PC Gaming News Message Board older than one year ago

Who wants a free game to play? Lots of people. Who wants a free “expressive game” to play? Not quite so many. Did I also mention that it’s French? Well it is. A French expressive game about a man exploring his past to fix his future. It’s called Keys Of A Gamespace and for one glorious moment I thought it might be my new favourite point and click game, for at least today. In the end, that wasn’t the case. Let me tell you why.

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The news horn of Eurogamer sounds a clear note of DRM alarm as it notes this voluminous thread on the Football Manager 2012 forums. The situation nothing like as venomous as other DRM solutions we’ve seen of late, being a one-time only Steam activation, but it has nevertheless been greeted with scorn by thousands of players. Publishers Sega have responded defending the DRM solution, and saying: “Make no mistake, if a quarter of the people that usually pirate the game switch to purchasing Football Manager 2012, the sales of the game worldwide would more than double. This would lead to increased development budgets and more benefits for all of you who do buy the game.”

Oh dear.

Eccentric 2D MMO Glitch (the team recently hired Katamari-creator Keita Takahasi and the game is set inside the combined dreams of eleven giants) is out of beta and now available to play. What’s interesting about the game is that it has some player-driven emergent potential to it. Not only is much of the in-game economy powered by players, a la Eve Online, but the world itself is expanded by players as they unlock high-level items at the fringes of the existing game. There’s also some complex factional stuff going on which hinges on which of the dreaming giants the players end up favouring. All intriguing, all a bit weird. You can check out the most recent video below, or sign up and take a look for yourself.(more…)

Above and Beyond Technologies have announced the existence of a new MMO, dubbed The Repopulation. It’s powered by off-the-shelf MMO system Hero Engine and is described by its creators like this: “You begin your adventure as a second generation clone colonist on the planet of Rhyldan, with mankind on the verge of extinction, and in the midst of a civil war. We’ve taken a fresh look at every feature of the Massive Multiplayer genre, with an eye on revolution, rather than evolution. The end result is a unique feature set aimed towards old school fans and new players alike.” Hmm! So what sort of unique features? Well, “Hybrid approach which blends Sandbox and Theme Park mechanics.” That sounds promisingish. “City building system allows Nations to form their own cities complete with Walls, Turrets, Harveters, Workshops, Houses, and other forms of structures geared towards benefiting the owning character, or the City as a whole.” More interesting! “Be rewarded for your travel through the exploration system.” That’s interesting, too.

“Pre-alpha” video, below. It certainly looks like a sci-fi MMO.(more…)

Yes, the Eurogamer Expo, of which our Indie Games Arcade was a tiny part, will be happening again next year. We’ll be there, of course, with our beards and our indie games. Next year’s event will take place between September 27th and September 30th, once again at Earl’s Court. It seems like people generally had good things to say about the event, perhaps because Eurogamer’s worryingly youthful bossperson, Rupert Loman, limited the number of tickets that could be sold for the event, allowing people to get to the games they wanted to play without having to queue for too long. Hopefully that’ll be the policy next year, too.

We, meanwhile, decided to put indie gamers in a black box with pop music playing outside, because that was some kind of metaphor. Anyway, did you attend the expo this year? Will you attend it next year? Will you come to our drink up next year? Will John be getting married again on the same weekend? All good questions.

Speaking of MMOs, Turbine send word that LOTRO’s expansion, Rise Of Isenguard, which sees the level cap raised to 75, and adds some familiar locales and characters to the line-up, is out today. Free-to-play adventurers can now adventure freely in Dunland, the Gap of Rohan, and Isengard itself. Fun times are to be had with Saruman The Betrayer, Grima Wormtongue, and other unpleasantmen. There’s also a 24-player dungeon in which you can “Face the ancient evil of Draigoch”. Mmm.

Watch the trailer below!(more…)

Glitch, the cute browser MMO set inside the minds of giant monsters, is officially opening up to the public today at 10AM EST after a long beta period. The game is the work of Tiny Speck, a new company formed by Stewart Butterfield, Cal Henderson, Eric Costello, and Serguei Mourachov, four co-founders of Flickr. It's a free-to-play game with subscription and virtual currency options, both used for avatar customization items.

Speaking to me in a phone interview yesterday, Butterfield claimed that the game is playable in a casual style, but also accommodates players interested in a more intense experience. "We wanted to have enough depth to capture the imaginations of people who want to go deep," he said. "There are 1000-plus items and 90 skills."

