‘Goat Simulator’ is getting a ridiculous zombie survival add-on
Goat Simulator‘s offbeat, knowingly glitchy gameplay is about to invade yet another genre: zombie survival. Meet GoatZ, a not-so-subtle jab at DayZ and other titles where you spend as much time scrounging for supplies as you do fighting off the undead. Coffee Stain Studios’ add-on is just as nuts as you’d expect (pink crossbows, anyone?), and is almost too on-point with its send-ups. It has “as many bugs” as other survival titles, and there’s a “completely realistic” mode where you eat every few minutes — because that’s what you do in these sorts of games, isn’t it? If that sounds at once hilarious and all too familiar, you’ll be glad to hear that GoatZ will be available for $5 on Steam as of May 7th, with mobile versions also on the way.
Filed under: Gaming
Via: Eurogamer
Source: Coffee Stain Studios (YouTube)
Sony’s sold two million PS4s in the UK
Although Sony’s other businesses aren’t faring too well, its entertainment division is helping keep the company’s head above water. This is thanks, in part, to the success of the PlayStation 4, which continues to outstrip sales of the Xbox One and further compound Microsoft’s console misery. With 22.3 million worldwide sales now in the bag, Sony has provided an update on how well the PlayStation 4 is getting on in the UK, announcing that it’s now shifted more than two million units. According to Sony, the console reached the milestone over the past weekend, keeping it ahead of the super successful PlayStation 2. Those sales have also helped make it the best-selling domestic games console for 2015 so far. While it took 42 weeks for the PS4 to reach one million sales, it only took a further 35 weeks for Sony to double that tally. Something tells us that the console price wars are definitely influencing buyers, but exclusive games like Bloodbourne are doing their bit too.
We’ve just hit 2 million PS4s sold! Thank you to all the players who’ve helped us get here, from @PlayStationUK. pic.twitter.com/a6HzewoQct
– PlayStation UK (@PlayStationUK) May 5, 2015
Source: MCV
Engadget giveaway: win a gaming headset and sound bar courtesy of Polk!
This week’s giveaway goes out to all the Xbox One owners out there (and even future adopters). Polk Audio collaborated with Microsoft to fine tune some of its gaming-centric gear and we’ve got a set of prize packages for a few lucky Engadget readers. First off, we have the Striker ZX headset, which offers wireless connectivity for Xbox owners and an omni-directional boom mic for in-game chats or phone calls. Also, when the coast is clear, you’ll be able to fire up Polk’s N1 Gaming SurroundBar for open-air audio immersion. The company worked alongside designers from Halo and Forza to provide optimized sound experiences for the games in addition to its Music and Cinema settings. You can also connect to the sound bar with your Bluetooth devices and aptX support is on the menu. It has its own Sub Bass tech, but if you’re a glutton for punishment, you can add your own subwoofer to the mix, too. It’s a trifecta this week, with three pairs of speakers and headsets ready to ship out to a trio of lucky winners. All you need to do is head to the Rafflecopter widget for up to three chances at winning!
- Entries are handled through the Rafflecopter widget above. Comments are no longer accepted as valid methods of entry. You may enter without any obligation to social media accounts, though we may offer them as opportunities for extra entries. Your email address is required so we can get in touch with you if you win, but it will not be given to third parties.
- Contest is open to all residents of the 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), 18 or older! Sorry, we don’t make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so direct your anger at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
- Winners will be chosen randomly. Three (3) winners will each receive one (1) Polk Striker ZX Xbox One gaming headset and one (1) Polk N1 Gaming SurroundBar/sound bar.
- If you are chosen, you will be notified by email. Winners must respond within three days of being contacted. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen. Make sure that the account you use to enter the contest includes your real name and a contact email or Facebook login. We do not track any of this information for marketing or third-party purposes.
- This unit is purely for promotional giveaway. Engadget and AOL are not held liable to honor warranties, exchanges or customer service.
- The full list of rules, in all its legalese glory, can be found here.
- Entries can be submitted until May 6th at 11:59PM ET. Good luck!
