The best pro gaming to watch this weekend

It's another great weekend of competitive electronic gaming in store, with a World Championship, a Major qualifier, and a community-supported LAN event happening.

It's another great weekend of competitive electronic gaming in store, with a World Championship, a Major qualifier, and a community-supported LAN event happening. It's the biggest event of the year for Smite, with it's World Championship running from Thursday through to the end of the weekend. Meanwhile, over in the Dotaverse there's the Shanghai Major qualifiers to enjoy. Finally, there's one of the cooler events in a while, the Heroes of the Storm 'Heroes Rising' tournament is a crowdfunded LAN event taking place in LA this weekend. Read on to see how you can tune in live:

Smite: World Championship 2016

If you're goal is to watch the highest level of play possible this weekend, regardless of the game, Smite is what you'll want to watch. The biggest event of the year for Hi-Rez's action-MOBA, this is the winner-take-all, final showdown between the best teams in the world. The World Championship started yesterday and runs through January 10th. You can watch on the official Twitch channel here, and games go from 8am-8pm PT most days—you can find the full schedule here. Catch up with what happened on day 1 here, and our very own Chris Thursten is at the event live and ready to fill you in as the weekend continues.

Dota 2: Shanghai Major Main Qualifiers

Although the Dota 2 Shanghai Major isn't until the beginning of March, qualifiers started on Thursday and and continue through the weekend—with the playoff bracket starting Saturday. There was an open qualifier earlier this week, but the main qualifier is split into four regions, with the top two teams from each region qualifying for the Shanghai Major. Games begin at 10am PT on Friday, and 2:30pm PT Saturday and Sunday, and you can watch live on the BeyondTheSummit Twitch channel here.

Heroes of the Storm: Heroes Rising

Heroes Rising is a LAN tournament held in LA with both invited and qualifying teams, but the coolest part of this event is that it was crowdfunded by Esports Arena, raising over $8k on Kickstarter—70% of which went straight into the prize pool. It begins today at 4pm PT with a series of showmatches (one of the Kickstarter stretch goals) and then continue from 11am-10pm PT on Saturday and 11am-8pm PT on Sunday. You can watch on the main Twitch channel here—another stretch goal added a second stream with alternate games here, and can take a look at the bracket here.

is dedicated to esports and competitive gaming. Check back every day for exciting, fun and informative articles about League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, CS:GO and more. GL HF!

Top iPhone game apps: Angry Birds Space, Draw Something head up paid charts

Warhammer Online to shut down this December

I'm pretty surprised by the news that Warhammer Online is scheduled for closure.

I'm pretty surprised by the news that Warhammer Online is scheduled for closure. Mostly that's because I'd largely forgotten about it. Er, whoops, that can't have helped matters. Mythic's fantasy MMO had been quietly existing in the background, after a promising 2008 launch, and a subsequent and continual decline in subscribers. Now, it's due to end this December, with its creators citing the end of their licensing deal with Games Workshop.

"We here at Mythic have built an amazing relationship working with Games Workshop creating and running Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning over the last 8 years," announce the Warhammer Team. "Unfortunately, as with all licensing deals they do eventually come to end and on December 18th, 2013 we will no longer be operating Warhammer Online." Already, Mythic have disabled the purchase of three-month game time codes and auto-renewals, ensuring players aren't paying for time beyond the closure date.

Producer Carrie Gouskos provides a more heartfelt assessmentof the end, writing, "some of the most talented people in gaming made Warhammer possible. They worked insanely long hours, and they put their heart and soul into trying to make this beautiful IP a living and breathing universe."

Meanwhile, other projects hope to continue the spirit of Mythic's history. Former Warhammer Online lead designer Mark Jacobs is currently working on Camelot Unchained, a post-apocalyptic fantasy MMO that raised over $2 million on Kickstarter.

Thanks, Gamasutra.

Get ready for Smite World Championship day two

Today will be the bloodiest day of the Smite World Championship.

Today will be the bloodiest day of the Smite World Championship. With yesterday’s double-elimination best-of-ones behind us—and two teams already out of contention—we’re now staring down four best-of-threes and four further eliminations by the end of the day. Every single team will be fighting for their tournament lives in the quarter finals.

What happened on day one?

The opening round was designed to establish a pecking order among the teams—there’s not a huge amount of inter-regional play in Smite outside of Worlds, so this was when fans (and the teams) got to find out exactly how pronounced the European/North American advantage actually is.

The answer is ‘quite pronounced, but China’, if you were wondering.

European icemen Epsilon were expected to do well, and began the day with a very one-sided victory against the Latin American champions Isurus —14 kills to zero when the game ended after a controlled, almost passive performance that simply shut their opponents out of the game.

Then, Brazilian squad PaiN took on Chinese hopefuls OMG . It was a much more active game than the first, and OMG brought a greedy, aggressive roster that highlighted the difference in regional metagames. However, PaiN’s reactive style and strong counter-initiations proved to be an effective counter.

Like Isurus, Avant are completely undefeated on home turf—in this case, Oceania. They faced off against North American dark horses Enemy and seemed to struggle from the start. Enemy’s jungler, Adjust, brutalised Avant across the map as Hun Batz (who had a very good day in general.) Avant’s loss of confidence was palpable, and they lost 22-6.

Next, the Chinese team QG Reapers faced off against European wildcard (and the most veteran team in the tournament) Fnatic . This was my favourite game of the day when it happened, and well worth watching—a fun, scrappy, aggressive performance by Fnatic that worked their opponents over.

The upper bracket games began with Epsilon vs. PaiN . It was extremely passive and close for a long time, with only two kills each by twenty minutes and big engagements followed by equally big disengagements. Once again the jungler turned out to be key, here, with Adapting opening up the game for Epsilon with a double kill by Fenrir. The game ended 13-5 to Epsilon after 30 minutes.

Fnatic vs. Enemy was the game of the day, for me, and it’s embedded above—definitely watch it rather than read about it if you only catch a single match. Good early strategic play to Fnatic gave way to very impressive individual play by Enemy, including a series of great reads by Vetium, a brilliant Khepri ult by PainDeViande, and a game-winning Zhong Kui play by Khaos. These gave Enemy the momentum they needed to win.

The first elimination match was OMG vs. Isurus , which began cagey—as you’d expect, with the tournament at stake—but tipped OMG’s way after an early triple kill by Luo’s Neith. The teams continued to trade, but fights steadily played to OMG’s advantage despite a few casualties. OMG snowballed into a 25 minute victory, and Isurus were sent home.

Finally, Avant faced off against QG . The Australian team scored first blood but immediately traded and seemed nervous afterwards. QG’s beefy front line, lead by Mikasa’s Hades and If’s Sobek, reliably created scenarios that Avant did not want to trade into. Avant managed one or two good defenses in the midgame, but it felt like psychological momentum was on QG’s side throughout—dominance expressed as much in aggressive positioning as in actual kills. When the dust settled, Avant were the day’s second casualty.

Today’s essential match

The cop-out answer here is ‘all of them’—after all, top-seeded teams Cloud9 and Paradigm both got a bye through the first round, and they’ll both play today. It’ll also be interesting to see if Enemy can continue their tear as they face PaiN. Even so, my pick for the day is Epsilon vs. Fnatic at 20:15 EST (17:15 PST/01:15 GMT).

These two European teams are exclusive scrim partners and it’s only by a quirk of the brackets that they find themselves facing off in an elimination match in the quarter finals. They know each other better than any other team does, and they’re close personally, so this will be a close-fought and emotional series regardless of the result. They’re also entertaining teams to watch, which counts for something too.

For further stream and schedule information, check out our guide to the event. Enjoy SWC 2016!

is dedicated to esports and competitive gaming. Check back every day for exciting, fun and informative articles about League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, CS:GO and more. GL HF!

Top iPhone game apps: Gameloft's Shark Dash debuts to high ranking

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Our Verdict
A true wizards wheeze, and a fine return for one of gamings oldest tactical classics.

