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Twenty Sided has an article up on how have flawed main characters can be fun. The example used here is the lead character from BioWare’s Jade Empire. For those of you who have always wanted to play it but haven’t got around to it; you might want to skip this article. However for those gamers who understand the inside joke, this is a fun piece of truism.

Personal, I like a little roughness in both my NPCs and player characters. It makes them more realistic and easier to relate to. It also helps to build tension in a story. If everything single obstacle is too easily surmounted, I tend to lose interest quickly.  This especially applies to RPGs and games with RPG elements.

The unstoppable Kratos retains a human touch as he mourns the loss of his family. Similarly, the new Viking: Battle for Asgard features a less than perfect main character as well. Not all player characters are as clueless as the lead character in Jade Empire, but it’s nice to have three dimensional characters that have some room for growth.

via Twenty Sided

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Flashcube Studios has released a game trailer for it’s upcoming action platformer Spectraball. This game will have players navigating a series of platforms and traps in a variety of 3D environments. The physics-based gameplay footage is set to electronic music and colorful courses that one of my friends would describe as “trippin.” It’s no geometry wars but it looks like a reasonably challenging and entertaining diversion.

Spectraball is scheduled for release in 2008.
via FileFront

Ever since the Windows Vista OS came out; gamers have been complaining about it and going to great lengths to get it to behave in the way they expected it too. The latest guide up on ExtremeTech shows PC gamers how to bypass Vista 64-bit limitations.

The author gives gamers who haven’t already used this solution instructions on how to run 32-bit Vista on 64-bit Vista in a virtual machine. This solves a few known problems with 64-bit Vista including the author’s difficulties with Nikon RAW codec or getting VPN to work with older Cisco concentrators. The article is fairly technical, but also very usful for those gamers running into problems with Vista 64-bit. Get the complete run down on ExtremeTech.

Aside from World of Warcraft, the biggest MMO of 2007 and so far this year isn’t one you would name off the top of your head. According to the author of an article up on Eurogamer; it’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The piece goes on to defend the position that although CoD4 isn’t an MMO in the strictest sense of the definition, it does share many of the same gameplay elements that typify an MMO.

Call of Duty 4 proves that it’s possible to take some of the things that MMOs do right and distil them for a game that wouldn’t traditionally be seen as an MMO. The potency of the idea, even in this form, is obvious; the drive to play just a little bit more, because there’s a reward waiting just up ahead, is an incredibly powerful and addictive force for players

I can actually agree with the author on most of his points, and the idea isn’t one that hasn’t been presented before. The success of MMOs is changing the way traditional video games are being designed. One of the latest examples of this trend is the multi-player mode in RockStar’s Grand Theft Auto IV. I think we’re going to see the games industry moving ever closer to this formula as gamers demand more of a social element to their gaming experience.

via Eurogamer

The CHiL Semiconductor is set to streamline your overclocking capabilities on your favorite gaming PC. The product line digitally maximizes the process of converting the power supply for use.

“Digital power has been this buzzword for a bunch of years, where it equals state of the art, which equals high cost, which equals we can’t really use it,” said Larry Spaziani, vice president of marketing for Chil. “We’re bringing digital power for the mainstream computer market, and with it bringing features and cost benefits.”

“We intend to shake up the motherboard market,” Spaziani said.

Typically between your electrical socket and your PC; 20 percent of the power is lost in the power supply, and another 25 percent in conversion on the motherboard in the form of excess heat which then requires more power to cool. Chil aims to simplify the design of motherboards; eliminating a substantial chunk of passive components. It will reduce the number of capacitors needed and digitally regulate power as well. Theoretically, it can improve improve the power conversion efficiency by 3 to 10 percent.

via ExtremeTech

Rich Briggs, a Producer on EA’s Dead Space puts the S-E in SEXY with his work on Scripted Events and Focus Groups. These are the major building blocks of the Dead Space storyline. Briggs has a colorful analogy on the roll of SE in the game.

