Archived News:
The Lead and Gold Website announces this will be a free-to-play weekend for Fatshark's wild west third-person shooter (thanks MxxCon). Here's word: This weekend (Thursday July 22 -> Sunday July 25) we will have a free to play weekend. So get ALL your friends together and play some Lead and Gold!
We will try our best to increase the numbers of servers during this period and mails will go out to all the current server partners to have them up the number of available servers.
Steam News now offers the Uncharted Land Map Pack, the first DLC for The Settlers 7: Paths to a Kingdom. The pack is $3.99 USD, and here's word on its contents: "This DLC pack consists of three new multiplayer maps: The two-player map Battle of Tanholm, the four-player map Tempest Taiga, and the three-player map Fiery Chasm."
The FINAL FANTASY XIV Recommended System Requirements are now available (thanks Big Download), for some reason omitting the AMD/ATI counterparts for CPU and graphics. Here they are: Continue here to read the full story.
The Paradox sale mentioned yesterday is not solely restricted to Steam, as a 50% discount on almost all Paradox games is also available through Direct2Drive and Impulse. Update: And GamersGate (thanks Divebomb).
Direct2Drive offers preorders of Sid Meier's Civilization V Digital Deluxe Edition. Besides the bonuses with the Digital Deluxe Edition, preorders will also receive the first Double Civilization and Scenario Pack for free as well as a free copy of Sid Meier’s Civilization III Complete.
The PlayStation.Blog.Europe announces the voice talent for DC Universe Online, the upcoming comic-inspired MMORPG. Word is: "Mark Hamill (Batman: Arkham Asylum, Batman: The Animated Series) will once again voice The Joker, while Kevin Conroy (Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League Unlimited, Batman: Arkham Asylum) brings to life everyone’s favorite dark knight, Batman." Also included in the game's voice cast is Adam Baldwin as Superman, Gina Torres as Wonder Woman, James Marsters as Lex Luthor, and Michelle Forbes as Circe. Thanks Big Download.
A new patch is available to automatically update Alien Swarm, the just-released freeware top-down shooter, announces Steam News. A number of bugs are fixed and a few exploits are removed in the new version. Here are the patch notes. Continue here to read the full story.
Steam now offers an automatic patch for Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source and Day of Defeat: Source, addressing a few bugs and closing off an exploit. There's also a Portal update to fix bonus map import dialog. Finally, a new automatic patch for Left 4 Dead 2 has fixes for the zombie shooter sequel, which are outlined below. Continue here to read the full story.
The StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty - Join the Dominion Website offers a new StarCraft II: Ghosts of the Past Trailer with an impressive cinematic paving the way for next week's release of the real-time strategy sequel. The two-and-a-half minute trailer is embedded below. Continue here to read the full story.
A CGI trailer for Alice: Madness Returns offers a brief and creepy look at the upcoming sequel to American McGee's Alice, the unusual Alice in Wonderland game. The embedded version of the 30-second clip follows. Continue here to read the full story.
SOE Announces that Jace Hall will be the master of ceremonies at SOE Fan Faire in Las Vegas next month. Hall will host the annual Kickoff Reception, Grand Banquet, and Costume Contest. "I’m honored that SOE chose me as their official emcee for Fan Faire," he says. "Giving the show a bit of my own flavor and personality and mixing it with traditions from the past will be just the right combination to make this event PWN 4LL n00bs!" Yup, that's what he said, so prepare for pwnage. Platinum passes for the Sony Online Entertainment convention are sold out, but Gold and Silver passes are still available.
Ubisoft and DC Comics announce a collaboration on a comic series based on the Driver series of wheelman games. They are distributing a special issue 0 of the comic at Comic-Con, which features cover art by Jock (The Losers, Judge Dredd, Batman), who will be at the Ubisoft and DC Comics booths signing free copies of the preview issue.
A fourth Mass Effect novel is planned, reports Big Download, who interviewed sci-fi author William C Dietz, who tells them he's working on a novel based on the science fiction RPG series that's due at his publisher early next year. Mass Effect: Retribution, the third ME novel by BioWare's Drew Karpyshyn is expected next week.
The Din's Curse Patches Page now offers four new patches for Soldak Entertainment's action/RPG. There are new official version 1.002 patches for both the Windows and Mac editions of the game, as well as a new beta version 1.003 patch for each platform. This page lists the extensive changes in each new version, and they offer the following caveat about the beta patch: "A beta patch means it has been tested, but not enough to be an official patch. So use at your own risk."
2K Games announces a Mafia II Digital Deluxe Edition will be available through select digital retailers, offering four bonuses: the Made Man Pack, a Digital Art Book, the Orchestral Soundtrack, and a Digital Map of Empire Bay. They also announce that those who preorder either the standard or deluxe version of the life-of-crime sequel from participating online services will receive a free copy of the original Mafia to play right away. On a related note, Valve announces all PC versions of Mafia II will be making use of a number of Steamworks features, such as auto-updating, Steam Achievements, statistics, downloadable content, and more. Mafia II is in development at 2K Czech (formerly Illusion Softworks), and is expected in North America on August 24, and in Europe on August 27.
