Train2Game News: Yogscast and Humble Bundle raising money for charity

YogscastYogscast have teamed up with Humble Bundle to raise money for several different charities this Holiday season.

People who donate $25 to this Humble Bundle will receive over $200 worth of games including; Torchlight, Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, Shank 2, Magicka: Wizard Wars (Early Access), Sonic All-Star Racing Transformed and Napoleon: Total War. With this Bundle not only will you receive all those games but even a couple of bits of DLC, including an exclusive Yogscast War of the Vikings Hat.

The money raised by this Humble Bundle will be used to support great charities like; Oxfam, SpecialEffect, Little People UK, GamesAid, and War Child.

Yogscast have created this video to explain what they are doing in more detail:

If you want to donate and get some great games visit https://www.humblebundle.com/yogscast

Train2Game News: Humble Bundle 8

Humble Bundle 8The eighth official Humble Bundle has been out for a few days and has some amazing games included.

This latest pay-what-you-want affair for charity comes with Little Inferno, the charming puzzler with a killer soundtrack; the subterranean Metroidvania adventure Capsized; the profoundly beautiful first-person stroll-’em-up Dear Esther; the minimalist narrated platformer Thomas Was Alone; and the colourful multiplayer platformer Awesomenauts.

If you pay above the average, which at the time of writing is $5.45, you also get the highly popular Hotline Miami, which Eurogamer gave a massive 10/10, and the chirpy, abstract exploration game Proteus.

Every title in the bundle is available for PC, Mac, and Linux, which several of these games are debuting on with this bundle.

Proceeds are split between the developers, Child’s Play, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the bundle organisers. As per the usual routine, you can decide which of your money goes where.

The Bundle has already made $1,295,199.86 (and rising) from 227,826 sales. It reached the $1m milestone after just 18 hours. Currently the customer that has paid the most for the bundle is Markus “Notch” Persson with a purchase price of $5,000.

You can enjoy an amusing video detailing the Humble Bundle 8 below:

To purchase the Humble Bundle 8 you can go to www.humblebundle.com

Train2Game News: Community created games

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: Mid-week round up

Blizzard Entertainment released Mists Of Pandaria yesterday. The latest expansion for World Of Warcraft. Blizzard have also said that they have no fear of Windows 8 and will release games for any platform their players are on.

Avenged Sevenfold have released a new track that will feature on Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2. The song, Carry On, is the second song the band have released for a Call Of Duty game. They previously released Not Ready To Die with one of the Call Of Duty: Black Ops DLC packs.

Telltale’s five Walking Dead episodic games will be put on disc in December for Xbox360 and PS3. The game is based on the graphic novel turned TV show and through playing them myself I can say, if you are a fan of the series, play this game. You won’t be disappointed.

Nvidia’s head of cloud gaming, Phil Eisler, believes that cloud gaming could take over from consoles. He believes that consoles have one final generation in them before they die out, leaving the world of gaming in the hands of the cloud.

Ubisoft have announced that Assassins Creed 3 will not play on Windows XP. The company has released the specifications needed to play the game. There is a version for Windows 8 in the pipeline though.

Bethesda have released an animated prequel to its upcoming Dishonored. The webseries is called Tales of Dunwall and the gorgeous animated shorts are being released in three parts. The videos can be found on YouTube and they show the downfall of the in game city.

Sony Xdev are giving a small studio the opportunity to win £25,000. This new initiative, called Playstation Pioneers, will reward developers for a PlayStation Mobile game concept and will also offer successful candidates the opportunity to work alongside XDev. Further details can be found here.

An extra four titles have been added to the Humble Bundle 6. The titles are: Bit.Trip Runner, Gratuitous Space Battles, Jamestown, and Wizorb. If you have already purchased the bundle, you will get the new games added at no extra cost.

If you are attending Eurogamer this weekend you can get a special surprise when you play Company Of Heroes 2. Everyone that plays the game or attends the developer session at the event will get a code to access a future beta for the game.

Finally Train2Game will be at Eurogamer this weekend. If you are attending go and say hello, it is always nice to meet these people. I will be attending on the Saturday so if you see me feel free to talk to me. I hope everyone that attends has a brilliant time.

