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LOS ANGELES — Ubisoft held its pre-Electronic Entertainment Expo media briefing today, and after showing two trailers for nearly all of its games, Ubisoft pulled a switcheroo and announced two new Trials games in a single trailer.

The side-scrolling motocross franchise is headed to next-gen systems as Trials Fusion, and it is sprinting to mobile devices as Trials Frontiers. The two will interact with each other — and both will bring back the beloved biking action that developer RedLynx nearly perfected in Trials Evolution.

Trials Fusion is due out for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, and Xbox 360. This is unlike Trials Evolution, which was exclusive to Xbox 360 until its recent release on PC.

It’s no surprise that Ubisoft would want to expand the Trials franchise. Both Evolution and the original Trials sold incredibly well on Xbox Live Arcade. They are among the best-selling titles on the platform.

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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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Memories define who we are. They shape our futures and influence our decisions. They can also be the source of tremendous pain. If we could wipe away the bad and keep only the good, who would we be?

That’s the kind of question the action-adventure game Remember Me (out tomorrow for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC) seeks to answer through the setting of Neo-Paris in the year 2084. The corporation Memorize has created a remarkable brain implant called Sensen, which enables people to share and store their memories in a network. In the first few minutes, players go from listening to people praise the technology to witnessing the devastation it has caused.

When the female protagonist Nilin wakes up in a cell, we watch as her captor strips away her memories in an agonizing process. He misses a few. That makes her dangerous. Nilin is a talented memory hunter who can steal or “remix” people’s memories through their Sensen, and as a member of the rebel group the Errorists, she’s a threat to Memorize. With her mind still intact, a mysterious contact named Edge guides her out of prison and onto the streets where she can lead a revolution.

What you’ll like

An immersive sci-fi world
Remember Me’s opening moments are a powerful way to start out the game. As a disoriented Nilin staggers around the confinement facility, the camera follows her every unsteady movement, creating a sense of dizziness. Everything is a little too bright, and she encounters horror after horror: white rooms that house delirious inmates, a machine that rips the memories out of people’s heads, and even a menacing “coercive” robot that hunts down escapees. She leaves in a coffin — one of many mass-produced containers for the dead and still alive.

The vividness of the environment persists. Neo-Paris is a gorgeous city, its infrastructure part historical and part new — the street level littered with androids, neon lights, and holo-televisions. From the skyscraper vistas to the grimy underground, Remember Me is an atmospheric wonder. It feels well thought-out down to the lingo, which the characters constantly bandy about. The game tops that off with weird, futuristic-sounding music that’s different from anything you’ve likely heard before.

The story drives much of the game and introduces you to eccentrically named characters such as Johnny Greenteeth, Headache Tommy, and Bad Request, among others. Nilin sets out to save the suffering city from Memorize. Only she can reach the people responsible and either enact revenge or “remix,” aka rewrite, their memories — altering their roles in events to better suit the Errorists’ agenda. Without her own complete memories, however, she’s unsure whether what she’s doing is right.

The uncertainty makes the experience that much more compelling and enjoyable.

A deep combat system
While Remember Me is big on story, developer Dontnod Entertainment carefully balanced it with strong combat mechanics. Basically, players assemble combos in the Combo Lab menu. You have only four increasingly long, predetermined combinations of the X and Y buttons to toy with the entire game — you unlock these slowly, one at a time — but the real depth emerges with the Pressens. Think of these as the individual Xs and Ys that you can assign to each entry in a combination.

Pressens come in different forms: Power, Regen, Cooldown, and the rarer Chain. While Power Pressens deal a lot of damage, Regen regains health for Nilin every time she uses one in a combo. Cooldowns reset your S-Pressens (special moves) faster, and Chains magnify the effects of the Pressen that came before it in a combo. Players can mix and match to engineer any devastating combo they please — maybe one string that inflicts maximum damage or another that helps recover more health. Some arrangements can even grant bonus Procedural Mastering Points (PMP), which unlock forgotten Pressens. Think of them as level-ups that offer you even more ways to kick butt.

The inputs are always the same — a series of Xs and Ys — but the results vary. Longer combos are more deadly, too, as later Pressens take on more power.

Remember Me constantly adds new layers to the combat, and it takes the entire 10-hour game to see them all. Nilin can use S-Pressens to more effectively terminate the enemies around her. For example, Sensen Fury is very similar to free-flow in Batman: Arkham City, in which players can rapidly trash a number of baddies without losing stride. And Sensen R.I.P. (Rust in Pieces) turns all robots into allies that eventually self-destruct.

On top of this, Nilin can shoot foes with the Spammer weapon she acquires. It has a number of applications, such as breaking shields or weak environmental structures with its Junk Bolt enhancement. She can also use it to interact with the environment by opening doors, moving objects from afar, and so forth.

Frequent new challenges
Remember Me flavors its gameplay with various activities. Some minor missions involve tapping into people’s memories and activating their “Remembranes” (ghosts of themselves in the environment) to watch scenes from their past. This helps you bypass security and learn vital information.

You can also locate and collect different items. SAT Patches and Focus Boosts increase health and Focus (which fuels your S-Pressens), respectively. Those are useful. And Scaramechs — little white “bugs” that crawl on walls and emit a ticking noise — are fun to search for and kill for PMP bonuses.

Sometimes bosses and minibosses, especially, act as the perfect break from regular combat, challenging you to think fast and use your S-Pressens and other abilities in creative ways. It’s fun to hear a lumbering death robot roar and then tell you “it’s just a flesh wound” when its arm falls off. This is a Zorn, and I love him.

These fights do end with a few quick-time events, but fortunately, the title allots you plenty of time to press buttons in sequence, and you quickly get a feel for when these moments will happen. They shouldn’t catch you off-guard.

For some encounters, though, a little surprise could do some good.

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Internet forums are full of discussions about the Xbox One versus the PlayStation 4 in the wake of announcements. But the high-end gamer PC is already running circles around those machines, six months before they hit the market.

In the past, the consoles leapt ahead of the PC, if only for a short time. But console technology is frozen in time. With constant refreshes in technology coming every six months, the PC can absorb the latest processors and graphics cards to leapfrog the consoles. On top of that PC threat, however, is the rapid advances in mobile gaming that could siphon off players from the consoles.

“With so much of today focused on mobile, free to play, and casual gaming on smartphones and tablets, would anyone even buy a next-generation console?” wrote Anand Lal Shimpi, founder of tech news site Anandtech.

Consoles today are engineering marvels, with more than 5 billion transistors — the on-off switches of digital computers — in the Xbox One. But they take so long to design that engineers have to lock their specifications in place a couple of years in advance. And so, by default, the Darwinian PC can evolve faster than a game machine.

Xbox One vs. PlayStation 4

The Xbox One has an eight-core AMD central processing unit (CPU) based on the 64-bit Jaguar design. It has eight gigabytes of DDR3 random access memory, a 500-gigabyte hard drive, HDMI in/out, USB 3.0, gigabit ethernet, and the Kinect motion-sensing and voice recognition system. The AMD processor is believed to run at 1.6 gigahertz, and it is coupled with an on-board graphics processing unit (GPU).

The combined chip with CPU and GPU is dubbed an accelerated processing unit (APU), and AMD has managed to get its APUs into all three console makers for this generation. The graphics in the Xbox One are very close to the performance of the AMD Radeon HD 7790 graphics chip for the PC. Microsoft says it will have 68 gigabytes per second bandwidth between the CPU/GPU and memory. The GPU has 102 gigabytes per second bandwidth to a local 32 megabyte SRAM memory cache and another 30 gigabytes per second bandwidth to game controllers, Kinect, and other peripherals.

The PlayStation 4 also has an eight-core Jaguar AMD APU, with a GPU that is about the same performance as the AMD Radeon 7880 GPU. It has eight gigabytes of GDDR5 random access memory. That graphics memory gives it 176 gigabytes per second bandwidth for the CPU and GPU. Shimpi said that the value of that memory bandwidth is about the same as what you would get in terms of bandwidth from a $300 GPU for the PC. But the graphics memory is expensive, Shimpi said, and Sony is now dependent on it for the life of the console.

Sony hasn’t said how much hard drive storage it will have. Both have Blu-ray disk drives for loading games and playing movies. Some reports estimate that the Xbox One will use 3 gigabytes of its main memory to run its three operating systems, while Sony will only use 1 gigabyte for that purpose.

Sebastian Anthony at ExtremeTech wrote, “ In short, while there are small hardware differences between the consoles, they will ultimately have very similar performance characteristics. The PS4, with its one, big block of fast RAM, and bigger GPU, probably has the edge.”

But it’s less clear comparing the capabilities of Sony’s PlayStation Eye and the Xbox One’s new version of Kinect. It appears that Kinect has the upper hand, ExtremeTech said, but more details will emerge later. Kinect has its own dedicated chips for handling voice recognition and a 1080p high-definition camera, along with an active infrared camera. So no matter where you are in a room, Kinect knows who you are and what you’re doing.

Kevin Krewell, senior analyst at The Linley Group, said that the Jaguar cores are “modest performing CPU cores.” But there are some details missing such as exact clock speeds that would make the comparison easier. (He notes that official clock speeds have not been released yet for the consoles).

The PS 4′s GPU has 18 compute units, while the Xbox One’s GPU has 12 compute units. That would give the PS 4 an advantage even if the Xbox One GPU had a higher clock speed. AMD’s top-of-the-line graphics chip for the PC, the AMD Radeon HD 7970, has 32 compute units. Krewell said that a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor with eight threads (or separate programs) should outperform the eight-core Jaguar processors. (That’s akin to how one kind of car engine can perform better than another kind of car engine with the same number of pistons).

“From the limited specs we have today, I believe the PS 4 will outperform the Xbox One on graphics and should scale better on 4K displays,” Krewell said.

The 4K displays will be used in televisions and monitors that have four times the number of pixels as today’s high-definition TVs. But a consumer would have to have a new 4K TV, which today costs thousands of dollars, to exploit that advantage.

With AMD technology in all three consoles and in x86-based PCs as well, it has never been easier to compare the machines. But it’s also clear that Sony and Microsoft are going to have a hard time differentiating themselves from each other. For developers, that part of the story is good. However, Shimpi points out that the bad news it the memory subsystems are wildly different and could require different programming techniques. Microsoft’s 32-megabyte cache, for instance, has to be properly managed via programming.

The PC wins, but at what price?

Microsoft’s Xbox One semi-custom processor is built with a 28-nanometer manufacturing process. But Intel is already moving on to its Tri-Gate 22-nanometer process with its microarchitecture code-named Haswell. Intel’s fourth-generation Core processors, based on Haswell designs, are shipping in PCs in June and July. Since Haswell uses a more advanced manufacturing process, it has better performance, lower cost, and better power efficiency than chips made with a less advanced manufacturing process (in this case, 22 nanometers is more advanced than 28 nanometers). Intel notes that the graphics performance of its processors is twice that of last year’s model, and it is more than 75 times better than models introduced in 2006.

When it comes to the PC, the eight-core Jaguar appears to get about half the performance of a current generation Intel Core i7, ExtremeTech said. And the AMD Radeon 7790 is currently used in a $150 graphics card.

“In short, then, today’s PCs will stomp all over the Xbox One (and PS4) in terms of raw computation power,” ExtremeTech said.

Historically, the battle has been one-sided. Consoles gain an edge when new versions come out, but that was eight years ago. The Xbox 360 was ahead of the Nvidia PC graphics chip, the GeForce 7800, in 2005. But by 2006, Nvidia’s GeForce 8800 chip could outperform the graphics in both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, according to Jon Peddie Research, a longtime visual market researcher headed by analyst Jon Peddie.

“They were ahead for about six months, but we destroyed them for the last seven years,” said Frank Azor, general manager of Dell’s Alienware division, a maker of gaming PCs.

The Xbox 360 had about 300 gigaflops of floating point performance, on a theoretical level. The PS 3 was about 400 gigaflops. The Xbox One and PS 4 are expected to be about six times more powerful on graphics. The Xbox One can do 1.23 teraflops, while the PS 4 can do about 1.84 teraflops. The systems have about 16 times the amount of main memory as the Xbox 360.

But the PC has been increasing its performance at a compound annual growth rate of 48 percent since 2005, according to Jon Peddie Research. The high-end PC will outperform the graphics of the PS 4 and the Xbox One by 250 percent to 300  percent when the consoles debut later this year, according to Jon Peddie Research.

What will the future hold?

Microsoft had an intriguing argument where it said that “cloud processing” techniques could lead to an improvement in the Xbox One’s performance over time. That’s because the Xbox One is architected so it can borrow processing power from a web-connected data center for tasks that don’t require an immediate response. If that is true, then Microsoft could improve the hardware performance of the Xbox One over time, without changing the actual hardware, said Boyd Multerer, one of the operating system experts at Microsoft.

Sony can also apply that concept to its machines, as it purchased Gaikai, a cloud gaming startup with similar technology. Nvidia also has a cloud gaming strategy in the works with its Grid technology. The easy bet is that the PC will race ahead of the console technology and do so very quickly in this generation.

You might expect Intel, Nvidia, and Advanced Micro Devices to point this out with glee, as the PC is under heavy attack not only from the consoles but from tablets and smartphones. On the other hand, all of these major firms are also strong partners of Microsoft’s and Sony’s. They don’t want to tout the PC too much, or they’ll anger those partners.

Shimpi concludes that Microsoft’s hardware strategy has focused on spreading the applications out beyond gaming (that’s why it has three operating systems, so it can switch between applications quickly), while Sony is very focused on gaming alone.

“If the market for high-end game consoles has already hit its peak, then Microsoft’s approach is likely the right one from a business standpoint,” Shimpi said. “If the market for dedicated high-end game consoles hasn’t peaked however, Microsoft will have to rely even more on the Kinect experience, TV integration, and its exclusive franchises to compete.”

We can’t avoid the irony of the PC’s triumph, which may be a Pyrrhic victory in the end. It has the top performance, but the question is whether it will matter. In a time when PC sales are declining as tablet and smartphone sales rise, many users will choose to the latter platforms for gaming. Tablets and smartphones also improve every six months or so, and the gaming performance on those devices may be approaching “good enough” for many players.

