Mobile free-to-play consultant and Battlefield vet's advice to indies: "Make PC games"
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Former Battlefield producer and free-to-play consultant Ben Cousins has advised indies not to brave the App Store, which is fast becoming the sole preserve of Rovio, King, and those with backing from Apple.
Instead, he suggests, they should be making PC games.
Ubisoft are selling nine different editions of Watch Dogs (and a season pass)
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Maybe you’ll pre-order Watch Dogs. That might be a thing to do, given that it’s one of the most important PC games of 2014. But will you order the Special Edition, or the Limited Edition? The Uplay Deluxe Edition, or the Digital Deluxe Edition? Put a foot wrong and you’ll miss out on one or all of the 10 DLC packs Ubisoft are divvying out between the game’s various versions.
Simply put: Watch Dogs has been split into more strands for its release than an old shoelace.
Elder Scrolls Online patch unsticks stuck NPCs, makes a hard knock life harder for werewolves
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Do you find that the good people of Tamriel run away from you mid-conversation? Or stand rigid, as if pinned in place by poor pathfinding? There are two possible explanations.
a) You’re a werewolf. The world is terrified of you, and this latest patch is only going to make things worse.
b) It’s just the bugs. In which case, this latest patch is only going to make things better.
GTA was Elite's true successor, says Braben: "games set in space lost sight of freedom"
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Elite and Frontier spawned an entire subgenre that’s just now beginning to orbit the sun, powered by fuel sourced from Kickstarter. But in the 20 years prior to Elite: Dangerous and Star Citizen, David Braben reckons space games simply stopped being about frontiers.
Instead, freedom became the preserve of other settings - of games like GTA.
"Raids in Wildstar are what we always thought raids should be," say Carbine: "Insane."
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If you’ve watched Wildstar videos like this one, you might know that its combat system prides tactical coherence above all else - telegraphing both player and enemy attacks rather than letting the fight devolve into chaos and cooldowns.
“In the open world, this makes combat clear, dynamic and reactive,” say Carbine. “In dungeons, it feels dangerous and exciting. And it makes raids insane.”
Dota 2 International 2014's Compendium outsells its predecessor in one day
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Valve have shifted more copies of their inches-thick tournament almanac in the last day that they did over the course of last year’s Dota 2 International, the company have announced. The Compendium doubles as a big prize pot for the Dota community to pour their coin into - and consequently the prize pool now sits at a positively whopping $4,229,664.
Diablo III lead producer leaves Blizzard behind for Star Citizen; "I knew I had to be a part of it"
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“With my head in the clouds and my eyes on the stars, I am contemplating life after #Blizzard,” tweeted Alex Mayberry, decade-long Blizzard veteran and Diablo III’s lead producer.
And then, today: “Hailing @robertsspaceind at Cloud Imperium Games, requesting permission to board.”
In his new role, Mayberry will oversee product development for Chris Roberts’ overfunded space sim, and his underlings will call him executive producer.
Early access, but in a box: Nordic Games are selling hard copies of Planetary Annihilation
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There it is on Amazon, in a rectangular DVD box like all the others - a tangible, physical version of Planetary Annihilation, the interstellar RTS currently tearing up Steam Early Access.
“Of course there will be some who dislike the idea or question its raison d'être (especially from those who have Steam on start-up),” publishers Nordic told PCGamesN. “But we are willing to find it out for ourselves.”
Looking back at EVE Fanfest 2014: space trucks, MMA fighters and virtual reality
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The last time I played EVE Online was five years ago. I was in a corporation whose name I can no longer remember. My job was to drive a huge freighter ship around an asteroid belt so that smaller mining ships could deposit their hauls and get back to shooting rocks with their lasers. I’d do this for hours, collecting ore, opening up my cargo hold to accept my colleagues’ valuable dirt, warping back to the nearest station to dump it and then returning to the belt to fill up again. I was a truck driver. In space. An interstellar Eddie Stobbart.
Greatest Hits: Guild Wars 2 revisits the past for Festival of the Four Winds
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Guild Wars 2 has easily been considered MMO royalty in the almost two years it has been around, its ‘Living World’ content generally seen as solid additions to the game and frequently keeping the world of Tyria a fresh and funky place to be.
The good people of China are only just getting to know Guild Wars 2 though, and whilst NCSoft’s China launch is going well for Guild Wars 2, new Chinese players have missed out on many months of great content. The Festival of the Four Winds is about to change that.
Sledgehammer approached Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare as if it were a new series
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Sledgehammer Games are currently slaving away on their first solo entry in the Call of Duty series. But despite crafting the eleventh core entry in the franchise, the team decided to approach Advanced Warfare as if it were a brand new IP.
GameSpy won’t be made open-source say Glu
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As the sun slowly sets on GameSpy’s great multiplayer legacy, the healers, priests, and necromancers slowly walk away from its altar shaking their heads. Resurrection is impossible, the dying breath cannot be prevented. EA has stepped away, mumbling that they cannot fathom the technology. And now Glu, GameSpy’s adoptive parent, has dismissed the idea of the technology going public as open-source.
Hacked off: FIFA 14 player creates anti-cheat tool to ward off hackers
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Did you know that FIFA 14 is plagued by hackers? According to one player of the PC football game, the multiplayer community is blighted by cheaters who use a program that tells the FIFA servers that the match is over and credits the hacker with a win for their team.
This player - YouTube user m41nd3 - is fed up with cheaters ruining his game. And so he’d created his own little piece of code to help identify potential cheats and avoid them altogether.
Metro developer 4A Games opening new studio in Malta
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Developer 4A Games - famed for the Metro series - will soon open a new studio in Malta. The studio will act as the developer's HQ, with key members of the company relocating from the current Kiev, Ukraine headquarters to Malta as part of the move.
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