VentureBeat » Dota 2

GamesBeat weekly roundup: WoW loses 1.3M subscribers, Amazon brings paid apps to China, Q1 earnings, and more

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Fri, 10 May 2013 17:49:13 +0000

If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, Activision reveals strong first quarter earnings while Blizzard loses 1.3 million World of Warcraft subscribers, EA lays off 1,000 but expects to develop Disney’s Star Wars games, indie charity drive Hunble Bundle now accepts the virtual currency Bitcoin, and the Amazon Appstore beats Google to distributing paid apps in China.

We’ve also got a lot of previews for you, including Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Deadpool, and Watch Dogs, and reviews of Star Trek and Mario and Donkey Kong: Minis on the Move.

News

Mobile news

Tech

Strange happenings

Fighting words

Developer Warren Spector slams Wolfenstein: The New Order

Fund it

Earnings

Safeguarding the future

Previews

Reviews

Interviews

Watch Dog creators bring the reality of “smart cities” to games (interview)

Pieces of flair

Filed under: Games

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

Dota 2 replaces World of Warcraft as Raptr’s third most-played game

Jeffrey Grubb — Wed, 08 May 2013 16:04:15 +0000

Gamers pour millions of hours into top titles, but we never really had a good way to measure who is playing what across multiple platforms. That is until Raptr, a social network for gaming fans, began tracking play a few years ago.

Raptr just released its list of the 20 most-played games among its users in April. This method isn’t perfect since Raptr doesn’t log every gamer or even every system (it doesn’t log the 3DS or Vita), but it’s good for giving a glimpse at what people are playing.

We’ve embedded the list below:

Call of Duty: Black Ops II and League of Legends continue their stints at the top of the list, but Valve’s multiplayer online battle-arena game Dota 2 is making gains. In April, it jumped from fifth to third. That places it above Blizzard’s World of Warcraft for the first time ever.

Between League of Legends and Dota 2, MOBAs hold 10 percent of the total playtime among all Raptr members.

The only new title on the list is the multiplayer shooter Defiance for the PC, which placed ninth. Recent addition SimCity dropped off the list entirely.

Filed under: Games

Zynga reveals League of Legends-like Solstice Arena for mobile

Jeffrey Grubb — Fri, 03 May 2013 16:58:53 +0000

Gaming trends come in waves. Recently, we’ve had modern military shooters, $1 iPhone games, and then free-to-play mobile games with in-app purchases. The popular trend right now is free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) titles. As with any gaming craze, Zynga is making moves to capitalize on it.

Today, the social-game publisher revealed details about Solstice Arena for tablets and smartphones. The MOBA follows in the footsteps of Riot’s League of Legends and Valve’s Dota 2 PC games, but Zynga wants to take that playstyle to the wide-open mobile market.

“Our main goal with Solstice Arena is to take gameplay we love from a genre we love and transform it in such a way that allowed anyone — hardcore fans and casual players — to experience the thrill of multiplayer online battle arena gaming right from their mobile devices,” a Team Solstice spokesperson wrote on the game’s website. “We hope [some will] see a high-fidelity, well-balanced MOBA. To [others], we want Solstice Arena to simply be an awesome fighting game with great graphics.”

Solstice Arena will enter closed beta soon. Players can sign up on the game’s official website for a chance to get access to that testing.

Like Dota 2 and League of Legends, Solstice takes place in a fantasy world where heroes collaborate to take on teams of other heroes. Zynga is positioning Solstice Arena to generate revenue with in-game purchases that enable players to customize their characters, but Team Solstice is stressing that the title won’t have any pay-to-win bonuses.

“Solstice Arena is free-to-play and fair to play,” reads the Team Solstice blog. “Above all, we want to preserve the core progression of MOBA competition.”

Zynga isn’t the first company to bring a MOBA to mobile devices. Gameloft released Heroes of Order & Chaos on Android and iOS in 2012.

Team Solstice was previously known as developer A Bit Lucky. Zynga acquired that studio in September specifically based on what it saw in this title.

While Riot and Valve battle each other for dominance of the lucrative MOBA market on PC, Zynga is taking a blue-sea approach by releasing that style of game in a market with far less competition.

Filed under: Games

Raptr starts releasing its most-played games of the month: Black Ops II is tops for March

Dean Takahashi — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:00:44 +0000

Raptr has begun releasing monthly figures for the most-played Xbox 360 and PC games, and in its first-ever report, Call of Duty: Black Ops II is at the top. Black Ops II came out in November, but the first-person modern combat shooter is still commanding about 7.61 percent of overall gamer time.

Raptr is a gamer social network with 17 million users who share information about their game playing on the Xbox 360 and PC. Since Sony doesn’t allow PlayStation Network members to share game play data, there are no PlayStation 3 games in the rankings. The chart below ranks titles by the percentage of the total time spent on the top 1,000 games played by Raptr users.