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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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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Android’s market share is a joke, and most tech writers aren’t getting the punchline.

That, at least, is the opinion of John Kirk, a “recovering attorney,” financial adviser, business coach, and investor who wrote an interesting column recently stating that market share in general, and Android’s market share in particular, is not an appropriate measure of success.

And that contrary to all popular opinion, Apple is “winning the smartphone wars — and winning them handily.”

That’s not what you hear from most pundits, industry analysts, or Wall Street investors these days. Rather, the news is all about how Android has won, how its market share is massively outpacing Apple’s, and how Apple has failed by slowing innovation and refusing to release cheaper and more diversified iPhones.

I wanted to understand Kirk’s position, so yesterday we chatted about Apple, Google, Android, and Wall Street.

Source: John Koetsier

Android is open for business, apparently.

VentureBeat: You stated that Android’s market share is a joke. Why?

John Kirk: It’s a reference to the old joke that you can lose money on every sale but make it up in volume.

Many companies in the Android ecosystem are losing money or, at best, breaking even. HTC, Motorola, and many of the other phone manufacturers are in that boat.

VentureBeat: But isn’t profit a trailing indicator?

Kirk: Yes, it is.

But market share isn’t necessarily a leading indicator. Profit comes from a combination of market share times margins, and people are completely ignoring margins.

VentureBeat: That’s typically explained via platforms and ecosystems, and the network effects that a bigger platform has, and that the profits are coming — at some point.

Kirk: Different business models should be scored differently.

I’m talking almost exclusively about hardware manufacturers, which I think are poorly measured by market share and should be measured by profit share. If you’re looking at Apple and companies like Motorola, HTC, and Samsung from the manufacturer perspective, Apple is winning, Samsung is in second, and everyone is in a very distant third.

Source: John Koetsier

Android meets Wall-E.

Regarding platform, there’s an assumption that market share is the only thing that matters. And yet, all the evidence indicates that Apple’s iOS has a very strong platform, even with much, much smaller market share than Android.

The way the Android advocates explain this is to say that their theory is sound and that profit share must follow market share and that it’s going to happen any day now … but there’s no evidence that it actually is happening.

Saying that market share is the only thing that matters in platforms is like saying that acreage is the only thing that matters in real estate. Sure, the size of a property matters, but the location matters more. And sure, the size of market share matters, but the quality of the market share matters more.

In other words, Apple owns the high end of the market.

VentureBeat: One example that platform effects might be starting to impact iOS and Android is Google Music. Apple can’t seem to get a streaming music deal done, but Google was able to.

Kirk: Just because Apple hasn’t done it yet doesn’t mean they won’t do it. I think the music industry would much, much rather have Apple’s ecosystem than Android’s because that’s where the money is.

I’m not saying that Google Music won’t be OK, but it doesn’t impress me. It’s not necessarily another Google TV, but I don’t think it’ll be that big a deal.

Market share is like advertising … a huge audience is fine, but it’s much better to have a very focused, targeted audience.

VentureBeat: Are Google and Amazon wrong? They’re betting on the value of an ecosystem being a function of the value that flows through it — media, apps, books, ads, commerce — not just the value of the device it’s on.

Kirk: Google is playing a different game and wants to be scored differently … and it should be scored differently.

But Apple is winning in manufacturing … and that doesn’t mean that Google is losing in the advertising war. In fact they are winning, too — they’ve got exactly what they want.

It’s a mistake to think that Android is the only platform that matters to Google … in fact they’re spending a ton of resources on iOS apps as well.

VentureBeat: Leveraging a high profit share on a low market share is certainly efficient. But is it safe?

Kirk: There are two possible answers to that.

You can look at the PC wars versus the Mac, which everyone says that Apple lost … but what Apple “lost” by losing that war was winning 45 percent of the current market’s profits! So despite the fact that currently they’re at 8 percent market share, they’re doing very well.

Apple has historically demonstrated that they’ve been able to not just survive but thrive on limited market share.

I don’t think that history is repeating … it seems much more likely that we’re ending up with a duopoly rather than a monopoly, and that Apple’s ecosystem is large enough to be self-sustaining right now.

So what Apple needs to do is continue to add value to its ecosystem.

VentureBeat: If you’re right, why does Wall Street disagree with you?

Kirk: Wall Street had Apple valued at $700 last fall, and they have Apple valued at under $400 six months later.

So Wall Street was either wrong about Apple then, or they’re wrong about Apple now, or they were wrong both times. You shouldn’t judge the business value of a company by Wall Street’s variable estimates — you need to judge the fundamentals.

Frankly, if you’re investing in Wall Street, you need to be lucky as hell.

Image credit: Jesus Belzunce Gomez/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

PC shipments fell off the proverbial cliff in the first quarter of 2013, according to IDC, with their biggest drop ever in recorded history.

That might sound a little melodramatic, given that the recorded history of PC shipments only goes back to 1994. But with a drop of 13.9 percent — almost double the expected 7.7 percent — to only 76.3 million units, the first quarter of 2013 has been a disaster for traditional PC manufacturers.

Even a new version of Windows, once a guaranteed shot in the arm for PC shipments, failed to stimulate demand. Quite the opposite.

“At this point, unfortunately, it seems clear that the Windows 8 launch not only failed to provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market,” Bob O’Donnell, an IDC vice-president, said in a statement.

O’Donnell says that with its radical user interface changes, subtraction of the familiar Start button, and extra costs that come with Windows 8-equipped PCs that take advantage of its touch capabilities “have made PCs a less attractive alternative to dedicated tablets and other competitive devices.”

Ouch.

In the U.S., this marks the tenth consecutive quarter of year-on-year declines, and quarterly shipments reached their lowest level since early 2006. Europe was down as well, and even growing China and the rest of the Asia Pacific region dropped 12.7 percent, the first double-digit decline in PC shipments there.

HP remains the top PC vendor globally, IDC said, but its shipments fell 23 percent year-over-year, and it was almost surpassed by Lenovo, which astonishingly had double-digit growth in a sinking market. Dell dropped 10 percent as well, and Acer, Asus, and Toshiba also dropped somewhat.

Even Apple, which has seen strong growth in recent years, particularly in laptops, had shipments decline 7.5 percent to 1.4 million.

IDC seems interested in blaming Windows 8, but the more likely culprit is surging sales of tablets, which some analysts are including in “PC” shipment numbers. In fact, some analysts believe that this year is the year tablet sales will outpace traditional PC sales, with quarterly sales of 55-60 million.

Given this quarter’s numbers, it looks like the crossover point could be as soon as the next three months. But whether that happens or not, big changes are in store for PC vendors:

“The industry is going through a critical crossroads, and strategic choices will have to be made as to how to compete with the proliferation of alternative devices and remain relevant to the consumer,” David Daoud, IDC Research Director, said in a statement. “Vendors will have to revisit their organizational structures and go-to-market strategies, as well as their supply chain, distribution, and product portfolios in the face of shrinking demand and looming consolidation.”

photo credit: amygentle77 via photopin cc

Ghostlight is an expert on localizing Japanese games, but we don’t hear of the company much in North America. That may be about to change as the European publisher has been working for months to bring Japanese role-playing games from consoles to PCs worldwide.

It announced its first today, a strategy RPG called Agarest: Generations of War (pictured), which is now visible on Steam Greenlight and is the first entry in developer Idea Factory’s Agarest series.

Generations of War has come to North America before on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 but not PC, and the popularity of Steam could be beneficial. Worldwide release on Valve’s digital distribution platform means the publisher can reach audiences in more territories and generate greater attention for these often underloved games.

That idea became Ghostlight’s mission in 2004 when it emerged with a focus on bringing Japanese PlayStation 2 titles to the PAL territories, like Europe and Australia. Its first published game was Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer’s Call, or Nocturne if you live in the United States or Japan. It then followed with the Digital Devil Saga series — “all of which met with great success,” said Ross Brierley, the community manager for Ghostlight, who spoke to GamesBeat about the announcement.

If the company’s vision sounds familiar, that’s because it’s not too far off from that of Atlus, a more recognizable name in North America. Atlus develops and publishes Japanese games like the Shin Megami Tensei line in North America and Japan.

Ghostlight has expanded since its early days, releasing games on PSP and PlayStation 3 and just recently on 3DS with Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked. Naturally, the next step forward was to penetrate the PC market. Success on Steam could mean a different strategy for Ghostlight in the future.

“Should this first release take off, we will be looking to bring more JRPGs to PC,” said Brierley. “And with the nature of the PC as a platform, we would be looking to give them a worldwide release [wherever] possible.”

Where the genre fits in

The landscape is not identical around the globe, however. Not everyone is even clear on what a JRPG is.

“Personally, I tend to view them as being any RPG that comes from Japan,” said Brierley. “However, there are several things that occur far more regularly in JRPGs than in Western RPGs. JRPGs often concentrate on telling a single story with perhaps several different endings rather than the branching storylines you are more likely to see in Western RPGs.

“Moment-to-moment gameplay can often be different, too, with many JRPGs favoring a more strategic turn-based system as opposed to the real-time combat that many Western RPGs prefer. There are, of course, exceptions on both sides, with Japanese action RPGs such as the Ys series favouring real-time combat.”

Brierley says that while JRPGs are considerably more successful in Japan, for obvious reasons, they seem to sell better in North America than in Europe.

“This might partially be due to the underlying popularity of the genre, but one of the major reasons is the difficulty of localizing games for Europe,” he said. “The number of languages in Europe means that we are faced with the difficult choice of either limiting our audience by releasing our games in English only or increasing our localization costs drastically to release our games in multiple languages. Unfortunately, given the costs involved, the latter is not practical in most cases.”

He doesn’t think the genre has diminished in the West, either; although, it may appear that way to many fans here who cross their fingers and hope for RPGs like Pandora’s Tower or Bravely Default: Flying Fairy to make it stateside.

“Rather, the surrounding games market has grown larger — what with the casual market picking up like it has,” said Brierley. “In fact, the overall market has grown for JRPGs, but casual sector growth — as with many other genres — distorts the statistics.”

Keeping the love alive

“I think there’s also a bit of a problem with the perception of JRPGs at the moment in that some gamers who are new to the genre will assume that JRPGs are old-fashioned,” said Brierley. “I firmly disagree with that point myself. I’ve found that many of my personal bugbears, such as fixed save points instead of the ability to save anytime, seem to be on the way out. Also, perhaps it’s due to my increasing involvement in gaming, but I’ve seen a huge variety in battle mechanics and the like in this generation, and it seems like there are some awesome-looking games in the pipeline from Japan as well.”

Brierley also noted that limited releases have been an obstacle in the West.

“While there have been some excellent PS3 JRPGs, the supply has been somewhat limited on the home consoles,” he said. “This is not really the case with the handhelds, but unfortunately, many portable JRPGs have not made it over here. And for the ones that do, the coverage is not as great as it was in previous generations.”

Bringing these games to PCs overseas could change all that. “There’s a lot of interest in the idea of bringing JRPGs to PC/Steam,” said Brierley. “Every time we even mention the subject in a blog post, we get a large increase in traffic, and the overwhelming majority of comments we get are excited about the idea.

“As you’d expect, we get a lot of people asking us to bring particular titles over, but we also get lots of comments about what features a port should have to take advantage of the PC as a platform, which download services we should release the game, etc. We also get lots of questions regarding the possibility of a physical PC release. While we can’t please everyone, we are listening to everyone’s feedback and trying to do what we can.”

Localizing these games takes a lot of work even for a company like Ghostlight, whose years of experience means a longer list of contacts in Japan. The publisher has to form an agreement with a game’s rights holder and talk to Japanese publishers and developers about the idea. Sometimes it works the other way around, and companies approach Ghostlight first.

“Either way, we then have to crunch the numbers ourselves to work out if the release will be viable before submitting an offer,” said Brierley. “Should a deal be agreed [upon], only then can we start work on the port.”

It’s worth the effort, though: “There is still something about the JRPG which speaks to a lot of people,” he said. While other forms of entertainment, like social and mobile gaming, are on the rise, Brierley says the future of the genre is secure — at least in Japan.

“Here in the West, there are a few more potential threats, including the possibility that the gap between the popularity of certain platforms here and in Japan will continue to widen, increasing focus on big-budget triple-A titles,” he said.

“Having said that, the success of several JRPGs, such as those from Carpe Fulgur on Steam, has shown that there is still a lot of interest in these types of games and that you need to bring the games to the people rather than expecting people to come to whichever platform the game is on.”

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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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Ecco the Dolphin was a spectacularly innovative, nonviolent video game when it debuted on Sega’s game consoles starting in 1992. In that classic, a generation of gamers discovered the visual wonders of the ocean while playing as a jumping, spinning dolphin who battled sharks and sang to sea life.

Now the creators of Ecco have launched a Kickstarter campaign to create a new game about life in the ocean after humans become extinct: The Big Blue. Ed Annunziata and Spencer Nilsen, the creators of Ecco the Dolphin, have pulled together a veteran team in a company called Playchemy to make the next-generation undersea adventure game. Their latest collaboration isn’t based on the Ecco property itself, but they consider it to be the “next evolutionary step in undersea adventure games,” Annunziata said in a video promoting the project. In other words, it’s a spiritual successor, without the Ecco name.

“We want to make something epic,” Annunziata said. “Something with smooth game controls, a deep back story, and emphasis on exploration and artificial life.”

Source: Ed Annunziata

Ed Annunziata and his cohorts have put The Big Blue on Kickstarter. It’s the so-called spiritual successor to Ecco the Dolphin, a beloved game from the days of the Sega Genesis.

The Burlingame, Calif.-based Playchemy wants to raise $665,000 in the next 30 days to fund the project. Annunziata has had talks with Sega about doing another Ecco the Dolphin game, but so far nothing has come from that. So his team is forging ahead on Kickstarter, where they hope to bring out another title that will help people appreciate games as an art form.

