After the discussion of GaaSygames – games as a service – at the F2P summit yesterday, mention of Steam’s Early Access store is timely. Although it is not based on the same principles of monetization – Early Access games are bought with a one-off purchase – the philosophy of games as processes of iteration rather than finished objects is comparable.
Using the Early Access program, developers can not only give their fans an opportunity to see the development of their game as it happens, but also acquire capital for its ongoing development. Games like Kerbal Space Programhave become critical successes and strong sellers without leaving the program.
In effect, Steam is embracing – and monetizing – the “paid alpha/beta” model made famous by Minecraft, the absurd success of which made its creator, Markus Persson, a millionaire several times over before the game left beta in November 2011.
Glow future for you
Vlambeer are known as the creators of Super Crate Box, Luftrausers andRidiculous Fishing, arguably the best freemium-styled game ever to eschew freemium mechanics. Vlambeer’s Rami Ismail noted that many people believed that the store in the game was broken because it did not allow real-money purchases, adding that in his opinion most free-to-play mechanics were difficult to implement without detracting from the quality of the game overall.
(Their own perceptions of the ethics of free-to-play development have also been colored, understandably, by the controversy over the alleged cloning of their online game Radical Fishing in 2011, which put the brakes on their own iOS adaptation, Ridiculous Fishing, which was eventually released in 2013.)
However, the service model has advantages for indie developers, who often experience the lumpiness of the product development and sales chain through lengthy periods of minimal earning. Early access programs are one approach to levelling out those bumps by making the product saleable earlier and for longer, as well as acting as a marketing tool. Vlambeer’s mix of public statements of integrity and novel promotional activity – currently, they are live-streaming development of Nuclear Throne on Twitch.tv - has made Vlambeer one of the better-known and more admired independent developers in Europe.
Throne berry - the first fruits of this roguelikelike are available for early access
Nuclear Throne itself – renamed from its original title, Wasteland Kings, after a cordial discussion with Brian Fargo’s inXile Entertainment over the risk of confusion with the upcoming, Kickstarter-funded Wasteland 2 – is a roguelike-like, in which the player fights for control over a post-apocalyptic, randomly generated wasteland, aided by sudden mutations. Anyone eager to get their hands, paws or pseudopodia on the initial build can do so on Steam or through the Humble store, via the game’s site.
Thứ Sáu, 11 tháng 10, 2013
PS4 Exclusive 'Deep Down' Has Amazing Looking Magic, Dragon Flame
Capcom’s online RPG has some surprises up its sleeve.
Deep Down is a free-to-play dungeon crawler coming to the PS4 next year.
I’m still not entirely sure how to feel about the game.
Its first announcement made me think we were in for a more story-driven, single-player experience, but it turned out the focus was on multiplayer and randomly generated dungeons and monsters. That it was also an online-only, free-to-play title only made matters worse.
That being said, a dungeon crawl can be a lot of fun, and if the F2P features are handled wisely the game might be pretty neat.
I say this also because of two new gameplay demos that have just come out forDeep Down.
In the multiplayer demo you get to see four people battle a truly massive dragon. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a steady stream of flame; it’s quite the inferno, racing out of the cavern and down the corridors beyond.
But the neatest thing in this demo is the magic. At one point, one of the players uses a spell that freezes time. All the other players and the dragon and even the fire itself are frozen in place. The player then uses two fireball type spells which are themselves frozen, aimed at the beast. When time restores itself, the fireballs fly into the dragon’s side. It’s quite a spectacle.
In the single-player demo you notice some interesting things as well, including one or two pretty awesome spells. But what really stands out to me is hit locations. Hitting a troll (or whatever the things are) in the leg can send it to its knees for a moment. Hitting in the head does more damage, and so forth.
I also noticed the map overlay is 3D, showing each level of the dungeon you’ve explored. It looks pretty handy, especially since it looks like you’ll be doing a lot of falling-through-floors in this game.
Oh, and the music sounds excellent so far. Very reminiscent of other Japanese RPGs, very moody. (Though the announcers speak over the entirety of both videos which makes it a bit distracting, especially if you—like me—don’t speak Japanese.)
The controls/camera set-up are what worry me the most. It just looks a little overly clunky, and occasionally the camera wigs out and makes it hard to see what’s going on. I prefer a slightly more zoomed-out approach in my third-person action games. (Dark Souls, for instance.)
