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Archived News:
The Sims 4 FAQ offers recommended system specifications for The Sims 4,
EA's upcoming lifestyle simulation sequel (thanks
DSOGaming). On a semi-related, and delicious note,
EA
News has word on how "you could end up scoring some cool The Sims 4 gear" by
sharing a short stack with Pancake
Bob in Seattle this weekend. Here are the Sims 4 specs: REQUIRED:
Internet connection required for product activation.
OS: 64 Bit Windows 7,8, or 8.1
PROCESSOR: Intel core i5 or faster
AMD Athlon X4
MEMORY: 4GB RAM
HARD DRIVE: At least 9 GB of free space with at least 1 GB additional space for
custom content and saved games
DVD-ROM: DVD ROM drive required for installation only
VIDEO CARD: NVIDIA GTX 650 or better
SOUND CARD: DirectX 9.0c Compatible
DIRECTX: DirectX 9.0c compatible
INPUT: Keyboard and Mouse
Besides revealing a new movie
service, today
GOG.com
also announces the launch of a "fresher, better GOG.com." Here's word on how
the DRM-free game (and movie) marketplace is evolving: We wanted to give
you more choice as to how you pay for things on GOG.com. Now it's up to you if
you want to pay in US Dollars, or in the currency primarily used in your
country, whether it's the Euro, Pounds Sterling, Australian Dollars, or Russian
Roubles. That's four new currencies supported by GOG.com for your convenience.
Still - the choice is yours, so if you want to stick to US dollars, just switch
to it - you find this option at the bottom of each page. To make buying things
at GOG.com an even more flexible process, we're introducing some new payment
methods: Sofort, Giropay, Webmoney, and Yandex.
All this also means that users for whom the local currency pricing has been
enabled will have an option to select one of two different prices for each game
in our catalog. Of course, we stand by the simple truth that $1 does not equal
1€, so a game with a $5.99 price tag will cost 4.49 Euro, 3.69 British Pounds,
6.49 Australian Dollars, and 219 Roubles respectively. $9.99 translates to 7.49
Euro, 5.99 Pounds Sterling, 10.89 Australian Dollars, and 359 Roubles. In a
perfect world we would apply the same method of pricing to all of the games we
offer. However, things are a little bit more complicated, and there are some
games in our catalog that follow a different region-based pricing scheme.
However, we wouldn't be GOG.com if we didn't find a way to make right by the
users who end up paying relatively more for such titles. Here's where the Fair
Price Package comes in!
The Fair Price Package applies to all of the titles which we couldn't include in
our standard pricing scheme. If you end up paying more for a game than its
standard US Dollar price, we'll refund you the difference out of our own pocket.
The refunded value will be added to your account in Store Credit in the currency
of your purchase. That's right, no more gift codes, you'll be getting Store
Credit that you can use to purchase anything on GOG.com or partially pay for an
item that's more expensive. More choice, ease of use, and less limitations!
Finally, the GOG.com store has gotten itself a substantial visual revamp. We
went for a fresh, mobile-friendly design that should make it even easier to find
the games you want, notice the hot promos, and see what's new. The main page,
catalog view, product pages, and checkout have been updated and also lay the
groundwork for even more overhaul, coming within the next few months together
with many of the GOG Galaxy features. We hope you like it!
One more tidbit from GOG.com,
where they announce
that they are holding a sale of up to 80% off on
a selection
of titles that will soon no longer be sold on the service: Today,
we're here to honor the promise we gave you to announce ahead of time whenever
we're taking a game down from sales. We wanted to give you one last chance to
get the titles we're delisting with a considerable discount, and the partners
involved agreed. There are
35 games on
that list and you can get them all for up to 80% off until Tuesday,
September 2, at 3:59AM GMT. Any title you buy will remain in your collection
even after it's removed from our catalog, so you can always download and
re-download the installers and bonus content. Check out the promo page to see
which games this concerns.
