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This is the latest in a series of articles about the art technology of games, in collaboration with the particularly handsome Dead End Thrills.

An irony of Chernarus, the fictional-yet-you-can-somehow-cosplay-there home of DayZ, is that the older the game gets, the younger the map should grow. The awesome ArmA machines for which it was built – planes, helicopters, tanks, boats, guns, the Lada – will fall into disrepair. Some survivors might have the specialist tools to fix them, but more will have the skills to steal them. Those bandits maybe won’t fix them, and this post-Soviet state will suddenly start to look very pre-Soviet indeed. Though this natural outcome seems unlikely for a mere computer game, it’s what’s so exciting about DayZ being Early Access. We get to watch its apocalypse unfold.

This must be a rather strange prospect for Ivan Buchta, the Bohemia Interactive designer who grew up in the northern area of the Czech Republic the map so closely resembles. To the current DayZ Standalone team he’s the “Ambassador Of The Republic Of Chernarus”, which makes plotting the death of his birthplace an unlikely part of his job description. But then that’s the other thing about DayZ going Early Access: it’s a job he seems to share with just about everyone, from his workmates to the players who think they should ratify the game’s every move. (more…)

A newly released mod for the 2013 PC version of Mossmouth's roguelike platformer Spelunky enables custom seed functionality, allowing players to bypass the game's random level generator and replay specific level layouts.

The "Seedlunky HD" mod automatically generates repeatable level layouts based on any entered text string. The added utility is especially useful for competitive purposes; players can distribute seeds among friends, subjecting them to particularly challenging levels. See if you can create a series of dark stages filled with tons of instant-kill spikes. Your friends will love you for it.

Spelunky already offers a similar feature in its Daily Challenge mode, which pits all players against pre-designed level layouts as they compete for leaderboard rank. Daily Challenge levels are only playable once, however, whereas Seedlunky HD-generated levels can be loaded and replayed at will.

EA's Ronku program offers YouTube personalities extra cash for covering specific aspects of EA games, with rules regarding what the players can say or show on-camera. For the "Battlefield 4 Launch" Ronku assignment, YouTubers wouldn't receive compensation if they made "a video that focuses on glitches in the game," according to a document posted to NeoGAF. Compensation for the Battlefield 4 Launch assignment was $10 per CPM with a cap of 20,000,000 views, or $200,000.

"Through EA's Ronku program, some fans are compensated for the YouTube videos they create and share about our games," an EA spokesperson told The Verge. "The program requires that participants comply with FTC guidelines and identify when content is sponsored. User-generated videos are a valuable and unique aspect of how gamers share their experiences playing the games they love, and one that EA supports."

Asked whether YouTubers openly disclose their participation in the Ronku program, the spokesperson said, "We explicitly state in the Terms & Conditions of the program that each video must comply with the FTC's Guidelines concerning Use of Testimonials and Endorsements in Advertising."

The FTC's Guidelines on Use of Testimonials and Endorsements in Advertising, in PDF form here, offer examples of personalities who would have to disclose the compensation, and those who wouldn't. In Example 7 of § 255.5, disclosure of material connections, the FTC states that a blogger reviewing a game would have to share his connection to the company if he received that product for free.

Microsoft also has a YouTube bonus program for presenting positive coverage of its products, which it calls "a typical marketing partnership."

DayZ is a multiplayer zombie survival sim which, though buggy and incomplete, produces anecdotes of drama, desperation and clown mask-wearing weirdos. Emily Richardson has been playing it with a question: can you be a good person in the videogame post-apocalypse?

I’m waiting behind a big green house in the grass, watching the city below me from my little hill. It’s my second time in DayZ, the first consisting mostly of finding and eating sardines with my guide, Andy. I’m waiting for him to find me when I see a silhouette coming up through the grass toward me, a big M4 rifle pointed at my head.

I yell, ‘Wait, wait, don’t do that!’ and turn and run round the other side of the house. When I turn to look back at him he’s stood waving. It’s Andy, but as a woman, in different clothes and wielding a weapon I hadn’t ever seen before. He thinks I’m an idiot.

I’m so new to this that I feel a lot like the hopeless little kid from The Road and Andy is a bit like my dad, leading me through the world and trying to keep me alive. But not in a weird way, that’s just an analogy. I have no idea what I’m doing, though, or what my course of action is for bashing into other survivors.(more…)

And now for something completely different. Or, well, actually kinda similar to other stuff you might have seen before, but in video form and on RPS. A Game And A Chat (tentative title, probably) is a weekly live show in which I play a game with a developer and, you know, chat with them. At the same time. I am nothing if not multi-talented. Sometimes the game will be all shiny and new, other times it’ll be aged, haggard, and only tangentially relevant. Who knows? Maybe one day it’ll be a boardgame. Or tag. Or cage-fighting. This first episode, however, is fairly straightforward. Given that Broken Age is about to land in the click-hungry hands of the masses, I thought I’d bring Tim Schafer into the studio. By which I mean my bedroom. Via, er, a webcam. But not like that. Oh jeez just click past the break and watch us discuss Serious Topics while being accused of murder by trees or something. We’re kicking off at 11:00 AM PT/7:00 PM GMT*.

