A few videos have emerged of the new “White Knight Chronicles” multiplayer RPG from game studio Level-5 for the Sony PS3. Released in Japan back in 2008, the game will finally come to the english speaking world on February 26th making it the first cooperative multiplayer online RPG for the PS3. The videos show some multiplayer combat scenes.
See the second video after the break.
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Lukewarm Media’s newest game “Primal Carnage”, a first-person shooter that puts you against dinosaurs in a lush jungle environment, will be driven by the Unigine engine. Aiming for a release in Q4 2010 on both Windows and Linux (yay!), it aims to have both full mod support and extremely high-end graphics content, all thanks to their choice of a public engine.
The Unigine engine, with its quick-to-learn toolset, has helped Lukewarm Media bring its ideas to reality. There are a number of other exciting aspects to using the Unigine engine including (but not limited to) its support for DirectX 11, and being able to include the Unigine toolset and SDK for development of custom content and mods. This is a mutually beneficial partnership as it should allow both the Unigine and Primal Carnage communities to flourish.
See more about the game at www.primalcarnage.com .
via Unigine engine empowers dinosaurs game | Unigine (3D engine for games and real-time virtual worlds).
Back in May, Tim Omernick of ngmoco presented at Stanford University on special considerations of using OpenGL on the iPhone. Now, that video is available online for all to view.
At 36 minutes in length, he covers everything from the basics of OpenGL to the “last 5%” of optimization and design, all from one of the premiere iPhone gaming developers.
I was checking out some of the big indie gaming hits, and came across PuzzleBloom. A fun little web-based flash game, it’s a clever little mind-control game where you take control of various creatures and move them around to your goal. The interesting part, to me, was the fully rendered 3D world, running quite smoothly in nothing but Flash.
Beautiful visuals, 3D graphics, sound, and more. Check it out for yourself at www.puzzlebloom.com and post your thoughts in the comments.
Update: Well, I’m confused now. Yesterday when I played it (And wrote this initially), I could have sworn it was flash. It wasn’t full-page, just a small box in the middle of the page, and running Flash. Today, it’s Unity based. Sorry folks, I’ve got no explanation other than that.
A quick note to all you gamers out there, Amazon.com is offering free trial downloads of all of their downloadable games. Classics like Jewel Quest III, Tales of Monkey Island 5, and many others are free for you to check out, and then buy if you want.
Check it out, and let us know if you buy anything neat!
Ryan Shrout of PC Perspective got his hands on a coveted OnLive beta invite, the widely discussed but incredibly secretive remote gaming service, and put it through the paces on a few popular games and wrote up the experience. He was, sadly, unimpressed.
The games were running at 1280 by 720, and the expected issues became reality. “The input lag on UT3 was so noticeably bad with the mouse and keyboard that I would call [the] game simply unplayable. I often found myself overshooting the mouse movement by half a screen, moving well past my intended target because the cursor didn’t stop when I did.”
It’s worth pointing out that he did not receive the beta invite via official channels, rather via the age old ‘friend of a friend’. This is important since OnLive has long said that they would deploy multiple gaming centers, to maintain the required proximity to the end-user, and he may have been too far away, resulting in his degraded performance. In fact, it even warned him via the image shown to the right.
Guess we’ll just have to wait for a real review on an official invite.
PS: If any OnLive folks are reading, I’ld be happy to take one :)
OnLive Game Service Preview, via OnLive demoed: lag, graphics are a problem.
Activision’s latest entry in the Call of Duty franchise, Modern Warfare 2, has sold over $1 Billion worldwide, quickly making it one of the most successful video game launches of all time, and putting it in the ranks of most successful entertainment products of all time.
“In its first five days alone, the game sold an estimated $550 million worldwide, outpacing five-day worldwide theatrical box office gross figures for such films as Avatar, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and The Dark Night,” Activision crows.
ArsTechnica taks a look at the release process to see what we can learn from it. Covering the usually high price, $60 rather than $50, the exclusion of PC gaming support and dedicated servers, and the unusual review policies Activision implemented.
There was only one way to review Modern Warfare 2: on the Xbox 360, in Santa Barbara, under the watchful eye of Activision. Accepting the paid trip, along with room and board, was the only way you were going to get a review before launch. Joystiq noted that this broke their ethics policy, but they went anyway. Who can say no to a review destined to bring in traffic?
In short it seems that to a point, the gaming industry is changing. No longer do successful games need to enable modding and user content, putting the experience squarely back in the hands of the designers. Will this be the norm for games in the future, or will more open-ended platforms reign?
The “Video Game Statistics” infographic from OnlineSchools.org shows details about video games, including duration, gender, console of choice, and more. It compiled data from the ESA, various console manufacturers, and online surveys into a fun chart. Some numbers:
See the full chart after the break.
EA’s new “Amy of Two: the 40th Day” (for Xbox360 and PS3) has an amazing new commercial from Zoic. You can view it online, or download the 175M Quicktime MOV. (01/19/2010: At Interdub’s request, I have removed the Download Link. Simply hit the View link, and you’ll see a download link on the page.)
I guess it’s a successful commercial, because I sure want to play it now.
A while back, popular MMO “City of Heroes” rolled out an “Architect System”, allowing players and developers alike to create missions and in-game content. It has been a huge success, and Senior Designer Joe Morrisey sits down with MMOGamer to talk about the thoughts and philosophy that went into designing it. One particularly interesting point is how they chose to deal with simply bad content:
To some extent you can’t. You want to give players the freedom to create stories they want to create.
So you are going to end up with some stuff that isn’t that good.
But the real thing that you need to do just like any other medium, where you have a lot of entries into, like if you look at the music industry or if you look at the movie industry, there is a lot of noise.
So how does the good stuff get to the top? It gets to the top by people saying, “Hey I really like that song,” or “I really like that book,” or “I recommend that you play this.”
With my recent Second Life kick, I find this quote particularly interesting:
Joe Morrissey: We’re kind of moving to this new area in games. I mean, everybody hypes user-generated content, and it seems like, “Oh, it’s the next big plateau,” and stuff.
As a storyteller, I’m not really as concerned about if it is the next big thing. But, what I do like is it’s giving the new people, the new blood that will eventually become the movers and shakers in the industry, the ability to have their voice in games.
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