Latest Gaming and MMORPG Updates |
- Wasteland to Get Kickstarter-Funded Sequel After Almost 25 Years
- Less than Famous Firsts: Your Favorite Developers’ Early Efforts
- Mercenary Ops (CN)
- Missing Songs in Jet Set Radio-HD Shows Need for Game Preservation Movement
- How Mario 3D Land Marries Old and New
- 400 Diablo 3 beta keys to be won at NowGamer
| Wasteland to Get Kickstarter-Funded Sequel After Almost 25 Years Posted: 15 Mar 2012 06:04 AM PDT Double Fine amply demonstrated what Kickstarter is capable of. Its proposed old-school graphic adventure set a record for the service by raising more than $3.3 million in just over a month despite its goal being to generate only $400,000. That was an unusual set of circumstances though, as Tim Schafer has built up a tremendous amount of good will with gamers to the point where they’re willing to hand over their money to get a game that doesn’t have so much as a name yet. But for all of the talk over the last month about how Kickstarter could change the industry and fund all sorts of projects fans have been wanting to see for years, we’ve yet to see a significant amount of money generated by anyone other than Schafer. While it’s impossible to say right now whether this is another exception that can be added to the list alongside Double Fine or a demonstration of what can happen when turning to the Kickstarter community, we now have another project asking for a good deal of money that is likely to get it. Interplay founder Brian Fargo expressed interest last month in turning to Kickstarter to finally get the funding needed to produce a sequel to 1988′s Wasteland. Fargo and his current company, inXile Entertainment, finally went ahead with their plans for a Kickstarter yesterday, seeking more than twice as much as Double Fine did: $900,000. The game’s cost has been estimated at $1 million, though Fargo is offering to pitch in the last $100,000 to reach that figure if it’s necessary. At the current rate, he can go about finding something else to spend that money on. With this positioned as “probably the last chance for a Wasteland sequel,” backers have pledged in excess of $700,000 (accurate as of this writing; the figure shot up $60,000 as I was writing) after only about a day. Several people have donated in excess of $5,000 and $10,000, and almost half of the current 12,449 backers have pledged $30 or more. It’s a remarkable showing of support for a game some believed would not be able to generate much interest in 2012. It’s all the more impressive considering it’s made pretty clear the game won’t be completed until late 2013 following six months of pre-production and a 12-month development period. Wasteland is a game you don’t hear a lot about these days, not having the benefit of a re-release on Good Old Games or some equivalent to drive discussion. That is not a reflection on its quality or significance, though. While I have no doubt it would fail to impress younger gamers who have never played it before, its influence can’t be denied — as Fargo explains in the video above, Fallout was created when EA wouldn’t hand over the rights to Wasteland. And the Fallout series was heavily inspired by Wasteland, which featured branching paths, moral decisions, and other elements we praise games for even today. Making the safe assumption that the next 33 days will be able to yield the remainder of the money needed, Wasteland 2 will be staying true to its roots. The developers — the team includes people involved with development of the original Wasteland and the first two Fallout games — have promised to make this a top-down, turn-based strategy game where you’ll manage a team of characters, just like in the original. It seems some lessons may have been learned from Double Fine’s Kickstarter, as slightly more detailed plans for what will happen if the goal is exceeded were provided this time. “At $1.25 million, the money will go primarily into making the world bigger, adding more maps, more divergent stories and even more music,” the page reads. “At $1.5 million, the world gets even bigger. You’ll have more adventures to play, more challenges to deal with, and a greater level of complexity to the entire storyline. We’ll add more environments, story elements, and characters to make the rich world come alive even more. We will even be able to bring Wasteland 2 to OS X for Mac lovers. And after $1.5 million the sky is the limit.” Clearly, there is still interest in the game, even if only from a fairly small, niche fan base. Like the Double Fine game with the adventure genre (which, Telltale aside, is not exactly at its peak when thinking about the point-and-click variety), a successful Kickstarter campaign for Wasteland 2 could encourage others to bring back games we never thought we’d see again. Wasteland falls into that category for sure. While Fargo had spoken repeatedly about doing a sequel since obtaining the rights from EA a decade ago, it had been