NEED TO KNOW

What is it? A magical duel for between 2 and 4 players, where spells cut the air and summoned monsters battle it out… unless the spells fizzle out, which they often do.
Influenced By: Magic & Mayhem
Reviewed On : i7, GTX 970, 8GB RAM
Alternatively: King’s Bounty
Expect to pay: £15 / $20
Release: Out Now
Publisher: Snapshot Games
Developer: Snapshot Games
Website: Official site
Multiplayer: 2-4 (deathmatch and co-op)

Your love for or frustration with Chaos Reborn, the remake of that Julian Gollop game that’s not Laser Squad or X-COM, hinges on one question: do you feel lucky? Well, do ya, no doubt lovely and intelligent person? It’s a game of surprising depth and complexity, where wizards wage war with powerful spells and summoning hideous beasts to fight in their name—but it’s also one where, totally guaranteed, your dragon with a 90% chance to clobber the enemy in the next hex will fail miserably five times in a row, only to be casually annihilated by a passing goblin.

This isn’t so much a design choice as a line drawn in the sand, not between good and bad, but by a philosophical divide almost as deep—exactly as Hearthstone players are currently torn between appreciating its random elements for spicing up rounds and objecting to each new element that puts success at the whim of invisible dice, which detracts from the purity of deck-building and skill based play.

As with Hearthstone, it’s not that simple. Chaos Reborn is a fiendish game on its own terms, and one with a high skill ceiling. Managing luck is simply part of that. When summoning a card or casting a spell, you only have a percentage chance of it actually working. If it doesn’t, you burn the card. However, that chance is malleable in a couple of basic ways. You can cast magic to slowly bring the general aura of the map over to either Law or Chaos, making your spells and summons more effective, or spend mana points to directly boost the chances of a spell creating a snarling hellbeast instead of a sad magic fizzle.

Every move counts. Games of Chaos Reborn are short, and each one only allows one move and attack per unit, and one spell or summon. High ground gives huge bonuses for attacking, and huge disadvantages for enemies below. Spells like Tangle Vine can cut off incoming units, only for your rival to fly a Pegasus over the top of a nearby hill. By default, each wizard is weak and barely able to clonk a Gooey Blob, but give them a mount like an elephant, a Magic Sword and Magic Shield, and suddenly they become a monster killing machine. Even the height of creatures matters. Every one has its specialities to remember and use, like the Paladin's ability to strike back, and Undead ones' immunity to mundane attacks. There’s a good selection, but not too many—it’s a manageable army, with every unit carefully chosen to pull its weight in a world where one lucky/successful hit from a Rat is as good as a Hellhound bite.

The random element never goes away, and leads to more cries of "bullshit!" than an overly-enthusiastic poop-identification club’s annual trivia competition. But it’s the layering of the elements that soon takes priority. The terrain control, the psychology, the preparation and twisting the numbers in your favour, all of it makes rounds of Chaos Reborn as tense and tactical as more predictable games like the esteemed Advance Wars series. It’s also fair, generally. For every moment where the RNG turns round and punches you in the face, it’ll have done it to your opponents. It’s just that those moments are never going to sit as sour.

A good example of the two sides meeting is Chaos’ most controversial mechanic, Illusions. These allow you to cast any summon with 100% success, with the Illusion hitting and acting just like the real thing—the catch being that if the other wizard guesses that it’s not real, they can cast the always-available Disbelieve spell on it and wipe it from existence without even burning up that turn’s cast. Reborn talks about itself in terms of poker as much as anything else, and it’s a good metaphor—you play the cards you have, but you also have to play your opponent.

You play the cards you have, but you also have to play your opponent.

The meat of Chaos Reborn is in the raw tactical game, played between two and four players on simple but attractive hex fields. Equipped mode offers an upgrade system where you can swap gold for gear like Talismen and Staffs to improve and customise your wizard as they level up. You don’t pick specific spells, like in a CCG, but your gear does skew the draws in your chosen direction and offers advantages like boosts to specific spells that you can build a playstyle around.

There’s also a single-player mode called Realms of Chaos, which plays like a simplified Disciples/Age of Wonders. This gives you a map to explore. You must recruit helpers in towns and fight a timer to avoid being Banished. It’s not a mode worth buying the game for in and of itself, but it’s a well-implemented and surprisingly comprehensive bonus feature on top of the core skirmish action, with just enough scripting and scope to let good worlds stand out.

Chaos Reborn lives and dies on its combat though, and it hasn’t lost any of its charm since the original version. Sadly, the community is a small one, which can make it hard to get a good game going. That in turn puts more reliance than there should be on the single-player side. It deserves a bigger player-base though, as provided you embrace its fundamental love of random chance and don't mind rolling with punches, it’s a fantastic tactical game with far more than luck on its side.

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The Verdict

Chaos Reborn

A true wizards wheeze, and a fine return for one of gamings oldest tactical classics.

We recommend By Zergnet

Smite season 3: Japanese gods herald huge changes

On the eve of the Smite World Championship 2016 , I visited Hi-Rez Studios for an early look at the upcoming season 3 changes, which will start to come into effect from Monday next week—immediately after this weekend’s main event comes to a close.

A challenger appears

The standout addition to Smite is the game’s first new pantheon in several years. Starting with the sun goddess Amaterasu, Shinto deities will be making their way into the Smite on an ongoing basis. This is clearly news to you and the entire Smite community, and not something that has been steadily leaking out of Hi-Rez over the past weeks and months. Let’s all look surprised!

Nonetheless, she’s a beautifully-designed character: Hi-Rez have come a long way from their weaker earlier work (hi Neith). Her look incorporates key items from mythology, including Amaterasu’s necklace and mirror, and detailed swordplay animations have been created with a sensitive eye for accuracy.

She’s a Warrior and a solo laner with an emphasis on teamfight utility. Her passive marks enemies she hits on the map, and a second hit applies a debuff that causes Amaterasu’s teammates to do more damage to the target. All of her abilities have both a defensive and offensive mode. She has a dash which applies a cleanse to allies that she passes through, an aura that can be toggled between offensive and defensive bonuses, and an active tanking power that buffs her damage based on the amount of damage she absorbs. Her ultimate is a three-hit combo, ending in a stun—essentially a revamp of Guan Yu’s ultimate from the Smite beta.

Amaterasu will be available in game from January 12th, and her arrival will also herald the beginning of the ‘Rising Dawn’ event, a ‘mini-Odyssey’ with Japanese-themed skins for lots of existing heroes—including an awesome-looking Kaiju look for Sobek.

Box of trinkets

While Hi-Rez aren’t going into much detail about the specifics of season 3’s balance changes, they did reveal that a lot of work is going into a revamp of the itemisation system. Active items are getting the most substantial rework—apparently, the majority of players don’t even buy them (here’s to you, everybody who has ever tried to persuade their arena team to buy beads.)

From season 3 onwards, active items will now be called ‘trinkets’. And they’ll be free. And there’ll only be one level for each one, which will sit somewhere between the level 2 and level 3 versions of each current active item. You’ll receive one free trinket at the start of every game, and you’ll have the option to pick up a second one later on as you level up. You’ll have a choice of trinkets, naturally, but there’ll be obvious picks for each character.

This is a buff and a nerf all in one, forcing actives into the hands of players who wouldn’t previously buy them while also reducing their overall effectiveness in the lategame. To account for this, other changes to items and gods will be made—particularly with regard to crowd control duration. Hi-Rez are quiet on the precise details at the moment, however.

More broadly, the patch will focus on creating more pronounced power curves for gods, establishing a sense of early, middle and late-game power and encouraging teams to strategise around those ideas.

What ails you

In the name of clarity, a standardised system is being implemented to make it much easier to tell which status effects have been applied to your character at any given time. Stuns, silences, disarms and so on will now have single, consistent icons and much clearer representation in the game UI.

Welcome (back) to the jungle (again)

The Conquest mode jungle is getting another rework, with new pathways—particularly around midlane—and a new speed camp, which is described as ‘very exciting’. Expect more information later in the event.

Quests and matchmaking

Daily rewards are dead, replaced by Heroes of the Storm-style daily quests that you can hold onto and complete at leisure. These comprise things like ‘win three games as a Mage’ or ‘win five games as a Norse god’, and you can complete them in any mode you like—Hi-Rez want to avoid splitting the community up or forcing specific playstyles, but are equally interested in encouraging players to leave their comfort zones from time to time. Gems will be awarded for certain quests, meaning you no longer need to worry about missing a day of log-in rewards if you want to get the best free stuff.

