Morhaime: The time is right to level-up StarCraft II as an eSport.

Blizzard cofounder Mike Morhaime says StarCraft II growth outside Korea has been a "big surprise."

Blizzard cofounder Mike Morhaime believes that the time is right to level-up StarCraft II as an eSport. In a new interview with GameSpot, the industry veteran detailed the new system for the World Championship Series, how StarCraft II's growth outside of Korea has been surprising, and more.

Check out the full interview below.

What is the goal in creating this new system for the World Championship Series?

I think we just look at the whole ecosystem and recognize that it could be a whole lot easier to understand. There are scheduling conflicts that make players have to make difficult decisions where sometimes you don't get people playing in the tournaments they think they should be playing in. It's very hard to follow, to really know what the relative importance of winning various things are. I think it really falls to us, to Blizzard, we're really the only company in position to work with everybody, to help create a single storyline in the ecosystem. We think the time is right to level-up StarCraft II as an eSport.

When you guys were deciding to make a change, what were your considerations going into this? What were the first problems you were looking to solve?

Well number one, we wanted to leverage all the great stuff our eSports partners were already doing. I think we took a first attempt at this last year with the World Championship Series which was awesome, but it didn't really do what we had hoped, which is to be the single storyline around StarCraft eSports. It actually turned to a parallel storyline that just added a whole other set of events to follow. Even though we worked with our existing partners, it didn't really leverage the cool stuff that they were already doing. So I think this approach is actually much better because now we're having partners actually running the league.

Why set up this system of events now instead of before?

We didn't know how big StarCraft II was going to be in the West. We've always viewed South Korea as the epicenter of eSports. We did actually setup a global StarCraft League in Korea called by the same name: GSL. The big surprise with StarCraft II is how big SC2 eSports has grown outside of Korea.

Ideally we would have loved to be able to announce this before Heart of The Swarm launched, but setting something up something like this with so many different partners is actually quite complicated. We're a little bit later in the year than we would have hoped, but everybody is really excited now and it's going to be a really awesome story for the year.

Why decide to use both GomTV and OnGameNet as partners in Korea instead of choosing one?

GomTV has been an excellent partner to us in StarCraft 2. We've been talking to OnGameNet now for years. We're really excited to finally have everybody in Korea working together in harmony. We have some excellent partners that have contributed a lot to esports throughout the years and we really wanted them to take part in the league.

In North America and Europe the partners are Major League Gaming and the Electronic Sports League, respectively. Notable names left out are DreamHack and the North American Star League. Why were these regions not done the same way as Korea with both participating?

We talked to everyone and we tried to do the things that were best for each region according to the various existing capabilities of the partners. We think that the stuff that NASL and DreamHack have been doing has been really awesome for StarCraft II, and we would love to see that continue. We think that seeing a single operator in those regions for North America and Europe made more sense for the World Championship Series events.

We're hoping that by giving the North American and European players their own league, it will make it so they don't have to travel as much and can focus more on practice. We think that the level of play will also increase within the regions this way.

The Korean region will have only studio matches in the form of GSL and OSL. Will this format also happen in the North American and European regions?

Most of the matches will be played in a studio. The Online portion for North American and Europe is mainly looked at for logistical reasons for this year, to ease the travel burden. We do recognize the challenges with online play and that's something we're working on to address in future iterations of the WCS. All the critical matches will be played in a studio, and we're taking different steps to ensure the online play is fair.

For North America and Europe, the Round of 32 will probably be played Online. We're still zeroing in how exactly that will look like. Anything from the Round of 16 and beyond will definitely be in studio.

How will events like DreamHack and NASL now exist in the new World Championship Series system?

The way that we envision that is there will be the opportunity for non-WCS events if they meet certain criteria to give out WCS points so that there is some incentive and reward for pro players to compete in those events. But the majority of the points that we expect pro players to get will probably be through doing really well in the league.

Korean media reported that GomTV and OnGameNet would be paid $1.8 Million dollars in financial support. Is this true?

The numbers they reported are not accurate.

Are those numbers close at all? Can you say how much you're paying the leagues? Is this support being given also to MLG and ESL?

Our business terms with the leagues are not public information, so I'm not able to talk about those. Blizzard is making financial investments and we have been making financial investments to support StarCraft II eSports for a while now.