Ecco the Dolphin has become a classic with a big following, and it has been republished on downloadable platforms, bringing the title to new audiences. But we haven’t seen a big undersea exploration title with state-of-the-art visuals for a while.

Nilsen is composing new music and sound for the game that will tie into the larger story. The music will be dynamic and run continuously through the game. Composer Bear McCreary (Battlestar Galactica, The Walking Dead) is contributing to the soundtrack.

In The Big Blue, human life has become extinct. Dolphin, porpoise, and whale (cetacean) sounds become the only form of communication, and a kind of undersea Internet comes to life. Players will be able to “sing” new creatures to life and control how they evolve.

The Big Blue deals with themes such as climate change, mass extinction, evolution, and biogenesis. It suggests that the Earth itself is a living organism, à la the Gaia theory.

The player can create new life forms based on the information carried in “life songs.” The graphics feature special effects like volumetric water, surface deformation, sun rays, refraction, and reflection lighting. It meshes puzzle gameplay with science, nature, and science fiction. It is not about humans and it sports a lot of nonviolent story and emotion.

It will have hyper-realistic creature animation with flocking, swarming, and procedural animations. Creatures can evolve, and players can share their creatures via collectible cards and codes.

Annunziata still gets e-mail and fan letters more than two decades after the introduction of Ecco the Dolphin. (I played it with my oldest daughter and enjoyed it immensely). He worked at Sega from 1989 to 1997, and then he moved on to Nokia Games, AndNow, TwoFish, SmartyAnts, and now Playchemy, which was founded in October 2011 with angel-invester money. The company has 12 employees and seed funding from Rick Thompson’s Signia Ventures.

The challenge is to get people to “care” about a game that doesn’t include human interactions. It is also difficult to instill the right balance of “fun” in an expansive environment and gameplay style where it is easy to get lost or not clearly know how to proceed.

The Big Blue uses the Unity 3D game engine. It’s going to be for the PC, Mac, iOS, and Android. If it hits its stretch goals, the team will work on multiplayer cooperative gameplay and possibly add massively multiplayer online capability.

Annunziata and his team created Ecco the Dolphin and Ecco: Tides of Time as well as a number of other titles. Jon Berg, who created the “Hammerhead” alien in the original Star Wars (this iconic space race are now known as “Ithorians), is the creature designer for The Big Blue. He is creating creatures in an “unlimited canvas” to create sea life. Laszio Szenttornyai is a programmer from the original Ecco team.

“We hope that you’ll support us and we’ll see you in the ocean,” said Annunziata.

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Tomb Raider has just come out, and I’m already greatly enjoying it. It was one of my most anticipated games of last year until it was delayed to 2013. A few days ago, right before the game released, I heard something about this new hair-rendering technology that would be included in the PC version called TressFX.

I looked up this tech and was intrigued by what I read. Most intriguing was how it would more realistically render locks of hair instead of the blocky groups of polygons that most games show. Realistic hair is something I’ve dreamed about in video games. The few games that manage to do something more realistic, such as Alice: Madness Returns, are breathtaking. I’m not ashamed to admit that it made me even more excited for Tomb Raider as I read about it.

Of course, I turned the tech on the first time I played the game, eager to see how it worked. At first, I was blown away by the level of detail. TressFX seems to render the hair as individual strands that move according to what is going on. It was quite impressive for the first 30 minutes or so. After that point, the reality of the technology was starting to set in. There are a few issues with the tech (widespread or just on my machine, I don’t know) that need to be fixed before the hair I dreamed of is possible.

First and most noticeable is the strange way the technology seems to try and prevent the hair from clipping into Lara’s body. If you look closely, you can see what looks like some kind of field a few inches off the character model (very noticeable around the shoulders in particular). The hair will just sit there and not actually touch her shoulders. I understand why the game renders it that way as I’m sure that preventing the clipping of models is still a very hard-to-solve issue for developers. However, it looks very unrealistic. I’m sure that it will be the concern most people have about TressFX when they start playing, and it may be a severe turnoff for some of them. I think it just looks too strange for a tech that is supposed to be about realism.

Another issue I have with TressFX is that the individual strands of hair seem to be a little too responsive to the physics elements at work in the world of Tomb Raider. It seems like every slight jerk of the character or gust of wind makes the hair blow about crazily. Maybe it’s just that I’m not used to more realistic hair in my video games, but the physics don’t seem quite right. It’s hard to explain what I mean without seeing it in action for yourself. Shadows from the hair strands also look pretty grungy. It’s almost as if they didn’t alias these shadows as they look pretty blocky and unrealistic.

The reason for this may be that TressFX is quite intensive on the computer. I could run the game at 60 frames-per-second easily without it turned on, but the fps dropped about half as soon as I did. Other accounts I’ve read online say that some computers get unplayable framerates with it turned on. Since the game has to realistically render all of these strands of hair in real time, it can have a pretty severe effect on the framerate. I’m assuming the tech is GPU-based, so it will probably get better with some drivers and newer video cards. Nvidia seems to already be at work on updating drivers to fix some of these issues, but the performance hit is quite a problem now.

At the moment, I don’t feel that TressFX is worth enabling. It looks too odd and unrealistic for me to want to bother with the framerate loss. I’m hoping that some optimization with patches and drivers will resolve the issues so that I can use the technology on a second playthrough of Tomb Raider. Even with these hitches, I still think TressFX is a step in the right direction. I’m all for additional realism in character design wherever I can get it. The hair does look really nice; the physics elements of the simulation can just be a tad bit jarring. I can’t wait to see what future iterations of this technology look like.

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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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Call of Duty: Black Ops II players on the PlayStation 3 and PC, today is the day. You can finally get your headshot-loving thumbs on first downloadable content pack for Treyarch’s first-person shooter.

Activision released the Revolution map pack on PlayStation Network and Steam today for $14.99. Gamers can also get it as part of a $49.99 Season Pass, which guarantees access to the four planned expansion packs.

Revolution includes four maps, a new gun, a Zombies map, and a fresh Zombies mode.

Check out Activision’s PlayStation launch trailer below:

I’ve had some time with the map pack on Xbox 360, and I can say that the new maps are a good time.

• “Hydro” takes place at a hydroelectric plant in Pakistan. At set intervals, certain parts of the map flood and will kill anyone who’s standing in the water’s path.
• “Grind” is in a Venice Beach skate park. It doesn’t have many corners to hide behind, which is very different for a Call of Duty map.
• “Downhill” takes players to a ski resort in the French Alps. This is my favorite of the new maps. It offers a few great sniping locations and plenty of ways to flank said locations.
• “Mirage” is a luxury resort in China’s Gobi Desert. This is another great map, which offers ample pathways to attack the enemy or set up ambushes.

In addition to the maps, Revolution is the first time that Call of Duty has a new DLC weapon. The Peacemaker submachine gun is very similar to the M27 assault rifle. If you like the M27 but also want to run around like a mad man, the Peacemaker might fit your playstyle.

As for Zombies, Treyarch added the “Turned” mode, which gives players the chance to play as the undead. The DLC also has a new Zombies level called “Die Rise.” Treyarch set the stage in a skyscraper in a destroyed Chinese city.

Activision still isn’t saying anything about when (or if) the DLC will arrive on Nintendo’s Wii U. That’s not a good sign for Nintendo. If one of the biggest games in the world can’t figure out delivering its popular add-on packs, then what chance do any smaller games have of doing the same?

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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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Last time I posted about the upcoming console generation, I made a big deal about how social features might define it for consumers. I still stand by that, but I also think console gaming is hitting an important impasse regarding developer relations.

We’ve had guys like Cliff Bleszinski and the president of Sony Computer Entertainment talking a bit about it — how platform holders need to be more flexible with developers. I think this could turn out to be one of the biggest changes going into the next generation. Really, it’s been one of the most important aspects of console gaming throughout its entire history.

In an interview with Eurogamer, SCE head Shuhei Yoshida noted that Sony will allow indie studios to self-publish games on the PlayStation 4. SCE America head Jack Tretton also mentioned that they’ll allow companies to set PS4 games at various price points, ranging from 99 cents (and likely free to play) to $60. 

Trine 2 creator Frozenbyte noted awhile ago how it was able to self-publish the Wii U eShop version of the game as opposed to going through an outside publisher for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. I think that’s a pretty big deal. It’s also probably one of the biggest differences between the console digital-distribution services and other stores like Steam, iOS, and Google Play. Finding a full publisher is one of the biggest barriers for indies and probably the reason why a lot of PC and mobile indie games don’t come to consoles.

Price variation is a big issue, too. The console game market during the current generation was almost cleanly bifurcated between $60 retail games — too many of which struggled to sell — and $15 small indie games. If you look at, say, the PC during the same period, you see a lot of games in a nice place in between. You see $20 games like Amnesia and Strike Suit Zero that you don’t see on consoles at all. There are also cases of $1 iOS games like Angry Birds, which for some reason had to be priced much higher on consoles.

I think Blezinski put it pretty well at the 2013 East Coast Game Conference: “Right now, he suggested the console market is 80 percent $60 retail titles and 20 percent cheaper downloadable offerings, but it needs to embrace virtually all genres and all price points,” Gamesindustry.biz reported. “That means $20 horror games, $40 shooters, $60 triple-A blockbusters, free-to-play, and everything in between, all easy to find for the audience who would be most interested in them.”

A third important element of publisher-developer relations that’s now changing is platform-holder policies on patching. A lot of developers have complained about all the bureaucracy involved in patching console games. “When Gears of War 2 launched and we found out that our netcode wasn’t working right, it took us three months to get an update out,” Bleszinski said. “By that time, the majority of users had moved on to the next game or had traded it in.”

In contrast, Steam and Apple have put the onus entirely on the developer to QA each patch, and they let developers release those patches without charge. I think the difference shows in how often software gets patched on Steam or iOS as opposed to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

The developers of Dungeon Defenders basically gave up on updating the console versions, but my Steam copy of the game seems to be receiving a patch all the time. The number of content updates Valve has released for Team Fortress 2 on PC is in the triple digits; it’s hardly even the same game it was in 2007, but the company gave up on the Xbox version after running into Microsoft’s policy on how many free updates a developer gets. That same policy has forced Valve to charge for Left 4 Dead downloadable content on Xbox 360 while offering it for free on PC. There’s also the infamous case of how Polygon declined to patch Fez on Xbox 360 because of the costs Microsoft imposed.

In contrast, developers have already confirmed that Nintendo lets Wii U developers patch for free and as often as they want. Sony and Microsoft definitely need to follow suit.

A Wired article puts all these factors together pretty well in what it and The Penny Arcade Report call “The Minecraft Test.” Basically, it asks if a phenomenon like Minecraft could have occurred on a particular game platform. Minecraft happened because Mojang was able to “release” the game in a proto state, switch up its pricing model as the company pleased, and update it whenever it wanted without having to go through approval processes. I don’t think a console will ever be as completely open as the PC (unless Ouya really takes off), but the current ones are probably still a little bit too closed.

And that’s really the whole point: If consoles really want to fight off mobile gaming, tablet gaming, and the resurgent PC, they need to be more flexible with developers. More flexibility will probably get a platform more software, and more software increases the value of the hardware.

That’s how it’s been since basically forever. Sony overtook Nintendo with the original PlayStation by offering third-party publishers a friendly alternative to Nintendo’s then-draconian certification policies.

On the other hand, platform holders should remember the reasons why they have content curators in the first place. Nintendo’s draconian policies resurrected console games after the 1983 crash, when too many crappy games flooded the market. IOS is the perfect modern example of too little management, with good games struggling to stand out in a sea of shovelware along with a price ceiling so low as to prohibit full games.

A relations system built around big third-party publishers has worked up until the current generation. With the resurgence of garage development, though — with which mobile and PC have gotten along well and quickly — consoles are going to have to find a new balance to accommodate them properly.

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

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It all comes down to placing blocks. While many of the puzzles in Antichamber demand attention to detail and very specific ordering, the psychological-exploration game also leaves room for something I didn’t expect: inventing solutions. Some areas were unlocked not just by following a formula but with me creating my own key.

After solving the initial set of puzzles in the game, the first gun becomes available. This is where the game changes from simple navigation to the application of my imagination. Because the guns can pick and place blocks anywhere, passages required me to use them to stop or unlock doors. Positioning was important as the primary resource, the blocks themselves, were at first in short supply. Drawing with them was my main form of interaction, both as a mechanic and as an aesthetic response to the game.

The green gun

When I acquired the next gun, I received more blocks to draw with in the world. I began to paint the walls, writing my name or creating simple pictures. I drew arrows on the walls and marked where I had been as I walked from one passage to another. Each time I escaped back to the titular antechamber, my art would disappear. But each time, I would make it anew.

Then came the puzzles that challenged me to design my own solution. Instead of needing to make exact placement, I could freely carve my path using whatever patterns I wanted. A bridge could be linear, sure, but I could also make stairs that circled upward or led to different paths. Given a blank canvas, my own imagination was my guide to making my way. An abyss wasn’t an impasse but a chance to create something unique. Structures that carried me across an expanse could be different each time.

A smile in Antichamber

This was something I did not expect to find. I came looking for another Portal, a game where I would learn variations on a central mechanic and be restricted on where I could move and go. Here, in Antichamber, I could draw my way through doors. I could paint the walls in my efforts to find a route. I might have to face a new puzzle that demanded strict movements, but I could also loop blocks along the walls and scrawl out, on the world itself, a new solution before I tried it in a confined space.

It was very simple mechanic and, as I came to realize, the most important one: placing blocks was the only way forward. Doors were opened by filling holes. Walkways were created by layering blocks. The ability to draw might be a bonus, but it was also the way to progress, too. The game wanted me to experiment — to learn through playing — in order to see different ways the blocks could interact with each other. It would teach me the basics, but I needed to form the connections myself.

Everything in Antichamber builds on itself. The puzzles mutate and grow as one technique leads to another. The passages may loop around, and dead ends may abound, but it all leads to one place. Even the placement of blocks compounded on themselves as my illustrations filled the world and I made my way to the end.