They’re also taking another pass at ranked, which will include a soft MMR reset. The old master league is going away, replaced by a new ‘grandmaster’ system. Places will be reserved for the top 100 players in any given region, and Hi-Rez expect positions to shift constantly—it won’t be enough to get into the top bracket and stay there, you’ll have to work constantly to avoid slipping back down into diamond. The hope is that this more dynamic system will create a more accurate sense of who the best players are at any given time.

Ranked Joust, at last!

The new Chinese Joust map is a major season 3 addition, of course, but as Wes has already played and written about itI figure I’ll move on to the day’s fresher news: Joust is coming to ranked. You’ll be able to bring in your premades and compete properly at this level, which is great news for anybody who, like me, tends to find it easier to pull together groups for 3v3 rather than 5v5. It’ll use the same pick and ban system as ranked Conquest at first, but his may change over the course of testing.

Hi-Rez aim to deliver all of these season 3 changes by February 2nd, and there’ll be multiple bouts of PTS testing starting after SWC 2016. Expect more info as the main event progresses.

is dedicated to esports and competitive gaming. Check back every day for exciting, fun and informative articles about League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, CS:GO and more. GL HF!

Zynga buys Draw Something maker Omgpop

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Our Verdict
Game of Thrones gets the feel of Martin's universe right, but it relies too heavily on familiar themes to form a memorable identity of its own.

need to know

What is it? A six-episode Telltale adventure that takes place in the Game of Thrones universe.
Expect to pay: $30/£23 for the six-episode season
Developer: Telltale Games
Publisher: Telltale Games
Reviewed on: Windows 10, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 780
Multiplayer: None
Link: Official site

Far into the first season of Telltale's Game of Thrones series, one of the characters looks up to find the constellation he's been searching for right where it needs to be. There's no Tolkienesque waiting for a particular moon cycle or time of night; it's as though it never moves. It's a telling event, as much of the season is wrapped up in the same sense of inevitability. Time and time again, I tried to alter its soul-crushing scenarios in my favor through onscreen prompts and swift decisions, but my troubles seemed as destined to fall into place as those stars in the chilly skies north of The Wall. It ultimately makes for an unsatisfying overall experience despite a handful of high marks—Game of Thrones ends up being one of Telltale's weakest recent efforts.

Don't know what The Wall is? You'll need to, as this is no country for uninitiated George R.R. Martin converts. It boldly assumes you know the significance of terms like "Valar morghulis" and events like the Red Wedding. (For that matter, it assumes you know the dance of onscreen hotkey prompts for actions and timed dialogue choices common to Telltale's story adventure games.) It's a smart approach overall, as it lets the plot slip on a coat of intrigue and action immediately rather than tripping over wasted hours of exposition. What's more, it's particularly fertile ground for the introduction of entirely new characters without any connection to the HBO show that Telltale draws its inspiration from.

Enter House Forrester. An offhand mention in A Dance with Dragons technically makes them canon, but Telltale wisely uses that flimsy foundation to mold them into a notable northern house that supplies tough "ironwood" from the sequoia-like glades that surround their vaguely Viking keep of Ironrath. The art team in particular has fun with this concept with varying success. I never grew tired of the way the shadowy, wooded setting contrasted with the often barren vistas of the HBO show, and I usually admired the painterly visuals used for the backgrounds even when they clashed with the more familiar Telltale designs for the human characters.

As for the Forresters themselves? If only their characterizations were as original as their surroundings. I'm more than a little convinced I could describe them individually to a casual watcher of the HBO series and leave them thinking I was talking about the Starks. There's Forrester squire Gared Tuttle, who joins the Night's Watch and frolics with wildlings just like Jon Snow. There's a matriarch who could work as a body double for Catelyn Stark, and a young girl in King's Landing who's basically Sansa Stark with an edge. This servile mirroring of the Starks' tragic tale makes Telltale's few more-or-less original additions all the more appealing, as in the case of the Star-Lord-esque Asher Forrester and his endlessly likeable sellsword companion Beskha. Asher and Beskha's adventures hint at what could have been, but the season overall leaves a bitter aftertaste of Stark déjà vu.

This reliance on the familiar especially poses problems in the appearance of well-known characters from the series (each voiced by their HBO actors). They work best in cameo, as in the case of a tense meeting with Cersei Lannister that still makes me shudder months later. But one infamous jerkwad in particular sticks his sadistic nose into the rivalry between the Forresters and the neighboring Whitehills for several episodes, and the plot tension suffers from the knowledge that he's not going anywhere soon. He's still kicking on HBO, so no matter how cruel or disgusting he gets, I know all too well I can't end his crap with a well-timed crossbow bolt or dagger thrust.

True to expectations, it's a brutal, vicious world Telltale crafts for us here.

True to expectations, it's a brutal, vicious world Telltale crafts for us here. The great strength of the season is its method of adding a personal layer to choices that affect the lives of hundreds — something you won't get in either books or the HBO series. In theory, we're actual players in the game of thrones. It's one thing to watch or read about Ned Stark's choices and argue about what he should have done; it's quite another to discover what you actually end up doing on the spot. And true to form, the series throws some gut punches that initially left me frantically attempting to figure out what I could have done to avoid its Aeschylean tragedies.

But of course, as it turns out, not much. The cast may change, the words may shuffle, but eventually Game of Thrones succumbs to that now-classic Telltale awareness that your choices don't really matter. The tendency stings less in games like Tales from the Borderlands, but it's especially damning here as the appeal of the Forrester saga partly rises from the hope that Martin's horrors could have been avoided if we'd been in charge. That's to say nothing of the other troubles, such as two advisers so opposed that they come off as political cartoons, entire sideplots that seemingly have little import for the main narrative, and a season finale that relies far too heavily on cliffhangers and unresolved threads.

I don’t regret my time with Game of Thrones. It captures the hopelessness of the main series well (although at times it threatens to venture into parody), and in the absence of any true resolutions, I appreciate that it let me vent my frustrations by ramming Valyrian steel through the skull of an insufferable asshole with the help of the usual button prompts and arrow keys. Deep down, I want to look forward to another season. I kind of want to finally see what's so special about the North Grove. But after almost a year of misery piled on misery and after months of placing my hopes on cliffhangers that lead to nothing substantial, right now I'm convinced that winter can't come for this world quickly enough.

The Verdict

Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones gets the feel of Martin's universe right, but it relies too heavily on familiar themes to form a memorable identity of its own.

We recommend By Zergnet

Smite mount arrives in Paladins as a champion

Two new additions to the Paladins beta test have been announced ahead of the Hi-Rez Expo, held as part of this year’s Smite World Championship.

The first is a champion who will be familiar to anybody who plays Hi-Rez’s god-battling MOBA. Grover is a lumbering treant who acts as a mount for the Roman god Sylvanus and apparrently moonlights as a competitive FPS character. Hi-Rez revealed his in-game look (see above) but didn’t say anything about how he actually plays. His weapon is a magical wooden forest lantern, because of course it is, and this presumably works a bit like a gun but who can tell with magical wooden forest lanterns, really.

According to lead designer Rory ‘Drybear’ Newbrough, they’ve retained the services of Grover’s existing voice actor to ensure that his wordless treant groaning is consistent across both Paladins and Smite. This is a huge relief, to be sure.

I managed to confirm after the presentation that Grover will, like any other Paladins character, be able to ride a horse. This makes him a rare example of a mount in one game that is granted a mount of their own in a different game, a bit like if Blizzard released a racing game where your collection of sparkling celestial steeds could ride around in cars. In the interests of fairness, I think they should release a Grover cosmetic for Paladins where he can swap out his mount for Sylvanus himself. Alternatively, they should release a Sylvanus skin for Smite where Sylvanus is riding Grover who is riding a horse. All of these things would be an excellent use of everybody’s time.

Right, yes: they also confirmed that cosmetic skins are coming to Paladins relatively soon. There’ll be whole-character makeovers as well as gun skins, so you’ll have something to look at in first person.

Also: the next map will be called Glacier Keep, and it’ll have a wintry theme with Fortress of Solitude-style ice structures. Expect greater verticality than usual as well as tighter corners. They only showed a single picture of it, so there’s not much more to say than that at the moment.