a very long time since the original was released and this particular genre is also not thriving, making the likelihood of a publisher putting up any amount of money unlikely. One noticeable difference between this Kickstarter and Double Fine’s is the average pledge. Double Fine’s ended up being just over $38 per person, compared with over $56 for Wasteland 2. That’s an enormous disparity. It’s possible the latter will come down as more pledges are made over the next month, though it wouldn’t shock me to see it stay a good deal higher than Double Fine’s. Wasteland 2 may not have the potential to be a multi-million seller, but the fans that are still out there have a voracious appetite for a game like this and seem to be willing to prove that with their wallets. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Less than Famous Firsts: Your Favorite Developers’ Early Efforts Posted: 15 Mar 2012 02:28 AM PDT Everyone starts somewhere in the game industry. Few would-be auteurs are handed their own big-budget projects without first doing time in smaller roles. Of course, some of those smaller roles are part of major games. Many of today’s best-known game developers began their careers on important ground: Doublefine founder Tim Schafer’s first gigs came with such acclaimed LucasArts adventures games as Maniac Mansion and The Secret of Monkey Island, while Deus Ex and Thief producer Warren Spector jumped into game development by working on the Wing Commander and Ultima series. Other major talents from today’s game industry started off with humbler attempts. Their first games didn’t change the market or spawn successful franchises, and some of them were clearly planned as disposable pieces of a popular license or an ongoing series. Yet in each of these seemingly minor titles, there’s a hint or two of what their designers would accomplish years down the road.  Hideo Kojima – Penguin AdventureAbove all else, Hideo Kojima is known for messing with players. He’s also known for the Metal Gear Solid series, the Zone of the Enders games, and the graphic-adventure pioneering of Policenauts and Snatcher, all of which throw curveballs in their stories or gameplay. Kojima’s knack for that dates all the way back to the first game he ever worked on: Penguin Adventure on the MSX. Devoid of weary military operatives or finger-wagging about nuclear proliferation, Penguin Adventure sends Pentarou, its chubby flightless hero, racing through various courses. He’s out to find a golden apple, the only fruit that can heal the stricken Princess Penko. Along the way, Pentarou contends with pits, bats, an icy-breathed Freezasaurs or two, and something that assistant director Hideo Kojima would later adore: unvarnished references to popular films. The statues that greet Pentarou at a level’s end resemble penguin-headed versions of the sphinxes from The Neverending Story. True to Kojima’s form, there’s a nasty surprise at the game’s conclusion, where the princess dies in spite of Pentarou’s efforts. There’s only one way to prevent this: pause the game once and only once during the entire quest. There’s no hint of this in the game itself, which led to plenty of disappointed players back in 1986. Twelve years later, Kojima was less subtle about killing off Meryl Silverburgh in Metal Gear Solid; she survived as long as Solid Snake resisted a bout of electroconvulsive torture. Perhaps Penguin Adventure even planted some seeds for Metal Gear Solid 2, where no less than three major female characters die rather abruptly. Later Appearances:  Yuji Naka – Girl’s GardenYuji Naka is remembered most readily as the co-creator of Sonic the Hedgehog and the man who oversaw the blue speedball’s best outings. Yet he’s also the force behind NiGHTS, Burning Rangers, Phantasy Star Online, and Billy Hatcher. Before he was ever Sonic’s steward, Naka worked on the first two Phantasy Stars and his lesser-known first game, Girl’s Garden. Like many of its contemporaries, Girl’s Garden is all about hunting items in a maze. That maze is a web of bushes, the items are flowers, and the collector is a girl named Papri, who’s gathering a bouquet for the boy she likes. Naka intended Girl’s Garden for female players, and it makes no secret of defying the game industry’s gender roles: Papri’s quite willing to risk mauling by the bears who roam her garden, and her love interest, Minto, is unashamed of liking flowers, thank you very much. Girl’s Garden may be simple, but it merits revisiting to see just how far female characters have come in video games–and how far they haven’t. Originally conceived as a test project by Naka and another Sega employee, Girl’s Garden caught the eye of upper management and was released for the SG-1000 (the ancestor of the Sega Master System). And while the cast of Girl’s Garden never showed up Sonic the Hedgehog or Burning Rangers, Naka still unfraid to go after segments of the gaming market previously ignored by other