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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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When I spotted Evoland, which Bordeaux, France-based studio Shiro Games is billing as “short story of adventure video games evolution,” two thoughts crossed my mind. First, it looked like an equally clever but more gorgeous version of Silicon Studio’s 3D Dot Game Heroes, a pixel-heavy throwback to the 8-bit era with modern sensibilities. Then I wondered how the developer was planning to encapsulate the entire history of a genre in one title.

It wasn’t until I talked to Sebastien Vidal, chief executive officer of Shiro and former chief operating officer for NCsoft Europe, that I begun to understand what “evolution” really entailed.

Evoland itself isn’t new. Nicolas Cannasse, founder of Flash game company Motion Twin, made Evoland Classic in about 30 hours for the Ludum Dare #24 Online Game Jam event, where people from around the world give up a weekend to make a game. Cannasse participated in the challenge window that took place from August 24-27, 2012. Out of 1,400 entries, his emerged with the highest overall score. The theme that weekend? Evolution.

Evoland Classic obtained over 300,000 players within a couple months. Now, with such a strong interest in the game, Shiro has decided to make a full commercial version of Evoland, which is coming first for PC and Mac in early March (and later iOS and possibly Android) for under $10.

“Most feedback we had [with Evoland Classic] is that people loved the concept rather than any specific part of the game, which is what makes a lot of people hooked to the idea when they first hear about it,” Vidal told GamesBeat. “This is not a game on which we expect comments about the graphics or the music or an event in the storyline — even if [we] had quite a few on the music.” (Audio was the category in which Evoland Classic scored lowest.)

In fact, the new Evoland doesn’t even have a story in the traditional sense. It’s not a narrative per se but rather a “story” of how action-adventure games have changed throughout the years.

“Like in the Classic version, everything in Evoland is based around unlocking chests that give access to some new feature, generally gameplay- or technology-related,” said Vidal. “Players will go back and forth between different styles of gameplay, but the technology used to created the environment [will] always move forward.”

These unlocks include features like a sword or the ability to save your progress — moments or mechanics that came into the genre as it advanced — as well as technological aspects like graphic upgrades and higher quality music.

“The whole point of the game is progressing through these unlocks to unfold the story of action-adventure gaming,” said Vidal.

He also showed us three screenshots (two included here), where the player unlocks (don’t think of “unlocks” as in extra content; rather, these are core parts of the game that drive its progression) 16-color display, music, and the ability to enter houses (and “freely invade people’s privacy,” the game jokes).

I’m now half-expecting to rummage through other people’s drawers and break their pots — two activities Link from The Legend of Zelda is good at — which wouldn’t be too far off base. Vidal mentioned that Zelda, Dragon Quest, and Final Fantasy were all big influences.

“Evoland Classic was clearly inspired by the Zelda series,” said Vidal, “but we wanted to go beyond that and pay a tribute to the action-adventure genre as a whole rather than to specific titles while also keeping the parodic humor of the original game.”

These “tongue-in-cheek comments” and references to gaming culture also include the names of people, places, and different secrets that you can find.

Shiro is moving further along the technical and gameplay evolution of the genre than Evoland Classic did by including different types of combat (like turn-based Active Time Battle and hack-n-slash), allowing players to switch back and forth between gameplay styles, and having the perspective change from 2D to 3D (both prerendered and real-time). Vidal said that items that block your path in 2D might appear flat in 3D.

“Unlike many games, the content in Evoland is there to serve the gameplay and not the other way around,” he said. “The game inverts the roles, and you end up living a story on a background of gameplay rather than playing a game along a storyline.”

It’s a “game about games,” as he calls it.

“In terms of depth, we actually discussed doing a game about the whole of gaming history, starting with Pong up to full 3D action games,” he said. “But the editorial work just to pick what best represents each style and era would have been huge –and the development time even bigger — so we went back to the roots and ‘only’ expanded on the action-adventure styles. That alone could, in theory, cover many genres of role-playing games, and we cut down to a few cult series that worked with each other and had an overlap in their audiences.”

Vidal says the four-person team is happy with the positive feedback they’ve been receiving on Steam Greenlight, YouTube, and other social networks like Facebook.

“We initially thought [Evoland Classic] would mainly appeal to veterans of the genre, but it turns out a lot of people who have tried the game and never played an RPG really enjoyed it,” he said. “For them, the experience of having a game evolve around them as they played completely overshadowed the fact that it was an action-adventure game. It could have been anything. The evolution was what made it fun for them.”

Evoland’s, well, evolution is what ultimately makes it different from the countless other nostalgic, retro throwbacks on the market.

“I guess Evoland only starts as a retro game and ends as a — fairly — modern one,” said Vidal. “We’re not trying to make a game like the ones in the past — in terms of graphics and/or gameplay — but rather to tell the story of these games.”

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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 second word in the name “Sony Online Entertainment” isn’t just for show. The developer is proving its web expertise with the promotion its most recent PC game, PlanetSide 2. SOE has the difficult task of hyping up a shooter in a competitive market saturated with them.

A couple of PlanetSide 2’s strengths are that it’s free-to-play and massive in scale, with thousands of players competing in individual matches. So in order to fill out the ranks with new players, SOE is partnering with popular YouTube gamer pundits, bringing fans into the development process, and working with the Major League Gaming electronic sports organization. This wide approach reflects the changing ways that players hear about and engage with games, and it has some serious potential.

SOE recently hosted the PlanetSide 2 Ultimate Empire Showdown exhibition event just outside of Los Angeles. The company invited Total Biscuit, SeaNanners, and LevelCap Gaming – popular YouTube broadcasters who focus on gaming — to come play. The three of them alone have a combined following of 2.6 million viewers.

In particular, Total Biscuit (his real name is John Bain) is a Planetside aficionado, going back to the original that came out a decade ago. Knowing Total Biscuit’s admiration, SOE brought him in during the early stages of development for PlanetSide 2 to cover the game through his YouTube channel. Not a bad idea considering he currently has almost one million subscribers and well over 300 times that number of views.

“I’m known for giving my honest opinions, yet they’re willing to give me the opportunity to play this anyway and still let me say whatever I want,” said Total Biscuit. “I did this big critique video of them while this campaign was going on. Were they upset by it? No, it was quite the opposite. They took that feedback on board, because that’s the type of company they are. They understand that the only way to make a game like this successful in a highly competitive market is to listen to and implement feedback in the most efficient and effective way possible.”

He went on to contrast SOE’s tactics to an alleged search-engine-optimization scheme by Sega. Total Biscuit claims that Sega recently used a provision in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to take down tons of YouTube videos related to the Shining series, some of which didn’t even feature footage or music from the games. This was all to supposedly improve the placement of any new promotional trailers on the video-sharing site.

“Sega flat out just doesn’t get how important YouTube is,” said Total Biscuit. “The fact is that you seriously ruin your PR if you go stomping on journalistic outlets.”

SOE’s approach, on the other hand, is to embrace not just the traditional gaming press, prominent voices like Total Biscuit, and other YouTube users but also the rest of the fans online. “Having a relationship with your community where they feel like they can converse with you is super-helpful and not even just to get more people to talk about the game,” said PlanetSide 2 creative director Matthew Higby. “When there’s a bug in the game, I’ll find out about it from Twitter before it’s posted on the forums or our QA team knows about it. It’s because we’ve cultivated a good relationship with our player base.”

“That’s not some extraordinary, superhuman thing to do,” Higby explained. “You just have to put yourself out there and say, ‘Hey, you know what? We’re listening. We care about what you guys think. Let us know if you see something you like, something you don’t like, and we’ll listen to it.’ And then you start getting people working as partners with you.”

This development philosophy extends into the new Roadmap program SOE is implementing for PlanetSide 2. The team has its game updates for the next six months laid out online for fans to see and discuss. Players can even make suggestions and vote on what they want to see added.

“As a developer, it’s exciting to me because it helps us vet ideas,” said Higby. “We’re putting up our ideas, we’re getting ideas from the community, a lot of times those ideas intersect, and we can integrate their thoughts or suggestions directly into a bigger system we’re already making. A lot of times they’re going to come up with ideas that are just straight up better than ours, or we’ll  find out that we put up something and get a lot of negative feedback about it before it’s even patched into the game. That’s a stumbling block that’s really easy to avoid but nobody does right now.”

Higby stressed that even for popular change recommendations that the team passes on, he feels it’s very important to still explain to the players why they did so. It’s this type of commitment to the PlanetSide faithful and the integrity of the series that helped bring about the deal with Major League Gaming.

“They’re very much engaged with their community, said Major League Gaming co-founder and CEO Sundance DiGiovanni. “They’re very concerned about maintaining and protecting the value of the IP, the experience for the player, and that’s important. It’s not just something that they’re saying, but something that they’re doing. So that made us comfortable that they wouldn’t rush into this expecting too much too soon, but that they would take the time to do it properly.”

MLG plans to work with SOE to tweak some parts of the game so it can fit the e-sports style of online broadcasting but in a way that doesn’t change things too much. This involves, for example, paring down the number of players in the MLG-featured PlanetSide 2 matches from thousands to hundreds to make them a little more spectator-friendly.

Will all of these different online, social media-infused tactics pay off for SOE? Over three million players have logged on to play PlanetSide 2 already, which looks like a pretty solid start considering the game launched back in November amid the busy holiday season. Plus, the Roadmap feature and MLG partnership are barely underway now. Chances are, players won’t have any trouble finding enough teammates and targets to fill out the hundreds (if not thousands) of slots available for matches in 2013.

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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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Don’t call it a map pack. The Revolution downloadable content for Call of Duty: Black Ops II has more than just some new multiplayer arenas.

Activision unleashed the first add-on pack for its popular first-person modern-military shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops II today on Xbox 360 for 1,200 Genuine Microsoft Points ($14.99). Developer Treyarch titled the DLC “Revolution.” It includes four new multiplayer maps, a new Zombies mode, a new Zombies map, and a new multiplayer weapon.

If you have the $49.99 Black Ops II season pass, you can boot up the game and start downloading the content at no extra charge.

The new maps include a hydroelectric power plant in Pakistan, a skate park in California, a ski resort in the French Alps, and an oasis in the Gobi desert.

Turned, the new Zombies mode, allows players to chase after player-characters as a zombie. The expansion includes a new Zombies map called Die Rise, located in the “far east.”

Finally, Revolution adds a whole new weapon into the mix. The Peacekeeper small machine gun is a light and powerful weapon. It has a fully unlockable experience and add-on path just like any of the other guns.

Activision hasn’t said when this DLC will hit PlayStation 3 or PC, but most other add-on content in the Call of Duty series hits those platforms a month after Microsoft’s console. Expect the same with Revolution.

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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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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Intel posted better-than-expected earnings for the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, as PC sales weren’t as weak as forecast and server chip sales were strong.

Analysts were expecting a consensus of 45 cents a share in the fourth quarter, down 30 percent from 64 cents a share a year ago. Those analysts expected revenue to fall 0.9 percent year-over-year to $13.76 billion for the quarter, compared to $13.89 billion a year ago. Intel posted earnings per share of 48 cents a share and revenues of $13.5 billion. So the earnings were better while revenues matched expectations.

Intel’s earnings are closely watched as a bellwether for the computer industry’s health as well as the overall tech industry. But like Microsoft, Intel is heavily weighted on chips for PCs, even as market demand shifts to smartphones and tablets. While those latter sectors are growing, PCs are believed to have fallen 5 percent in unit sales in the fourth quarter, according to market research firm Gartner. In after hours trading, Intel’s stock is up slightly 0.18 percent at $22.70 a share.

“The fourth quarter played out largely as expected as we continued to execute through a challenging environment,” said Intel president and chief executive Paul Otellini in a statement. “We made tremendous progress across the business in 2012 as we entered the market for smartphones and tablets, worked with our partners to reinvent the PC, and drove continued innovation and growth in the data center. As we enter 2013, our strong product pipeline has us well positioned to bring a new wave of Intel innovations across the spectrum of computing.”

Intel’s PC Client Group had revenue of $8.5 billion, down 1.5 percent from the previous quarter and down 6 percent from a year ago. Data Center Group revenue was $2.8 billion, up 7 percent sequentially and up 4 percent from a year ago. Other revenue was $1 billion, down 14 percent sequentially and down 7 percent from a year ago. Research and development and general sales and marketing spending was $4.6 billion, in line with the expectation of $4.5 billion. Gross margin percentage was 58 percent, 1 percentage point above the expectation of 57 percent.

“This is a good sign that didn’t slide backward in a very challenging market,” said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. “Enterprise made up for most of the shortfall of PCs. Intel had a good quarter.”

In the first quarter, Intel predicts revenue of $12.7 billion, 58 percent gross margins, and R&D and MG&A spending of $4.6 billion.

For the full year, Intel’s PC Client Group revenue was $34.3 billion, down 3 percent. Data Center Group revenue was $10.7 billion, up 6 percent. Other revenue was $4.4 billion, down 13 percent.

For the full year, Intel expects low single-digit revenue increases. Gross margin percentage is expected to be 60 percent, plus or minus a few points. R&D and MG&A is expected to be $18.9 billion, plus or minus $200 million. Capita spending for 2013 is expected to be $13 billion, plus or minus $500 million.

Intel is shifting to meet mobile device demand. It has created laptop chips that dissipate as little as 7 watts, and its code-named Haswell processor coming mid-year is expected to be even better at power consumption. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Intel said it was working with seven major vendors of smartphones who have launched Intel-based smartphones in 25 countries. But the revenue from those deals is a drop in the bucket compared to the revenues Intel gets from the PC chip business.

Having looked at designs in the works, Otellini said, “I’m genuinely excited about the new form factors.”

In the past four quarters, Intel’s revenue has been mixed. It fell 5.5 percent in the third quarter, rose 3.6 percent in the second quarter, was flat at 0.5 percent in the first quarter and soared 21.2 percent in the fourth quarter a year ago. Net income fell in each of the last three quarters. In third quarter, net income fell 14.3 percent from the year earlier. Second quarter net income was down 4.3 percent, and first quarter earnings were down 13.4 percent.

