For the followers of Epsilonism, the Earth is only 157 years old. They believe dinosaurs are a lie that people fall for because they are weak. And if you have a birthmark, you might be a descendant of Kraff, the famous “Emperor of the 4th Paradigm.”

The only things the religious cult asks for in return is an open mind and your wallet.

The clear-cut parody of the Church of Scientology is just another jab at pop culture in the upcoming Grand Theft Auto V. The open-world crime game doesn’t come out until Sept. 7, so developer Rockstar Games has a few more months to drip feed cryptic teases, such as this PSA from the fictional Epsilon Program. The video displays the various goals and belief systems against a background of seaside cliffs, a lighthouse, and a small island, which look like possible locations for GTAV. The portrait of a new character dressed in a ceremonial robe is also shown.

Check out the three-minute teaser below:

This isn’t the first time that the Epsilon Program has been in a GTA title — you could’ve found out about it in missions or idle chatter from pedestrians and radio stations. Back in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, you can run into Epsilon believers who love to shout “Kifflom!” — the name of a deity Epsilonists worship that’s also used as a greeting — or hear an interview with its leader, Cris Formage, on West Coast Talk Radio. In Grand Theft Auto IV, you can hear another person talking about Kifflom on Public Liberty Radio. And if you place an order for GTAV on Rockstar’s Warehouse site, you can get a Kifflom shirt for free.

On its website, the developer invites readers to visit “one of [the Epsilon Program's] enlightenment centers.” Directions to those centers, and possibly more GTAV news, will arrive in a week.

(Thanks to Zak Islam for the tip.)

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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!

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It’s sad how many open-world/sandbox titles almost exclusively target adults. Kids are probably more inclined to chase down pigeons in Grand Theft Auto IV than I ever will be, but I can’t justify handing that game over to a child. Luckily, Lego City: Undercover provides younger players with all the manic, open-world adventure found in the Grand Theft Auto and Saint’s Row series without the innuendo and violence.

You control detective Chase McCain as he returns to Lego City after a disastrous case that caused him to leave town and ended with his girlfriend going into witness protection. It’s up to Chase to track down the dastardly Rex Fury even if it means infiltrating various street gangs in the process. Putting Fury in prison was the whole reason Chase left Lego City on bad terms, so he’s out to make up for past mistakes.

Lego City: Undercover is the first game in the Lego franchise built for the Wii U. While a 3DS version is in the works, Lego City’s use of the GamePad blends so seamlessly into the action that it’s hard to imagine playing without a tablet in your hand.

What you’ll like

Collectibles and building

I make a habit of finding all the collectables I can in a Lego game, but that feels almost impossible in Undercover (in the best way, though). With several disguises, hundreds of blocks, and even more vehicles to build and find, you’ll easily put 10-20 hours into gathering everything you can.

Undercover also introduces a much more involved item-building mechanic than previous games had. As you explore, you’ll find numerous “super build” points that cost anywhere from 8,000–100,000 blocks. Now, whenever you break things, you’ll collect little Lego pieces that help you make bigger items as well as the typical “stud” currency used to unlock cheats and special gear.

Now you have twice as many reasons to break everything you can in Lego City, including other cars while driving around.

Clever references

I’m not sure how many people younger than me will be able to spot the Colombo reference in the first hour of Lego City, but I love that it exists. Lego City gleefully and unapologetically embraces references from film and TV that children likely won’t understand, but their parents will. Dirty Harry, The Shawshank Redemption, and even The Matrix show up in various and obvious ways.

Clever references aren’t just reserved for characters, however. As you explore, you’ll uncover several international landmarks re-created in Lego form. A few of my favorites are definitely Times Square, Mt. Rushmore, and the Golden Gate bridge. Of course, a mountain with massive Lego faces carved in it overlooks a sprawling Chinese-inspired castle! That kind of whimsical absurdity fuels most of Undercover and makes the various winks and nods to real-world things that much funnier.

Sensible use of the Wii U GamePad

Using the GamePad as a scanner or map isn’t anything new, but implementing that functionality into a sandbox game is surprisingly fluid. You’ll use the GamePad to talk with other characters as well as search for hidden items and covertly listen in on conversations. Chase McCain spends most of his time operating just outside the law and uses any technological advantage he can to get the drop on the various crime syndicates he’s investigating.

It’s surprisingly natural to lift up the controller to search for clues and doesn’t require a lot of movement on the player’s part. But if you’re really into spinning around your living room, any way you turn can reveal new parts of the map immediately around Chase.

Mostly non-violent

Chase McCain is a police officer. Whenever criminals approach him to fight, he deftly dodges or redirects their attacks until he can slap a pair of cuffs on them. I absolutely love that developer TT Fusion embraced the tried-but-true concept of a kung fu hero while subtly suggesting that the police should behave with a bit more decorum than, say, Batman. You aren’t breaking baddies into bits in Lego City, but that’s alright. Chase’s silly floating crane kicks and dramatic cuffing animations are equally as rewarding as shattering villains into their core components. This is also a great message that heroes don’t have to go on the offensive to ultimately win a fight.

If you can’t help but inflict a bit of harm on poor Lego minifigures, you can flatten unlucky pedestrians as you race through the streets. Since you do get studs and blocks for smashing items on sidewalks, I’m pretty sure running down innocent passers-by was totally intended. Anyone you hit will eventually get back up, but they’re pretty surly about being trampled.

What you won’t like

Hurry up and wait

From the moment you boot up Lego City: Undercover, you’ll find yourself idling at various loading screens. It’s no secret that Wii U software takes awhile to start, but you’ll sit through three separate loading sequences before you even access your save data. A little waiting isn’t bad, but those long progress bars start to feel very tedious as Lego City’s generic ’70s cop show theme music perpetually plays in the background.

