Archived News:
GamesIndustry International states that EA Phenomic is closed, a
still-unconfirmed report that says the end has come for the German developer of
the Spellforce series and Command & Conquer: Tiberium Alliances.
EA did not specifically address Phenomic in responding to their request for a
comment, but rather gave an outlook on their restructuring as a whole: As
part of EA's realignment in recent weeks, we have announced internally a small
adjustment to some development staff to better focus our teams against priority
growth areas. The decision to let people go is not something we take lightly and
we are working to ensure that impacted employees are treated fairly and with
respect for their contributions to EA, and with assistance to find other job
opportunities.
These are hard but essential changes as we focus on delivering great games and
showing players around the world why to spend their time with us
Precursor Games now offers a
Pre-Launch Update #3 for Shadow of the Eternals, revealing they plan on
reviving the Kickstarter for Shadow of the Eternals on July 25th. The previous
effort of these Silicon Knights veterans to fund a "spiritual successor" to
Silicon Knights' Eternal Darkness
was cut short when
it was apparent it would not reach its goals amid
community concerns about how
the campaign was structured. Having regrouped, here's what they have to say: "We
really want to thank our community and followers for the unwavering support and
patience over the past few weeks – it’s been a huge inspiration and motivator
for us. Your feedback has been instrumental in many ways throughout the process
of creating the new campaign and we can’t wait for you to see what we have in
store for you all." Thanks
VG247.
Eurogamer notes a that in
an interview with GameSpot, Riot Games' eSports manager Nick Allen says that
the U.S. government now recognizes League of Legends as a sport, as players are
now allowed to enter the United States on athletic visas in order to compete in
LoL tourneys. "The United States government recognizes League of Legends pro
players as professional athletes and award[s] visas to essentially work in the
United States under that title," said Allen. "This is groundbreaking for
eSports."
A new Total War: ROME II
Campaign Map Planner is online, showing the scope of Creative Assembly's
strategy sequel in a format that can actually help you formulate game strategies
in advance of the game's release. Here's the explanation: "Today Creative
Assembly updated the Total War website with an Interactive Campaign Map for ROME
II! Not only will you be able to get a sense of the vast scale of the new
Campaign Map and get a feel for the various factions, wonders and diplomatic
relations at the start of the game, but you’re also able to plan out your
burgeoning empire’s opening moves. Share your vision via Facebook, or recreate a
distinct moment from history; it’s an exciting hint at the epic conquest coming
your way on the 3rd September."
Toki Tori 2+ was released yesterday
on Steam, and it turns
out Two Tribes debuting their game while the launch of the Steam Summer Sale was
committing a DDoS attack on the Steam Store had some downsides, as they
experienced some problems with the loyalty coupons for their beta testers. They
send word that the coupons should work correctly soon, and that they've extended
the game's 34% launch discount for the duration of the Steam sale, which runs
until July 22nd. Here's word on this platformer: "Toki Tori 2+ is a Metroidvania
style puzzle adventure. There are no tutorials, there's no hand-holding, no-one
tells you what to do in Toki Tori 2+. The fun is in exploring and overcoming the
obstacles of the lush forest island on your own merit."
A "triple-A" shooter is one of the
unnanounced
games in development at Epic Games, reveals company founder Tim Sweeney at
the Develop Conference, as quoted on
Eurogamer (thanks
VG247). He says the company is "trying to master development at every scale"
as he outlines the scope of the various projects they have in the
works: "Last generation, most of the company was focused on building Gears
of War 3, a massive project," he said. "Gears of War 1 was a 60-person project
at peak. Gears of War 3 was more than 100-people at peak.
"Now we're building several games at different scales. We're building Fortnite,
a PC online game which is a fun, sort of Minecraft meets Left 4 Dead. It's a
35-person team. It's not aiming to beat Call of Duty in terms of graphics. It's
more of a Pixar art style and a limited project in scope, just aimed at fun as
opposed to massive breakthroughs in scale.
"We're building a bigger, triple-A shooter project that hasn't been announced
yet. And we've also internally started developing really tiny projects with two
or three guys working together as a team for a few months in small scale game
development.
"It's really cool. We're testing our development at all scales and learning it
as we go. We're trying to master development at every scale."