Also interesting is the prevalence of spears. In many of the videos we’ve seen so far, including these, spear seems to be the weapon of choice. I’d like to see more sword-and-board if only to see whether there’s much in the way of defense in this game. So far it looks mostly hack-and-slash.
'Dark Souls 2' And 'The Witcher' Comic Books Announced
Several video games are getting their very own comic book adaptation in 2014. This year’s New York Comic Con had some particularly cool announcements for fans of roleplaying games.
Dark Souls 2
From Software’s Dark Souls 2 is getting a free online graphic novel called Dark Souls 2: Into the Light. It’s being developed primarily for the internet, but certain editions of the game will come with a print copy, according to Namco Bandai.
I’m intensely curious how Dark Souls, a game with few words and a very enigmatic storyline, will translate to the printed page. What new lore will we be privy to this coming January when the comic is slated to go online?
Into the Light is being written by Rob Williams and Andi Ewington, with illustrations by Simon Coleby.
'Splinter Cell: Blacklist' Quick Hit Review
Quick Hit reviews are conversation-starters about games I’m enjoying at the moment, and not intended as full reviews.
When author Tom Clancy passed away recently it reminded me of two things: First, I needed to pick up a Tom Clancy book. It’s been years, and I always enjoyed his thrillers.
And second, I needed to play the latest Splinter Cell game—a franchise I haven’t played in almost as long, but one that I enjoyed back in the day a great deal.
While I haven’t picked up a book yet—I’m reading The Lies of Locke Lamoraat the moment and don’t intend to quit—I did fire up the game on my PC. I’m glad I did, too, because so far at least it’s absolutely terrific.
Graphics, voice-acting, the action-movie story, all of that stuff is great. But it’s really the stealth mechanics, the great upgrade system, and the really tight controls that make this game so much fun.
Missions are varied, and level design encourages exploration, finding secret paths, and rewards playing as a “Ghost” most of all. The stealthy, non-lethal path doles out the highest rewards. It also poses the greatest challenge, though run-and-gun in this game isn’t really a viable option.
On top of the solo campaign, tons of co-op and multiplayer options are available, giving the game even more variety. Lots of ways to play, numerous upgrades, myriad side missions, and (so far at least) an engaging military-thriller plot, all add up to make this a really well-rounded, balanced experience.
Interestingly enough, I started playing right after finishing Beyond: Two Souls. I had just finished writing about how the QTE mechanics inBeyond were actually immersion-breaking, and described the benefits of traditional control schemes thusly:
Far from being freed from the supposed repetitiveness of more traditional games, Beyond requires that we pay attention to the buttons all the time, much more than in a game where we simply learn the controls so completely that we never even think about them. In a well designed game, controls become an extension of thought, a bodily reaction that’s almost second nature. But that mastery comes after practice and failure.
Playing Splinter Cell: Blacklist, I found myself almost instantly more immersed in the game than I ever could become in Beyond.
The fluid controls, the simple-to-learn but hard-to-master style of play, it all comes very naturally. A well designed control scheme and, in third person shooters especially, a functional camera, makes for a wonderful experience.
That’s what Blacklist gives us: good solid gameplay, through and through.
Ubisoft released Splinter Cell: Blacklist on August 20th. The PC version received an 83/100 on Metacritic. FORBES contributor David Thier gave the game a glowing 9/10.
Exit Questions:
1) What is your favorite Tom Clancy novel?
2) What is your favorite Tom Clancy video game?
3) What is the best adaptation of Tom Clancy novel to the silver screen?
4) Aren’t you glad that Tom Clancy video games are unique IPs rather than movie adaptations?
Gamestop Offering Deep Discounts For PS3 And 360 Ahead Of Next Console Generation
Patient gamers out there can finally rejoice. If you’ve been putting off getting a particular console for years now, Gamestop is about to have some sales so deep, you might not be able to pass them up. Ahead of the launch of Sony'sSNE-0.91% PS4 and Microsoft'sMSFT+2.09% Xbox One, Gamestop is knocking down the price on used versions of both companies’ old systems.
From October 11 to October 24 the original Xbox 360 is on sale for $99.99 (previously $129.99) and the Xbox 360 Slim 4 GB system is $119.99 (previously $179.99). Used PS3 hardware is on sale for $149.99 (previously $259.99).
Though many reading this likely own either an Xbox 360 or a PS3 at this point, most will likely not own both, which is the sort of thing that leads to the incredibly divisive “fanboy camps” as one side fails to realize the benefits of the other, simply because they don’t own the system. Video gaming is an expensive hobby, and many players will only be able to afford one console, which at a few hundred dollars each, is understandable.