Mocking dialogue

If your game has frustrating timers, poor load times, and drawn-out action sequences, it’s usually not the best idea to repeatedly point them out in the dialogue. Throughout Lego City, Chase often comments on various environmental things that annoy him and likely the player as well. Self-aware humor is funny, but not when it points out real and frustrating flaws within a game.

I know progress bars are terrible; I sat through several of them just to watch Chase sit through one of his own.

Clumsy platforming

Free-running in an open environment is instantly less fun the moment you feel confined by camera controls. Lego City often falls victim to odd camera angles that can obscure jumps and alter the game’s perspective. Many rooft0p sequences end in disaster as Chase narrowly misses a ledge he probably would have made if you could have lined up the action before following through with it.

I feel most of the Undercover’s platforming hazards are directly caused by the camera occasionally freezing into an awkward position, but Lego minifigures aren’t exactly the most dexterously animated characters, either.

Conclusion

Lego City: Undercover is a very silly but rewarding romp that proves how well the Wii U’s GamePad functions as a tool as well as a controller. Despite the predictable loading hiccups and the inevitable technical pitfalls of an open world, Undercover delivers a sanitized sandbox experience that doesn’t require violence or explicit dialogue to make its point.

Children deserve massive, explorable worlds just as much as adults. It’s wonderful that TT Fusion took that concept and made a fully functioning and largely non-violent world without sacrificing action. You won’t miss firing guns or swinging lightsabers in Lego City — not when you’re scouring the landscape for super builds and smashing everything in sight.

Score: 90/100

Lego City: Undercover is a Wii U title that released March 19, 2013. A 3DS version is scheduled for April. Nintendo provided a retail copy of the game for this review.

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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!

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Traditional console gamers are vehemently resisting a major change in the business: the increasing influence of online integration and microtransactions. The closer we get to the next hardware cycle, the more game developers and publishers seem to defend this vision of the future. Like all advances forward, the industry is probably going to stumble a lot before it, as a whole, really figures this out.

For a little while now, it seems like we’ve been looking at an all-out assault on the very idea of a video game as a singular piece of content or as a creative work for that matter. The latest stated intentions come from companies like publisher Electronic Arts and developer Crytek, which are basically saying they’re doing away entirely with the old notion in an attempt to get people to stop trading in their games, with seemingly no room for coexistence.

EA wants all of their future games to include microtransactions. Forward-looking statements like this rarely end up being 100 percent true, but I also don’t like the idea of EA moving on with a blanket approach to every game they publish. I could only imagine what Need For Speed, all EA’s sports games, and Battlefield will look like laden with microtransactions, but I believe Dead Space 3 (pictured top) was the most egregious example because of its history as an atmospheric, isolated experience with the series’ game elements focused on a narrative instead of profit in and of themselves.

Crytek’s statement that single-player games are going to disappear is just as much of a speculative blanket proclamation as EA’s. That says that the developer isn’t really going to think about whether free-to-play is really a good thing for this particular game or that particular game. I have no idea how it’d implement microtransactions into a single-player Crysis game.

Former Epic Games designer Cliffy Bleszinski recently tried to defend companies like EA, and he’s right in regard to how varied the free-to-play and microtransaction-based business models are. But very few developers have really figured out good ways to implement them. He also makes a point that, apparently, people do buy these microtransactions. The market has generally accepted them, which brings forth the point that core gamers so vehemently against these new business models are a minority. It’s actually kind of scary when you think about how only a small portion of gamers actually care about the idea of a game being a singular creative work rather than a service with which to generate revenue.

One game that a lot of people (including Bleszinski) seem to bring up as a great example of melding single-player and multiplayer is Dark Souls (pictured below). But I actually see Dark Souls as a great example of not ceaselessly pushing forward with online-connected gaming in every single product a company makes.

Maybe a reason I’ve gravitated back towards Japanese games a little bit is because Japanese developers don’t seem to feel the need to cram online into each and every one of their games. When From Software made Demon’s Souls and later Dark Souls, the company didn’t just slam token multiplayer or microtransactions into the games in order to keep people from trading them in. From Software actually thought up a genuinely unique idea for a game that happened to require an Internet connection. People have probably given Nintendo crap for not making enough online-focused games for the Wii U already, but I applaud them for simply sticking to what makes their games fun whether they be connected or not.

Maybe, however, this is because online gaming isn’t as big in the Japanese market. What is big over there is local multiplayer for handheld games as well as passive communication between devices. That’s why so many handheld games have tried out Monster Hunter-style local multiplayer features and why Nintendo implemented Streetpass as a system-wide feature in the 3DS.

Still, I think market differences like that — as well as the continuing demand for wholly single-player experiences — will result in a landscape in the next-gen consoles that’ll be a hodgepodge mix of such games alongside the fully connected ones. We already have publishers like Nintnedo, Bethesda, and Rockstar that still primarily make single-player games.

Nintendo and Rockstar can do this because their games sell well enough already. You never seem to find used copies of Nintendo games, and their prices never seem to go down at retail — even five or six years after launch. With a game that sells as much as Grand Theft Auto, you don’t really see Rockstar complaining as much about the second-hand market, either.

Bethesda is the kind of company that can put out Skyrim – a game with no online features whatsoever outside of a few rather large pieces of downloadable content — and sell over 10 million copies. You never see Bethesda complaining about the used market — likely because it made a game that people can spend 100 hours playing. Plus, you’re also probably still going to have a lot of indies releasing games of all kinds, including those strictly based around single-player.

The appearance of microtransactions and free-to-play on consoles next gen is inevitable, but what’s also inevitable is that we’ll see a greater variance of business models and price points for console games.

Originally Posted on MultiPlatform.

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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!

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Reckon you can wait 8 months for Grand Theft Auto V? Developer Rockstar thinks so. We’re not so sure.

It’s pretty clear that no one’s playing GTA V before September, though, following news that the open-world game isn’t hitting its anticipated spring launch window.