While Black Ops II has the lead, it is closely followed by League of Legends on the PC, with 5.9 percent; World of Warcraft for the PC with 3.4 percent, and Gears of War: Judgment for the Xbox 360 at 2.54 percent. Dota 2 (Valve’s battle arena sequel to the Defense of the Ancients mod for Warcraft III) is still in beta but it has climbed up the charts recently, with play time up 63 percent from February. Game time for Dota 2 is half the time of its rival battle arena game League of Legends, but in the last week of March, the gap in playtime was just 25 percent under League of Legends.

Battlefield 3 saw a surge from the release of End Game downloadable content (DLC) in the first half of March. Halo 4 on the Xbox 360, meanwhile, continues a slow decline, with game time down 28 percent compared to February. The largest percentage of those Halo 4 players returned to play Mass Effect 3, thanks to the release on March 5 of the Citadel DLC for that game. A smaller group went to play Gears of War: Judgment.

BioShock Infinite launched on March 26, and the Xbox 360 version was the second-most-played game for that week, with the PC version coming in seventh. Meanwhile, Candy Crush Saga is still the top browser game on Raptr, and Marvel: Avengers Alliance is a distant second, with 25 percent of Candy Crush’s play time.

SimCity had severe launch issues, and it came in 20th for the whole month. During the last week of the month, SimCity was the 34th most-played game.

Filed under: Games, Social

Total War series gets a League of Legends-style spin-off

Jeffrey Grubb — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 20:15:56 +0000

Free-to-play games are huge. Multiplayer-online-battle-arena titles are everywhere. Sega and developer Creative Assembly want in on the action.

The Creative Assembly, which develops the Total War real-time strategy games, is now working on Total War: Arena. This new MOBA-style game pits players against one another as history’s greatest commanders in online combat.

The developer describes it as a mix of the standard RTS gameplay from previous Total War games and the MOBA genre exemplified by League of Legends and Dota 2. Naturally, it’ll cost nothing for players to get started.

Sega and Creative Assembly aren’t talking about release yet. The developer is still working on Total War: Rome II for PC, which is due out this year.

It will be fascinating to watch one developer introduce two games in the same franchise and see which one does better: The free-to-play game or the full retail release.

Filed under: Games

Infinite Crisis proves that superhuman brawls never get old (preview)

Giancarlo Valdes — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 12:00:59 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO — Comic book fans love to argue about which superheroes would win in a fight. Would Batman really beat Superman? Could the Flash take on the Green Lantern? But what if these heroes fought against themselves: Would Batman Prime (with the regular cowl and tights) win against the vampire-like Nightmare Batman? Or would Gaslight Batman’s steampunk gadgets school them both?

These are the sorts of questions Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment may answer with Infinite Crisis, a free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) for the PC featuring the well-known heroes and villains from DC Comics. It follows the basic MOBA formula: Two teams fight for control over specific points on a map, players level up by capturing those points or killing the opposing team, and then they upgrade their skills and buy items to maximize the potential of their characters.

Handling development duties is Turbine, a studio best known for its massively multiplayer online games like The Lord of the Rings Online. With Infinite Crisis (set for release later this fall), Turbine is going up against established MOBA giants such as Riot Games’ League of Legends and Valve’s Dota 2. Even though Warner Bros. just announced it Monday, Infinite Crisis was ready to see, with an early version available to the press at the annual Game Developers Conference.

It may not set the MOBA world on fire, but my time with Infinite Crisis was enough to see that — just like the DC-centric fighter Injustice: Gods Among Us — superhero-on-superhero battles never get old, no matter what the genre.

“All of our work has been about players getting online, playing together in groups, and having a good time together,” said executive producer Jeffrey Steefel. “ And MOBAs felt like the natural next step for us.”

Taking inspiration from the comics

While the plot is loosely based on the Infinite Crisis comic book series that DC released a few years ago, Turbine wants to tell its own story and focus, in Steefel’s words, “on the characters and the [different] worlds they come from.” The premise involves a mysterious cataclysm that pulls in all sorts of parallel universes (hence the different versions of the superheroes and supervillains) to the Earth we know and love. As a protector, you must assemble a team to fight against other teams in order to restore order across all the worlds.

Source: Turbine

Zatanna (left) takes on Captain Marvel.

Infinite Crisis will start off with six different variants of each character, with Turbine planning to release more (including versions of heroes that aren’t in the comics) as time goes on. These aren’t just character skins, however. Each will have their own sets of powers, skills, and backstories: That means Gaslight Batman handles very differently from Nightmare Batman.

