Tag Archives: Game Development

Train2Game News: Have you won a free Xbox One?

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Xbox OneYou may have won a free Xbox One from Microsoft if you have been a loyal Xbox Live customer. Start checking your emails!

Some users have also been gifted the fully unlocked version of launch title, Killer Instinct. The email states that the recipient will get a version of the game with all characters unlocked from the off. Further instructions will follow on the 22nd, the day of Xbox One’s launch.

This offer has been confirmed as legitimate by Microsoft through their official Xbox twitter account.

Gamers with and without the email have been comparing Xbox Live stats to try and determine Microsoft’s methods for choosing recipients. Some have the Xbox One Pre-order Achievement – but others don’t. Some have been beta testers – others have not. Some have nearly a decade of Xbox Live under their belt – others don’t and some have over 75,000 gamer score – others have around 15,000.

“We don’t have any specifics on that other than that some users have received a gift,” a representative wrote. “We considered a variety of things like Gamerscore, Live tenure and other factors in markets where Xbox One is available.”

Train2Game News: Unity free for Xbox One Developers

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Xbox OneMicrosoft has partnered with the maker of the popular Unity kit to secure free access for all ID@Xbox members to the Xbox One add-on, which is planned for launch next year.

Announced at Gamescom earlier this year, ID@Xbox will allow independent developers to self-publish on Xbox One without fees. Registered users will not be required to pay certification or title update fees, though currently developers “with a proven track record” are being prioritised for registration. Microsoft also said in July that every Xbox One console can be used as a development kit, though the functionality will not be available from launch.

“When released in 2014, the Xbox One add-on for Unity will be available at no cost to all developers in the ID@Xbox program, as will special Xbox One-only Unity Pro seat licenses for Xbox One developers in the ID@Xbox program,” confirmed Microsoft’s ID@Xbox director Chris Charla.

“We want to make sure the dev who’s working away in Omaha, or Coventry, or Chiba will have the same shot to realize their vision on Xbox One as one of my developer friends we hang out with in Seattle or at a trade show like GDC or Gamescom.

“The Unity add-on for Xbox One supports every element of Xbox One, from Kinect to SmartGlass to the impulse triggers of the new controller,” Charla added. “Using Unity, developers will be able to take advantage of all aspects of Xbox One, which is rad. More importantly, Unity is available for Windows and Windows Phone too (and yes, the add-on is available at no cost to developers for Windows Phone and Windows 8 store games). So from one base game, developers can ship their games across all Microsoft platforms.”

Unity Technologies CEO David Helgason has said that while the dev kit will support high-end features that will make use of Xbox One’s additional power, its established toolset will simplify deployment for familiar developers.

Train2Game News: UK Top 20 Games -05.11.13

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Assassin's Creed 4: Black FlagAssassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag and Battlefield 4 go head to head in a fiercely contested chart that sees Ubisoft’s title take the number one spot.  Both titles appear to be affected by the imminent appearance of both Xbox One and PS4 with neither title matching the sales of its predecessor.  Both Assassin’s Creed III and Battlefield 3 were the highest week one sellers in their respective series and achieved number one in their first week of release.  Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag benefits from its Event Title status having been available from Tuesday this week. Sega land at number six as Football Manager 2014 arrives for PC.  The title sees strong sales although it’s down 7% on Football Manager 2013 which debuted at number four.  Also new this week WWE 2K14 is at number seven and is the first in the popular series to fall under Take 2’s 2K Sports label following its acquisition from previous publisher THQ.

All formats
Week ending 2 November 2013

POS.  TITLE  PUBLISHER  LAST
WEEK 
1 ASSASSIN’S CREED IV: BLACK FLAG UBISOFT –
2 BATTLEFIELD 4 EA GAMES –
3 – FIFA 14 EA SPORTS 3
4 GRAND THEFT AUTO V ROCKSTAR 2
5 BATMAN: ARKHAM ORIGINS WARNER BROS. INTERACTIVE 1
6 FOOTBALL MANAGER 2014 SEGA –
7 WWE 2K14 2K SPORTS –
8 MINECRAFT: XBOX 360 EDITION MICROSOFT 7
9 SKYLANDERS SWAP FORCE SKYLANDERS 4
10 POKEMON Y NINTENDO 6
11 POKEMON X NINTENDO 5
12 JUST DANCE 2014 UBISOFT 10
13 DISNEY INFINITY DISNEY INFINITY 11
14 – LEGO BATMAN 2: DC SUPER HEROES WARNER BROS. INTERACTIVE 14
15 F1 2013 CODEMASTERS 12
16 LEGO THE LORD OF THE RINGS WARNER BROS. INTERACTIVE 8
17 TOMB RAIDER SQUARE ENIX –
18 TOM CLANCY’S SPLINTER CELL: BLACKLIST UBISOFT 17
19 SAINTS ROW IV DEEP SILVER –
20 MOSHI MONSTERS: KATSUMA UNLEASHED MIND CANDY 9
< previous week
Leisure software charts compiled by Chart Track, (C)2013 UKIE Ltd