Glitch has potential for emergent gameplay, which he compared to Eve Online, though he was quick to note that it's not as combat-oriented as Eve and more fun to actually play. For example, he related an anecdote from the beta, about players creatively using a "notes" system. "Early on, some of the richer players started a bank, with an alternative currency that was based on notes," Butterfield said."They just guaranteed the notes with their supply of in-game currency based on the timestamp and the person who created it."

Left to steer the good ship RPS on my own today, I was feeling a little grim. Jaw set, lip slightly curled, brow furrowed, coffee cup crushed by my feeble fist: you know the look. Then I watched this footage of Incredipede (‘a game about life and feet’), the next offering from the creator of Fantastic Contraption, and now I keep giggling to myself and wanting to hug people.(more…)

If, like me, you normally roll your eyes when you hear the term "Facebook game," you might want to check out developer abitlucky's Lucky Space. It still has many of the accoutrements associated with the oft-hated social games (i.e. micro-transactions, timers, and a need to pester people in your network), but beneath it all lies a genuinely addicting game that challenges many assumptions of the platform...

Before the cake was a lie, cherry pie was a simple truth. Twin Peaks, a benchmark in redefining what a television series could be and a major influence for Alan Wake, has received a fan-made video game adaptation for the Atari 2600 (playable on current generation computers).

Oddly, Twin Peaks aired in 1990, which is actually a couple console generations after the Atari 2600's glory days. Of course, trying to apply logic to Twin Peaks means you're a few steps from entering the Black Lodge, the setting of the video game.

Created by Jak Locke and downloadable for PC and Mac, Black Lodge places players in the role of Special Agent Dale Cooper, as he runs from one similar room to the next. The residents of the logging town and his doppelganger are in pursuit. For fans of the series, the game will make some sense in what it's trying to evoke. Also, it really helps to read the fully-developed "instruction booklet" that comes with the game.

Jim has already been playing A Valley Without Wind and shared the experience here but now you can all have a go for yourselves. There’s a free demo available and you can play the full current version for a mere $10, which is half the price it’ll cost you if you buy it when it’s finished. The game is still at a relatively early stage in development so it’s extra helpful to have a demo available alongside the pre-purchase option. I’ll be playing it soon but in the meantime, I’ll refer you once more to Jim’s thoughts if you need help to work out if you’re interested or not. This new trailer might help too.

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RetroEpic Studios dropped me a line earlier to tell me that they’d released a new “sliding puzzle type game”. This filled me with dread because my brain isn’t wired to complete those things. I actually had to look up solutions on Youtube when Alice: Madness Returns decided it’d be a good idea for me to have a go at one of those infernal switcharoos. Thankfully, A Day In The Woods isn’t that kind of sliding block puzzle at all. Instead of making pictures, you’re making routes for Red Riding Hood to follow through the woods, so it’s about navigation of a single piece rather than rearrangement of a group. As an extra treat, the art design, which makes the whole thing look a bit like a fancy wooden gameboard, is beautiful. There’s a trailer yonder and you’ll find a link to the demo, for both Windows and OSX, on this page.

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It seems like everywhere I look there are games springing up with procedurally generated worlds and fully destructible environments. That’s partly because I spend most of my waking hours looking at websites for in development, ambitious indie projects, but I’m still surprised by how many of the things there are. There are 3D and 2D choices, there are more complex iterations and this one here is set in space. It’s called Blockade Runner, which is the headline gag I would have used if it had been called literally anything else. Although in pre-release at the moment, it is possible to preorder and play around with the ship designer while waiting for a more functional version next year. Video and more details below.

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Oh, hello there. Sorry to pull you away from your radishes, but we just wanted to let you know about the new episode of the IGN AU Pubcast! - our distinctly Aussie take on the traditional podcast, blending our love of gaming with beer and toilet humour - and a liberal dose of intelligent debate. ...

The Lord of the Rings: War in the North doesn't need a ring to defeat its foes; it has the power of three. Three different beings, to be exact -- after all, if it were the power of three rings, that would defeat the purpose of that whole "one ring" thing Sauron won't shut up about.

If you were (or are, as it’s still going on) lucky enough to be among the gaming hoards at the Eurogamer Expo you might have noticed a booth with “PC Gaming Since 1873″ emblazoned upon it. Inside are twelve games. Some of them are even PC games! We saw them. We judged them.