developers. Other parts of the industry have long since caught up with him, but his studio Prope’s been busy with Let’s Tap, Ivy the Kiwi?, and the Sonic-esque Rodea the Sky Soldier. Later Appearances:  David Jaffe – Mickey ManiaThere’s no question that David Jaffe’s games earn their “M” ratings. God of War is relentless in its savagery, and the Jaffe-backed installments of the Twisted Metal series grew darker and darker with their concoctions of vehicular carnage and Mephistophelean soul-selling. All of this contrasts starkly with Jaffe’s first game, Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse. Paying tribute to Mickey’s career, the game features several nicely animated recreations of classic cartoons: Steambot Willie, Lonesome Ghosts, and even the 1990 short The Prince and the Pauper. It is, course, as non-violent as a game can get without depleting itself of all conflict: Mickey dodges and outruns some bosses, he throws marbles as his only weapon, and he comically feigns death when he’s out of energy. It’s even less aggressive than, say, Mickey Mousecapade on the NES, where the stars Mickey fired were at least pointy. Despite the lightweight, Disney-mandated tone of the whole production, co-designer Jaffe shows a good grasp of the same varied styles that would win God of War many fans. With each new cartoon tribute comes a new gameplay concept or two, and the final battle against Pete involves some creative use of the game’s environment. Mickey doesn’t slam Pete’s head in an iron door and stab him fifty-seven times before decapitating and dismembering him, but the mouse’s improvised weapons aren’t such a far cry from God of War’s more memorable clashes. Later Appearances: Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Posted: 15 Mar 2012 12:04 AM PDT
I guess it is not really common to find a hugely successful Free to Play third person shooter in the online gaming world, and I can only think of a couple with not much success. For console gaming, there seems to be many success stories. Mercenary Ops utilize a couple of extra actions which are typically missing from first person shooter, including blind shot, leaping and really treating the environment as a tool. See the number of primary weapons my character can hold? That is one of the few new things in my experience in the game. Playing in 2 AI PvE maps, the Shopping Mall is a rather stale mode, shooting enemies on sight and perhaps grab that cool flamethrower weapon as well. While the map is pretty restricted, the Hospital of the Dead map is really quite big. Essentially a zombie mode map where the undead spawns like crazy in various rounds, there are many rooms to explore and zombies literally spawn from almost everywhere, in which my team was finally overwhelmed. Players can even repair window grills to stall the zombies from destroying them too quickly, but I think it is a rather useless feature given how the grills fall off faster than I can gobble down a burger.Some doors will require points to open for convenience, but I will suggest leaving that to the pros. I will be back next week with more footage, other maps/ modes and a take on the current cash shop in the China server, which is pretty heavily-monetized from my point of view. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| Missing Songs in Jet Set Radio-HD Shows Need for Game Preservation Movement Posted: 14 Mar 2012 06:03 PM PDT The upcoming HD update of Jet Set Radio will feature only around half of the music tracks that appeared in the original game. Sega says it made every effort to re-acquire the rights to all of the game’s music, an undoubtedly a lengthy process. When the publisher signed the licensing agreements for the game’s soundtrack in the late ’90s, nobody could have foreseen a market that demanded the re-release of classic games in the quantities we see today. Sega wasn’t alone in their short-sightedness — until quite recently, most publishers never gave a second thought as to how they would sell their game ten years into the future. Very rarely, if ever, do filmmakers have to eliminate licensed songs from their scores when releasing their movies on DVD or Blu-ray. The games industry, on the other hand, has never been in the bargaining position to or had interest in demanding licensing arrangements that will continue into the future and cover all further releases of their games. Until this current console generation, the business side of the industry didn’t see any money in old games at all. Occasionally they’d throw fans an overpriced compilation of some kind, but by and large games have always made money in the first weeks after release and been considered essentially worthless afterward. The current world of HD updates and cheap downloadable games is still young, and the financial realities of game making before the existence of services like PSN, XBLA, Virtual Console, or Steam encouraged short term thinking. Sega signed the licensing