Archived News:
Gamasutra
reports that the upcoming driving action game Rage may not support
user-modifications, long a hallmark of id Software releases. The topic came up
in a Q&A following Tim Willits' talk at the
Austin Game Developers Conference ( story) in answer to a user
question. The id creative director reaffirms the company's belief in user mods,
pointing out he owes his own career to game modding, but says that the
horsepower required to process the megatextures used in the game may make full
user modifications impractical. He does say he envisions users being able to
create smaller modular mods that could be slotted into the game's existing
structure. On a semi-related note, during this year's QuakeCon keynote, id
technical director John Carmack revealed that their upcoming online shooter
Quake Live will not support modifications either ( story), albeit
for completely different reasons.
LineRider2: Unbound is now
available for Windows and DS, offering inXile Entertainment's sequel to the draw
your own tracks gameplay of LineRider. The game features a Story,
Freestyle and Puzzle Modes, and dozens of new tools to help get in touch with
your inner doodler. Line Rider 2: Unbound for Windows and DS include online
capabilities to allow players to exchange tracks. LineRider2: Unbound for the
Wii is expected on October 6.
A new co-op collaboration trailer for Call of Duty: World At War is now
available showing off the upcoming World War II shooter sequel. The movie
features footage of soldiers shooting at each other, and the presumption is that
they are cooperating somehow. The clip is available from
Boot Daily,
FileFront, and
MyGameTrailers.
A pair of new movies from Dragon Age: Origins, the upcoming RPG BioWare
considers a "spiritual successor" to Baldur's Gate. The first of the narrated
gameplay clips can be found on
ActionTrip,
AtomicGamer,
FileFront, Gamer's Hell,
and
MyGameTrailers. "Episode 2" of the movie demonstration is posted on
ActionTrip,
AtomicGamer,
Gamer's Hell, and
MyGameTrailers.
A new Red Faction: Guerilla movie offers some gameplay highlighting a
figurine that will come in the collector's edition of the upcoming earth
shattering shooter sequel. You can find the clip on
AtomicGamer,
FileFront, and
Gamer's Hell.
RPG Vault's
EverQuest II: The Shadow Odyssey Interview talks with Noel Wailing and
Jeremy Gess about the upcoming fifth expansion for Sony Online Entertainment's
MMORPG, as well as the state of the game itself.
Okay, the post counts listed next to each story are now totally broken, after
only being partially broken for a while. This is the only issue we are currently
aware of, but I do not have an ETA on a fix.
Eurogamer
has a follow-up from Mythic's Mark Jacobs, who backpedals from Paul Barnett's
comment that EA knows "nothing about launching MMOs in Europe, unless it's
spending lots of money closing them down I suppose" ( story). Mark
points out they already had a deal for European distribution of Warhammer
Online: Age of Reckoning with GOA before they were acquired by EA, so this
was not a case of choosing to avoid using EA for this. He chalks Paul's comments
up to his well-known sarcastic sense of humor and irreverence, and says, "What
Paul said about EA not knowing anything about launching MMOs: you know, Paul
likes to exaggerate - of course EA knows things about launching MMOs. EA is
responsible, certainly, for one of the most important MMOs of all time, and that
was Ultima [Online]." This is excerpted from
a larger
interview with Jacobs discussing the game's impending launch, saying that so
far their early access program has hit no snags, and has had no game crashes and
no individual server crashes.
We got a reply from Valve to our inquiry about the rumor circulating this
morning that Google was seeking to acquire Valve ( story).
According to spokesperson Doug Lombardi, this is just a rumor: "It's nothing
more than rumor. Valve is focused on making Left 4 Dead a great product and
supporting folks like Crytek and Ubisoft who are bringing great games to Steam
this year."