Dead Space is a horrific roller coaster ride that we want to take you on. The framework of the coaster is already there, as our core gameplay mechanics will drive your second to second enjoyment. The SEs are the paint, the decorations, and the lights. They are the dark tunnel you plummet through, and the plumes of water that spray up as you skim along the water. It’s the name of the experience, which is why roller coasters are called “The Viper” or “Death Rail” as opposed to “Mobile Cart Precariously Connected to Wooden Tracks.”

The biggest challenge for the development team is making sure that you can’t break the SE moments in the game. They occur while you still control the main character, and while they want you to experience these as spine tingling episodes, they don’t want to take away your control, like say Dirge of Cerberus.

Dead Space is scheduled for release in North America and Europe October 2008.

via Dead Space

Funcom has issued another Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Insiders trailer. Insider 3 talks about Crafting and Citadeling. The gamplay footage is from the beautiful region of Poitain, a lush and fertile region, rich in game and natural resources. Crafting and Citadeling actual works nicely together as crafters that belong to guilds will have distinct advantages over solo characters. For example guilds can build specialized crafting structures like Alchemy Towers that give its alchemists special recipes that other characters of their types won’t have access to.

via FileFront

Those who make the claim that PC gaming is dying or already dead might want to take a look at some new numbers that the NPD Group have released. The value of online subscriptions in the US from games like World of Warcraft exceed even Dr. Evil’s fantasies, to the tune of more than $1 billion a year. This number is based on data gathered from October 2007 to March 2008, which also reveals that 11 million people subscribe to online games every month.

“Now that NPD can estimate the value of the subscription market, it’s clear that there is a sizable chunk of revenue being generated by PC gaming beyond what is reflected in retail sales,” said NPD analyst Anita Frazier. Certainly, this bodes well for the PC gaming community and developers who remain interested in the platform. But, success doesn’t come easy; looking at the top PC MMOs in terms of subscribers in Q1 2008 show that there’s some extremely stiff competition at the top.

MMO/PC Games:

1. World of Warcraft
2. RuneScape
3. Lord of the Rings Online
4. Final Fantasy XI
5. City of Heroes

Gaming Websites:

1. Pogo.com
2. Realarcade.com
3. Bigfishgames.com
4. Gametap.com
5. Disney.com

Demographics were another area that was looked at by NPD, which show that MMO players are primarily males under the age of 35, while the majority of those on gaming websites like Pogo are females over the age of 35.

The problem with tapping this market, of course, is the significant investment it takes to even attempt to become a successful MMO. Coupled with the high risk of failure, it’s not likely that you’ll see every developer around trying to tap this market — at least not at this point.

via GI.biz

Bethesda’s latest Inside the Vault spotlight falls on Fallout 3 Lead Designer, Emil Pagliarulo. This interview gets a little more up close and personal than some others I’ve read. Pagliarulo gives players an opportunity to glean a little insight on the man so crucial to Fallout 3’s development.

One big question posed is whether the video games industry is recession proof. Pagliarulo gives us an optimistic answer grounded in realism.

Because of the growing popularity of video games, I do indeed think the industry as a whole is recession proof, but that’s more of a high level financial statement. It doesn’t mean a hell of a lot for the people who work for companies that suddenly go under. That seems to have been happening a lot lately, and my heart really goes out to those guys.

I think we sometimes forget how young this industry really is. We’re experiencing the kind of exponential growth the film industry experienced in its early days, and with that comes a lot of growing pains — cancelled projects, studio closures, what have you.

So for the end user, it’s great. All video games, all the time. Steady releases at Christmas, sequels to your favorite games pretty regularly, even revivals of old licenses like what we’re doing with Fallout 3. I don’t see that ever ending. But I think for the people working in the industry, there will continue to be trials and tribulations for quite some time.

Get to know the man behind the machine on Bethesda Blog.

So I am off work for a week due to moving and I come back hoping that my usual Saturday post would give me something actually exciting to write about. Sadly, I was mistaken because there are little demos that are new this week. Seems like a growing trend as of late, but I digress.