But don’t just sit and watch the GTA V trailers endlessly while you wait for that pesky summer sun to come and go. Watch these eight fan-made alternatives instead, created using Minecraft, Lego bricks, Battlefield 3, old GTA games, and the real-life streets of Rio De Janeiro. Heck, one even showcases Super Mario’s bad-ass side.

And remind yourself that it’s only 200-odd days until GTA V’s Sept. 17 launch. Just long enough to listen to that gravelly voice-over another 264,000 times (or thereabouts).

Grand Theft Minecart

Minecraft players keep amazing gamers with their creations. The ridiculously popular open-world crafting game hosts this impressive take on GTA V’s first trailer.

GTA V vs Battlefield 3: Trailer 1

It’s wonderfully endearing to watch highly trained military personnel shuffling around masquerading as female passersby. This homage to Grand Theft Auto V’s first trailer must have been a blast to make.

GTA V vs Battlefield 3: Trailer 2

Trailer one was a tough act to follow. This one beats it hands down, with the masterful use of an EOD [bomb disposal] bot as a rottweiler just over a minute in. The tank train is a stroke of genius, too.

Lego Grand Theft Auto V

I hate to think how long it took to re-create the GTA V trailer in stop-motion, using only Lego bricks, in this entry for YouTube channel Machinima’s Interactive Film Festival. Probably not far off eight months.

Grand Theft Mario V

Nintendo’s iconic hero Mario reveals his darker side in this parody trailer by humor website Jest. It’s tough being a family man, Mario. Just ask Bowser.

GTA V Real-Life Edition: Rio de Janeiro

Much darker than the other videos featured here, this fan-made film really captures the dichotomous nature of life in Brazil’s capital city. Those are some mean streets.

GTA V vs GTA: San Andreas

Re-creating a 2012 trailer with a game engine from 2004 is a tough task. This trailer makes it look easy, though, with San Andreas-era Los Santos ably standing in for its modern-day likeness.

GTA V vs GTA IV

This piece of work really showcases the progress that Rockstar has made, in terms of visuals, in the time between Grand Theft Auto IV and Grand Theft Auto V. It sure makes for an interesting comparison.

[Top image via Vareide/YouTube. Featured image via Ketegano15/YouTube.]

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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!

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I’m a freelance games journalist. I write for some of the most progressive publications on the planet. I’m also a gun owner, supporter of the 2nd Amendment, and nominally inclined toward the National Rifle Association.

Strange, I know.

So when the NRA blamed the Newton, Connecticut tragedy on violent video games, it struck a raw nerve.

“There exists in this country a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people,” NRA President Wayne LaPierre said in a December 21st statement.

“Through vicious, violent video games with names like ‘Bulletstorm,’ ‘Grand Theft Auto,’ ‘Mortal Kombat’ and ‘Splatterhouse.’ And here’s one: it’s called ‘Kindergarten Killers.’ It’s been online for 10 years. How come my research department could find it and all of yours either couldn’t or didn’t want anyone to know you had found it?”

Those who associate make-believe violence with real-life violence (particularly the idea that video games make kids more proficient marksmen) don’t understand gaming, firearms, or both. Since the NRA – the preeminent defender of the 2nd Amendment – is sufficiently acquainted with firearms, I’d have to conclude that it knows jack shit about gaming.

I don’t question Lt Col Dave Grossman’s expertise in firearms and marksmanship. But when the former parachute infantryman and U.S. Army Ranger calls certain games “murder simulators,” I can’t help but think that he’s never played a first-person shooter (or any video game with guns).

Anyone who’s both shot a weapon and played a video game in the last 20-30 years can point out clear differences between the two activities. Proper marksmanship entails a variety of mechanical, psychological, and physical elements that video games cannot possibly simulate.

I straddle the fence between gun owner and gamer so these discrepancies seem readily obvious to me. For example, no FPS, no matter how meticulously researched and detailed, can possibly mimic the recoil of a real-life weapon (especially the heavier automatic weapons).

The Weaver shooting stance. You can observe it in movies or video games but can only learn it by picking up a real-life weapon.

I shot an M2 Browning .50 Caliber Machine Gun (“Ma Deuce”) from an enclosed Humvee turret once, and my ears were ringing afterward. No video game recreates the tactile response and visceral reality of firearms.

Playing Call of Duty won’t improve your sight picture, breathing, or hand placement. Medal of Honor won’t teach you the “weaver stance” or how to absorb the recoil of a .45 1911 pistol. Putting rounds downrange is the only way to become a more proficient shooter and learn the mechanical skills for handling a sidearm.

This is a very old argument. Any reasonable person — the key word being reasonable – can sense the innate difference between holding a virtual weapon and handling the wood and metal of a real-life firearm.

But few people can exhibit a basic level of familiarity with both video games and marksmanship. And every school shooting prompts calls for tighter regulation of our industry, and “violent video games” has become an all-too familiar refrain. U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has already passed a bill to direct the National Academy of Sciences to examine the link between violent video games and real-life violence. My guess? The study is inconclusive, finding no causal link between virtual entertainment and school shootings.

The Newton, Connecticut tragedy is symptomatic of many societal ills — ills that would more befit our tax dollars. Violent video games are not among them.

I’m not a member of the NRA. I support their mission but am generally adverse to large organizations. If I were, however, I would cancel my membership forthwith. Instead of launching a probe into the systematic failures that led to the Newton shootings or merely expressing their condolences, this influential lobbying group has cast aspersions on the least likely culprit.

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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!

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Just how far has Rockstar’s RAGE engine come since 2008′s Grand Theft Auto IV? Someone took the time to re-create the recently released second trailer for Grand Theft Auto V using its predecessor’s engine. The differences are immediately noticeable.

Both original videos are below, or you can view them side-by-side here.

Grand Theft Auto V:

Grand Theft Auto IV version:

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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!

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I have never, ever played a Fable game. I always intended to throw on one of Peter Molyneux’s fantasy epics and take it for a spin, and hey, I still do. Someday. Really.