ATI's Drivers & Software Page
now offers new version 8.9 CATALYST reference drivers for ATI graphics
accelerators. The new drivers offer custom HDTV modes, Overdrive support for
QUAD CrossFireX configurations, and phase one of their OpenGL 3.0 support. A
number of issues are also resolved. Word is the Linux 8.9 driver release is
"coming soon."
Steam is now offering
online sales and downloads of Crysis Warhead, Crytek's first-person
shooter follow-up. In a bit of a surprise, this precedes the game's
international release, which is tomorrow ( story). They are also
offering Warhead as a bundle
with the original Crysis.
The mysterious folks behind the re-launch of
Ryzom have finally provided a few scant details on what they are up to in
reviving this science-fiction MMORPG that has launched and closed a couple of
times already. This
forum post from yesterday, which they point out was the game's fourth
birthday ( story), describes their immediate goals as making the
game profitable and getting their programmers up to speed on the game code. As
for that profitability, they do not outline their business model, but indicate
the game's free status is not permanent by promising Ryzom "will stay free for
everyone *at least* until the end of October, and possibly longer." Meanwhile,
their longer-term plan is simply to make a plan: "Every day we are thinking
about where we want to go and what we want to achieve for you. But we don't want
to make the mistake of planning bad decisions because we hadn't prepared enough
or we rushed into these decisions too quickly; we want to prepare ourselves as
best as possible before giving you any straight answers. Don't forget that an
MMORPG is an extremely complex living thing, especially Ryzom."
id Software Talks Rage,
Game Narrative on IGN recaps a talk by Tim Willits at the
Austin Game Developers Conference where
the id Software creative director discussed game narrative, making jokes himself
that id is not the first company one would associate with this topic. He
suggests that the story as presented in the game is only part of its narrative,
but it also involves the gameplay experiences of the user, using DOOM as
an example, saying if a user wrote down all their experiences playing DOOM and
their reactions to the game: "…it would be a great story. And that is from a
game that many people would say had a very bad narrative. The paper story is
only one part of the videogame story." He also discusses Rage, making it
clear they consider their action/driving game a franchise in mentioning how
sequels might be named, describing how the Rage story will play out, and how
creating a multiplatform game presents storytelling challenges as id strive to
appeal to a wider audience. He also discusses how audience preconceptions and
expectations are also elements of storytelling, offering a very frank assessment
of how QUAKE fell short in this area: "Quake I was so much different than Quake II.
When we were developing Quake II, we wanted to call it something else, but we
couldn't find a name, our lawyers told us all the names we picked were already
taken, it was extremely difficult to find a name, and we just wound up calling
it Quake II. When people played Quake II they were so confused. They had such a
preconception about what the franchise was that when they got to this game they
had to overcome so much that the experience and story that we wanted to tell was
actually hampered. Then, in our infinite wisdom, we made Quake III, which was
completely backwards and we failed in that concept again. Even to this day the
Quake series suffers from an identity crisis."
Big Download has a post speculating that Mirror's Edge might be
delayed, based on the occasionally accurate release dates reported by online
retailers. Our post about this last night ( story) was a little
dismissive, accepting the explanation that the game is due this winter. In
fairness, though, DICE's acrobatic action game was announced for release in
"calendar 2008" ( story), so if the game is released in early
January as suggested (but not confirmed), that would indeed represent a delay,
albeit an almost inexplicably short one.
MTV Multiplayer contacted Electronic Arts to follow up on four major
complaints about the SecuROM digital rights management in Spore; that it
is limited to installation on three computers, that the DRM has some sort of
spyware functionality, that only one Spore account can be created in spite of
the manual saying otherwise, and the need for authentication every time online
features are used leaves users vulnerable if those services are ever shut down.
