Tag Archives: games industry

Train2Game News: Kickstarter record blasted away

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The two crowd-funding efforts for Chris Roberts’ Star Citizen have come to a close, bringing in a combined $6.2m in pledges.

The game’s Kickstarter wrapped up yesterday at $2.1m in funding and over 34,000 backers, added to the $4.1m raised from the already concluded Roberts Space Industry drive. This smashed the old record, previously held by Tim Schafer which earned $3million.

Roberts’ said “I am absolutely elated by the incredible outpouring of support for this project.

“It’s clear that space sim fans have just been waiting for a game like ours to come along and rekindle some of the excitement that’s been missing from PC games and the space sim genre. With the resources that our fans have provided, it means the team will be able to provide more features in Star Citizen and deliver an even better game.

“With all the tools and tech currently available, I can now make a game that really provides gamers with cutting-edge visuals, a highly detailed, immersive world and visceral, heart-pounding combat that only the PC can provide.

In fact, PC gamers don’t need to take a back seat to any other platform. With Star Citizen, I want them to be able to stand up, be counted and completely enjoy all that their PC can deliver.”

Star Citizen’s development schedule has an alpha planned for a years time for backers who met or exceeded the $30 tier.

Stories such as these are incredibly inspirational as it shows that if the game idea is good you can do amazing things. With a good game, the sky is the limit.

Train2Game News: Community created games

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Double Fine are asking the public for their opinions on the games of the annual Amnesia Fortnight and BioWare is asking the public where they think Mass Effect 4 should go.

This year, Double Fine has decided to change up its Amnesia Fortnight event by allowing fans to choose which ideas get made into games, live-streaming the entire development process, and then releasing those titles as a Humble Bundle.

The Amnesia Fortnight is a two-week prototyping period where Double Fine employees split into small teams to brainstorm and develop inventive new titles. Previous Amnesia Fortnight titles have included Costume Quest, Stacking, Middle Manager of Justice, and Iron Brigade.

The first step is for players to head to the Double Fine forums to discuss their favourite game ideas. Players then head to the Double Fine Humble Bundle page to vote for their favourite games.

After the first week, the four most popular ideas will be developed into prototypes. The teams have two weeks to make their games, with 2 Player Productions filming the entire development process and posting videos each day.

Double Fine founder Tim Schafer said “We do it to test out new ideas, and to test out new project leaders who feel ready to have a project of their own. Many of the games we’ve released in the last few years have come from the Amnesia Fortnight process. It’s really a great morale boost for the team, and a highly effective way to develop new game ideas”

Of course this being released through Humble Bundle means that a portion of the money made will go to the charity Child’s Play.

In addition BioWare has asked fans whether Mass Effect 4 should be a sequel to the existing trilogy or take place before the trilogy.

Mass Effect overlord Casey Hudson canvassed fans via his Twitter account, he wrote “Parsing through your thoughts on the next #ME game. Would you be more interested in a game that takes place before the trilogy, or after?”

A game set in the series past has many viable options like the war between the Rachni and the Krogans to the war between Turians and Humans following the Relay 314 Incident.

A game set later in the series’ history would have to tackle Mass Effect 3’s various ending choices, which leave the galaxy in varying states of repair.

It’s not the first time BioWare has asked fans their thoughts on the next Mass Effect game. BioWare previously questioned their fans on what they would like to see in Mass Effect 4.

BioWare Montreal studio director Yanick Roy said earlier this month “While Mass Effect 4 will be very respectful of the heritage built over the course of the first three games, with the original trilogy now concluded and the switch over to a new engine, we are exploring new directions, both on the gameplay and story fronts,

“You can still expect the pillars the franchise is known for to be fully intact though, including diverse alien races, a huge galaxy to explore, and of course rich, cinematic storytelling.”

From stories such as these and services like Greenlight and Kickstarter it seems that the public will start taking great effect on how and what games are made. This could see an interesting wave of fan made games come soon, from AAA to Indie titles.

Train2Game News: Talisman levels up to PC

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Nomad Games have announced that the popular board game, Talisman, will see it’s video game début. It is aiming for launch on PC on the 22nd or 23rd November. It will cost £5.99.

Talisman: The Magical Quest Game is a fantasy themed adventure board game for two to six players, originally designed and produced by Games Workshop and now published by Fantasy Flight Games. The game was first released in 1983 and has gone through several revisions.

The game that launches this month is Talisman: Prologue, a single-player quest-based virtual version of the board game.