Smite will undoubtedly rule the show in Atlanta this weekend, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a few more Paladins snippets—and beta keys—made an appearance during the event. Watch this space!

is dedicated to esports and competitive gaming. Check back every day for exciting, fun and informative articles about League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, CS:GO and more. GL HF!

Top iPad Game Apps: Aquaria Premieres To Fast Sales

Square Enix today unveiled plans for a curated publishing platform, through which it hopes to bring together

creators and players to make more game concepts become reality. Game designers will be able to post ideas for games to the Square Enix Collective platform , which can then be judged by the Collective community, made up of players signed up to the platform.

Square Enix adopts crowdfunding model for new program

If the community collectively decides that an idea is great, Square Enix will then utilize a new partnership with crowdfunding website Indiegogo to help get the game idea funded and development underway, and provide distribution services once the game is ready to ship.

Any project pitches can be submitted to the platform for free, whether it simply be to receive feedback from players, or to shoot for the Indiegogo funding plan. Square Enix says that the idea is that studios can receive real feedback from real players, and build momentum behind the idea.

Once a game has been on the platform for 28 days, Square Enix then makes a decision on whether or not your game idea has been successful enough to suggest Indiegogo funding is possible.

Note that there's also an evaluation phase, during which the company will check that your game idea meets its submission parameters, and that you yourself have the expertise and tools to actually create the game. If a studio does not make it through this phase, Square Enix will provide feedback on exactly why.

Phil Elliott, head of the Collective community, says that he wants developers "to walk away with the majority of the sales revenue, and we want to reinvest any profits back into the platform."

The underlying concept, says Square Enix, is to encourage an open development process amongst studios, and for developers to offer transparency and communication with the Collective community around all decision-making.

Notably, Square Enix is also offering some of its own IP to the program. If the company decides that an idea could work well with some of its older Eidos IP, it may choose to allow a studio to build a new game using one of these IPs. The specific IPs up for grabs will be announced at the GDC Next conferencenext month in Los Angeles.

The Square Enix Collective GDC Next talkwill also delve into details on launch plans for the platform, submission parameters, and game devices you can expect to launch on their the service.

Gamasutra had the following questions to put to Elliott regarding the Collective.
Some devs are going to question why exactly they would want to publically put their game ideas out there to a whole bunch of people, especially when there is so much heat around game cloning/ideas being copied by other devs. How would you respond to these people?I understand concerns around privacy and cloning – unfortunately there’s always that risk whenever you engage with an audience prior to launch.
At the point when a dev has realized that their idea is gaining traction, what's to stop them pulling out and going to Indiegogo, Kickstarter etc themselves? Do they have to sign an agreement when they put forward an idea stating that you hold the rights to any idea they propose?Regarding signing an agreement beforehand, there will be submission T&Cs – we're still working on the exact details, but once an idea goes up on Collective, it's a process we'd ask devs to see through to conclusion.

The terms will cover a few things – possible options for the future, not submitting ideas that are knowingly copied, etc – but devs will retain any original IP, that’s something we've sense-checked with a bunch of indie devs to make sure Collective is attractive, not restrictive.
Is it really a great idea to bring gamers into the early stages of game development? I know plenty of developers who believe that gamers don't really know what they want, and that they would rather simply look for ideas they are familiar and comfortable with, rather than hunt down new, fresh ideas. Aren't you just going to end up with a bunch of game ideas being pushed forward that already exist?In terms of bringing gamers into the process early – I think the way that crowdfunding platforms already work is good evidence that the majority of gamers are pretty savvy when it comes to looking at the potential of an idea. But there's no specific requirement that a campaign owner changes a pitch idea in response to the feedback on Collective if it's going to go against their vision.

That said, I think it's really important that we help to give people a greater understanding of what goes into development and the thinking behind making decisions, whilst keeping an open dialogue.

Smite World Championship 2016: what you need to know

The second-ever Smite World Championship begins today in Atlanta.

The second-ever Smite World Championship begins today in Atlanta. I was there for the first one, and had a brilliant time. I’ve written this before, but the Smite scene is still relatively young compared to League of Legends or Dota 2, the games it most resembles. That provides the game, the teams and the community with a strong sense of energy and dynamism, as well as a sort of underdog charm. If you’ve never played or watched Smite, this event is an opportunity to pick up on a bit of that enthusiasm. If you began the new year with a resolution to check out some new competitive games, this makes for a strong first port of call.

What’s Smite like?

Smite is a third-person team strategy game that takes the principles of a MOBA (lanes, items, asymmetric hero powers, and so on) and presents them in the context of an action game. There’s a lot of emphasis on skillshots, tactical movement, and teamfights. The game’s unusual perspective makes awareness and communication particularly important: the best players are able to anticipate enemy plays without the benefit of an isometric viewpoint. The high number of aimed and projectile abilities helps the spectator experience, too: while Smite is predominantly a MOBA, there’s a little bit of shooter in its DNA too.

How do I watch it?

The entire tournament will be streamed on Twitch via the official Smite account. You can find a full schedule on the tournament website, but the broad strokes are this: play begins at around 11:00 Eastern Time (08:00 PST/16:00 GMT) every day from Thursday to Sunday, finishing 8-10 hours later in most cases. Friday will be the longest day, thanks to the quarterfinals, and if you’re only interested in the PC version then Thursday and Saturday will be a bit shorter: both of those end with playoffs for the Xbox One version. If you just want to tune in for the climax, the PC grand final is scheduled to begin at 15:30 Eastern (12:30 PST/20:30 GMT) on Sunday.

What’s the format?

This year’s bracket is tuned for drama. Play opens on Thursday with a series of double-elimination best-of-ones to establish placement. Eight games will be played total, and the bottom two teams will be eliminated. The fifth and sixth-place teams, although they progress to the main event, will face the European and US first seeds in the quarter finals. Those top teams were granted a bye through the first round, so they’ll have a whole day to watch the opposition before they have to play.

From Friday onwards, the main event will progress as a single-elimination bracket. The quarterfinals will be played as best-of-threes, while the semifinals and grand final will all be best-of-five, with the lion's share of $1m going to the winner.

Who’s playing, and what’s their deal?

Reshuffles, buyouts and new sponsorships mean that 2016 roster contains a lot of new names. In North America, Cloud9 arrive as defending champions—four members of this crew won in 2015 as Cognitive Prime. Their regional counterparts are Enemy , who came together later in the Smite Pro League after a drama-filled reshuffle to place second at the Super Regionals last year.

From Europe, Smite’s most active region, come Paradigm —a new, popular team who saw off higher-profile opponents to become the European first seed. They’ll have a lot of fans at Worlds. They’re joined by Epsilon , who boast a very impressive seasonal record and a disciplined playstyle but who were ultimately bested by the scrappier Paragon in the Super Regionals. This is a rivalry worth paying attention to. Fnatic are the third and final European team in contention, the winner of the wildcard. Despite taking the longest route to get to SWC, they’re actually very familiar with the event—this is the exact roster that competed (and came 4th) last year as SK gaming.

Oceania is a new region for Smite, and traditionally a part of the world that has struggled—due to access and ping problems—to compete in global esports. Avant arrive at SWC having never been defeated on home turf, and make for a solid underdog bet. Their coach, Job Hilbers, is the former coach of Titan—they came second in SWC 2015 after a fairytale run of their own, but didn’t qualify this time around.

Isurus are the champions of Latin American Smite, dominant in their region, while PaiN —the Brazilian team—are more of a surprise inclusion. The growing Chinese Smite scene is represented by OMG.B , who again are dominant on home turf but untested internationally. The other Chinese team, QG , is made up of members of ‘Doge is Dog’—they won hearts at SWC 2015 despite having been relatively unknown prior to the event.

What else is happening?

Last year, SWC was also host to a side area where the Xbox One version of the game was playable for the first time. This year, the same area is being turned into an expo for Hi-Rez Studios as a whole. Expect announcements for all of Hi-Rez’s games this weekend, including Paladins. There's also an Xbox One Smite tournament running concurrent with the PC event, the first time the same game has been represented on two different platforms at the same tournament.