EA once again categorically states that Spore contains no spyware or malware
(though they've found virus-infected copies on torrents) and repeats the
explanation that manual was in error about being able to create multiple
accounts ( story). They also promise to patch the game to
eliminate online authentication if they ever take the authentication servers
offline and state they plan to release a patch in the "near future" to allow a
game installations to be de-authorized so authorizations can be freed up to
install the game on other machines. Perhaps most interesting are the questions
that went unanswered, as EA declined to comment on their view of the legitimacy
of these complaints about the DRM and if the DRM being handled differently for
Red Alert 3 ( story) signals their policies are shifting on
this issue.
GamesIndusty.biz reports that Gaute Godager has left Funcom, saying the
producer and game director on Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is acting
on his dissatisfaction with some elements in the recently launched MMORPG.
A follow-up post quotes Funcom's European product manager, Erling Ellingsen,
who says Godager "wanted to take the consequence" of these aspects of AoC by
leaving the company he co-founded 16 years ago. While Ellingsen declines to
specifically identify these elements, he does offer insights into areas of
dissatisfaction in his outlook on what this will mean to players of the MMORPG:
"The first things will be that we are updating the PVP, we're adding new PVP
features and that's something players have been requesting for months now,
they've been screaming at us. Next new content will introduce new areas into the
game, new quests, hours of more exploration and so on. That's two of the things
we're working very hard on right now." The
Age Of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Website has a full announcement that
Godager's successor is Craig Morrison (once of IGN), who previously served as
producer and game director for Anarchy Online. They quote Morrison on his
mission: "I have a clear conviction I can lead the further development in a good
way, evolving Age of Conan into something even better. My main priority now is
therefore to listen to, and act on, player concerns, while ensuring we add
additional great content to the game."
The INQUIRER cites "well placed sources" saying Google is going to be buying
Valve "any second now." This is speculation from a site that specializes in
such, but
Edge
Online has picked up the story from them, so this will spread. According to
INQ's well placed source the crux of such a deal would be Google's lust for
Valve's Steam as a mature content delivery service. It was just last month
that Gabe Newell said Valve said Valve is approached "a couple of times a week"
by potential acquirers or investors but they are "super-happy" as an independent
( story). We've contacted Valve for comment, but it's still before
dawn on the west coast. Update: The story has also been picked up by
MCV,
who also report
Google refuses to rule out Valve takeover, though actually they simply
refused to comment on the rumor.
Mod DB
offers release candidate 1 of P.U.R.E.,
a freeware real-time strategy game not to be confused with the ATV racing game
due next week ( story). This is the first of a number of R.C.s
they will offer over the coming weeks to allow them to collect feedback on the
project.
The Frontlines: Fuel of War
Website announces some downtime for the login servers tomorrow for KAOS
Studios' military shooter. Servers should be down from around 9:00 am EDT to
around 11:00 am EDT: "During this time you may not be able to join online games
or may lose connection with online games you are playing. This only affects PC
players and is unrelated to the upcoming patch."
The World of Warcraft Website
announces the last of the tickets from the BlizzCon 2008 ticket drawing have
sold out. Those interested in the proceedings at the convention still have the
option of getting the pay-per-view on DirecTV ( story),
not that everybody is happy with that arrangement.
The
Demigod Q&A on Gaming Nexus discusses Demigod with Mike Marr, lead designer
on the upcoming action/RPG/RTS hybrid. They discuss the game's use of the
Supreme Commander engine, the game's "hook," specifics about the game's eight
demigods, resource management, other types of units, piracy, and more. His
answer regarding piracy shouldn't be a surprise considering Stardock is
publishing the game: "Bottom-line? For this title Stardock and GPG believe that
the solution to the problem is worse than the problem itself."
Okay, the server move is done, and I can't thank Frans enough for his yeoman
effort at making everything happen, which involved quite a lot. The only issue
I'm aware of is how the post counts are off next to stories, but I'm pretty
sure that'll smooth out once the DNS switch fully propagates, as we're currently
pulling data from both the old and new servers. Other than that, registration
should work again, reminder emails are going out, and the forum wonkiness seems
ironed out. Thanks for all your patience in the time it took to fix all that.
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