A new
Open Gaming Alliance website
is live as a new home to the organization formerly known as the PC Gaming
Alliance (thanks
GamePolitics). The PCGA was originally formed
in 2008 with a stated goal of helping to
reverse a trend where PC game sales were falling, but in
their explanation of the name change they seem be admitting failure and
moving on, saying that "as the PC is no longer the most dominant gaming form
factor" they will now also embrace mobile gaming. Here is word on their new
mission:
As the market for digital games grows on a variety of mobile
platforms and as the PC is no longer the most dominant gaming form factor, the
PC Gaming Alliance, (PCGA), a nonprofit corporation dedicated to driving the
worldwide growth gaming, is pleased to announce the name of the organization has
been changed to Open Gaming Alliance, or OGA.
Polygon - Gaming's favorite villain is mental illness, and this needs to
stop.
If you encounter a game that deals with issues of mental health, chances
are it’s a horror game. The genre loves to play around with mental illness;
specifically the vague, generalized Saturday Morning Cartoon-style
"insanity" that doesn’t match any real definition of the term. In fact, the
concept of sanity is so ubiquitous within the genre as a thematic, narrative
and mechanical device that several horror games feature [in]famous "sanity
meters;" literally a way to quantify how "crazy" characters are.
Shacknews.com - Opinion: What happened to episodic games? Thanks
nin.
...Sin Episodes...
Link of the Day:
One lucky truck
driver. This one is really unbelievable.
A
The Sims 4: Gameplay
Walkthrough Official Trailer released on Friday features gameplay footage
and developer commentary from the upcoming installment in the lifestyle
simulation series (thanks nin via
Joystiq). The clip runs 20 minutes, and features more than 15 minutes
of raw gameplay footage, so it's no surprise it took even the Sims nuts at
SimsVIP a couple of days to get through the whole thing, but when they did,
they discovered the clip includes the revelation that the game will include
a premium subscription service. A quick glance at
Steam shows that The
Sims 3 has no fewer than 19 full-priced DLC packs, so a subscription plan makes
sense, but this is apparently not a season pass deal, as much as an early access
program. Word is: "The Sims 4 Premium: Save on new packs with early access and
exclusive items. Become a Premium Member to get early access to 3 new packs,
with exclusive items. Your Sims can throw a spooky costume party, camp in the
great outdoors, and toast to the new year in style."
Continue here to read the full story.
An
interview on GameStar.de talks (in German) with the folks at Yager
Developments about
Spec Ops: The Line learns that in spite of the
positive reception the military shooter met with, it's failure to achieve
mainstream success leaves Yager reluctant to revisit the genre. The sentiment we
see in a machine-translated version of the article is that the intellectual
approach they took to the shooter only appeals to a subset of the audience, and
the costs of making a AAA shooter do not justify a game tailored to a niche
audience. Art director Mathias Wiese also notes that five years of looking at
war images can be rough on the developers, which would have left them reluctant
to make a sequel even if Spec Ops had been a huge hit. Thanks
Strategy Informer via
NeoGAF.
U.K. game sales figures for the week ending July 19th are now available through
GfK Chart Track.
The Elder Scrolls Online ascends to the number one position on
the
Top 20 PC games chart as
Battlefield 4 drops to number three. There are also
three re-entries, including two different
StarCraft II SKUs. On the
all platforms chart Watch Dogs sits at number one again on a very static
chart that has three
Pokemon re-entries among 40 titles. Here's
the gripping narrative
describing the results:
With sustained hot weather, the winding down of
schools for summer and no new releases, the market drops 10% units / 14% value
over last week.
Ubisoft’s ‘Watch Dogs’ (-12%) remains on top, claiming its 5th No1 crown.
Familiar faces continue to shuffle around the Top 10 with EA’s ‘FIFA 14’ up 1 to
No2 (-13%), Activision’s ‘Call of Duty: Ghosts’ up 3 to No3 (-12%) and
Bethesda’s ‘Wolfenstein: New Order’ remaining at No4 (-27%). 505 Games’ ‘Sniper
Elite 3’ (-29%) drops 3 places to No5 followed at No’s 6 & 7 by ‘Minecraft 360’
(-3%) and ‘Minecraft PS3’ (-4%).
EA’s ‘Titanfall’ refuses to leave the Top 10 even after 19 weeks, down 3 to No8
(-24%). EA’s Battlefield 4’ continues to climb back in to the Top 10, up 1 to
No9 (+2%). Nintendo climb 6 places to No10 thanks to strong sales of Wii U
‘Mario Kart 8’ (+31%). Old DS favourites from Nintendo re-enter this week at
No’s 21/22 with ‘Pokemon Black’ (+127%) / ‘Pokemon White’ (+110%) thanks to some
impulse price purchase initiatives.
Areal Kickstarter update calls out a couple of the sites for expressing
"unprofessional" skepticism about West Games' proposed first-person shooter,
citing Forbes and VG247 by name along with a list of users who they feel have
been engaging in a campaign to troll them. They also offer an interesting
conspiracy theory to explain why it appears that the project's funding total is
rising without a corresponding increase in their number of backers: "They are
now claiming that our success on Kickstarter is fabricated, whilst conveniently
failing to mention that people are using multiple accounts to make a bunch of 1
dollar pledges, and every time a new backer comes along, they remove 1 or 2
pledges, so that it looks like our sum is increasing without any new backers."
Thanks nin.
I saw something flopping around as I was mowing the lawn yesterday that turned
out to be a fledgling bird that had fallen from its nest, a cute little guy that
appeared to be a robin from the orange-red blaze on its chest. I know the fears
that adult birds will reject babies that smell like people are exaggerated, and
since I was wearing gloves anyway I scooped the little flapper up and did a
little looking into how to deal with this. It turns out the general advice is to
leave them where they were found and let nature take its course, especially
since this can be a normal part of a robin's process of leaving the nest. I
checked on the area later and there was no sign of him, so I'm just allowing
myself to believe things worked out fine for him.
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