For those who closely follow DC Comics lore, Turbine also made sure to incorporate some character-specific touches to their attacks and abilities. I only got to play two characters during my short time with Infinite Crisis, but the best example I saw was when I was controlling Captain Marvel. His ultimate attack (ultimates unlock for all characters once they hit level 6) actually reverts him to his human alter ego Billy Batson, a young teenaged boy, who then runs up to the nearest enemy and yells his trademark battle cry of “Shazam!” This summons a large thunderbolt that hurts anyone within a small radius as Billy transforms back into Captain Marvel.

Other ultimate attacks also lean on creating the sort of spectacle you’d expect when superheroes fight each other. The Green Lantern (the Hal Jordan version) creates a large plane using the powers of his ring and smashes it on top of his enemies, while the Flash uses his incredible speed to repeatedly punch you.

Source: Turbine

The Flash’s ultimate attack: The fastest puncher in the DC Universe.

Familiar MOBA gameplay with a twist

I’m not the most seasoned MOBA player — I play a little League of Legends every once in awhile — but I was able to easily slip into Infinite Crisis without too many adjustments. Capture points are still here in the form of large electronic pads, as are your team’s “minions” or nonplayable allies — here they’re robots — that mainly serve to deter the enemy from venturing too far into your territory by themselves.

The matches I played took place on a circular map known as Gotham Heights. In order to win, you have to reduce the opposing team’s health bar to zero, which starts decreasing once your team captures three or more pads. On the one hand, you can join your teammates to hunt down and kill isolated players, but this leaves you with fewer eyes watching your captured points. If you spread out, you’re more likely to defend or capture new places, but you’re also more vulnerable, especially if the other team decides to gang up on you.

One major way Infinite Crisis tries to distinguish itself from other MOBAs is by pitting players against the map as well as the other team. This happens during sequences Turbine calls “catastrophic events,” where a large meteor heads toward the map whenever a team’s health bar dips below a set number. Small beacons determine where the meteor will land, and if you don’t deactivate the one near your team’s spawn, the meteor will crash and damage everyone, as well as alter some geographical features of the map itself. If both sides shut off the beacons in time, the meteor will just hit a “neutral” spot where no one gets hurt.

Source: Turbine

Nightmare Batman

Some abilities called “stolen powers” also let you interact with the levels. When I was playing as Doomsday, I had the Super Strength power already equipped, so I could lift heavy objects like cars and toss them at other players for extra damage.

Infinite Crisis isn’t finished yet (that’s why you don’t see any screenshots of the user interface, as much of that is still being finalized) but as far as MOBAs go, it seems like a solid addition. Given the worldwide recognition of DC Comics’ stable of heroes and villains, it should have no trouble finding a dedicated community to support it.

Filed under: Games

Twitch and Evolve team up to broadcast live from the Game Developers Conference

Jeffrey Grubb — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 20:29:02 +0000

Gaming social network Evolve and video streaming site Twitch are teaming up to cover the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco.

The two companies will begin broadcasting live on Twitch and on Evolve’s own website tomorrow through Thursday. The streaming shows will air from 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Pacific each day.

Evolve plans to cover major games and news from GDC, and it will even stream a live Dota 2 match featuring Journey designer Jenova Chen.

This isn’t the first partnership between the two sites. Evolve recently added Twitch functionality to its PC desktop software. Gamers were already using Evolve to track achievements, gameplay hours, and friends — now Twitch provides those gamers a way to beam gameplay directly to others with the press of a button.

“Evolve is the right kind of partner for us as we continue to extend Twitch’s reach into every conceivable gaming environment,” Twitch chief executive Emmett Shear said in a statement. “Being able to broadcast any game using Evolve and then sharing this with a myriad of game developers and publishers at one of the largest gaming conferences in the world is the perfect stage.”

This is the latest in a series of similar partnerships that Twitch has made in recent weeks. In addition to Evolve, Twitch has similar integration features with the Raptr gaming network. It has a dedicated app on the upcoming Ouya Android console. It has one-click livestreaming support in the first-person online game Firefall. Activision added Twitch support in Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

Filed under: Games

Dota 2 surpasses Skyrim’s record for most concurrent players on Steam

Jeffrey Grubb — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 17:30:07 +0000

The Dragonborn is no longer the most popular kid on the block. All the cool kids are into defending the ancients.

Valve’s Dota 2 strategy game just broke The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’s record for the most concurrent players on the Steam gaming network. Dota 2 reached 297,010 simultaneous gamers on March 2. That beats Skyrim’s 287,411 players on the game’s launch day in November 2011.

Dota 2 is Valve’s entry in the popular multiplayer online battle arena genre. Other popular examples include League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth, and Guardians of Middle-earth. These games continue to grow in popularity largely due to huge presence in the competitive gaming scene.