Prologue includes 10 characters, ranging from the warrior to the wizard, who each have five quests. Once you complete a character’s set of quests a bigger quest is unlocked. It’s designed as an introduction to the game, with a bigger version, complete with AI, multiplayer and a new set of quests for Prologue, due to launch on smartphones, tablets and PC early 2013.

The quest system is designed to give players a way to experience all the different characters and discover their strengths and weaknesses.

Nomad commercial director Don Whiteford explained “If you’ve got the board game, in order to try out 10 different characters you’re going to have to play the thing 10 times,

“And even then after 10 times you’re probably not fully au fait with what that character can really do strategically.

“The questing system is a great way to get people into the game and let you try stuff out.”

Nomad accepted Games Workshop’s offer to work on Talisman because of the success it had seen others have with video game versions of board games, such as Carcassonne, Catan and Ticket to Ride. In addition to that one of its designers is a huge Talisman fan.

Talisman also has a Steam Greenlight page. Whiteford reckons it has a 50/50 chance of being greenlit on Valve’s community approval platform. Even if it is successful, it could be months before it launches on Steam.

I am personally really looking forward to this game as I have many memories of playing it with my family through my childhood. I have played a demo of the game and it does feel like the board game. I am very happy to see this being released.

Train2Game News: New ‘Durango’ console details

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It was revealed last week that Xbox World and PlayStation Magazine 3 won’t be published any more. Following that, XBW has used its penultimate issue to reveal details about the next Xbox.

According to the article, the next-gen Xbox – which it speculates is likely to be called simply “Xbox” – will introduce Kinect 2.0, use Blu-ray discs and feature directional audio, a TV output and input, ‘innovative controller’ and – at a later stage of the console’s life – AR glasses.

Current codename ‘Durango’ dev kits boast a CPU with four hardware cores, each divided into four logical cores and an impressive 8GB of RAM, XBW reports.

Editor in chief Dan Dawkins said “Xbox World has been at the cutting edge of Durango coverage for over 12 months. Unless something really dramatic changes, everything we reveal in our penultimate issue will be revealed long before E3 in June.”

The magazine has good form when it comes to next-gen Xbox leaks, having revealed in January Microsoft’s plans for augmented reality, directional sound, and a four-player, finger-tracking Kinect, all of which were later confirmed in the now infamous leaked planning document in June.

To read the full 8-page feature, buy the latest issue of Xbox World online or on Apple Newsstand here.

PSM3 features an equally large feature on PlayStation 4 and you can buy that on iOS here.

Train2Game News: UK Top 20 – 19.11.12

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Halo 4 was knocked off of the top spot by Call Of Duty Black Ops 2 this week. The PS Vita counter part, Call Of Duty Black Ops Declassified came in at 16. The other new entries this week are The Sims 3: Seasons which came in at number 9 and Kinect Disneyland Adventures which entered at 17. We now get to see how long Black Ops 2 will stay at the top of the charts.

Week ending 17 November 2012

POS.  TITLE  PUBLISHER  LAST
WEEK 
1   CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS II ACTIVISION –
2 HALO 4 MICROSOFT 1
3 –  FIFA 13 EA SPORTS 3
4 ASSASSIN’S CREED III UBISOFT 2
5 SKYLANDERS GIANTS SKYLANDERS 6
6 NEED FOR SPEED MOST WANTED EA GAMES 4
7 JUST DANCE 4 UBISOFT 9
8 –  BORDERLANDS 2 2K GAMES 8
9   THE SIMS 3: SEASONS EA GAMES –
10 FOOTBALL MANAGER 2013 SEGA 5
11 WWE ’13 THQ 7
12 THE ELDER SCROLLS V: SKYRIM BETHESDA SOFTWORKS 15
13 MOSHI MONSTERS: MOSHLINGS THEME PARK MIND CANDY 12
14 –  DISHONORED BETHESDA SOFTWORKS 14
15 FORZA MOTORSPORT 4 MICROSOFT 19
16   CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS DECLASSIFIED ACTIVISION –
17   KINECT DISNEYLAND ADVENTURES MICROSOFT –
18 –  NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. 2 NINTENDO 18
19 MEDAL OF HONOR: WARFIGHTER EA GAMES 10
20 RESIDENT EVIL 6 CAPCOM 13

Leisure software charts compiled by Chart Track, (C)2012 UKIE Ltd

Train2Game News: SpecialEffect Charity Auction

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A new art exhibition is auctioning off game pictures for charity SpecialEffect. Everything on display at the London Game Festival exhibition is for sale.