But now? It might be time to cross over to the other side and see what you’ve been missing. This is especially relevant because the next generation of systems will not be backwards compatible. In other words, the only way many players will be able to play classic PS3 or 360 games is to actually own the consoles. Until the ultra-HD re-releases, of course.
This situation happened to me a few years ago when after years of being an Xbox 360 loyalist, I finally realized I could afford a PS3 as well. That lead to a video game revelation for me, as I got to play games I’d long been missing out on, from God of War to Uncharted to Heavy Rain and more. If I was in the other camp, I’m sure I would have had fun finally getting to play through all of Gears of War and Halo.
Getting each of these systems for $100-$150 is a steal. And even better, most of their “classic” titles can be picked up for pretty cheap at this point, as it’s been years since their release. For “new era” exclusive classics like The Last of Us, the price point will still remain high, but if you pick up a PS3 and keep up your patient streak, the cost will drop eventually.
I don’t work for Gamestop and I’m not necessarily trying to push their specific sale. Rather, I think owning multiple systems can go a long way to bridging these sort of inane brand fanboy divides that make no sense to me. As soon as I owned both a 360 and a PS3, I stopped avidly defending one and attacking the other as I realized both had their pros and cons. And I’m going to buy both a One and a PS4 so I can try and continue to have a balanced perspective of what’s out there.
The deal consists of a $5.83B share buyback as well as the purchase of $2.34B in company stock by a coalition of investors spearheaded by CEO Bobby Kotick which includes Chinese game company Tencent, the publisher of League of Legends.
Activision had appealed an earlier decision by Delaware Chancery Court Judge J. Travis Laster to require a shareholder vote on the proceeding, after a shareholder sued to stop the deal.
“There is no reasonable possibility of success on the merits,” Chief Justice Myron Steele wrote of the lower court’s decision. “The Stock Purchase Agreement here contested is not a merger, business combination or similar transaction.
“There is almost universal belief that this is a good deal for the stockholders,” Steele added.
The final sale will reduce Vivendi’s stake in the company to just 12 percent, while the majority stake of about 25 percent would go to the investor group led by Kotick.
Vivendi expects to complete the deal on or around October 15th.
Prior to the buyback, Vivendi had consideredforcing a $3B dividend from Activision, exercising its ownership rights to drain the video game publisher’s coffers to pay down the French company’s debts.
The original court ruling blocked the buyout deal indefinitely and according to Activision attorneys, minority shareholders stood to lose as much as $1B if the deal remained blocked.
According to analyst Michael Pachter, Activision’s independence from Vivendi will put the game publisher “in a position to be more financially flexible.”
“The company communicates clearly, executes well, and its management appears to truly understand how to make money,” Pachter noted.
“These transactions together represent a tremendous opportunity for Activision Blizzard and all its shareholders, including Vivendi,” Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said when the deal was first announced.
“We should emerge even stronger-an independent company with a best-in-class franchise portfolio and the focus and flexibility to drive long-term shareholder value and expand our leadership position as one of the world’s most important entertainment companies.”
Activision shares are up 4.73% on the news, hovering at $17.05.
The company has two major game releases coming out in the near future: next week’s launch of Skylanders: Swap Force, and the November release ofCall of Duty: Ghosts.
Report: 'GTA 5' Is On Its Way To PC
Despite setting a suite of Guinness records for making an ungodly amount of money, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto 5 has racked up all of its unprecedented sales figures without the sizeable PC community. There have been some pretty strong hints from both NVidia and Intel about a PC port, so while it seems highly likely, we’ve still yet to hear anything from Rockstar itself about bringing the massively succesful crime game to Windows. Now, a report from typically-reliable Eurogamer cites “multiple industry sources” saying that a PC port is on its way for first quarter 2014. We’ve reached out to Rockstar for clarification, but I wouldn’t expect an official announcement for a little bit.
A PC port makes sense for a lot of reasons, even if moving a game this big is a sizable task. The PC community is stronger than it has ever been, and Rockstar has already seen what the modding community has managed to do with GTA 4. There’s a lot of money in consoles, but the PC community offers a much longer tail than the living room can muster. Games like GTA 4 benefit from a vast sea of fan-made content, making the game a viable purchase even years out from its release.
Still, it isn’t a foregone conclusion. Rockstar’s last gigantic open world game, Red Dead Redemption, never made its way to PCs, and the impossible success of this game’s console version proves that it can get by just fine on PS3 and Xbox 360.