But the simple fact is this: If you game, you’ve got a pile of shame … that list of titles you haven’t played yet but fully intend to. Someday. Really.

Nobody likes to admit it, but few of us have the money and time to play everything we’re interested in. In fact, the number of missed opportunities just grows and grows as shiny distractions (work, family, newer games that look really cool) come into the picture. So as we come out of the summer doldrums and into a very busy gaming season, we asked some of most influential names in the industry to publicly humiliate themselves by telling us what’s still on their piles of shame.

And they didn’t all answer. But here’s who did.

Cliff Blezinski: former design director, Epic Games (Gears of War)

I’ve yet to go back to Batman: Arkham City because I can’t find the darned disc in my cluttered setup.

Jenova Chen: cofounder, Thatgamecompany (Journey, Flower)

I haven’t played Deus Ex: Human Revolution after the first boss. It’s the game of the year for our lead engineer, John Edwards, so that means a lot. But I haven’t got time to go back to it yet.

Dan “Shoe” Hsu: editor-in-chief, GamesBeat

Mass Effect 2. I don’t understand what all that hub-bub was about the ending to the Mass Effect storyline. We’re still not even halfway through the trilogy, right? Right?

Sigh … yes, this is my big shame game. I’m not even finished with Mass Effect 2 yet. I know it’s something I need to get through — Mass Effect is a major franchise in gaming, after all — but I just can’t seem to find the time. Actually, that’s not true. I somehow scraped together 188 hours for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

I honestly don’t know what it is about this series. I loved the first game, but it took me over a year and a half to beat it because I was constantly leaving it, then coming back, and then leaving it again. For all of 2012, ME2′s been sitting next to my TV, beaming subliminal messages to my brain: “Play me … play me. …” But it hasn’t worked. Now that Borderlands 2 is here, and all the other fall games are arriving soon, I’m afraid part two of this sci-fi trilogy will just have to wait a bit longer.

Morgan Webb: co-host, X-Play

Spec Ops: The Line. Everyone tells me it’s really good. Everyone tells me about the crazy tough choices you have to make. And I even bought it. It is still in the plastic and will likely remain so until about January. It’s not a very large pile. I try really hard to keep up with things. And seriously, Shoe needs to play Mass Effect.

Frank O’Connor: franchise development director, 343 Industries (Halo 4)

Working on Halo is a pretty  involved process. There’s the work, of course – story, universe building, endless meetings, travel … most developers know the score there. But you compound that work with home life, raising an angry 3-year-old, taking out the trash, fixing the sewer, making dinner – there just aren’t that many hours in the day. And so when I do play games in my downtime, they tend to be Halo. Take-home tests, matchmaking, just a ton of Halo stuff. So my pile of shame is almost limitless. And to prove that point, my main shameful miss is a couple of years old, and I still haven’t gotten around to it properly. It’s Red Dead Redemption.

Hardly unusual, but when I did finally put it in my drive, I immediately knew this was a place I wanted to inhabit. And I got as far as the first horse race, couldn’t beat Bonnie around her ranch, and that’s where I left it. Right back to Halo stuff. I also have a miserably small completion ratio of Forza, and in fact I have not unlocked the Halo Warthog that’s squirreled away in there. The least dusty, still-shrinkwrapped item on that pile is Borderlands 2.

I still haven’t seen the new Batman, either, and I only saw Cabin in the Woods because it was on my plane. I genuinely feel actual shame because part of my job is to understand why other games are cool and expose myself to new experiences. I feel like I should really just take a couple of months off to reengage and immerse myself in what’s new and what’s awesome.

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Square Enix’s Sleeping Dogs is a Friday-night escape, something you enjoy while digging into a bag of burned microwave popcorn. It’s simple, predictable fun — just like the best Hong Kong police movies.

After all, you’ve played Sleeping Dogs before in one form or another, and you’ve probably experienced its story, too. The United Front Games-developed title is a solid, mission-to-mission, open-world action experience. You’ll hurt a lot of thugs, drive a lot of cars recklessly, and work for a lot of shady characters — all while kicking and capping through a you’ll-see-everything-coming-by-a-mile storyline.

And that’s the point.

This is the Chow Yun-fat of games — rough, cliché, yet quintessentially badass like the Hong Kong actor.

WHAT YOU’LL LIKE

Live out your undercover-cop-posed-as-burgeoning-Triad fantasy
In Sleeping Dogs, you are Wei Shen, an undercover supercop with a tragic past. You start the game by breaking into a low-level Triad gang, hoping to gain a foothold within Hong Kong’s seedy, organized-crime-ruled underworld.

Wei is practically unstoppable. He’s got the gun skills, gut punches, and gear-busting driving sense to stand toe-to-toe with any tattoo-riddled gangster — along with the smooth lines to woo any attractive female acquaintance. So, yeah, he’s perfect for the part.

Open-world crime that pays
Many releases have attempted to cash in on Rockstar Games’ tried-and-true Grand Theft Auto formula, and many of them have failed. For the most part, Sleeping Dogs gets the sandbox structure right.

The game’s version of Hong Kong is densely populated, topographically rich, and filled with interesting nooks and crannies just waiting to be crashed into. Obnoxious street vendors yell at you to buy fish balls, fish dumplings, and other fish-flavored fare. Driven-over parking meters reward you with their spoils. And lazy workers play impromptu dice games in an alley instead of focusing on their jobs.

If you’re worried about this feeling like a second-rate GTA, you don’t need to. Hong Kong is your oyster, ready for your blood-stained blade to shuck.

A melting pot of personality and personalities
Hong Kong is a great setting for an open-world action game. In fact, the tightly packed, claustrophobic nature of the city reminds me of the living, breathing backdrops from Sega’s Shenmue and Yakuza games. Sleeping Dogs’ Eastern-flavored surroundings are teeming with character, such as the pink, neon glow of the night-laced streets and the charming, Cantonese-English hybrid dialect that the characters speak.

