Smed's Blog has word from SOE's John Smedley on their goal of supporting
PlanetSide 2 for more than a decade in a massive update about the MMOFPS sequel, following a
tweet showing off concept art for a Bastion Fleet Carrier being designed for the game (thanks
VG247 where they also note a post
on Massively discussing plans to make Station Cash purchases in the game available account-wide). Here's a portion of the post on the game's future:
We have games that have run for over 13 years, so when we're making Planetside 2 we aren't looking at what it's like in 2012. We're thinking about a game we plan to have running in 2025. Yeah. Really. I plan on doing a lot of direct comparisons to other games. When I'm doing that in no way do I want any of this to be viewed as me slamming other games. I've played the heck out of Battlefield 2 and 3 as well as BFBC2. I've also played a ton of MW2 and MW3 as well as TF2. I am primarily a PC gamer. I've also played on teams extensively. All of the above games are amazing and are made by people with tremendous talent and passion that I have the utmost respect for. We're making Planetside 2 to be a game we at SOE want to play. We've gotten a lot of inspiration from elements of the above games as well as many other games.. including our own and especially from the original Planetside which we released back in 2003. Well ahead of it's time. This isn't meant to be a super comprehensive FAQ on Planetside 2 - just some things I wanted to get out there after reading a lot of questions and comments. Also - it's late.. I'm not spending a ton of time formatting this too well, so sorry for the wall of text in many spots.
This Kickstarter revives the fundraising for
Antharion, an old-school RPG that
just missed its funding goal the first time around after a flurry of eleventh hour interest. They have reworked their pitch to capitalize on this momentum, and have already attracted 65% of their modest $10,000 goal. Here's a reminder of what developer Orphic Software hopes to achieve with this project: "Antharion is a hard-core dungeon crawling RPG set in a vast open fantasy world. What sets Antharion apart from other RPGs is how faithfully it recreates the experience of classics like Ultima, Wizardry and Pool of Radiance. Antharion combines an immense open world, deep tactical turn-based combat and a rich character creation system, with the distinctive look and feel of a traditional Western RPG. Antharion aims to breathe new life into an old genre."
Following the Kickstarter theme from the story above, an
interview on IncGamers.com talks with David Braben of Frontier Developments about
Elite: Dangerous, and the
Kickstarter for this new entry in the space simulation series. He discusses the history of the series, their goals for the original Elite and the new game, the reason so many space games are working on crowdsourcing, general thoughts on Kickstarter, and more.
NowGamer has word from Free Radical Design cofounder Steve Ellis on Star Wars Battlefront III, the cancelled sci-fi action sequel for which footage emerged earlier
this year. Ellis talks of the encouragement they took from the reaction to the videos and claims that the game was in the polishing phase when it was cancelled, which doesn't seem to mesh perfectly with him saying this was "for financial reasons: "We had a 99% finished game that just needed bug fixing for release. It should have been our most successful game, but it was cancelled for financial reasons. I'm happy that people did at least get to see what we were working on and share the team's enthusiasm for it." Thanks nin via
Kotaku.
I benefited from some of our family raving about
Skyfall over Thanksgiving, as it inspired MrsBlue to willingly go see it, in spite of her strong aversion to movie theaters. We caught a show with a very light audience yesterday, which was pleasant, though in a sign of the times we still had an audible cell phone ring when there were only a dozen patrons in the theater. In spite of having some of the plot holes and silly clue following that have been hallmarks of the whole Bond series, the movie was outstanding, and Sam Mendes deserves credit for realizing his vision of placing 007 in a more realistic
Dark Knight-inspired setting.
Today is World Aids Day, and the
World Aids Day Website has suggestions on how to mark the occasion along with a bunch of HIV facts and statistics.
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