showing a playable dinosaur in action, and some jumping/shooting behaviour. Mr Dino looks fantastic, frankly. The team have also done a big old write up of what they’ve been up to in the past month over here.
Go take a look, below…
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By Adam Smith on September 7th, 2011.
A few weeks ago, Valve started beta testing its Steam Trading feature and people have swapped over a million items since then. Were the majority of them hats? I don’t have those figures, but the entrails in this animal say “yes”. The trading feature is now officially live and you can trade all sorts of gubbins with one another. Clarification: “all sorts of gubbins” means Team Fortress 2, Portal 2 and Spiral Knights items so not a great deal has actually changed. Perhaps more interesting than item swapping is the ability to trade unredeemed games, although do note the qualifier ‘unredeemed’. Steam is not letting you swap grubby used goods. There’s a FAQ here. The fact that every public profile now comes with an inventory means that Steam is officially an RPG in which buying cheap games is the grind. The plan is to bring more developers on board in the coming months, so one day you may be able to trade the Incas for a pair of cowboy boots. Truly, we live in exciting times.
A Last Resort
By John Walker on September 7th, 2011.
Dead Island was released (in some manner) in the US yesterday, and arrives in the UK, once it’s painstakingly paddled across the massive oceans of the internet, on Friday. I’ve been playing it for a long, long time, and yet still haven’t got anywhere near its ending. And as such, even though I’m about to tell you Wot I Think, in the interests of probity will offer you my Impressions.
By Jim Rossignol on September 7th, 2011.
The past couple of weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about game environments that do something a bit different, or game environments that I really love spending time in because they are singular and unique (Hello, The Zone!).I wanted to ask you guys, too. So what game environments do you keep coming back to? Which ones took your breath away with their cleverness? What are the most interesting game environments, and why?
Speak!
By Adam Smith on September 7th, 2011.
Map-clicking simulation Sengoku is out on September 13th and if you’ve been following its development, you already know why this is exciting. If you haven’t, allow me to summarise in a crude and reductive fashion. Sengoku is Shogun meets Crusader Kings, it’s Europa Universalis in Japan. Helpful to an extent, if you’ve played those games, but what’s more important than those comparisons is Paradox’s desire to emulate what is unique about the clans and culture of the period and place. That’s why it’s unfair to suggest Sengoku will be Crusader Kings with nothing more than a different hat and moustache. Behold the thrilling world of Feudal Japan in the video below.
By Jim Rossignol on September 7th, 2011.
Speaking to Edge, a CGO of bigshot F2P company Bigpoint, Philip Reisberger, has hit out at big publishers trying to get into the free-to-play arena, taking a shot at Valve as he did so: “There are millions, hundreds of millions of people willing to invest even though they aren’t obliged to. The crucial part of the design is not having to invest, but wanting to. Most people in the Bigpoint universe don’t ever pay. But if they want to pay, don’t just offer hats – offer them something that will help them.” Reisberger believes that players should be allowed to pay for a competitive advantage: “If selling an advantage ruins the game, you haven’t done the balancing right,” he said. “EA and Ubisoft, for example, they’re both trying, but they’re not really there yet.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by other F2P companies I’ve spoken to: they’re generally unimpressed with the efforts of more traditional firms to get into the market. Are they worried? Maybe. But I sense there’s also an element of envy there – companies like Valve and EA are using their existing reach to bring F2P options to gamers who might not previously have considered it. Not that Reisberger will be worried, Bigpoint gets 250k new signs ups every day.
Restore your HP
By B Caldwell on September 6th, 2011.
I was having my breakfast shower last Thursday when I got a message from Jim. So I got out of the water and put down my Wheetos. When I read the message bleeping away in my jeans I found it simply read: “The Baconing: Review?” I replied with a lengthy acceptance speech, pointing out many of Jim’s finer qualities.
I was naked. “A review of unprecedented amazingness please,” he replied. “No ‘editor called me’ intros.” I resolved to disobey him as soon as I finished my toilet. What do you think of THAT Square Brackets Jim!? [I think you are looking for trouble, Caldwell - Jim]
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By Alec Meer on September 6th, 2011.
News that an eyebrow-raising 3 million Steam activation codes for natty racing title DIRT 3 had been leaked online broke earlier today, and now has an official oh-dear air to it as a result of confirmation from AMD that, yes, the codes were intended for vouchers that shipped with their Radeon graphics cards and yes, a database file containing them was purloined by bad eggs. I’m sure no-one at AMD or DIRT 3 publisher Codemasters is terribly calm right now, but at least it doesn’t appear to be the case that either of their sites or servers were directly hacked.
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The Sounds of Zilence!
By Jim Rossignol on September 6th, 2011.
There’s a grim danger with multiplayer shooters. The danger is that if they’re any good, I’ll lose a year’s worth of productivity. This is becoming a genuine concern as I played through more rounds of Red Orchestra 2, Tripwire’s shiny sequel to the super-bleak World War II shooter. It’s a little less brutal and minimal than its parent, of course, because it’s a more friendly commercial release. But the horror remains. And it is brilliant.
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By John Walker on September 6th, 2011.
Like an angelic voice of reason amongst the grunting lunacy comes Christofer Sundberg, founder of Avalanche Studios. The Just Cause developer has told EDGE that “always-on DRM only says: ‘Thank you for buying our game, we trust you as far as we can throw you.’” Responding to the utterly unfounded and unevidenced defence of Driver SF’s always-on DRM from Martin Edmonson last week, Sundberg told the Edgeborg that treating customers with respect would be a far more effective means of dealing with piracy.
The Way Of The Dinosaurs
By Jim Rossignol on September 6th, 2011.
When Eve’s Council Of Stellar Management (CSM) was formed, it was a bold move by developers CCP. The creation of a player-elected ombudsman was intended to deal with what was seen as a lack of communication between the playerbase and the company, as well as providing a forum to address issues such as perceived instances of corruption, instances like the one that sparked the CSM formation in the first place. In the light over the controversy over Eve’s cash shop, the CSM met with CCP again, expressing player concerns. Following a series of apologies and concessions, not too much seemed to come from this, but now the CSM chairman, infamous Goon boss Alexander “The Mittani ” Gianturco has spoken out, concluding: “We will not stand idly by as an alliance while our subscription money goes to waste, watching the game we pay to play spiraling into entropy due to the folly and neglect of CCP’s management. It is not yet time to start a fire, but get your gasoline ready. “