Free run away from the cops
You won’t just be driving away from the police with your tricked-out ride; you’ll also be running away from them the old-fashioned way. Wei effortlessly darts and dashes through Hong Kong like a parkour prince. All you need to do is tap a button to hop over obstacles or to grab a ledge at the end of a wall.

The game also throws you into intense chase sequences, similar to the on-foot perpetrator pursuits in L.A. Noire, where you have to run down an enemy. These moments help shuffle the tempo, even though they do get a bit monotonous.

Fisticuffs of fury meet hard-boiled shooting
One of Sleeping Dogs’ strongest features is its robust combat system. Surprisingly, most of the game’s fighting is done with bare hands and swift feet. Taking a cue from Batman: Arkham Asylum, attacks consist of one-button combos complemented by timed counters and grappling. You’ll take on gangs of mobsters, and, as the kung-fu-fighting Wei, you’ll dispatch them in short order — just like a cook filling requests for dim sum in an adjacent restaurant’s kitchen.

Gunplay is clearly inspired by third-person, cover-based shooters. You can glide from barrier to barrier, protecting yourself from oncoming fire while returning plenty of rounds yourself.

A significant part of these skirmishes actually take place while driving, which adds some appreciated variety to the projectile-based proceedings. I couldn’t help but feel a rush of satisfaction when I launched cars and motorbikes into the air after blowing out their tires with my bullets. And the adrenaline flowed even harder as I leapt wildly from vehicle to vehicle, like in the PlayStation Portable’s Pursuit Force series, turning my road rage into an air raid.

WHAT YOU WON’T LIKE

A dark history that comes back to haunt you
As a game, Sleeping Dogs has a few things in common with its street-savvy hero. Both are layered and interesting, yet both are confronted with remnants from a murky past.

Sleeping Dogs went through a few name changes and narrative rewrites over its lengthy, multistudio-and-publisher development cycle. Even the initially female protagonist had to go through gender-reassignment surgery, leading to the final game’s maniacal man-about-town Wei.

Because of this checkered backstory, the final playable product feels unpolished in spots. Scripting errors sometimes occur on random missions, causing enemies to nonsensically plant themselves in place when they should be running. The title’s graphics engine is far from cutting edge. Character models have a plastic action-figure look while many of the polygonal bodies acting as street-and-building filler are constantly repeated. Even some of the storefronts are nothing but flat images that poorly simulate actual dimension. Grand Theft Auto IV, which came out four years ago, looks better. And that’s a problem.

But to United Front’s credit, just getting this release out the door — in its appealing state — is an achievement.

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Graffiti has been used throughout history to spread political messages and liven local communities. In Papo & Yo, it’s a way to encourage players to “get lost” in a fantastical Latin American setting.

Developer Minority Media’s upcoming puzzle-based platformer invites players on an emotional journey to an authentically Chilean world. Pablo Aravena, a graffiti expert and filmmaker born in the South American country, helped make the environments resemble the cultured neighborhoods and stacked buildings of the port city Valparaiso. Celebrity graffiti artists Sebastian Navarro (aka Charquipunk), Simon Paulo Arancibia Gutierrez (La Robot de Madera), and Inti Castro (INTI) also added their touches to the game.

As unique as Papo & Yo is, it’s not the first game to feature graffiti on its streets and city walls. Here are some more examples you might be familiar with. Can you name any others?

Papo & Yo hits the PlayStation Network on August 14.

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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!

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For gamers, that’s good news. The Grand Theft Auto series has a cult following that has gone mainstream. In 2008, Grand Theft Auto IV sold more than 6 million units in its first week, grossing more than $500 million in revenue. Expectations for GTA V are likely to be higher than that, given the huge growth in the installed base of consoles since 2008. Game fans are salivating at every rumor.

Strauss Zelnick, the chief executive and chairman of Take-Two, said on the analyst call yesterday that the Rockstar team was making “substantial progress” on GTA V, but he declined to disclose a release date for the game. At the same time, Zelnick only slightly lowered the expectations for annual sales for the fiscal year, even though the company missed its target by a long shot in its first fiscal quarter.

Michael Pachter, analyst at Wedbush Securities, said that he does not believe Take-Two can hit its target for revenues in the year ending March 31, 2013 unless it ships GTA V. Take-Two is targeting revenue of $1.7 billion to $1.8 billion for the year, with 55 percent of that figure coming from Rockstar (about $963 million) and 45 percent ($788 million) from the 2K Games label. For Rockstar, the Max Payne 3 title is expected to generate no more than $250 million in revenues, and the company’s older catalog of games could generate $150 million. That leaves $563 million in revenue for the fiscal year that Pachter believes could only come from GTA V.

But the chances for an announcement are declining. Rockstar made no announcement at E3 in June, and speculation is mixed about whether it will announce the game later this month at Gamescom in Germany. Pachter expects that a preholiday release is less likely but still possible, but a first calendar quarter release in 2013 might be likely.

Ben Schachter, an analyst at Macquarie Research, agreed that GTA V is likely to ship in the current fiscal year. Atul Bagga, an analyst at Lazard Capital, added that the management guidance suggests GTA V will ship in the first calendar quarter of 2013. Whenever Take-Two makes the announcement, the stock will probably take off, said Colin Sebastian, an analyst at R.W. Baird.

Take-Two could always delay the game and lower its earnings in the future, but that’s a pretty big bomb to drop on a stock that has been battered this year due to missed expectations for games such as Spec Ops: The Line and Max Payne 3. But Zelnick has always been willing to take short-term hits in favor of long-term investment, and the Rockstar leaders, Sam and Dan Hauser, are the ones in charge of production on GTA V. And they’re not known for shipping games early.

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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!

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Everyone has their opinion on who should portray their favorite novel, comic book, or video game characters in movie adaptations. Unfortunately, “perfect” casting choices, like Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier in X-Men, are few and far between.