Publisher dtp entertainment and developer Synetic announce development of Crash Time 4, saying the racing sequel based on a German television series will include multiplayer support for the first time when it is released for PC and Xbox 360 during the fourth quarter of this year. The multiplayer mode supports up to eight player races, and here's a bit more on the game: "Developer Synetic virtually rebuilt more than 100 kilometres of Cologne’s streets, highways and beautiful sceneries, including world famous sightseeing spots such as the Cologne cathedral and the Rhine river bridges. Crash Time 4 offers more than eight square kilometres of gameplay world and more than 40 different cars." Here are some Crash Time 4 screenshots.
Nicely Crafted Entertainment announces that Time of Defiance, their long-running MMORTS game is shutting down at the end of this month, just a couple of months after the game went free-to-play. They explain: "Well, Time of Defiance is an old, old game and does not generate any revenue. Whilst this would not normally prevent it just pottering on for those of you who still love and play the game (it costs very little to keep it operating), there are some networking, software and other infrastructure changes that we're about to make that will disable ToD permanently. We need to make these changes for future products and development and, unfortunately, we're not going to be able to find the time, money and resource to modify ToD to take account of these changes." They are hoping that players will migrate to Picaroon, saying ToD vets should expect to get into the beta: "Hopefully you'll all move over to our new Picaroon game. Picaroon uses the latest Nice Technology engine and has all sorts of wonderful features for game-players of all types. If you sign up for the beta programme and mention your ToD history in the sign-up form then we'll do our level best to get you up and running as soon as we possibly can." Thanks Gamer's Hell.
Gamasutra has US PC sales data from NDP showing digital distribution seems to be on the verge of eclipsing physical sales of games, with NPD estimating digital distribution represented 48% of unit sales (21.3 million units, compared with 23.5 million physical units) for PC last year, accounting for 36% of dollar sales. They note this shows the NPD is attempting to capture some previously ignored data: "Retail sales of PC games declined 23 percent in the U.S. to $538 million in 2009, NPD reported in January this year. As online sales from downloadable content, full game downloads, subscriptions, microtransactions and mobile continue to increase, NPD is looking at ways to measure the impact of those emerging models on a regular basis." They also offer some analysis of this and the first article also shows the top five digital distributors based on share of unit percentage:
- Steampowered.com
- Direct2drive.com
- Blizzard.com
- EA.com
- Worldofwarcraft.com
Here's today's game industry verbal blast, courtesy of Develop, where they note a tweet from Glen Schofield (also noting that this is not officially confirmed as the Twitter account of the Sledgehammer Games co-founder), saying: "Wow, a year ago today I left EA. What a day that was. They really treated me like s**t even after creating Dead Space 4 them." They also note a follow-up tweet: "Seems my tweet got some attention. Didn't mean to. But after a year of EA bashing us it's good to get it off my chest."
Here's a second video developer diary from Rift: Planes of Telara, in which the developers at Trion World Network explain how the game will not pin down players into one class. Word is: "It gives players a stellar overview of soul attunement, details about the root and branch soul tree, and some examples of the souls you can attune to (i.e. - warrior, rogue, mage, cleric). You’ll see clearly that in Rift you’re never pigeonholed with one class as the title features several exciting options for you to chose from." Here's the embedded version. Continue here to read the full story.
Charlie Six - Why don't video game companies have "tip jars"?
Also, perhaps this incentive to donate could be provided: a promise that the short message attached to the donation is read by the developer receiving the donation (when you send payment to someone through Paypal, you have the option to send a message along with it). These messages could be requests for sequels. Or they could be requests that certain features be included in a current or future game. Multiplayer game balance suggestions. And so forth. No guarantee that any of these requests will be fulfilled, of course, but a promise that someone will at least take the time to read them. In this way, the donor feels their opinions as a fan are being heard. And the game developer may use these messages as a way to gauge public demand for new games, features, etc. A message with money attached to it has more weight than some feedback found in an e-mail or forum post, I'd imagine.
Smart Speak - Cliffski v Mark Rein – Much ado about nuthin.
For my part, if I’m at a roundtable discussion and someone interrupted me in this fashion – regardless of the reasoning behind it – I’m not going to wait until I get to my browser – then write up a vitriol laden blog post about it. I’d engage right there and then. A quick “Why don’t you just shut the hell up?” not only does the job, but it also guarantees that it is probably never going to happen again. There is a reason that such behavior is called Scorched Earth. There is no chilling period. At all.
Thanks Acleacius and Ant.
The oddest thing that's come out of the launch of the Blue's News Facebook Page is learning from a couple of people that this is allowing them to check out the news at work, since their employers' networks block this site, but not Facebook, which I find quite odd.
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