There were some initial reports saying that the Korea eSports Association weren't involved in talks initially. How much of a role do they play in all of this?

It's critical, and KeSPA was with us every step of the way. Not all the information that gets to press in South Korea is accurate. I don't really know why that is, but it's true. Anyone that reported KeSPA wasn't involved just wasn't true.

There will be three Season finals this year. Will they be located in the same region or spread out? Have you thought about how you want to present them?

I think it'll be different based on each region. There will be one in North America, one in Europe, and one in Asia in 2013. In 2014 there will be four events. Two of them will be in Asia, one in North America, and one in Europe. I think that they'll be similar to a major event that you see today. The North American event may look a lot like how you see a current Major League Gaming major event stop.

Why hold the finals at BlizzCon instead of doing another standalone championship event like last year's World Championship Series finals in China?

We think that eSports has been a pretty important part of BlizzCon for many years now. In terms of celebrating the Blizzard franchises I think there's no better way to celebrate it than crowning a World Champion. At BlizzCon 2011 we had the GSL Code S Championships between Jung "Mvp" Jong Hyun and Mun "MMA" Seong Won, which some consider one of the best events of all time. The weird thing about 2011 was we crowd 2 champions that weekend, one for BlizzCon and one of the GSL finals. That…is strange. We sort of want to get away from that and actually crown THE champion, and have a single storyline that's understandable.

Is there any worry for events that aren't a part of the WCS not getting as much attention as they used to?

Not really, because I don't think it'll be any worse than what we have today, where they don't get any points for anything.

What about regions that aren't listed, such as China and South East Asia?

I think that there's opportunity to expand this in future years based on how successful it is, but I think initially players outside of the set regions will basically have to choose a region to compete in. There are StarCraft leagues in China that still run, but if they'd like to play in WCS at this time they'll have to choose one of these three leagues. I'd love to see that change in the future, but at this point China isn't at that point of maturity in StarCraft 2 eSports that it made sense to do it in 2013.

How much of this is in the response to Riot's League Championship Series?

I don't think it has anything to do with them. We've been working with these guys a lot longer than Riot has.

Has there been thought to running the World Championship Series without the use of partners?

I would say not really. We're not trying to replace all of these great companies. I think there's a lot of great expertise and really good effort that has been built up over the last several years. We want to leverage that. We want Blizzard's focus to be on making awesome games, and not running tournaments and leagues, which in itself is a huge project. There are entire companies based on doing just that. This allows us to focus on what we do best.

Who will handle the broadcasting?

For all of us in the West, it will be available via TwitchTV. We can watch this stuff. There will be a regular schedule. One of the really awesome things about all of this is we have all the entities in Korea working together now. The Korean leagues will be available to watch both through OGN and GomTV. ProLeague will still be going on and the GSTL will still be going on. We'll have StarCraft 2 on television 5 nights a week.

The broadcasts will be streamed in 720p for free through all services. We're still working out what to do beyond that with qualities beyond 720p, and VOD packages.

What type of potential hub could we see for all of the World Championship Series?

That's a great question. We still have some work to do here. We don't have that hub Online yet but it's something we know we need, and we have plans to create that and put it Online this year.

15.06 | 0 komentar | Read More

Blizzard unveils revamped $1.6 million 2013 StarCraft II tournament season

Today at a press conference in South Korea, Blizzard Entertainment announced a revamp to its StarCraft II World Championship Series which debuted last year, working with partners to create three equal and parallel leagues in North America, Europe, and South Korea. More than $1.6 million in prize money will be up for grabs for players in 2013, and fans at home can expect to watch for free in 720p.

Blizzard announced that it will use both GomTV and OnGameNet in South Korea, Major League Gaming in North America, and Turtle Entertainment's Electronic Sports League in Europe. Each will operate their region's WCS league for the year. There will be three separate seasons in 2013 each with regional finals and a season finals event. A unified global player ranking system will be established with points given to players at each event, culminating with the top 16 players in points vying for a spot to be called World Champion at the BlizzCon Global Finals. Next year there will be four seasons.

"I think we just look at the whole ecosystem and recognize that it could be a whole lot easier to understand", Blizzard Entertainment CEO Mike Morhaime told GameSpot. "There are scheduling conflicts that make players have to make difficult decisions where sometimes you don't get people playing in the tournaments they think they should be playing in. It's very hard to follow, to really know what the relative importance of winning various things are. I think it really falls to us, to Blizzard, we're really the only company in position to work with everybody, to help create a single storyline in the ecosystem."