These charts cannot be reproduced either in print or online without obtaining permission from Ukie. If you wish to reproduce the charts in print or online, please contact david.smith@ukie.org.uk for the appropriate license.

Train2Game News: A Gallant Journey Part 3

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WP_20131027_023GallantCloud’s Wayne Campbell discusses the team’s current project A Knights Tail and the bustling UK development scene.

Hi everyone this is Wayne from Gallant Cloud at the helm of this week’s blog and what an awesome week it has been for the team! We started this week’s project entitled A Knights Tail.

So far building this project has been amazing since we as a team are loving every part of the process. It’s hard work for sure, but we all love what we are doing and we are also meeting some really influential people in the gaming industry and beyond.

We are all absorbing things really fast and as we are halfway through the Microsoft Ventures UK accelerator, this is where we all turn things up even more! We assigned our individual tasks through the new system to keep track so that everyone is up to speed on their task. We have the daily scrum to make sure everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet which has been working brilliantly so far. Everyone has been supportive of one another and pushed each other to achieve their best.

We are all very excited about the things we are doing and planning on doing the future and are very fortunate to be right in in the middle of the melting pot of the game developing world. Earlier this week several of the team members went to the Bossa event, where they were showing off some incredible new things that were happening with the Oculus Rift and it was brilliant to meet some really passionate people.

That is one of the greatest points about being in tech city. There are so many incredible events going on all of the time and so many great people. We have found that joining the community has been like becoming part of the family. All I can say in the words of Ben Cooper: it’s “absolutely awesome.”

We all came from different backgrounds and put together simply with the same vision to make absolutely mega games. I come from South London where it can be kind of tough if you don’t have any direction or will power. I personally would like to make some kind of difference in my community and show that anything is possible if you work hard enough for it.

This weeks event highlights: we had another great session around funding and giving us more direction on where to focus our attention for the business side of the company. There was also a session with the incredible Ben Nunney from Twilio on telling a coherent brand story. We attended a user experience workshop within Central working and had a pitching practice session to get a feel of what to expect later this year. We then had a meeting with Professor Bernie Good, a Cyber-psychologist. It is always a pleasure to talk to her and she has some incredible knowledge and views on video games and their gamers.

This week we also had our monthly start-up meeting. This was a brilliant chance for all of the start-ups on the program to give feedback on how they feel the accelerator has been so far. The Microsoft Ventures UK team really have been brilliant in helping each of the teams realise their full potential and constantly work hard to give our businesses the best chance possible.

Thanks for reading guys and don’t forget to check us out on our website, Facebook and Twitter and obviously our blog each week for new updates on what we are doing!

One love, Wayne

Train2Game News: A Gallant Journey Part 2

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WP_20131027_029GallantCloud’s Paul Rayment discusses how the early stages of the Microsoft Ventures UK Accelerator Programme have gone so far.

GallantCloud, the team of five Train2Game students merged together to create a new and upcoming games studio, are now on Week 4 of the Microsoft Ventures UK Accelerator Programme.

With our mentors onboard, ranging from members of existing high profiled games studios, Microsoft resources, and many others lending their expertise, GallantCloud now have a vast quantity of resources to make use of.

The team and mentors have worked hard and have created a game development curriculum that is unique to GallantCloud and will work alongside the overall curriculum that all Microsoft Ventures UK Accelerator teams are working to.

The GallantCloud curriculum is very geared towards making the most of the teams time in getting ideas out there and filtering those ideas to a smaller number which the team will develop further. To accomplish this we are using a physical whiteboard for those in the office, and then everything is transferred to the digital whiteboard for future analysis.

Everyone on the UK Accelorator Programme has just been really helpful as well as informative. GallantCloud have been granted access to hardware and software that wouldn’t have been possible going it alone. Great things were happening, but now they are happening with greater tools for the job.

Of course it isn’t all work (well it is, but it’s fun!), the Eurogamer Expo that took place in London Earl’s Court was a fantastic opportunity not to be missed.