The only really hyped up demo that was suppose to hit this week was the GRID demo from Codemasters, but unfortunately yesterday after it was put up, it was quickly pulled due to blackout issues. We received an email stating that it would fixed by later that afternoon, and then another email saying that it will be fixed by Monday. Therefore, if you are still interested in the demo, check back with us Monday and hopefully any outstanding issues with it should have been fixed.

Here are the demos that hit FileFront this week:

• Dead Wake Beta 4: Dead Wake zombie survival game is in production. The game brings barricades, blood, and weapons to zombie fans. Headshots and physics play a major role when player attempts to survive against the zombie hordes.
• The Amazing Brain Train Windows Demo: Grubby Games has released a Windows demo for The Amazing Brain Train, a title that offers 15 different brain games in 5 categories, three different ways to play, 32 unique trophies to unlock, and more. Also available for Mac and Linux.
• Droid Assault Windows Demo: Puppy Games released the Windows demo for Droid Assault, a modern-retro arcade shooter game which is aiming to capture the raw feel of 8-bit games such as Paradroid and Quazatron, with a slick shiny sheen of modern graphics and sound. Also available for Mac and Linux.
• Overclocked: A History of Violence English Demo: Created by award-winning developer House of Tales Entertainment, players will delve into the world of Overclocked to explore the deranged minds of three of the five patients admitted to the Staten Island Forensic Hospital. This highly anticipated Adventure game on PC DVD-ROM is available in stores now.
• Lights of Dreams Demo V2.15: This is the demo version V2.15 of Lights of Dreams : The Angelical Blade… It is free to play…Play as Xylvan to find a way to save the future Earth of 3800…
• The Lost Cases Of Sherlock Holmes Demo: Legacy Interactive release a demo of The Lost Cases of Sherlock Holmes, a whodunit casual computer game of theft, espionage and murder in which the player must tap their own powers of observation to solve puzzles and identify the culprits.
• Bee Oh Bee Demo: LunaKite has released a demo for Bee Oh Bee, an adventure casual game where you play as a God-bee, bees that live above in the sky to help homeless cute earth-dwelling honey-bees.

Here are the patches that hit this week:

• Harpoon: Advanced Naval Warfare v3.9.2 Patch
• Battlefield 2142 v1.40 to v1.50 Beta Patch
• Fury v35256 to v35416 Client Patch
• Albatross18 S3 Revolution v4.14 Client Patch
• Conquer Online v5021 to v5023 Patch

As always, for the full list of demos and patched available, click here and here.

Everybody seemed pretty happy yesterday when we posted the news about Burnout Paradise heading to the PC. Today, we have a new trailer for the PC version up on FileFront for your viewing pleasure.

Ya know, I have not really been into racing games since Pole Position at the arcade or Diddy Kong Racing (which I have told you about before) but this trailer makes me want to give it another go.

The Nvidia-branded Assassin’s Creed has had some trouble running its DX10.1 features on Nvidia cards, while ATI cards seemed to manage the effects just fine. Ubisoft has released a statement saying they’ll be releasing a patch which will remove support for DX10.1 until they “rework its implementation.”

ATI’s Developer Relations team, however, made a statement when the game was introduced: “Ubisoft [is] at the forefront of technology adoption, as showcased with the fantastic Assassin’s Creed title. In this instance our developer relations team worked directly with the developer and found an area of code that could be executed more optimally under DX10.1 operation, thus benefiting the ATI Radeon HD 3000 Series.”

Naturally, rumors have begun springing up that Nvidia had threatened Ubisoft into removing support of DX 10.1. TG Daily has been investigating, with an anonymous DX 10.0 game developer close to Ubisoft telling them, “Felt you might want to hear this out. Read the explanation and laughed hard … the way how DX10.1 works is to remove excessive passes and kill overhead that happened there. That overhead wasn’t supposed to happen - we all know that DX10.0 screwed AA in the process, and that 10.1 would solve that [issue]. Yet, even with DX10.0, our stuff runs faster on GeForce than on Radeon, but SP1 resolves scaling issues on [Radeon HD 3800] X2.”

