Stay on top of all our E3 coverage here.

As part of our larger interview with Final Fantasy XIV game director Naoki Yoshida, we asked the opinionated developer how Square Enix justifies a monthly subscription for its upcoming MMO relaunch. After all, most similar games have thoroughly embraced a free-to-play model, and those brazen enough not to, such as Star Wars: The Old Republic, quickly course-corrected after subscriptions and active players take a massive dive within the first couple of months.

Yoshida’s explanation, given through a translator, is a lengthy but interesting one, describing the mindset within a major corporation such as Square Enix as well as discussing his thoughts on titles like World of Warcraft and The Old Republic:

There are many different types of MMOs. There are two big types or groups that we see. You have one group with games like your Rift or your Star Wars, which are very large-scale MMOs with established IP. Then you have your smaller MMOs, which are maybe new IPs that don’t need as big a user base to be successful. So we can start off with the big group, the large-scale MMO group, with your Rift, your Star Wars, your Guild Wars, your Age of Conan and The Lord of the Rings. These games all started out on a subscription model, or were planning for a subscription model when they were in development. Then, partway through, they switched to free-to-play.

Then again, you have games like Rift and Star Wars. Even though people have been saying that yes, there is this change in the market, everything’s moving to free-to-play, they still – up until recently – were developing a system that would be subscription-based. Even though everyone is saying the industry is going free-to-play, they still were developing these huge games with subscriptions in mind. Again, we’re not saying that one is better than the other, that free-to-play is better than subscription or subscription is better than free-to-play. But for a large game on that scale, what’s most important – more important than making a lot of money – is making a stable income, a stable amount of money over a long period of time. And so to develop a large-scale MMO like this, you need to spend a lot of time with a lot of resources and a lot of staff to make this game.

To do that, you need a lot of money, and to get a lot of money to do that, you usually need investors to invest in your game. Because you’ve spent a lot of money on getting this game ready and borrowed a lot of money from these investors, when you release the game, the investors expect to see returns. If your game gets a lot of users and a lot of subscriptions right away, your investors will be happy and you can pay them. But what happens if you don’t hit that number right away? You have a bunch of staff members waiting to get paid. You have a bunch of investors waiting to get paid. You have a bunch of contents that needs to get made because you have to have updates, but you can’t do it because you don’t have enough money, because you didn’t hit that number you were aiming for. And so what do you have to do? One option to get instant money is free-to-play, or selling these items. To get that money so you can pay off your staff, pay off your investors, and start making new content, switching to free-to-play, selling items, and using that money is one way to do it.

So why didn’t Rift or EA with Star Wars do this from the beginning? Why didn’t they start with free-to-play? There’s a reason behind that. With free-to-play, because you’re selling these items, you’ll have months where you sell a bunch of stuff and you make a lot of money in that one month. But it’s all about what happens during that month. Next month, the person who maybe bought $100 worth of items in the last month could purchase nothing at all. You don’t know what you’re going to be getting, and because you don’t know what you’re going to be getting, you can’t plan ahead. You don’t know how much money is coming in. If you can’t plan ahead, then you can’t keep staff, because you don’t know if you’ll have enough money to pay the staff next month.

With a subscription base, if you get maybe 400,000 members, you know that you’re going to have the money from that monthly subscription for the next month. You also know that you’re going to have 400,000 this month, and it’s not going to go down to 200,000 users next month. That type of jump really doesn’t happen with a subscription model. So you know that you’re going to have a steady income. Because you have a steady income, you can plan ahead further. You can make sure you have staff members to create that new content. By creating new content, you’re making the players happy. If they know this game is going to keep creating new content, they’ll continue to pay their monthly subscription fees. So rather than going for the huge $100-million-a-month hit that you might get with the free-to-play model, having that steady income allows us to provide a better product to the players.

Now, you have Blizzard and you have Square Enix. We’re the only two companies in the industry, basically, that are making MMOs with our own money. That gives us an advantage, because where other companies have to get money from investors and have to pay that back, we don’t have a lot of time to build slowly and be able to pay that back. Investors want their returns right away. With Square Enix and Blizzard, because we’re putting our own money into it, we don’t have those investors to worry about, and that means we can release something and maybe take a little bit of a hit at the beginning, but as long as we’re increasing the amount of people we have, then we’ll get that money and make the players happy. We’ll get into that cycle I talked about before, where we’re creating good content and have that steady income to keep the cycle going.

With version 1.0, even though we call it a failure, we still had a user base. During the time that we were developing this game, 2.0, we were able to increase the amount of subscribers threefold as well. Again, it takes time. It takes showing the users that we’re really into this and giving them that new content. But we’re able to see a rise there. That’s what we’re looking for in this. Again, we’re not saying—The market didn’t change. It’s that there are two different types of models. Choosing the model that’s right for your product and being successful with that is what’s important. We believe that the bigger the game, the larger the scale of the MMO, it’s going to be better for the game if it’s on a subscription model.

That’s why you see a lot of companies that chose the subscription model, that wanted to do what we were doing, but were forced to free-to-play. They didn’t go to free-to-play by choice, because if that was the case, they would have gone free-to-play at the beginning. They’d develop it for free-to-play, not full subscription, instead of being forced to go free-to-play. We hear a lot of people saying, “Star Wars is free-to-play now, it’s great!” But then you ask them if they’re playing free-to-play Star Wars and they say, “No, not really playing it.” Everyone talks about how great it is that it went free-to-play, but then you ask around and really, there aren’t that many people who are playing it since it’s gone free-to-play. If you spend all that money on a game ,release it, and it’s filled with bugs and you don’t have enough time to do your updates, people will leave. Players need that new content. Not being able to provide it is fatal. If they were able to produce as much content as players wanted, then people would have stayed there. We don’t really believe it’s a problem with the business model. It’s how that’s handled.

You can read the rest of GamesBeat’s interview with Yoshida 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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This sponsored post is produced by Dealzon.

Earlier today, Square-Enix tweeted August 27th as the release date for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn on the PS3 and PC. Although current owners of the original FF XIV on PC can download the new version for free (and thus should disregard the next few sentences), new potential players on PC can take advantage of lower-than-usual list prices as well as a 20% off preorder deal on GMG.

The digital Standard Edition for preorder comes to $24 after coupon, while the Collector’s Edition costs $20 more. All preorders includes pre-launch access to the game servers, a Mog cap to wear around Eorzea, and a Cait Sith Doll Minion who joins your party as a pet.

Although the digital Collector’s Edition preorder omits the numerous physical bonus items associated with the DVD version, you’ll still receive the Helm of Light, a Baby Behemoth Minion, a Coeurl Mount, and even Behemoth Barding armor for your Chocobo as in-game bonuses.

Announced just two days ago, Metro: Last Light – Season Pass for PC download also has the 20% discount after coupon at Green Man Gaming. The Pass includes four DLC packs: Faction Pack, Tower Pack, Developer Pack, and Chronicles Pack. Assuming the packs will cost $5 each as they release, the final price of the Pass represents a 40% discount off what you’d otherwise pay. Accordingly, fans of the Metro franchise certain to buy the additional DLC would be wise to grab these in the Pass.

Hot deals & recent releases

Aug. 27: Final Fantasy XIV: Realm Reborn (PC Dowload) — $24 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. If you already own the original FF XIV on PC, don’t pay twice – it’s free for you to download. Otherwise, be thankful for the lower $30 list price, 20% off coupon, and preorder bonuses.

Tuesday’s release: Metro: Last Light – Season Pass (PC Download) — $12 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. Save 40% off what you’d pay if you were to buy the packs individually as they’re released.

Tuesday’s release: Resident Evil: Revelations (PC Download) — $40 at Green Man Gaming after coupon. This “slighty buggy [but] fun” transition from a successful 3DS title to the bigger screen has a 75/100 Metacritic rating so far.

Yesterday’s release: Call of Juarez: Gunslinger (PC Download) — $11.99 at GameFly after coupon. Pay respect to the Old West with a bounty hunting title getting solid reviews thus far. Next best is $15 at Amazon.

Wii U Console 8GB Basic Set — $239.99 at Target. Plus $6.55 shipping. Cheapest we’ve seen for the basic Wii U console, with other retailers still selling for the usual $300.

Freebie PC games at Amazon

16 Bit Arena (PC Download) — FREE. If you miss vintage graphics in turn-by-turn battles, your nostalgia won’t cost you a thing. List price is $10.
 

Stronghold Kingdoms + Stronghold Crusader HD (PC Download) — FREE. While Stronghold Kingdoms has been free for a while now, Stronghold Crusader HD is usually $10.

PC download deals

Guild Wars 2 Digital Edition (PC Download) — $39.99 at Green Man Gaming. Since its release last year, GW2 has had its up and downs, but the core community is still relatively strong.
 

Sleeping Dogs (PC Download) — $6.25 at GamersGate. A cheap safe bet for fans of open world action adventure. Next best is $30 at Amazon.
 

Space Battle Weekend Sale: Games and DLCs (PC Download) — up to 75% off at GamersGate. Includes a whopping 63 space-related games and content to download, including Sins of a Solar Empire, Endless Space, and classics like Master of Orion.
 

PC Physical DVD Preorders

June 4: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Legendary Edition (PC) — $49.99 at NewEgg. Don’t let MSRP be your ‘arrow to the knee’ – save $10 after coupon instead and get the base game, 3 DLCs, and other new features.
 

Last Monday’s release: Battlefield 4 (PC DVD) — $49.99 at NewEgg after coupon. Recently announced to include the provocatively named ‘China Rising’ for free on release date.
 

Nov. 5: Call of Duty: Ghosts (PC DVD) — $49.99 at NewEgg after coupon. First real deal we’ve seen on the PC physical since the release date announcement.
 

360 and PS3 deals

Bioshock Infinite (PS3, Xbox 360) — $39.99 at GameStop. This ties the lowest price we’ve seen. If you haven’t played yet, these solid prices are giving you even less of an excuse.

