PayPal Sparks Speculation About Online Gaming In U.S.
Last year, an article written up at Slate speculated that online gambling would be legalised across the U.S. by the end of this decade. The article suggested that with online poker already legal in three U.S. states (Nevada, New Jersey, and Delaware), and significant pressure from major gaming companies being put on legislators, a spread is inevitable. Both types of games and regions in which those games are legal will almost undoubtedly expand between now and 2020.
It was a very sound argument from a major publication, but the truth is that Slate’s article was also one of many. It’s not exactly groundbreaking to pose a theory that the U.S. will legalise online gambling, at least in some respects. The industry potential is simply too staggering, and too much of the U.S. population is interested. The issue is just that legislation in America can be a very slow process.
But recently we got a subtle indication that some potentially major players in a hypothetical U.S. online gambling industry may be expecting things to start happening sooner rather than later. According to CNBC, PayPal has worked its way back into some budding online gambling platforms operating in the U.S. This move makes perfect sense, as there’s plenty of business for PayPal even if it’s only operating on sites active in three of the 50 American states. However, the timing has raised some eyebrows. Noise about legalisation efforts in the U.S. is getting louder by the year, and for PayPal to quietly hop on board now suggests that the company is expecting increased activity on the horizon.
As for the actual utility of PayPal for gambling sites and among paying players, the idea is to simultaneously streamline and secure the experience. While U.S. legalisation would bring about the quick emergence of a number of online gambling platforms, many see the most potential in the mobile market that would be attached to these platforms. We’ve already seen in areas of the world in which online gambling is perfectly legal that mobile gaming brings in gigantic amounts of business, and part of that comes down to providing quick gaming and payment methods.
In the UK, the Gala Bingo platform—it incidentally already includes PayPal among its various payment options—has provided a model for making gambling opportunities as accessible as possible to players. Rather than requiring an app download (which is still an option), the site actually offers QR codes that can be read by a smartphone, and which then load the Gala platform onto that phone. Alternatively, players can even send a certain text message to an arranged number and receive the platform as well. This is the sort of speed and accessibility that has made mobile casinos mutually appealing—to the casinos because they bring in business, and to players because everything is so convenient.
The integration of a payment facilitator with online gaming sites and their respective mobile branches is an extension of this convenience, and one from which PayPal stands to benefit enormously. Just as online gamblers grow used to being able to access their favourite sites’ games at the touch of a button or after a quick scan, the ability to pay instantaneously will contribute to the user experience on a broad scale.
This, in addition to the fact that PayPal is generally trusted by the public as a safe way to send and receive funds, is why PayPal and online gambling sites can be so valuable to one another. And the fact that PayPal is already moving on securing these partnerships may just be the latest indication that the U.S. is an online gambling market waiting to explode.
‘Dark Souls 3’ is coming for your patience next April
Don’t have a PlayStation 4 and Bloodborne but still want in on some punishing action by way of the folks at From Software? Good because Dark Souls 3 hits PC, PS4 and Xbox One next April — right in line with the “early 2016” window we were teased with during E3 this year. And for those who need something to do between now and then, perhaps the recently announced “The Old Hunters” expansion for Bloodborne will whet your whistle come its November 24th release date. Here’s to hoping you’re suitably prepared to die evade peril by then.
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Filed under:
Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD
Tags: 2016, april2016, bloodborne, darksouls, darksouls3, dlc, fromsoftware, gaming, hd, hdpostcross
A giant rat bird was the closest I got to ‘The Last Guardian’
Well, I got to tease it with a giant pink ball. To promote The Last Guardian, which is very much happening and also very not playable (so far) at the Tokyo Game Show, the team at genDesign hooked up a 20-foot screen with a projection of the lovable / grotesque (delete as applicable) Trico. The feathery giant rodent is projected at fictional life-size, while two hidden depth cameras pick movement of anyone near its cage. We seemed to get the best reactions when the organizers brought out that aforementioned pink ball to catch its attention. It still roars a lot, which only scares the crap out of you the first… twelve times. It’s a simple little technical demo that doesn’t reveal anything more about the game, but it’s better than watching similar gameplay videos again. Hand me a controller.