To avoid casting disasters such as Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper in the Super Mario Bros. film, we’ve formed a list of actors who actually resemble popular game characters. For shits and giggles, we threw in some offbeat recommendations, as well.

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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!

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Game technology and development company NaturalMotion has raised $11 million from venture capital group Benchmark in a second round of funding. It will use part of the investment to open a U.S. headquarters in San Francisco, Calif.’s SoMa district, which is also home to competing mobile developers Gree and Zynga.

If you’ve played major console releases like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed or developer Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto IV, Red Dead Redemption, and Max Payne 3, you’ve seen NaturalMotion’s tech in action. Its Euphoria engine creates animations that simulate body movement rather than relying on premade clips, so characters move and react realistically when you shoot or Force-push them.

NaturalMotion, founded in 2001, currently employs 130 people in offices in Oxford, London and San Francisco. In 2010, it opened NaturalMotion Games to bring its innovations to mobile devices.

“We realized the iPhone was becoming fast enough to run our technology, and we founded NaturalMotion Games [to] create mobile social games that combine console quality with mobile usage patterns,” company chief Torsten Reil said in a statement to GamesBeat. “We focus on ultra-high-quality 3D visuals and compelling characters and [gameplay], and our first six games have all been global Top Ten App Store chart successes.”

NaturalMotion’s games include a mobile version of Parker Brothers’ block-stacking game Jenga and football titles like NFL Rivals and Backbreaker. Its first free-to-play iOS game, the equine ownership sim My Horse, launched in September 2011 and has generated over 10 million downloads.

Moving forward, all of NaturalMotion’s games will be free-to-play. “We love the ability to reach that many people and the sustained revenue profile,” Reil said.

The NaturalMotion chief also says that 3D graphics are the future of mobile development and that the company’s continued focus on visual technology will ensure its success.

“We believe that creating rich, believable visual experiences is becoming the key differentiator in mobile social games,” Reil said. “Animated movies had their Toy Story movement, which meant the end of the previously dominant 2D films, and mobile games will go through the same transition. We’ve seen early evidence of this with our My Horse game — the download numbers and engagement have been off-the-scale for us.”

You can read the full press release here.

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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!

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Microsoft’s Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb posted his regular activity roundup for the Xbox 360’s online network, and the Minecraft mania flows strong on the lists.

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition nabbed the top position for bestsellers as well as sliding in behind long-standing champions Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Call of Duty: Black Ops for unique-user counts. Other titans felt the squeeze: Battlefield 3, Halo: Reach, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Gears of War 3 trailed by significant margins.

Here’s the punchline: All of this happened in Minecraft’s first week of release.

Creativity spawns popularity, or so the legions of Minecraft’s stalwart community believes. Originally released for the PC on November 18, 2011, the open-world tinkering title arms players with pick, axe, sword, and other tools while throwing open the floodgates of crowdsourced content, resulting in masterful works such as a recreated Westeros from Game of Thrones and Portal’s test chambers.

Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition launched on May 9, promptly fashioned a golden sword, and smashed digital-sales records on its first day in the wilds. Its 1,600 Microsoft Points ($20) cost, unusually large for an XBLA title, and its lack of a modding infrastructure didn’t prevent the acclaim rolling in.

Check out Major Nelson’s activity lists below. If you’re playing Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition, what have you created so far? Let us know in the comments!

Xbox 360 Top Live Titles (based on unique users)

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
2. Call of Duty: Black Ops
3. Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition
4. FIFA 12
5. Battlefield 3
6. Halo: Reach
7. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
8. NBA 2K12
9. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
10. Gears of War 3
11. Grand Theft Auto IV
12. Trials Evolution
13. Forza Motorsport 4
14. Mass Effect 3
15. NHL 12
16. Madden NFL 12
17. Halo 3
18. Red Dead Redemption
19. Saints Row: The Third
20. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Top Arcade Titles (Full Versions purchased)

1. Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition
2. Trials Evolution
3. The Walking Dead
4. Fable Heroes
5. Fez
6. Pinball FX2
7. Awesomenauts
8. I Am Alive
9. Castle Crashers
10. Family Game Night
11. Fruit Ninja Kinect
12. Bloodforge
13. Toy Soldiers: Cold War
14. Gotham City Impostors
15. Toy Soldiers
16. Trials HD
17. Dungeon Defenders
18. Full House Poker
19. Peggle
20. Magic: The Gathering — Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012

Top Indie Games (Full Versions purchased)

1. CastleMiner Z
2. CastleMiner
3. Total Miner: Forge
4. The $1 Zombie Game
5. FortressCraft: Chapter 1
6. The Impossible Game
7. Avatar Paintball
8. Avatar Deathmatch
9. Fortress Wars
10. FLIRT
11. End of Days: Infected vs. Mercs
12. Avatar Legends
13. Flight Adventure 2
14. Toy Stunt Bike 2
15. Solar 2
16. Firing Range 2
17. Miner4Ever
18. Avatar Air Wars
19. Don’t Die Dateless, Dummy!
20. Attack of the Zombie Horde

Games for Windows Top Live Titles (based on unique users)

1. Grand Theft Auto IV
2. Age of Empires Online
3. Batman: Arkham City
4. Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition
5. Microsoft Flight
6. Batman: Arkham Asylum
7. DiRT 3
8. Gotham City Impostors
9. F1 2011
10. Resident Evil 5
11. Fallout 3
12. Street Fighter X Tekken
13. Toy Soldiers
14. Fable III
15. BioShock 2
16. Colin McRae: Dirt 2
17. Bulletstorm
18. F1 2010
19. Street Fighter IV
20. Section 8: Prejudice

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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!

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Max Payne 3 was meant to be a new chapter in the life of the titular former NYPD detective, who left New York behind to become a bodyguard for Sâo Paulo’s richest family. But while publisher/developer Rockstar’s attempt at a meaningful story may ultimately fall flat, its revolutionary method of delivery manages to raise the bar for video games and provides more than a little excitement when imagining what’s in store for the next Grand Theft Auto. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves….