For PC Gamer’s part, we’ll be covering the World Championship throughout, reporting on upcoming changes to Smite and Paladins, and catching up with the newly-refounded Tribes Ascend team.

Edit: fixed a typo. Sorry, Isurus!

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Seems we almost got a non-Lego Jurassic World game

I still haven't seen Jurassic World, so I don't yet know if it's the best thing ever, the worst thing ever, or the OKest thing ever, like the Internet says.

I still haven't seen Jurassic World, so I don't yet know if it's the best thing ever, the worst thing ever, or the OKest thing ever, like the Internet says. But the idea of an open world, dino-based survival game floats my boat, even if, er, one of those already exists. We almost had another, if documents dug up by this Jurassic World fansitecan be believed.

Rumours appeared a few months agothat Cryptic Studios Seattle was working on a Jurassic World game before it was closed, and now evidence of such a thing—or an unrelated Jurassic World title—have come to light. The evidence includes dinosaur renders, animations of Chris Pratt, a T-Rex and velociraptors running about, and this handsome render of someone who bears a passing resemblance to the film's likeable hero:

Those earlier rumours described the game (if indeed these images are related to it) as being download-only for Steam, PSN and XBL, and "similar to H1Z1", only third-person, and featuring dinos instead of zombies, obviously. Those dinos would have included the Gallimimus, the Triceratops, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the Velociraptor, the Spinosaurus, and everybody's favourite, the Baryonyx.

While the images have since been taken down from the Jurassic World fansite, NeoGAF has them collated here. (Thanks, Eurogamer.)

Why is Dust2 so popular? Veteran CS:GO mapmakers answer

This year's catalog of GDC panels included some Counter-Strike: " Community Level Design for Competitive CS:GO " a series of words that are alarmingly up my alley .

. There was no way I wasn't missing a panel dedicated to competitive CS:GO, especially when retired Counter-Strike pro player Sal "Volcano" Garozzoand Shawn "FMPONE" Snelling(who we've featured previously on our site in the series " Building Crown") were doing the panelin'.

I'm still writing up my notes and recorded audio from the presentation, which I'll share soon in a separate story. After the panel, though, I pulled Garozzo and Snelling in front of a camera to get them talking about the state of CS:GO's esports scene and the immortality of de_dust2, likely the most-played map in the history of gaming.

Playing PS4 games with PS Vita TV is a lagless, slightly compressed experience

Sony continued to shine a spotlight on PS Vita TV during its Tokyo Game Show keynote, talking up the little device's ability to stream Vita, PS3, and PS4 games. But how they would look, and--more importantly--how they would play, was yet to be known. As soon as the show floor opened we made a beeline to Sony's booth, and after getting hands-on with the hardware we left with mixed opinions. There's

Source 2 coming, will be "free to content developers"

Valve has officially announced that the Source engine, the technology it first used for Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2 in 2004, is getting a successor.

Valve has officially announced that the Source engine, the technology it first used for Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2 in 2004, is getting a successor. Source 2 ( which we've actually known about for quite a while) will be "available for free to content developers," according to Valve's Jay Stelly. "This combined with recent announcements by Epic and Unity will help continue the PCs dominance as the premiere content authoring platform."

It's not clear if Source 2 will be 'free-to-use' like Unreal Engine, which charges royalties on revenue, or if "content developers" excludes certain entities. We do know that it's targeted at both developers and modders.

"With Source 2, our focus is increasing creator productivity," said Stelly, according to the press release. "Given how important user generated content is becoming, Source 2 is designed not for just the professional developer, but enabling gamers themselves to participate in the creation and development of their favorite games."

Valve also announced a Vulkan-compatible version of the engine. Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics API formerly called 'Next Generation OpenGL.' Support for Vulkan is in line with Valve's push to get PC gaming away from Microsoft's DirectX API and onto Linux.

That's all they wrote about Source 2 (in the press release they sent us), so we don't know yet when Source 2 will be available, or what exactly the business model may be. Valve has directed us to a currently empty URL for more ( www.steampowered.com/universe), so that's no help just yet. We've reached out to Valve with questions, and should be able to follow-up on the news soon.

Update: Valve has clarified exactly how free Source 2 will be. It's free to use, with no royalties, but any released games must be made available non-exclusively through Steam.

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New Guild Wars 2 profession revealed

NCsoft and ArenaNet have just unveiled the sixth profession for Guild Wars 2.

NCsoft and ArenaNet have just unveiled the sixth profession for Guild Wars 2. The Thief has arrived, and he's sure to steal your heart (and your coin purse). Something of a mix between GW's Assassin and a rogue from WoW, the Thief will be sneaking into Tyria when GW2 is released.

According to NCsoft's press release, "the Thief is deadly in single combat—particularly when catching enemies off guard. Thieves compensate for their relatively low armor and health by being quick and evasive. They can travel through the shadows, vanish into thin air, or steal items from their opponents and use them as weapons." The Thief, as expected, is a master of hand-to-hand combat, able to dual-wield daggers and swords. They can also dual-wield pistols, something we just don't see enough of in MMOs. Instead of spending Energy, the Thief has a new mechanic dubbed Initiative. All of the Thief's abilities have no cooldowns, so players will have to micromanage how many Initiative points they have available with no breaks in the ability-casting action.

Be sure to stay tuned to PC Gamer—we'll have HQ footage of the Thief in action tomorrow, as well as all the Guild Wars 2 info that we can print. Until then, try to decide whether or not your Thief will be named Aladdin or the Artful Dodger.

Free Guild Wars update to add new areas, heroes and quests

A huge Guild Wars update is landing on Thursday.

A huge Guild Wars update is landing on Thursday. The patch will add a new hub location for adventurers called Embark Beach. From here, teams will be to get together and fast travel to any locations they have unlocked, making it much easier to get straight into the quests. The limit on the number of heroes you can recruit any one time has also been increased from three to seven, letting you tailor even more powerful retinue, and there's also a new Mercenary Slot feature, which will let you clone and play alongside your own alt characters.

On top of all this there will also be new daily quests, a new minion UI to let you control your pets directly, and changes to how you get drunk in the game. Read on for more details and the first screens.

Embark Beach is a new outpost in the Battle Isles, and is populated by NPCs representing Guild Wars' different expansions. These NPCs will offer fast travel to a number of locations within each campaign. Every destination will be manned by a scout that can give the player swift travel back to the beach. The aim is for the beach to become a social hub where players can gather and form groups, before sailing off to the campaign of their choice.

If you're not looking to group with other players, the update will also allow you to recruit four more hero characters. The extra four heroes should be more effective than the often useless henchmen they're replacing, and should prove especially useful when taking on high level areas.

There will also be an option to buy Mercenary Hero slots for your characters. Slots can be bought for £6.99 each, or it's £12.99 for a 3-pack. Mercenary Heros are exact clones of characters in your other accounts, meaning you'll be able to form a party of characters you've built and levelled yourself.

There are even changes to how drunkenness is calculated. Previously players would have to be moderately plastered for 7 days to unlock the Drunkard title. Now, very much unlike real life, every drink contributes points to an overall score. It's dependent on the drink's strength, too, so gutrot and rye are worth more points than a light shandy.

The update will be applied for free this Thursday at 10pm GMT. Head over to the Guild Warssite for more on the game. We've got some screens of the new hub area below. Click on them to enlarge.

The Long Dark's first in-game screenshots crashland with new community forums

It's been a few quiet months for The Long Dark , the post-apocalyptic survival game successfully Kickstarted last fall.

, the post-apocalyptic survival game successfully Kickstarted last fall. Now the first in-game screenshots have surfaced to herald the arrival of a new set of community forums, and they look handsome. The screens, I mean, they look handsome. The forums are nice, too.

The Long Dark is a survival game, but not in a run-and-gun flavor. You'll need to carfully manage your food, energy, and warmth levels as you move around and set up camp after surviving an airplane crash. We're excited to see what The Long Dark's developers, with resumes including Far Cry 3, Saints Row, and League of Legends, can do when they're funded with fans' money and unfettered by corporate structures. If nothing else, it should be a fascinating look at the survival genre that isn't (as far we know) staggering around with zombies.

For more information, check out The Long Dark's new forumsor their successful Kickstarterpage. The Long Dark is still on track for a PC release later this year.