The Last Guardian beast is kind of adorable — until it roars down your ear. #tgs2015
A video posted by MT (@thtmtsmth) on Sep 16, 2015 at 9:58pm PDT
Tags: japan, projection, sony, tgs2015, thelastguardian, trico, video
‘Mighty No. 9’ demo delay gives backers more reason to be upset
What a long, sad trip it’s been for folks who backed the Mega Man spiritual successor Mighty No. 9 on Kickstarter. A demo, which was originally planned as an apology for the game being delayed, has been pushed back. Developer Comcept writes that this tardiness is a result of issues that arose pertaining to the distribution method — Steam. No other updates or info was given, and this news was buried at the bottom of a blog post about a custom-design contest (hey, we’re running one of those too!). It’s probably safe to guess that those involved feel pretty bad about the whole ordeal and how Comcept plans to make up for this is going to be interesting. Could another apology even suffice at this point?
Filed under:
Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD
Via:
Polygon
Source:
Comcept
Tags: crowdfunding, delay, demo, gaming, hd, hdpostcross, KeijiInafune, kickstarter, megaman, mightyno.9, steam
Telltale’s ‘Minecraft’ adventure game arrives on October 13
Minecraft, but as a point-and-click adventure game? When Telltale’s Story Mode title was first announced, it left many of us scratching our heads. Minecraft is hardly known for its rich narrative, and its open-ended gameplay couldn’t be further from the tightly woven, decision-driven moments found in most Telltale games. However, since then we’ve had a steady clip of trailers and screenshots that give us an idea of how it’ll all shake out — and now we’ve got a release date too. Minecraft: Story Mode launches on October 13th with the first episode, “The Order of the Stone.” It’ll be available on PC, Mac, PS4, PS3, Xbox One and Xbox 360 — iOS and Android will join them on October 15th, followed by Wii U and PS Vita sometime in the future. Retail versions will be dropping on October 27th — Telltale is calling it a “Season Pass Disc,” which means you’ll get instant access to the first episode and download codes/patches for the latter four episodes that wrap up the series.
Filed under:
Gaming
Source:
Telltale Games
Tags: AdventureGames, minecraft, minecraftstorymode, mojang, releasedate, telltalegames
Former ‘DmC’ devs are risking millions to make a ‘AAA’ indie
Hellblade, a third-person game seen through the lens of a mentally ill protagonist, is a multimillion-dollar risk for developer Ninja Theory. Its strong focus on building a unique world and narrative represents a huge shift in creative direction from the company’s last AAA effort, the melee combat-heavy DmC: Devil May Cry. Rather than working with a big publisher, the Cambridge, England-based studio is self-funding Hellblade as an “independent AAA” title. It’s a decision that’s freed Ninja Theory from creative constraints, allowing it to tackle difficult topics and simply make the games it wants to make.
Hellblade follows Senua, a Pictish Celt warrior living with schizoaffective disorder, a mental illness that combines symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorders. It’s the murder of her tribe by warring Viking raiders that drives Senua into a psychotic break, causing her reality, as reflected in the gameplay, to be affected by hallucinations and delusions.
“We want to create entertainment, yes, but we also want to create art,” said Ninja Theory design chief Tameem Antoniades of the studio’s reasons for creating Hellblade without major publisher support. “And I think usually large publishers want to create a product. There is a distinction between creating a product and creating a piece of art.”
“I think usually large publishers want to create a product.”
Tameem Antoniades, Ninja Theory
Antoniades’ comments came from a talk at Develop, an annual video game development conference held this past summer in Brighton, England. It wasn’t until Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, that Ninja Theory was ready to show off a brief demo of Hellblade‘s mechanics. There, Dom Matthews, the studio’s “product development ninja,” walked us through what’s called a “vertical slice” of the game. It’s an industry term for a pre-production demo that, rather than being representative of the final game, combines various ideas to see what does and doesn’t work before entering full production. The demo follows Senua as she begins her journey to the Viking heartland to exact revenge.
During the 15-minute scene, rocks shape-shift; Viking enemies take on otherworldly forms; and the environment transforms with Senua’s heightening fear. This transformation isn’t tied to your actions; instead the environmental change helps hammer home the protagonist’s fluctuating emotional state. Of course, there are solid combat mechanics — you’d expect as much from the studio behind DmC and Heavenly Sword — but fights are few and far between. And the ones that do occur are overshadowed by the game’s intentionally fractured narrative and unique design.
