Call of Duty to be made in three-year cycles by three teams from now on (Sledgehammer are the new one)
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Call of Duty’s famous one-two punch is to become a three-part thwack-bang-wallop, Activision have announced. Series originators Infinity Ward and more-fun cousins Treyarch are to be joined by Sledgehammer - the team who saved Modern Warfare 3.
Don’t call it a decline: World of Warcraft subscriptions are back up a bit
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MMO doomsayers like to characterise World of Warcraft’s twilight years the way Telltale describe The Walking Dead - like a man slipping inexorably down a hill, desperately grasping for things to hold onto.
In actuality, Blizzard are playing ongoing WoW development more like Tiny Wings - keeping their heads down to ensure the highest possible peak after each trough. Mists of Pandaria came out at the tail end of 2012, and first annual expansion Warlords of Draenor isn’t due till later this year - but the books have already turned up again.
Riot address LoL spectator cam kerfuffle: "We have no interest in using patents offensively"
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A couple of years ago, Riot Games filed for and won a patent for an in-game “self-moving camera”. The spectator cam automatically follows League of Legends players on any given map, prioritising shots using a server-calculated “interest value”.
Trouble is, Dota 2 had one of those first. Fans reached for the pitchforks when the patent was published last week, prompting Riot to release a statement in response. Their stance: we’re not going to be dicks about it.
Valve win German court battle: resale of Steam games still a no-no
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Valve have triumphed against a consumer rights lawsuit that sought to undo the no-resale clause in Steam’s terms of service. A German judge has ruled that the copyright laws which allow the sale of second-hand game DVDs do not apply to their digitally-distributed counterparts.
Elder Scrolls Online beta first impressions: a familiar world made foreign
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Good news: The Elder Scrolls Online is, by some distance, the Elder Scrollsiest of all the MMOs. But that’s not the whole story. Jules, Nick and Jeremy pottered about nu-Tamriel’s green fields and brown wastes for a few days, and have returned veritable loremasters - ready to tell the tale of beta ESO, as I think we now call it.
A world at once familiar and compromised. And narrated by a bored Dumbledore.
Driver update: nearly half of Ubisoft Reflections working on The Division
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I am chuffed. Reflections, the Driver lot defining the next generation of brum-brums in Watch Dogs and The Crew, have continued their creep towards Ubisoft’s inner circle of go-to studios. They’ve devoted about 40% of their workforce towards The Division, the third-person survival shooter that filled E3 with positive noises this year.
Best of all, it wasn’t a missive from Paris that compelled Reflections to work with Division directors Ubisoft Massive - they just happened to like each other.
The saga will go on: The Banner Saga trilogy development to start soon
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After a short hiatus, Stoic will be starting work on the second game in The Banner Saga trilogy, its melancholy tactical RPG title. The first game was a gorgeous, thoughtful mix of chess-like battles and Oregon Trail-style roaming, and rightfully did rather well. “No game has ever been more worthy of the title 'Saga’,” the developer posted on Facebook, no doubt referring to the trademark debacle with King.
Watch out for the lava: auto-generating Temple Run in Minecraft
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These running games are all a bit too athletic for me, getting me all sweaty and hungry for a cigarette. And now someone’s only bloody gone and put Temple Run, or a facsimile of Temple Run, into Minecraft. When will the insidious pro-running lobby stop invading our games?
It is actually rather nifty, though, as you will undoubtedly see when you slap your eyes on the gif below.
Zom-b-gone: Zombies evicted from Rust in latest update
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Despite the apparent popularity of the shambling dead, zombies have been evicted from Rust. It’s no longer a zombie survival game - though it never really seemed like it was, regardless of the presence of the undead - as of the latest update.
“Yep. We did it. We decided we couldn’t hold off any longer. The longer we keep zombies in – the more complaints we’d get about removing them. We are forcing ourselves to deal with it. We are no longer a zombie survival game! They’ve been replaced with red bears and wolves. You hate them. We know. They’re just plugging a gap for now. All will be revvvealed,” reads the blog post. Is the triple “v” a hint? Perhaps.