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Middle-Earth Roleplaying Project mod for Skyrim petitions WB to revoke cease and desist

Last week, Warner Bros.

Last week, Warner Bros. sent a cease-and-desist letter to the development team of the Middle-Earth Roleplaying Project(MERP), a detailed Skyrim mega-mod portraying the Lord of the Rings experience with quests, iconic characters, locations, and visuals lifted from the books and films. Ambition, like a tenacious hobbit, won't diminish easily, as MERP's team set up a petitionearlier this week asking fans and followers to convince Warner Bros. to rescind the order.

"As of 2012, the team ported the mod to the newest Elder Scrolls game from its predecessor, Oblivion," the petition reads. "Since the move, the team has built up a huge following due to its quality and drive. This rise in popularity has also drawn the eyes of Warner Bros., currently the rights-holder to The Lord of the Rings in gaming, who then issued the MERP team a cease-and-desist letter. We now need you, our fans and other gamers, to help make Warner regret sending that letter by showing them just how many people are behind this mod." A Facebook pagefor the petition also exists.

The conflict began when modder Marfaer revealed WB's actions and announced that MERP would cease development in a forum post. Speaking to PC Gamer, Maegfaer summarized his communication with WB's lawyer: "WB first said they wanted to see if we could come to some sort of understanding, but when we offered to remove the Ringbearer mainquest (they mentioned specifically that it was a problem) they refused and immediately wanted us to cease & desist without any further negotiations. We then offered to become a private project, with us only releasing screenshots/movies of MERP to be able to recruit modders, and they still refused. The negotiations felt like a farce, because they refuse anything unless practically all LotR content is removed."

When we reached out for comment, Warner Bros. VP of Public Relations Remi Sklar said simply, "While we appreciate our fans' enthusiasm, we also need to protect our IP rights."

Maegfaer also provided excerpts of "the most interesting parts" of the team's back-and-forth with WB, which are copied below:

Warner Bros. lawyer: As you may be aware, Warner Bros. has developed and is developing, either by itself or through a licensed third party, games based on the LOTR and Hobbit properties. From the description of MERP available publicly, we understand that it essentially amounts to a LOTR game, which contains numerous similar elements to legitimately licensed LOTR/Hobbit games. The release of MERP into the marketplace will likely result in customer confusion and cannibalization with respect to such legitimately licensed LOTR/Hobbit games and will detract from the value proposition bargained and paid for by legitimate licensees of the LOTR/Hobbit properties. Furthermore, projects and games like MERP will diminish and erode Warner Bros.' ability to manage and protect the brand, reputation and quality of the LOTR/Hobbit properties that it has invested significant resources to cultivate over the years.

We would like to explore with you ways to modify MERP to address our concerns from the intellectual property rights-holder's perspective while, to the extent possible, allowing you to achieve at least some of what you wanted to accomplish with MERP. If you are interested in exploring that kind of an approach, please give me your contact details so we can arrange a time to talk. Among other things, we would like to see a description of the mod, settings, characters, etc. and understand how far along in development the mod is, when you were hoping to launch the mod, and who the key team members are that we should be talking to about altering the mod to remove the Hobbit/LOTR content.

MERP: It's understandable that a Ringbearer questline is problematic to Warner Bros, since it would re-tell the story of a large part of the books. Although it hurts, the team could probably agree to scratch the Ringbearer questline and not make any of the main characters (such as Frodo, Gandalf, Aragorn, Théoden, etc.) from the book available for playing, nor let the player follow major parts of main character's stories told in the book.

That way the player would only have occasional contact with main characters, who would usually merely function as quest givers to send the player on their own path. Usage of copyrighted contents from the books would then be minimal.

Warner Bros. lawyer: Thank you for your email. Unfortunately the removal of book content from MERP as outlined in your email does not sufficiently address our concerns, as MERP would still contain many infringing elements. Based on the information that you provided and in light of the current stage of development, we ask that all development efforts in connection with MERP be terminated at this time. This includes, among other things, cessation of the use of the name “Middle-earth”, which is the subject of a trademark registration owned by The Saul Zaentz Company d/b/a Middle-earth Enterprises. Please respond at your earliest convenience to confirm that you will comply with the foregoing demand.

MERP: Development of MERP has been halted, as per your request.

We have another proposal though. We could turn our mod into a private project, meaning that we wouldn't have any public releases of the mod's game content. The mod would only be distributed among the developers of the mod, which would take away MERP from the marketplace and thus avoid any customer confusion and not harm Warner Bros' ability to manage and protect the reputation of the LOTR properties.

If Warner Bros will allow us to pick up and resume development of our mod, we will rename the project to get rid of the usage of the Middle-Earth trademark, and to the public we will merely mention that we have become a private project to prevent legal issues. Public presentation of the team's efforts (through pictures and the occasional video) will be limited, merely serving the goal of recruiting other talented modders to preserve the vitality of the mod's development team.

We think that this solution would take away any conflict of interest between Warner Bros and us modders, leaving both parties satisfied and unharmed.

Warner Bros. lawyer: Thank you for confirming that you have complied with our request to cease development. We have considered your proposal to turn the mod into a private project, and while we appreciate and commend you for your creativity and willingness to address our concerns, we cannot authorize the MERP team's use of the LOTR/Hobbit properties in the mod, whether as a private project or otherwise. Accordingly, we cannot agree to your request to resume development.

Adr1ft footage floats into view

On the one hand, Adr1ft could be a fantastic exploration of terror, isolation, and the quietly desperate beauty of space.

On the one hand, Adr1ft could be a fantastic exploration of terror, isolation, and the quietly desperate beauty of space. On the other hand, it's called Adr1ft. With a number in it. While I struggle to internally reconcile these two facts, you can enjoy nearly nine minutes of zero gravity survival.

Your amnesiac astronaut's job in Adr1ft is to collect resources and fix the escape vehicle that will take you home. It's due out later this year.

Thanks, IGN.

Video: 'The future of the PlayStation' from Phil Harrison, in 2000

The PlayStation 2 ultimately became the best-selling video game console in history, shifting over 150 million units.

The PlayStation 2 ultimately became the best-selling video game console in history, shifting over 150 million units. These were Sony's salad days. And they had a beginning, of course.

In this 2000 keynote, delivered a week after the console launched in Japan and ahead of its release in the West, former Sony exec Phil Harrison delivers a characteristically charismatic look at Sony's then-new hardware, as the company was poised to strike.

The speech was geared towards "the creative and technical people in the audience," meant to inspire them to "challenge your development metholodogy and really think of new ways to bring great content to market in the future," Harrison said at the time.

It's a fascinating look back at Sony's aspirations for its second big bet in games, and the one that brought it the most success -- a snapshot of a time that's so easy to forget, as we live in a much-changed era and amidst the success of the PlayStation 4, a different kind of success that lives alongside smartphones and resurgent PC games.

About the GDC Vault

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vaultand its new YouTube channeloffers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech

Wildstar enables free PvP/PvE megaserver transfers

Wildstar recently migrated players to one of two 'megaservers' themed around PvE and PVP, and following complaints that the PvP one has been a little too quiet, they've now been given a way to transfer between them.

to one of two 'megaservers' themed around PvE and PVP, and following complaints that the PvP one has been a little too quiet, they've now been given a way to transfer between them. Players be able to make the switch in either direction, for free and for an indefinite time period, although the devs will be "keeping a close eye on things for any shenanigans or foul play".

Here's Carbine's reasoning in a bit more detail:

"For the time being, these transfers will remain open indefinitely, but we will be closely monitoring the situation and if we feel it necessary we will remove this service. Rest assured, we will ensure to give you appropriate notice if we do decide to shut these free transfers down, as well as an explanation as to why.

"We expect there will be some concerns about players using PvE servers to level up, without the dangers of a PvP server, and then transferring across once they reach max level, however we felt that ensuring the health and community of each server is more vital. We will be keeping a close eye on things for any shenanigans or foul play though."

If you're wondering what we thought of Wildstar, you should have a read of Phil's review. Spoiler: he liked it a lot.

Thanks, Massively.