No other company besides Disney could make Disney Infinity. Aside from the obvious, the amount of resources it can pull together for this upcoming platform is staggering.

Disney Infinity is essentially an open-ended Grand Theft Auto sandbox with a Minecraft/LittleBigPlanet creative component that you can use to make their own content. You can unlock new characters, items, worlds, and more by placing stylish collectible figures and chips onto a special base. And everything is wrapped in the family-friendly ethos of the Disney films and theme parks.

Infinity launches this June for PC, all major home consoles, and mobile platforms. Leading up to the summer, the House of Mouse is making a big push to establish this new brand (read: money machine). It officially unveiled Infinity this week at the classy, Disney-owned El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, Calif. John Lasseter, the chief creative officer at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios, was on hand to talk about Infinity’s emphasis on play and creativity.

I had a chance to preview the game and learn about all its different elements. I came away with one main conclusion: Regardless of how you feel about conspicuous consumption or one company owning so many different things, you must admit that something as ambitious as Disney Infinity is only possible because one conglomerate owns all this:

Walt Disney studios: It’s no coincidence that Infinity and the upcoming Monsters University film are both coming out in June — and that the game features characters and stages based on the movie. Expect this to become the norm whenever a new high-profile Disney flick comes out. Instead of having to spend two or three years making a standalone movie-game tie-in, developer Avalanche Software can just make a new set of levels and characters to expand Infinity.

Executive producer John Vignocchi explained to me that Disney hooks Avalanche up with unprecedented access to filmmakers like Jerry Bruckheimer (Pirates of the Caribbean), Tim Burton (The Nightmare Before Christmas), and their teams.

Talk about going to the source for authenticity.

The type of audiences that Disney commands from its motion pictures is tremendous, and now each of those viewers is a new potential customer to try an inspired interactive experience with Infinity. How many people are fans first of Spyro the Dragon and other characters from the rival Skylanders series and then get into the games second? Compared to all those for the beloved Disney franchises, not many.

Since Avalanche is able to draw from all the Disney-owned properties, what else might we see in the game? One of the add-on vehicles available at the event was the Electric Mayhem bus from The Muppets. Does this mean we might see some Marvel Avengers or Star Wars content when Disney releases those blockbusters in the following years?

“The possibilities are infinite,” Vignocchi said.

Parks and resorts: Picture the iconic Sleeping Beauty castle from Disneyland with a Finding Nemo underwater twist. Now, swap out the coral decorations for some neon-laced Tron trim. Add a constantly growing interactive world around it and you start to get the idea. These are the kind of images Disney showed us to promote some of the creative potential for players using the Minecraft-inspired level-editor Toy Box.

The theme park connection is also visible in the Play Sets. These are what Disney calls the different in-game worlds (each with mission-oriented gameplay) that players can unlock with Play Set figures. The Pirates of the Caribbean level we saw had a couple of visual references to the classic ride. As Captain Jack Sparrow rowed a boat under archways and between vessels exchanging cannon fire, I instantly thought of the Disneyland attraction. No one had to tell me. The park experience is that ingrained in me, and that can be a powerful way to connect with customers

Consumer products: “We’re all game developers,” Vignocchi said. “So while we hoped and dreamed, since the inception of Infinity back in 2010, that we’d have this line of collectible figures that went with it, none of us know how to make toys.” That’s where Disney’s massive Consumer Products division comes in. This is the group that manages the mountains of official Disney licensed stuff in stores.

They help us “identify factories that we we’re going to work with for manufacturing, make sure that we’re delivering the correct file formats to the various factories, quality assurance, working with the FCC. …” said Vignocchi.

Disney’s Imagineering and other research teams also served as consultants to the special figurine technology that Avalanche conceived of. Those teams are also helping to develop what future versions of the base reader (what you use to connect the toys up to the game) can do.

Club Penguin: With user-generated content, fans inevitably will try to make levels featuring swastikas, marijuana leafs, penises, four-letter words — you name it. Hell, some rogue Disney animators even inserted a picture of a topless woman into The Rescuers. That’s apparently the kind of thing some people will always do given creative freedom.

To keep the game environment family-friendly, Disney is bringing in some pros to vet the levels that players submit. The customer support staff from the popular online children’s game Club Penguin (which reportedly has over 30 million registered user accounts) will sort through submissions and weed out the inappropriate ones before players can download any of it for Toy Box mode.

Club Penguin is aimed at kids ages 6-14 and has been around since 2005. I cannot imagine a group of people who have more experience cleaning up online f-bombs and hate speech than the folk who work there.

Avalanche Software: A quick glance at this developer’s portfolio shows that the people there definitely know how to make solid licensed games. They’ve been crafting them since Disney acquired the studio in 2005. More intriguing is the Octane development engine that they’ve been adding to for the past 11 years.

“Right now, I know that we have well over 60 different mechanics in the game,” said Vignocchi. “Whether that’s melee combat to sword fighting to projectiles, driving … it is on par with some of the biggest games out there, like Grand Theft Auto, and it is a ‘family game.’”

This foundation is essential for Avalanche to make each Play Set feel different. The Incredibles level involves a lot of superhero fighting and robot smashing, while Monsters University is more focused on stealth to scare students from rival Fear Tech. The Pirates of the Caribbean world featured galleon customization and naval gun battles. These certainly aren’t cookie-cutter platformers. Considering how many developers treat the stable cash-in of licensed properties, it’s refreshing to see Avalanche go the distance. “As game developers,” Vignocchi said, “our mantra is, we kind of take a page out of Pixar’s book, we create games for ourselves but that are accessible to kids.”

That focus will ultimately benefit fans since the freedom in Toy Box mode turns them into game makers. In a demo video, we saw how quality assurance staff could change the camera angle to 2D for a working Donkey Kong arcade game level. Another person re-created the Bowser’s Castle race track from Mario Kart 64 that players can actually drive on. When you add in the programming logic items that enable aspiring level designers to add and chain together triggers, doors, moving platforms, and more, the potential is pretty promising. Disney plans to foster user creativity by holding themed contests.

It’s that emphasis on play and imagination that appears to ground Disney Infinity. So much of this corporate synergy is a bit mind-boggling. The business model is classic Disney (movie tie-ins, collectible trinkets and toys, and so on), but it’s the gameplay that will determine whether Infinity is just a massive cash-in or the title that could finally establish Disney Interactive as a formidable, traditional game maker.

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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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Beards, puppies, and dragons: What do these three things have in common? They’re all favorites of independent developer Cleaversoft, which is about to debut its first full-blown video game (due in early 2014) at the Music and Gaming Festival (MAGFest) in Maryland today.

Dragon Runner (iOS, PC, Mac) is a runner-type game like Tiny Wings and Jetpack Joyride, and it has a smart vision for reinvigorating the genre. It’s also a big step up from the studio’s previous releases, BeardWars and PuppyWars, which are only available for iOS. Cleaversoft founder Rich Siegel thinks of them more as “navigatable mobile apps” than true “living, breathing” video games.

What makes it different

The difference shows. Dragon Runner’s premise sounds fun and exciting: you play as a bearded hero named Stanley who slays dragons in space. He runs across their backs as they’re flying, too, which distinguishes the game from other runners where your environment doesn’t move on its own. This one’s actually alive.

“I guess the big thing we’re adding right off the bat that’s different from those games is you’re running on this living, moving surface,” Siegel told GamesBeat in a phone interview. “The dragon flies up; he flies down. He’s moving up and down as you’re running on him. He wiggles. She wiggles.”

Dragon Runner also contains more depth than other runners, which often resort to recycling content. “You kind of go through a couple of areas, and there’s these repeating enemies and repeating situations,” said Siegel. “We don’t have [that]. There are random spawns as far as things being on levels. … You also have things that are triggered by not only the distance [where] you’re on the dragon but also by time.”

The team and its plans

With the small success it’s achieved with PuppyWars, which has reached over 50,000 downloads, Cleaversoft could afford to expand. Joining the former one-man team are talented artist Paul Davey (“Mattahan” on DeviantArt), who worked on Cleaversoft’s previous titles; programmer Mark Bradshaw (Lose Your Marbles); animation specialist Zach Cohen; and chiptune musician Paul Weinstein (aka “Chipocrite”), who created an original soundtrack and sound effects all on his Game Boy.

“We’ve been working on the game for about 10-and-a-half months now,” said Siegel. “We realized that we really love it more — maybe more — on the TV, so we really want to put it out on everything since that’s going to be a possibility.”

Cleaversoft’s early vision for Dragon Runner was much smaller. The developer originally planned to make it a universal app for iOS before deciding to use the Unity 3D engine, which builds codes for virtually any platform. But the painstaking design is what Cleaversoft hopes will make Dragon Runner one of the most stunning games on iOS. The studio handpainted and animated every character, frame by frame. And it’s not every day that you see a DeviantArt member (“Mattahan”) handling it all.

A familiar feeling

The studio is also looking into universal saving across platforms, but that’s only part of what makes Dragon Runner so accessible and deep. Games like Subway Surfers and Monster Dash are controllable with only one or two buttons, so they’re easy to grasp. In Dragon Runner, Stanley’s sole moves are Jump and Anchor, but these have multiple applications depending on how or when you press them. And jumping on enemies’ heads keeps you alive longer.

Dragon Runner is easy to play, but it’s not easy. “Most people will die,” said Siegel. “And it’s more so gaining skill in the game that will get you farther than necessarily upgrading things.”

Siegel referenced Spelunky as an inspiration as far as the feel of the game and how it progresses. And the PlayStation 2 title Shadow of the Colossus is also an influence — once you reach the end of the dragon’s back, you have to take out the head.

“The key thing for advancement in the game is killing at least one type of each dragon,” he said.

So why dragons? It’s just a natural fit, according to Siegel. They wanted players to feel like they had power over something much bigger than them — hence the Shadow of the Colossus vibe.

Cleaversoft even combined its love of dragons with its love of beards. A few bearded dragons appear in the game, and Stanley, the main character, has an “epic beard that’s always flapping in the wind.”

Siegel added, “We haven’t implemented it yet, but we’ve been discussing a power-up where he tosses out chunks of his beard.” Kind of like fireballs in Mario, he joked.

And Super Mario Bros. — a series Siegel has been playing his entire life — has been a huge source of inspiration. Even though the original is largely considered a platformer, Siegel says it’s a “one-runner” like his game: When you die, you start back at the beginning.

Siegel aspired to bring the depth of classic Marios into Dragon Runner. Instead of three golden coins, for example, the team put in three dragon eggs that give Stanley more power when he faces one of the beasts’ heads.

“There’s always new things [in Mario] to learn about and find, and little glitches. We just want to add in even more Easter eggs — even more crazy things to find in Dragon Runner than in a Mario game. And if we can do that in a one-runner, and really do it well … I believe in my heart of hearts that we’ll have something, and people will just love it.”

Check out a sampling of Mattahan’s work in the gallery below. Click on the first image to view its caption.

Screenshots are taken from the Dragon Runner MAGFest promo video.

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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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Hi-ya! That’s the noise I make when I karate chop stuff in life and while playing developer Jordan Mechner’s remake of Karateka.

Karateka is a 1984 martial arts brawler that Mechner originally released for the Apple II. He’s updated the graphics and the gameplay for modern systems and already unleashed it on Valve’s Steam for PC, Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade, and Sony’s PlayStation Network. Today, the developer launched the mobile version designed for iPhone and iPad on the iTunes App Store for $2.99.

This is the first Karateka release for Apple hardware in 28 years, and Mechner addresses that in this video:

GamesBeat talked to Mechner in November about working on the Karateka remake.

“It was refreshing where it was small enough where I got to talk with every member of the team every day,” said Mechner. “We wanted it small because at its heart, we wanted Karateka to be a small game that you could play in one session.”

Karateka is a fighting game with a deep rhythm mechanic. Each opponent throws kicks and punches in a sort of groove, and the player must defend against those to power up a counterattack.

You can read more of our interview with Mechner 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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Before Dead Space came out, I loved watching the developer diaries because they showed just how much thought and care was being put into the game. They’d talk about how the designs for the Necromorphs told a grotesque story of pain: bodies twisting, bones breaking, and skin tearing. And that story was what made them so terrifying. You could see how the transformation happened just by looking, and that was my favorite part.

Now watch the new trailer for Dead Space 3.

OK.

Let’s just ignore how tonally different it feels from Dead Space for a minute. Let’s ignore how it feels claustrophobic not from tight, dangerous corridors where you’re never more than a few feet from a monster viciously stalking you but from too many people, too much dialogue, and too much story. Let’s even ignore how the power dynamic has shifted from the first game’s trailers, which simply showed all the gruesome ways Isaac can die to all the empowering ways he (and Carver) can kill.

Let’s instead focus on what the hell was that?

Seriously, just look at this thing:

What is that? I mean, I guess it used to be a baby judging by the size, but what was the transformation process? Did it just get overtaken by black goo like in Spider-Man 3 and have an allergic reaction on its back? Does it feed through the top of the baby’s skull now? What?

Or this:

I don’t even know what I’m looking at anymore. I don’t know which direction this thing is pointing. How can I possibly be scared or grossed out by it if I can’t even tell what it is? It’s just some dumb mass of flesh.

And check this guy out:

OK, this is just getting embarrassing. The guy looks like he fell out of a PlayStation-era Resident Evil. Is he seriously holding a pickaxe? They don’t even use pickaxes anymore in Dead Space — that’s what plasma cutters are for. And why are his eyes glowing? Ooooooh, scary. I’m shaking in my zero-gravity boots.

Remember in the first game, when you watch the body of the Ishimura’s captain get turned and you witness firsthand exactly how the Necromorphs are made? Remember all the care that was put into the opening scene of the second game, where a guy gets transformed just inches from your face?

Those were stellar scenes that legitimized the Necromorph presence in that world, forgoing the typical notions of “nothing is scarier than the unknown” for a detailed look into the game’s monster closet. I loved it. The way Dead Space 3 seems to be tossing all that believability out the window in favor of visually incomprehensible beasts, crusty zombies with glowing eyes, and “human enemies [with] guns” is really disappointing to see.