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The newest add-on is now available for free to Legendary members.

Dr. Dre and company have launched Beats Music and we take the new streaming service for a spin.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance has kind of a silly name, but it’s one heck of an intriguing prospect. The hyper-detailed historical RPG heralds from a small army of developers who once steered the creation of Mafia and Arma, among many others. Despite coming from a relatively small team by triple-A standards, the game’s production values are through the roof, and the dev team really wants it all: Skyrim-like exploration, a Mount and Blade-style world, entirely procedural combat, and choice reactivity inspired by The Witcher. Can Warhorse pull it off? I checked out an early build of the game and talked extensively with project director Daniel Vávra to find out if they’re on the right track.

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We take a look at the authentic medieval RPG's realistic open-world, combat, and crafting systems.

From Arean to aZure (come on), we go through all you need to know about Blizzard's new mega game.

Well, now-ish anyway. Today is JanuMonth TwentyTwomeral (or however we’re designating dates in these lawless, calendar-bereft times), and tactical multiplayer shooter Insurgency should be out any second now. Originally an award-winning Half-Life 2 mod, a full version has crept forth from the massive camo-tattooed womb that births all military FPSes. After an attempted infiltration of Kickstarter didn’t end so well, developer New World Interactive took the game to Steam Early Access, but now it’s finally graduated to the non-Early-Access portion of Steam, which I believe is populated by something like four or five games these days. Footage and detailsy info below.

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Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft is a tremendously dull name for a game, but let’s unpick this. The game is the hearthstone, the bottom of a fireplace. The players are the kindling, being rapidly consumed in that fiery furnace. The closed beta is the flames, locked in place so only those lucky enough to have a key can enter.

Only now the fire is spreading. North America has already been consumed, and the rest of the world will fall in “the next few days.” Run. Run! Hearthstone has entered open beta.(more…)

If Mafia-director-led team Warhorse has its way, Kingdom Come: Deliverance will be gigantic. Like, hundreds of hours gigantic, when it’s all said and done. But this is a smaller team designing a colossal open world full of stories, NPCs, and – yes – warhorses. It was never going to be easy. So Warhorse is doing two things to stave off the monetary death siege banging down its doors: 1) slicing the main plot up into three episodic acts and, yes, 2) going to Kickstarter. But even a successful £300,000 crowdfunding drive won’t be enough to pull this cart over the figurative mountain. A mysterious outside benefactor will handle the rest, apparently. I spoke with director Daniel Vávra about how that will affect the game, if players will still influence development, and whether hacking such a cohesive world into pieces will hurt the final product. 

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UPDATE: Candy Crush Saga developer King has also put in a trademark application for the word 'Saga' and is going after Stoic Studios.

Storyteller is a rather novel thing, both in that it’s unlike pretty much any other game and that it offers very convenient opportunities for wordplay. The comic-book-esque mini-story creation puzzler has been in development for quite some time, and each peek offered by developer Daniel Benmergui has only increased the flow of questionable liquid from my slavering chops. I wants it, precious. I wants it. I am, then, somewhat disheartened to hear that he’s putting Storyteller on temporary hold, choosing to instead focus developmental fire on a commercial version of his free “quick RPG” Ernesto. Don’t get me wrong: it’s very good, but perhaps not quite as potential-packed as Storyteller. Fortunately, this detour is still worthwhile, not to mention (hopefully) brief.

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Yesterday the internet was alive with the news about King, owners of Candy Crush Saga, their trademarking of the word “Candy”, and their ensuing threats to other developers who are using the word in their game titles. The response from King was to flap their eyelashes and protest innocence – they were only defending the Earth against evil, not liberally chasing anyone and everyone. About that. We’ve seen the document that shows their attempt to go after The Banner Saga.

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There are several reason contributing to the fact that wargames have remained a niche hobby while comic books and Dungeons & Dragons have stealthily infiltrated the mainstream. Look at the image in this link. Perhaps your reaction is to spit axle grease into your hands, rub them together and wrestle with the hexes and stats immediately. Or maybe you think the whole thing looks like a particularly unpleasant piece of history/mathematics homework. The fact that publisher Matrix lists Germany At War as “Complexity – Basic” is one of the key reasons that wargames are in a niche. They think that basic training involves holding your breath underwater for two hours while completing an extremely difficult Sudoku. It doesn’t help that they’re pricey and rarely have demos, but Germany At war now has a trial version. So jump in and measure the complexity.

