Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Did you wake up this morning feeling more judged than usual? Don’t panic. Just look around the room and see if you can spot the RPS Staring Eye of Judgement? Well done, you have chosen, or been chosen, to take part in our little experiment: the RPS Staring Eye of Judgement will, eventually, monitor your every move to ensure that when you sit down and make a comment on the site that you’ve made the correct decisions in life up to that point. I say “eventually”, because right now it’s just a helium balloon with an eye drawn on it. Could you just drag it around and pretend, maybe making whirring and clicking noises? Thanks! We got the idea from Valve, who’ve decided to hand the matter of CS: GO’s policing over to the community. The sinister sounding Overwatch will be community members who have the power to review cheating cases reported by players and ban those responsible.
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Valve’s secret augmented reality project, or at least one of them, has finally surfaced. At the weekend’s Maker Faire, ex-Valvesters Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson, demonstrated CastAR, a pair of glasses with a mini-projector that ‘casts’ games onto a reflective surface. The game appears in 3D in front of the player, who can interact with the insubstantial environments. It was a project that died during Valve’s “great cleansing” at the start of the year, but it’s not a cloak-and-dagger tech theft: Gabe waved his magic wand and gave his ex-employees the rights to the new technology.
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There are nearly as many Team Fortress 2 hats as there are snarky jokes about Team Fortress 2 hats. I see more hats in a day of browsing the Valvier parts of the Internet than I do in a year of going outside. But let’s face it: ours is a hatted man’s world, and so long as there are heads to be ogled and summarily shot, people will clamor for more carnivals of craftsmanship to cover them. You can probably see where I’m going with this. There’s a new Team Fortress 2 update, and it’s entirely player-created. Also, it’s mostly hats. These, however, are robot hats, and – as the wisest of all Benders taught us – that makes them exponentially more interesting. There’s also a video, comic, and all sorts of other post-update revelry. The break is not a robot, but it will do is best to emulate the experience.

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There are so many videogames! More than I can count with my entire, exceedingly creepy plaster hand collection. Valve tries its darndest to get the best ones on Steam, but they just keep coming. Perhaps throwing the towering Select-O-Tron 9000 and 3/5 into hyperdrive is the answer? Valve’s having a go at it, at least, and so far the result’s been smaller batches of games at an appreciably speedier clip. Last time, that meant three games, but this time it’s six. Hooray, progress! Standouts include the piracy plagued Game Dev Tycoon, Harvest-Moon-meets-Minecraft standout Stardew Valley, and the creatively named RIOT, which is about riots. Details after the break.

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There is a line, I think, between metagame-y stuff and full-on gamification, and I’m beginning to worry that Valve might have crossed it. Admittedly, Steam sales have tasked players with accomplishing special goals to earn tangible rewards for ages, but now all of Steam is doing it. Today, Valve introduced the beta for Steam Trading Cards, which can be earned and crafted into badges. Why are badges important? Because this: “Unlike the current badges, crafting games badges earns you marketable items like emoticons, profile backgrounds, and coupons. Level up your badge by collecting the set again and earning more items.” Oh, you can level up now, too. Your whole profile. I guess it’s cool that we’re getting something of worth out of it, but remember when the point of gaming was, well, the games?

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We’re waiting for you, Valve. In the sweat chamber. Show us what your mad wearable computing tech can do, instead of all this teasing. Latest report is that they’ve come up with kit which can measure assorted bodily responses, including heart rate, facial expression, brain waves, eye movement, pupil dilation, body temperature and, indeed, sweatability. Based on how you appear to be feeling, the game will alter factors such as difficulty and intensity to suit.
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Not so long ago, Gabe Newell sounded like he was dead-set on killing off Steam Greenlight, but still the rather obtuse game selection process persists. If nothing else, though, at least it’s not treading water. Say so long to a sludgy trickle of monthly additions, as Valve’s paving the way for a rapid-transit highway straight to the heart of the Greenlight system. From now on, it’ll greenlight more titles faster, but in smaller batches. And the first to benefit? How about surging (and completely marvelous) communist document thriller Papers, Please? Or, if that’s for some insane reason not to your liking, there’s also Edge of Space and ambitious, otherworldly action-RPG Venetica, in which you play as the daughter of Death Incarnate. Innnnnteresting.

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I hate Adam Foster, creator of last decade’s rapturously-received Half-Life 2 mod series MINERVA (not to be confused with BioShock 2: Minerva’s Den) and more recently a Valve employee. I hate him not because he is talented, not because he works at a cool place and not because I have a pathological distaste for people called ‘Adam.’ (Smith, you’re fired). I hate him because today he has made me feel SO OLD.

One of the first long-form pieces I ever wrote for RPS was an interview with Mr Foster about his excellent, thoughtful mod, and its fine accomplishments in level design and mood. That was in 2007. Now it is 2013. Six years later. And I am posting about MINERVA again. He now works at Valve, and meanwhile I’m still typing words into the same CMS, but older, grimmer, fatter. At least I’ve changed my chair twice since then. Something Foster has also done is repackage and spit’n'polish his mod for a well-deserved re-release on Steam today.
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A new crop of games have been rescued from the Steam Greenlight tarpit. Bigger names in there are City Of Steam, Frozen Endzone, Dreamfall: Chapters, and other games you look at the name of and say, “Huh? Why on EARTH was that having to fight it out to get on a shop?” The full list is below.

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Pretend that you didn’t read anything on the internet last week so that I can tell you about a keerrraazy new crossover that you won’t believe. Left 4 Dead 2 and Resident Evil 6. I know, right? When you’ve gathered the pieces of your mind, now blown into giblets, indulge me for a moment longer and act like you didn’t know that the survivors from Valve’s co-op sequel will be selectable in Capcom’s lurching horror. Mini-tanks and witches will also appear in the No Mercy game mode, which is part of the ‘Mercenaries’ minigame. Some Resident Evil monsters will also appear in Left 4 Dead 2. They’re called the Lepotitsa, Napad and Ogroman, and I can’t work out which has the silliest name. There’s a video below.

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I’m in the process of moving to a new house, just had to resuscitate my poor little shoe car from the brink of death, and was recently informed that the meticulously stone-hewn, full-sized medieval castle required of all RPS writers isn’t tax deductible. I cannot, in other words, afford anything. On that note, do you want to buy some dirt? Or how about this nice clump of air? Oh, look at this slightly used chewing gum. It’s fresh from your mouth as of three seconds ago. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. You’ve done a good thing here today. You won’t regret it! I’ll get my life back on track. You’ll see! [Immediately slinks off to Old Man Newell's back alley Steam Sale emporium to squander it all on indie games.]

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