Buy 2 Pre-Owned Video Games, Get a 3rd FREE — at Best Buy. You’ve got over 5,000 pre-owned games available, and savings will appear in cart after you’ve added your choices.
 

GameFly Used Games Sale (Xbox 360, PS3) — If you don’t mind pre-owned video games, there are several solid discounts this week, including:

• Assassin’s Creed 3 (PS3) — $19.99 (cheapest new $30)
• Lollipop Chainsaw (360, PS3) — $14.99 (cheapest new $22)
• Transformers: Fall of Cybertron (360) — $14.99 (cheapest new $55)

Hardware

Memorial Day deal on HP Envy dv7t-7300 Quad Edition — $749.99 at HP after coupon. Quick Specs: Quad Core i7-3630QM, 8GB RAM, GeForce GT 650M 2GB, Blu-ray drive, and 9 cell Lithium Ion Battery. List is $1,000. For the same processor, HDD, RAM, video card, 1080p resolution, but with a smaller screen, the HP Envy dv6t-7300 Quad Edition laptop is $849.99 after coupon (no Blu-ray in this 15.6-inch). Both are fully gaming capable in terms of config and setup.

Alienware M18x r2 1080p Gaming Laptop — $1,575 at eBay. Quick Specs: Core i7-3610QM, 500GB + 32GB SSD, 16GB RAM, and 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675M. List is $2,349.

Alienware M17x r4 Gaming Laptop — $1,612 at Dell Home after coupon. Quick Specs: Core i7-3630QM, 8GB RAM, and 2GB GeForce GTX 660M. List is $1,749.

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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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Elyse Petersen is the founder of Tealet

Tea Drinkers Anonymous is a guild on the popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game Guild Wars 2. And no, they are not trying to fight a tea addiction: On the contrary, they brought it online. Its members sip tea as they explore the world of Tyria together. The connection between tea and games could stop there, but it turns out tea connoisseurship relates to gaming personas, as modeled by Richard Bartle. More, these might apply to many other kinds of products and experiences.

A model for gamer’s personas

While Bartle’s research comes from early MUDs (multiuser dungeons, ancestors of current online games and RPGs), it laid a foundation for the personas of gamers that has been used to describe many other online communities. Other models compete, but Bartle’s is widely used.

He found that the four things that people enjoyed most from MUD games were: achievement, exploration, socializing, and competition Most players exhibit dominance of one or two traits. And consciously or not, game developers manage the balance of these elements in order to sustain a healthy ecosystem of players.

Achievers want to complete the game and gain levels and recognition.

Explorers enjoy their knowledge of the game world and finding out hidden corners of the game’s world.

Socializers spend a great deal of their time interacting with the other players in the game. Their influence and network of friends in the game keeps them motivated to play.

Competitors are more aggressive and find fulfillment in “winning” and domination.

From MUDs to tea leaves

“Herbivorous” tea lovers are – like gamers – on a journey, and they exhibit many similar behaviors.

In the tea world, here are the equivalents of Bartle’s personas:

Achievers are the enthusiasts that will spend their life becoming a tea master. These connoisseurs will stop at nothing to learn more about the artistic mysteries of the Camellia sinensis plant. They might share their enthusiasm in detailed blogs about the teas they taste and stories they learn. They might not have a mastery level attached (unless they practice Japan’s cha-do), but the community respects these achievers as experts.

Socializers are the backbone of the new tea lover community. These tea community builders love tea not just for its wonderful taste and healing powers but also for the bond that forms when people share a tea experience. Since the beginning of tea’s history, it has played a significant role in bringing together communities – from India to East Asia and to England and more. With technology, you can share a cup of tea across the world — regardless of the time difference involved.

The tea journey for explorers is motivated by the desire to try every tea they can. Believe it or not, those adventurers may find themselves traveling around the globe to well-hidden tea-growing regions just for the taste of something that you can’t find anywhere else. More than likely, these explorers have so much experience tasting teas that they can taste the difference between two Dragon well teas harvested from the same plant just days apart. They are not unlike wine lovers or birders.

Competitors, also referred to as killers, are not out to drown others in tea or poison their cup. These passionate tea lovers enjoy heated discussions with others about their favorite beverage. They are always sure to correct someone’s tea ignorance or disagree with someone about the degree of muscatel of a Darjeeling. A quick browse on subreddit /r/Tea will show a list of engaged discussions on proper tea pouring and tasting etiquette. These discussions are had in good fun and help create bonds between the community members.

Communities increasingly dominate industries

As the Internet is connecting isolated enthusiasts in all sorts of fields, similar personas are emerging and gaining power from their knowledge, network, attitude or opinions. Offline experiences that used to be isolated are being shared and influencing in turn which companies succeed by harnessing those powers to serve customers better.

Thinking about your own interests you can surely identify how much of an achiever, explorer, socializer, or killer you are.

While at Tealet our passion took us on the way of tea, the lessons from online games and virtual communities as Bartle describes are taking over. Is life a game, or were games life in the first place? We might ask the members of Tea Drinker’s Anonymous around a virtual campfire and … a cup of tea!

Thanks to Benjamin Joffe for suggesting this connection between tea and gaming and reviewing drafts of this article.

Elyse Petersen is the founder of Tealet, an online community and marketplace for tea lovers. She is an advocate for tea growers and technology and wants to connect growers and tea drinkers around the world. Tealet is part of the 500 Startups Accelerator Batch of Winter 2012.

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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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Many triple-A massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) seem to lean toward a more serious tone, with no shortage of scantily clad female elves running around and bashing things with epic axes twice their size on an epic quest to save the world from an epic evil. WildStar, the latest MMO from publisher NCsoft (Guild Wars 2) and developer Carbine Studios, is going for something a little different.

After a few hours of hands-on time at a recent WildStar preview event, GamesBeat sat down with lead narrative designer Chad Moore to discuss the game’s emphasis on humor and how the team tapped the spirit of Pixar when creating an epic universe for a broader audience.

“As a company, we talk a lot about personality,” says Moore. “It was important to us that WildStar had something different from almost any MMO or any MMO at all that’s been released up to this date. It doesn’t necessarily have to always be serious in order to be epic. We’re going to have epic moments in our game, and you’ll see those things. You’re going to experience those things. But just because your story is epic and your characters are epic, it doesn’t mean that they have to be dour and serious or what you would consider traditional characters from games that you’ve played before.”

“When we showed our original release trailer, there were people who likened that release trailer to a Pixar movie,” Moore continues. “We thought that was cool because when we talk about it at Carbine, we talk about Pixar movies or Disney movies. Those are the best examples, I think, where you can have a serious story that has emotional resonance, but the characters are funny. They’re humorous. Their interactions with each other are humorous, but it doesn’t take away from the coolness of the story or the overall experience of the movie. I always talk about The Incredibles as being one of my favorite movies ever even though a lot of people might look at that and consider it sort of funny or humorous or maybe for kids. I think, ultimately, those movies are not for kids. They’re for adults who do enjoy that sort of humor. We’re going to try to do the same thing in our game.

“Because that’s a company-wide philosophy, the art resonates with that. You’ll notice that right away. The content that we create — I don’t know if you played through a quest in there where you’re working for these little inventor guys. They’ve strapped this big mamoden full of explosives. A mamoden is this big rhinoceros-looking thing. They’re testing out their new weapons technology. You get to go and control this mamoden and go over to blow up some poachers. If you look at the mamoden itself, it’s kind of ridiculous. It’s this big rhinoceros and the explosives are oversized and it’s kind of humorous and funny. That’s a great example, I think. The little guys that give you the quest — they’re humorous in the way that they speak. The art itself is funny. The quest itself has that same humor, too. You’re killing these poachers that nobody’s happy with, and what the poachers are doing is serious, but the way that you’re dispatching them has a unique kind of WildStar feel. We just try to have that synergy between art and design and story all throughout the game.”

Meet one of the two factions in the game. What do you think? Is WildStar as funny as Carbine thinks it is?

WildStar currently has no release date set, but Carbine Studios plans to hit all the major game events this year to unveil more of the game.

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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 video game business never has a year without controversy. 2012 was no different in that respect. But the different ways that game companies could get into trouble and draw mass market attention were surprising. The age-old controversies about sex, violence, and other cultural insensitivities surfaced again this year. But game publishers also had to deal with the consequences of being hacked, violating the government’s concerns about military security, and upsetting fans by failing to live up to games-as-a-service obligations in free-to-play games.

Sometimes, the controversies brew up from the bottom as unintended consequences. At other times, it seems like the controversies are intentionally manufactured for marketing reasons, so that the game can rise above the noise and catch the public’s attention. But that’s a double-edged sword, as such marketing can turn off as many consumers as you attract. Whether the controversies are accidental or intentional, it’s clear that when you create entertainment for the public, there are so many ways to get into trouble. Please vote in our poll for the top game controversy, and leave a comment if you like.

Video games take the heat for Newtown shooting

The horrific shootings at Newtown left 20 children and seven adults dead. Though it happened late in the year, this incident revived concerns over excessive violence in video games. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that video games were protected under the First Amendment. But calls for regulation and studying of a possible link between games and violence went out again in the wake of the shooting. The anti-game-violence crowd got help from an unexpected corner, as the National Rifle Association blamed the shooting on violent video games (and called for armed guards at schools). Greg Fischbach, former chief executive of Mortal Kombat publisher Acclaim Entertainment, predicted that the consequences of the shooting will play out over years for the game industry.

Ex-Navy SEALS disciplined for consulting on Medal of Honor Warfighter

Electronic Arts touted the fact that former elite soldiers gave it advice in the design of its realistic combat shooter Medal of Honor Warfighter. But the company failed to go through the proper channels in getting permission from the government for the consulting. As a result, the Department of Defense punished seven active-duty Navy SEALs who consulted on the game. The SEALs had two months of pay docked and received letters of reprimand. More were under investigation.