In August, Valve held a Dota 2 tournament with a $1.6 million prize pool. Events like these are clearly replacing traditional marketing budgets, and it’s obviously working. You can see in the above chart that Dota 2 is growing rapidly.

Via Reddit

Filed under: Games

Valve gives Plantronics the rights to officially brand headsets with Aperture Laboratories and Mann Co. logos

Jeffrey Grubb — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 16:27:46 +0000

Gabe Newell — whoa, relax! I just said the guys’ name; you don’t have to lose your mind.

I understand a lot of you gamers have a bit of a thing for the managing director of Valve and everything he does. Well, the publisher and digital distributor is teaming with consumer electronics company Plantronics to release four officially branded gaming headsets.

The two companies partnered to slap logos for Dota 2, Counter-Strike, Mann Co. (Team Fortress 2), and Aperture Laboratories (Portal) on the Plantronics Commander and 780 lines of personal audio equipment. The headsets are available now exclusively from the Valve or Plantronics stores.

This collaboration between Valve and Plantronics doesn’t end at some words on headphones. Valve will support the products with in-game promotions and online tournaments.

In-game promotions for a product that you wear on your head? Sounds like a perfect opportunity for:

Filed under: Games

Heroes of Newerth 3.0 adds bots, hopes to teach new players (interview)

Mike Minotti — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 19:32:59 +0000

HoN, LoL, push mid, gank top. If that all sounds like gibberish to you, then you’ve never played a multiplayer online battle arena. Even though these MOBAs trace their origins to a custom map for Warcraft III that let two teams of five heroes attempt to destroy each other’s bases, games like League of Legends and Dota 2 have helped make this one of the fastest growing genres in gaming.

One of the more popular MOBAs is Heroes of Newerth, a PC game launched in 2010 by developer and publisher S2 Games. While a success in its own right, HoN never took off the way its biggest competitors did, but S2 is hardly ready to concede defeat.

GamesBeat talked to S2 Games founder Marc DeForest, who detailed the upcoming changes coming to Heroes of Newerth in early 2013 (known as HoN 3.0), including the addition of computer-controller bots. We also talk about the growth of the MOBA genre, the notoriously newbie-unfriendly community, and the challenges of differentiating HoN from its competitors.

GamesBeat: MOBAs have seen a lot of growth.

Marc DeForest: We’ve been pretty successful ourselves. I know that just in this year alone we’ve seen about 50% increase in our player base. We’ve had solid growth in North America, but we’re actually seeing most of our growth come from southeast Asia. I think our partners there said we’re the number one online game played in Thailand, which is a pretty exciting stat to have. Our partner in southeast Asia, we just signed a deal with them to launch HoN in Taiwan and China as well. The size of our company has doubled this year in terms of personnel. We’re close to 100 people. I just signed a lease on a new office this year which over doubles our current square footage to make room for additional growth. We’re not stopping with what we’re doing with HoN. We’re going to continue to operate it as a service. We’re going to continue to invest in it. We’re going to continue to invest in the company. We’ve got some other tricks up our sleeve, and we’ve got some other things we’ve been working on, which is pretty exciting. We’re almost three years old now and still extremely popular and still growing. I think that’s a testament to not just how good of a game HoN is as it is to the stickiness of this genre.

One of the things we have not spent enough time focusing on is the capability of learning how to play the game better before you play it online. Early next year we’re going to launch HoN 3.0. It’s an extremely solid update. We’ve spent a lot of time working on it. We’ve invested a seven-figure budget just into this update alone. One of the things we’re going to focus on is putting bots in the game. We’ve spent a lot of time making sure our bots feel like real players and not be so challenging that it is exactly the same as playing real players. Also, we’re focusing on easing players into playing their first bot game and teaching them the mechanics of the game in an easier fashion.

We have a thing in the office where if anyone calls it a tutorial then they have to get their hand slapped with a ruler, because it is not a tutorial. It’s not boring, but it is a good new-player walkthrough that will help transition someone, whether they’ve not played a game like this at all or they’ve been a long time LoL player and they’d like to try and play HoN.

But we knew we couldn’t just cater to all of those new players. 30 of the original (character) models, this being a three-year-old game, are getting refreshed artwork to a higher quality. Of course, we just call them HD versions of the models, but they look significantly better. And the map is getting a complete overhaul. The buildings, the towers, the wells, and the textures throughout the entire map are going to be changed, and it looks fantastic. I think people are going to be impressed. We’ve redone the in-game chat to make it better and streamlined it. We’ve redone the buddy list and notifications. So, you know, we’ve taken the time to take feedback from the community, to look at the things that we think we can do better, put those together, sit down, come up with a plan, execute on making the UI (user interface) better, making some of the art better, adding some new features, putting in bots.

