Crytek co-founder Avni Yerli has angrily disputed claims made in a blog post that the company has been treating its employees unfairly, and in some cases unlawfully dismissing them, saying the allegations are "completely misleading."
Bodycount is Codemasters’ attempt to muscle in on the mainstream FPS market, but it suffers from the same identity crisis that befell Operation Flashpoint: Red River recently. It’s a game with one foot in the past and one in the present, lacking the confidence to deliver either classic old-school thrills or contemporary blockbuster highs. Sent in to tackle an escalating conflict between warring factions, it’s your job to aim big guns at big blokes and hope they hit the ground first.
Management at Eve Online developer CCP has been accused of neglecting the popular MMOG and its users, doing little to arrest a stall in growth of subscriber numbers brought on by the controversial Incarna update, and of being "hell-bent on running Eve Online into the ground."
With a quarter of a million registrations a day and 220 million accounts on its books, free-to-play specialist Bigpoint loves numbers. Its many games, which include Battlestar Galactica Online, Drakensang Online and Farmerama, may be free, but with a philosophy that says "you can be as creative as you want to, but base it on numbers," the German publisher is becoming one of the richest players in the online marketplace.
I sometimes wonder how the number of virtual people killed by the average gamer compares to levels of historical violence. For example, do we off as many people in our gaming careers as have been murdered in real life, ever? How about just in the US since 1960? That would be about 880,000 murders, so if you play 50 violent games in your life, you’d only need to kill 17,600 people in each to reach that. Seems like some of us might be close. Has a real person ever killed even close to 17,600?
Sony has for the first time spoken about Microsoft's content and release policy, accusing its rival platform holder of "protecting an inferior technology" and warning: "Publishers are getting the living crap kicked out of them by Microsoft."
Edge columnist Tadhg Kelly discusses games as belief engines, dubbing the sublime experiences you can get with games 'thauma'. It's a good word - thaumaturgy relates to saints' ability to work miracles. "Thauma is more than immersion, gameplay, rewards or story," Kelly says. "You infer qualities of the game that are not actually there.
Eidos Montreal's Deus Ex: Human Revolution is the UK all-formats number one for a second week in succession.
The Square Enix-published title retains top spot despite its sales declining by 46 per cent week on week, with the newly released Driver San Francisco making its debut in second spot.
Recent chart king Zumba Fitness slips another place to third, but the biggest shock of the week is Bodycount: Codemasters' shooter enters the chart in a lowly 36th place.
Dragon Quest X will be released for Nintendo's Wii U, Square Enix has confirmed.
The publisher revealed the news at a press conference in Tokyo earlier today, confirming that the next iteration of the enormously popular RPG will be headed not only to Nintendo's ageing Wii as previously announced but its successor as well.
Within a cavernous hangar on LA’s Hercules campus, the place where eccentric visionary Howard Hughes built his Spruce Goose aircraft, Activision unveiled its own ambitious vision of the future last night. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is getting a range of updates, improvements and additional features, as well as deep COD Elite functionality – much of it free, the rest for a $49.99 annual subscription.
Christofer Sundberg, founder of Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios, believes that DRM does nothing but punish legitimate customers, and is far from the solution to PC piracy that publishers proclaim it to be.
We're a little late with this one, but in this podcast, writer Tom Bissell talks to the New Yorker about his piece on Mass Effect FemShep voice actor Jennifer Hale, including an interview with the voice herself. "She does great grunting sounds," says Bissell.