Filed under: Announcements, Gaming
Rockets, flirting and bruised egos on Steam Early Access
Steam launched its Early Access program in 2013, allowing developers to publish and sell incomplete, in-progress builds of their games on the internet’s largest digital distribution hub. And publish they did — by May 2014, more games had launched on Steam that year than in all of 2013, partially thanks to Early Access. This contributed to the gaming industry’s ongoing digital revolution, where publishers shifted away from shipping physical products, indies were on the rise and Kickstarter changed how everyday players interacted with game creators. The revolution continues to simmer today and developers, especially independent ones, are still figuring out what to do with all of these new tools — including Early Access.
Radial Games released its multiplayer arcade shooter ROCKETSROCKETSROCKETS on Early Access in May 2014. It ended up selling about 12,000 units before it was completed, and those sales helped fund development of the full game, which launched on May 1st this year. The key word here is “helped.”
“Unfortunately, [Early Access] is not some magic spell that makes everything roses and sunshine — with a team of four core team members, conferences, booths and other expenses, the 12,000 units we sold was not enough to fund even half of the game’s development costs,” Radial co-founder Andy Moore says. “The remainder came from our personal savings and credit cards.”
It worked out for Radial. RRR is on Steam, in full, and it’s doing well. It’s an arcade shooter where players deploy rockets at each other, leaving brilliant, swirling trails behind their ships as they spin wildly around the map. It’s ballistics ballet; one of Moore’s favorite reviews calls it “a 2D physics game about dancing and flirting,” a delicate description for a game that involves lots and lots of rockets.
RRR has received only positive reviews since launch, but it’s at 90 percent positive overall. That’s a great rating, Moore says, but it captures one particularly frustrating aspect of Early Access. When RRR first hit the service, some players panned it in reviews for being buggy, not pretty enough or simply incomplete — which was the point of releasing on Early Access in the first place. “Seeing some early criticisms of the game definitely hurt our egos a bit,” Moore says.
Many players don’t know how to react to Early Access titles.
“Those User Reviews stick around forever, dragging our overall rankings down. Sometimes we can change people’s minds, but usually not. It really feels like everyone doesn’t quite know how to handle Early Access. Some news sites won’t cover Early Access games; many players don’t know how to react to Early Access titles and many developers don’t know what to do with it, or if they even want press coverage at that state. This is relatively new territory in the video games industry, and there isn’t really a solid set of ‘best practices’ yet.”
There are Early Access success stories: Kerbal Space Program recently launched after a successful stint, Nuclear Throne just passed $1 million in revenue and other massively popular games have happily taken the Early Access route. However, by November 2014, only 25 percent of Early Access games had gone on to launch as full titles, industry analysis group EEDAR reported.
For Moore, the benefits of launching RRR early weren’t in sales numbers, but in player feedback. Even with the negative comments and confusion over what an Early Access game was supposed to be, Radial learned a lot about its own project. RRR is multiplayer-focused, meaning they needed tons of testers, and Early Access provided that.
“We were able to produce a game that — for the first time in my career — launched without any critical bugs,” Moore says. “We’re really happy with how solid we were able to make the game, and that’s all thanks to the early testers.”
Overall, Moore is still on the fence about Early Access. He doesn’t have full-release sales numbers for RRR yet, but he does have a hunch about how the pre-release pitch impacted this month’s launch.
“My suspicion is that Early Access has dramatically diminished our press coverage, which has led to reduced sales numbers,” he says. “My instinct is to say ‘it’s not worth it,’ but that ignores all the critical feedback and bug-hunting our beta-testing rocketeers accomplished. Maybe if we didn’t do Early Access, we’d have more press coverage and more sales, but more game-breaking bugs or bad reviews?”
Moore is sure about one thing: There is no single rule for thriving on Early Access. Success depends on the type of game and how the developers interact with their communities, Moore says. “And, perhaps critically, your ability to handle negative, unfair criticism,” he adds.
Image credits: Radial Games
The Nintendo studio behind ‘Kirby’ talks its new game ‘BOXBOY!’
