EA hope to make $1 billion from DLC this year
As your newspaper-reading relatives have no doubt informed you by now, these videogames sure do make people a lot of money. And they do. But what your relatives don't know yet is how much the invisible bits tacked onto games make for those same people.
First, Black Ops II DLC make Activision as much money as they’d expect from a standalone, best-selling game. Now, EA expect to take $1 billion in DLC revenue from their 2014 roster of games.
British geologists fill the gaps in Ordnance Survey's Minecraft Great Britain
An awful lot of comprehensive geographical, topographical and geological data about Great Britain has been compiled and compressed on computers. And for decades, nobody knew quite what it was for. Some vaguely recalled that we started mapping in the wake of the Jacobite Rebellion, but that no longer seemed particularly relevant.
Then, with a collective sigh of academic relief, we hit upon the reason: it was all necessary to create an accurate replica of the British landmass in Minecraft. Inspired by the Ordnance Survey’s Minecraft map of Great Britain’s mounds and motorways, the British Geological Survey have recreated the real geology beneath the surface - right down to the bedrock.
SimCity modders do what Maxis couldn't: expand its maximum city size
Is SimCity finally fixed? The server fires that hobbled Maxis’ game at launch were put out and, many months later, we got our much-coveted SimCity offline mode. Now we might even see an end to that third great quibble with the rebooted city builder: its claustrophobic city limits.
Project Orion is a mod already published in beta which pushes back those boundaries - with a few, heavy compromises.
Watch Blizzard explain the Diablo III ladder system new in Reaper of Souls 2.1
Diablo III is unprecedented, which is an odd thing to say about a sequel to anything. But it is: an action RPG with the post-release support of an MMO. That means it’s warped into a substantially better game since it was first, briefly finished two summers ago - and even now, after its wildly successful Reaper of Souls expansion, the game grows.
Over the course of a seven-minute video, Blizzard rummage through the new junk in Diablo III’s trunk.
CCP rework wormholes in Eve Online's third mini-expansion: Hyperion
The appeal of a wormhole is its mystery: what will you find when you come out of the other end, if you come out at all? But Eve players have had wormholes for yonks, and nowadays publish guides about the best wormholes to live in.
Yesterday’s Hyperion update is CCP’s attempt to inject a little of the unknown back into wormholes and their space game at large.
GOG grows: now there's optional regional pricing and DRM-free movies
GOG has gone through a dramatic change today. There are new appendages sticking out of its torso, which might be a bit shocking, but don’t worry, it’s not a freak mutation.
Regional pricing, which was planned and subsequently scrapped earlier this year, has returned, but in an entirely optional format. And the DRM-free platform is attempting to beat Steam to the punch when it comes to movies, offering 21 films - documentaries, all - about our funny old industry.
There was an Elite musical co-written by Ian Bell's brother. You can read the whole thing online now
Hidden in plain sight on Elite co-creator Ian Bell's homepage is a semi-complete Elite musical, with tunes from the developer's brother Aidan Bell and lyrics by writer Brian Phillips. The musical, which as far as I can tell never entered production, is simply titled Elite: The Musical — The Elite Musical and it's brilliant. It's about some space folks who head off into the stars in pursuit of a notorious pirate, with unexpected twists and turns along the way.
You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll damn the cruel universe that did not allow this to reach the West End. There's a plot synopsis if you'd rather not try to guess how all the songs work, but otherwise, here are some of the best bits.
Shadowrun: Dragonfall - Director's Cut turns the expansion into a standalone next month
While Shadowrun Returns did a lot of things very well, particularly in the writing, it didn’t quite offer the freedom that its tabletop forebearer was known for. Its expansion, Dragonfall - a proper expansion like the ones found in ye olden tymes - made strong moves in that direction though. A big hub to explore, lots of optional quests, a proper cast of party members who don’t mind a bit of a gab - it was quite the improvement.
And now soon you’ll be able to pick it up as a standalone. Shadowrun: Dragonfall Director’s Cut will come with the expansion’s campaign, five new missions and a slew of changes and new features that might even make it worth dipping in a second time. It’s free if you own the expansion already, too.
StarCrawlers makes dungeons out of spaceships
Despite its apparent heyday being far behind us, there does seem to be a healthy number of modern first-person dungeon crawlers around. Surprisingly, many of them are handheld games, but on PC we’ve not been left out in the cold. Legend of Grimrock and Might & Magic X are the most notable ones, but there’s StarCrawlers, too, and it looks rather promising. And the dungeons are spaceships rather than crumbling ruins and dark caves, which is definitely a welcome shift.
Supply drops are how you gear up in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare multiplayer
Acquiring futuristic killing tools and bulky armour that makes you look a wee bit like a robot is one of the ways future soldier sorts will be progressing through Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare’s multiplayer modes. What’s the point of going to war unless there’s loot at the end?
Direct your eyes below, where Sledgehammer Games’ Michael Condrey gives up the skinny on the shooters supply drop system.
Quake Live gets a massive, newcomer-friendly update in anticipation of the Steam launch
When free, browser-based Quake Live was announced for Steam back at QuakeCon, bringing with it changes and new features, details on what these changes would actually be were sparse. But now the curtain has been lifted, and a hefty update has been applied to the game to get it ready for what the team no doubt hopes will be an influx of new players when it launches on Steam.
Most of the changes are built around the team’s goal to broaden its appeal, making it more welcoming to newcomers. This includes things like letting players select their loadout - their primary and secondary weapons - and scrapping gun-specific ammo packs for global ones.
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