I want to be excited for Dead Space 3, but everything the developers have shown off has inspired zero confidence in me. Here’s hoping that it doesn’t turn out as bad as that trailer makes it look.

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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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So you bought the first five Tomb Raider games that recently hit Steam, and your collection is complete. Hang on, treasure hunters. You’re still missing a few.

The early Tomb Raider action-adventure games are available on a variety of modern platforms: PlayStation Network and PC via GOG.com and most recently Steam. But previous Tomb Raider developer Core Design also released a number of add-ons and standalone expansions for PC that are nowhere to be seen. Unless you own the original discs, you can’t play them even if you find a download online.

This extra content is substantial, too. The first of the Tomb Raider Gold games for PC and Mac arrived two years after the release of the original Tomb Raider. This version contained four bonus levels on a second disc: “Shadow of the Cat,” where female lead Lara Croft searches for a tomb devoted to the Egyptian cat goddess Bastet, and “Unfinished Business,” where she ventures back to Atlantis to destroy, well, mutant creatures guarding an alien hatchery.

Tomb Raider II Gold featured five bonus levels (“The Golden Mask”), The Lost Artifact was a brief sequel to Tomb Raider III, British newspaper The Times released an exclusive level for The Last Revelation in collaboration with publisher Eidos, and Chronicles sold with a level editor.

We asked Stellalune (who goes by her pen name online, not her real name), the owner of the popular and long-running Stella’s Tomb Raider fan site, whether it’s possible to play these lost levels another way. She doesn’t think so.

“In a perfect world, all the expansions would be available on all systems,” she said. “But sadly, I don’t make those decisions.”

Are the extras even worth it? “I really enjoyed all the Tomb Raider bonus levels, and I think they’re just as well designed and fun to play as the main games,” she said. “[They're] also just as weak on plot, but I don’t really care about that much. I just like exploring, solving puzzles, et cetera. That said, I don’t think any of them are essential to the Tomb Raider experience.”

She added, “I’m still a little cranky that they never released the Xbox 360 Underworld bonus levels for other systems since those add-ons actually do add to the plot of the main game.

“Meanwhile, there are also tons of amazing user-created games done with the Tomb Raider Level Editor. I haven’t had a chance to play even a tiny fraction of what’s available, but sites like trle.net, skribblerz.com, [and others] are great places to start if you’re interested in tons of free Tomb Raider.”

GOG.com’s Trevor Longino confirmed that the site does offer the extra level in Revelations, at least.

“We signed the rights to the Tomb Raider 1-3 Pack, which is what we released,” he said. “We did not sign the Gold editions of Tomb Raider One and Two, but we’re looking into the possibility of adding them to our catalog in the future.”

We also reached out to Steam but have yet to receive a response.

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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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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

You have to hand it to Microsoft. The hardware running Windows software has become more diverse with the introduction of Windows 8. And one of the most intriguing new designs for a computer comes from Sony. The Vaio Tap 20 Mobile Desktop lives in a space between a touchscreen tablet and a full-fledged all-in-one PC. The machine is a pretty good choice if you’re looking for a family PC with multiple personalities.

The machine is just the sort of device that could get people interested in using a PC again, even in a world of iPads, iPhones, and all sorts of other devices. It is just the sort of thing that PC advocates had in mind when they began thinking about reinventing the PC in the age of portable electronics.

The Vaio Tap 20 has a 20-inch touchscreen that can be detached from its stand. You unplug it from the wall and carry it around the house as if it were just another tablet computer. It runs for 2 hours and 45 minutes on battery power, or you can plug it into a wall with a laptop-size power cord/AC adapter.

The possibilities for its use defy simple classification. It’s not just a kitchen computer. You can use it with a wireless keyboard and mouse on your kitchen table, or you can use it as an electronic artist’s canvas. It can be an ever-changing board game with a glass surface instead of cardboard. And you use it on battery power and stay connected on Wi-Fi as you move from one part of the house to another. I’m using one (Sony sent me a loaner) to write this review right now, near the rest of the family, whereas I would normally be stuck all by myself in an office.

The ins and outs

The screen measures 19.75 inches across by 12.inches high, and it is 1.5 inches thick. The machine weighs under 11.25 pounds. That makes it heavy enough that you’ll get plenty nervous if your young child carries it from one room to another. It has indentations on its sides that make it easier to carry. The stand is attached to the back of the device and is sturdy enough to support the machine at any angle you prefer.

This simple flexible stand gives the computer multiple user scenarios. If you tilt it all the way up, it’s just like an all-in-one desktop. If you tilt it at an angle, it invites you to touch the screen, or kick back to watch a movie. If you lay it flat on the table, you can allow multiple people to gather around the edges and use it at the same time.

The machine is made for collaboration because it has a wide-viewing angle, so more than one person can see what’s on the screen at the same time. The Tap 20 uses Sony’s Mobile Bravia Engine 2, which delivers good picture quality on an in-plane switching (IPS) panel. The Bravia technology reduces noise artifacts in videos that you watch at a resolution of 1,600 x 900. The battery is removable.

Sony’s one-touch function lets you listen to music and view photos across an array of near field communications (NFC) wireless devices. You touch one device against another to establish a wireless connection. If you happen to have a Sony Xperia smartphone, you can tap it against the Tap 20 and then transfer a YouTube video that you’re watching on the small screen to the Vaio’s bigger screen. The machine has a webcam that you can also use with simple gesture controls.

The Tap 20 has advanced audio technologies, including Sony’s Clear Phase, XLoud, and other technologies. It comes in black or white.

Apps at your fingertips

The Windows 8 touch-oriented, tile-based user interface makes it easy to scroll through different apps and try them out. It is colorful, full of visually appealing icons, and the tiles are big enough to hit accurately even if you’re using your thumb. You can get to the Start menu easily if you tap the icon in the middle of the screen at the bottom. Or you can swipe sideways from the edge of the screen to draw up a set of navigation choices, such as search. By virtue of its being a Windows 8 machine, the Vaio Tap 20 is easy to learn for any computer user.

Sony partnered with digital arts software firm ArtRage on the finger-painting app, which comes with the PC for no extra cost. The ArtRage Studio offers natural painting tools such as oil paints, watercolors, and utilities that make drawing with a finger or stylus simple. You can trace a pattern using your finger or stylus.

Sony also included Sony Pictures’ My Daily Clip, a movie-trivia game that lets four players gather around the Tap 20 PC to watch a Sony Pictures movie clip and answer trivia questions to gain points they can trade in for prizes. You can also use the family scheduling app to post memos or calendar reminders for family members.

I played with a drawing program called Family Paint (pictured at top). With that program, you can fingerpaint with someone else at the same time, coloring pages or playing simple games like tic-tac-toe. I was also mildly entertained by PuzzleTouch, where you can put together the pieces of a puzzle using your fingers.

Pluses and minuses

Pricing for the base machine starts at $879. That’s a hefty price, considering it comes with a somewhat slow, low-voltage Intel Core i3 1.8-gigahertz processor. You can tell the processor is a little weak as you wait for it to switch from one app to another, or just from one screen to another. The machine wakes up fast, but app-loading time is noticeable.

Like other Windows 8 machines, the machine can be used with keyboard, mouse, and touchscreen at the same time. If you want to switch windows from one open web page to another, you can simply swipe your finger across the screen. That’s a lot easier than using a mouse to accomplish the same task. The benefits of using a machine like this include the ability to run Microsoft Office, with all of its bells and whistles.

Other points for and against: The screen is drip resistant and has a drain in case you spill something on it. The machine uses Intel integrated graphics, so it’s not going to be satisfying for hardcore gamers.

Conclusion

The good thing is that this machine is unique and could be quite appealing to people who fit its usage scenarios. If you’re an artist, you’ll like it. If you like playing simple board games with the kids, you’ll like it. If you find touchscreens easier to use than a mouse sometimes, you’ll like it. And if you want to stay in touch with the family as they move from one room in the house to another, you’ll like it’s versatility. It is a well-designed machine that makes the PC more personal. It’s for people who want something different from the boring old Windows PC.

The Vaio Tap 20 is available for shipping shortly. You can order it at Sony’s online site for $879.99 for the base model with an Intel Core i3 processor and four gigabytes of random access memory (RAM) and a 500-gigabyte hard drive. A $999 version includes an Intel Core i5 processor, and an $1,199 version has an Intel Core i7 processor. The more expensive versions have bigger hard drives and more main memory. If you buy it, you’ll definitely be better off with a more expensive model that can get rid of some of the lag in loading apps and switching screens.

Editor’s note: This review has some limited story spoilers.

My arms feel like they’re permanently vibrating from all of the machine-gunning I’ve been doing lately. I’ve played just about every aspect of Call of Duty: Black Ops II, and I have the sore wrists to prove it. As the holidays approach, Activision Blizzard is launching its ninth installment in the Call of Duty military combat series, and this one is as violent, action-packed, and as full of adrenaline as ever before.

So much for peace on Earth.

Each year, Activision generates more than a billion dollars in sales from Call of Duty games. In order to hold the title of the fastest-selling game in history, the developers at Activision’s Treyarch studio have to keep trigger-happy gamers feeling like the game has something new to offer. On this front, Treyarch has delivered. Call of Duty: Black Ops II is loaded with so much content that its $60 price seems like a bargain, and everyone else in the industry is going to have to meet a high bar if they want to hang on to the attention of gamers as well as this title does.

This game has so many elements that it is four games in one. It includes the single-player story campaign with 11 missions. On top of that, it has five single-player Strike Force missions, the Zombies cooperative play game, and multiplayer gaming with 16 maps and several new modes at the outset. The single-player campaign may keep you busy for eight hours or so (I played it on the Hardened difficulty (which is one notch above Normal), and it kept me busy for about 12 hours), but the whole package is meant to keep you occupied with Call of Duty so that it becomes a round-the-clock, year-round part of your life.

Let’s give a rundown of each of the major elements.

Single-player campaign

The narrative spans more than a generation, from the 1960s to the year 2025. The story from Oscar-winning screenwriter David S. Goyer depicts a decades-long struggle to stop a mad man from causing a world war. At the outset, you meet Raul Menendez, the eventual villain, as a child. He goes through a horrendous experience that shows how he came to hate America and turn into a murderous psychotic. The characters from the original Call of Duty: Black Ops — Frank Woods and Alex Mason — try to stop Menendez, but each time he escapes and leaves a trail of bodies.

By 2025, Menendez reaches his psychotic potential. He builds himself a worldwide terrorist empire. He seizes control of the supply of “rare earth elements,” or metals found in most electronic products. That is a key chokepoint in the world’s electronics supply chain, and it also gives him a path to launch a cyberattack. Then Menendez executes an improbable but ingenious plot to hijack the American military’s fleet of drones. He destroys Los Angeles and then sends the drone fleet to attack China’s biggest cities, threatening to draw the superpowers into a war. And he does this all because he wants to get back at those who emotionally and physically scarred him for life in his childhood. A small group of “black operations” soldiers, including David Mason, the son of the first game’s hero, Alex Mason, stands in the way of Menendez.

The story can be hard to follow, particularly when Menendez drops out of the picture. Treyarch constructed this tale on top of compelling characters (such as Woods and Alex Mason) and gripping and gruesome scenes. And the story’s scope is so sweeping that it exposes the player to what the world’s battlefields of 2025 might be like. The story makes you think about how far you would go to stop a man like Menendez. Like any good cinematic video game, it makes you think.

It has a couple of disturbing parts in which you play the enemy, and those are sure to raise alarms among concerned parents (and media and politicians looking to score some cheap points). You have no choice but to go on a murderous rampage, shooting the good guys or even civilians. As the player pursuing the villain, you make some critical ethical decisions about whether to shoot a captive or show him mercy. Often you don’t have a “right” decision. The story has multiple endings, adding some variety and replayability to the campaign.

Strike Force

Strike Force is a difficult new subgame where you can control teams of drones, armored robots, and infantry squads to take objectives on a map. The Strike Force missions throw you into an open-world sandbox. You can play it like a real-time strategy game, viewing the action from a commander’s view. But you can also tap your controller button and assume command of an individual if you wish. You can play as a drone, a Claw (a mech that looks like a bear), or a soldier.

You can play these matches as a micromanager, fighting as a single soldier. But if you don’t pop out and view your assets, you may frequently find that you’re lone warrior is the last one left. The trick is being able to focus on the key action even as multiple firefights erupt on the ground. Strike Force missions has five missions, not counting a tutorial, and they’re all pretty hard, even though you’re playing against computer-controlled enemies.

In contrast to the Zombies cooperative mode, the Strike Force outcomes are integrated into the story in some way. But I didn’t really grasp how it fit.

Zombies

In Black Ops II’s Zombies, Treyarch has introduced a cooperative mode that is like a campaign unto itself. For the first time in the Call of Duty franchise, Zombies comes with its own version of a story. You journey through a wasteland in Tranzit, where you ride a bus from location to location, trying to survive and praying you don’t run out of ammo. Always darkly lit, Tranzit is like an open world for the undead.

You team up with other players and take turns popping the heads off zombies. These zombies aren’t dumb biters. They charge at you and set themselves ablaze in hopes of engulfing you. That makes them a lot more terrifying, and it’s more satisfying when you blow their heads off.

But if you can make it back to the bus and keep the zombies off you, then you can ride on to the next stop. You really do need four players to defend a piece of ground or keep the zombies off the bus. It really helps to communicate via headset so that the more experienced players can guide the newbies — or just to hear the screams and curses when the last survivor dies and the game ends.

Black Ops II’s Zombies mode also has extensive stat tracking and leaderboards. It has a skill-based matchmaking system and modes such as Grief (humans vs. humans vs. zombies) and Survival, where four players have to survive never-ending hordes in select locations from within Tranzit.

Multiplayer combat

The multiplayer game comes with its own Bootcamp combat tutorial, so you to play with bots and learn the maps and tactics before go against people who quit work so that they can play Call of Duty full-time. Multiplayer is fun, but it has the same pluses and minues that make hardcore gamers swear by it and neophytes fearful of it.