Being that GallantCloud were all Train2Game students, at the allotted time we took our positions within the GamesIndustry/fair section of Eurogamer in the Train2Game room to talk of our experiences whilst on the Accelerator Programme to train2game students. Day two also saw GallantCloud standing up front talking again. After a great overview of the UK accelerator programme a thunderous applause erupted!

Eurogamer was a great experience and we certainly had fun and took away a lot from it (not just the free loot and photos with cosplayers!). GallantCloud managed to take part in the mass energy and excitement that buzzed throughout the building, gathering ideas and intel on ways to create, present and expand on everything there is to do with getting a game created from the simplest to the complex of ideas.

Technological advances such as eye tracking systems to drive cars with your eyes only (or slice fruits in Fruit Ninja!) were brilliant to witness and experience each piece of innovative technology adding to the way we think about our game ideas.

We invited our followers to join us in our Eurogamer experience, with a constant stream of pictures and updates to our Facebook and Twitter, and received loads of new support and great feedback!

We have achieved a lot and have so much more ahead of us to accomplish. We continue to move forward, each step a discovery.

If someone were to ask us how we feel things are going with the UK Accelerator Programme, things are going incredibly well. There is something happening every day, whether it be a talk from an external party coming in to give insight in to how they got started with their product, or a quick chat with a mentor, a meeting with Microsoft to give updates on our milestones, or actually getting some games created, there is always productivity taking place.

 

Train2Game News: A Gallant journey Part 1

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Gallant CloudThe GallantCloud Games team chronicles their journey through the Microsoft Venture accelerator

Hello ladies and gents and welcome to GallantCloud Games!

We are a brand new start-up game company and are in the privileged position of working with the Microsoft Ventures UK team on their accelerator pilot.

The team is made up of five guys who have wanted to make games since getting their podgy little fingers on their first Gameboy, console or computer. We are all Train2Game students, working to create beautiful little games from the safety of our bedrooms and garages when we escape work (or the kids).

We entered a competition that popped up one day on the Train2Game student world, and after phone calls, meeting and deliberations we, the lucky few, were put together.

We then had a bit of a mountain to climb. We needed a name and with a name a logo.

This proved to be harder than anticipated, with all five members contributing to create a very unhelpful list of a hundred names, all of which weren’t quite perfect.

After many late night Skype calls and much cursing we had it! Now… just to create a logo.

So there we were on September 9th. Five chaps who hadn’t met as a team before got together at Central Working to meet the other brilliant teams who had a place on the Microsoft Ventures UK pilot scheme.

After the initial meetup and layout the hard work began. We jumped in at the deep end, having to pitch a so far non-existent game to a panel of industry professionals in just two days time.

After a shaky start and some incredible training from the Microsoft team and its partners, we managed to pull off a pitch. The rest of the evening involved chatting and sharing a drink with some great people about our new company and how we should go about forming what we are doing.

Following some great advice, we organised a game jam for our team. Held at Central Working and with the theme of sound, we took over several desks for 24 hours and went about creating our game ‘Monster Night’, finding out how well we worked together as a team and learning where each others strengths and weaknesses lay.

The next week brought some more excellent training and more ideas of how to structure the company and made us think about what we want to deliver to our customers. It also brought some new ideas for potential games that the team felt passionate about and that we put in the ‘to do’ design pile.

We were also invited to take part in the Develop Quiz. Aside from from the dodgy ‘reversed songs’ round It was an absolutely brilliant night and GallantCloud went head to head with some extremely talented game developer teams, with some brilliant stories shared and yet more great advice for the team! We decided not to show all of the other teams up and positioned ourselves a sly third from the bottom on the scoreboard…

We managed to get some more design and concepts done throughout the rest of the week, even managing to create a rough prototype of one of the games, sparking ideas for how it will work and what type of things we could add to make it AWESOME.

The first two weeks have been incredible for the team and we have an exciting time ahead of us. We would love for you to follow our journey through our blogs!

Train2Game News: Gallant Cloud Video

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Gallant Cloud 01A Train2Game start up games studio named Gallant Cloud games have been invited to be a part of a Microsoft Accelerator Programme.

Microsoft described the Accelerator programme as an intensive chance for start-up businesses’ focused on anything from games to new social media ideas to break into the big time. Microsoft will be aiding the start up as much as they can to help them.

Gallant Cloud was interviewed whilst on a recent trip to the Train2Game head office in Luton about their experiences so far and you can watch the video below.

Train2Game News: Facebook gaming rising

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facebookToday, Facebook announced that is has made significant updates to its Unity SDK and removed it from Beta.