This will mark the first time that OnGameNet and GomTV will be working together. GomTV will run the first WCS league in Korea, beginning with the upcoming GSL Code S season starting in less than two days. OGN will broadcast the event on TV in with their own casters. Both OGN and GSL will broadcast each other's leagues with their own casters and streams. After this season of Code S, OGN will begin their next OnGameNet StarLeague which has been on hold for a while, and act as the main operator of WCS Korea Season 2. Another season of GSL Code S will not take place until OSL is over, and act as the third and final WCS Korea season before the Global Finals.

The Korean eSports Association has been involved every step of the way, Blizzard said.

"One of the really awesome things about all of this is we have all the entities in Korea working together now," Morhaime said. "The Korean leagues will be available to watch both through OGN and GomTV. ProLeague will still be going on and the GSTL will still be going on. We'll have StarCraft II on television five nights a week."

"Blizzard really worked hard for all partners, so we can truly work together in not only Korea but also the world."

"Blizzard really worked hard for all partners, so we can truly work together in not only Korea but also the world," GomTV StarCraft 2 Manager Chae Jung Won told GameSpot. "For GomTV's perspective, we were working hard to increase our media platform from 2012."

Players must commit to one WCS league at the beginning of the year and cannot change region after, but can compete in any non-WCS events in any region. Each regional league season will run for 8-10 weeks, with all games played on weekdays in a consistent schedule. This will allow players to travel internationally to non-WCS events on weekends. Non-WCS events cannot run events on the same weekend as WCS events. Non-WCS events will be given as of yet undetermined amount of points.

All matches in Korea will be played in studio through GomTV's StarLeague or OnGameNet's StarLeague, while North America and Europe will play Online until the top 16 players. Those top 16 players will compete in a studio environment to determine the best five players in each region. Five players from each region will then compete in the Season 1 finals event, with one additional player to come from the host continent for 16 players total. They will compete for an undermined amount of points. Each continent will get one finals event this year in the size of an event similar to one at GSL, MLG, or ESL.

"We're hoping that by giving the North American and European players their own league, it will make it so they don't have to travel as much and can focus more on practice," Morhaime said. "We think that the level of play will also increase within the regions this way."

The tournament structure has been modeled off of GSL's Code S, Code A, and Code B system and is called Premier, Challenger, and Qualifier. This structure will run for all partners including MLG and ESL. The Challenger events will run slightly different in North America and Europe due to logistics in travel. Players will be able to move up and down within their own region as players do in GSL. Only the OSL will have differences, where there will be an additional Round of 32 added on played in a best of one format.

Players in North America and Europe will be invited to kickoff Season 1 based upon their performances in 2012 across all leagues. Open qualifiers will also be held to determine the final player list. Additionally, the top 200 Grand Masters players on the StarCraft II Ladder will be invited to join the initial qualifiers.

Blizzard says that they have partnered with TwitchTV to broadcast the entire year for free in 720p. There will also be a central hub created for fans to watch the games, follow the storylines, and get all information related to the World Championship Series.

"For all of us in the West, it will be available via TwitchTV" Morhaime said. "We can watch this stuff now. There will be a regular schedule to follow along."

With everything announced, Blizzard feels this will be the best year yet for competitive StarCraft II. With several developers giving support to the competitive side of their game as of late, Morhaime is thrilled to be able to do as much with their own franchise.

"We think the time is right to level-up StarCraft II as an eSport."

For more, check out GameSpot's extended interview with Morhaime.

15.06 | 0 komentar | Read More

Need for Speed: Most Wanted U Review

Late last year, Need for Speed: Most Wanted served up a welcome second helping of Burnout Paradise-style open-world wreckin' and racin' shenanigans, though it replaced that game's imaginary automobiles with the real cars that are a constant of the Need for Speed series. Now, the game has come to the Wii U, complete with a U pointlessly stuck to the end of the title. The features designed exclusively for Most Wanted U contribute little to the game, but Most Wanted is still an attractive and frequently exhilarating racer.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted U takes its name and some of its concept from the 2005 game Need for Speed Most Wanted. Both games take place in open-world cities and involve plenty of police chases, but the earlier game contextualized its action with a hilariously over-the-top story about taking down a crew of illegal street racers. In the new Most Wanted, you still have the goal of defeating a number of street racers, but there's no narrative to back it up. The racers on your list are identified only by their cars--they don't have names or faces or personalities--and without a personal investment in defeating them, doing so isn't nearly as satisfying here as it was in the 2005 game. It is merely a structural hoop to jump through; you do it simply because the game tells you that this is what you are supposed to do.

