Culture

The How and Why.

Respawn CEO says some developers ‘crossed a line’

pic.twitter.com/j8woV7g9Tx — Vince Zampella (@VinceZampella) August 19, 2019 I keep going back and forth between how I feel about the whole situation. On one hand, this is exactly what community managers are for. As developers, it’s not our responsibility (nor do we often have the experience) to interact directly with fans. It’s not really a surprise that some developers resorted to name-calling and poor judgment when they started to receive death threats.  But, on the other ha

Boy Problems - A Carly Rae Jepsen TTRPG

It is many years into the future. A wealthy and powerful person (or persons) has claimed a rare and much sought after prize: the “vault” of 200 unreleased (this is real!) songs from renowned Canadian pop artist, Carly Rae Jepsen. Hired by an anonymous sponsor, your team of highly trained individuals will raid a well-defended location to retrieve said item. From planning to set-up to execution, you will see this heist through to its completion, whether that be a success or failure. There will

Marc Andreessen on VR/AR

From Marc Andreessen: I think AR has tons of potential applications, both at work and at home. [But] I think VR is going to be about 1,000 times bigger. On the latest podcast of a16z, Andreessen goes onto explain that while AR works for more “interesting” places in the world (in other words, more densely populated), rural places never get to see the benefits of AR as much. As someone who spent a large portion of my life growing up in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin, this makes a lot of s

Reflections on DOOM's Development

The inclusion of multiplayer co-op and deathmatch modes changed everything about games. We knew that playing a game as fast and over-the-top as DOOM would signal a new era. I visualized what E1M7 would look like with two players shooting rockets at each other over a large room and it got me more excited than I had been since Wolfenstein 3D’s chaingun audio. Its not to say Doom invented multiplayer, however most games were usually were pretty exclusive to a single screen. There was somethin

25 years of Doom

The original Doom turns 25 this year, and to celebrate, its co-creater, John Remero made a new chapter to the original game, titled Sigil.  Sigil, according to the website, is an unofficial 5th episode to the game: I wanted the levels to feel like they belong to the original game as if they were a true fifth episode. There’s more detail in the levels than episodes 1-4, but not overly so. I believe that people playing Sigil will recognize my design style, but see new things I’m doing becau

Your precious ‘gamer culture’ isn’t dying.

I grew up playing video games. By the age of three, I started mastering my parents’ old Atari 2600. Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of friends, and those I did have, didn’t live close by, so video games always helped keep the loneliness at bay. By the time high school rolled by, I was well into making mods and eventually even experimenting with making my own games. Video games even helped me bond with my mentally disabled brother. A bond we both still share today, even after 20 some odd years

Nintendo visionary Hiroshi Yamauchi dies aged 85

As a kid, I idolized this man. I read Nintendo Power almost religiously. As far as I was concerned, this man was Nintendo. As I got older and read more about him, my perception of him changed somewhat. While I still respect the man, like Steve Jobs, this man built these amazing products by being a ruthless businessman. But despite his business practices, or perhaps because of it, Nintendo created some of the most memorable gaming experiences in my childhood. He put the consumer experience over e

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An Investigation of World of Warcraft Character Names

An interesting look at naming conventions in World of Warcraft. Personally, from an early age, I've found myself becoming prejudiced against people whose usernames began and ended in ‘x’ or included Final Fantasy or Dragon Ball names. Looking at you xX-Sephiroth-Xx69. An Investigation of World of Warcraft Character NamesA story of explorative game analytics and the surprises you encounter when investigating eight million World of Warcraft characters - and a couple of thousand Battlefield playe

BioWare writer quits after death threats to family

Jennifer Helper was working on sequel Dragon Age: Inquisition but is quitting BioWare this week to go freelance, in large part thanks to threats she and others of the team received in the wake of Dragon Age II’s release. Both of these posts still seam relevent. Even if it comes from some anonymous kid or manchild, who’s only goal is to incite fear to get something to go their way, it doesn’t’ matter. To even post such vile, hateful words, means you probably need some anger management courses

Half-Life 3 – the game that doesn't exist

Half-Life 3 has become the gamer’s equivalent of the DB Cooper legend. There are so many hints and speculation over something that could be there. Whether or not the game really exists or not, the real question is whether or not anything produced could live up to the hype thats built up over nearly a decade or waiting. Half-Life 3 – the game that doesn’t existHints, teasing tweets and feverish speculation, the wait for Valve’s next version of the game is like an online soap opera. By Rich Stan

Xbox Community Level

Members participate in Xbox Community Ambassadors or the Enforcement United beta, and on the backend, we track your participation, calculate your XP, and award loot to your Gamertag as you level up. There’s no need to opt in to earn rewards, submit your activity, or create a new profile. We’ll take care of the heavy lifting. Looks like leveling your gamertag was successful enough for Valve/Steam that Microsoft is jumping on the bandwagon too. I wonder how long until they add trading cards t

Stop threatening game developers

But if the loudest voices in the Call of Duty “community” act like an angry mob instead, guess how the entire world views Call of Duty? While the majority of gamers don’t act this way, they are often times the ones most heard. It’s also why the gaming community can’t be taken as a whole so often. It’s that angry mob mentality that is the first to stand out to any non or even casual gamer. I was turned off of League of Legends for this very reason. While most may be nice people to play with,

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U.S Says eSports Players Are Now Professional Athletes

Riot Games eSports manager Nick Allen: This was a lengthy process; we had a lot of people fighting for this and it wasn’t something that happened overnight. This was a constant back and forth of ‘show us more proof… is this realistic?’ and that sort of thing. Eventually it got to the point where they were like ‘we have no reason to say no… okay, this is legitimate’. The U.S. Now Recognizes eSports Players As Professional AthletesTo the general public, the idea that those who play video g

An ode to MSN Messenger

Today marks the last day of MSN Messenger before it permanently shuts down and merges with Skype. In a way, it signals the end of an era of my life. It’s a service I used for almost half my life since I was 13. It had a profound effect on my life. It was the first real social network I was part of. Years ago, I mostly hid out on IRC or battle.net. If someone wanted to find me online, they knew I could always be found there. I didn’t even have an AIM or Yahoo username for some time. Nothing abo

Woman's call to end video game misogyny sparks vicious online attacks

A woman seeking to expose misogyny in video games has suffered a harsh lesson in the extent of Internet viciousness, as a campaign of harassment escalated to a Canadian man creating a game that let people batter an image of her face. It amazes me how someone could raise so much money for a great, interesting concept, then becomes a target of trolling by the same type of people who helped raise the money in the first place. Stay classy, average straight white male gamer.

Penny Arcade Sells Out

People don’t like advertising almost as a general rule; Advertising is simply The Way It Is. People who make content learn to like it, because they want to make content, and they also want to eat food and sleep under a roof, and the opportunity to do both at the same time seems like a pretty good idea. Honestly, I thought this was a joke at first. It falls way beyond what Kickstarter was meant for- that is, time-limited projects. Either way, it’s an interesting take on the crowdfunding issue.

Banned 'Diablo 3' Linux users speak out against being called cheaters

If you’re computer savvy enough to figure out how to get Linux installed, and setup WINE to get Diablo 3 playable on an unsupported OS, you should be smart enough to realize Blizzard’s in-game security, Warden will throw off some false positives on occasion. Blizzard is not going to waste time sorting through thousands of bans to verify you’re just playing, and not having multiple VMs open and botting. Moral of the story: If you play an online game, dont complain if you get banned or something

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Another paint splatter effect