Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Those among you with your ears to the internet will have noticed that a mystery has been unfolding around Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Some people are referring to it as an “ARG”. That’s a pretty serious term and shouldn’t be bandied about lightly, but this does have all the hallmarks of one. It all started with a code, or “some gibberish” as I call it, and eventually led to the image you see above. Quite how people worked it out is a mystery to my little meat-brain, which is to say I’m convinced they had some form of calculating device embedded in their skulls. Rather amusingly, even that wasn’t enough though because Eidos Montreal had to release extra clues. To be fair, I didn’t even understand those though. The story so far is here. What does it all mean? Were any of you involved in figuring out what’s happened so far? And am I actually quite stupid for not understanding how any of this worked? Arg(h)!

Are you a German teenager? Then do we have some good news for you! After a short seventeen year-long wait, you are now legally allowed to buy a copy of Doom. And, indeed, Doom can now be stocked in normal shops, not just ones ominously deemed ‘adults-only’ – which was basically putting the game right up there with porn.

As of yesterday, Germany’s Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons (Bundesprufstelle) has removed Doom – and Doom II – from its list of ‘controlled’ games, following an appeal by id’s owners Bethesda. Their reasoning? Because the Bundesprufstelle thinks Doom is ‘now only of artistic and scientific interest and will not appeal to youngsters’, according to the BBC.

WHAT.
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Major League Gaming‘s snazzy pro-gaming events in North America continue apace, and the multitudinous happenings of last weekend have been catalogue in exhaustive detail, for your browsing pleasure. This video probably sums it up in the least time, while I’ve embedded the footage of the Starcraft final below. Those dudes sure can click stuff good.

For a lot more video from the event check out this page. The next is the weekend of the 14th of October in Orlando, details here.
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Ultima IV, which is a game from the time when games really were games, and not transmedia double-dip marketing opportunities, is now free on GOG. Haha, games are really old. I am old. Oh dear.

(Thanks, Lewie!)

World Of Warcraft lead Tom “Kalgan” Chilton has been talking to PC Gamer about the recent decline in World Of Warcraft subs, which are down to 11.4m worldwide compared to a 12m high. What is interesting, however, is his citing of “complexity” as a reason why PCs might be “re-emerging” as a platform, suggesting he sees a shift in developer attention back keyboard-baring beast.

“In a lot of ways I see the PC as potentially a re-emerging sort of platform,” said Chilton. “I think that the PC has always offered ways to approach games that you can’t necessarily approach on console, even if it’s just because of UI restraints. Keyboard and mouse opens up options that you can’t get replicate as easily with a controller in RTS games like Starcraft 2. If you look at the way we do an MMO like World of Warcraft, our communication method and all that kind of stuff, it kind of implies a level of UI complexity that would be really hard to pull off on console.” Chilton’s focus on the PC has been continuous, of course, but it’s interesting to see so many developers now expressing this sentiment. (Basically: Devs are so hot for hotkeys.)

The unstoppable march of free-to-playification continues! Cryptic’s Star Trek Online – which is published by Perfect World – will be free-to-play by the end of the year. According to this report on Perfect World’s exciting Q2 earnings call, chief financial officer Kelvin Lau told investors: “Cryptic is working on the free-to-play model for Star Trek Online. This is going to be launched by the end of this year.”

This feels like a transitional period to me. All these MMOs that launched with subscription models reconfiguring themselves to F2P, while much better contenders – such as forthcoming Tribes-but-WoW offering Firefall – wait in the wings to prove that they can do F2P from the off. Nonetheless, I expect we’re a long, long way from this all being normalised in any fashion. What “free” actually means for these games is still very much up for definition.

Some sad news, I’m afraid. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has announced that Team Bondi, developers of LA Noire, have gone into administration. It’s not long since stories of the troubled and prolonged development hit the airwaves and Rockstar had already stated they would not publish the team’s next title. Rockstar do own the rights to LA Noire though and the PC version is in the hands of their Leeds studio. This shouldn’t change anything on that front, though we shall keep an eye on the situation. As for Team Bondi, judging from what conditions were apparently like in the studio, it’s amazing to see the ambition that still made it into LA Noire. Sad times indeed for those hardworking people who may undeservedly lose their jobs.

The PC version of the game (handled by Rockstar Leeds) is arriving later this year. We’re taking a look at it very soon.

The Miner Wars team send word that they’ve just released a major update for the game (which is in a pre-orders-pay-for-alpha-access-state) which includes a in-game editor. They explain: “Build your own space ship, space station or any sort of space-like edifice you can think of. These structures are be made from prefab modules, and in the future we’re looking to feature ’total destructibility’ for these objects. Prefab modules include tunnels, lattices, beams and panels as well as diverse chambers and special devices. You can also upload your hand-made sectors to the server and let your friends play them!” I had a mess about with the initial tech demo that was released last year, and it was genuinely impressive, if totally empty at that time. It now features all kinds of stuff, including AI bads and so on. Is anyone still playing around with it?

Full list of updates and latest (by latest I mean totally ancient) video below.
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