agreements for the game’s soundtrack because the publisher never imagined a world where they could make a profit selling decades-old Genesis and Dreamcast games. Game publishers considered their older titles less than worthless. It takes money to properly control the climate in a storage room to maximize the lifespan of disks, CDs, and DVDs. Japanese developer Irem, for example, maintains only ROMs of their classic ’80s RPGs — the games’ source code having been lost long ago. Without the source code for a game, it becomes quite difficult to update it for re-release. When Mattel sold off the 8-inch floppy drives that contained much of the source code for original Intellivison games at auction, former Mattel employee Keith Robinson took it upon himself to track down buyers and recover the data. Thanks to his efforts, interested players can play historically important Intellivision games easily on their iPhone, Xbox, PS2, or any other number of platforms. Not every developer or publisher has a Keith Robinson willing to sacrifice his own time to preserve classic games in their original form. For most of this industry?s history, retail stores had no interest in filling their shelves with ten year-old games. Only the most beloved titles, like the early Monkey Island games, received re-releases with any regularity. The business model of the industry relied on massive profits generated days or weeks after a game’s debut, not years, and older titles held little value beyond the intellectual property therein ? which publishers could later mine in the form of sequels and reboots. With a business environment that stressed reliance on massive profits from new content, it’s no wonder the music licensing deals publishers signed came with a a few caveats that would prevent the music’s use if the game were released on another platform or at another time. Not even the most idealistic publisher would have imagined their games to be so successful as to demand re-release ten years later. In all likelihood, Jet Set Radio’s missing tracks will only bother the most dedicated fans. Even though its a relatively small change to the game, it reminds us of the importance of preservation in the industry. JSR-HD will probably play and look better than its Dreamcast sibling, but it won’t play exactly as it did in 1999, meaning we may enjoy the HD update, but the game historians of the future will likely prefer the game on the Dreamcast. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| How Mario 3D Land Marries Old and New Posted: 14 Mar 2012 02:26 PM PDT Once upon a time, getting about in a Zelda game was such a clear-cut process. You had your dungeons (anywhere from four to 12, depending) and you had the overworld that linked them all together. Aside from the occasional spin-off (Four Swords Adventures was broken into levels, and Majora’s Mask centered around the hub of Clock Town), that’s how it always worked. You’d wander around, maybe poke into a cave for a Heart Piece, clear away some scrub, fight some bad guys, and eventually work your way to the next subterranean puzzle labyrinth. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is mixing things up, and — for the first eight hours of the game, at least — the results are pretty great. Skyward Sword’s design makes the distinction between overworld and underworld much muddier than in past games. Perhaps that’s appropriate, since this adventure divides its world into three layers rather than the usual two. Above the dungeons, you have the overworld; meanwhile, above it all is the realm of Skyloft, best described as an aerial take on Wind Waker’s sea. At the heart of Skyloft is a large city held aloft by (one assumes) ancient magic or technology or something, but the skies are littered with floating islands, and Link travels between them on the back of a huge red bird. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. |
| 400 Diablo 3 beta keys to be won at NowGamer Posted: 14 Mar 2012 12:02 PM PDT Diablo 3 fever is heating up, and while there still isn't a solid release date in place, you can whet your appetite with one of 400 Diablo 3 beta keys up for grabs at our sister site NowGamer. To register for your chance to grab one of the 400 Diablo 3 beta keys, all you have to do is enter your details on NowGamer's competition page. NowGamer staffers will randomly give away 100 keys each day, so if you don't get one straight away, don't worry, you might still have a chance. For details of how to register your beta key, please read the official Diablo 3 beta blog. Full terms and conditions can be found linked on NowGamer's competition page. Posted by: admin in Gaming News Thank you for Visiting Gameforumer.com, Hope you enjoyed the stay with us. Incoming search terms:
|
| You are subscribed to email updates from Gameforumer.com: MMORPG | Gaming News | Reviews | Gaming Community | Gaming Directory and more To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