It’s this focus on mental health, as opposed to more traditional and appealing combat, that Matthews believes makes a game like Hellblade financially unattractive to big publishers. “[The decision to go indie] is not really the result of any specific issue; it’s the reality of the AAA development market that you have to try and make a game that sells to millions of millions of people,” said Matthews. “You have to make compromises to justify the huge development costs associated with that.”
Hellblade‘s budget is low by AAA-development standards, but very high compared to the average indie game. Whereas a typical AAA game “is going to be $50 million upwards,” explained Matthews, Hellblade comes in “way below $10 million.” And that budget’s funded almost entirely by the studio itself. “We’ve put in our money; we’ve got loans and some support from the Wellcome Trust. … By and large, it’s our own money. That allows us to maintain creative ownership.”
That partnership with the Wellcome Trust, a medical research charity, is notable in that it’s helping to inform Hellblade‘s depiction of mental illness — a particularly tricky theme for video games to properly address. Through it, the studio was put in contact with people living with mental illness, as well as a professor of health neuroscience at Cambridge University who is working with the team to ensure an accurate portrayal of schizoaffective disorder. Even the most careful and well-intentioned developer can end up doing more harm than good when integrating mental illness into their game. Tackling the subject is a risk in itself.
“With Kickstarter you’ve got one shot. If you take donations and it doesn’t work out, then you’ve burnt that bridge.”
Dom Matthews, Ninja Theory
Given its niche appeal, an obvious question lingers over Hellblade: Why not follow other developers’ examples and try crowdfunding? For Matthews, that route represents a gamble the studio wasn’t willing to make. “I think with Kickstarter you’ve got one shot,” he said. “If you take donations and it doesn’t work out, then you’ve burnt that bridge. We didn’t want to take money from our fans and then have it fail. … [Hellblade] is an experiment, and there’s a risk that it won’t work.”
Self-funding the project means keeping the team small; 15 people are working on Hellblade right now, with most disciplines being filled by one person. “That’s the team size; that’s what we can afford,” Matthews explained, “but they’re experienced people that have spent a lot of time making AAA games.”
While the rest of the studio remains under the safety net of publishers — Ninja Theory just finished work on a portion of the well-received Disney Infinity 3.0 — the team building Hellblade has to improvise to keep costs low. To that end, Matthews even built a motion-capture space in the studio’s boardroom. “We used Amazon lights and IKEA wardrobe poles [and] did a proper ‘DIY’ job on it. But we got really important data for the game. It’s encouraging that we’re getting wins like that. … We have to be innovative for this to work.”
In order for Ninja Theory to break even on its risky indie effort, it needs to move 300,000 copies of Hellblade. Given the studio’s prominence and track record, the target seems more than realistic. “It’s a lot easier than the 5 million units that big AAA games have to do,” said Matthews, “but it’s not going to be easy.”
Without the marketing budget of a Capcom or a Disney behind it, Ninja Theory is going to rely heavily on reviews, word-of-mouth and promotion from Sony, which is offering it as a PlayStation exclusive (Hellblade is also coming to PC). “We’ve got a partnership with Sony who are doing a really good job of helping independent developers publish their own games, as are Microsoft. … That type of support is really crucial for us,” said Matthews. But marketing from Sony isn’t guaranteed, as even Sony-published games like Until Dawn seem to fall through the cracks.
That Ninja Theory is experimenting on its own dime with a non-traditional premise suggests it has a great deal of faith in Hellblade. These are early days — it’s only just entered the production phase, meaning the studio’s learning from its experiments with the “vertical slice” and building the game proper. Ninja Theory’s current aim is to release Hellblade at some point in 2016 as something “half the length and half the cost” of a typical AAA game. “We really want to make this work,” said Matthews, “and in all likelihood if we can do that, we’ll go on and do more things like this.”
Images: Ninja Theory
Tags: gamescom-2015, hdpostcross, Hellblade, MentalHealth, NinjaTheory
Wanted: your custom ‘Super Mario Maker’ levels
Something happened when we were broadcasting the Wii U’s Super Mario Maker on Playdate last week. Sean Buckley and myself (and almost assuredly someone from Twitch chat) thought it’d be a great idea to play through levels that the community made, live on the internet. And guess what? That’s absolutely what we want to do, but we’ll need your help. For a future stream we’d love to do nothing but play custom levels created exclusively by our loyal Playdate viewers. All you need to do is take the ID code for your masterpiece and drop it in an email to EngadgetPlaydate@gmail.com. It’s easy! We’re playing pretty loose with the rules too. You can send us a couple of your favorites (but fewer than 30) if you’re having a tough time narrowing it down to just one, and all that we ask if you not have anything lewd contained therein.