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The publisher is reportedly suing the makers of a mobile title bearing striking similarities to its fast-paced strategy game.

StarCraft 2's "Starter Edition," the limited free-to-play version of Blizzard's popular real-time strategy sequel, receives a substantial today in North America. The update will roll out to other territories as the week progresses.

This update brings StarCraft 2 "Starter Edition" up to version 2.1, unlocking all three races (Terrans, Zerg and Protoss) and providing access to custom maps to the entire internet. These custom maps can be accessed through Blizzard Arcade, the free game-hosting platform and editing suite offered by Blizzard through StarCraft 2. ​So if someone creates the next DOTA, which was created as a custom game type in Warcraft 3 and based on a custom StarCraft map, and publishes it to Blizzard Arcade, then everyone in the world will have access to it - not just those who own StarCraft 2.

Head past the break for another pair of videos, produced by Blizzard, going into more detail about Blizzard Arcade.

Swedish designer and craftsman Love Hulten has shaped wood and metals into pure class with his "all-in-one" gaming system, R-Kaid Revelation. The gorgeous machine was crafted from walnut and copper, and features built-in peripherals and a backlit LCD screen that showcases the computer's components while asleep. Though the build was first revealed to the world in early December, it was only recently highlighted by culture site Boing Boing.

The machine boasts a custom interface (with the ability to boot into Windows), over 10,000 pre-installed games, an Intel i5 CPU, 8GB of RAM and a previous-generation GTX 600 Series GPU. The build components won't pit it against more modern horsepower, but it's housed inside a case that would look right at home in my parent's living room.

For more of Hulten's work, which includes plenty of other gaming-related projects, check out his online portfolio.

Gender Swap is an experiment by interdisciplinary art collective Be Another Lab, as part of its open source art project, The Machine to be Another - and it uses the Oculus Rift to transport people into bodies of the opposite gender. Two participants strap on the Oculus Rift with first-person cameras mounted on top, and each person receives the visual input from the other person's camera. A woman will look down and see the body of the male participant, and he will see her body.

Both participants then begin moving, slowly and in synchrony, feeling their new bodies and moving with new limbs. They first agree on movements they won't make, but after that, they have to remain attuned to one another's motions to get the full gender-swapping effect. Watch a video of Gender Swap in action below the break - heads up for nudity.

The Machine to be Another has spawned multiple Oculus Rift projects, including some where one person tells a story of hardship, body issues or joy while the other participant is in his or her skin.

"Designed as an interactive performance installation, the 'Machine' offers users the possibility of interacting with a piece of another person's life story by seeing themselves in the body of this person and listening to his/her thoughts inside their mind," Be Another Lab explains. With Gender Swap, Be Another Lab aims to "investigate issues like gender identity, queer theory, feminist technoscience, intimacy and mutual respect."

You no longer need an invite to try out Blizzard's free-to-play, Warcraft-themed card game.

Blizzard's digital collectible card game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft has entered open beta, and is now available as a free download for Windows and Mac in North America.

Originally announced at PAX East in 2013, Hearthstone saw a lengthy closed beta test in advance of today's launch. Ports for iOS and Android are set to premiere later this year.

The game's latest champion has been made temporarily unavailable.

Hello youse.

Way back in the day, when I first covered Arkham Horror I made it clear that while it was a game I loved, it wasn’t a game I could easily recommend. You can travel back through time by the power of “link-clicking” to find out all about that if you wish. Once you’re done, you can click to read further into this edition of my column, where I’ll recommend a different game to you, and recommend it easily.(more…)

Bohemia Interactive's newest content places players on a Mediterranean island.

To the Death mashes up shoot-em-ups and beat-em-ups.

Arma 3‘s campaign singleplayer is being released in three chunks. The first, released late last year, was called Survive. The second is out today and is called “Adapt”. There’s a trailer below, which shows a player adapt from a lying-down to a standing-up position, and then there’s an explosion and lots of little parachuting men.

Woo.(more…)

Candy Crush Saga developer King said it will not enforce against all uses of the trademark "candy." This follows news that the broad trademark was approved for publication in the United States, granting the public 30 days to file opposition against the trademark once published before King receives a certificate of registration for the mark from the USPTO.

"We have trademarked the word 'CANDY' in the EU, as our IP is constantly being infringed and we have to enforce our rights and to protect our players from confusion," King told Gamezebo. "We don't enforce against all uses of CANDY - some are legitimate and of course, we would not ask App developers who use the term legitimately to stop doing so."

The developer first applied to register the trademark with the USPTO in February 2013 and was granted approval for publication by the examining attorney last week. King also applied to trademark the term "saga" in regards to online and multiplayer video games with the USPTO in late 2011, though that application is currently suspended.

PC gaming in 2014 is looking more diverse than ever. Check out the games you shouldn't miss this year.