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Archived News:
Valve announces a new public Steam beta, offering the chance to check out a
bunch of new community-oriented features: August 6, 2007 -- The largest
update for Steam, a leading online platform for PC games and digital
entertainment, is now open for public beta testing. The update, which will be
available free of charge, introduces an expansive set of social networking and
online multiplayer features to a growing PC platform serving games and digital
entertainment to over 13 million accounts.
The new Steam community features are designed to connect gamers with friends and
other gamers, create and join groups, and organize matches and tournaments. The
initial batch of features rolled out in the beta version include: . Steam ID.
Create a personal profile-complete with a photo or avatar, biographical details,
favorites, and more-viewable on the Web and within the Steam client. . Friends.
Add peers to a personal Friends List that shows in real-time who's online and
available to chat or play a game. Accessible from within the Steam client or
while playing a game, the Friends List makes it easy to invite friends to chat,
play a game, or join a group. . Groups. Create and join public and private
groups comprised of gamers who share a common interest, such as fans of a
particular game, map or mod, or competitive teams. The Group Profile page
displays information about the group, recent activities, news and announcements,
and a schedule of upcoming events. Groups can quickly initiate a text or voice
chat; plan a game, tournament, LAN party, or any other event; and track group
gameplay statistics. . Statistics. From both a personal Steam ID or Group
profile, users can view a range of gameplay statistics, such as most played
games or maps and average playing time. . Chat. Initiate a chat with friends and
groups using integrated instant messaging, text chat, and voice features. .
Events. Schedule matches, tournaments, and in-person gatherings, such as LAN
parties. Upcoming events are displayed in both a list and calendar view, and
members can receive reminders that help keep everyone on schedule.
The Steam community features may be accessed within the Steam client or from
within any game available in the Steam library of games - a growing collection
that includes new releases and classic titles from leading publishers and
independent developers around the world. Additionally, certain features, such as
the user's Control Panel, Friend's List, and Groups pages may be accessed and
managed using any Web browser.
This upgrade marks the largest extension to the Steam platform since its first
commercial release in March 2004. In its three year history, Steam has defined
the next generation online gaming platform delivering hundreds of games to
millions of users with services such as Guest Passes, Automatic Updates, Free
Weekends, and access to purchased games from any PC.
To explore the Steam community features, install the Steam client available at
www.steampowered.com. Click the
Community tab within the Steam interface to take a tour of the features and
create a profile.
- Far Cry 2
This
Ubisoft FTP directory offers a new "behind the scenes" trailer for Far
Cry 2, their upcoming first-person shooter. The 9.6 MB clip is available
on 3D
Downloads,
FileFront, and
Gamer's Hell.
- World in Conflict
A new World in Conflict trailer is now
available, showing off more of massive Entertainment's upcoming RTS game.
From the can't make this stuff up department, word is the clip "introduces
the main characters of the single player campaign through a recreation of
the Magnum PI opening sequence." The download is available on
3D Downloads,
FileFront, and
Gamer's Hell.
- Mark Rein
An
Audience with Mark Rein Part Two on Computer and Video Games concludes
their chat with the Epic veep, discussing the next "Make Something Unreal"
contest, console mod and input support, PC Gears of War, DirectX 10, and
more.
- N.o.t. F.E.A.R.
Embrace
Your New F.E.A.R. on IGN is a Q&A with Troy Skinner of Monolith about
their continuation of the F.E.A.R. series under a new name, since they no
longer have rights to that title. They discuss what will be similar to the
original game as well as what will be changes. On a related note, final
voting for that new title is live on the
Name Your Fear Website
(thanks GameSpy).
- World of Warcraft
The
World of Warcraft Interview on The MMO Gamer is a BlizzCon interview
with WoW lead designer Jeffrey “Tigole” Kaplan, discussing the future of
Blizzard's MMORPG. The conversation is available as an audio file and it is
also transcribed for your reading pleasure.
- Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising on
WarCry.
We got the sad news today that Jaroslaw Krzysztof Marcin Wolski, A.K.A. Jerry
"PoliSh" Wolski died suddenly last night. Jerry was a stalwart member of the
DOOM/QUAKE community, who maintained websites, helped create seminal machinima
movies, organized leagues and tournaments, and was one of the folks who helped
put together the original QuakeCon in 1996. In spite of all that old school
credibility, PoliSh was only 32 (Saturday would have been his 33rd birthday),
far to young to go, much less of what was an apparent heart attack. I had the
chance to spend some time with Jerry on a few occasions and always found him to
be a warm, fun-loving character. To offer an overused phrase that is quite
appropriate, he will be missed, as the world needs more of his ilk. Our
heartfelt sympathies to his young widow and his other family and friends.
There's a forum post about this on the
AHLPoker Forums
where more details may end up surfacing.