Among those who consulted was Matt Bissonnette, who was part of Seal Team 6 team that killed Osama Bin Laden. EA said that it wasn’t aware of any rules that required EA to vet the game with the DoD. It wasn’t clear if any military secrets were improperly divulged in the game. Bissonnette also got into hot water for co-writing the nonfiction account of the raid that killed Bin Laden in the book, No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden.

Copycatting called out

Zynga has long been accused of copying other game designs. Electronic Arts finally sued the company this year for allegedly copying The Sims Social with the launch of Zynga’s The Ville people simulation game. EA claimed that Zynga’s team copied many details of The Sims Social. Zynga denied outright copying, and it noted that EA’s SimCity Social was similarly a copy of Zynga’s own city-building game, CityVille, and that CityVille itself has only passing resemblance to EA’s SimCity games on the PC.

In response to similar allegations of copying in a bingo game, Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga, claimed that his company has re-imagined past games by making them more social. The result is those games become more popular than ever thanks to sharing with friends on Facebook. EA said that it had to stand up for the industry to stop the rampant copying. Complicating the matter was the fact that The Ville’s designer, Mark Skaggs of Zynga, used to work at EA, as did many other Zynga executives. The issue of copying came up again as Spry Fox sued 6waves for copying not the look of its game, but the game play. That lawsuit was settled. But the EA-Zynga dispute is still pending.

The courts have been clear on the subject. Making a new game in an existing genre isn’t a violation of copyright law. But taking someone’s computer code and claiming it as your own is illegal.

Talent raiding wars

Related to the copycat allegations, big companies also went to war over talent raids. After Zynga hired an EA executive, Zynga alleged that EA’s chief executive John Riccitiello proposed an anti-competitive no-hiring pact or he would threaten litigation. Zynga claimed that was the real reason for EA’s copycat lawsuit. Meanwhile, Kixeye CEO Will Harbin made a hilarious video lampooning Zynga and EA as part of a campaign to recruit talent. But then Zynga sued Kixeye for stealing a game designer. Zynga alleged that Alan Patmore took 763 confidential documents with him when he started his new job at Kixeye. But Harbin blasted Zynga for lashing out while it was “burning to the ground and bleeding top talent.”

Apple cracks down on bot marketers

Early in the year, Apple quietly prohibited mobile game companies from using bots and other marketing tactics that artificially boosted games in Apple’s rankings of its top-performing apps. Animoca alleged that Apple unfairly cracked down on its Pretty Pet Salon game and that communication from Apple was sparse. Our own investigation found that the secrecy around the crackdown left a lot of developers wondering what was OK to do and what wasn’t when it came to marketing games. Game developers feared that if everyone used unfair marketing tactics, then legitimate high-quality apps might never get noticed. But one thing was clear. If you used too many incentives, Apple would start paying attention. Late in the year, Tapjoy again learned a tough lesson about being too aggressive with incentives, this time with web-based offers that apps linked to from within Apple apps. Neither Apple nor Tapjoy elucidated on the matter, leaving developers in the dark.

Hackers disrupt online games

Anonymous taught Sony a big lesson last year as it hacked into both the PlayStation Network and disabled the network for 77 million registered users who could no longer access their online games. It also attacked Sony Online Entertainment. This year, hackers were back with more attacks. Gamigo got hacked and lost control over 8 million email addresses and passwords for its users. And 11,000 Guild Wars 2 players also had their passwords stolen. Zynga’s YoVille social game saw disruption for 1,000 fans after some players began using a vulnerability to steal belongings from other accounts. Game companies that get hit by hackers will find out that consumers will blame the company for lax security as much as they will blame the hackers.

Fan revolts hit Mystery Manor

Game Insight had a tough time dealing with fan outcry after it decided to take away some perks offered to players of the game. Game Insight made the iOS version of Mystery Manor: Hidden Adventure, which was enjoyed by as many as 20 million registered users. The hidden object game was a free-to-pay title where users could play for free and pay real money for virtual goods. But Apple banned a practice that the game had previously allowed: letting friends obtain and trade gifts with other players inside the game. Game Insight had to scramble to comply with the rules and fans objected. A second fan revolt erupted with a second service disruption. Fair warning. Fan revolts are going to be common if game developers decide to change long-standing online games or discontinue them altogether.

Sex chat brings down Habbo virtual world

A British TV station dealt Habbo a severe blow when it blew the lid off a sex chat culture within parts of the virtual world, which has more than 250 million registered users. During the scandal, retailers stopped carrying prepaid cards for Habbo and an investor pulled its support from the company. Habbo had measures in place to stop sexual predators, but it shut down the service to deal with the new allegations. The company reviewed its chat records and found 3.7 percent of members were engaged in inappropriate chat. By the time that Habbo went back online with new measures in place, it had lost about 35 percent of its membership. Chief executive Paul LaFontaine pledged to redouble efforts to protect kids and win more of those users back.

Ex-OMGPOP ignites debate about refusing to work for Zynga

OMGPOP’s Pictionary-style mobile game Draw Something gained a huge number of users early this year, prompting Zynga to buy the New York game company for $180 million. But Shay Pierce, one of OMGPOP’s employees, wrote a blog post about how he didn’t want to work for Zynga, which he viewed as completely antithetical to his professional and creative values. Then OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter tweeted that the one employee who didn’t accept a job with Zynga (Pierce) was the “weakest” one. But Pierce didn’t miss out on much. Draw Something lost millions of users and Zynga had to take a write-off of $95 million because of the diminished value of the mobile game. Zynga’s stock price also cratered as it announced two quarters of weak earnings in a row.

EA and Activision Blizzard spar over Infinity Ward

In 2011, Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts squared off over the departures of the founders of Infinity Ward, an Activision-owned studio that built the Call of Duty franchise into a billion-dollar machine. Two co-founders were fired from Infinity Ward as they prepared to exit and set up Respawn Entertainment, a new game studio funded by EA. The lawsuit was headed for a trial this year. Just before the trial, EA and Activision settled the case. But not before there were some interesting disclosures about Project Icebreaker. Activision executive email records showed that executives were hunting for dirt on the co-founders as a pretext to fire them. Activision denied the characterization of the emails.

Mass Effect 3′s ending fiasco

Fans were in an uproar after they played through the entire Mass Effect trilogy, only to be disappointed by the uninspired ending of Mass Effect 3. The fan reaction was so intense that Electronic Arts’ BioWare division decided to come out with an enhanced ending to satisfy gamers. And not long after that, BioWare founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk decided to retire from their top positions at EA.

Here’s our poll.

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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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Want proof that the massively multiplayer online (MMO) game industry is in a state of extreme flux? Look no further than ostensible World of WarCraft-challenger Star Wars: The Old Republic, which lasted all of seven months before going free-to-play. The times are certainly changing.

Profound disruption, however, can have its advantages. More than ever, underdog MMORPGs and other online games are finding niches in which they can survive and thrives for years. Even apparent busts can right the ship with some smart content and a good free-to-play model.

With that in mind, here are five great MMOs from 2012.

Planetside 2

Welcome to the future. That’s pretty much all we need to say about Sony Online Entertainment’s Planetside 2, which marries a free-to-play model with a full-scale shooter that’s nearly on par with big-budget games like Call of Duty. Sony Online obviously spent a lot of money on this game. That it’s free-to-play says a lot about where online gaming is headed.

More impressively, Planetside 2 really is free, which is more than can be said for many F2P titles. Free players and premium players are more or less on equal footing, with the main differences being in weapon efficiency. It’s a smart move on the part of Sony Online, since skewed balance tends to be felt rather keenly in games such as these.

Apart from being a free-to-play shooter, Planetside 2 is worth experiencing simply because it’s so huge. True, it’s bewildering at first. You’ll spend your first few minutes flailing around, desperately trying to figure out what all the icons mean and what you’re supposed to even being doing. But once you get your feet under you, the firefights that form and dissipate across the massive battlefield are consistently impressive.

At this early juncture, Planetside 2 is certainly still experiencing its share of growing pains, and it feels a touch floaty compared to other shooters. But nevertheless, Sony Online has found a standard-bearer for both its own offerings and free-to-play at large.

World of WarCraft: Mists of Pandaria

The decision to add in the Pandaren race is a transparent attempt to bring in new players and perhaps appeal to a younger demographic. But in practice, Mists of Pandaria has turned out to be very much for longtime fans of the series.

Mists of Pandaria’s feature list is familiar — a new continent, a new race, and a new class. But Pandaria seems less interested in introducing a world-destroying bad guy like Cataclysm’s Deathwing than reigniting the spark of what made the World of WarCraft so appealing in the first place. The continent of Pandaria is everything we’ve come to expect from the series over the years — lavishly detailed and full of nods to games of the past, all rendered with a winking sense of humor.

The actual content is likewise meant to recapture the attention of the old-guard. Aside from a host of challenging new dungeons, Mists of Pandaria brings with it a pet battling system much like that of Pokémon. For longtime players, it’s a great opportunity to dust off all those pets from BlizzCons gone by.

In general, you can say the same for the rest of the game. It’s not an expansion that’s apt to win many new fans, but World of WarCraft seems to be past that point. For those players who have been collecting pets and following the lore from the beginning, Mists of Pandaria is delightful.

The Secret World

At first blush, The Secret World seems like a pretty traditional MMORPG with a modern setting. In this case, it’s set in a world where every myth is essentially true — Lovecraftian demons, vampires, the Illuminati, and all the rest of it. But from there, it goes in some very interesting directions.

One way in which The Secret World shakes things up is in its open-ended battle system. In essence, The Secret World is something of a card game, with your deck of skills determining your role in a party. The goal is to allow players to avoid being pigeonholed into one role, and it’s rather successful in that regard.

