A lot has happened in gaming over the last 7 days, I am here to sift through the BS and bring you what is most important to you and your gaming experiences, your PC gaming news. This is an aggregation of news, catered towards gaming of the PC variety. Let see what this past week brought to the table and what it all means to the average gaming Joe.
WoW is in the news as always, yet I feel torn when I read this article about how ‘violent games’ such as WoW reduces stress in the individuals that play them. The study shows that for hours before and after the gaming experience , the subject would be in a more calm and or relaxed state.
There were actually higher levels of relaxation before and after playing the game as opposed to experiencing anger but this did very much depend on personality type
here is what I gather from this article. It’s BS, this experiment is dumb and shouldn’t have been made, yet if the media wants to get a hold of it to exemplify gaming and get the mass public off our back, then by all means, let them. though the fact they classify WoW as a violent game and don’t even mention games like condemded or even a shooter In general makes me wary at about how professional they must have been in their research.
90 percent of online gamers said the PC was their platform of choice
In much the same way that I am torn about the previous article I am slightly torn in this one too, a recent study has been made to determine the number of gaming americans. In one aspect It says that 72% of Americans game on a semi regular basis. yet I still have to wonder about what this info means exactly. They note that the over all number is up and that more are playing online compared to previous years, but My question is if this study differentiates MMOs and Shooters from PopCap java based games as ‘online’. Also all the findings I could find are worded quite vaguely as to avoid confusing specifics, like amount of time played and type of game played with further distinction than online or offline.
For you heroes out there, kicking super villain butt all Paragon, will soon have in-game optional advertising. I saw some of the game screens and they look unbelievable for the setting, so let’s hope that those were demos on how advertising can be used, without actually having a 30ft tall billboard for some local Chinese Restaurant. Don’t get me wrong I am OK with in-game advertising in general, just not when it is done poorly. Well, at least the gamers have the ability to opt out of it if they so desire.
In the market for developing your own game and want to know how to make it big? Well both Intel with Epic, and Sony have a way to fund your way through this laborious adventure. For Intel and Epic it is a little bit straight forward, make the winning mod for UT3 and get a million bucks.
The secret is out: Females game. We’re just trying to encourage more women to make the games they obviously enjoy playing
From Sony it comes in the form of a scholarship designed to get girls in on the action and will help girls majored in game deisgn with their school bills. I am completely for fresh talent, and hope that these and promotions like it bring a good mix of creativity and ingenuity by indie developers that would normally be too reserved to try anything large scale.
Bioshock’s Ken Levine, when asked about the sequel, had something to say about stories in general for games. Again I am not sure how to take this; he basically called all gamers thick and unable to enjoy a real story. Apparently somewhere on their cutting room floor is 70 years of Bioshock they couldn’t include in the game because it would make it too complex. He goes on to say something I agree with a little more:
The advantage of videogame storyline over movies, Levine goes on, is that developers “have the opportunity not to push information at people but to let them pull it to them.”
How I see it is that gaming is a different style of beast, I enjoy a damn good story but in a story either read or watched, you are guided along a set of rail and all the information is given to you and you eat It all in order. With an enjoyable video game we have free reign and thusly care less about actual plot elements that don’t affect us directly. Once game devs quit trying to make movies with game-play in between games in general will become more fun. On a referential note, I just beat Bioshick and absolutely loved the experience, the storey might have been simple but it was rewarding. Lets hope they can do it again with the next one.
In digital distribution news, Hothead and Stardock are both set to release their own clients for digital distribution, Stardock is geared towards more main stream titles that find valve too restricting while Hothead is teaming up with Penny Arcade to distribute their new game later this spring, and help Indie developers find a home for their content that may otherwise have trouble getting living elsewhere.
One of Stardock’s first real games included in their impulse service will be Demigods by Gas Powered Games (dungeon siege, supreme commander).Demigod an action/rts will combine RTS and roleplaying elements as players assume the role of massive Demigods out to destroy their opponents. Demigod is slated for a 2009 release.
Greenhouse will provide an outlet for games “too niche or too risky in terms of game play for the top publishers to be comfortable with distributing.”
For the time being the Greenhouse service from Hothead will only have Penny Arcades game, but word will spread fast and indie developers will flock to the new service in no time.
I am all for competition yet I don’t want more than 3 quality digital distribution sites because then it just gets messy with having to install something from everyone; then there is the whole question what happens to my subscriptions when you either fail or get bought out as a company. I guess time can only tell and hopefully these 3 companies can live very harmoniously together while I sit back and enjoy the gaming.
For Starcraft’s 10 year anniversary they are making an “I <3 SC” photo mosaic, to submit your photo or fan art with the above quoted text visible follow the link below. The top 50 submissions will not only be added to the photo mosaic but also receive t-shirts.
For those waiting for Mass Effect PC you are going to have to wait a few weeks longer as it has been pushed back towards the end of May; while they bring in 3rd party, Demiurge to help finalize the transition to PC. This is fine with me because anything that will help fix all the problems I was hearing about the X360 version would be greatly received. And I have complete faith in Bioware and their products.
There was a lot of news today that I couldn’t really find a voice for, all of it interesting but maybe not relevant, so don’t forget to check out the links at the bottom of the post.
Please leave a comment with suggestions and or compliments at the bottom of the page also. And if you have a PC-gaming voice and would like to share with the site, let me know in the comments or email me at blogadmin@gamersbeyond.com
Until next time; keep playing, gamers.
-Shegs
Shegs Shared Stories
Another great artical.
One thing that was left out for Stardock, they recently released “Sins of a Solar Empire” which while not very hyped, is very good and holding a strong community. They made a leap with this one and combinded two styles of gameplay. One being RTS, the other I’m failing to remember the name, but its one of those really large scale games that are thought to only be turn based. I guess like Heroes of Might and Magic, and some other space games where you’re taking over planets…
A link to a forum post about it: http://forum.gamersbeyond.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=857
As for their game distribution, I like Steam, and I have invested some money in it where I have quiet a few games on there. I really hope there isnt a huge issue where several companies are doing the same and we’ll have to have two or three of these programs installed just to access your games…
ReplyI have to agree that steam is the direction that pc gaming hs to go, whether steam is the best format for this service is beyond me. I do know that others that I have tried suck, EA for example only keeps it attached to your account for 2 years and this is if you buy the “service plan” or whatever. you can still play it but you cannot re-download it.
ReplyI recently found out about EA’s little “you can download it for x amount of time” thing….thats very annoying. Are they really that afraid that people will continually delete and re-download? If I remember right, if you didnt get the plan, they only let you download it for six months! Rediculous…they better send you a DVD of the game while they’re at it!
ReplyAnyhow, Steam appears to be the best thing out, so I might like it because of that, but there’s been more than once where I wished they did something differently. Its a young app(kinda) thats breaking good ground though, so I cant complain too much.
yeah I unfortunately, well not unfortunately but my only choice was EA for hellgate london, it’s alright though because I will move the downloaded files to some file server that I will build in the near future, as I want my gaming and my storage on 2 different machines.
ReplyYeah, it just kinda kills the whole reason I like Steam…I dont have to worry about losing my disks! Now in the future, if they can implement the option for saved games to be copied to their server, that would be even more awesome! That way if you’re formatting, you can have it move copies of your saved games to the server, and then reinstall them and move em back….or something along the lines. I’m still kinda against all saves automatically going to the server, but something along those lines would be nice.
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