Leaked Adr1ft E3 trailer is beautiful and horrific

Adr1ft is described as a " first-person experience (FPX)," and make of that modern distinction what you will, there's no question that it looks very nice so far.

(FPX)," and make of that modern distinction what you will, there's no question that it looks very nice so far. You play—sorry, experience —it as an astronaut floating amongst the wreckage of a destroyed space station, with a leaky suit and no memory of how you got there. Your only hope for survival is to explore what's left, salvage what you can, and try to find a way home.

The trailer playing above was originally intended for E3 but leaked, according to a tweetby developer Three One Zero. "We made it with Blur. 100% game assets. Please enjoy," the studio wrote. It also provided a link to the trailer on YouTube, presumably trying to make the best of a bad situation, but the video has now been marked as private. Fortunately for we nosy types, several sites, including Only Single Player, were able to make copies on their own channels before it went dark.

Adr1ft will support the Oculus Rift, as it clearly should, and possibly Valve's Vive headset as well, as the studio tweeted earlier this week that it has received a Vive developer's kit. But even without the magic of VR support, it made a powerful impression in our brief hands-onin March. "Playing the 10-minute demo of Adr1ft is something I’d class as a genuinely memorable and worthwhile experience," Sam wrote. "I find myself unable to remember so much of what I saw at the show, but damn, I won’t forget the first time I saw an enormous pink-leafed tree surrounded by glass looking out onto space in Ad1ft."

Adr1ft is currently slated to come out sometime in September. Find out more at Adr1ft.com.

MolyJam, other game jam events come to the forefront

In the early evening of Friday, July 5, they began to assemble in Oakland.

In the early evening of Friday, July 5, they began to assemble in Oakland. More than a dozen Bay Area video game developers—as well as hundreds of others around the world—gathered at more than 30 sites such as the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainmentvideo game museum for "Molydeux Deux," the second annual game jam developer event in which participants chose from 60 inspirational quotesfrom legendary game designer Peter Molyneux and began a 48-hour process of making functional (and usually ridiculous) video gamesbased on them.

By 7 PM, the developers had formed into groups, assigned duties and begun coding. Some pulled out sketch pads, others, audio equipment or drawing tablets, and started downloading resources as needed and requesting art, music and code from team members collaborating from home.

By Sunday night, hundreds of new games had been completed. Many of them were showcased in a staggered, city-by-city webcast and were later posted for download at www.molyjam.com/games. The entries included:

• A first date simulator in which a man and a woman both used a time machine to travel back in time and improve their first date,

• A multiplayer sex simulator with supports for up to five simultaneous players,

• A dog walking simulator in which the dog is given a rocket- propelled grenade launcher,

• A flight simulator in which you fly an only semi-functional plane with various broken dials and readouts

• A game where you play as a Catholic school girl who must continuously adjust the length of her skirt to win the approval of her classmates.

"It's a great way to get quick ideas out, and prototype things, and work with different people," said Brandon Sheffield, one of the organizers of the MolyJam event. "When you've got other people to talk to about stuff, it sort of expands your brain in terms of how you think about problems, and what angles to attack them from."

Sheffield, who stated that he'd initially only intended to stick around "for about 15 minutes," wound up forming a group known as "Team Boring" with attendees James Hoffman and Scott Looney. The trio worked to create a game known called "Freedom Isn't Free," which modeled itself after the Molyneux quote that "Freedom can actually be boring, you've got to realize that." Team Boring sought to intentionally make a game in which the player had absolute freedom to do anything they wanted but no constraints to make the game's rewards challenging or worthwhile.

Across the room, Cecily Madanes and Tiffany McCoy formed an all-girl duo, the two quickly breaking down tasks: Madanes handling art and coding line after line of Javascript, while McCoy began to create sound effects for a text-based adventure modeled after a classic "Love and Rockets" comic book story in which a female engineer travels to an island, solves puzzles, and has a dinosaur fall in love with her along the way.

"It's still inviting and intriguing,” said McCoy. “You meet interesting people and hear interesting stories. And the workflow is cool," said McCoy when asked how she and Madanes felt about attending the MolyJam event. She then added that she was trying to pick up as many audio techniques as she could from the other developers around her. "I'm in sponge mode right now," she said, laughing.

If you'd like to get involved in upcoming game jam events and dive into video game development, the resources are out there. Global Game Jamgenerally takes place in January at assorted remote sites. Like MolyJam, it offers gives developers 48 hours to design and complete a game. Ludum Dare, the second-largest development event, follows a similar 48-hour development model, but runs completely online. Roguelikeoffers developers a full week to create a complete game and other game development events can be found over at www.compuhub.net.

PAX East: Dungeons & Dragons Online weaves a tale of expansion

With a huge, intricate spider web hanging down from the rafters of the Boston Convention Center, the Dungeons and Dragons Online booth is overshadowed by the evil presence of Lolth, the main villain for the upcoming Menace of the Underdark expansion, hanging overhead.

With a huge, intricate spider web hanging down from the rafters of the Boston Convention Center, the Dungeons and Dragons Online booth is overshadowed by the evil presence of Lolth, the main villain for the upcoming Menace of the Underdark expansion, hanging overhead. The spider queen's presence lends an air of, well, menace to my time with Executive Producer Fernando Paiz and Senior Producer Eric Boyer as we take an extensive look through what Menace of Underdark will offer players, as well as a quick look at the Druid class and some of its abilities.

When we last left our DDO heroes, they'd defeated the spider-queen Lolth's manifestation in Eberon known as The Weaver of Shadows. This expansion continues that story, shoving players through the literal "crack in the wall" to the inter-dimensional zone of The Demonweb, which is both the link between Eberon and The Forgotten Realm, and the home of Lolth. This ethereal, space-like zone will have players traversing its asteroid like landscape on spiderweb bridge. Creepy, right?

Here, we experienced the first of the new enemy types we'll be facing in our fight again the Spider Queen: the half-spider-half-man Driders. These brand new additions to the game are powerful members of the Drow faction, and will do everything in their power to grief players. Chased by packs of these murderous minions of Lolth, we high-tailed it out of Demonweb and moved on to Evening Star, the first village that you'll visit once you hit The Forgotten Realms.

Before we entered the village, Boyer took our character into the first dungeon. The underground path winds until we battle a group of Forest Hags, which Paiz playfully described as DDO's version of Macbeth's witches. It's here that player will first learn about The Thread of the Weave, a powerful artifact of Mystra, the Mother of all Magic in The Forgotten Realms. When players arrive in The Realms after their dimensional travel, Mystra is missing in action, not sitting on the Throne of Magic like she should be. Lolth wants to gain The Thread of the Weave to gain some of Mystra's power and take control of the Throne.

After finishing the dungeon, and learning of the dangers that threaten The Forgotten Realms, players will then pass through Evening Star, which used to be a quiet, peaceful village. Nowadays, things are a bit more chaotic, as Drow raiding parties have been emerging from The Underdark to raid this once sleepy town.

We doubled back into the first wilderness area that we had traveled to, and ran into a few of those troublesome Drow raids. This race of below-ground dwellers, naturally accustomed to living in dark places, have the ability to create darkness around their group, effectively blinding us as we attempted to fight them off. This mechanic will become very important, according to Paiz, as players travel into The Underdark itself. Players with Drow characters will re-learn how to see in the dark (a racial ability), but players with characters of any other race will need to use specialized gear, like darkness-vission glasses.

One of the most visually stunning parts of the demo for me was when the character that Boyer was maneuvering around the wilderness was suddenly plunged into darkness and ambushed. This unnatural lack of light meant that his enemies were incredibly difficult to stop, creating a real sense of urgency and panic as he scrambled to find the Drow.

We continued through the wilderness, and ended our tour with the reveal of a very large Green Dragon through the forest. A stunning beast that towered over us, the dragon'll give you nightmares about poison effects (just like the classic Green Dragons in D&D lore). To quote Paiz, "It's about time players were afraid of poison again." Sounds good, although I don't think I was ever particularly fond of being poisoned in the first place.

According to Paiz, the expansion will have three adventures packs worth of content in it. One raid, three large wilderness areas, and six dungeons will populate The Forgetten Realms at the expansions launch—enough to keep players very, very busy.