We’ll probably hear about the PC version of this game soon, but I doubt that’s the last platform the game will arrive on. Both the Xbox One and the PS4 are built a lot like PCs, so a next-gen port is likely at some point as well. I’d expect a Game of the Year Edition with a bunch of bundled DLC and high-res textures for next-gen consoles arriving during the 2014 holiday season. This franchise typically enjoys a pretty long tail, and this game doesn’t seem like it will be any exception. Combine new retail sales with the possible success of a micro-transaction model with GTA Online, and you’ve got a cash cow for years to come.
Thứ Tư, 9 tháng 10, 2013
'Mario Kart 8' Flexes Its Wii U Racing Credentials With Motorsport Commentary
There are many things on my Mario Kart 8 wish list, but this motorsport style commentary just went to the top of the list.
Fingers crossed for local five player with the Wii U game-pad, some kind of tie-in with Mario Kart on the 3DS and a bunch of new courses and characters. But more than that I’d love to be able to hear racing commentary from different Nintendo characters.
The commentary here comes from Alan Boiston, of Team VVV the automotive gaming and simulation YouTube channel. Seeing the race through his eyes certainly added another dimension to the experience. As well as having a bit of fun it highlighted how much more of a racing focus this iteration of Mario Kart has.
In the past I’ve not been a fan of the overtly battling feel of Mario Kart: Double Dash on the Gamecube and preferred concentrating on the cornering and racing line in Mario Kart 7 on 3DS — even if the snaking tactics of some online players did frustrate me.
Although Mario Kart 8 won’t be with us for some time, getting hands on with the game recently (as you can see in the video) it is already looking pretty polished. Drawing on ideas from Mario Kart on the 3DS and Wii, the Wii U version adds levitating vehicles that can drive along walls and expands the online features with MiiVerse. Not only that but it also lets you pull out a hand glider as well as race on motorbikes — maybe at the same time?
Certainly something to look forward to once the buzz and excitement aroundplaying Swap Force and LEGO Marvel has subsided in my family early next year.
Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag's Lead Writer On Capturing The Pirate's Voice And Viewpoint
“We do not plunge headlong into folly on the orders of a single madmen, but act according to our own collective madness! So all in favour of storming the cove and taking this ship, stomp and shout “aye!” All opposed whimper nay! Never was the King’s Council this unified!”
Darby McDevitt, lead scriptwriter of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, is having some fun with the piratical language of Ubisoft’s upcoming pirate game.
I talked with McDevitt in the basement of Ubisoft’s Montréal headquarters, where the game was being finalised in a haze of secrecy. A life-sized plastic model of Sam Fisher stood guard over the main entrance, perhaps a little incongruously.
In one sense, a pirate-themed Assassin’s Creed game makes perfect sense – everyone loves pirates, after all, and the genetic-memory science babble of the game’s setup allows the neurologically induced flashbacks that make up the majority of the game to take place in any era.
However, the popularity and familiarity of the piratical milieu also introduced a new challenge for the scriptwriting team: everyone knows, or believes they know, how pirates talk. As becomes painfully clear every Talk Like A Pirate Day.
That was the single hardest thing I had to do. When I started doing research… this is the first Assassin’s Creedwhere people started out thinking right off “I know pirates!”
And they would design something with a hook hand and a parrot companion mechanic – I’m making these up, but they are the kind of discussions I was hearing. You couldn’t launch into the Renaissance like that, but with pirates you have this accumulated baggage you had to divest yourself of.
I had an argument on the floor with a couple of guys who really wanted a hook. Hooks are an absolute fantasy! Parrots? Parrots were definitely captured and sold in the British colonies as rare birds, but it would have been hard to keep a parrot alive on a boat. Sailors on long journeys would have cows for milk and chickens for eggs, but pirates’ excursions were a lot shorter.
So, we had to argue a lot.
The original map someone presented to me way back in October was much tighter. Yucatan (on the northeast tip of Mexico), Hispaniola (modern Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and Cuba – that made a good, bounded arena. But of course, after 20 minutes of research into Blackbeard you realise he spent most of his time in Nassau.
So, then you have to explain [to the designers] why it would be fun – and you see that Havana, Kingston and Nassau are incredibly different. That connects to the parkour mechanics being extended to natural objects for the first time. Kingston as a city is still very leafy and tree-filled, because the city is only 20 years old – an earthquake in Port Royal moved people over. Havana is more developed. And Nassau is just a shanty town – it has lots of character.