BOXBOY! did not hit the 3DS with the fanfare it deserved this spring. It’s a brand-new game, with brand-new characters and it’s published by Nintendo. Which is precisely the sort of thing the company’s greatest detractors claim it’s missing. Then again, even though the funny, little puzzle game is ingenious and addictive, it’s also as quiet and unassuming as the studio that made it: HAL Laboratory.
Much like BOXBOY!, HAL does not have the reputation it should. For 35 years, the first-party Nintendo studio’s pumped out games that are deeply traditional while remaining deeply experimental. The Kirby franchise, HAL’s signature work, has been both a major sales success with more than 30 million games sold and a hotbed for creativity (as in Kirby and the Rainbow Curse) and old-school style (a la Kirby: Triple Deluxe.) That little pink puff Kirby tends to dominate HAL’s output, which is what makes an original like BOXBOY! so exciting. So to get some deeper insight into the creation of this new Nintendo IP, I interviewed Yasuhiro Mukae, the director of HAL’s first original in five years, via a translator through email. We discussed HAL’s creative process, the secret to making expressive characters and what it’s like making games at one of gaming’s most consistent, if underappreciated, studios.
Cleverly manipulating boxes is the key to navigating BOXBOY!’s deceptively challenging traps.
What is HAL’s usual creative process? When trying out new ideas for the Kirby series for example, do you come up with the gameplay first and say, “This is good for Kirby!” or do you take Kirby and try to come up with something unusual for him to do?
Using BOXBOY! as an example, we often come up with ideas that go with the gameplay.
This goes for the Qbby character design, which is a match for the gameplay, as well as the assorted new tricks we came up with to make it more fun to advance through stages. We devote a lot of effort to expanding the range of gameplay.
The game idea came first. We started with the ability to create boxes, and we did the character design from there. The result is Qbby, with that really simple design. He looks simple, but he can create boxes, dance around and more. I think we created a really vibrant and charming character here.
How long did it take to develop BOXBOY!?
Between the initial experimentation we did and the official project launch, it was about a year and a half. We devoted half a year to experimentation, and once we kicked off the official project, it took us a year to wrap up the game.
Why did you make BOXBOY! so visually sparse? HAL has a penchant for bold, colorful games.
Those simple visuals were something we aimed for in order to differentiate ourselves from other games.
In the modern scene, with tons of games with colorful visuals all over the place, having a simple monochrome game like BOXBOY! is something we thought would draw gamers’ attention and make them take an interest in the game.
The game idea came first. We started with the ability to create boxes, and we did the character design from there. The result is Qbby.
It’s interesting playing BOXBOY! so soon after Kirby and the Rainbow Curse since it feels very traditional by comparison in terms of control. Kirby and the Rainbow Curse is purely about using the touchscreen while BOXBOY! is still about buttons and a d-pad. What is different about making a game for old-style controls and for games controlled only with a touchscreen?
Intuitive, easy-to-grasp controls were something we treated very importantly during BOXBOY! development. On that point, I’m sure that there was no difference in the direction taken by both BOXBOY! and Kirby and the Rainbow Curse. Also, the action of creating boxes forms the core of BOXBOY!‘s gameplay, so we focused a great deal on making that box-creating action easy, comfortable and fun, without requiring complex controls.
BOXBOY! takes the Pac-man approach to charming design and, apparently, gendered fashion.
How did BOXBOY! change from when it was first conceived to when it came out?
Ever since the idea phase, BOXBOY! was centered around the idea of creating boxes in order to make your way through puzzle landscapes. We were able to proceed with development without this core gameplay concept changing much at all, from the very beginning.
One major change that did occur was how the game is structured overall. At first, we created rather large stages that you could really sit down and spend a great deal of time playing. We later reconsidered this, restricting the amount of content per stage and changing the structure so you could complete each stage more quickly. We also added story elements in a move to encourage players to enjoy the game all the way through to the end.
Were there any ideas you tried to implement in the game that just didn’t work out?
There are a lot of ideas that we couldn’t make happen within the game. These run the gamut from ideas that didn’t even make it into the project plan to things that wound up lacking in fun after we implemented them. As for exactly what ideas we had, I hope you’ll allow me to keep them a secret.