Boyer finished up the demo by giving me a sneak peek of the Druid classes' transformation skills: a bright light flashes as the humanoid shifts into the shape of a lone white wolf. Three animal forms will be available to the Druid: Bear (tank), Wolf (DPS), and Elemental (DPS or Heals), giving players plenty of room to find a style they like.

There was one thing nagging me a I came out of this preview, though. Menace of the Underdark is, with the exception of the Druid class' shapeshifting, simply more of the same. That's not necessarily a bad thing: DDO has always had strong content, with plenty of Dungeons and Wilderness Areas to keep players busy. So while there aren't any major new dungeon mechanics or anything game-changing in that area, I still think fans of the game will have plenty of fun.

Keep an eye out for the Beta coming in May, and check it out for yourself.

Song of the Deep, Insomniac's aquatic Metroidvania, releases in July

Insomniac Games, the studio best known for console-centric titles like Ratchet and Clank, Resistance and Sunset Overdrive, will release its 2D Metroidvania on Steam in July.

Insomniac Games, the studio best known for console-centric titles like Ratchet and Clank, Resistance and Sunset Overdrive, will release its 2D Metroidvania on Steam in July. As James discovered when he played it back in January, Song of the Deepfollows the adventures of Merryn who, after losing her father during a routine fishing trip, feels compelled to find him. Inevitably, the ocean holds all manner of strange malevolent foes.

Interestingly, this will be the first title published by American retailer GameStop, and if you want a physical copy, you'll need to get it from them. There's no official word yet on how digital distribution will be handled, but you'll probably be able to pick it up on Steam.

This isn't the only PC title Insomniac is working on: Edge of Nowhereis a VR-exclusive title due to release some time this year. Tim gave it a crack at E3last year, writing that it gave him "a significant kick of The New amid the continuing glut of military shooters".

Check out the latest trailer for Song of the Deep below:

Video: Developers speak their minds from the 2014 Indie Soapbox

"We live in a time when a young black child can envisage becoming the president of the United States or a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, but not a game developer.

"We live in a time when a young black child can envisage becoming the president of the United States or a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, but not a game developer. Even the indie scene has a huge problem with diversity." -
Treachery in Beatdown City creator Shawn Alexander Allen puts the industry's diversity problem on blast during GDC 2014.

One of the most popular sessions of the annual GDC Independent Games Summit is often the Indie Soapbox, in which ten speakers take the stage one after another to present a six-minute microtalk about an issue they’re passionate about that affects indie development. The speaker lineup typically features a diverse array of industry professionals, and this year was no exception: the Indie Soapbox at GDC 2014 featured excellent microtalks from Robin Hunicke, Leigh Alexander, Zoe Quinn, Ryan Clark, Shawn Alexander Allen, Zach Gage and more on everything from challenging the status quo of the game industry to meeting the challenge of remaining creative as a new parent.

If you missed it during the show, the entire session is now available for everyone to watch -- free of charge -- on the GDC Vault. We've taken the liberty of embedding the video of the GDC 2014 "Indie Soapbox" above, but you can also watch it hereon the Vault.
About the GDC VaultIn addition to this presentation, the GDC Vaultoffers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC, GDC Europe, and GDC Next already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Tech

It's booty time in Dungeon & Dragons Online's 5th anniversary event

Some pirates have parrots, but I prefer a pack of gem-hunting kobolds to boss around and scour the earth to fill my coffers with shiny booty.

Some pirates have parrots, but I prefer a pack of gem-hunting kobolds to boss around and scour the earth to fill my coffers with shiny booty. And that's what I'm doing in the pirate-themed events of Dungeon & Dragons Online's fifth anniversary (which hits live servers this Thursday). My pirate gear is on and I'm joining other bands of pirate players to squeeze the treasure out of every chest I find, just like we did when it all began in the game's first dungeon, five years ago.

The pirate haven of Smuggler's Rest was the first dungeon players entered back when DDO launched. Back then, players scratched out an existence as they inched towards the level cap dungeon by dungeon, while paying fifteen bucks a month to do so. Today, the game's much improved and more flexible as a free-to-play offering. Which is great, because anyone--DDO vets or brand new players--can jump in for the big anniversary event and fight through the original starting area of Smuggler's Rest for a pirate adventure filled with treasure hunts and kobold-commanding, piratey action.

A pirate just isn't a pirate without some sort of sweet headwear; which is where DDO's 5th-anniversary, doubloon-hungry mission begins. Existing characters receive a voucher good for one piece of upgradeable head gear, which you can select from a slew of specialized looks and stats (the higher level your character, the higher the hat's stats will be) to help increase your chance of finding treasure as you progress. Newer players don't get thrown in the brig, however--the hats can be earned by participating in the event or purchasing them from the cash shop, along with the other eight new pirate-like Appearance kits (items that change the look of your armor) added to the the DDO Store for the event. As a veteran player myself, I immediately donned a feather-capped hat fit for my weathered sea dog.

Now that I look the part, it's time to play it. I immediately bump into a familiar face from the original release, Euphonia Teles, who sends me out into the misty jungle bordering a small, ship-packed cove. My first mission (to slay buccaneers and scallywags in the search for doubloons and treasure maps) rewards me with even more treasure. It isn't long before I'm up to my chest in bugbear body parts, sending foe after foe straight to Davy Jones Locker with my scimitar. My stack of map pieces and dubloons is getting higher, and the map pieces are beginning to bestow quests that point me in the direction of other hidden caches of doubloons and gems. I head back to Euphonia and exchange my newly-acquired doubloons for more shiny goods from Euphonia's Barter Box, a chest packed with pirate-themed shwag for players of all levels.

Once the players on your server have turned in enough maps, the second part of the Jolly Roger adventure unlocks: a unique dungeon, aptly named Crystal Cove. I tear into the dungeon, ready to slay anything that looks piratey enough to have treasure (or not piratey enough to be an easy kill). It's a pleasant surprise to find the dungeon stepping away from traditional DDO experiences and mixing it up with a gem-collecting fight that contained loose RTS elements and treasure-fueled crystal grabs in between the undead-pirate killing.

One quest has me guiding kobold minions through a dreary mine in search of the oh-so-shiny crystals. But to increase my chances of success, I have to risk some of the crystals I've collected in exchange for various tools that help the kobolds find more crystals further down the dungeon. I purchase some extra minions and pick up a few torches to guide kobolds. I use the torches to link pathways between crystal nodes hidden in the depths of the cavern. This isn't Snow White and the Seven Kobolds though: a few minutes in, the kobolds cry out “INCOMING” and suddenly I'm surrounded by buccaneers and skeletons trying to kill my little dirty miners. No one beats my minions but me! I jump into the fray, hacking and slashing at everything that moves until my kobolds can get back to making me rich.

The dungeon only requires your kobolds to collect 100 crystals (it doesn't take as long as you'd think), and you can keep any extra you collect and exchange them for bonus rewards from Euphonia's Barter Box. The rewards include potions, upgradeable weapons and other various level-appropriate items for players of all levels, some of which are incredibly powerful.

The entire event is filled with typical DDO action, made even more interesting by having to juggle crystal resources and kobold minion management while you fight. The random nature of the crystal and enemy spawns makes Crystal Cove repeatable for those that simply must have all the event's rewards--whether you want to run it as an individual or organized group.

Overall, I was really pleased with the event--it's a great way to showcase how far the game's development and gameplay has come in five years.The NPCs also sport some refreshingly humorous dialogue and the kobolds are about the funniest characters to date in the game, constantly screaming out ridiculous phrases and insider jokes meant for veteran players.

And it's not all looking backwards: Crystal Cove introduces a new mechanic for the game: scaling the difficulty of your dungeon to a specific level. Design Director Ian Currie and Producer Erik Boyer tell me this feature will be used in future events to help give the game even more flexibility and assure that any player can find adequate challenges and rewards, regardless of their level. If you haven't ever tried DDO, I highly recommend jumping in and trying out this 5th anniversary content. It's some of the most modern content in the game, there's crazy hats and it's completely free.

If you have some fun and decide to stick around for awhile (no pressure--it's a free-to-play game afterall), you'll have some sweet gear to help you get started: most of these rewards can be upgraded several times, so you can extend the life of the loot long after the event has ended.