You have until 12 am ET next Tuesday, September 22nd to make any submissions. Should we choose to play through your level we’ll be in contact via email to let you know when you need to be online for the broadcast. Ideally, you’ll be able to join us in chat while we play.
Simple as that! Since it’s going to be my cohost Sean that’s actually playing through the game while I cackle in delight as his misfortunes, if you could make them a tad on the difficult side that’d be even better. Or, you know, maybe try and curry favor with him by cramming as many amiibo blocks into the level as possible. It’s up to you!
Filed under:
Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Nintendo
Tags: community, gaming, hd, hdpostcross, mario, mariomaker, nintendo, playdate, supermariomaker, wanted, wii, wiiu
Sony’s retrotastic 20th Anniversary PS4 controller lands in the UK
So, you didn’t manage to get your hands on a 20th Anniversary Edition PlayStation 4, just like everyone else. Well, nevermind, as you can now have the next best thing. Sony has today released the Anniversary Edition DualShock 4 controller in the UK (and the rest of Europe), with its retro gray colour scheme and home button sporting the original PlayStation logo. Unfortunately, this model’s lacking the engraved touchpad found on those shipped with the limited edition console, but it’s close enough. The nostalgic pad can now be found at stores including GAME and Amazon for £50, which is probably more than you’d spend picking up an OG PS1 and a copy of Crash Team Racing on eBay — not that we should be telling you which is the better purchase, of course.
This is for the PlayStation generation. Which one are you? 20th Anniversary Dualshock 4 out now #20YearsOfPlay pic.twitter.com/Qd56UPGXCF
— PlayStation Europe (@PlayStationEU) September 16, 2015
Filed under:
Gaming, Peripherals, HD, Sony
Source:
PlayStation Europe (Twitter)
Tags: 20thAnniversary, controller, dualshock4, hdpostcross, playstation, playstation4, ps4, sony
NVIDIA’s GeForce game sharing feature is available in beta
NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience Share has been released in early access beta, giving PC gamers the ability to invite friends to take over a game or play cooperatively. Via an in-game overlay menu, players can use the “Shadowplay” option to continuously capture a stream, then broadcast it to Twitch, other players, or YouTube as an upload. NVIDIA said that the feature can save the last 5 to 20 minutes of game play at up to 4K (3,840 x 2,160) with very little performance hit. Players can also send a live game stream to Twitch via the “broadcast” feature.
The game stream co-op feature, meanwhile, works not unlike Sony’s Share Play. You can invite friends — who presumably need a GeForce Experience-compatible graphics card and Share access as well — then stream it over the internet with low-latency. From there, they can watch you play, take control and show you how it’s done, or join you for co-op play. NVIDIA didn’t say if your graphics would take a hit like they do on Sony’s Share Play, but it likely depends on your hardware and internet speed. If you’re interested, you can now grab the beta from NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience site.
Source:
NVIDIA
Tags: Broadcast, Co-op, GeForceExperience, In-game, InstantReplay, nvidia, Overlay, SharePlay, Streams, video, YouTube
‘For the King’ is a hard, cute co-op game that needs your help
At first blush, it’s easy to dismiss a game based on its marketing bullet points: persistent choices; rougelike, online co-op. But sometimes it takes actually seeing it in motion for the cynicism to fall away. That’s what happened to me with For the King, a gorgeous little game that hit Kickstarter recently and was almost entirely funded ($26,739 of a needed $30,210 as of this writing) in its first day. Roguelikes by definition are typically solo affairs, but For the King supports three-player online co-op and the developer promises the game’s “unforgiving” in nature. So, expect a lot of death once the procedurally generated game launches next June.
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As you might gather from the images above, it’s absolutely gorgeous. If any of this tickles your fancy, $15 gets you in the door with a digital copy, but if you were hoping to spend large, the $1,000 reward tier that lets you create an in-game character is already sold out.
Filed under:
Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD
Source:
Kickstarter
Tags: crowdfunding, gaming, hd, hdpostcross, ironoakgames, kickstarter, roguelike, spelunky
AIVAnet 