HAL is very adept at visual storytelling. Both Qbby and Kirby are very clearly defined characters with a lot of personality that comes through even though they’re silent. How do you convey character and story to players without using words?
The secret lies in how we devote time to the characters’ expressions and motions. Qbby is a simple character — composed of nothing but a square body, some eyes and some feet — but we paid particular attention to his animation to make sure that gamers would find him engaging.
We also included a lot of variation in the animation, from the stage-complete dances to the little motions when there’s no player input. I think he’s become a pretty cute character as a result, one that’s fun even if you’re just looking at him.
[Image credit: Nintendo]
GOG’s Galaxy platform is one step closer to taking on Steam
It seems like just yesterday Good Old Games was giving away copies of Aliens vs. Predator to get folks to try its (optional) PC gaming service, Galaxy. Times have changed and leading into The Witcher 3: WIld Hunt‘s release — the first major title debuting on the storefront — the platform is moving from closed alpha testing into an open beta. The constant that’s carrying over from the alpha is that you aren’t required to participate in anything within the software. Not into automatic updates that might fix some of your favorite glitches in a game? That’s totally cool; you can opt out and still keep playing. Steam and Origin aren’t quite as keen on that.
Let’s say that you’re going to go all in and allow Galaxy to perform the patches for you. If one breaks the game to the point of it being unplayable, you can roll back to the previous, working version supposedly without much of an issue. You can download a separate DRM-free backup copy of a game, too.
As the press release quotes tell it, the idea is to make the optional features — and the platform itself — enticing enough and to such a high quality that you’ll choose to use them; it’s a motivator for the development team to do its best work. Want to see what this so-called digital freedom “tastes like?” Head over to GOG.com and grab the beta for Mac or Windows.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD
Source: Good Old Games
PlayStation Now’s game streaming subscription hits PS3
It was easy to scoff at Sony when the electronics giant said it had a 10 year plan for the PlayStation 3, but here we are almost a decade later and it’s still supporting the console. Case in point: the firm’s announced that it’s bringing subscriptions for the PlayStation Now game-streaming service to Blu-ray’s trojan horse. It all starts on May 12th, and beyond that a handful of new games are hitting the service too. They include F1 2014 , Farming Simulator and the ever-so-charming Fat Princess (that’s an awful lot of “F” games now that I think about it), bringing total number of streaming titles to around 100.
Sony says that subscriptions are coming to even more devices too. So, at this point is $20 a month to stream an “unlimited” amount of games on an additional platform enough for you to pull the trigger? If not, what would it take? Let us know in the comments.
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Sony
Source: PlayStation Blog
Gaming legend Sid Meier auctions his SNES kit for charity
Want a rare piece of video gaming history? We hope you’re a quick-draw bidder. Legendary game developer Sid Meier is holding a charity auction for a Super NES developer kit (which is hard to find by itself) used during his MicroProse days. Yes, there’s a real chance that you could be using a system that helped build an early console version of Civilization. Don’t think that you can just take on some credit card debt to get that nostalgia kick, though. Meier is only selling the kit to trustworthy eBay users with verified PayPal accounts, and bidding starts at $5,999 — it’s worthwhile if you want to help St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, but you’re paying for a lot more than someone’s second-hand console.
Filed under: Gaming
Source: eBay
Google+ launches Collections, a Pinterest-style sharing board
The new Collections tab on Google+ offers a way to organize and share your interests with other people on the network, a la the mother of all cutesy-sharing sites, Pinterest. You’re able to create a customized Collection about anything that you like (suggestions: Hello Kitty accessories, Harry Potter spells, summer books, League of Legends champions), complete with photos, videos, links and commentary. Fellow Google+ users are able to follow any Collection set to “public,” or you can start a private Collection and keep all of those adorable Hello Kitty backpacks and phone cases to yourself. The Collections feature is live for many users right now, and you should be able to find it in the dropdown tab on the left side of your very own Google+ page.