We’ve had a lot of people who are like, “I’d love to just be able and sit down with me and four bots against five bots, me and two buddies with two bots against five bots, or I can get in a match and queue up with four other people I may not know and play against bots. It’s a totally different experience. And they’re pretty impressive. That’s the key. You don’t want to look at a bot and say, “I can tell you’re being controlled by a computer. You’re doing real asinine things.” They’re actually intelligent.

GamesBeat: The best thing with this is that one person can essentially play the game by himself and learn a new character or just learn the game in general. Especially when you’re new and trying to learn what a MOBA is.

DeForest: Yeah, and it’s an incredibly stressful time, and if you encounter the wrong type of players that exist you’re going to get punished, you’re not going to enjoy yourself, and you’re going to blame it on the game. You know, it is our responsibility as developers to make the transition for somebody who doesn’t really know much about the game to becoming somebody who can be great at the game. Self-admittedly, we looked at that and we didn’t do a good job of it. We’re always looking to improve on all the things that we do, including the games that we make. Nothing we do will ever be perfect, and we have to make it better.

Speaking of that concept, we also revamped our “report a player” system to make it more accessible and easy for players. I’m sure you see, being a player in the States yourself, that people can be mean-spirited and can be extremely hard on other people. That devalues the content. The community is actually a big part of the content of the game, and if you have a community that is detrimental to people who maybe aren’t that good, who maybe just want to log in, have fun, and not get berated for making one wrong move, it’s our responsibility to offer tools to our community to help police themselves and to make sure that people like that are no longer part of that community.

Filed under: Games

Pages: 1 2

The GamesBeat ‘Naughty and Nice’ alternative holiday gift guide for your geek

Rus McLaughlin — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 17:49:58 +0000

Black Friday! A day of retail armageddon and full contact-shopping … what could be better? And odds are you’ve got a gamer on your holiday gift list – because they’re everywhere now. Naturally, you don’t want to give them video games. They’ve got those already, and let’s face it, those things all the same, anyway. Better to surprise them with something they didn’t even know existed but always secretly wanted in their heart of hearts. Fortunately, I know what that is. Don’t ask how.

I also know someone will inevitably rope you into buying something for a total dork you despise with every fiber of your being. No worries. You can easily give the gift of sabotage.

So in the name of science, I’ve assembled a list of gift ideas guaranteed to delight your geekish friends and punish your nerdy enemies. That’s what the holidays are truly all about.

The Nice List

Dark Horse Deluxe Normandy SR 2

Geeks love toys. Just accept this into your heart. This nicely sculpted tchotchke, based on the signature space cruiser from the Mass Effect role-playing game series, is just right at a 6-inch length. It comes in both its Cerberus and Systems Alliance (pictured) liveries, includes a stand, and makes a nice focal point for the entire room. Unfortunately, you’ve got to make your own engine and laser sounds.

$28.75 at Amazon

Portal Companion Cube cookie jar

Finally, an easily attainable product that combines our two favorite things: crunchy, delicious chocolate-chip cookies and unconditional, artificial love. You’re under no obligation to provide the former because you are, after all, a monster. But any true nerdcore human will find this ceramic jar, patterned on our dearly departed friend from Portal whom we did not savagely destroy for personal gain, a necessary and tasteful addition to their kitchen and/or bedroom. Even when they steal all its cookies and hate it for being empty. Because that’s what best friends do.

$29.99 at ThinkGeek

MOGA Mobile Gaming System for Android 2.3+

Have I seen a lot of cheap controller add-ons for smartphones and tablets? Yes. Yes, I have. The Moga, however, feels rock-solid and is ergonomic and smartly designed. Rubber grips, nice action in the buttons, and surprisingly stiff control nubs (perhaps a touch too stiff) single the Moga out, and a retractable arm grips your phone tightly indeed. You’ll have to pick and choose the games you get for it with care (Pac-Man and Sonic CD come free), and it’s only compatible with Android phones, but that just goes to show how good the Moga is. I want it to work with every game on every phone and tablet so I’m never without it again.

$44.99 at Amazon

Super Mario Wall stickers

The geek on your list probably already has these. But just in case, and since you’ll probably want them for yourself, I include them here. Vinyl, reusable, and in glorious 8-bit color, these decals can go up on any wall and come down again without peeling your landlord’s paint off. Easier than painting Koopa Troopas yourself, more legal than armed robbery, and nostalgic enough to bring tears to the strongest of us, these will go up in your friend’s home office before Christmas morning comes.

