Become a 1980s hacker in ‘Quadrilateral Cowboy’ on July 25th

Quadrilateral Cowboy has been a long time coming. Creator Brendon Chung, creator of the underground hit Thirty Flights of Loving, began working on Quadrilateral Cowboy in 2012 and he showed off an early version of the game in 2013. It’s a blocky, first-person espionage game set in the 1980s that has players actually hack their way through various levels, typing in lines of code to disengage alarms, open doors and generally sneak around. The independent-gaming crowd ate it up and Chung said it would be out within six months. He was off by nearly three years.

Quadrilateral Cowboy will hit PC via Steam and Chung’s studio, Blendo Games, on July 25th, and it’s due to land on Mac and Linux in September. Chung announced the release date today on Twitter.

We talked with Chung earlier this year about the reasons behind Quadrilateral Cowboy’s delay. Back in 2013, once he found a balance between marketing duties and actual development (hint: he largely stopped doing press for the game), he said the game took on a life of his own and he didn’t want to rush it.

“This is going to sound kind of artsy-fartsy, but I get this feeling sometimes when I start writing, that it’s not me anymore,” Chung said. “The piece that you’re writing just starts to kind of steer itself, in a way. The game did that to me.”

As for what the game will do to players, Chung said he hoped it wouldn’t be intimidating. Even though it involves actual coding, Quadrilateral Cowboy was designed to be a game for everyone, from engineers to novice players.

“My favorite thing at these shows is when kids come up to play it — like 10, 11, 12 years old,” he said. “They don’t have these preconceived notions that programming is this thing for geniuses or brilliant people. …They’ll just sit at the keyboard, they’ll start banging on it, and they get it. They pick it up because they don’t have all this baggage about what programming is. It’s amazing. That’s what I want.”

Quadrilateral Cowboy has a date: available on July 25, 2016.https://t.co/3CZNNKEfTB pic.twitter.com/mBDSXLtiLA

— Brendon Chung (@BlendoGames) July 11, 2016

Source: Quadrilateral Cowboy

The joyful death of the Philly Game Forge

Whenever a developer at the Philly Game Forge finished a project and shipped it off for the harsh scrutiny of the wider world, everyone would gather around, raise a glass and recite the following chant:

The code is done
The tweets are sent
The game is out the door
So now we’ll drink
And drink and drink
And then we’ll drink some more.

This chant offered camaraderie for the developer and a dash of self-deprecating humor before a flood of public attention, but mostly it signaled the end. The end of a game’s development. The end of months — or years — of work. The end of an era.

On Thursday, June 30th, the chant signaled the end of something even larger: the Philly Game Forge itself.

For four years, the Philly Game Forge was the hub of independent game development in Philadelphia, and it was a regular meeting place for anyone interested in video games. Dozens of developers worked out of the space daily, and it hosted a weekly public meet-up called Philly Dev Night. More than 100 developers, artists and enthusiasts showed up to each event, on average. The Dev Night hosted regular game jams, and over the years, numerous independent studios sprouted up around the city, rooted in relationships seeded at the Philly Game Forge.

Philly Dev Night hosted one game jam a month, challenging local developers to build something from scratch and present it to the community for judging. Sometimes these games would become something larger, such as commercial products, or spark ideas for new features in existing projects. The jams were a chance for developers to flex their creative muscles and try new things. Roughly six games would come out of each Dev Night jam, meaning the Forge spawned 72 games a year from this monthly meetup alone.

Some of these games went on to be featured at major festivals like SXSW and IndieCade. The post-Dev Night success stories include Monster Want Burger, SoulFill, Henka Twist Caper, Tailwind, the card games Resistor, Mahou Shojo and These French Fries are Terrible Hot Dogs, plus the board game Yomi’s Gate.

One challenge, the Profit Jam, gave teams one month to create their games and two weeks to sell them; the team that generated the most profit won. Some groups raked in thousands of dollars.

And this doesn’t count the work developers did during the day, creating and supporting games like Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony, Domino!, Dragon Fin Soup and Monsters!

Despite these successes, lack of funding forced the Forge closed its doors for good late last month. Its founders held a massive goodbye party on the evening of June 30th, where members read speeches on stage, signed a giant Game Forge poster, danced all night and said goodbye to a space that many of them called home.