Facebook is now making it even easier for more than 2 million developers working with Unity to tap into Facebook’s leading social features. The newest version of the SDK makes cross-platform development easier and increases compatibility for apps using multiple plugins. Additionally, the SDK is up to date with the latest features of Facebook’s iOS and Android SDKs.

The updated SDK makes it simple for games to let users share screen shots of their game experience with friends. This feature is very popular among players of Cmune’s Uberstrike, a game that recently integrated our SDK. Users share over 65,000 pictures a day and have shared over 2 million pictures in the last 30 days. Other Unity games using the SDK are also having great success. For example, Madfinger launched its mobile only game, Shadowgun: Deadzone on Facebook and increased its total daily players by more than 75% for the first couple weeks. Since integrating the SDK, Nival’s strategy and combat game, Kings Bounty: Legions, has doubled conversion of Facebook users who install the Unity plugin and start the game’s first fight.

Gaming on Facebook has been gaining momentum throughout the year and there’s never been a better time for gamers and developers to start working with Facebook. In the first half of this year, people spent more than $1.5 billion on games on Facebook, and there are now more than 260 million people playing games on Facebook every month.  Last year, over 100 developers generated more than $1M in revenue from Facebook. Yesterday, Facebook also released Q3 earnings, announcing that it was Facebook’s first $2 billion quarter in terms of revenue. The “payments and other” revenue in Q3 was $218 million and payments revenue from games was up 18% from last year.

Train2Game News: Steam reaches new milestone

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SteamSteam has had an incredible year this year with their Valve digital distribution service with a rise of 30% of users.

Sixty five million users are now on Steam marking a new milestone for the company. This number has been reached with thanks to 2013 seein the introduction of Family Sharing, Steam Trading Cards, Early Access and the introduction of Linux support.

Steam also passed it’s 10th birthday this year with many more in sight thanks to the announcements of the company’s movement into gaming hardware with the 2014 launch of various Steam Machines, its new operating system SteamOS, and a Steam Controller featuring dual trackpads and haptic feedback.

“The main goal of Steam has always been to increase the quality of the user’s experience by reducing the distance between content creators and their audience,” Valve boss Gabe Newell explained.

“As the platform grows, our job is to adapt to the changing needs of both the development and user communities. In the coming year, we plan to make perhaps our most significant collaborations with both communities through the Steam Dev Days and the Steam Machines beta.”

I imagine that Valve and Steam will continue to go from strength to strength through their eleventh year and on wards.

Train2Game News: The Walking Dead Season Two announced

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The Walking Dead season 2Telltale Games and Robert Kirkman, the Eisner Award-winning creator and writer of The Walking Dead, have officially revealed The Walking Dead: Season Two – A Telltale Games Series.

The Walking Dead: Season Two – A Telltale Games Series, is now available for pre-order on PC/Mac via the Telltale Games Online Store as well as Steam.  The second season will make its highly-anticipated premiere later this year on PC/Mac, home consoles and iOS, with additional platforms to be announced.

The Walking Dead: Season Two – A Telltale Games Series will continue the story of Clementine, a young girl orphaned at the outset of the undead apocalypse, now left to her own devices to seek safety and survive in a world gone mad.  Now assuming the role of an ordinary child, players will struggle to outwit both the dead and the living in situations that will test their morals and control the flow of the story through their decisions and actions.

“The terrifying nature of Robert Kirkman’s world has allowed Telltale to push the boundaries of interactive drama in video games to a place that has had fans anxious to know what will happen next in this series,” said Dan Connors, Co-Founder and CEO of Telltale Games. “Today we can finally lift the veil, albeit only a little, on how this story will continue, and we’ll soon be putting players in the shoes of a lead role that will challenge their expectations of how to survive in a world where no one can be trusted.”

Expected to premiere later this year, The Walking Dead: Season Two – A Telltale Games Series will consist of five episodes that will be released for digital download over the course of the season and will conclude in 2014.  Players can save 10% off of the purchase price of the PC/Mac versions with a pre-order of the season pass, giving them access to all five episodes when ordering through the Telltale Online Store, or through the Steam digital distribution service.

To date, The Walking Dead: A Telltale Games Series has sold more than 21 million episodes worldwide, earning more than 90 Game of the Year honors from outlets including Metacritic, USA Today, Wired, Spike TV VGAs, Yahoo!, The Telegraph, Mashable, Polygon, Destructoid and GamesRadar, and was also the recipient of two BAFTA Video Games Awards for Best Story and Best Mobile Game.