Included in the initial batch are three signed pieces from Batman: Arkham City, two Fable 3 pieces signed by Peter Molyneux and the artists, a signed Metal Gear Solid ‘Raiden’ canvass, plus pieces from Tomb Raider, Dishonored, Moshi Monsters and Runescape.

The collection will be made available to bid on in four batches. The first batch is available now. The others will be put up for auction every Monday until 3rd December.

The auction is held online at www.londongamesart.com

Do remember to keep watching and sharing SpecialEffect’s video. They are well over half way to hitting the target of 25,000 views by christmas day. I know this can be done and it will really help spread the word of SpecialEffect!

Train2Game News: Chris Ledger talks to T2G Radio

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Chris Ledger spoke to me about the rise of Derp Studios and having their game released on the app store.

You can hear the interview here: http://audioboo.fm/boos/1062901-train2game-chris-ledger-talks-to-mark-on-t2g-radio

Or read the transcript below

Hey I’m Chris Ledger, I’m on the Train2Game Designer course and I live in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

What’s your story? What are the past experiences that have shaped your life to who you are today?

The Train2Game design course even in its early stages did. I managed to do a few Portfolio Pieces, A High Concept Document and other working style documents. I managed to show that to a small iPhone developer and my first project that I worked on was licensed. The second one was the Game Jam in 2011, which was hosted by Train2Game and Epic Games. I was chosen as an individual to make the fourth team to go on to Make Something Unreal Live where we worked on a project which used the Fighting Fantasy license. The company, Derp Studios, which was The Gadget Show Live Team, just released their first title, Dire Consequences on the iOS store.

Tell us a bit about the game

The game, it’s a first person action game. It’s a wave game for iOS and you can buy optional spells, the more enemies you defeat you get souls. You can use the souls to get spells to help you through the waves. That’s the gist of it really. At one point, I nicknamed it horde with swords because it’s a wave mode like Gears so I thought horde with swords was the best way to describe it.

That’s a good way to describe it I think. So is this work for you now? Is this what you do for a job?

I did make Derp Studios a limited company in, I guess around April time, just after Gadget Show Live I think. We are planning to go ahead and make it a business and earn a bit of money from it, which will be nice. Even though it’s still like a hobby it feels but we do want to make money out of it as well.

How did you get that to happen?

There’s websites you can actually go through to register as a company. It doesn’t actually cost a lot. Well it can build up over time because you’ve got to get all the documents. I used a website called TheCompanyWarehouse.co.uk which is quite good. I actually signed the company up for a pound but you’ve got to pay for other things like helping you with documents and things because there is loads to do to set up a company, more than you’d ever imagine.

Do you think Derp Studios will enter the Power Up competition by Microsoft and if you do, do you have any early game ideas yet?

We would like to try that. We have been discussing it I can’t really say for certain if we’ll go ahead and do that. I know we do want to make a second project so that will start quite soon.

One thing that I have always wondered is why did you end up calling the studio Derp Studios?

Oh no, explaining this again! People usually ask that. Well in the early stages we didn’t know what to call ourselves and we were unknown for a while. Because we are all quite new to making games, we kept making mistakes and would say “Oh that’s a Derp mistake”. The most common phrase was “Oh Derp”. So it just kind of went from there.

What is your reason for getting into the gaming industry and how do you think getting into the games industry will change your life?

Well it’s changed my life already but I have always wanted to be in the gaming industry, ever since I was about 8 or something. I just wanted to give something back really to the gaming community and actually live out the dream of becoming a designer that I’ve had since a very early age.

How is Dire Consequences doing on the iOS App Store?

Better than I thought it would to be honest. I forget how big the iOS market is. We shoved it out there and we were over the moon when it was actually on sale. We had some quite good reviews but our average rating is 2 stars but I thought we are quite novice still and it is still quite buggy. People have been pointing it out, issues that they would like to see resolved and how we can improve it, which is absolutely great hearing feedback from a customer audience that have actually played it and experienced it, so that’s proven quite valuable. I think in the first week we have had three thousand downloads.

That’s Excellent. Thank you very much for your time Chris!

No Problem.

Train2Game News: App in development to ease gamer frustration

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A new app is in development that will allow gamers to take a screenshot of where they are in a game and a walkthrough will be found for them.

Sometimes gamers get stuck in a level and need help clearing it. This means going through the tedious process of pausing the game, reading through hundreds of search engine results and then, just maybe, finding the right help. With this new app developed by Noah Glaser, owner of popular gaming site LegendZelda.net, this could be a thing of the past.

