Hearthstone expansion will shuffle 100 new cards into the game
The next release for Hearthstone will be a 100-card expansion, Blizzard have indicated. It’ll begin a new cadence of single player updates and expansions for one of the best PC games of 2014 so far, set to play out over the course of the next year.
Star Citizen's $55m won't turn into profit; all pre-launch funds to be "spent on development"
Star Citizen first found success through a WordPress crowdfunding plug-in. Then it found further success on Kickstarter. And then it sort of forgot to stop, slurping success through a straw from some bottomless pit of player goodwill. Today, Star Citizen is in the Guinness Book of World Records - not as the most-crowdfunded game of all time, though it is, but as the most-crowdfunded anything ever.
But the game hasn’t reached profitability yet, absurd as that sounds. The $55 million raised in its name to date will all be funnelled into development, says RSI fleet commander Chris Roberts.
“I sometimes get asked why we continue to raise money,” he wrote. “Haven’t you already raised enough to make the game? The answer is that Star Citizen isn’t a normal game. It’s not being developed like a normal game and it’s not being funded like a normal game.”
Kickstarter games in 2014 will make less than half the amount they did last year, say analysts
Kickstarter successes in the games industry have been smaller and less frequent so far in 2014 - and consultancy firm ICO Partners expect developers to muster less than half of 2013’s total by the end of the year.
What’s to blame? A relative dearth of big name developers, ICO reckon, and Steam Early Access.
Planetside 2 grows space pumpkins in today's update
Did you know? Space pumpkins boast a variety of medical and scientific uses over their plainer, earth-bound cousins. If you didn’t, not to worry: you’re about to become rapidly acquainted with the orange wonderfruit’s interstellar variant.
In a fortuitously seasonal mix-up, a ship-load of pumpkins has been spilled evenly over the surface of Auraxis. The galaxy’s fruit-pickers aren’t equipped with the necessary training to enter that famous warzone, so it’ll be up to Auraxis’ soldiers to send pumpkin seeds along their way.
Bedlam is a permadeath post-apocalyptic roguelike built around the Banner Saga engine
It’s nice to see successful RPG studios sharing their tech - reminds us of the late ‘90s, when for a little while the Infinity Engine powered anything with a rulebook.
Obsidian have loaned out the Pillars of Eternity engine for Torment: Tides of Numenera, and now Banner Saga types Stoic have lent their tech to Bedlam - a permadeath, post-apocalyptic roguelike with acronymical ambitions to marry FTL and XCOM.
How Hex has evolved on the way to open beta
Hex, the first collectible card game MMO, has come a long way since its first alpha build. As it readies itself for open beta players can now take part in 128-man tournaments, buy and sell cards through the auction house, and, with a move to the upgraded Unity engine, it's looking better than ever.
Cryptozoic's work is paying off, creative director Cory Jones tells me. “People are playing a lot. The average session is something like 3 – 4 hours. In the first six weeks of the closed beta there were about a million booster packs opened, we had about 600,000 games played, and we recently hit 10,000 paid tournaments.”
Hex is going to be huge.
Watch WoW boss Anub'arak make holes in a Heroes of the Storm map
Heroes of the Storm is the only game we’ve ever called “a triumph”. If games had an award season, we’d say it was tipped for awards.
As the Blizzard MOBA emerges, bug-cleansed and account-wiped in the last stage of its technical alpha, Blizzard have advertised the addition of a former WoW boss to Heroes of the Storm’s roster: the insectoid undead king Anub’arak.
Fuck WoW, he was legit in WC3
Valve announce the 2014 Saxxy Award winners (they're all TF2 shorts)
The fourth annual Saxxy Awards promised a more varied line-up than we’ve been used to, thanks to the release of Left 4 Dead and Portal assets to Source Filmmakers. Which makes it all the more surprising to see TF2 creations claim every top spot in the competition. We’ll be waiting til next year to see the fruits of that change.
There’s no faulting the victors for quality, though. The creator of this year’s winning short did a canny thing - made a film that said something about the lives of Valve animators. Take a look.