Find out which one was the winner of our yearly super-indie award accolade, below!(more…)

Sundays are for a breath of fresh air. They are also for sitting in a cold room somewhere in The West and meticulously combing through the internet for clues. Let’s see whether we can find any.

• BitGamer’s Craig Lager has taken some time to investigate microtransactions. This is definitely an important topic: “There’s little point in diving into Korean MMORPGs that explicitly follow the ‘pay to win’ business model, as those games will be deliberately imbalanced to favour regularly paying customers. Western developers, however, claim to avoid falling into this ‘pay to win’ genre; which begs the question of whether they’re telling the truth or just selling empty promises. Thus, these are the games we’re going to analyse – flip the page to see the seven games we’ve chosen to look at.”

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Hello youse,

I had an idea.

Ever since I started talking about boardgames, from Downtime Town to Cardboard Children, people have been telling me the same thing. The same thing. Again and again. The same thing.

“This is all well and good, man. But I have no-one to play with.”(more…)

Since the rest of the hivemind have absconded to comrade Walker’s wedding, I’ve taken responsiblity for getting this posted, but it’s actually my Savy-minions Will and Tony who put together this week’s bargain bucket. I’m too busy playing games and drinking all the free tea I want (press perks!) at the Eurogamer Expo. I shall leave you in their capable hands: (more…)

Zynga's profit fell from $27.2 million in Q2 2010 to $1.3 million in Q2 2011, a 95 percent decrease, an IPO filing with the SEC revealed Wednesday. Zynga's profit measures how much money the company is truly retaining, while revenue measures how much it is making, before expenses. To that end, Zynga's revenue grew over 100 percent year-on-year, to $279.1 million; however, this growth is slowing, rising 15 percent from its March quarter, while March rose 24 percent from the previous quarter.

Zynga's "bookings" measure revenue directly from ad sales and microtransactions before any adjustments, such as the 30 percent Facebook claims, and these were down for the first time in company history, dropping 4 percent to hit the super-low, rock-bottom, Ramen-every-night number of $274.7 million.

So far it looks like someone took some extra vacations on their new yachts this quarter. Or not. Zynga attributes its profit loss to two things: It didn't release any new games until Empires and Allies in March 2011, and it focused more on internal growth, hiring and acquisitions this quarter.

All of this stagnating growth and dipping profit-margins means only one thing -- Zynga's valuation was increased in this same analysis, rising from $13.98 billion to $14.05 billion. Because that's how money works.

[This was written at 11.30am, but our scheduler messed up. Hooray! - Retroactive Ed] I should be at the Eurogamer Expo right now, but instead I’ve been stuck on a train for the last few hours, diverted through the darkest and most obscure reaches of the South-East, because this is crappy old Britain and its greedily-privatised public transport infrastructure is totally capable of efficiently dealing with day-to-day problems. I have a laptop, but the only game on it is Diablo 3. So I won’t be playing that. Hey, DRM? Screw you. Screw you right in the ear.

The battery-sapping miracles of phone tethering allow me to at least bring you this brief missive, which isn’t actually intended to be about my travel gripes – those are a beige alert at best – but instead about an ambitious mod for Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, which enthusiastically recreates the original, purer Red Alert within this the more recent C&C’s shiny, full-3D engine. (more…)

Indie developers are the starving artists of the video-game world, often brilliant and innovative, but also misunderstood, underfunded and more prone to writing free-form poetry on their LiveJournals. We at Joystiq believe no one deserves to starve, and many indie developers are entitled to a fridge full of tasty, fulfilling media coverage, right here. This week, Justin Scott drops some archeological drama with Icarus.
Why did you want to make games?

I love that feeling from creating something and having it come to life. When I was young I drew levels for Mario games. When I grew up I started getting heavily involved in Active Worlds (forget Minecraft and Second Life; AW got so many things right). My entire career is computer programming, which I learned because I wanted to make games. Some people make music or pictures, I make worlds.

"While this news might not be a complete surprise, I know that many of you were hopeful that Diablo III would ship this year," writes Blizzard president Mike Morhaime. "We were too."

This means, for a brief period in time, Diablo's fans and creators were united in convincing themselves that a Blizzard game might come out on time. Neither party had fully committed to an official release date, however, and the Irvine, California-based developer had only said that it was "aiming to launch by the end of 2011." Luckily, the only thing more steadfast than Blizzard's lengthy development times is its proclaimed commitment to quality.