The other way The Secret World stands apart is in its approach to its world. Some of have called it a “puzzle MMO,” and that description isn’t far off. Even before The Secret World came out, its marketing was placing riddles around the Internet. The resulting collaboration has been rather interesting to watch.

Unfortunately, like many Funcom titles such as The Age of Conan, The Secret World has been dogged by issues of content and various bugs. Having recently dropped its subscription requirement, however, the hope is that The Secret World will soon be able to reach its considerable potential.

Rift: Storm Legion

Along with World of WarCraft, Rift is one of the very few subscription-based MMORPGs still kicking around. Newcomers Star Wars: The Old Republic and The Secret World shifted away to new models rather quickly, while Rift has managed to hold on. Storm Legion offers a hint as to why.

Simply put, Storm Legion is more proof that Rift is run by one of the best teams in the business. Extremely polished for an MMORPG release, it roughly doubles the size of the world while further building upon the dynamic content that helped define the game early on. Events take place on a grand scale, occasionally overwhelming entire zones. It’s a spectacle certainly worth seeing for yourself.

Also worth noting is the way in which Storm Legion addresses replayabiilty, which was an issue in the original game. Storm Legion’s expansion areas include a rather substantial route split, meaning a whole different set of content depending on which you choose. For those who aren’t extremely interested in traditional raids, the added replayability is a nice plus.

Like Mists of Pandaria, Storm Legion has flown under the radar a bit. The very fact that Rift has managed to last this long as a subscription-based MMO, however, suggests that Trion is doing something very right. The high quality content of Storm Legion is proof.

Guild Wars 2

ArenaNet intended Guild Wars to be the embodiment of disruption in the MMO space — an RPG that broke all the rules and redefined the genre. You can argue whether they have succeeded; but either way, Guild Wars 2 is still a terrific MMORPG.

Pretty much everything Guild Wars 2 has done has been to thumb its nose at the likes of World of WarCraft. Dedicated healers? Gone. Traditional loot distribution? That’s gone, too. Guild Wars 2 ends up sacrificing some depth for being as free and organic as possible; but in that, it ends up being far more welcoming to new players than many of its ilk.

Thanks in no small part to these changes, a vigorous marketing campaign, and strong word-of-mouth, Guild Wars 2 has arguably received more attention than even Mists of Pandeira. Though perhaps not the revolution that ArenaNet was hoping for — it’s still very much a classical MMORPG in form and substance if not in style — it is still strikingly beautiful and well executed. It is the perfect MMO for a genre in flux.

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Like Halloween, Christmas is a great time to hop in your favorite massively multiplayer online (MMO) game. Not just because your friends will actually have time to grind rare loot and experience with you but also because developers tend to go a little crazy (and generous) around the holidays. Unique items, characters, monsters, events, and locations — the more the merrier!

GamesBeat has rounded up what some of the biggest MMOs are doing for this year’s Christmas celebrations, but feel free to add in your own in the comments below.

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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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We thought we were so smart back in January with our release lists and RSS feeds. We really believed we knew what was going to happen this year. “I can’t wait to play BioShock Infinite when it releases in 2012!” we said. We were so naïve back then. It doesn’t matter how closely you follow the news or how often you refresh your browser; some companies can still manage to catch the gaming public completely unaware.

Here are some of our picks for the biggest surprises of 2012.

Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Contributor Rus McLaughlin

I hated the first Black Ops. Hated. It. I even went back and replayed parts of it just to refresh every design misstep and weak idea in my mind before its sequel arrived. You’d better believe that I’d sharpened all my knives in anticipation of carving up Black Ops II like a particularly ugly turkey who killed my dog. And then it turned out good … like, really good.

It’s as if developer Treyarch, a company that consistently churned out the worst entries in the franchise for years, suddenly ditched their old playbook and started fresh. The flow and encounters hit a sweet spot that I haven’t felt from the series since the first Modern Warfare, which came out in 2007. The branching storylines — often based on your in-game performance rather than flat yes/no answers — lock in unless you replay the entire mission … and every mission after it.

Very nice. Sure, the real-time strategy chapters don’t hold up as RTS games, and it’s still the bro-tastic Michael Bay of video games, but I can’t deny that I’m actually excited about Call of Duty again right when COD fatigue had fully set in. Can Activision deliver at this level every year? I’m still skeptical, but at least now I know that the possibility exists.

Rediscovering adventure games

Contributing editor Stephanie Carmichael

This was a momentous year for point-and-click adventure games, and Kickstarter played a huge role in that. Fans donated more than $3.3 million to Double Fine Adventure, making it one of the most successful video game campaigns on the crowdfunding service, let alone one of the greatest outpourings for the genre to date. Luminary Jane Jensen raised enough money for her Pinkerton Road Studio and the upcoming adventure game Moebius. And Telltale Games launched one of the hottest titles of 2012 with The Walking Dead. Those are only a few of the promising or excellent titles that found an audience in the past dozen months. Who said adventure games were dead?

Street Fighter X Mega Man

Contributor Samir Torres

Street Fighter and Mega Man turned 25 years old in 2012, and that calls for a celebration. Street Fighter X Mega Man is a free, PC-only, old-fashioned Mega Man adventure game in which you battle Street Fighter characters instead of Robot Masters. When you beat them, you acquire their abilities. It came out on December 17.

The most interesting part is that Capcom is working with die-hard Mega Man fans to make the title — fans whom the developer has neglected in recent years with the cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3 and Mega Man Universe and the Blue Bomber’s omission in Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

The PlayStation Vita

Intern Giancarlo Valdes

Though I only bought the Vita a few weeks ago, I honestly think it’s the best handheld I’ve ever owned — with its gorgeous screen and sleek hardware design, it’s also the prettiest. Games such as Gravity Rush, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, and Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack are great — even when I’m not commuting and just playing on the couch at home. The proprietary memory cards are still ridiculously expensive, and game-wise, the lineup doesn’t look too bright in 2013, but for now, I’m happy with just catching up with all the gems that came out this year.

Guild Wars 2

Contributor Rob LeFebvre

I quit playing World of Warcraft a few years ago because, meh, I thought the third-person fantasy massively multiplayer online genre was over, and I was tired of it. After messing about with Star Wars: The Old Republic and Eve Online, I figured that Guild Wars 2 would just be another WOW clone. Instead, it’s much more interesting and compelling to play, has many different ways to progress in the game, and made me an MMO player yet again. Not having a monthly subscription is a big factor as well.

Warlock: Master of the Arcane

Copy editor Jason Wilson

I hadn’t realized how much I had missed Master of Magic, the fantasy equivalent of Civilization from the 1990s. I didn’t realize that I had been yearning for a game like this until I encountered Warlock: Master of the Arcane. It isn’t as deep as Civilization — the focus is more on combat than in Sid Meier’s legendary turn-based strategy series — but in some ways, it’s more fun. The factions each have their own personality (I love the voices of the goblin units or the flying galleons of the Undead), and Warlock’s A.I. actually knows how to play its game. If you enjoy turn-based strategy that focuses more on combat than on expansion and empire-building — and dig fantasy — check it out.

Guild Wars 2

Intern Mike Minotti

I’m one of those MMO players. You know, the kind who plays World of Warcraft casually, sometimes tries something new, but always returns to the welcoming arms of Azeroth. I never thought I would find an MMO that I would genuinely like better than WOW, but Guild Wars 2 hooked me with its beautiful world and innovative quest systems.

The Phantom Pain/Metal Gear Solid connection

Editor-in-chief Dan “Shoe” Hsu

Every year, the best part of Spike’s Video Game Awards — meaning the good part of Spike’s Video Game Awards — is all the world-premiere trailers for upcoming titles. 2012′s show was no different, and the announcement trailer for developer Moby Dick Studios’ The Phantom Pain was the highlight of the evening.

Even more interesting is the fan-driven speculation that the title is secretly the next installment in Konami’s Metal Gear franchise. The evidence is circumstantial at best, but if you think back on it, this is exactly the sort of thing that we’d expect from the stealth action series.

Dragon’s Dogma

Contributing editor Rob Savillo

Capcom’s underrated action-adventure caught me completely by surprise. I’d heard nothing about it until a few weeks before release when then-Bitmob staff writer (now at PC Gamer) Omri Petitte published his “A Series of Epic Events” preview. Instantly, I saw Monster Hunter- and Dark Souls-style gameplay dancing in my head, and I wasn’t too far off once I got my hands on the disc.

Here’s a game that makes nighttime feel dangerous and isolating, not merely a moonlight-blue hued palette swap. Here’s a game with a detailed, skill-based combat model that encourages creative solutions. Here’s a game that makes exploration feel grand and of consequence such that smart preparation becomes a necessity. Here’s a game that blends asynchronous multiplayer into an experience that’s not turn-based or on a phone. Here’s a game that doesn’t waste your time with bland, boring, and ultimately useless dialogue from cardboard non-player characters. Here’s a game that’s not afraid to challenge modern design conventions and show them to be a poor way forward for the medium.

The PlayStation Vita

Intern Jasmine Rea

I was all prepared to dislike the Vita based on how woefully under-supported it was at launch and Sony’s silly choice to make a 3G-enabled model. Since I really wanted to review Persona 4 Golden, I knew I’d buy one at some point, and boy was I shocked by how much I loved it. The screen is mesmerizing, and the increased size and heft fixed all the problems that I had with the PlayStation Portable’s shape. Most of all, I didn’t mind forking over money for digital versions of PSP games that I already own. They just look so much better on that pretty screen. The Vita deserves more support, and if you like Japanese role-playing games, you’re sure to adore this flashy little handheld. Just don’t buy into the touch panel gimmicks, and I think you’ll love it, too.