Crusader Kings 2 is free this weekend on Steam to celebrate 1 million copies sold
If you had any plans this weekend, you can forget them: Paradox’s feudal strategy game, Crusader Kings II is free to play this weekend on Steam. I’m sure you’ve heard about the mad stories that come from this game - it oozes with anecdotal potential. If you’re still on the fence about Crusader Kings II, you should probably try it.
Stardock unveil Sorcerer King, a new 4X fantasy game on Steam Early Access
Stardock, who brought us the likes of Sins of a Solar Empire and Galactic Civilizations, have abandoned the setting of space in favour of a more traditional fantasy one. Their new 4X strategy game is called Sorcerer King, and it’s available today via Steam Early Access.
It’s a “new breed” of strategy game according to Stardock.
Beyond the Summit announce The Summit 2: $100,000 global Dota 2 tournament
Casting studio Beyond The Summit have announced their second Dota 2 tournament: The Summit 2. They’ve got $100,000 up for grabs to the best teams around the world.
Just like the Dota 2 International, players and spectators can purchase an in-game compendium item to help increase the prize pool, while also offering bonus in-game items and tournament statistics.
If you’re looking for the next biggest tournament after The International, this is it.
Rust’s mouth now moves when it talks
As with most civilisations, developing from a nude caveman to the king of a wooden utopia in Rust requires a little communication. Voice chat has always been present and correct in the game, but these voices appear to emanate from hidden speakers in the characters' chests rather than due to the flapping of tongues and the adjustment of lips.
That was then, but this is now. 'This' being the movement of player mouths when voice chat is active.
Pillars of Eternity delayed until next year
Obsidian’s hotly anticipated classic-style RPG Pillars of Eternity has been kicked back down the release schedule. The game is now due to be released in 2015.
The delay comes after the game’s closed beta, which revealed to the development team a collection of bugs and issues that require a little more time to rectify than Obsidian originally expected.
It's squid monsters versus killer robots in apocalyptic RTS, Human Resources
The end of the world (zombies anyone?) is a commonly used setting in a lot of games these days, but makers of Planetary Annihilation, Uber Entertainment, have spun a twist on their newest RTS game. Human Resources puts you in the shoes of not one, but two apocalyptic forces in order to claim the remnants Earth for your own: giant insect-like robots and the mammoth creatures known as the Ancient Ones.
But none of this will happen unless the game is successful on Kickstarter, where they’re asking for smooth $1.4 million dollars.
Far Cry 4 has a lot of tools for destruction
The Far Cry series has always done guns better than the average shooter. It’s not just the selection, but the feel and mechanical love that goes into each one. They’ve all got lovely little notches cut out from years of use, solid kick-back, and a sense of presence that really sells the open-season experience.
Far Cry 4 doesn’t look like it’s bucking the trend anytime soon. This new trailer shows off some of the game’s guns and other death-dealers that will soon be available for hire.
ArenaNet are hiring a Guild Wars 2 game designer for "raid content"
Guild Wars 2 at present currently has zero raids - not counting the world bosses - but ArenaNet might be looking to change that. A new job posting for a Guild Wars 2 game designer specifically mentioning “raid content” suggests that raids are at least on the drawing board. It’s also backed up by several mentions of “Guild Raids” on the games forums, straight from the developers mouth.
Oculus Rift Development Kit 1 plans are now open source, go “make something awesome” say devs
VR sensation Oculus Rift is two years into development now and is, what some would say, a ‘pretty big deal’. From a Facebook takeover to a deal with Samsung, Oculus has sprouted from the mind of a 19-year-old Palmer Luckey and bloomed into the biggest thing in consumer electronics.
Whilst Oculus are proud of that progress, they acknowledge that none of it would be possible if not for their fans and supporters. As a thank you, Oculus are making the hardware and software details for Development Kit 1 of the Oculus Rift open source.
Piranha Games shuts down Transverse crowd-funding; begins refunding backers
Piranha Games today have announced that they’re halting crowd-funding on their ambitious space title, Transverse. The game, which required at least $1 million dollars for the most basic of features, failed to build any sort of momentum. Conceding defeat, Piranha Games is now refunding all backers for the game, while taking “Transverse behind the curtain” for the time being. hope to see you on the Fringe!
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