We're still ironing out a few details. For now, the promo pages, like the one
for the Last Chance Special, list all the game prices only in US dollars. But
don't freak out: if you chose to use your local currency you will see the prices
in local currency in checkout, and you can still finalize the transaction in
local currency. We hope to have this issue fixed within the next weeks.
Tropes vs Women
in Video Games - Women as Background Decoration- Part 2. Thanks
Ant via
Boing Boing.
This is the second episode exploring the Women as Background Decoration
trope in video games. In this installment we expand our discussion to
examine how sexualized female bodies often occupy a dual role as both sexual
playthings and the perpetual victims of male violence.
Social
Justice Warriors.
Social Justice Warriors is a satirical role-playing game that transforms
you into a crusader for online morality, a champion of internet justice, and
the lone defender standing valiantly against the encroaching morass of
willful human ignorance.
Deep Silver announces a November 18th release date for Escape Dead Island,
the recently announced zombie
survival/mystery game that fills the gap between Dead Island and the
upcoming Dead Island 2 (it seems they aren't buying into Gearbox's
"pre-sequel" label for this concept).
A new trailer
celebrates the news, though for the full Dead Island marketing effect you'll
have to find a way to play it backwards in slow motion on your own. The clip
shows off the game's cel-shaded art style and seeming lack of antialiasing,
including glimpses of melee combat. Here's word: Deep Silver today
confirms the release of ESCAPE Dead Island®, a third-person survival mystery
spin-off that unravels the origins of the zombie outbreak and connects the
events of multi-million-seller Dead Island with the recently announced successor
Dead Island 2, for November 18 in North America. Developed by Fatshark, ESCAPE
Dead Island will be available for the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment
system and for the Xbox 360 games and entertainment system from Microsoft as
well as Windows PC.
Delivering the key features of a Dead Island game – visceral melee combat set in
a beautiful paradise setting – ESCAPE adds a completely new tone to the zombie
universe. The visually unique styles accompanies the player on his struggle
against insanity as he experiences the secrets of the Dead Island universe,
fights off zombies with a vast and unique array of weapons and opens the path to
the events that will happen in Dead Island 2.
Continue here to read the full story.
GOG.com
announces the addition of DRM-free movie sales to their marketplace for good
old games, offering films to either download or stream, providing two flicks for
free to help test out their ability to deliver them. Besides the two freebies,
all but one of their offerings are
currently priced at $5.99, and though this is an introductory price for some
titles, they say this is their main target price point going forward. They say
most of the movies are full 1080p HD, though some are 720p, and they also offer
a 576p format for the bandwidth constrained. Here's word on the program (extra
credit for the George Harrison lyric reference), which will also eventually
include television shows: Our goal is to offer you cinema classics as well
as some all-time favorite TV series with no DRM whatsoever, for you to download
and keep on your hard drive or stream online whenever you feel like it. We
talked to most of the big players in the movie industry and we often got a
similar answer: "We love your ideas, but … we do not want to be the first ones.
We will gladly follow, but until somebody else does it first, we do not want to
take the risk". DRM-Free distribution is not a concept their lawyers would
accept without hesitation. We kind of felt that would be the case and that it's
gonna take patience and time to do it, to do it, to do it right. That's quite a
journey ahead of us, but every gamer knows very well that great adventures start
with one small step. So why not start with something that feels very familiar?
We offer you a number of gaming and internet culture documentaries - all of them
DRM-Free, very reasonably priced, and presenting some fascinating insight into
topics close to a gamer's heart.
A
PAX Prime panel on Friday will feature a one hour "quiz show" with Volition
that will culminate in a project reveal, which may correlate to word last
month that the developer was adding around 100 employees. The description of
this is pretty low-key, but the title of the panel plainly calls this a "Quiz
Show Hour with Volition - Project Reveal & Prizes." This runs from 1:00-2:00 pm
EDT, so we should know more by early Friday afternoon. Here's word: The
developers behind the Saints Row franchise invite you to participate in a quiz
show hour with Natalie Lander, the voice of Kinzie! At the end of the panel,
we'll show you exclusive gameplay, art, and details for an upcoming project from
Volition.