EA and NAMCO BANDAI announce the release date for Hellgate: London, Flagship
Studios' debut action/RPG, as October 31 in North America and November 2 in
Europe: EA AND NAMCO BANDAI GAMES ANNOUNCE NOVEMBER 2nd RELEASE DATE FOR
HELLGATE: LONDON The Next Benchmark in Action Role Playing Games will Start
Lighting Up PCs this Halloween Chertsey, UK. – August 6, 2007 – Get ready to
hack, slash, and shoot your way through a demon-infested London this Halloween!
Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) and NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc. today
announced that Hellgate™: London, the premier title from Flagship Studios, will
start hitting retail stores in North America on October 31, 2007 and in Europe
on November 2, 2007 for the PC. Hellgate: London represents the next leap in the
evolution of the action RPG genre, combining the depth and addictive gameplay of
traditional RPGs with the visceral action of first-person shooters.
“We wanted to hit the sweet-spot for release in terms of the development
schedule and delivering the highest-quality game to our players,” said Bill
Roper, CEO of Flagship Studios. “Halloween was the perfect fit as it ensures
that Hellgate: London will have an appropriate amount of beta testing, while
also being an incredibly fun time to unleash the game.”
One of the most anticipated PC games and RPGs of the year, Hellgate: London
offers infinite re-playability with dynamically generated levels, items, enemies
and events. The player creates a heroic character, completes quests, and battles
through an innumerable amount of demons to advance through a deep, rich
story-driven campaign. A robust, flexible skill and spell system, highly
customizable appearances, and a massive variety of randomly generated equipment
allow each player to create his or her own unique hero.
While some may prefer to slay demons solo, players will also be able to take the
fight online*, teaming up with friends to save London in a secure, client-server
environment and playing through the entire story-driven campaign for free. For
those players who want to extend their Hellgate: London experience, Flagship is
offering an optional subscription service which will give players access to huge
amounts of content on an ongoing basis in the form of quests, character classes,
demons, items, etc. More details about Hellgate: London’s online options are
coming soon.
The game has not yet been rated by the ESRB, PEGI or BBFC. Visit
www.esrb.org,
www.pegionline.eu or
www.bbfc.co.uk for updated rating
information. For more information about Hellgate: London, log onto
www.electronicarts.co.uk or the
game’s official website at
www.hellgatelondon.com.
* Internet connection required.
Slashdot
points out a thread on the
Halflife2.net
Forums suggesting that the recent release of older id Software games over
Steam ( story) may be a violation of the GNU GPL (thanks Ant).
At issue is the inclusion of what may be a modified version of the
DOSBox x86
emulator without attribution. Since this discussion started, relevant text files have been added to
this Steam distribution, indicating efforts were already undertaken to address this over
the weekend. A subsequent post by one of the DOSBox authors tries to
quell the ire some are expressing over this. It should be pointed out
that the second part of the comment is a bit off-base, since id has already made
the free GPL releases of DOOM ( story), Quake
( story), Quake II ( story), and Quake III Arena
( story): Can you people just calm down already. It's been
like what 1 or 2 days after this thing has been released and people are already
bitching about legal action or damage payments. It's not like we're losing money
or whatever, it's euhm free software. There's lot's of open source programs
being used for commercial ends. Sure it's nice to be mentioned somewhere but
even then there's no obligation to do so. GPL violations can easily be sorted
out in time if they just add or remove the necessary files.
On a different note you could of course wonder why ID is still milking their age
old dos games, might give the fans something for free after all this time. But
okay that's their right to do so.
This Loki Forum
Post points out a new patch for Loki, updating Cyanide's action/RPG to
version 1.0.6.0. The download is mirrored on
ActionTrip,
Gamer's Hell,
Strategy
Informer, and The Patches Scrolls.
- Crysis
A new countdown trailer for Crysis helps mark the
time until the release of Crytek's upcoming first-person shooter, currently
slated for November 16 (story). The clip is available on
3D Downloads,
ActionTrip,
and Gamer's Hell.
- Hellgate: London
A new Hellgate: London trailer is now
available, showing off cooperative play in Flagship's upcoming action/RPG.
The clip can be found on
3D Downloads and
Gamer's Hell.
A redesign to The Buka Entertainment Website
has the goal of making navigating the site and finding information on Buka's
various upcoming projects. Word is: "Buka.com was fully redesigned and
modernized in order to meet higher corporate standards of the company that grows
intensively and builds up the strong image. The site is business-oriented and
focused on providing the partners and the press with the comprehensive and
easy-to-get information about Buka’s business activities."
The Mercenaries 2 Q&A on Play.TM hears
from Scott Warner about Pandemic's upcoming combat simulation sequel. Topics
include the game's setting, navigating over and through water, co-op,
improvements over the original game, and more.
I am one of those baseball fans who answers questions about my fandom with the
pretty standard comment that after all these years of watching games, you can
still see something you never have before. Sure enough, in yesterday's Yankees
game two homeruns hit into the right field bleachers were caught by the same
fan! This is apparently not the first time this has happened, so I'd love to see
the odds against that happening. It has to be up there with being hit more than
once by lightning or winning multiple lottery jackpots.
R.I.P.:
Singer/songwriter Hazlewood dies.
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