$68.11 at Amazon

Sifteo Cubes

Got kids? Get these. Sifteo Cubes might just be one of the more clever and versatile tech gifts around. The basic set includes three 2-inch square touchscreen cubes that you move, place, touch, and tilt to solve puzzles, cleverly disguised math and grammar problems, and even some light Metroidvania-style dungeons. How? You reveal the maze by moving the blocks around each other. Very neat. More cubes (sold separately) sync right in to add more complexity. It comes with nine games, and you can buy and download more for a few bucks each, and if you’re really lucky, your kids will let you play with them, too. But probably not. Rotten kids.

$129 at Amazon

But what perfect gifts could you bestow on your most hated enemy? We have a few ideas about that, too.

Filed under: Business, Games

Pages: 1 2

Nexon to publish Dota 2 in Japan and Korea

Jason Lomberg — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 21:26:00 +0000

Dota 2 is heading to Asia.

“Freemium” publishing guru Nexon (MapleStory) is partnering with Valve Corporation (Portal, Half-Life) to publish the Defense of the Ancients sequel in both Korea and Japan.

The original Defense of the Ancients, is a free-to-play mod for the real-time strategy game, Warcraft III. This birthed the “multiplayer online battle arena” genre of games such as League of Legends. Upon release, the original quickly established a presence in e-sports tournaments worldwide, including BlizzCon and the Cyberathlete Amateur and CyberEvolution leagues.

A 2008 Gamasutra feature, “Defense of the Ancients – An Underground Revolution,” noted that “DOTA is likely the most popular and most-discussed free, nonsupported game mod in the world, judging by the numbers.”

Considering that DOTA also was featured at the annual World Cyber Games (operated by the eponymous South Korean company and sponsored by South Korean stalwart, Samsung Electronics), it’s no wonder the sequel found its way to Asia.

Dota 2’s release date is TBA, but it’s already created a bit of a stir. Enigmatic designer “IceFrog“ will contribute to the game, which uses Valve’s proprietary Source engine.

Interested parties can sign up for a “Free Dota 2 Invite” on the official blog: http://www.dota2.com/survey/experience/

Filed under: Games

6 reasons E3 might suck this year

Evan Killham — Fri, 18 May 2012 02:42:28 +0000

Next month’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, taking place in Los Angeles from June 5-7, is starting to look a little sparse.

While the annual trade show is usually an opportunity for the games industry’s biggest companies to announce titles, unveil new hardware, and demonstrate their questionable choices in event hosts, this year’s event is looking more notable for what we won’t be seeing. Several high-profile projects and developers will not be present at the conference. That isn’t to say that we can’t still expect some surprises, but the list of stuff we won’t be hearing about continues to grow. Things like:

Respawn Entertainment’s unannounced game

Fans have been eagerly awaiting the first offering from Jason West and Vince Zampella’s Respawn Entertainment, which was founded after their unceremonious departure from Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward in 2010. Those fans will have to wait a little longer, though, because while representatives of Respawn will be attending the show, they will not be revealing anything about their secret project. I guess we’ll have to go back to squinting at that blurry screenshot they released last year (below).

The Nintendo Wii U’s pricing and launch date

Nintendo has announced that it will be revealing the final specifications and launch titles for its upcoming high-definition console at E3, but we’ll still have to wait to hear how much the new hardware will cost and when exactly it’s coming out this fall. This doesn’t really come as a surprise considering the company didn’t finalize launch information on the Wii until two months before it came out.

Anything about Sony or Microsoft’s next consoles

Both Sony and Microsoft have confirmed that they won’t be showing off their top-secret followups to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 (respectively). Sony will likely be focusing more on upcoming software for its struggling PlayStation Vita, and Microsoft will likely spend a lot of time talking about console-exclusive titles like Halo 4 and … well, we can’t rule out any surprise announcements, but Halo 4 is probably the main one.

Any Valve game containing the number 3

Developer Valve Software is going to E3, but that’s as close as it’s getting to that number. The company has stated that it will not be announcing anything new, opting to focus on previously revealed titles like Defense of the Ancients 2 and Counterstrike: Global Offensive.

BioShock Infinite

Developer Irrational Games’ latest was one of the most anticipated releases of this year until it was delayed until 2013. Unfortunately, we won’t be hearing anything at E3 about the now most-anticipated release of 2013, because Irrational and publisher Take-Two Interactive would like to put as much time as possible into, you know, making it. “Preparing for these events takes time away from development, time we’re going to use instead to get the best version of Infinite into your hands in February,” Irrational head Ken Levine said while announcing the delay last week.

Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto V developer Rockstar Games won’t be at the Expo at all, which means we’re not going to see anything about its next big release. I have reason to believe that this game will have cars in it, but I suppose the speculation as to precisely what kinds of cars it’ll contain will have to continue. Rockstar’s absence is especially odd in light of the fact that rumors have it that GTAV will release this winter.