Well, that and the fact that driving, racing, and eluding the police are really enjoyable, for the most part. Despite the stable of real-world cars, the driving isn't realistic. Cars have a great sense of weight and momentum to them, while still being extremely responsive, and as you'd expect from a racer by developer Criterion, judicious use of the brakes and a bit of practice will have you blissfully drifting through corners at high speed. As in most Criterion racing games, boosting is a big part of racing in Most Wanted. You build up your nitrous bar by doing things like drifting, taking down cops and rivals, and driving in oncoming traffic, and you press a button to spend that nitrous. It's a tried-and-true arcade racing game mechanic, and Most Wanted's terrific sense of speed makes it as reliably exciting as ever.

Each vehicle has five events associated with it. Victory in each of a vehicle's events nets you speed points, which you need to earn a set number of before you can challenge each of the most wanted racers. Winning events also gives you access to modifications for that vehicle, including chassis that make you more resistant to impacts, gears that increase your acceleration or top speed, and tires that reinflate if popped by spike strips.

In earlier versions of the game, building up your car collection was a simple, unrewarding matter of driving up to cars parked all over the city of Fairhaven. In this release, with the exception of the cars driven by the most wanted racers, you have access to every car in the game from the start. (This includes the five cars that were released as downloadable content called the Ultimate Speed Pack on other platforms.)

Although they can be accessed from anywhere in Fairhaven almost immediately, cars are still scattered across the city in set locations, called jack spots, in Most Wanted U. The upside of this is that if you get the cops on your tail as you're roaming about the city, you can pull up on a car's jack spot and, provided that you've got a bit of distance between you and your police pursuers, hop into the other car, reducing your heat level a bit. Your heat level determines just how much effort the police are putting into bringing you down. At the lowest level, you might have a few cop cruisers on your tail. As it increases, the police start setting up roadblocks in your path, and more and better law enforcement vehicles join the fray. Heavy SUVs might try to ram you head-on, and Corvette Interceptors speed along in front of you, deploying spike strips that, if hit, can seriously diminish your car's handling.

All is not lost, however; repair shops are all over the city, and driving through one instantly fixes up your car and gives you a fresh coat of paint to boot. Like using jack spots, speeding through these repair shops reduces your heat level. Your heat level increases automatically as a pursuit goes on, and taking down police cars with a satisfying shunt into oncoming traffic, a swift T-bone collision, or whatever aggressive, effective option presents itself makes it go up significantly faster. If you get enough distance between you and your pursuers, you enter cooldown, during which your heat level declines. Stay in cooldown long enough, and the police call off the pursuit.

You earn speed points during police pursuits, but you get to keep them only if you eventually escape; if you get busted, you earn nothing, so the stakes can get quite high. Escape from the cops, and you feel great; see the speed points you earned over the course of several risky minutes disappear as you get busted, and you may be crestfallen. It's a good risk-vs.-reward system that leads to some extremely tense moments. Unfortunately, shaking off your pursuers can often feel as much a matter of luck as of skill. Police are tenacious in their pursuit of you--maybe a little too tenacious, because it sometimes seems as if no amount of changing direction, catching big air, going off-road, or anything else is enough to lose the cops. In the game's faster cars, speed can often be your savior, but in the more everyday models, it often feels like you don't have a fighting chance.

Additionally, some parts of the city don't have many areas that are off the beaten path; you might enter cooldown but find yourself with nowhere to hide from patrolling police who soon spot you and reinitiate the pursuit. The balance between making it very possible for you to be spotted again during cooldown and giving you good options for eluding the police was better handled in 2005's Most Wanted, which provided you with more spots that cops on the hunt for you might or might not investigate. That earlier game also did a better job with police chatter; here, the police are irritatingly repetitive. Several times during the same pursuit, you might hear cops, awed by your driving prowess, come to the realization that they're "not dealing with joyriders."