The
Tribes Ascend Forums have a response from Hi-Rez's Todd Harris to
an Open Letter To Hi-Rez on reddit about patching Tribes Ascend,
since the free-to-play shooter was last updated four months ago today (thanks
PC Gamer). Todd explains that they will continue to support the game's
servers, but the company's priority for the next six months is SMITE, and
that updating their Tribes multiplayer shooter is still not their top priority
after that. The implication is there may be no further updates for the game
going forward, as their post-SMITE plan is a Global Agenda sequel, and
though no one is working on Tribes Ascend 2, a sequel would probably take
precedence over a patch as well. Here's word: There are no major dev
updates planned for Tribes: Ascend in the next six months.
For the next six months our primary development focus is SMITE. Beyond that it
is GA2. And beyond that a TA2 would be more likely than a major update to TA;
but to be clear no devs are currently working toward TA2.
Per the development blog on our forums, the recent TA work has been Kate
developing some additional maps. If time allows then these new TA maps (along
with some bug-fixes) would be finalized and deployed but no committed date yet.
We continue to support TA servers, online community events, tournaments with
prizing, bringing Tribes to offline events like recent RTX and upcoming
QuakeCon, and live-streaming.
The End of Nations website
now offers beta signups for End of Nations, calling the this "the first
MOBA RTS." This was announced by
troubled developer
Petroglyph as an MMORTS game before being brought in house at Trion Worlds
late last year. It seems they
altered the formula a bit, as here is how the game is now described: "End of
Nations® is a tactical MOBA where your success on the battlefield depends on the
heroes and units you command and quick decision making in the heat of combat.
Dominate during team-based matches and catapult your commander to the top of the
ranks." Thanks
VG247 via
PCGamesN.
Free character transfers are underway in World of Warcraft,
Blizzard announces,
saying these will run until July 25th. They list specific source and destination
realms that qualify, suggesting they are rebalancing based on the number of
players who have opted to give their toons a free transfer to the retirement
home for the MMORPG. They say paid transfers are still offered for those
swimming against the tide, and also offer a warning that players planning on
moving as a group should coordinate, as they reserve the right to end free
transfers at any time as target realms fill, so care should be taken not to
strand your straggler friends on your former realm.
A
Kickstarter seeking a modest $15,000 is underway for Ten Aces, a
tactical turn-based strategy game for Windows, OS X, and Linux which is intended
to emphasize player skill and minimize the impact of randomness or luck.
Playable demos are available for all three platforms to help decide whether this
project is worthy of support.
Worst Marathon Ever II is just
underway, a 72-hour gaming marathon that's a sequel to an event that raised $10K
last year for clean water projects. As the name implies, one of the sacrifices
for charity this involves is that they are playing what are regarded as some of
the worst games of all time, including Superman 64 and ET on the Atari 2600.
- ASUS MAXIMUS VI HERO (Intel Z87) Motherboard on
TweakTown.
- ASUS P8Z77-M and Gigabyte GA-Z77M-D3H on
X-bit labs.
- BIOSTAR Hi-Fi Z87X 3D Motherboard on
Mad Shrimps.
- EVGA SuperNOVA G2 1000 W on
techPowerUp.
- Eye-Fi Mobi 8gb Memory Card on
Testfreaks.
- Inno3D GeForce GTX 770 iChill HerculeZ X3 Ultra on
Guru3D.
- Logitech G700s on
True PC
Gaming.
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 2 GB Graphics Card on
X-bit labs.
- NZXT Phantom 530 Chassis on
eTeknix.
- Palit GeForce GTX 770 2GB JetStream Overclocked Video Card on
TweakTown.
- Palit GeForce GTX 780 Super JetStream on
TechSpot.
- SanDisk Extreme II RAID 0 (3) Drive Array on
SSD Review.
- Scythe Ashura CPU-Kühler on
Technic3D. German.
- Tesoro Gungnir H5 on
ocaholic.
- Zalman CNPS10X Optima Shark's Fin Blade CPU Cooler on
eTeknix.
For all my talk, I didn't actually get out to 7/11 for my free Slurpee
yesterday, even though as nin points out they were considerably larger this year
than last year. I still have the bug in my ear, so I still plan on heading
over there one of these days to get one, but I'll be more likely to get one of
those in a cup the size of a garbage can than one of those little guys. Sorry
Mayor Bloomberg.
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