Death warmed up: see Diablo III: Reaper of Souls' Malthael in motion
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Diablo III looks its worst when it stands still. Iffy watercolour screenshots like that above are about as good as it gets. But since when did anything ever stand still in Diablo? It’s always been far better represented in motion, and the same is true of its imminent expansion, Reaper of Souls.
Diamond dividends: Mojang's income more than doubled last year
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Mojang made 816 million ($128 million) Swedish kronor in 2013. That’s up from 326 million kronor the previous year.
It doesn’t quite match the figures of Candy Cush monarchs and former Notch employers King, who raked in $1.88 billion last year. But it’s worth remembering that King now employ 665 people, while Mojang is still a studio of 34 - promoting and updating a game now over five years old.
All 34 are now doing rather well for themselves.
Paradox and Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity partnership is a "personal relationship" with "no BS"
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I think we’d all assumed, somewhat oddly in retrospect, that Obsidian would not only build Pillars of Eternity themselves, but that Feargus Urquhart would hand-deliver copies of the game to Gamestops around the world. He’d do so in a rusty old Fallout-themed van, naturally, and stop off at the postbox on the way home to mail out t-shirts to Kickstarter backers.
That’s not to be: instead, Obsidian have joined up with Paradox, who’ll handle distribution, marketing and Kickstarter fulfillment. And both sides seem pretty happy with the arrangement.
“What we both know is there’s no BS,” said Urquhart at GDC.
Shiny happy people: Giants: Citizen Kabuto creator to Kickstart spiritual successor
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When explaining precisely what made Interplay a PC powerhouse in the ‘90s, it’s natural to leap to the in-house RPG invention of Black Isle. But the other half of the answer lay elsewhere in California, with Shiny Entertainment. Their wilful disregard for genre, leftfield humour and, ah, unique character design shone through in Earthworm Jim and MDK, and perhaps even more so in spinoff studio Planet Moon’s Giants: Citizen Kabuto.
To the eternal shame of Earth and all its denizens, none sold particularly well - and both studios died slow deaths-by-shovelware. But key staffer and Earthworm Jim level namesake Nick Bruty has regrouped with a new team at Rogue Rocket Games to build a new game in the Shiny mould, which he rather hopes you’ll help Kickstart.
Obsidian & Paradox On Eternity Team-Up, South Park Bugs
By Nathan Grayson on March 19th, 2014 at 11:00 am.
Sound the unexpected announcement alarms and check to make sure over-jerked knees are covered by your insurance plan. Paradox has announced that it’s publishing Obsidian’s notoriously independent old-school RPG Pillars of Eternity, a big, (not, by most definitions) bad publishing type dipping its pinky toe into the brave new world of Kickstarter. “…Er, why?” You might ask. “Also didn’t Obsidian get oodles of cash from backers? What happens to the game they paid for if Paradox decides all bets are off?” Well, good news is, Paradox can’t actually do that. I quizzed Paradox CEO Fred Wester and Obsidian CEO Feargus Urquhart about their new partnership, creative control, what this means for backers, why the two companies struck a deal in the first place, whether Paradox is interested in pursuing other classic RPG revivals like Torment, and how South Park ended up glitchy despite Obsidian’s allegedly renewed QA efforts. It’s all below.
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