Treyarch succeeded in remaking multiplayer with different game modes, such as Multi-team, where as many as 18 players fight on six different teams. Another addition is Hardpoint. In this mode, you take and hold a section of the map while the enemy tries to take it away. Every few minutes, the Hardpoint moves to another location, and you have to assault it again. No other multiplayer map has a way to draw players into a massive firefight like this one. Nothing about it is realistic, but it sure is fun. It gets rid of the waiting time that always occurs just as you’re about to get into combat. This is like combat all the time.

With 16 maps and many different ways to play them, the combinations are endless. And once you get tired of what Treyarch has created for you, you can fashion your own custom games and invite your friends to play them. You can also try your hand at eSports via League Play, which offers skill-based matchmaking so your bracket will include people who are a good match.

The multiplayer has 55 levels. Once you hit 55, you earn yourself Prestige. And you can earn the Prestige rank 10 times over. You don’t have to agonize about starting over. You can now restart the progression with all of the weapon experience and earned attachments you already have. If you hit level 55 10 times over, then you become the Prestige Master and unlock everything special in the game.

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Windows 8 crashes 55 percent less and is 84 percent less frustrating than Windows 7, according to a new report.

PC optimization software Soluto helps over three million people in 182 countries get more out of their PCs. Along the way, the company learns a lot about what people do … and how their software works. Fortunately for us, the company shared that data a couple of days ago.

Here are some of the highlights:

European nations such as Hungary and Portugal are adopting Windows 8 quickly, with almost 9 percent adoption in Hungary and 5.29 percent in Portugal. China is also moving quickly, with more than seven percent of Windows users already on Microsoft’s new operating system. Americans, however, are adopting more of wait and see approach, with only 3.4 percent of Windows users updating.

In addition, with the touch-friendliness of Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows 8 is penetrating the tablet market much more effectively than Windows 7. For example, while less than two percent of Windows 7 machines are tablets, almost five percent of Windows 8 machines are, in fact, tablet computers — before Surface has really had a chance to make an impact yet.

Not actually a Windows 8 install disc

Interestingly, desktop use is also slightly higher, with almost 51 percent of Windows 8 installs being on a desktop PC, versus 48.5 percent of Windows 7 installs being on a laptop.

Some apps, Soluto found, crash less frequently on Windows 8.

That includes Google Drive, which is the most common app crash culprit on Windows 7, crashing for almost a third of all users (I guess companies can be great at everything). In Windows 8, however, Google Drive crashes for only one percent of users. TuneUp Utilities is another in the much-improved category, moving from crashing for 20 percent of its users on Windows 7 to five percent on Windows 8.

Some apps, of course, crash more on Windows 8. Facebook Video Calling, for instance, crashes at least once a month for a rather unlucky 13 percent of its users, compared to just one percent on Windows 7. And Apple’s iTunes software, often maligned for being bloated, crashes almost twice as much on Window 8.

Soluto also tracks PC brands that users have purchase. The top PC brands being used by Windows 8 early adopters are HP and Dell, with most than 30 percent of the market, followed in fourth and fifth spot by Asus and Acer:

1. 16.83% – HP
2. 14.65% – Dell
3. 10.71% – Gigabyte
4. 10.32% – Asus
5. 8.72% – Acer

One thing about crashing apps: Third-party developers don’t have a lock on them. Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer still crashes about the same amount on Windows 8 as it always has.

photo credit: gynti_46 via photopin cc, Robert Couse-Baker via photopin cc

When Crysis first came out, only gamers lucky enough to own a powerful PC could play it. Today, it’s also available on consoles, but publisher Electronic Arts and developer Crytek want to give you a better reason to revisit the past.

Preorder Crysis 3 and you’ll receive a free download for the original game on your choice of platform: PC, Xbox 360, or PlayStation 3, while supplies last. For anyone who’s had their eye on Crysis 3 but is hesitant to jump into a third entry in a series, this deal is hard to pass up.

The first Crysis plunges players into a conflict between the U.S. and North Korea, both sides fighting to claim a mysterious artifact of extraterrestrial origin.

“The release of Crysis in 2007 was truly a watershed moment for first-person shooters and raised the bar on cutting-edge visuals and gameplay, and we could not be more thrilled to include the original game as a preorder bonus,” said Cevat Yerli, the chief executive officer of Crytek, in a press release today. “Building upon the framework laid by the previous games, Crysis 3 offers unparalleled tactical freedom as players experience New York City’s Seven Wonders and adapt to the truly unique challenges they present. By blending the best elements of the series so far, we’ve created an action experience that we believe will blow fans away.”

The Seven Wonders represent the distinct environments of the New York City Liberty Dome, a collection of rainforests, swamps, and rivers in place of the city. As the “Prophet,” the player explores the treacherous Nanodome, which the Cell Corporation created in your absence.

Those who preorder Crysis 3 will also receive the Hunter Edition (a $59.99 value), which gives players immediate access to the Predator bow, its attachments and bonus skin, three exclusive dog tags, and the Hunter Nanosuit module enhancement for the super-suit. They’ll also enjoy a boost in experience points up to level 5 in multiplayer.

Crysis 3 releases in February 2013 for PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.

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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 biggest puzzle-platformers of recent years — like Limbo and Super Meat Boy — are punishing in their difficulty. Take even a single hit and it’s game over. They’re also endlessly creative, constantly testing players with new angles on previous challenges and surprises in gameplay. Now, Might and Delight’s debut title Pid, or Planet in Distress (out today for Xbox Live Arcade and Steam), seeks to reproduce that winning formula as it leaves the fate of a world with a young boy.

What you’ll like

Otherworldly colors and sounds
All Kurt wants to do is go home. When the bus drops him off at a remote planet by accident, he learns the return trip will take a little longer — traffic to and from the planet has completely stopped, save for its newest little visitor. The boy proceeds to explore his surroundings only to become embroiled in a conflict that concerns the welfare of the planet and its robot inhabitants, who are helpless to the changes and evil-doings going on around them.

Life on the planet might be tragic, but the sights and sounds are wonderful. The game begins (and ends) with a wordless series of illustrations set to sound, which gives the story its context and mood. From there, Kurt journeys to locations like an old castle, an opera house, and an eerie cave and underground maze. The colors are gorgeous, especially in areas outdoors; the hazy palette blends together beautifully even as each part of the environment stands out from the rest. This effect gives Pid a sense of childlike wonder, like we’re viewing these scenes through a veil of starlight. It helps to emphasize how brave one small boy can be to take on a mission this big. Kurt has amazing spirit, and his determination to find a way home brings hope and aid to a desperate people.

His adventure unfolds to the beat of an excellent soundtrack, which seems to reinvent itself each time Kurt discovers a new region of the planet. The drums, bass, guitar, and saxophone come together in an easygoing and energetic way — it’s not intrusive, but it’s as hard to ignore as the ever-changing, gorgeous environments.

Challenge for one player or two
Pid is tough even on Normal, the only available difficulty setting at the start (the other is Hard, which you unlock upon completion). Luckily, the game lets you power through its stressful scenarios with a friend, a preferable way to play any puzzle-platformer of this caliber.

And this one has plenty of challenges and content. I clocked in just shy of 15 hours, but only after dying 648 times, according to the end-of-game stats. Puzzles require the use of your growing inventory of weapons and items — the beam, which bounces off walls and can float you in any direction; bombs and timed bombs; the slingshot, for when you need to trigger a beam on a distant surface; and more — but the tasks always differ. Pid even introduces new enemies and traps toward the end (like the flying black domino-shaped foes pictured above, which cling to your light beams), a rarity for some puzzle-platformers.

What you won’t like

Unforgiving gameplay
While Pid can be fun at times, be prepared for it to wear heavily on your patience and tolerance for frustration. As hard as the puzzles are, the bosses are even tougher. You’ll face six of them, and each is more aggravating than the last. You can spend most of your time during these fights just surviving and only whittle away at the boss’s health before dying. The mechanics are imprecise — one showdown, for example, involves climbing your opponent’s shoulder while avoiding missiles, but Kurt can get stuck on his anatomy. More than one confrontation turns into a chase scene, and another requires you to make a perfect landing or else spend minutes doing little more than avoiding enemies and their fire. The chances of dying are great, and they’re too slim for success.

It wouldn’t be as much of a problem if the game stocked you up on health at the start of a fight, but too often you have little to no armor by the time you reach the boss. You can buy life vests at vending machines, trading in the star constellations you collect (which play a greater role in the story), but it’s easy to lose them as you take damage. Considering the duration of these battles, a little extra health could go a long way.

Occasional drops in quality
As hard as Pid works to keep play fresh and interesting, it’s not immune to repeating the same tricks. A good handful of scenes could have been cut, and it’s here that players will notice the repetition — too many laser-based or missile-based obstacle courses set back to back, for instance, with no scenic view.

Pid also resorts to a few fetch quests, but it’s better off without them. They only feel misplaced in a game that’s largely about pressing forward, not running around in circles, lost. If players have to repeat rooms they already died on just to gather X number of batteries, that’s when they abandon the game.

In addition, while Pid has a strong checkpoint system — crucial for puzzle-platformers where the player death count is in the hundreds — half the time it never works the way you need it to. It might, for instance, reload the game at a previous scene or start the player off at a point they’ve long passed.

Conclusion

Pid is just as atmospheric as Fez and as grueling as Braid, but it’s the little details of its execution that keep it from flawlessness. An Easy mode would be a huge boon if only the developer had added one; the boss fights are unnecessarily tedious and slow; and the health and item system is too unreliable (why spend stars when you’re just going to lose your new power-ups before the real trouble hits?).

But it is a quality puzzle-platformer, and one with excellent narrative, graphics, and music. Most of the mistakes you make belong to you, not Pid — no matter how much you swear at it.

Score: 75/100

Pid was released for Xbox Live Arcade and Steam on Oct. 31. The publisher provided GamesBeat with an XBLA code of the game for the purpose of this review.

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

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Being part of an independent studio doesn’t mean letting go of big ideas. One team is challenging the distinctions between indie and triple-A game quality in its approach to development.

“Compared to other indie devs, I’d say that, mentality-wise, we find ourselves more like a larger indie studio. But in execution, we’re very much a small team,” Refract Studios’ chief executive officer Jordan Hemenway told GamesBeat.

The 11-person Refract team got its start when three DigiPen Institute of Technology graduates worked on one hit game: Nitronic Rush, an “experimental survival driving game” available for PC as a free download online. The three founders — Jason Nollan, the physics/gameplay programmer on Nitronic Rush; Kyle Holdwick, the producer and gameplay programmer; and Hemenway, the composer, sound designer, and public relations person — are now collaborating with a new team on a new project, a spiritual successor called Distance.

“One of our biggest goals at Refract is to push the boundaries of what it means to be game,” said Hemenway. “Most of the games we’ve done in the past were a lot more abstract and experimental, and when starting the company, we were planning on doing something much more along those lines. What made us turn around back toward another racing game was the chance to innovate on atmosphere and the world design within an action-driven context.”

To understand what inspires Distance, you have to look at its predecessor. Nitronic Rush has achieved over 700,000 downloads and 1.1 million play sessions thanks to the team’s efforts to push press coverage and foster a community around the game. But what exactly makes it so popular with players? The team has given that question a lot of thought, and Hemenway admits that the catchy design probably helped, among other factors.

“I think that vehicles by their very nature are pretty universally understood, and we tried our best to not have the game rely on any certain cultural bias or understanding,” he said. “According to our analytics, the U.S. only comprises about a third of our players, which really showed us that the work we put into marketing the game was nothing compared to power of people sharing it via word of mouth.”

Nitronic Rush originated as the group’s junior year project at DigiPen. Hemenway says they conducted a playtest almost every week and were able to use academic licenses for the software needed to create the game, which eliminated cost as a potential obstacle. After 17 months of development, they shipped the first version on Nov. 11, 2011. Since then, they’ve released four huge content updates for free.

But just because it was a class assignment doesn’t mean Nitronic Rush is the work of amateurs. “All of us graduated with a ‘B.S. in Computer Science in Real-Time Interactive Simulation’ degree, which is about intense as it sounds,” said Hemenway. “The majority of our projects at DigiPen were required to be built from scratch, so we’ve had incredible practice building everything from low-level graphics engines to various high-level tools.” Now, they’re learning to use powerful tools like Unity’s premade engine.

Hemenway said the teachers at DigiPen encourage students to keep working on a game and submit it to the Indie Game Challenge and Independent Games Festival competitions. The team’s five full-time members contributed 30 hours to 40 hours a week to the project on top of their 15 credits of classes. Their dedication shows: Nitronic Rush is this year’s Indie Game Challenge Winner for the Gamer’s Choice Award, an Independent Games Festival Honorable Mention for both Technical Excellence and Student Showcase, and an Independent Propeller Awards Finalist in three categories, among other acknowledgments.

The result is what the team calls an experimental survival driving game — a label designed to get people playing without seeing the words “racing game” and automatically thinking triple-A. “We ended up using that terminology because we wanted to properly set expectations for players before they played the game,” said Hemenway. “We were concerned that calling it specifically a racing game could be troublesome since many people would expect a full-fledged triple-A racing game instead of our smaller but more experimental game. We also used the term ‘survival driving’ instead of ‘racing,’ since there technically isn’t any racing between you and other opponents. The real focus is using your car’s capabilities to outmaneuver obstacles placed in your path.”

Nitronic Rush is similar to arcade racers like Wipeout and Rush 2049, but Refract Studios wants Distance to be that and more — combining elements of games like Limbo, Half-Life 2, and Halo. “From the beginning of Distance’s development, we [wanted] to draw on those inspirations to develop a world with a more mysterious purpose and function. It’s something we don’t often see in the racing genre, and we’ve had so much fun creating atmosphere-focused games like Solace and Solstice [as DigiPen students]. It’s a great chance to finally bring those undertones into a new context.”

Since Distance is the team’s first outing as Refract Studios, they want to build a strong audience before people even start playing. That means turning to Kickstarter. They’re aiming for a $125,000 funding goal.

