Valve release Left 4 Dead 2 assets to Source Filmmakers
Valve have pulled the lid off one of the best PC first person shooters ever made and poured its contents over the heads of grateful amateur animators.
“Both the Source Filmmaker and Left 4 Dead communities have been asking for this for a while,” said the developers, “so we expect great things!”
Magicka devs' Gauntlet reboot set for September 23 release
Arrowhead are remaking Gauntlet, from the ‘80s. Had you forgotten? In that case you probably won’t particularly mind that it’s been delayed by a few weeks. The developers will spend the next month “fine-tuning details” to ensure they’ve got a “robust multiplayer experience” on their hands. And then come September 23, we’ll be playing a sort of artfully-stunted action RPG.
Why id reworked Quake Live for newcomers: "We have often longed for a wider audience"
Quake might be one of the fastest shooters ever made - but the changes id have wrought ahead of Quake Live’s Steam release are happening all-too-quickly for players who’ve been hopping about the same arenas since 1999.
Loadouts, item timers and an auto-hop mechanic have all been introduced in an effort to bring in players. But why the sudden recruitment drive?
“While Quake will always be a home to the competitive base, we have often longed for a wider audience who could experience, appreciate, and fall in love with all that it has to offer,” explained id.
BioWare will support Dragon Age: Inquisition multiplayer "far beyond Mass Effect 3"
Did you hear? Dragon Age: Inquisition has a four-player co-op dungeon-crawling mode. Gasp.
The more you think about it, actually, the less surprising it gets. There’s precedent set by The Old Republic’s co-op Flashpoints, the recently-announced Shadow Realms and, in particular, the surprising success of Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer.
It’s Mass Effect that BioWare Edmonton are looking to match and outdo in Inquisition’s loot-driven diversion. They have months of updates planned.
Guild Wars 2 is doing really well in China
Guild Wars 2 is one of the best MMOs on PC, but it was denied to one of the most MMO-literate audiences in the world until May of this year. More fool ArenaNet: Guild Wars 2 sales doubled in the months after its Chinese release, and have now helped publishers KongZhong stay in the black.
Empty space: Eve devs CCP lay off high-ranking staff and close San Francisco office
CCP have closed their San Francisco office and let go of one of their most visible executives in chief marketing officer David Reid, a financial statement has revealed. The move comes as part of an effort to “combine and simplify” the Eve operators’ business.
Sledgehammer "worked with a Pentagon adviser" for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
Three years ago, Sledgehammer had just finished propping up an Infinity Ward devastated by the departure of half its staff to Respawn Entertainment. They’d made another game about Russian ultranationalists in Modern Warfare 3, and were tasked with conceiving the Next Big Threat for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.
“We got together with a scenario planner from the department of defense, who is active in the Pentagon,” said Sledgehammer co-founder Michael Condrey. “His job is to think about future threats and prepare ‘what if’ scenarios for the US government. So we asked him, what do you think will be the conflict of tomorrow?”
Internet misogynists drive Anita Sarkeesian out of her house with death threats
Here is the news. It's bad news. A woman who made a video on the internet about women in games has been driven out of her home by death threats and misogynistic abuse.
Anita Sarkeesian, author and host of the Tropes vs Women in Video Games series, received a torrent of online abuse following the release of her latest video, which focused on the objectification and sexualisation of non-playable women characters in games.
"Some very scary threats have just been made against me and my family," she tweeted. The threats prompted her to leave her home and contact the authorities. Here's the video.
S.W.A.P is a first-person shooter with body-swapping and no guns
First-person shooters are often laden with goals and objectives, but one always rises to the top: shoot and kill things. Chaos Theory Games clearly aren’t ones for convention, because their upcoming multiplayer FPS S.W.A.P has no guns and only indirect ways to destroy opponents. Strictly speaking, there’s no death, either, as all combatants are swift wee robots with jetpacks.
The clue as to how these little robotic soldiers destroy each other is in the acronym. They launch projectiles that allow them to swap bodies, and do bad things with their stolen form.
Warlords of Draenor's beta patch notes reveal big changes for Hunters
As Blizzard watched testers playing through Warlords of Draenor content, they’ve been doing a lot fiddling and tweaking. So the patch notes for the expansion - which were made available a while back - have been appropriately updated.
Racial traits and crowd control have seen some very small number of changes, but most of the update is concerned with World of Warcraft’s classes, all of which have changed in varying degrees.
Not going to PAX Prime? There are bundles for that
If you can’t make it to PAX, which you will no doubt know is opening its doors tomorrow, then you might as well stay at home and play some games. To assist in this noble endeavour, two bundles have been released - one on Steam and the other on Humble Bundle - filled to the brim will indie treats.
Hopefully, your weekend is looking less gloomy.
No world is safe: Planetary Annihilation launches next week
Uber Entertainment has decided that the studio’s world-destroying RTS, Planetary Annihilation, is almost ready for launch. In just over a week, on September 5th, the game will leave Early Access behind.
It’s been a good long while since we took a look at the game. In my Planetary Annihilation Early Access review I advised patience, as it was only just getting meat on its lovely bones. But a lot’s changed since then, with the inclusion of Galactic War and the new features introduced in the gamma phase.
We’ll no doubt be taking another look next month, but in the mean time, here’s the launch trailer.
Titanfall gets a new mode, Pilot Skirmish, and Titans aren't invited
I like mechs as much as the next guy, and since I’m alone in my office, I am the next guy, and I like mechs quite a lot. But when it comes to Titanfall, I’m less a fan of the mechs than I am the pilots who… pilot them; specifically when they are doing things other than piloting their Titans.
Titanfall update six is for people like me then, amazing people. It introduces a new game mode: Pilot Skirmish, which strips out AI troops and Titans, leaving two teams of eight pilots to duke it out alone.
Hearthstone pro joins Blizzard as associate game designer
As eSports have become more prominent, the question of what the hell one does after they stop pro-gaming has been getting raised more. Riot’s even got a rookie camp that aims to not only teach League of Legends players how to market themselves and conduct themselves during interviews, but also prepare them for a career after eSports.
In the case of Hearthstone player Ryan "Realz" Masterson, a job at Blizzard was where his career has taken him. The ex-Mana Grind leader took an associate game designer position with the Hearthstone and World of Warcraft developer after enjoying several tournament victories and becoming a notable streamer.
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