Glaser’s goal is to create this easy-to-use app by May 2013. He will create the app which allows frustrated gamers to simply pull out their phones, take a picture of the screen and submit it. This will pull up a guide in both text/image and video formats for that particular section of the game and how to get past it. No hard-to-follow written steps, the Game Image Recognition Walkthrough App will provide textual and visual demonstration.

This is an interesting and potentially very helpful idea but to develop it he is funding it through Kickstarter.

The bonuses he is giving if you pledge are listed below:

Pledge $10 or more
·         Free app
·         LegendZelda.net logo sticker

Pledge $30 or more
·         Free app
·         LegendZelda.net logo sticker
·         LegendZelda.net bumper sticker

Pledge $50 or more
·         Free app
·         LegendZelda.net bumper sticker
·         Zelda keychain

Pledge $100 or more
·         Free app
·         Zelda plush doll

Pledge $200 or more
·         Free app
·         LegendZelda.net bumper sticker
·         Zelda guidebook

Pledge $350 or more
·         Free app
·         LegendZelda.net logo bumper sticker
·         Zelda branded t-shirt
·         Zelda plush doll

Pledge $500 or more
·         Free app
·         LegendZelda.net logo bumper sticker
·         Built-in recognition within the app
·         Zelda Wii, n64, ds, or 3ds game of your choice

You can pledge here.

Glaser’s gaming sites have a large following and well-established communities which provide him with reliable connections for launching the new app. Through your funding and Glaser’s connections, the app would help gamers worldwide play better and smarter without the frustrating delays of getting through difficult levels.

Train2Game News: Five hundred gamers heading to American civil war

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Flying Squirrel entertainment has announced that they are working on a five hundred player game based on the American civil war.

The game, Battle Cry of Freedom, is going to be historically accurate. So all of the uniforms, weapons and scenarios will all be historically based on the American Civil War. There is going to be a large variety of player controlled artillery available, like mortars and cannons, each of which can use special ammunition types. There will be an engineer class who can build barricades, trenches and explosives and a musician for when you feel less violent. Lastly, the maps will be entirely destructible when it comes to fences, buildings or whatever is in the way.

In addition they are going to use real war civil war music, all the maps will be historically accurate recreations, there will be a regiment focused system that helps players join up with their unit, there is a goal system that assigns squads with specific objectives like supporting fire for artillery and there will be an engagement mode that is basically a historical objective mode.

Earlier this year Flying Squirrel Entertainment released the multiplayer focused Napoleonic Wars for Mount and Blade: Warband, which sold rather well with around 200,000 sales. With that game they unleashed two hundred players into early 19th century line battles that involved muskets, artillery and a customize-able battlefield.

Mount and Blade: Napoleonic Wars having two hundred players was pretty hard on their servers, so Flying Squirrel Entertainment has quite the challenge in front of them to make five hundred player battles without all of the lag. However, they are using a different engine this time around and they are entirely focused optimizing the game so it won’t needlessly load what the player cannot see. They are already reporting successful tests with up to three hundred and fifty players, so they have plenty of time to work on getting five hundred players to be manageable.

They plan to release the game in a year but, unlike Napoleonic Wars, this standalone title is being crowd funded by the fans and they are taking donations on their website.

Train2Game News: Mid-week round up – 14.11.12

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Cliff Bleszinski, better known as CliffyB, has received a mysterious package in a hotel room he is currently staying at. The package contained a phone with a Ubisoft background and one phone number in it. CliffyB told his twitter fans that he would ring the number saying “I do have a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me an asset for people like you.”

What started off as a breeding ground for indie titles now seems to be the only form of submission to the digital distribution service, Steam. This is a bold move by Valve as it means not only the bedroom developers but also the big hitters will have to submit their game to Greenlight.

Halo 4 earned $220 million on the day it launched. This isn’t quite as much as Halo 3 or reach but it is still an impressive figure. Microsoft reckons its juggernaut franchise is on track to hit its $300 million global sales target within its first week, thrusting lifetime sales for the Halo franchise passed the $3.38 billion mark.

Of course the other big release lately is Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2. The game is Amazon’s most preordered game ever beating last year’s Modern Warfare 3. Amazon said it “shattered” the previous record. The company wouldn’t reveal any further details on the launch or preorders of Black Ops 2.

Valve president Gabe Newell has has revealed Valve is working on a next generation successor to the Source Engine. Newell also confirmed the Source 2 engine would be completely new, instead of just another update for nearly ten year-old tech. Source made its debut in Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2 in 2004.

Mass Effect 4 will run on DICE’s Frostbite engine, the latest version of which was used in Battlefield 3. There also seems to be a lot of interest in being able to play as different alien races, similar to the style of Dragon Age:Origins.