15.06 | 0 komentar | Read More

The Xi3 Piston - Who Is It For?

I like this guy's idea of aiming for games being playable anytime on the latest hardware and that is the direction I'd like to see gaming go. It makes preserving classics much easier to do. Although it is an unrealistic goal, particularly if they're going to roll with Windows OS, which is a more closed software platform than Linux. Nintendo has been ardently stubborn in keeping their games exclusive to their platforms as well. Also the price point of the Piston is a killer. It doesn't appeal to console gamers because it's too expensive, and it won't appeal to PC enthusiasts who would rather build their own PCs at that price point. It will be surprising if this system succeeds in the current economy.

15.06 | 0 komentar | Read More

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15.06 | 0 komentar | Read More

More Destiny at E3

Today during a Game Developers Conference panel, Bungie teased it will share more information about its new action-shooter Destiny at the 2013 Electronic Entertainment Expo, which runs June 9-11.

"See you at E3," Destiny writer and director Joe Staten said.

Bungie also shared a host of Destiny concept art images today during the panel, as part of a discussion regarding the company's world-building techniques. Staten and art director Christopher Barrett explained how Bungie's goal for Destiny was to create a world that mattered and that lasted, while also being flexible and accommodating to anything the community creates.

More Destiny concept art is available at Bungie's website.

Lastly, Bungie showed off a video (below) that offers a look into the character art, development, and design of Destiny. It includes early drawings, concept art, animation, and in-engine character models.

GameSpot sat down with Staten and Barrett today following their presentation. This conversation will be posted in the time ahead.

15.06 | 0 komentar | Read More

Disney Infinity GDC Demo: Freedom and Opportunity to Create

I know that this is off topic, but I just wanted to ask, why hasn't GameSpot mentioned the Hyperkin Retron 5?

http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/23/4140592/hyperkin-retron-5-gaming-console-can-play-almost-any-cartridge

You can emulate, sure, but this thing is cool (if it works, which I imagine will). Sorry for being off topic, but I thought it was worth mentioning, and I hope it gets noticed here.

15.06 | 0 komentar | Read More

Heroes Who Look Like Us: A Call for Diversity in Games

At GDC 2013, Halo: Reach writer Tom Abernathy argued that when games are more diverse, everybody benefits. Carolyn Petit thinks the time for such increased diversity is now.

Now, I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth here. When Cliff Bleszinski blogged recently in defense of Feminist Frequency's Tropes vs. Women in Video Games project, I was glad to see an undeniably important industry voice taking a stand on an issue that I care about a great deal. His primary focus was on taking to task those who had responded to the Feminist Frequency project with vitriol, those who seemingly felt so threatened by the idea of someone critically examining the representation of women in games that they lashed out with slurs and threats.

Addressing those trolls specifically, he wrote, "Heaven forbid a woman actually take a magnifying glass to our beloved hobby and actually try to unravel and figure out why things are the way they are in the effort that somehow she might change things? Why aren't there more female protagonists? Are you protecting Lara Croft in the new Tomb Raider or are you empowering her? And god dammit, where's my Buffy game? Shame on all of you." I'm with him on this. The hostile reactions elicited by the Feminist Frequency project and other attempts to thoughtfully examine portrayals of women in games are embarrassing; they are a sign, as Bleszinski puts it, of "a deeper cancer plaguing our business."

But I do need to take issue with just one thing Bleszinski states in his blog. Before launching into his spirited rebuke of haters and defending the value of examining representations of women in games, he asserts his own positive impact where women in games are concerned, writing, "I'd… like to remind everyone out there that I went out of my way in working with our team, the writers, and Epic's artists to make sure that female characters are represented well in that franchise. By the time we got around to Gears 3 the female soldiers were kicking butt right alongside the men in outfits that weren't drastically different than the men's, and with a restrained depiction of hair and makeup."