“I cried. A lot,” recalls William Stallwood, one half of Auditorium studio Cipher Prime and co-founder of the Philly Game Forge. “In fact, I couldn’t even stay all night; it was just too emotional for me. Sometimes, it’s incredibly hard to see how the things you do impact other people. I never knew or realized what an impact the things we’ve been doing have had. I’m so incredibly grateful to have been able to travel this beautiful journey in my life.”

On that massive poster covered in doodles and goodbyes, one person left a simple message: “The Forge saved me.” These words resonated with Stallwood on a deep level.

Game Forge and Cipher Prime co-founder Dain Saint had a similar reaction to the high tide of emotions at the farewell party. Saint says he’s a naturally stoic person; he feels comfortable wearing a calm, apathetic facade.

“But damn if I didn’t cry during the closing party,” Saint says. “And it wasn’t even the loss of the space that did it — it was the stories of success and inspiration. On that signed poster, Andy Brown said, ‘Because of the Forge, I never gave up,’ and I’m tearing up now just thinking about that. How amazing is that feeling? That’s something only teachers and parents get to feel, and I’m lucky enough to get to feel it now.”

Flyclops, the studio behind Domino!, was the first company to grow up and graduate from the Philly Game Forge, and Stallwood estimates it’s the highest-grossing game studio in Philadelphia. Domino! has more than 1 million installs on Google Play alone, plus it’s available on both iOS and Facebook.

The Forge was a force to be reckoned with in Philly. Stallwood says Dev Night began with just 10 people or so, but it blossomed into a booming, productive party.

“This is incredible for the only US city that doesn’t have a AAA game studio in or around it,” Stallwood says. “While not really known, Philly really is an indie-dev powerhouse.”

Game Forge’s power stemmed from more than its Dev Nights. It was a place for meeting people, asking questions, teaching others and taking chances. Multiple members describe Game Forge as a creative paradise in what had previously felt like the game-development desert of Philadelphia. They recount stories about feeling alone and lost in the city as a burgeoning developer — until they discovered the Forge. Its community pulled some members from the clutches of depression, it propelled some into careers as developers and it served as a second home for even more.

Crucially, the Forge demonstrated that independent development was possible in Philly.

“Everyone was so friendly and always willing to help, which was the opposite of what I expected game dev to be like. …As for the party? I’ve never cried more in my life. It’s not the tears of graduation, or of a goodbye party. They’re the tears of losing a friend.” – Mila Pokorny, Deerfox Games

“The most substantial thing I did in the Forge was Global Game Jam 2015. I spent that weekend rising early and going to bed late, spending all the time in between at the Forge, working nonstop alongside other artists and programmers to slap together a game. It was one of the best weekends ever.” – Tabitha Arnold, artist

“It helped get me out of my shell, and encouraged me to constantly improve my work and constantly contribute back to a community. …The Game Forge is the reason why game devs in Philadelphia have a community at all.” – Nick Rome, Dev Night host

“The Philly Game Forge was, more than anything, a beacon of hope that making games was a real thing you could do.” – Jake Vander Ende, Spriteborne

“After the Forge was established, the game development community just seemed to evolve. Games reached new levels of production and the community reached levels that it would take much longer to reach individually.” – Shawn Pierre, Origaminc, Philly Dev Night co-founder

“The Philly Game Forge, and by extension Dev Night, is how I got into game development at all. Will and Dain and the rest of the Forge regulars pointed me in the right direction and gave me the confidence and the drive to start Ghost Crab Games.” – Chris Hoopes, Ghost Crab Games

“Without it I wouldn’t have my job, many of my friends, and most of the games I’ve made. …Philadelphia has no major game studio and only a few successful smaller studios; the Forge served as place that tied the small community together into something much more dedicated than you might find in other cities.” – Camden Segal, independent developer

“It was a creatively fruitful place with some of this city’s best minds. It was a place I went to for a safe haven to work on the things I care about the most. …I was heartbroken to hear the Game Forge was closing.” – Nicole Kline, Cardboard Fortress

The Philly Game Forge didn’t close down due to lack of interest or love. It was a simple money issue — Stallwood and Saint funded much of its operations themselves via their studio, Cipher Prime. Other studios at the Forge, including Flyclops and Final Form Games, helped out too, but in the end, it wasn’t enough to keep the lights on.