Alan Wake’s American Nightmare

Intern Evan Killham

Alan Wake, developer Remedy Entertainment’s Stephen King/Twin Peaks-fusion thriller with a dash of Lovecraft, was one of my favorite games of 2010. I was a little disappointed that the follow-up, Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, was a bite-sized Xbox Live Arcade downloadable title, but I checked it out anyway because, hey, more Alan Wake. And you know what? It is glorious.

Remedy drops the first game’s moody tension in favor of a more action-based, grindhouse dynamic, and while such a drastic shift in tone might be the worst thing that could happen to a franchise, somehow it just works for Alan Wake. It could be because this is a series explicitly about storytelling and creativity, and as such, it can include any genre Remedy feels like throwing in there. And seemingly as a test of this hypothesis, American Nightmare is a time-travel story.

The game has three levels, and you play through them three times. You could assume that this is a clever way to reuse assets and keep the game XBLA-sized, and you would be right, but on each time through, the characters around Alan remember bits of information about their experiences in the previous loop. For example, one time through, Alan has to go out to a character’s car to retrieve an item; the next time around, she remembers that someone will need that object and has it with her when you first (second?) meet, saving you the dangerous trip outside.

It’s really clever storytelling that keeps the repetition from feeling, well, repetitive, and it also serves as a fascinating commentary on game mechanics in general. What are checkpoint restarts, after all, but a form of time travel?

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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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If 2012 has shown us one thing, it’s that video game development is truly in the “crossover era.” GamesBeat’s 2012 Game of the Year, The Walking Dead, was first available as a downloadable title, not a retail release. Other downloadables, such as indie-developed darlings Journey and Faster Than Light, garnered plenty of votes as well. And in our staff’s and contributor’s top games of the year lists, we even see mobile releases — like Fieldrunners 2.

Gaming has changed, and it’s nice to see that it’s more than just big-budget console and PC titles that have earned Game of the Year attention. Here are the top games as chosen by GamesBeat staffers and contributors. Let us know what you think about our picks in the comments — especially if you feel we’ve left something off our lists!

Editor-in-chief Dan “Shoe” Hsu

XCOM: Enemy Unknown
Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Firaxis Games

Little green men — yesteryear’s poster boys for mysterious invaders from outer space — are about as menacing as Oompa Loompas armed with toy guns. XCOM’s little gray men, however, are scary as hell. It’s not the ashen skin, bulbous eyes, or creepy-crawly walk. It’s what these Sectoids represent: a greater threat that we are simply not equipped to handle.

In the strategy game XCOM: Enemy Unknown, we mere humans bring dull knives to plasma gunfights. And just when we start to catch up in weapon technology, the bug-eyed bastards bring bigger guns and meaner friends. These jerks even cheat with mysterious mind-control powers. Meanwhile, we’re barely keeping the checkbook balanced between research, manufacturing, facility construction, aircraft, and an ever-decreasing budget due to world nations pulling out of the program if you can’t keep them safe (and you can never keep them all safe).

It all adds up to an incredibly exciting and stressful experience. Each decision — whether it’s which tree to hide your assault trooper behind or which whiny country gets your last airspace-monitoring satellite — feels monumental and permanent. Humanity’s existence is at stake, and we just want to make it to the next month, when a few more pennies come rolling in and a few more traumatized soldiers get out of sick bay.

It’s a desperate fight. And boy will we celebrate when those little gray men are dead.

Shoe’s other picks for best games of 2012: Fieldrunners 2, Dishonored, Journey, Fez

Lead writer Dean Takahasi

The Unfinished Swan
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PlayStation Network)
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America
Developer: Giant Sparrow

The Unfinished Swan is one of the most creative titles yet for the PlayStation Network. It’s an interactive fairy tale where you lob blobs of black paint at a white screen. As you do so, you uncover part of a 3D space hidden within the white scene. Uncovering each scene is a mind-bending task, as you have to navigate perplexing puzzles. You explore the unknown, and as you do so, you uncover a new segment in a fairy tale about a boy who loses his mother. It is a touching story that will remind of you of the zany Alice in Wonderland. Ian Dallas, the game creator, feels that a child who is abandoned is like an unfinished work of art. But just when you think that the game has become predictable, it changes. In some ways, the story seems unfinished. But the title is a wonderful first effort for Giant Sparrow, a new studio bankrolled by Sony.

Dean’s other picks for the best games of 2012: Halo 4, Far Cry 3, Journey, Call of Duty: Black Ops II

Culture editor Sebastian Haley

Hotline Miami
Platform: PC
Publisher: Developer Digital
Developer: Dennaton Games

Indie sensation Hotline Miami is best described as the film Drive, but in a retro, pixelated and somehow even more violent form, with subtle hints of Rockstar’s Manhunt sprinkled on top. The short-but-sickeningly sweet levels allow you to carefully orchestrate your symphony of murder and mayhem, filling the floors with maimed corpses and spraying the walls with crimson, all while its surreal, Miami Vice-inspired soundtrack beats in the back of your mind. Basically, if you own a Wii or like looking at livestreams of kittens, this is not your kind of game.

Sebastian’s other picks for best games of 2012: Trials Evolution, Far Cry 3, The Darkness II, Final Fantasy XIII-2

Staff writer Jeff Grubb

Mark of the Ninja
Platform: Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Arcade), PC
Publisher: Microsoft Studios
Developer: Klei Entertainment

For these Game of the Year summaries, we’re supposed to look above and beyond the individual parts of a game. We’re supposed to write about why it is important, but in the case of Mark of the Ninja, it’s those parts that make it so special. Developer Klei’s 2D stealth action game for Xbox Live Arcade and PC is a master class in well-executed gameplay mechanics. Whether it’s a soundwave that ripples off your ninja’s feet to indicate how much noise he’s making or a vision cone that indicates where an enemy is looking, Mark of the Ninja is constantly communicating with the player. It then provides the player with a great controlling character to poke and prod the world with.

It’s not rare that a game makes you feel like a badass, but with Klei’s game it’s not about how powerful you are — it’s about how in tune with the environment your character is. You have so much visual and aural information that every moment is an opportunity for experimentation. You can spend 10 minutes laying out a detailed plan that involves deadly traps, or you can play the entire game without a sword.

In video games, we don’t usually get a lot of new ideas, we just get different takes on old ideas. Stealth is an old idea at this point, but Mark of the Ninja distinguishes itself by executing the concept better than any other game before it.

Jeff’s other picks for best games of 2012: The Walking Dead, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Trials Evolution, FTL: Faster Than Light

Copy editor Jason Wilson

FTL: Faster Than Light
Platform: PC, Mac, Linux
Publisher: Subset Games
Developer: Subset Games

I’m low on fuel. My crew raced around my starship like a colony of ants, hastily putting out fires as doors opened to the cold vacuum of space. The Rebels are closing in on me. Do I take a chance and see if I can gain more fuel in the next nebular cloud, or do I make a mad dash for the next sector and hope to find friendly forces instead of angry adversaries? These are just some of the choices the player faces in FTL: Faster Than Light, the indie roguelike that’s swept upon a number of Game of the Year lists in 2012 (including ours!). What makes FTL so compelling to players is that a take on Civilization’s “one more turn” addictive nature — but instead of furthering your game, you’re driven to see if your next attempt takes you closer to escaping the pursuing Rebel forces. And it’s this that makes FTL one of the most interesting, fascinating, and, yes, best games of 2012.

Jason’s other picks for best games of 2012: The Walking Dead, Crusader Kings II, Torchlight II, Dragon’s Dogma

Contributor Rus McLaughlin

Far Cry 3
Platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, PC
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Montreal

Something visceral. Something primal. Most shooters don’t have these. They settle you into a safe, comfortable role. Veteran soldier. Seasoned cop. Career criminal. A hero … or an antihero. But Far Cry 3 makes you run blind through the jungle while murderous pirates hunt you like a piece of prey. You’re just a terrified kid. Never held a gun before. Never seen anyone die before. Now you’re covered in your own brother’s blood and getting high off the giddy thrill of mere survival. Then you’re turned lose to roam two amazingly rich, open-world islands where you can really start enjoying yourself, slowly and cautiously picking your tormentors apart. Before you know it, the elation you get from destroying a criminal empire hardens into a different kind of drug: revenge.

That’s when Far Cry 3 surpasses the standard shooter fare. An aimless twentysomething becomes a killer of killers, as feared as the insane warlords he wants dead. Between coolly tense stealth play and straight-up gunfights, you become the predator, stalking intruders in your jungle and murdering them at will. It all culminates in a moment where you must decide just how much you enjoy that particular power fantasy. Enough to abandon your humanity? Maybe.

Far Cry 3 goes there. Solid gameplay — minus a weak-tea multiplayer — and incredibly detailed environments lift it far enough, but its secret weapon lies in how it takes you into that dark, primal place. And then it dares you to ignore your basic animal instincts.

Rus’s other picks for best games of 2012: The Walking Dead, Fez, Halo 4, Journey

Contributing editor Rob Savillo

Contributor Rob LeFebvre

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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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At least one game studio and perhaps another apparently laid off employees today. The confirmed job cuts hit the Seattle studio of NCsoft, a major South Korean publisher of online games such as Lineage and Guild Wars 2.

The rumors surfaced on Twitter and a spokesman for NCsoft denied that the Seattle studio had closed, but confirmed that a “realignment” was taking place, according to PC Gamer.

“NCsoft is realigning internal publishing resources to better suit the needs of our game development studios,” Lincoln Davis, a spokesman for NCsoft, told PC Gamer. “As a result of the realignment, several employees and contract positions were affected. This was a very tough decision to make and wish the best for all NCsoft employees in their next ventures.”

Davis also confirmed it to GamesBeat. We haven’t yet confirmed layoffs at the other studio. Eurogamer reports that Las Vegas-based Petroglyph has laid off 30 employees. We have contacted Petroglyph for comment. Petroglyph was making End of Nations, a massively multiplayer online real-time strategy game End of Nations. But Trion and Petroglyph indefinitely postponed the open beta test of the game as the closed beta test revealed issues that needed improvement.

