Supergiant Games just announced one of the clearest policies I’ve read on a developer’s stance for Let’s Players in a long time.
The reasoning behind its statement is not only proactive on their part, it’s also dead simple: “We often get emails from video content creators asking our permission to create and monetize videos about Bastion,” wrote the developer. “We wanted to come up with a clear stance on this to save everyone the trouble of ever having to ask us about it again.”
As if they were just waiting for me to publish that last post, so they could slap me across their face with a rebuttal, Riot Games just updated their game client to prominently display an interactive comic, heralding the release of the new Ultimate Skin, Spirit Guard Udyr.
The fully voiced comic’s animation is pretty stunning, and its accompanying soundscape provides a degree of immersion to Udyr’s story that’s unprecedented outside of the couple of one-off CGI trailers that Riot has released over the last few years. The invitation presented underneath the title image is wholly accurate; this is not a short comic you’re going to read – it is a comic to be experienced.
Riot Games recently announced Lucian, a new champion for League of Legends, and his concept art confirms rumours that have been hanging around the game’s community for months: Runeterra’s first black champion is finally making an appearance.
Lucian looks like he’s going to be an evil-pursuing, relentless, vengeance-driven maniac, who happens to be black, and I could not care less about the reason for his pursuit, or his ethnicity in a game like League of Legends.
Oh Lucian is black? Cool. Now, look at the size of those guns!
Doing part time work has never been a major concern for me, so I’ve often struggled with the luxury of zero responsibilities.
When I’m forced to work myself to the bone from 7am to midnight every day, I flourish. But give me the opportunity to regularly sleep past 9am, and I slowly tangle myself into a self-loathing mess of poor productivity.
I’m like a slinky climbing down the stairs: When there are evenly spaced steps in front of me, I can tackle them with ease. Hell – even if a couple of those steps are a little weathered or poorly constructed, I usually find a way to adjust. I expand and contract as necessary to keep progressing.
However, when there are no steps present at all, things never go smoothly. Ever tried dropping a slinky from a window a couple of stories high? The coils twist in and out of their original shape, tangling along the way until it finally hits the ground in a convoluted heap that’s barely salvageable.
Some more news about the Xbox 360’s successor was reported by Polygon today, and word of its social and sharing features has me giddy for both next generation consoles likely coming this fall.
I am an extremely social gamer. Although I did once sink around 13 hours into Assassin’s Creed Project Legacy, a Facebook companion game for Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, I’m not talking about the genre of software we’ve come to brand as “social games.”
I’m talking about any type of video game. When I’m done playing a single player experience, I itch to talk about it with my friends to get their take. If a game I’m interested in has got a significant multiplayer component, you can bet that I’m going to try to round-up the gang before I dive in.
When it comes to the home console offerings that Nintendo has provided over the last eight years, I’ve been extremely disappointed. So to see them announce that they’ll be holding smaller E3 press conferences this year is a little worrisome.
Outland Games brings to iOS some of the charm that Uber Entertainment’s Super Monday Night Combat had going for it, but once you get past the initial chuckles, their first mobile foray does little to keep you hooked.
The idea of transplanting the gladiator ideals of ancient times into a futuristic atmosphere has been tossed around in video games for years, usually in the form of first-person shooters. Some titles re-imagine the feeling of competition well. The Unreal Tournament franchise is the first to jump to mind in this category, but many others like 2012’s Nexuiz have struggled to make the concept fun. And I’d put Outland Games in this second category as well.
Jason Schreier of Kotaku responded to a dig from Vanillaware President and developer, George Kamitani today, and you know what, while I agree with Schreier’s stance on the sexism issue that he is trying to tackle, it really sucks that that he needed to make his initial jab at all.
Schreier first called out the artwork of the sorceress in the recent Dragon Crown’s trailer last week, due to her hyper-sexualized design. “As you can see, the sorceress was designed by a 14-year-old boy.” Schreier wrote.
When I’m sitting on a couch with some friends watching movies, playing games, discussing the finer points of a hockey game, and I want to order pizza, I whip out my laptop or phone.
Yet Polygon is reporting that Pizza Hut and Microsoft are patterning together to “allow users to order from the chain’s menu directly through their Xbox 360.”
I get that, as of February 2013, Microsoft has now sold over 24 million Kinect sensors, and it might seem like a no-brainer for them to try and give the other 50-or-so million Xbox 360 owners a reason to pony up the cash for the 3D-camera peripheral, but trying to convince consumers that ordering pizza with one will be easier, is not the way to go. Continue reading
When I take a look back at the quality of the products that Dischan Media has developed in the past, it blows my mind that Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos is the first visual novel they’ve decided to adorn with a price tag.
I don’t enjoy reading – rather, it’s not that I don’t enjoy the act, it’s more that I prefer to consume my information and entertainment through mediums other than pages and books. Why would I torture myself with solely the words of a few great writers when I could be engrossing myself with the work of a multi-disciplined team of talented creators?
Whether it’s the remarkably artistic menus that welcome you to the game when you first launch it, the persistently detailed, yet subtle, facial expressions that shift across the characters’ faces as they react to the situations around them, or the instantly enveloping soundtrack that nudges you along, Learning to Manage Chaos is “reading” done right. Continue reading
Kevin Pennyfeather 