“We’re a small studio and have been having some financial and health issues,” Stallwood says. “Ultimately, we realized we could run our game studio or run the Game Forge. We had to make a very hard choice, but we ultimately chose to keep running Cipher Prime the best we can.”

Stallwood says the remaining studios were hesitant to take on the financial burden of running the Forge, and a little help from local universities or the government could have gone a long way.

“I don’t think it struck me until we were closing what it was we had actually accomplished,” Saint says. “It’s very easy to get caught up in the day-to-day organization, planning and logistics. So when you come up for air and see hundreds of people really feeling the loss of something you’ve had a part in creating, you have to look back and appreciate it.”

After four years of friendships, support, game launches and failures, the goodbye party was heartbreaking yet joyful for most attendees. It was the very definition of bittersweet.

The end of the Game Forge doesn’t signal the end of independent development in Philadelphia. It helped cultivate a rich community of video-game enthusiasts and professionals, and they’re not going anywhere. Philly Dev Night is still alive and well; it just needs to find a new home. On July 7th, the first Thursday without the Game Forge, developers met up for happy hour at the Independence Beer Garden. They jokingly called it the “first Dev Night in exile.”

That’s the same sense of humor, the same self-deprecating, warm tone that was found in the Forge’s finished-game chant. The Philly Game Forge lives on.

Manchester City signs its first FIFA eSports player

At this rate the Premier League will need its own dedicated eSports division. Following West Ham United, which signed Sean “Dragonn” Allen back in May, Manchester City has recruited its own FIFA star. Kieran “Kez” Brown is the club’s first eSports signing and will represent the team at both major tournaments and fan events. He’s not the biggest name — his YouTube channel has less than 12,000 subscribers — but he is a competent player. Prolific YouTuber Spencer Owen held a competition earlier this year to recruit a FIFA fanatic into his professional “Hashtag United” team; Brown narrowly missed out, losing to Harry Hesketh in the final.

Manchester City is one of many football clubs dipping a toe into the eSports waters. FC Schalke 04, a top club in the German Bundesliga, bought a League of Legends team formerly known as Elements in May. Vfl Wolfsburg, meanwhile, has signed a few different FIFA players.

Happy to Announce I’m the first e-Sport FIFA player for @ManCity.Something New. Something Different. I look forward to seeing how this goes🙃

— KezBrown (@_KezBrown) July 6, 2016

These moves might seem strange for an industry that’s primarily focused on physical competition — but moving into eSports, especially FIFA, does offer some obvious advantages. The long-running video game franchise is incredibly popular and is one of the primary ways that fans interact with the sport (outside of watching and attending football matches, of course.) Nurturing the FIFA community, both at an amateur and professional level, could nurture the ties that people have to the club. A stronger, larger fanbase will then allow a team like Manchester City to earn more money and ultimately prosper in the actual boots-on-the-grass game.

Source: Manchester City

‘Persona 5’ and other Atlus games are coming to Europe

If you’re a fan of the Persona series and its stylised take on the JRPG formula, good news — Persona 5 is coming to Europe. The region was notably absent when the game was announced for the US last month. Now we know why — Atlus and Sega are relying on Deep Silver, the publisher of Homefront: The Revolution, to distribute the title across the continent. It’s an unusual move given that Sega is a publisher in its own right, and perhaps indicative of a wider business decision. Aside from the occasional Sonic game, there’s little for the company to get behind these days.

The partnership will extend beyond Persona 5, covering titles such as Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse and 7th Dragon III Code: VFD. Persona is easily the standout, however, given the cult following that now surrounds the franchise. Persona 3 and Persona 4 were both excellent entries, combining a social simulator and dungeon crawler to great effect. The upbeat soundtracks and deep, surprisingly well written characters only strengthened its appeal. Persona 4 was successful enough to spawn a port on the PlayStation Vita and a raft of spin-offs, including Dancing All Night and the fighting “Arena” games developed by Arc System Works.

Persona 5 is the first entry on the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, offering better visuals and a whole new city to explore. You’ll take on the role of another high schooler, only this time there’s a heist-style vibe as you break into elaborate “dungeons” like a pack of thieves. It launches in Japan on September 15th — two weeks before Final Fantasy XV — and the US on February 14th, 2017. There’s no word on a European release date, however. For now, fans will have to make do with Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE, the Shin Megami Tensei crossover title that’s available now on Wii U.