PANELISTS:
Aubrey Norris [Brand Director, Deep Silver], Steve Jaros [Creative Director,
Volition], Natalie Lander [VO Actress, Volition], Jim Boone [Producer,
Volition]
Steam Database
tweets an image showing a new feature in Steam that allows users to select
multiple games to install as a batch, rather than requiring them to be installed
individually one-at-a-time. This feature should prove especially handy during
big sales. Thanks
Shacknews.
BioWare announces plans to include four-player cooperative multiplayer support in
Dragon
Age: Inquisition, the upcoming installment in the action/RPG series. This is
a first for the franchise, and word is this will involve a different set of
quests than the single-player campaign.
This trailer shows off
co-op gameplay, and here's an explanation: “For Dragon Age: Inquisition, a
special team of veteran developers from the Dragon Age and Mass Effect
franchises created fun, fast-paced multiplayer gameplay that requires strategic
teamwork on top of Inquisition’s party-based combat and extensive loot and
crafting system,” said Aaryn Flynn, General Manager, BioWare. “It was early in
the game’s development that we realized how much fun fans of our series were
having, with so many players teaming up in Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer mode. We
can’t wait to give Dragon Age fans an even bigger and deeper experience.”
In Dragon Age: Inquisition’s multiplayer mode, four players will team up across
a range of multiplayer quests and objectives, exploring intricate dungeons and
vanquishing all who oppose them. While dungeon-crawling, players will collect
loot, salvage items, craft new weapons and armor, and unlock new characters. At
launch, players will be able to unlock up to twelve characters across the three
Inquisition classes of Legionnaire, Reaver and Mage, each playing a different
and strategic role in multiplayer combat. Multiplayer in Dragon Age: Inquisition
is a standalone experience from the open world story players will embark in the
main game, and will not have an impact on single player progression or
story.
Continue here to read the full story.
CCP announces the Hyperion update is now live in EVE Online,
adding new content to the space-based MMORPG. The
patch notes have details on this, as well as a version 1.1 patch that
followed to fix a couple of issues. You can find more on this
on this feature page
and the developer blogs on
this page,
and this video offers
a look. Here's word: Hyperion brings other changes to EVE, including more
ship and module balancing, improved UI like sharable overviews and tooltips, new
cybernetic arms and “retro” headwear, and the opening of planetary colonies in
null security space to those outside the sovereign alliances that control them.
Hyperion follows Crius as the third update in a major shift for EVE development,
from two expansions per year to around 10 releases annually, as CCP delivers
more content, more frequently, to its legendary player-base. Hyperion is
available free to all EVE Online subscribers and trial users.
Continue here to read the full story.
A launch trailer
for Magicmaker is online, showing off this hyperactive platformer to celebrate
the news that it will be released on September 22nd, and that the original
soundtrack will come a week before that. Word is: "Magicmaker is a 2D
sidescrolling rpg-platformer with a really cool spellcrafting system that can
make almost anything! You can fire burning frost lasers. Shoot poisonous
exploding suns. Lead an army of iron golems. And even build turrets that shoot
ricocheting lightning bullets that suck out your enemies' lifeforce." Continue here to read the full story.
When we finally got an air conditioner last year I got a lot of comments
suggesting not having one represented some sort of attempt to deny the necessity
of such things. But this year the weather in these parts is much more in line
with what we're used to in our typically cool abode, and it's remained so
comfortable in the BlueTower throughout the season that as we approach the end
of August the AC sits in the basement, where it was put away last autumn. There
is still almost a month of summer remaining, but it's hard to imagine we'll need
it this year. The fact is, the temperatures have been so moderate that I've
hardly had to use the AC in my office, which is the one place it is usually
required. Sympathies if the summer (or winter down under) hasn't been as gentle
where you are, but since this seems to compensate a bit for an insanely cold
winter, I won't feel that guilty for enjoying this.
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