It's time for the heroes games give us to become more diverse, not in baby steps that coddle those who so adamantly oppose the idea of a gaming landscape that offers a wider range of heroes, but now.I'm sorry, but the fact that, by the time Gears of War 3 came around, there were a few playable female characters doesn't make that series an example of enlightened, progressive portrayals of women in games. Don't get me wrong; I'd rather there be women in Delta Squad in that third game than not. But why did it take so long? Why were women so marginalized earlier in the series, relegated to being, in Anya's case, mostly a voice in an earpiece or, in Maria's case, a victim of a horrific fate, more of a plot device to trigger emotions in one of the male protagonists than a character in her own right? On the whole, where women are concerned, the Gears of War series is pretty disappointing. Women have been so underrepresented in games for so long that there's a tendency to view minor gestures like the inclusion of a playable female character or two in the final game of a series as something praiseworthy, when really, the question we should be asking ourselves is, why weren't they there, as equally important, equally fleshed-out members of the cast from the series' inception?

It's time for the heroes games give us to become more diverse, not in baby steps that coddle those who so adamantly oppose the idea of a gaming landscape that offers a wider range of heroes, but now. Sure, the cancer Bleszinski referred to may respond to gradual treatments; over the course of the next 30 years or so, gaming could slowly continue to offer greater diversity in the gender, the racial and cultural backgrounds, and the sexual orientations of its heroes. But why wait? Let's just cut the cancer out right now.

You see, the trolls and the anger they spew are not the cancer itself. They are a symptom. Having grown up with games that overwhelmingly feature heterosexual white men as heroes, some members of that group have grown comfortably accustomed to the status quo. Whenever there is a systemic imbalance that favors members of a certain group in any facet of society--voting rights for men and not women, for instance, or college admission policies that make it harder for students from low-income backgrounds to earn acceptance--some members of the benefiting group will not take kindly to attempts to wrest away their special status and make things more equitable. Whether it's done slowly or quickly, there will be resistance to the process of diversifying game characters from those people who not only like things the way they are, but feel like they are entitled to have things the way they are. But the reality is that this is not a zero-sum game in which there must be winners and losers. The straight white male video game hero is not going to go the way of the dodo; he's just going to have more company, and then, everybody wins. Straight white males of the future won't long for the overwhelming majority of games to focus on straight white males any more than most men today desperately wish that women had never been given the right to vote.

This week at the Game Developers Conference, Tom Abernathy, a writer at Microsoft Studios whose credits include Halo: Reach, gave a talk in which he espoused the notion that greater diversity in games would be good for everyone. Now, as a straight white male himself, he grew up with no shortage of heroes who looked like him, in films, on TV, and in games. And he never had much reason to stop and think about how many others didn't similarly have plenty of examples in media of heroes who looked like them.

In recent years, however, that has changed. Raising a daughter who, understandably, wants to read books, watch movies, and play games featuring girls has brought this issue into his life in no uncertain terms. We all want to see heroes who look like us, Abernathy asserted, and his daughter, who is also multi-ethnic, has as much right to such heroes as she grows up as he did when he was growing up. Unfortunately, Abernathy's quest to find games that would offer his daughter such heroes turned up scant results.

The straight white male video game hero is not going to go the way of the dodo; he's just going to have more company.Abernathy's talk was hopeful, but he acknowledged that diversifying the medium isn't as simple as just starting work on games with more diverse casts. He referenced a recent Gamesindustry.biz article about Remember Me, in which the developers stated that publishers told them they were unwilling to take on the game because of its female protagonist, and Abernathy said that he has heard similar conversations many times. You will face resistance, he said. But he hoped that his argument could give developers the leverage they needed to start fighting for greater diversity in the games being developed at their companies.

Abernathy's argument in favor of greater diversity in games was three-pronged. First, there was the moral argument. It is, he said, the right thing to do. There's no good justification for not doing it; everyone should have heroes who look like them.

Abernathy's second argument was about creativity. Diversity benefits creativity, he said, opening up opportunities for richer, juicier narratives. Looking at television, he compared the relative simplicity of the TV landscape of the 1970s to that of today. He argued that television is a richer, stronger medium now than it was then and that this was attributable in part to the presence of complex female characters like Homeland's Carrie Mathison, Scandal's Olivia Pope, and the numerous women of Game of Thrones. Why, his argument implied, would the creators of games want to deny themselves the potential for richer narratives that a more diverse cast of characters can offer?

But ultimately, the only thing that matters to businesspeople in a business setting is a business argument, Abernathy said, and if those businesspeople believe the core audience won't embrace diversity, they will counsel against diversity in games. So it was his third argument that was the most important: that greater diversity in games is smart business. He cited data that indicated that women and nonwhites make up a massive percentage of gamers. "Women are not a special market on the fringe of the core," he said. "Women are the new core."