It seems that companies rarely announce such cuts, but more layoffs are being publicized these days as affected employees or friends mention the cutbacks on Twitter or Facebook. Layoffs near the holidays aren’t unusual in the game industry, as major publishers finish work on their current games and then start planning for the next year. If they come up short during the busy season, then they swiftly take action to cut staff.

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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 NPD numbers are in, and despite the beginning of blockbuster season, it was another down month for the video game industry.

The NPD Group, a financial analysis firm, tracks retail sales for the gaming industry each month, which makes it easier to keep tabs on the financial health of the people making games and gaming hardware. September’s diagnosis? This generation is breaking down with old age.

Hardware, software, and accessory sales were all down in year-over-year comparisons, but before we break down the numbers, let’s take a look at the top 10 best-selling games for September 2012:

1. Madden NFL 13: EA (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS Vita)
2. Borderlands 2: 2K Games (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
3. FIFA Soccer 13: EA (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, 3DS, PSP)
4. New Super Mario Bros. 2: 295,000 — Nintendo (3DS)
5. Guild Wars 2: NCsoft (PC)
6. NHL 13: EA (Xbox 360, PS3)
7. World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria: Activision Blizzard (PC)
8. NCAA Football 13: EA (Xbox 360, PS3)
9. Lego Batman 2: DC Super Heroes: Warner Bros. Interactive (Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, DS, 3DS, PS Vita, PC)
10. Battlefield 3: EA (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

Borderlands 2 nearly topped the list despite only having 11 days in retail compared to Madden’s full month. According to the NPD, Borderlands 2′s first-month sales outsold the original Borderlands, which launched in October 2009, by 234 percent.

Electronic Arts has four of its major licensed sports games all at or near the top of this list. EA published half of the 10 best-selling games in September. For years, we’ve grown accustomed to finding the most recent Call of Duty hanging around among the new releases, but EA’s Battlefield 3 seems to have stepped into that position.

“Madden NFL 13 launched on Tuesday, Aug. 28, and sold 11 percent more units in its debut month than the previous Madden last year,” Callahan said. “Not only was this an improvement over last year, but the launch of Madden NFL’13 represented the best month one performance at retail for a Madden title ever.”

One last note about this list, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria couldn’t crack the top five, but the NPD Group does only track physical copies sold, and Blizzard sold the majority of this expansion through its digital channel.

The industry as a whole is down 24 percent from 2011, $1.11 billion in sales down to $848.3 million. New console sales took a 39 percent hit from $346.7 million down to $210.9 million. Hardware has reached a saturation point in which this current generation simply can’t do much more damage. Software and accessories were down 18 percent and 11 percent, respectively.

“Hardware sales are up on an average sales-per-week basis compared to August for the NDS, 3DS, PS3, Vita and 360, which points to momentum heading into the holiday season,” Callahan said. “In mid-September, Nintendo revealed launch details regarding the Wii U. The new console will launch on Nov. 18 and has the potential to reinvigorate retail sales of hardware.”

Nintendo, is phasing out the Wii console phasing out in favor of its upcoming Wii U in November, pointed toward an 89 percent increase in 3DS software sales compared to September 2011.

“Nintendo 3DS XL continues to galvanize our Nintendo 3DS business,” said Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America’s executive vice president of sales and marketing. “Hardware sales are up, software sales are increasing exponentially, and the attach rate is growing stronger every month. With a great slate of upcoming games, including Paper Mario: Sticker Star, which arrives exactly one month from today, we like our position heading into the crucial holiday selling season.”

Nintendo also announced that Super Mario 64 DS became the third DS game to sell more than 5 million units in the U.S. It joins New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Kart DS which sold 10.6 million and 8.5 million, respectively.

Meanwhile, Microsoft released a statement saying the Xbox 360 sold 270,000 units in September, making it the best-selling “current-generation console” for 19 consecutive months. Consumer spending on Microsoft’s device remained high as well. The publisher bragged that total retail spending on its Xbox 360 platform surpassed $380 million, which is more than the PlayStation 3 and Wii combined.

Your Twitter profile just got a whole lot prettier with the addition of header images. Our vast selection of video game-themed pictures covers a wide range of genres and platforms.

We’re releasing seven days’ worth of artwork, each with a different theme:

• Monday: The modern era
• Tuesday: Popular franchises
• Wednesday: PC
• Thursday: It came from Japan
• Friday: Mobile
• Saturday: Retro arcade
• Sunday: Consoles

Today’s batch of headers features 10 entries from new and classic PC games. Right-click (or Ctrl-click for Macs) the picture you want and hit “save image as” to save to your computer. To add the header to your Twitter profile, please follow these steps:

1. Sign in to your account.
2. Go to “settings” and click on the “design” tab.
3. Scroll down to the “customize your own” section.
4. Click on “change header” and select the image you want to upload. No need to scale.
5. Click “save.”

Diablo III

League of Legends

StarCraft

Guild Wars 2

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

Crysis 3

Dungeon Siege

Fallout 3

Half-Life 2

Doom

For gaming-themed Timeline covers for your Facebook profile, click 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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You can finally get together with your Guild Wars 2 adventuring pals from your MacBook Pro.

Developer ArenaNet announced today that it has released a Mac-compatible beta of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

“The Mac Beta client is available immediately for all Guild Wars 2 players,” ArenaNet marketing and web coordinator David Campbell wrote in a statement. “It shares the same features and connects to the same live game servers as the PC client. Anyone who purchases Guild Wars 2 can now play it on both PC and Mac.”

Gaming support on Apple computers is on the rise. Campbell pointed out that much of ArenaNet’s staff uses Mac computers.

“We’re as excited as anyone to play Guild Wars 2 on OS X,” he wrote.

ArenaNet did advise that, since this product is still in beta, the game may suffer from some tech issues. Campbell assured fans that the final release will improve performance across the board. The team has yet to finalize the minimum specifications for this version of the Guild Wars 2 client.

To download the Mac version, simply sign in to your account from you Mac here and click the download link. ArenaNet provided a FAQ for Mac users if you run into any trouble.

Guild Wars 2 is a fantasy massively multiplayer online RPG. The original game set its self apart in the genre by forgoing a monthly subscription fee. This sequel continued that tradition, but increased the focus on in-game purchases.

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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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Firefall is one of the more interesting and brave massively multiplayer online games currently in the works. Despite lofty promises to the contrary, games like Guild Wars 2, The Secret World, and The Old Republic all feel incredibly samey. Firefall dramatically shifts the MMO template with heavy real-time first-person shooter elements, a Borderlands-esque art style, and a bold free-to-play strategy.

I participated in the ongoing closed beta a few months back and found the game to intriguing but somewhat unbalanced and undercooked. Since then, Red 5 has implemented what could easily be considered Firefall’s Adventure Update (for any Minecraft fans out there), adding and tweaking lots of game systems and content. This includes removing the typical MMO leveling system altogether, allowing players to build the characters they want with fewer restrictions on a more open-ended customization tree.

With that in mind, GamesBeat sat down with Red 5 Studios CEO Mark Kern to chat about what’s new, Firefall’s Kickstarter-inspired Founder system, and cosplay.

GamesBeat: Can you highlight some of the major changes based on the ongoing feedback from the beta?

Mark Kern

Mark Kern: We learned that our PvP, while it was very approachable, would sort of max out for skilled players. They’d say, “OL, I can go this far with my skill and not any higher.” What we did is we raised the skill ceiling. It’s a lot higher. At the higher tiers of competition, you have a lot more capability to display your twitch reflexes and everything else. That was one major change, based on feedback.

The other one was that the whole leveling system wasn’t working out for people. It didn’t seem to fit right with the game. It kind of fought against the horizontal progression that we’ve wanted to do. But we still wanted to have some type of different classes of progression. We broke it up into tiers instead, and that way we give you a road map of your character. You know what to expect. You kind of plan your way to what you want to unlock. That’s been very well received. It’s something where it wouldn’t have been possible if we hadn’t been willing to share our earliest systems in the beta.

A lot of companies, companies I used to work for, they would polish the heck out of something. Then they’d put it out there and get the feedback. If you’re Blizzard, good, you take it and you redo it. That’s very demoralizing for the team, though, because they polished it to such a high level in the first place. If you’re another company, you often don’t have that luxury. You’ve done a commercial beta, not a real beta. By the time you get that feedback, you can’t make dramatic changes to the system.

GamesBeat: I did play the beta several months ago, and I noticed that I felt that the difficulty, even from the onset, was pretty rough if you tried to do it either solo or with a two-man team. Especially for newbies who are starting out and maybe don’t know how to work together. Do I just suck, or is the game intentionally designed to be a multiplayer-only experience?

Kern: It’s really good that you picked up on that, because that’s the next round of beta feedback for this milestone. Our PvE milestone. We did our classes-tuning and our leveling progression in the last couple months. Now we’re working on the PvE aspect and the solo-ability of the game. We want you to be able to participate in world events and get credit for it even if you’re not grouped up. If you just show up, we’re going to be building in public quests. That type of dynamic where you can get points for participation even if you’re not grouped.

We also want to make sure that when we guide you down the path, the difficulty is matched much more to the ability of the solo player, but group players can still have that social experience and get a couple special things out of it. So I’d agree with you. I think the game, as it stands right now, is too hard to solo. That’s one aspect that we’re getting feedback on. We change everything and create fun. That’s our motto.

GamesBeat: What has the overall reception been to the game so far? And the player retention? How long do people play the beta before they move on?

Kern: I can’t give out specific numbers, but I can say that prepatch and postpatch, we’re about three times stickier than we were when you played the beta. So the changes we’ve made have gone to great lengths to make it stickier. We’re still in closed beta. We’re not inviting everybody in yet. But everyone who plays at PAX automatically gets in. That’s kind of our thing. I’m really happy with the retention rate right now. It’s much better than it was, and it’s going to get even better with the PvE patch.