Train2Game News: Mid-week Round up

Train2Game student Fiona Stewart has been featured in The Sun. She talks about how she moved from traditional art to digital art and how it has affected her life. The Sun also featured an article about Daniel Gent, a disabled student of Train2Game who uses a voice activated computer.

Microsoft are bringing Atari’s extensive back catalogue to tablets and browsers. The new portal is called Atari Arcade and it’s opening with eight titles: Asteroids, Combat, Centipede, Lunar Lander, Missile Command, Pong, Super Breakout and Yar’s Revenge. The rest of the games are set to be released over the next few months.

343 Industries and Microsoft are releasing eight different pre-order incentives for Halo 4. Depending on where you order the game from you get a different in game item. The in game items include: Different Armour sets, Avatar Items and multi-player Emblems.

Humble Bundle Six has been released. The Humble Bundles are great for picking up some of the top indie games whilst helping charity at the same time. You pay what you want for the bundle but need to pay a minimum amount to get the game Dustforce. Other games included are: Rochard, Shatter, S.P.A.Z, Torchlight and Vessel.

Sony are releasing two new thinner PlayStation 3s. These new consoles are 25% slimmer than the current models and one boasts a 500GB hard drive the other is a 12GB flash memory model but a 250GB hard drive will be available.

Sony are also launching PlayStation Mobile in October. It is a new store for games to be released for mobile devices. An SDK for the store will be released in November opening up a new market for games developers.

Nintendo has come to an agreement with Unity. Developers can use the engine to create games for the Wii U. Unity users will have to pay for a license to develop for the Wii U, just like with the other platforms.

EA will support the very first GaymerCon. The convention is for the LGBT community to come together through their love of gaming. Their website says its purpose is to educate and inform “the gaming community of the presence of sexuality in our digital lives and promoting acceptance and social change through gaming.”

Finally a big congratulations to the winning team at the weekends world record winning Game Jam. RetroMetro won with their game, Royal Rush. I hope you enjoy your prizes and I hope everyone who attended the Game Jam had an excellent time!

Train2Game News: New online indie game market opening soon

A new online store is going live on 26 September selling indie games. It will utilise a pay-what-you-want scheme.

The new store, IndieGameStand, is run by the same people behind Indie Game Magazine. Its goal is to promote indie games and give indie developers a chance to show their talents.

The pay-what-you-want scheme is a good way for customers to show their support for indie titles. The majority of the games have extra bonuses that come with them if you choose to spend enough. 10% of all sales will go towards the developer of the games chosen charity. Humble Bundle has had good success with a similar scheme.

Every game you purchase from the site can be downloaded and installed as many times as you like, regardless of what you paid.

IndieGameStand states on its website “The purpose of IndieGameStand is to put a spotlight on those indie titles which provide fantastic experiences, but may have been passed over by the mainstream gaming public, portals, websites, or whatever. This site is about supporting all of the fantastic and worthwhile indie developers out there. Every developer out there deserves a moment to shine.”

This is good news for students as it opens up a new market to sell your games on. You can get good exposure, have a game released and help a good cause.

You can learn more at IndieGameStand.com

Train2Game news: Watch Mojang’s Game Jam LIVE right now!

Train2Game students can tune in and watch Minecraft developer Mojang’s 60 hour Game Jam, right now.

The Minecraft team are making a brand new game this weekend, and donating the funds to the Humble Bundle Charity. Viewers still have time to vote for what genre of game they want Mojang to make, and at the time of writing it looks like they’ll be creating a Steam Punk RTS.

Watch the Mojam on the Mojang Twitch TV channel. It’s sure to provide Train2Game students with an excellent insight into game development.

More information about the Mojam is right here on The Train2Game Blog.

Train2Game students know all about Game Jams, as Train2Game has held two 48 hour long Game Jams, with the four winning teams at the Train2Game & Epic Game Jam, moving onto a Make Something Unreal Live at The Gadget Show Live, where they have the opportunity to win a fully licensed UDK Ios development kit.

As usual, leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.