Looking at the data, he said that it's not hard to see these trajectories moving forward, suggesting that the makeup of people who play games isn't going to get less diverse anytime soon. The audience is leaving us behind, he said; the market is changing faster than we are.

It was Abernathy's third argument that was the most important: that greater diversity in games is smart business.But his closing suggested that it doesn't have to be this way. An increase in diversity can lead to increased sales, he said, because games will be more relevant to their increasingly diverse players. As he made these statements, photos of his daughter kept his argument from being a purely intellectual one; it was a poignant call for a very important change our industry needs to make.

So let's do that now. Let's not put a woman or two in the third chapter of a male-dominated, woman-marginalizing series and call it progress. Will some people freak out if games suddenly get significantly more diverse? Sure, but they'll get over it. And those who don't, well, to hell with them. You don't coddle cancer.

15.06 | 0 komentar | Read More

GameCenter 03-27-13

I think what frustrates me so much with regi is he sits there talking about professionalism the whole time and how hard it is to make a business decision because he has personal feelings involved when if he were just the owner the choice would have been easy and to cut chaox.

This is why you can't be a player AND an owner, because you are going to have to make those hard decisions and you CAN'T have those personal feelings involved. Regi talking about chaox exploding on him, do you think that was done as player to player or player to boss? I'm not trying to justify chaox saying what he said, and in fact as a business owner if an employee said that to me I would fire him on the spot, but at the same time regi needs to realize that by simply being the owner AND a player that alone opens the door for tension to come rolling in because the relationship will get too convoluted and this is what happens.

If he were just the owner then he could have easily stepped up and said "look you're fucking up and if you don't stop this then there will be consequences plain and simple" just as any other boss would do in any other job.

Having an obvious boss/employee relationship is vital to any organization to succeed otherwise the employees do feel like they can act out. This is why you see head coaches of football teams (just as an example) not interact with players until after pre-season is over because they know they're going to have to cut some of the guys that don't make it. You NEED to establish "I am your boss, you are my employee" not "I am your teammate, friend, roommate, and boss".

Regi needs to seriously decide to pick one or the other because so long as he is doing both I don't see this tension going away even with chaox release. It almost feels as if it is dyrus and oddone vs xpecial and regi now with wildturtle potentially caught in the middle. Hows that for professionalism?

And as for xpecial, yes i have to say it lol you're a little bitch dude. Stop cowering when someone confronts you because you're scared and grow up. It isn't hard to have a reasonable conversation with someone if you do it with civility and most people (at least in my experiences) will respect you more for being straight up with them rather than hiding behind someone or something else. Thats just flat out highschool shit right there.

15.06 | 0 komentar | Read More

Journey takes top prize at GDC Awards

The votes are in and Journey has taken top honors at the 13th annual Game Developers Choice Awards this evening in San Francisco, California. Journey not only took home the top award, but also accolades for innovation, best visual arts, best downloadable game, best audio, and best game design.

Thatgamecompany's adventure game beat out XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Mass Effect 3, The Walking Dead, and Dishonored to secure the Game of the Year Award.

Jenova Chen, cofounder of Thatgamecompany, thanked his parents and his educators for helping him get where he is today. He said creating Journey was no easy task, but noted he has learned a great deal since beginning on his own journey to make the game.

The 2013 Game Developers Choice Awards was hosted by Double Fine founder Tim Schafer. Last year's winner was The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

The GDC Awards were preceded by the 15th annual Independent Games Festival Awards, where Cart Life took home the Seumas McNally Grand Prize. In addition to the top prize, Cart Life--developed by Richard Hofmeier--won the excellence in narrative and nuovo award.

A full list of the night's nominees with winners in italics follows below.

