Richard Bartle, co-creator of the first virtual world, MUD, a multiplayer RPG played over ARPAnet from its release in 1978 (read our Making Of MUD article), is known for speaking his mind, but he hasn’t previously been particularly vocal about gaming’s current hot ticket, social games.
Like its proto-Horde predecessor that debuted as an unlockable mode in Resident Evil 4, The Mercenaries is a time trial of violence, pitting the overmatched player against an endless stream of slow, relentless enemies. You shoot, you run out of ammo, and you spend the latter half of the round trying to escape via rooftops and catwalks, in a desperate attempt to avoid the zero score that awaits anyone who fails to survive until the end.
The development kit for Valve's Source engine is now available for free, the developer has confirmed.
Gamers have in fact been able to play mods made using the engine without charge since the release last year of Valve's free co-op shooter Alien Swarm. Now Rock Paper Shotgun reports that the developer has gone further and made the Source SDK completely free, following the news earlier this week that multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2 was switching to the free-to-play model.
FIFA 11 has claimed the number one spot on the Nordic chart, which collates sales data from Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark.
Former chart-topper LA Noire jumps two places to second, ahead of Lego Pirates Of The Caribbean, The Sims 3 and The Sims 3: Generations.
The week’s highest new entry is FEAR 3 at number six, while Duke Nukem Forever, the best-seller for the previous fortnight, slips to eleventh.
After the “horrendous mistake” that was his Fable: The Journey demo during Microsoft’s E3 press conference, it wasn’t entirely a surprise that he wasn’t going to repeat it for his Gamelab conference session today in Barcelona.
Limbo, Danish studio Playdead’s indie hit that was released on Xbox Live Arcade last year, is headed to PlayStation Network and PC.
Limbo, Danish studio Playdead’s indie hit that was released on Xbox Live Arcade last year, is headed to PlayStation Network and PC.
Activision has announced Call Of Duty XP, a two-day event based on its enormously popular shooter, to take place in Los Angeles in September.
Set in a 12-acre space, Call Of Duty XP will give 6,000 attendees a first chance to lay hands on Modern Warfare 3’s multiplayer and co-op modes, as well as the first full glimpse of the Call Of Duty Elite subscription service that Activision announced last month.
Anthony Gowland is a ten-year industry veteran responsible for designing games including Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars and Red Dead Redemption. Joining Rockstar Leeds as a mission scripter, Gowland was quickly promoted to senior designer after just three months and has spent the past six and a half years overseeing the studio's output. Last month, however, he decided to strike out alone, leaving big-budget development behind and setting up mobile development studio Mainly About Games.
Anthony Gowland is a ten-year industry veteran responsible for designing games including Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars and Red Dead Redemption. Joining Rockstar Leeds as a mission scripter, Gowland was quickly promoted to senior designer after just three months and has spent the past six and a half years overseeing the studio's output. Last month, however, he decided to strike out alone, leaving big-budget development behind and setting up mobile development studio Mainly About Games.
Organisers are promising a “record amount” of game development content at this year’s Siggraph conference, which takes place in Vancouver in August.
Heading the list is a two-part course looking at recent advances in realtime rendering. Among those taking part in the course - which is intended to foster links between the development community and the field of 3D graphics research - are staff from Bungie, EA, Sony, Treyarch, CCP and Avalanche.
Anthony Gowland, a former senior designer at Rockstar who worked on Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars and Red Dead Redemption, believes that attempts by the likes of Nintendo to keep the price of games at their current level despite the continuing rise in popularity of low-cost, downloadable games is misguided, and that the ultimate value of videogames is decided by consumers, not the industry itself.
Offering the player a choice of controls is a good thing, right? It means that all players can choose a method of interaction to suit their own preferences. On many iOS or Android games it’s common to see a range of control schemes available which, broadly speaking, can be split into several basic forms: tilt-based controls and the varying forms of touch – direct manipulation, virtual D-pads, steering wheels and twin-sticks.