The official schedule has been announced for this year's QuakeCon, which is taking place August 12-15 in Dallas, Texas. In addition to the usual id gallery, none other than Jason West and Vince Zampella of the newly formed Respawn Entertainment will be in attendance.
The ousted Infinity Ward heads will sit on a panel the Friday morning of the conference called "Building Blockbusters," talking with Tim Willits and Tom Howard of id and Bethesda about how to make big games (like the "huge summer blockbuster" they're supposedly working on). Todd Alderman, also of Respawn, will sit on a panel the previous day speaking about "The World of Design" with a few other developers.
Elsewhere in the schedule, John Carmack and Richard Garriott will hold court on Thursday evening discussing rockets and space travel, and Friday and Saturday afternoons will bring preview panels for RAGE and Brink. Sounds like an excellent weekend of FPS gaming -- so if you're in Dallas (or plan to be there), the event is free and open to the public.
The official schedule has been announced for this year's QuakeCon, which is taking place August 12-15 in Dallas, Texas. In addition to the usual id gallery, none other than Jason West and Vince Zampella of the newly formed Respawn Entertainment will be in attendance.
The ousted Infinity Ward heads will sit on a panel the Friday morning of the conference called "Building Blockbusters," talking with Tim Willits and Tom Howard of id and Bethesda about how to make big games (like the "huge summer blockbuster" they're supposedly working on). Todd Alderman, also of Respawn, will sit on a panel the previous day speaking about "The World of Design" with a few other developers.
Elsewhere in the schedule, John Carmack and Richard Garriott will hold court on Thursday evening discussing rockets and space travel, and Friday and Saturday afternoons will bring preview panels for RAGE and Brink. Sounds like an excellent weekend of FPS gaming -- so if you're in Dallas (or plan to be there), the event is free and open to the public.
Just one week after revealing the nominees of the E3 2010 Game Critics Awards, the numbers are in and the big winner is ... Nintendo's look-ma-no-glasses 3D handheld, the 3DS. But wait, the 3DS is just the Best of Show and Best Hardware winner! If you're looking for software, look no further than id Software's look-ma-crab-hands mutant-infested shooter, Rage, which took home the most awards in the show: Best Console Game, Best Action Game and Special Commendation for Graphics.
If you think it must've been frustrating to be either Sony or Microsoft, both of which were busy showing off their newest motion-sensitive gadgetry, you'd be mostly right. Microsoft did have one small consolation prize: Dance Central, Harmonix's look-ma-no-coordination dancing game for Kinect, took the well-deserved Best Original Game and Best Motion Simulation prizes. None of Microsoft's first-party Kinect efforts and no PlayStation Move games, first-party or otherwise, made the list.
Find the entire list of award winners, with links into our game pages for all of our coverage, after the break.
#awards
The game critics have spoken, and the 2010 E3 Game Critics Awards winners have been chosen. Check out a Best of Show that isn't a game, big wins for EA and Rage, and a little vindication for our E3 awards. More »
With E3 2010 over and done with, and a glut of outlet-specific honors dispensed, it's time for the annual Game Critics Awards to reveal its list of nominees. Culled from the selections of "31 leading North American media outlets that cover the videogame industry" (including Joystiq!), the Game Critics Awards represent something of an industry consensus on The Big Show. This year, id Software's upcoming post-apocalyptic-'em-up Rage took home the most nominees, scoring five including Best of Show. Sharing the Best of Show nominee space are Disney's Epic Mickey, Dance Central, and Portal 2, each of which received four nominations across the boards.
We've got the entire list after the break, and check out the "Fast Facts" breakdown linked below for some flamewar-worthy stats (Xbox 360 leads the platform nominations with 46 versus PlayStation 3's 39). Notably, Electronic Arts had the most nominees for a publisher for the fourth year in a row, earning 15 nominations ... and that's not including the formerly EA Partners-signed Rage.
If you doubted that Rage could look decent on the Xbox 360, rest assured it is a beautiful game. During the 30-minute presentation I attended at the Bethesda booth at E3, the "hand-crafted" environments backed up the boasting of the id Software producer guiding attendees through two different campaign segments.