Filed under: Games

League of Legends is finally getting a spectator mode

Mike Minotti — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 22:18:20 +0000

Riot Games is adding a spectator mode to the popular free-to-play title League of Legends with its next patch.

The new mode will allow players to move their own camera around a match, as well as pause, rewind, slow down, and fast forward through the action. Riot Games said:

Coming in the game’s next patch, Spectator Mode gives players the ability to watch their friends’ games in-progress, taking advantage of an AI-driven directed camera and Timeshift controls which allows them to slow down, rewind, and fast forward the action. On top of watching their friends, players will be able to spectate Featured Matches at any time, showcasing high-level competitive players duking it out on the Fields of Justice.

Other games similar to League of Legends, including Heroes of Newerth and Dota 2 (which is still in beta), already have spectator modes, which serve as a popular learning tool for players who want insight on how to play the complicated titles. Some even use the mode to coach their less experienced friends.

Many fans were annoyed by the lack of this feature in LoL. Maybe now players who switched from LoL to one of its competitors will have a reason to come back.

Riot Games also released a video explaining the new feature, posted below.

Filed under: Games

IGN Pro League viewers highlight the rise of eSports online

D. F. Smith — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:16:02 +0000

The numbers are in from this month’s IGN Pro League (IPL) gaming competition, and they’re record-breakers of a kind. IGN boasts of drawing 346,000 streaming spectators at the tournament’s peak and more than 3 million unique viewers over all three days of the event, described as “the largest-ever online viewership for an eSports event held outside of Korea.”

Those last four words are an important qualifier, of course. South Korea remains the global epicenter of the eSports phenomenon. As far back as 2010, the Korea-based World Cyber Games was drawing in excess of 100 million viewers through various channels to its Grand Final programming.

Still, IGN’s new promotion looks to be on the move. The Las Vegas, Nev. event, which hosted some 10,000 live spectators at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas for StarCraft II and League of Legends tournaments, was the fourth live IGN Pro League competition and the second held in a real-world location. 2011′s IPL 3 took place at Caesar’s Palace in Atlantic City while the first two IPL competitions were hosted online.

Regardless of where the individual players sit in their ongoing horse races, competitive gaming is clearly on the rise as a spectator sport, especially thanks to the increasing ease of watching streaming videos online. IGN’s event is only the latest in a series of tournaments to draw bigger online viewership numbers.

Comparing to some other, noteworthy recent eSports events, Major League Gaming’s StarCraft II national championship in November 2011 claimed some 241,000 concurrent viewers at its peak. The League of Legends Season One championship in June of last year drew more than 210,000 concurrent viewers for its final match and more than 1.6 million unique viewers. DreamHack Winter 2011, hosting competitions in several games, peaked at 94,932 concurrent viewers but still pulled in 1.7 million unique viewers all told. Valve’s Dota 2 Invitational at the 2011 Gamescom trade show in Cologne, Germany claimed more than 1.5 million viewers at one point.

The latest of the fighting-game-focused EVO tournaments, once a cult gathering in a suburban Los Angeles, Calif. arcade, racked up more than 2 million unique viewers over four days last July.

Elsewhere in the eSports arena, CBS Interactive today announced a partnership with the Major League Gaming promotion and the TwitchTV online broadcasting network. CBS Interactive (which also owns GameSpot, one of IGN’s rivals in online game news and reviews) will now be the exclusive online broadcaster for MLG’s competitions and the exclusive advertising and promotions partner for TwitchTV’s broadcasts.

Filed under: Games

Which Hollywood actors would fill Dota 2′s cast? (image)

Sebastian Haley — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 05:24:47 +0000

Valve’s Dota 2 has yet to be officially released, and the fans are apparently getting restless. Luckily, the fans also seem to be skilled in the ways of Photoshop, and Dota 2 forumgoer AvunaOs has created a series of portraits mashing together famous thespians with their proposed in-game counterparts.

For reference you can see the original character art here.

Filed under: Games

Professional gamer explains why League of Legends has nothing to fear from DOTA

Sebastian Haley — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 23:00:50 +0000

We sat down with professional gamer Carlos Rodriguez, aka Ocelote, to discuss the differences between the upcoming Dota 2, Blizzard DOTA, and League of Legends, his current MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) and profession of choice.

League of Legends, developed by Riot Games and inspired by the Warcraft III Defense of the Ancients (DotA) game mod, has rocketed to success since its release in late 2009. Running mostly unopposed up until now, League of Legends is set to face steep competition from Blizzard Entertainment’s Blizzard DOTA, and Valve’s Dota 2, by the creator of the original mod.