Filed under: Gaming, HD, Microsoft
Source: Google+ Collections
‘League of Legends’ documentary chronicles America’s eSports underdogs
Patrick Creadon wants to tell you about what he thinks is competitive gaming’s Miracle on Ice moment. And to do so, he’s employing the tool he knows best: a movie camera. Whereas before, the film director has focused on the national debt with I.O.U.S.A. or the (sometimes famous) people who love crossword puzzles in Wordplay, his latest project, All Work All Play, tackles the world of eSports. Specifically, League of Legends and two American dark horse teams quite literally going up against the rest of the world in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans packed into, ironically enough, hockey arenas.
“eSports teams don’t have the respect that they so badly crave,” he says. “These North American teams are not unlike the 1980 United States hockey team going up against Russia [in the Olympics]. Our movie really captures a similar story.”
All Work All Play follows the Intel Extreme Masters tournament’s 2014/2015 season, chronicling the event’s various stops around the globe and culminates at this past March’s $300,000 championship in Poland. Creadon and his wife, producer Christine O’Malley, chose to focus on LoL because, unlike StarCraft 2, it’s a team-based game rather than a solo affair.
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-771156display:none; .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-771156, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-771156width:570px;display:block;
trydocument.getElementById(“fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-771156″).style.display=”none”;catch(e)
All Work All Play‘s premiere trailer.
Creadon says that because of the team-based structure, the game offers a ton of interesting components and complexity that make for interesting storytelling. Chiefly, it’s an underdog story; Korea dominates not only LoL tournaments, but also eSports in general. While teams Cloud 9 and Team SoloMid have some clout domestically, they haven’t exactly been taken seriously on the world’s stage. Hence the “Miracle on Ice” analogy.
The inherent challenge is making the subject matter approachable for a worldwide theatrical audience this July. It’s something that Valve didn’t have to worry about with its DotA 2 documentary Free to Play, which debuted on its PC-based Steam platform, iTunes and YouTube last year. Creadon doesn’t see the theatrical release as a hindrance, though. For him, it’s an advantage in a few different ways. Aside from giving him a broader audience, he sees sitting down in a theater to watch the film as a parallel to attending an eSports event.
“You’re not watching the game or playing a game on a PC; you’re going to an arena!” he says excitedly. “That’s more than half the fun: seeing it with other people who are like you that love this thing that you also love.”
A movie about video games is one thing, but eSports are a niche within a niche.
A movie about video games is one thing, but eSports are a niche within a niche. Another point of comparison is soccer: wildly popular around the globe, but still considered outside the mainstream domestically. Think about the recent backlash regarding ESPN radio host Colin Cowherd blowing his stack over the “worldwide leader in sports” (his employer) airing a college Heroes of the Storm tournament last week. It’s this sort of reaction that it seems Creadon is trying to dispel. “We’re not casting judgment; we’re trying to paint a portrait of these people,” he says.
He likens his job to that of a tour guide at a museum. Given how long he’s spent with the material and has been embedded into the scene, he thinks he knows what’s interesting and what can make the game and the story of this tournament appeal to people. Instead of just pointing his camera at the back of someone’s head as they sit at a computer playing, he worked to get inside the minds of the competitors, interviewing them off camera and recording only voice to discover what drives them and who they are as people.
A scene from 2013’s Intel Extreme Masters tournament in Poland.
And it seems to have been a success. The film showed at the recent Tribeca Film Festival and as Creadon describes it, general audience members were sort of slack-jawed. He tells of a conversation he had with a female member of the audience after the screening. She has a younger brother who plays a lot of video games, but who she doesn’t have much in common with. After watching the movie, she called him and they had a half-hour-long talk about LoL and why he loves it. Now, she has a better understanding of the game and why it means so much to him. “She said the movie really made her feel closer to her brother,” Creadon says. “At the end of the day, eSports is really just about people and [the movie] is really a human story.” That’s the way he sees making eSports approachable to a mass audience. Giving them something familiar to grab hold of in a foreign world is the key for him. While he understands it might not have the same impact as his past work, how those who’ve seen the film have reacted encourages him. For the game’s fans, he says it’s like catnip — they can’t get enough of it. But for everyone else? “It’s like Tron; it’s like going into a world that you’ve never been in before.” [Image credits: Patrick Creadon (lead image), Piotr Drabik/Flickr]
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Intel
AIVAnet 