GamesBeat: How do you guys feel now that PlanetSide 2 is on its way? Do you feel that kind of gives you a little extra competition?

Kern: Oh, I know [Sony Online Entertainment's] John Smedley really well. I put him in the Firefall beta a while back. He likes the game. I like PlanetSide. I was a big PlanetSide fan. I think we fill two different niches. They’re about the massive PvP, we’re more about the eSports PvP, as well as this big component of PvE, exploration and co-op multiplayer that you can’t get in PlanetSide. So I think we complement each other really well. But I keep teasing him, because we’re coming out with a massive PvP mode that we’re going to be in beta with in the fall. At that point, maybe it’ll be a bit more competition. But right now I think it’s a really good way to get two different experiences.

GamesBeat: At the beginning of PAX, you guys unveiled your founder system. There’s three different tiers. Was that inspired by Kickstarter?

Kern: It really was. I was amazed by Kickstarter, and then I saw… like, MechWarrior Online did a pack. I asked the community months ago, “Would you like to see something like this from us?” Overwhelmingly, the response was “Yes.” They want to support Firefall. So, OK, let’s put something together. We did three packs, and they’re doing really well.

GamesBeat: It’s a cool system. Plus the XP gain, the permanent XP gain, I was sold. In-game pets and XP boosts will do it for me every time.

Kern: Yeah. The Merch is really special. When you unlock it, we’ve got a lot of behaviors we’ve coded into it to be true to the Penny Arcade version.

GamesBeat: Can you talk about the cash shop and what players can expect there?

Kern: OK. We’ve got the beta shop open now. We truly mean “beta” shop, just like our beta is a true beta. We set some price points to experiment. You can buy a lot of aesthetic items, eyepieces, different hairstyles, different hats that you can wear. We sell temporary XP boosts — 1 hour, 3 hours, 8 hours — for 20 percent. We also sell garage slots. If you like the game, you want to experiment with more tiers of battle frame. If you unlock more garage slots, you can keep them all on the same character.

GamesBeat: I know that, for a year or more now, you’ve been using Crystal [Graziano], the cosplayer, to represent your game. But in this weird unprecedented move, you’ve also sponsored the other costuming she does. Non-Firefall, non-gaming sometimes. I was wondering, why that very specific move?

Kern: I think it’s because we wanted someone to play Mourningstar at conventions who was really a gamer. Not only that, we wanted a real cosplayer, someone who could appreciate the costume that we’re building. It turned out that Crystal is a huge fan of Steve Wang, who’s a Hollywood effects guy that designed the Predator. A big name. He did these costumes for us, for Typhon and Mourningstar. She was just thrilled to meet him. We’re actually shooting a show about here, kind of behind the scenes with her and Steve about building these costumes. We’re going to be releasing that as a video pretty shortly here. Something you can view for free online.

We sponsor her other costuming because Red 5 is really about getting the gamer’s story out there. A lot of our stuff, in the industry, is very PR-focused…. Here’s the front of the mask, right? We want to change that. Because now we’re a direct-to-consumer industry, especially us. PAX is the show that we love the best. Sponsoring player activities, cosplay is well-loved by gamers, that’s how they show love for games…. So let’s sponsor that. Let’s sponsor eSports. Make it about players in the game.

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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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Guild Wars 2 is barely a week old, but the new massively multiplayer online role-playing game has already suffered a significant security breach.

Hackers have obtained more than 11,000 player passwords, reports ArsTechnica. They’ve done this by breaching an unnamed fan site and then checking if the credentials players used there were identical to corresponding logins for Guild Wars 2 accounts.

“Over the past three days, we’ve received approximately 8,500 new support tickets related to hacked accounts and other blocking login issues, and we’ve resolved issues to get approximately 9,500 players back into the game (most from tickets submitted prior to Friday, August 31),” said staff from developer ArenaNet the Guild Wars 2′s wiki. “We’re aggressively ramping up our customer support team, with 28 new support representatives starting today and more coming online in the next few days, to provide the fast response times our customers expect.”

ArenaNet is prioritizing all customer tickets related to hacked accounts submitted before August 31. The developer also urges players to protect themselves by using strong, long, unique passwords.

Players have to confirm login locations via e-mail. For example, if someone from China had my password and tried to play as one of my characters, I would receive a notification from ArenaNet asking me to authorize use of my account from that area. This keeps them from playing my Guild Wars 2 profile, but they still have my password, which is especially dangerous if I use it for multiple logins.

If you notice anything weird about your Guild Wars 2 account or receive an e-mail stating that someone accessed your characters from a strange location, you should contact ArenaNet immediately. Regardless, it’s a good idea for everyone to change their passwords. Now, excuse me while I do exactly that.

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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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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, Zynga loses more executives, Microsoft announces that its surface tablets will run Unreal Engine 3, and Double Fine reveals its first iOS game, Middle Manager of Justice, that’s all about managing superhero careers.

You’ll also find reviews for Transformers: Fall of Cybertron and the Origin PC Eon11-S gaming laptop as well as previews for Resident Evil 6 and Adventure Time.

News

• The DeanBeat: Being a tortoise isn’t so bad, but the water is choppy, EA’s top game studio boss says
• Zynga hires a real-money gambling chief
• Microsoft unveils first wave of Xbox Live games on Windows 8
• Game streaming lives on as Big Fish launches 100 cloud games on Android devices
• HitPoint Studios unveils Adera game for Windows 8 and Microsoft Surface tablets
• Techland wants gamers’ help shaping the brutal, dark fantasy world of Project Hell
• The ‘King of Kong’ star is out to set a new record in a Donkey Kong-inspired game
• Fans enjoy partial success in mission to bring Japanese role-playing games to U.S.
• Would EA venture into real-money online gambling?
• Embracing the crowd, Valve puts indie games up for vote with Steam Greenlight’s launch
• Location, location, location: Red Robot Labs unveils Life is Magic game, where you fight for territory
• Goodbye, OnLive. Hello, Square Enix. Core Online service brings high-def games to browsers
• Game Roulette is the app for when you have too many apps
• FAA seeks to ease rules on in-flight electronics
• KickAssist will bring attention and dollars to small Kickstarter game projects
• Hearthfire blends The Sims with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
• Microsoft and Red Bull team up on Kinect ‘crashed ice’ game for Xbox Live Arcade (exclusive)
• From Japanese history to Thief: The inspiration behind Mark of the Ninja
• LG opens its Game World for SmartTV players

Mobile news

• Double Fine reveals Middle Manager of Justice, a superhero office-management sim for iOS
• Game streaming lives on as Big Fish launches 100 cloud games on Android devices
• Mobile game studios and big publishers talk strategy
• Chartboost’s Kiosk program creates new revenue opportunities for mobile game developers
• W3i triples growth for its mobile monetization business (exclusive)
• Pocket Gems launches Tap Campus Life mobile sorority game
• Square Enix slaps release date on $29 (!) mobile game

MMO news

• PointMMO launches massively multiplayer online game portal (exclusive)
• Blizzard counterprograms its latest World of Warcraft patch against Guild Wars 2′s debut

Interviews

• After big hit on iPhone, only 30 percent of Kabam’s revenue comes from Facebook (interview)

Reviews

• Review: The Origin PC Eon11-S gamer laptop exploits intelligent graphics processing
• In Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, you either change or die (review)

Previews

• Satisfy your lust for loot in Adventure Time’s comical take on fantasy roleplaying (preview)
• Resident Evil 6 brings back the zombies, but not in a way that you’d expect (hands-on preview)

OnLive

• OnLive’s Steve Perlman bids farewell, says other projects will ‘blow your mind’
• OnLive founder and CEO Steve Perlman ousted [updated]
• Timeline: A chronology of the life of OnLive
• Steve Perlman donates $50K to ex-OnLive employee health fund
• Microsoft to OnLive employees: We won’t buy ya, but we’ll hire ya

House of Zynga

• Another day, another Zynga double departure
• In latest departure, Zynga loses its chief creative officer
• Zynga hires a real-money gambling chief

Windows 8 and Surface tablets

• Microsoft unveils first wave of Xbox Live games on Windows 8
• HitPoint Studios unveils Adera game for Windows 8 and Microsoft Surface tablets
• Unreal Engine 3 will work on Windows RT tablets

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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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ArenaNet and NCsoft’s long-awaited follow-up to the award-winning original has been in the works for five years, but Guild Wars 2 is finally upon us! Just as we did with Tera, GamesBeat is celebrating the MMO’s release with an exhaustive image exhibit featuring all of the races, professions, and character-creation options available to players in the game. Enjoy!

Profession Galleries

See the eight different professions and how bad-ass (or cute) each race looks as them!

• Elementalist
• Engineer
• Guardian
• Mesmer
• Necromancer
• Ranger
• Thief
• Warrior

Character Creation Galleries

Want to plan your character’s appearance ahead of time or see some pre-made suggestions?

• Asura M
• Asura F
• Charr M
• Charr F
• Human M
• Human F
• Norn M
• Norn F
• Sylvari M
• Sylvari F

In addition to all the galleries and information you’ll find at the above links, you can also check out some of ArenaNet’s amazing Guild Wars 2 concept and promotional art below:

Previous Guild Wars 2 coverage on GamesBeat:

1. Console ports and subscription models (interview)
2. Guild Wars 2′s careful monetization strategy (interview)
3. Beta test event help and tips
4. Guild Wars 2 hands-on (preview)

Lore and game descriptions taken from the official Guild Wars 2 site and wiki.

All gallery screenshots were captured on an HP HPE Pavilion Phoenix gaming computer.

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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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Sylvari
Mysterious, Noble Plant Beings

Sylvari are not born. They awaken beneath the Pale Tree with knowledge gleaned from their prelife Dream. These noble beings travel, seeking adventure and discovery. They struggle to balance curiosity with duty, eagerness with chivalry, and warfare with honor. Magic and mystery entwine to shape the future of this race that has so recently appeared.

