Opening the Develop Conference in Brighton tomorrow is Jason Holtman, director of business development at Valve. In his talk, Everyone's Business Is Business, he will discuss how the flat corporate structure revealed in Valve's leaked staff handbook benefits his entire organisation, with everyone in the company involved in business, PR and marketing decisions.
Gamers are bored. That's according to Ubisoft’s Alain Corre, who says that gamers are tired of ‘me-too’ sequels and want new experiences.
From now on, we'll be posting content plucked from Edge's rich history on weekends. It's nearly 19 years since issue 1 hit newsstands, and there's a wealth of material, much of it showing just how much has changed in the industry we love. Here we present tales of development hell - some attributed, but most anonymous - first published in issue 93 in 2001.
How do you expand what’s already expansive? Skyrim isn’t just large, after all – it’s deep. It’s so richly dense with content that any addition to its frosty milieu is bound to overlap with something else. Bethesda’s faced this problem twice already, of course, and its best solutions have been those akin to Fallout 3’s Point Lookout and Oblivion’s Shivering Isles.
How do you expand what’s already expansive? Skyrim isn’t just large, after all – it’s deep. It’s so richly dense with content that any addition to its frosty milieu is bound to overlap with something else. Bethesda’s faced this problem twice already, of course, and its best solutions have been those akin to Fallout 3’s Point Lookout and Oblivion’s Shivering Isles.
Cole Phelps may pack a sidearm, but his notebook is LA Noire’s most potent weapon. The game doesn’t let players wreak GTA-style havoc on the streets of Los Angeles, and the reason why can be traced back to these pages – it’s the tool that best showcases the way that LA Noire insists upon your allegiance to the law.
Atlus has confirmed that the PlayStation 3 version of Arc System Works fighting game Persona 4: Arena will be region-locked. This, we believe, makes it the first PS3 game to feature any region protection since the system's launch in 2006.
Times have changed since the glory days of One-Dot Enemies, and the prospect of a free iOS game increasingly means the same sort of things: punitive energy bars, in-app purchases, and some manner of creative compromise everywhere you might care to look. All of which means that it was extremely nice to discover Blind Man’s Dungeon over on the Indiegames blog. Sure, it has a few ads plastered about the place, but it’s lacking any of the more devious stuff.
Starbreeze Studios, a developer noted for its distinctly physical firstperson shooters, has hinted that its in-development P13 project won't follow in the footsteps of the studio's previous games.
A fixture of the summer European development calendar is the Develop Conference, the UK’s answer to GDC. This year’s event, held as ever in Brighton and to be covered in depth here on Edge Online, will again reflect the huge changes affecting the industry, particularly the way that small studios or even one-person outfits can now make a career out of developing games on their own terms.
Green Man Gaming CEO Paul Sulyok believes Tuesday's EU ruling on second-hand digital sales will make cloud gaming a less attractive prospect to consumers in the long term.
Just minutes after one of the most frustratingly conservative E3 conferences in recent memory, the image of Nintendo president Satoru Iwata staring at a bunch of bananas in his outstretched palm was a welcome reminder of his company’s willingness to indulge its inner eccentric. Beat The Beat: Rhythm Paradise is another, a game with such a delightfully antic disposition that it seems unlikely it would have been made by any other multibillion-selling corporation.
It really is much bigger. That’s stating the obvious, of course, with a device named the XL – but it won’t stop a momentary double take when you place it alongside its previous incarnation. Running deeper and wider than the launch model, the 3DS XL - announced late last month, barely two weeks after Nintendo denied it even existed - demands a larger chunk of desk space, and will strain the seams of all but the widest pockets.
Blizzard has responded to player criticisms of Diablo III's end-game, admitting that there isn't enough on offer for "long-term sustainable" play.
Sent out to die: games media shorthand for a new title released into a competitive market without any marketing or PR support. If you’ve worked in the console industry you’ll be well aware of instances when a publisher got spooked at the last minute and shifted budget onto a safer bet, or pulled the plug entirely.
Little in life signposts the prospect of rowdy, knockabout fun quite as efficiently as taking a word that traditionally ends in a ‘s’ and adapting it to end in a ‘z’ instead. Platoonz is a case in point. A name like Platoons could cover a multitude of games: you could be in for a period shooter as easily as a futuristic strategy sim. Platoonz, however, is always going to be a known quantity. There will be slack-jawed grunts and cartoon explosions.
No digital recreation of pinball can hope to capture the physical joys of the real thing, but the recent successes of Hungarian developer Zen Studios suggest that the allure of the silver ball remains difficult to resist even outside the amusement hall. The key is in the authenticity of the experience: Zen’s tables are a riot of vibrant colour and cacophonous sound, all flashing lights and satisfyingly noisy thumps, clunks and chimes. Crucially, as much attention has been paid to the ball physics, which offer an uncommon sensation of weight.
Working in a field you love is one of the greatest satisfactions in life, and if you grew up with videogames and count them among your hobbies, you might have wondered at least once how to secure a game industry job and make a living from your passion. In fact, I’m often asked by students and people that want to make a career switch about the best way to get a foot in the door, and my answer now is very different from what it would have been a few years ago.