"Ultimately, we feel that to deliver an awesome Diablo sequel that lives up to our expectations and yours as well," Morhaime should, "we should take a little more time and add further polish to a few different elements of the game." To aid the extended endeavor, Diablo 3's beta will run longer and accomodate more invitees.

If your gaming tastes incorporate more than highly anticipated role-playing games, you'll likely find some relief in this delay. Now there's more time for Batman, Drake, two kinds of modern warfare, Skyrim and -- wait, there's still not enough time, is there?

Size “Zombie Cow” Five Games have (oh, come on, we all know it’s just Dan Marshall)… has just announced that he’s made a special edition of the game that first brought him to fame, Ben There, Dan That (exclamation mark). Explaining it as “George Lucased”, the new version addresses his anally retentive need to go back and fix the past. I may be reading between the lines of his announcement here. But the good news is the new, tidied version, along with the 16-page making of e-booklet, Lowering The Tone, and a new storybook explaining some back history of the characters (they had back history?), is available on a pay-what-you-want basis.

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It would seem Neversoft is currently developing a first-person-shooter. The longtime Tony Hawk Pro Skater and Guitar Hero developer is currently recruiting a variety of positions that specify "FPS" in the title. Could the project for which it's hiring be the same "action shooter" we heard about last year?

Neversoft's job listings page calls for engineers, designers, artists, network programmers, multiplayer experts, and even a Windows PC platform lead. Since Neversoft is hiring for so many positions, we're inclined to think that this project is still fairly early in development.

It would seem Neversoft is currently developing a first-person-shooter. The longtime Tony Hawk Pro Skater and Guitar Hero developer is currently recruiting a variety of positions that specify "FPS" in the title. Could the project for which it's hiring be the same "action shooter" we heard about last year?

Neversoft's job listings page calls for engineers, designers, artists, network programmers, multiplayer experts, and even a Windows PC platform lead. Since Neversoft is hiring for so many positions, we're inclined to think that this project is still fairly early in development.

During the CD Projekt Fall 2011 press conference, the publisher revealed that its GOG games retail service is rapidly approaching the 6 million download milestone. To help push its sales -- which currently stand at a little over 5.8 million -- over the top, it announced two promotions: First, the six millionth downloader will receive every game on the platform for free. Second, for the first 48 hours after hitting the mark, everyone will get a free download of Broken Sword: Shadow of The Templars Director's Cut.

For CD Projekt's sake, we hope they don't get those two promotions mixed up. To wit: "Congratulations! You're our six millionth customer, so here's Broken Sword! Everyone else, here's everything for free oh god we gave all our games away."

Warco – which has been in development for a while but recently seems to have surfaced properly in a small surge of publicity – looks intriguing. Australian devs Defiant describe their UDK project like this: “In the role of war correspondent (‘warco’) Jesse DeMarco, the player must capture battle footage and edit together a news story, while trying to make it out alive.” The proof of concept video, which I’ve posted below, is quite something. Surviving this stuff could be genuinely more exciting than firing back. It’s like Beyond Good & Evil: Call Of Duty Edition, but apparently the real game will be in splicing together your footage at the end and deciding on the story you want to tell about the events you have filmed.

It’s shaping up to be something quite interesting indeed.(more…)

Back when we told you about Airport Control Simulator, we thought that was as exciting as an airport traffic controller simulator could get. But somehow there is room for MORE EXCITING! See, the problem with Airport Control Simulator is you have to control it with your mouse, like you’re some sort of caveman or something. Because now there is the appropriately excitably named Tower! 2011. And it’s voice controlled.

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It’s been a while since I crawled through dungeons or instances in an MMO (or jumped into Eve’s wormholes or complexes, even) but I couldn’t help thinking that Rift’s 1-2 player instances, called “Chronicles“, were a rather good idea for making the body of the game’s instanced content available to players who really only want to play with a single chum. I certainly did quite a lot of WoW with just Alec or John as a companion, and we often struggled to be bothered to get a party together for the dungeons, because we’d always end up with some guy who ran into walls, or a companion who could only type “what”. Anyway, it got me thinking about the Dungeon experience in MMOs, and I ended up thinking of two that I’ve enjoyed most: Guild Wars, for its largely instanced storyline, where pretty much everything lay within areas you’d play with a couple of friends, or even solo, and City Of Heroes, whose missions always seemed somehow “logical”, thanks to taking place in underground bases, warehouses, and so on.

So I ask you lot: where is the best dungeoneering to be had? And which MMO does it best?