Designing Abstergo
Part of the metajoke about AC4 is that, while the first three games were based around the hero character of the apostate assassin Desmond Miles and his world-changing destiny, the fourth, with Miles’ storyline ended, casts the player as a low-level employee of Abstergo Entertainment – a front company for the Templars, but also an entertainment industry company in a cavernous building in Montréal – not wholly unlike the entertainment industry company in whose basement, complete with privacy guards on the sunken windows, I am sitting. By sifting through the cloud-stored memories of Desmond’s assassin forebears, the player is helping to build IP for a company with its own internal conflicts about how a pirate adventure should behave.
We’re playing with the unreliable narrator: there are lots of conversations at Abstergo about how they could tweak the past to make a more interesting product. So, there’s an active banality of evil thing going on, there.
Further down the rabbit hole: the historical pirates, some of whom appear in the game, were themselves very aware of the importance of perception and the flamboyant performance of piracy. Blackbeard, the legendarily bloodthirsty pirate, wore burning tapers in his beard when he boarded ships to make his countenance more terrifying.
However, he did that precisely to avoid bloodshed, by encouraging ships to surrender without a fight. Assassins are generally supposed to be crafty, silent types, bound by a code of honor – how can that be reconciled with the aggressive theatricality of the pirate’s life?
There’s some overlap in the egalitarian ideals of the Assassins and the pirates [as against the hierarchichal, old-money Templars]. In the Royal Navy captains would get 600 shares to 1 share each crewman got from the sale of captured ships and treasure. Pirates did a two-to-one split. Captains got a double share, boatswains got one and a half, the ship’s carpenter got one and a quarter, and the regular sailors got a single share. So, it was much more profitable to be a pirate. Even privateers [officially sanctioned pirates operating under letters of marque from an imperial power] were in the order of ten shares for the captain.
Pirates, ninjas and egalitarians
So, the protagonist Edward Kenway’s anti-establishment leaning can be seen as mixing the ideals of the pirates he captains and the Order of Assassins with whom he has an uneasy relationship. And the idea of a flamboyant assassin had already been explored somewhat in Revelations, where McDevitt wrote Yusuf, the leader of Constantinople’s Assassins, as a clownish daredevil to act as a foil against the older, wiser Ezio Auditore. This time around that role – the foil and tutorial character – is fulfilled by Kenway’s first mate aboard the good ship Jackdaw, Adewale.
It’s always better to have someone standing next to the player, so he doesn’t have to talk to himself – “Hmm, I should attack that fort!” Adewale becomes the surrogate voice for the crew.
We toyed with the idea of having a lot more crewmen with personalities, but then we wanted that sense of a loop of recruiting and losing crew, and with so many other characters in the game Adewale would be the voice. He’s very interested in the pirate republic. He likes sticking it to the British, who probably sold his parents in Trinidad. His main goal is to remind Edward of the democratic values of the pirates.
As you proceed through the story, Edward starts to hear such strange and fantastical things from the war between the Templars and Assassins. Adewale wants to bring him back to Earth, remind him of the promise of Nassau [which in the early 18th century expelled its governors and became a free pirate city] and its democratic ideal. Adewale is a torchbearer for that ideal. As a former slave, he has a lot at stake here.
Slavery is an awkward historical element of the setting – one with a greater resonance today than the spotted-handkerchief-bandana school of pirate, certainly. Kenway does not trade in slaves – the decency of the character and the needs of the marketing department dovetailing – but he can find and free workers on sugar plantations, who can then join his crew. McDevitt’s research into the sugar trade in the West Indies during the golden age of piracy inspired the idea of these “plantation missions”.
We learned that pirates attacked land targets – like Henry Morgan’s attack on Panama. Charles Vane and Henry Jennings took a Spanish treasure fleet in Florida when it was was being held on land. We linked the two together – so, if there are plantations dotted around the world, It would be fun to come up with a systemic way to attack warehouses and plunder them of all their goods.
So, the raiding of plantations is not part of the historical pirate’s modus operandi, but the combination of historical realities – land raids and the sugar trade – created the idea of a possible mission structure.
Shiver me timbres
The dialog follows a similar line. McDevitt trod a line between authenticity and comprehensibility, guided by the rhythms of populist semihistorical dramas like Deadwood and contemporary resources like a 1736 dictionary of cant (the specialized language of the London underworld – a mix of rhyming slang, foreign loan words and euphemisms designed to make it impossible for eavesdroppers to glean their upcoming illegalities.