GAME DEVELOPERS CHOICE AWARDS

Game of the Year
Dishonored (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks)
The Walking Dead (Telltale Games)
Mass Effect 3 (BioWare/Electronic Arts)
XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Firaxis Games/2K Games)
Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment)

Best Audio
Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment)
Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games/Devolver Digital)
Sound Shapes (Queasy Games/Sony Computer Entertainment)
Assassin's Creed III (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft)
Halo 4 (343 Industries/Microsoft Studios)

Best Debut
Humble Hearts (Dust: An Elysian Tail)
Polytron Corporation (Fez)
Giant Sparrow (The Unfinished Swan)
Subset Games (FTL: Faster Than Light)
Fireproof Games (The Room)

Best Game Design
Dishonored (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks)
Mark of the Ninja (Klei Entertainment/Microsoft Studios)
Spelunky (Derek Yu/Andy Hull)
Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment)
XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Firaxis Games/2K Games)

Best Downloadable Game
The Walking Dead (Telltale Games)
Spelunky (Derek Yu/Andy Hull)
Trials: Evolution (RedLynx/Microsoft Studios)
Mark of the Ninja (Klei Entertainment/Microsoft Studios)
Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment)

Best Technology
Far Cry 3 (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft)
PlanetSide 2 (Sony Online Entertainment)
Halo 4 (343 Industries/Microsoft Studios)
Call of Duty: Black Ops II (Treyarch/Activision)
Assassin's Creed III (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft)

Best Handheld/Mobile Game
Gravity Rush (SCE Japan Studio/Sony Computer Entertainment)
Hero Academy (Robot Entertainment)
Sound Shapes (Queasy Games/Sony Computer Entertainment)
The Room (Fireproof Games)
Kid Icarus: Uprising (Sora/Nintendo)

Best Narrative
Spec Ops: The Line (Yager Entertainment/2K Games)
Mass Effect 3 (BioWare/Electronic Arts)
Dishonored (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks)
The Walking Dead (Telltale Games)
Virtue's Last Reward (Chunsoft/Aksys Games)

Best Visual Arts
Borderlands 2 (Gearbox Software/2K Games)
Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment)
Far Cry 3 (Ubisoft Montreal/Ubisoft)
Dishonored (Arkane Studios/Bethesda Softworks)
Halo 4 (343 Industries/Microsoft Studios)

Innovation
Mark of the Ninja (Klei Entertainment/Microsoft Studios)
Journey (Thatgamecompany/Sony Computer Entertainment)
FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games)
The Unfinished Swan (Giant Sparrow/Sony Computer Entertainment)
ZombiU (Ubisoft Montpellier/Ubisoft)

Ambassador Award
Chris Melissinos, curator of The Smithsonian's The Art of Video Games exhibit

Pioneer Award
Spacewar creator Steve Russell

Audience Award
Dishonored

Lifetime Achievement Award
BioWare founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk

INDEPENDENT GAMES FESTIVAL AWARDS

Seumas McNally Grand Prize
Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games)
FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games)
Cart Life (Richard Hofmeier)
Little Inferno (Tomorrow Corporation)
Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer)

Excellence in Visual Art
Incredipede (Northway Games and Thomas Shahan)
Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer)
Guacalamelee! (Drinkbox Studios)
Loves in a Dangerous Spacetime (Asteroid Base)
Year Walk (Simogo)

Excellence in Narrative
Thirty Flights of Loving (Blendo Games)
Cart Life (Richard Hofmeier)
Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer)
Dys4ia (Auntie Pixelante)
Gone Home (The Fullbright Company)

Technical Excellence
StarForge (CodeHatch)
Perspective (DigiPen Widdershins)
Little Inferno (Tomorrow Corporation)
Intrusion 2 (Aleksey Abramenko)
LiquidSketch (Tobias Neukom)

Excellence In Design
Samurai Gunn (Beau Blyth)
FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games)
Starseed Pilgrim (Droqen & Ryan Roth)
Super Hexagon (Terry Cavanagh)
Super Space (David Scamehorn and Alexander Baard/DigiPen)

Excellence In Audio
Kentucky Route Zero (Cardboard Computer)
Bad Hotel (Lucky Frame)
140 (Jeppe Carlsen)
Hotline Miami (Dennaton Games)
Pixeljunk 4AM (Q-Games)

Nuovo Award
Cart Life (Richard Hofmeier)
Spaceteam (Henry Smith)
Dys4ia (Auntie Pixelante)
Bientot l'ete (Tale of Tales)
7 Grand Steps (Mousechief)
MirrorMoon (SantaRagione + BloodyMonkey)
VESPER.5 (Michael Brough)
Little Inferno (Tomorrow Corporation)

Audience Award
FTL: Faster Than Light (Subset Games)

15.06 | 0 komentar | Read More