WHAT YOU’LL LIKE

A seamless interactive story
Even in a game as seemingly pedestrian as Max Payne (story, shoot, story, shoot, story, shoot…), Rockstar has crafted a very technologically impressive experience. From the menu, the single-player story mode starts instantly, launching into the opening cutscene. From that point on, you’ll never encounter a loading screen for as long as you play the campaign. Well, you will — you just won’t realize that you are since all of the loading takes place during the in-engine cinematics. The ample story elements are also subtly interwoven with the actual gameplay, so you may enter a door and immediately go into a cutscene, then a moment later you’ll go from a cutscene back to controlling Max without any jarring transition.

I understand it may seem bizarre to tout such mundane, non-essential aspects of the game. That being said, I’ve played nearly a thousand games in the past few years, and very few have put forth the effort to blend their interactive and non-interactive elements. Video games are the next step in the entertainment evolution, right? So then why is it commonplace for the biggest games of the year, on the most technologically advanced gaming platforms, to never move past inferior traditions passed down from previous generations? Authored cutscenes should pair with player-controlled gameplay like mashed potatoes and gravy, but instead they’re often as sour and jarring as a mouthful of wasabi-laced Vegemite.

Unfortunately, the seamless story mode comes at the cost of replayability. Attempting to replay levels to gather clues and other collectibles is a nuisance since you usually can’t skip cutscenes. That means you may need to sit through five minutes of dialogue just so you can play for 30 seconds to unlock an achievement. I was looking forward to mopping up missed items and finishing the game a second time but was seriously deterred by the inability to expedite the process.

The little things
Gameplay-wise, Max Payne 3 works more or less as it should. The shooting is accurate, the cover mechanic is functional, and Max’s signature bullet-dodge and slow-motion feats are still intact. Rockstar has also taught the old man some new tricks, such as Last Man Standing, where Max will go into a downed state if he has painkillers on him and can revive himself by shooting the enemy who would otherwise kill him.

But what really sets this above every other flashy third-person shooter are the little touches that very few developers seem to care about. For instance, instead of just strapping shotguns and rifles onto some imaginary holster on his back, Max holds larger weapons as a real person would. It’s so obvious and real that it actually becomes novel in a video game. Likewise, whatever smaller weapon Max isn’t using at the time will appear in his side holster, even in cutscenes.

The cutscenes themselves are drenched with little touches that most other devs simply do not seem to realize how drastically they can elevate the overall presentation of a game.

The motion capturing and attention to detail have really paid off.

A real multiplayer mode
One of the many ailments afflicting big-name video games in recent years has been the “tacked-on multiplayer” (TM, all rights reserved, Electronic Arts). Dead Space 2 and Mass Effect 3 are two shining examples, but the same argument could be made for BioShock 2 and many others. Here’s the typical publisher mindset:

1. Make sequel to single-player game.
2. Add multiplayer mode with arbitrary leveling/unlock system stolen from Call of Duty.
3. ???
4. Profit (and lots of angry fans on Reddit).

Max Payne 3 avoids these pitfalls by building off of the excellent foundation Rockstar established for Grand Theft Auto IV and especially Red Dead Redemption. Though the open-world-exploration element is removed, Max Payne 3’s multiplayer is a much tighter, focused competitive experience.

Everything that you can do in single player you can do in multiplayer and then some. This extends to bullet-time actions, which works surprisingly well. If you have enough adrenaline, you can shoot-dodge in slow-motion, hindering any enemies in your line of sight. Allies in your line of sight will be “chained,” entering bullet-time as well, and so on.

There are tons of items and features to unlock, which I don’t necessarily condone. Like in Red Dead Redemption or Call of Duty, playing, killing, and completing “Grinds” (challenges) rewards you with experience points, and as you rank up, new content becomes available to you. This means that higher-level players will always have the advantage over players who play less, regardless of skill. If I’m level 35, I’ll simply have more weapons, more abilities, more attachments, and more money to buy them all with than someone who just started or is 5+ levels below me.

But once you do start unlocking content, Max Payne 3’s multiplayer potential takes off. At level 4 you’ll be able to customize your own class, choosing your loadout as well as a Burst, which is a special ability activated by adrenaline. The different Bursts add a lot of variety to the game and bring a layer of strategy into what would otherwise be a by-the-books shooter (albeit a good one). One that the Rockstar team liked to use often on me during our play session was Paranoia, which makes all allies appear as enemies. At Paranoia level 2, friendly fire is enabled, meaning you can now kill your friends if you’re not careful.

A good deal of unique modes keep things fresh, too, beyond just deathmatch or team deathmatch. I was happily surprised to find such a robust online counterpart to the single player, and I can easily recommend the game on Max Payne 3’s multiplayer alone.

Replay value
In addition to the endless hours multiplayer potentially offers, Rockstar has padded Max Payne 3 with scores of metagame objectives, difficulties, and bonus modes. Particularly notable are Score Attack and New York Minute, the former of which has Max replaying story levels to rack up the highest score possible by building up a multiplier and stylishly laying waste to everything in sight, while the latter is a race against time, rewarding bonus seconds for each kill. Even if multiplayer isn’t your thing, the game packs enough single-player content to keep you playing long after the credits roll.

WHAT YOU WON’T LIKE

U sad, bro?
Max Payne 3 is set eight years after the events of Max Payne 2, but it’s been over a decade since thugs murdered Max’s wife and child. Yet he can’t. Stop. Talking. About. It. Perhaps if the game didn’t follow previous developer Remedy’s patented inner-monologue stylings, we wouldn’t know how truly pathetic Max was, but since we’re forced to listen to him conjure up new ways to explain how rough his life’s been, it gets old fast. Even Die Hard’s John McClane eventually got over feeling sorry for himself and got his shit together.