Origin jumps the gun and puts up Battlefield 4: Second Assault release date
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Battlefield 4's Second Assault DLC was the first expansion to DICE's beleaguered shooter, but only for those with an Xbox One. It's still not made its way onto PC, and even Origin is apparently sick of the wait.
EA's digital platform broke free of its shackles and leaked the release date before its human handlers sedated it and removed the release date from the Battlefield 4 page, if screencaps posted on Reddit are to be believed. February 18th was the date thrown up by Origin.
Diablo 3 sales reach 15 million across all platforms, which is quite a lot of loot
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Things are looking pretty good over at Blizzard right now. They had a great BlizzCon last year, got everyone addicted to Hearthstone before it’s even released, World of Warcraft subs are up and now Diablo sales have hit 15 million.
The figure comes from Activision Blizzard’s latest financial report and takes into account sales across all platforms. Bobby Kotick’s obviously pretty optimistic about the success of the upcoming expansion, Reaper of Souls.
MXGP – The Official Motocross Videogame – New Gameplay Footage Unveiled
Milestone and PQube have released a new gameplay video for . The new gameplay video for MXGP – The Official Motocross Videogame, featuring Evgeny Bobryshev at Valkenswaard (the Netherlands).This video aims to show two main key points of MXGP’s development: Track Soil Deformation and First-Person View. Continue reading
H-Hour: World’s Elite – Tactical Military Shooter from SOCOM creators – Gets New Screenshots
Special Operations Forces Studios has released a new set of screenshots for its upcoming MP spiritual successor to SOCOM, H-Hour: World’s Elite. These screenshots showcase the graphical difference between an early build (dated back in October 2013) and the latest alpha one. The early build is on the left while the latest alpha build is on the right. Continue reading
Dying Light Surprise Comes Next Week
Techland and Warner Bros have released a video that teases a surprise for next Tuesday. Although we are not certain what this surprise actually is, rumor has it that it will be a playable demo. After all, the trailer claims that it will be the day of trial for all humanity. Trial. Get it? Question now is whether this rumored demo will hit the PC or not. Continue reading
Gouraud Shading In The Myst: Myst Remake Gets Remade
By Alec Meer on February 7th, 2014 at 8:00 pm.
Do games still use gouraud shading? Probably not, but it’s the only relevant word I could think of that sounded even slightly like ‘gorillas’. Myst is ancient source of division amongst PC gamers, and also one that’s never quite managed to go away. Remade in 2000 as both Myst: Masterpiece Edition and realMyst, with any number of ports and sequels and spin-offs since then, it’s now back again again as realMyst: Masterpiece Edition.
There’s still no sign of a Pyst remake, however.
Read the rest of this entry »
Also
https://www.humblebundle.com/doublefine
Double Fine is opening their game jam process to the public again!
- Contribute and vote for your favorite game ideas to be prototyped (week 1)
- Finalists announced Monday the 10th
- Watch the live stream and daily recaps by 2 Player Productions as Double Fine creates prototypes of the top four ideas, with one by Pendleton Ward (weeks 2-3)
- Download the finished prototypes for Windows. Plus, you get five protoypes from the 2012 jam right away (week 5+)
Amnesia Fortnight 2014 - A Double Fine Production
A note from Tim SchaferWhere does Double Fine Productions get their ideas? Well, when it’s not from Tim eating spicy food too close to bedtime, it’s from Amnesia Fortnight!
Amnesia Fortnight is a lawless, unforgiving, creative supernova - an internal game jam that we started in 2007 as a behind-the-closed-doors-of-the-chocolate-factory kind of a deal, but have now exposed to the public whether they want it or not!
Here’s how it works: We take two weeks off from whatever we’re working on, split the company into small teams, and give each team two weeks to make a game. It’s not easy or fair; but it is exciting. We do it to test out new ideas, and to test out new project leaders who feel ready to have a project of their own. Some of these project leaders will live, and the others, well, they will also live. But they will NEVER BE THE SAME.
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