Recently I’ve been immersed in the world of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games. Writing, not playing, you understand. I’ve seen and heard about people who play them. What happens to their faces and, a bit behind their faces, their minds. Yes, I’ve seen and shuddered and kept away.
Kickstarter is here to stay but crowd-funding will get tougher and must evolve, according to co-founders of Stainless Games Neil Barnden and Patrick Buckland. In this morning’s Develop Conference keynote the pair revealed that it took Stainless two years to buy back the IP from its former owner Eidos following the publisher’s acquisition by Square-Enix in 2009.
The Act blends the QTEs and cartoon stylings of Dragon’s Lair with the tone and themes of Carry On. Out with the knights and the damsels; in with a lovesick window cleaner and a sexy nurse. It might have worked, if Dragon’s Lair was a better template. It might have worked if romantic comedy was as easy to construct as fantasy.
Connected, cross-platform communities, free to play and mobile will all contribute to the industry’s “very bright future”, Bioware Mythic’s VP and studio general manager Eugene Evans told the Develop Conference yesterday.
Do you remember Odysseus, the protagonist of Homer’s 2,800-year-old epic poem The Odyssey? Well, he’s more relevant than you might think to all these modern reboots of older franchises, such as XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition.
If Robert Boyd’s games are love letters to the JRPGs of his youth, they’re missives written in shorthand. Boyd’s collaboration with the eponymous webcomic is akin to a 16-bit Final Fantasy on fast-forward: progress is swift, battles are briskly paced and grinding is nonexistent. As with Cthulhu Saves The World, the journey may not last much longer than seven hours, but Rain-Slick 3 covers as much ground in that time as games five times its length.
Where next for Raspberry Pi? The ultra-low-cost computer was an immediate success on launch in February, with hundreds of thousands of people registering their interest for the device David Braben hopes will rekindle interest in computer science.
This week’s column pinches its title from a documentary which, if it reaches its Indiegogo total, will chart the rise and rise of the UK game industry. It will tell tales of British ingenuity and look at a hobbyist community which, almost by accident, played a fundamental role in shaping today’s global game business, not to mention plenty of childhoods.
The Android-based Ouya console is now official, and has raised over $2,000,000 on Kickstarter in a matter of hours - surpassing its $950,000 target with 28 days left of the campaign.
The campaign has raised so much, in fact, that company founder Julie Uhrman has asked supporters for feedback on what the project's "stretch goals" should be given the additional funding.
Suspiciously humanoid alien invaders. Burly men on a mission. Guns with mounted blades. Sound familiar? Inversion may be a derivative cover shooter, but it’s nevertheless an ambitious science fiction romp in its own right – one that consistently entertains and occasionally thrills despite reheating a vast range of ideas from a set of prestigious shooters.
Is the sun setting on Japanese game development? Not yet, says Dewi Tanner, a Welsh-born former producer at NanaOn-Sha, and now a freelance developer intent on fixing relations between Western devs and Japanese publishers.
At the Develop Conference in Brighton today, COO and co-founder of browser game publishing platform Turbulenz Gavin Shields’ talk pointed to the fact that the top 50 games on the App Store account for 71 per cent of its revenue - this, Shields says, is proof that latecomers simply can’t crack a market that has already had its heyday. Cut The Rope, whatever its other charms, made money by getting out of the gate first.
Our weekly game industry jobs round-up highlights some of the recently advertised positions from Edge Jobs.
Our weekly game industry jobs round-up highlights some of the recently advertised positions from Edge Jobs.
Steam Greenlight is the “solution to a huge business problem,” according to Valve’s Jason Holtman, who told the audience at the Develop Conference this morning that the company’s new indie game initiative was made possible by Valve’s flat, bossless structure.
Although many onlookers maintain that E3 2012 was a lacklustre vintage, the event will surely be remembered for one rather rare occurrence: a brand new IP stole the show. While familiar brands huffed and puffed for attention during morose press conferences and on exhibitors’ stands, Watch Dogs sprang its unknown universe onto a captivated audience and immediately everyone got it, making the rest of the show floor look decidedly last-generation.