The graphic novel-esque cutscenes from previous games contributed to the acceptably bleak, gritty attitude of the main character, but the developers completely removed them in Max Payne 3. I understand and appreciate Rockstar’s attempt to push the game noir concept forward aesthetically, but the end result looks like a graphic design student with epilepsy created it. Combined with the weaker writing and heavy reliance on cliches, and Max Payne is no longer the endearing tortured soul fans once loved.

Story mode wears out its welcome
If listening to a guy named Max Payne whine like a little bitch for 12 hours won’t grate on your nerves, the designers ensured the game will wear out its welcome regardless. The first act of Max Payne 3 is an intriguing, tightly paced, action-packed romp, but even massive shootouts lose their luster eventually. Max seriously can’t leave his apartment (and sometimes he doesn’t even have to do that) without ending up in a gun battle with hundreds of nameless goons.

By the end of the campaign, my stats had recorded over 2,000 enemy kills. Seriously think about that for a minute…. Two. Thousand. And like a Michael Bay movie, the game pushes for one too many drawn-out action sequences. After you’ve stormed yet another enemy stronghold, single-handedly laid waste to yet another entire army, and killed another main bad guy that you only just met five seconds ago, it’s hard to stay excited or care about anything that’s happening.

I was quite disappointed that Rockstar created such compelling, mature framework, then had it devolve repeatedly into standard vehicular shooting-gallery tropes.

Golden guns are another point of contention in the story. Rockstar has repeatedly stated that the plot is the focus of the game, and indeed much of the design corroborates that claim. But then you have the golden gun pieces, which are collectibles spread across each level. This is a two-fold nuisance: One, it completely derails what Rockstar achieved with the clues — non-intrusive collectible items that add an additional layer to the fiction — and two, it’s a little absurd to be running around some of the poorest locations in the world only to find a rocket launcher made out of solid gold lying in plain sight.

The completionist in me had to stop and check every area for the golden gun pieces, even when the plot was screaming at me to “hurry up!” It would have made much more sense for these to only be available on a second playthrough (such as Hardcore or Old School) or some other method.

No grenades
Part of what made Max Payne 2 so great was taking the John Woo-inspired mechanics that Remedy provided and creating your ideal action scene. I stopped progressing the story in a few places, so I could replay a chapter, thinking to myself, “No, I should have done this. It could have been cooler!” And a big piece of putting together that perfect puzzle was the inclusion of explosions and, more specifically, grenades. Max Payne 3 has the occasional explosion, but the single player is completely devoid of grenades.

Well, at least for Max, that is. The enemies throw grenades like they’re going out of style, and you can even shoot them out of the air if you’re quick.

In fact, Max Payne shoots more rockets out of the air than Nathan Drake falls off of stuff.

But you’re never given the ability to throw grenades yourself, which is particularly strange considering you can equip all manner of tossable explosives in multiplayer.

Unrefined controls
My first playthrough was done on Hard in order to unlock the Hardcore and Old School modes (and to impress all of you by stating that in my review!), and aside from a handful of challenging spots throughout the 13-hour game, I managed fairly well. But playing on the harder difficulty(s) made me realize that the controls are not nearly as refined as they really should be.

Exhibit A: Max cannot turn corners while in cover. Some games do it, some games don’t, but this one really needs to. On the harder settings, it only takes a couple of bullets to get downed, so staying protected at all times is imperative.  So if you suddenly find yourself on the wrong side of a 90-degree angle, you have to move away from your current cover, clunkily reposition yourself, then reattach to the new cover object, all while a hail of bullets rains down on you.

Exhibit B: Max Payne is old, hurt, tired, and probably more than a little hungover. I get it. But even Metal Gear Solid’s Old Snake could move his ass when he needed to. Whenever Max survives Last Man Standing mode, he’s left lying vulnerable on the ground. Worst yet is that the time it takes him to stand up is ridiculously long. If you don’t suck at video games, ending up in Last Man Standing usually means 20 different people are shooting you at the same time. And so even when you kill the guy who actually downed you, those other 19 thugs are still firing at you.

By the time Max stands up and slowly gets back to cover two inches away from him, you’ve taken enough damage to get downed again. No thanks.

All this despite the fact that Max can outrun snipers out in the open and go toe-to-toe with Neo from The Matrix when he feels like it….

CONCLUSION
A compelling kidnapping story quickly devolves into pointless mass murder, with the least interesting iteration of this franchise’s protagonist at the center. What’s the point of having extraordinary production values and cutting-edge presentation if you’re not presenting anything worthwhile? Luckily, Max Payne 3’s multiplayer is worth the price of entry alone, and the single-player Arcade challenges are great as well. Or vice versa, depending on your personal preference.

Score: 83/100

Max Payne 3 was released on May 15, 2012 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. Rockstar Games provided GamesBeat with an Xbox 360 retail copy for the purpose of this review.

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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!

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The PC version of developer Rockstar Games’ upcoming installment of the Max Payne series will take up 35GB of free space on on your hard drive when it launches on May 29, according to system requirements released today. To put this in perspective, I looked up the hard drive needs of a few other big releases to see how they compare.

Both id Software’s first-person shooter Rage and the latest version of the online role-playing game World of Warcraft demand a hefty 25GB of free space. World of Warcraft developer Blizzard’s other big property, Diablo III, will need a comparatively modest 12GB of room when it comes out on May 15.

Exploring a meticulously recreated digital version of 1947 Los Angeles took up 16GB in last year’s L.A. Noire, Rockstar’s most recent foray into PC gaming, and the entry fee for exploring the similarly sprawling Liberty City in 2008′s Grand Theft Auto IV was 18GB.

Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, arguably the biggest game of last year, boasts a game map covering approximately 14 square miles and populated with hundreds of characters offering infinite quests. It requires 6GB of hard drive space.

So basically, Max Payne 3 is like six Skyrims.

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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!

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