First of all, know that the premise isn't the only thing similar to that of the other big post-apocalyptic FPS, Fallout 3. The story is, like, very similar to that of Fallout 3. In Rage, a meteor strike has decimated the planet and the Authority -- the governing body of the world before the apocalypse -- apparently saw fit to bury these arks deep below ground, to house the remnants of humanity who could one day return to the surface after the effects of the meteor strike dissipated. The player's vault ark apparently has a malfunction (water chip malfunction?) and, as the last survivor, you must make your way to the surface for reasons unknown and join the rest of humanity and the mutated, crazed individuals who were once human.
If you doubted that Rage could look decent on the Xbox 360, rest assured it is a beautiful game. During the 30-minute presentation I attended at the Bethesda booth at E3, the "hand-crafted" environments backed up the boasting of the id Software producer guiding attendees through two different campaign segments.
First of all, know that the premise isn't the only thing similar to that of the other big post-apocalyptic FPS, Fallout 3. The story is, like, very similar to that of Fallout 3. In Rage, a meteor strike has decimated the planet and the Authority -- the governing body of the world before the apocalypse -- apparently saw fit to bury these arks deep below ground, to house the remnants of humanity who could one day return to the surface after the effects of the meteor strike dissipated. The player's vault ark apparently has a malfunction (water chip malfunction?) and, as the last survivor, you must make your way to the surface for reasons unknown and join the rest of humanity and the mutated, crazed individuals who were once human.
#id
Rage to me feels like one of those sneaky games. Like Arkham Asylum, or Red Dead, where you're mildly interested in it before it comes out, then when it's out, it blows you away. More »
#crime
A Virginia man faces charges of charged with misdemeanor animal cruelty and disorderly conduct after allegedly hurling his girlfriend's kitten against the wall after it disconnected the video game he was playing. More »
Bethesda Softworks focuses on other developer's titles this E3, with Splash Damage's Brink, Obsidian's Fallout: New Vegas, id's RAGE, and inXile's Hunted: The Demon's Forge making up its show lineup. More »
What does a video game producer do? Well, the brutally honest Jason Kim from id's RAGE summed it up for us. "I'm just a producer; I don't make anything that actually shows up in the game." So there you have it! Okay, we're kidding (slightly). It's a producer's task on a game to make sure everything is running smoothly, that schedules are being met, budgets being adhered to, all so that one day the game can end up on your system of choice. That's no small task.
Kim has been working on RAGE at id for the past several years, and has seen the project move from EA, to being an internally developed project at id, and now on to Bethesda. He's definitely enthusiastic about the project (and the word megatexture), and you can read on beyond the break for the full interview with him were he talks about the game, and why a lot of developers seem to be using the post-apocalyptic realm as a backdrop.
RAGE is a gorgeous game. The Xbox 360 version of id's post-apocalyptic shooter, running at 60 frames per second, stunned at a recent Bethesda event, and removed any doubts as to whether the idTech 5 engine would hold up nearly three years after the game's unveiling.
RAGE's story starts in the near future: a giant asteroid is heading towards Earth, and rather than launch a team of wacky oil-rig drillers at the problem, the governments of the world convene and decide to put most of the population into suspended animation and bury them beneath the surface in giant Arks. Years later, you're revived as the sole survivor of your malfunctioning Ark. I watched a hands-off demonstration a bit further along into the game, but there will be a brief tutorial during your revival process.
#bethesdasoftware
Quake and Doom makers id Software may be treading well worn post-apocalyptic territory in Rage, but for all the grotesque mutants and post-cataclysmic disaster, this Mad Max-style story of survival looks like fun. More »
In a tersely worded press release, ZeniMax Media - parent company of Fallout 3-dev Bethesda Softworks and, as of June, FPS hall-of-famer id Software - has "announced today that it has picked up the publishing rights for Rage, the video game under development at id Software." First announced in July 2008 during Electronic Arts' E3 press conference, Rage was to be published under EA's successful EA Partners program, home to other major titles from outside developers, like Rock Band, Left 4 Dead 2, and Brutal Legend.
Unlike ZeniMax's other development studio, Bethesda, id Software will not be self-publishing Rage; instead, "Rage will be published by Bethesda Softworks," the press release states. It concludes, "As a result, Electronic Arts Inc. ... will not be involved in the sales and marketing of Rage. The ongoing development of Rage is unaffected by this development."
With EA out of the picture and publishing duties for Rage in ZeniMax's hands, the partnership between the two companies can finally be consummated without having to wait for Doom 4, or whatever's next in the Wolfenstein franchise. Ah, love.