The 21-year-old Rodriguez hails from Madrid, Spain, where he acts as the captain of the professional gaming team, SK Gaming. Pro-gaming and e-sports have become a viable profession for many young gamers lately, and it’s practically the national pastime in Korea, where StarCraft players are on par with famous US athletes.

GamesBeat: So you’re the captain of SK Gaming — what does that mean to the layman?

Carlos Rodriguez: Okay, so… I didn’t say, one day, okay, I’m the captain, this is how it is. The people on the team choose that. When you like someone, how he’s the leader of something, how he manages the staff, how he talks to people… Then you automatically make him the leader, you know? It’s not like he said, “I want to be the leader.”

GamesBeat: What are your responsibilities as captain?

Rodriguez: Mainly, in-game calls and stuff are being done between some people on the team, so it’s not like me. In-game, inside and stuff, it’s not me. It’s all about, like when we go to a tournament, like before the games, we talk and stuff, and I tell them this or that. Or talking about organizations, they know I’ve got contacts, they know how I deal with them. Outside the game stuff. I’m the captain for that, basically.

GamesBeat: Do you focus on more than one game, or just one right now?

Rodriguez: Right now I’m focusing only on League of Legends, because… We’ve got so many tournaments going on pretty soon. We’re going to have, I think, 13 tournaments in less than eight months. It’s crazy, around the world. I definitely want to be at the very top level, so right now I’m just investing my time in League of Legends.

GamesBeat: Don’t want to spread yourself too thin?

Rodriguez: Yeah, exactly.

GamesBeat: What is it about League of Legends? Why is that your one game?

Rodriguez: I was playing Warcraft like four years ago, I was actually competing for SK as well. I ended up… I went to BlizzCon, I went to so many important tournaments. And I ended up thinking the game wasn’t good enough to become an e-sport. I disappeared, basically. So then I was just waiting for a new game to appear, a new e-sports game to appear, and League of Legends just appeared. I saw potential in the game, I started playing it, and it actually became just about the biggest game in the world right now. There’s nothing bigger in terms of PC or whatever. The most-played game out there. I feel like it has so much potential still. I think that for at least five, six more years, League of Legends will remain as the most-played game in the world.

GamesBeat: So you don’t expect any serious competition from Dota 2, or Blizzard DOTA?

Rodriguez: I don’t think so. When Diablo III comes, when Dota 2 comes or whatever, it’s like… People will keep playing this game, because… It’s funny. It’s like, going into a casual game, then going into a really serious game. What happens, there’s been so much money invested into the e-sports part of this game, the money’s everything, so the game is going to be an e-sport no matter what. So many companies are investing money into it, that’s the thing. League of Legends is going to remain.

GamesBeat: What is it about the gameplay of League of Legends that you think is the secret ingredient?

Rodriguez: I think it’s the team spirit, the team play. But there are so many factors together. I feel like, if you are good enough, if your game is good enough… If you get matched up against a good team, okay, if you play good enough, play the perfect game, the perfect score, you can carry the game alone. But at the same time, if the opening team is losing in terms of kills, they can still come back and win the game with good team play, with teamwork. It’s a bunch of things together that make the game very enjoyable for a pro player.

GamesBeat: But aren’t those all things that Heroes of Newerth or Blizzard DOTA would also have?

Rodriguez: I don’t know… The thing is, I played all off them. Well, I didn’t play the Blizzard game, I didn’t play that, but… I think all of them are kind of the same, okay? They are probably more skilled, probably, I’m not going to lie to you. But for the viewer, it’s not as entertaining.

GamesBeat: You think League of Legends is a little more accessible, a little more casual?

Rodriguez: Yeah, basically. If you go out to a convention, to a tournament, you can see how people watching CS matches… There’s a crowd gathered, it’s fine. Then you see StarCraft II, people are hyped as well. Then you see a Dota 2 tournament, and people don’t even realize what’s going on. But then you see a League of Legends matchup, and you actually enjoy the game, even though you don’t know anything about it. You see something is happening, both teams are fighting, there are towers around, so much stuff going on. You enjoy it.

GamesBeat: How long is the average match?

Rodriguez: Between 25 and 35 minutes, I would say. Sometimes 20, sometimes it’s 45 or 50 even.

GamesBeat: Do you feel like 30 and beyond gets a little too long for the average…?

Rodriguez: It depends, because those kinds of games that go on too much, are the kinds of games that everyone wants to watch, because they’re so funny. The shoutcasters end up without any voice, because they’re doing all that yelling. Those kinds of matches are so even, a match that goes on for 50 minutes is going to be pretty even stuff. That’s why it’s so enjoyable.

Carlos attended this week’s CES 2012 in Las Vegas, representing Super Micro Computers and their lineup of gaming-enabled workstations. You can read more in our exclusive interview.

Filed under: Games, Video