Read more at the official Guild Wars 2 site.

Profession Galleries

Elementalist - Engineer - Guardian - Mesmer - Necromancer - Ranger - Thief - Warrior

Character Creation Galleries

Asura M - Asura F - Charr M - Charr F
Human M - Human F - Norn M - Norn F - Sylvari M - Sylvari F

All gallery screenshots were captured on an HP HPE Pavilion Phoenix gaming computer.

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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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Sylvari
Mysterious, Noble Plant Beings

Sylvari are not born. They awaken beneath the Pale Tree with knowledge gleaned in their prelife Dream. These noble beings travel, seeking adventure and discovery. They struggle to balance curiosity with duty, eagerness with chivalry, and warfare with honor. Magic and mystery entwine to shape the future of this race that has so recently appeared.

Read more at the official Guild Wars 2 site.

Profession Galleries

Elementalist - Engineer - Guardian - Mesmer - Necromancer - Ranger - Thief - Warrior

Character Creation Galleries

Asura M - Asura F - Charr M - Charr F
Human M - Human F - Norn M - Norn F - Sylvari M - Sylvari F

All gallery screenshots were captured on an HP HPE Pavilion Phoenix gaming computer.

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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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Norn
Towering Heroes from the North

This race of towering hunters experienced a great defeat when the Ice Dragon drove them from their glacial homeland. Nevertheless, they won’t let one lost battle—no matter how punishing—dampen their enthusiasm for life and the hunt. They know that only the ultimate victor achieves legendary rewards.

Read more at the official Guild Wars 2 site.

Profession Galleries

Elementalist - Engineer - Guardian - Mesmer - Necromancer - Ranger - Thief - Warrior

Character Creation Galleries

Asura M - Asura F - Charr M - Charr F
Human M - Human F - Norn M - Norn F - Sylvari M - Sylvari F

All gallery screenshots were captured on an HP HPE Pavilion Phoenix gaming computer.

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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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Norn
Towering Heroes from the North

This race of towering hunters experienced a great defeat when the Ice Dragon drove them from their glacial homeland. Nevertheless, they won’t let one lost battle—no matter how punishing—dampen their enthusiasm for life and the hunt. They know that only the ultimate victor achieves legendary rewards.

Read more at the official Guild Wars 2 site.

Profession Galleries

Elementalist - Engineer - Guardian - Mesmer - Necromancer - Ranger - Thief - Warrior

Character Creation Galleries

Asura M - Asura F - Charr M - Charr F
Human M - Human F - Norn M - Norn F - Sylvari M - Sylvari F

All gallery screenshots were captured on an HP HPE Pavilion Phoenix gaming computer.

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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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Human
A Noble, Resilient People

Humans have lost their homeland, their security, and their former glory. Even their gods have withdrawn. And yet, the human spirit remains unshaken. These brave defenders of Kryta continue to fight with every ounce of their strength.

Read more at the official Guild Wars 2 site.

Profession Galleries

Elementalist - Engineer - Guardian - Mesmer - Necromancer - Ranger - Thief - Warrior

Character Creation Galleries

Asura M - Asura F - Charr M - Charr F
Human M - Human F - Norn M - Norn F - Sylvari M - Sylvari F

All gallery screenshots were captured on an HP HPE Pavilion Phoenix gaming computer.

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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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Human
A Noble, Resilient People

Humans have lost their homeland, their security, and their former glory. Even their gods have withdrawn. And yet, the human spirit remains unshaken. These brave defenders of Kryta continue to fight with every ounce of their strength.

Read more at the official Guild Wars 2 site.

Profession Galleries

Elementalist - Engineer - Guardian - Mesmer - Necromancer - Ranger - Thief - Warrior

Character Creation Galleries

Asura M - Asura F - Charr M - Charr F
Human M - Human F - Norn M - Norn F - Sylvari M - Sylvari F

All gallery screenshots were captured on an HP HPE Pavilion Phoenix gaming computer.

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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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Charr
A Savage Race of Conquerors

The merciless crucible of war forged the Charr race. It is all they know. War defines them, and their quest for dominion drives them ever onward. The weakling and the fool have no place among the Charr. Victory is all that matters, and it must be achieved by any means and at any cost.

Read more at the official Guild Wars 2 site.

Profession Galleries

Elementalist - Engineer - Guardian - Mesmer - Necromancer - Ranger - Thief - Warrior

Character Creation Galleries

Asura M - Asura F - Charr M - Charr F
Human M - Human F - Norn M - Norn F - Sylvari M - Sylvari F

All gallery screenshots were captured on an HP HPE Pavilion Phoenix gaming computer.

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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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Charr
A Savage Race of Conquerors

The merciless crucible of war forged the Charr race. It is all they know. War defines them, and their quest for dominion drives them ever onward. The weakling and the fool have no place among the charr. Victory is all that matters, and it must be achieved by any means and at any cost.

Read more at the official Guild Wars 2 site.

Profession Galleries

Elementalist - Engineer - Guardian - Mesmer - Necromancer - Ranger - Thief - Warrior

Character Creation Galleries

Asura M - Asura F - Charr M - Charr F
Human M - Human F - Norn M - Norn F - Sylvari M - Sylvari F

All gallery screenshots were captured on an HP HPE Pavilion Phoenix gaming computer.

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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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Asura
Diminutive Mystical Scientists

They may be short in stature, but these magical inventors are intellectual giants. Incredibly intelligent beings, the Asura use their knowledge and skill with magic and crafting to assert their natural dominance. In the world of the Asura, it is not the strong who survive but the clever. Other races believe they should rule by virtue of their power and strength, but they delude themselves. All will serve the Asura—in due time….

Read more at the official Guild Wars 2 site.

Profession Galleries

Elementalist - Engineer - Guardian - Mesmer - Necromancer - Ranger - Thief - Warrior

Character Creation Galleries

Asura M - Asura F - Charr M - Charr F
Human M - Human F - Norn M - Norn F - Sylvari M - Sylvari F

All gallery screenshots were captured on an HP HPE Pavilion Phoenix gaming computer.

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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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Asura
Diminutive Mystical Scientists

They may be short in stature, but these magical inventors are intellectual giants. Incredibly intelligent beings, the Asura use their knowledge and skill with magic and crafting to assert their natural dominance. In the world of the Asura, it is not the strong who survive but the clever. Other races believe they should rule by virtue of their power and strength, but they delude themselves. All will serve the Asura—in due time….

Read more at the official Guild Wars 2 site.

Profession Galleries

Elementalist - Engineer - Guardian - Mesmer - Necromancer - Ranger - Thief - Warrior

Character Creation Galleries

Asura M - Asura F - Charr M - Charr F
Human M - Human F - Norn M - Norn F - Sylvari M - Sylvari F

All gallery screenshots were captured on an HP HPE Pavilion Phoenix gaming computer.

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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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Welcome to the Guild Wars 2 Races Exhibit. Choosing from the 10 galleries below, you’ll be able to preview the sizable character creation options available for each of the five races (and their male/female counterparts) as well as a bit of the lore behind the various creatures and factions.

Character Creation Galleries

• Asura M
• Asura F
• Charr M
• Charr F
• Human M
• Human F
• Norn M
• Norn F
• Sylvari M
• Sylvari F

You can also return to our main Guild Wars 2 hub to check out tips and tricks as well as the different professions available to each race in the game.

Profession Galleries

• Elementalist
• Engineer
• Guardian
• Mesmer
• Necromancer
• Ranger
• Thief
• Warrior

All gallery screenshots were captured on an HP HPE Pavilion Phoenix gaming computer.

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Warrior Skills

Warriors can use more weapons than any other profession in the game, but they also have a range of distinct skillsets at their disposal.

Adrenaline
With each successful hit, warriors build up adrenaline. Warriors can spend all their built-up adrenaline to unleash a single, devastating burst attack. The more adrenaline a warrior builds up, the more powerful the burst attack.

Stances
These special skills temporarily boost the combat capabilities of warriors. A Berserker’s Stance grants warriors passive adrenaline regeneration for a short time.

Banners
Warriors summon banners to boost the attack power of their allies. One of these is the Banner of Strength, which increases the damage of allies within its range. Warriors can carry banners or plant them in the ground, allowing them to continue fighting.

Profession Galleries

Elementalist - Engineer - Guardian - Mesmer - Necromancer - Ranger - Thief - Warrior

Character Creation Galleries

Asura M - Asura F - Charr M - Charr F
Human M - Human F - Norn M - Norn F - Sylvari M - Sylvari F

All gallery screenshots were captured on an HP HPE Pavilion Phoenix gaming computer.

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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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Initiative

To power their attacks, thieves rely on a resource called initiative, which regenerates over time. Weapon skills cost initiative points, but they have no recharge time, so thieves can use them back-to-back. This allows thieves to stay flexible and responsive in combat and unleash a rapid flurry of powerful attacks.

Steal
Thieves use the Steal skill to create useful weapons based on the opponents they’re fighting at the time. When thieves steal from moa birds, they might get feathers that they can throw to blind their enemies. Stealing does not break stealth, but it cannot be used often.

Dual Skills
When using a main-hand and off-hand weapon combination, thieves have access to a spectacular Dual Skill that is determined by their weapons. Thieves with two daggers receive the Leaping Death Blossom skill, but thieves with a dagger/pistol combo receive Shadow Shot, which allows them to teleport to their target.

Profession Galleries

Elementalist - Engineer - Guardian - Mesmer - Necromancer - Ranger - Thief - Warrior

Character Creation Galleries

Asura M - Asura F - Charr M - Charr F
Human M - Human F - Norn M - Norn F - Sylvari M - Sylvari F

All gallery screenshots were captured on an HP HPE Pavilion Phoenix gaming computer.

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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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