“In many ways, I feel like we’re releasing the game since we’re putting together so much content from the beginning,” said Hemenway. “We’ve been developing a prototype for the past few months to see how much fun the game would be with multiplayer — as well as test the waters of using a premade engine — so we’re excited to finally show some of that gameplay.”

Refract also sought out other teams in their local Seattle area that had used Kickstarter and tried to learn from their successes — and failures. “Overall, there are lots of little things we’re doing to help, but we’re putting a lot of focus on being as transparent with consumers as possible while reaching out to those who’ve been so supportive in the past,” said Hemenway.

Rewards for backers include the standard fare — digital copies of the game, the soundtrack, posters, T-shirts, and in-game rewards like an exclusive car — as well as more distinct bonuses, like the chance to have a personal billboard or monument in the game world, own a completely custom vehicle of your choosing, or design a stunt for the car.

“Distance, in many ways, is taking what people loved in Nitronic Rush and cranking it up to the next level,” said Hemenway. “We’re keeping most of the core mechanics from Nitronic Rush intact, with the ability to boost, jump, rotate, and fly throughout the city. Several fan-requested features are now in place, such as LAN/online multiplayer, a powerful in-game level editor, several new game modes, and support for both PC and Mac.”

Working on Distance full time — as opposed to finding time for development in between classes, as they did with Nitronic Rush — means the team can ensure early on that different gameplay aspects work well together. This should lead to a more polished experience overall.

“We ended up doing some interesting experimentation in Nitronic Rush, where the music actually changed in accordance with how you used your abilities,” said Hemenway. “We also tied visuals to the audio in many parts of the level, where elements would pulse and move to the music to help connect [it] with the visuals of the world. Distance is very similar in that we’re dynamically mixing the musical and visual elements throughout the entire experience. Most of what we did with music experimentation in Nitronic Rush was done very near to the end of development, so this time we’re developing audio analysis tech early to push this part of the game even further.”

He added, “We’re also taking modes from the original game and rebuilding them in the new world. One of the most popular modes from Nitronic Rush was Hardcore mode, where you survive the track by traversing it parkour-style. It was something that we stumbled upon halfway through development of Nitronic Rush, but now we’re designing tracks and vehicles from the beginning to use it properly.”

Refract is currently targeting releases on PC and Mac, with the possibility of other platforms later on. Hemenway is looking optimistically toward the future, especially where indie games are concerned — and his studio seems to fit right in to that vision.

“A lot of changes are the on the horizon,” he said. “The void between $15 indie games and $60 triple-A games can’t last for long now that many indie teams are blurring the lines quality-wise. I’d imagine more teams will find themselves aiming for that gap and creating more innovative content on a grander scale. … Perhaps more [triple-A] studios will look at these small teams and start to incorporate their mentalities into their workflow.”

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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 release of Torchlight II is only a day away, but from spring to fall, the game has faced competition with Diablo III and now another action role-playing game, Borderlands 2.

Runic Games might be caught in between Blizzard and Gearbox Software, but chief executive officer Max Schaefer doesn’t sound worried about handing Torchlight II to the masses while in those companies’ shadows.

“Our shipping date is not determined by strategic thinking about when other games are coming out,” Schaefer told GamesBeat in a phone interview. “It’s really when we’re done with the game. And we took all that extra time to polish the heck out of the game and make sure that it’s exactly what we want it to be. So that’s why I’m confident now — I’m confident in our game. And where we fall in respect to other games is kind of random, and you can’t control that.”

Schaefer said that the nearly side-by-side release with Borderlands 2 doesn’t make “as big of a difference as people think.” He credited Blizzard with driving millions of new people into the action-RPG market, which wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.

“I think it’s a good time for action-RPGs because we got Path of Exile coming in, Borderlands 2, and Grim Dawn,” he said. “It’s good. I think there’s a symbiotic relationship between action-RPGs rather than a competition. So the more good ones there are, the more people get into the genre and check out the other ones. … I actually think it’s even done good for us just by bringing more people in and getting them enthusiastic about action-RPGs. And obviously, we offer some different things than they all do, so we’re happy to have the crowds.”

Runic hopes its design decisions with Torchlight II will interest more people even with Diablo III and Borderlands II as alternatives. “Instead of trying to have a secure economy, which is 100 percent cheat-free and makes you be online all the time, we decided to be more open with our architecture,” said Schaefer. “We let you play offline single-player. We let you use the same character between single-player and Internet-playing, and we also have local area network play, so you don’t even have to have the Internet to play with your friends. And we’re releasing our development tools with the game to encourage the modding community to come up with cool new variants. The other thing we offer is the $20 price tag. It makes it kind of a no-brainer purchase because the risk is so low. And because our game runs on pretty much anyone’s machines — it’s got very low min specs — I think we’ve got a lot of things lined up to attract a lot of people.”

The developer has used the past four months to make the game even better. “We’ve basically been content-complete for a couple months now,” said Schaefer, “What we’ve done is gone to the beginning of the game, went to each boss battle and champion battle, and made sure they were really fun and unique. [We] made sure all the areas were spawned correctly with the right variety of monsters, that skills were all interesting, and that it was playing up to what we wanted it to be like.”

Runic also implemented feedback from the community and beta participants from the spring — revamping the skill system based on players’ preferences. “It’s all this time at the end of the project where you put the extra polish into it that makes all the difference,” said Schaefer.

But the kind of criticism that comes postlaunch is going to be the hardest to swallow. “I know we’re gonna get people who love our game, and that’s gonna feel awesome, and there’s gonna be people who are critical of it, and that’s gonna hurt,” he said.

Schaefer joked that he’d deal with the onslaught “by drinking heavily,” but in relation to Torchlight II, he said, “You take seriously what people are saying about your game, and you try to look back at what you’ve done and see if there’s something [where] you can put out a patch and fix it. But one of the cool things about our game is that we are releasing our mod tools with the game, so if people don’t like something about it, it’s something that can be fixed pretty easily.”

Torchlight II releases tomorrow on Steam for PC.

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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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Dynamic random access memory chips have served as the main memory in personal computers since the 1980s. But for the first time since that decade, PCs no longer account for the majority of demand for the memory chips, known as DRAM or RAM.

Market researcher IHS iSuppli reported that only 49 percent of new DRAM chips were used in PCs in the second quarter. By the end of 2013, PCs will account for just 42.8 percent of DRAM production. The rest will go into smartphones, tablet computers, and other devices, according to iSuppli. Tablets and smartphones are eating into sales of PC desktops and laptops, hurting the profits of companies such as Intel, Microsoft, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard.

Microsoft hopes to inspire a resurgence of the PC with the launch of the Windows 8 operating system on Oct. 26. DRAM chips are extremely fast at storing and transferring data, but they lose their memory when the power is turned off. They can be used to store computer programs and data while a computer is turned on, but permanent data is stored in NAND flash memory chips or hard disk drives. Increasingly, smartphones and tablets are becoming the nexus of computing. That is benefiting memory chip makers like Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix.

The third-generation iPad has 1GB of DRAM, or twice the amount in the iPad 2. That is one reason that the new iPad is snappy and responsive. Tablets are 2.7 percent of second quarter DRAM demand, while cell phones are 13.2 percent.

Sometimes aliens aren’t the bigger threat — humans are.

Electronic Arts and Insomniac Games are developing Fuse (formerly called Overstrike), a four-person co-op shooter announced today. The game introduces players to elite agents Dalton Brooks, Izzy Sinclair, Jacob Kimble, and Naya Deveraux, who protect mankind from the titular alien technology.

In the game, players — as members of the Overstrike 9 contact team — must prevent a rogue paramilitary operation called Raven from stealing the classified Fuse energy source. The threat soon becomes a global one, leading the team all over the world.

Each agent has different skills and weapons (including those powered by the volatile extraterrestrial substance), and you can play each of them using the game’s “LEAP” feature, which switches between characters during combat. Players can also earn Fuse points for upgrades by completing objectives and killing enemies. Offline or online, you can open up character paths and unlock Fuse-driven abilities in a progression system linked between different modes, so you can level up regardless of how you play.

“Fuse demonstrates what Insomniac does best: outlandish and gruesome weapon design, over-the-top action, and a touch of humor,” said Ted Price, the founder and chief executive officer of Insomniac, in a statement.  “We’re especially excited to see how players utilize lethal teamwork by combining their Fuse weapons to stop a deadly arms race.”

Fuse is releasing for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC in March 2013. It is Insomniac’s first multiplatform release. The developer also created the Ratchet & Clank and Resistance franchises.

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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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Puzzle games are self-descriptive: The best ones combine tiny pieces to create something bigger and more exciting.

That’s exactly what Gateways — a puzzle-platformer from Smudged Cat Games coming out tomorrow, Sept. 13, on PC and Xbox 360 –  does with finesse. It’s a little bit Portal, a little bit VVVVVV, a little bit P. B. Winterbottom, a little bit Metroid, and more…but altogether, it’s something much greater. That very idea can mean the difference between a stale game and an innovative one.

“Developers always look at games and think, ‘I like that, but I would have done X, Y, and Z slightly differently,’” Gateways’ creator, David Johnston, told GamesBeat in an interview. “There’s always a lot of talk about people stealing ideas, like declaring every voxel game to be a Minecraft clone. People also accuse Minecraft of stealing ideas from Infiniminer, as well, but really it’s just a new genre of game that has emerged recently. It’s like how every first-person shooter used to be declared a Doom clone, but we now accept that it’s a genre of game.”

At its core, Gateways seems a lot like Valve’s popular series Portal — only applied in 2D instead of a 3D world. As an inventor exploring his own ruined lab, you find the gateway gun, which allows you to reach otherwise inaccessible areas by traveling through two-sided portals. But that’s only the beginning. As you obtain upgrades, you can illuminate dark areas with a “torch” (it’s more like a flashlight), reflect laser beams with a mirror, shrink the professor or make him giant-sized, rotate the gravitational pull, and even create duplicates of yourself by manipulating time. These are all elements we’ve seen in other games.

But the game isn’t all puzzles and solutions. Players must figure out how to defeat the strange alien-like “monkoid” enemies that have infiltrated the inventor’s lab, too, and this requires platforming skills and a fresh perspective.

“The enemies aren’t really there to pose a major threat,” says Johnston. “Once they’re destroyed, they’re gone forever. They’re really just a way to break up the puzzle-solving elements a bit and give you something more action-based to do while you travel between different puzzles. The only exception is the recharging enemy type, which requires a bit more thought to eliminate. I think it’s nice to have a bit of variety. Even if you really love a particular type of game, it can get monotonous if you’re doing the same thing over and over again.”

Gateways keeps its gameplay interesting by challenging players to use techniques in new ways. Time travel is the most difficult by far, especially in combination with the other power-ups, and eventually players can activate all the various gateway guns at the same time. It would be a huge headache if it weren’t so well done and addictive.

The game’s hint system helps with that, too, and it’s something lots of other puzzle games could learn from. For the cost of five power orbs, you can learn whether or not you have progressed enough to solve a puzzle or if you must complete another task first. For 40 orbs, you can pay to see the solution; the game even performs it for you. But the different names of these help points can provide clues as to what players need to do, as well.

Johnston says it’s important to have a good system in place for when players get stuck. “People play games for fun,” he says. “It’s nice to be challenged and feel that sense of accomplishment when you complete a difficult puzzle, but if you get really stuck and can’t continue the game, then you can feel a bit cheated. You’ve paid for all this content but have suddenly been locked out. It’s always a difficult line to tread because if you provide a free help system, it encourages people just to automatically use it, so they never get that sense of accomplishment. At the same time, I don’t like the thought of people running out of orbs and being unable to continue. Hopefully, Gateways gets the balance right!”

But aside from the platforming, puzzles, and hints, another important aspect of the game is the layout, which Johnston says is inspired by Metroid. Here the lab is color-coded, and each section features a different type of music. You can also unlock shortcuts that transport them from the center area to different spots around the map, which is easily viewed at any time. Taking a quick look at it prevents players for getting lost and reveals the next possible objectives.

“I decided quite early on to have different areas of the map,” says Johnston. “It helps break things up a bit and feels like you’re really exploring; it also help a lot with navigation. If everywhere in the map looks exactly the same, then it can be difficult to remember what was at a particular point, but different areas give you a reference. Once I had the different areas, it made sense to have music tracks for each of them to help give them all a different feel. The basement area is very dark and gloomy, the upper section is more high tech with the most difficult puzzles, and the middle area is more platforming-focused.”

While none of the ideas presented in Gateways are revolutionary by themselves, together they become something original and fun. Arguably, Gateways is so enjoyable precisely because Johnston pays attention to what else is out there — he doesn’t create games in a vacuum.

“I do play quite a lot of games,” he says. “It’s really interesting to see what other people are doing, particularly in the indie scene. There are a lot cool ideas out there, and the chances are if you come up with an idea, then someone will have done something similar before. I thought the way you look through gateways was unique, but then I heard about ASCII Portal by Cymons Games. A lot of indie games have really interesting ideas but never quite get the audience they deserve, so it’s always interesting to look and see what’s going on.”

Johnston adds that playing games has made him a better developer. “It helps me to see what other ideas people have tried and what works as a game mechanic,” he says. “Sometimes something sounds like a good idea on paper, but when it’s actually implemented and you get a chance to try it out fully, it doesn’t quite gel somehow. If someone else has already tried an idea that is similar to yours, then it helps to see how it works and if it’s actually something that can be fun.

“One thing I find about puzzle games is that they tend to be pretty linear in general. It’s one of the reasons I decided to set Gateways in an open world and allow the player to explore and discover things off the beaten track. It comes back to that thing of reaching a puzzle in a game and being unable to progress. In those situations, it’s nice to know there are other options to keep you occupied while you [think] about that puzzle that’s proving a bit too tricky.”

Gateways releases tomorrow on Steam, the indie digital download service Desura, and Xbox Live Indie Games as part of the Indie Games Uprising promotion. It costs $5 for PC (initially on sale for $4) and 240 Microsoft Points for XBLIG. Gateways was a winner of this year’s Dream.Build.Play competition from Microsoft.

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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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