Even with other evidence of various things, TG Daily leaves it up to you, the reader, to make a decision as to what really is behind all of this. But it’s clear that the gamers are the ones losing out, as you’re either getting a game that doesn’t function properly (Nvidia owners) or losing functionality because the developer couldn’t iron things out during the development cycle (ATI/AMD owners).

via Evil Avatar

When it was announced that the upcoming PC versions of Mass Effect and Spore would make use of a ridiculous security feature that would automatically re-authenticate the users CD key every ten days — and lock the game entirely if for some reason it couldn’t do so — gamers responed almost unanimously with outrage. Boycotts of the game were organized and many people stated they would illegally crack the game than make use of a frustrating security feature. Well, luckily EA has seen the error of its ways and realized that it’s not a good idea to treat your paying customers like criminals. As such, both Mass Effect and Spore will no longer require authentication on a regular basis. Instead, you’ll authenticate your copy once after installing it and each time you choose to take the game online or download new content, like most other PC games. You’ll still be limited to having the game on three computers max, but the new system will allow you play the game without the disc in the drive and without being online. So basically, they reverted it back to a security program that’s more in line with that of other popular games out there. And yes, this decision comes from listening to all the complaints from gamers. There will probably still be a fair number of people pirating the games — that’s to be expected — but at least most of them won’t be out of spite.

Via Kotaku (Mass Effect, Spore)

Concerns over the FilePlanet open Beta for Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures have led some gamers to question whether the game will be ready for launch. A Q&A with Funcom’s Age of Conan Product Director Jorgen Tharaldsen answers the hard questions on the state of AoC and its readiness for launch.

The MMORPG Q&A covers the FilePlanet Beta build as well as questions on loading screens between zones. There is also talk about some systems experiencing poor performance on systems meeting the minimum requirements.
Tharaldsen also talks about the May 10 grand finale to the Open Beta as detailed earlier this week on Gaming Today.

via MMORPG

The fourth annual Games for Health Conference will be showcasing the expanding role of video games in the Health profession. Video game technology is being applied in the field for rehabilitation, training and to encourage exercise.

Some highlights of the conference will be familiar to most gamers. A new version of Activision’s Guitar Hero is being introduced, which will be used in the rehabilitation of arm amputees. The results of studies based on the “Corrupted Blood Syndrome” form Blizzard’s World of Warcraft are also being presented.

Attendees will have the chance to play training games like 3DiTeams and the K.I.C.K. (Kid’s Interactive Creation Kiosk). 3DiTeams offers emergency health care training to medical professionals in virtual worlds. The full press release follows the break.

Read the full article

A new guide up on TechARP shows PC gamers how to soft-mod their NVidia Geforce to a NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics card. The hardware difference between the NVidia GeForce and Quadro graphics cards are negligible. Despite the almost identical make up, customers pay up to 2-5X more for the Quadro.

It all revolves around the driver support for professional 3D applications like 3ds Max or Maya. Quadro drivers allow the Quadro to be used to accelerate the rendering operations of such professional 3D applications while GeForce drivers do not. This is the basis for the premium prices NVIDIA (and ATI) charge for their professional-grade graphics cards.

This new guide will walk you through modifying your software to essentially turn your NVIDIA GeForce desktop graphics card into a NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics card. This will NOT improve your gaming performance, but it will greatly improve your performance with professional 3D applications like 3ds Max and Maya. Get the NVIDIA GeForce To Quadro Soft-mod Guide on TechARP.

Flagship Studios has released another trailer for its upcoming Mythos MMO. The project from the original Diablo team is a free to download, free to play MMO that is currently is closed Beta testing.

The Diablo-esque game started out as a test for Hellgate: London and has evolved into a separate entity. This video is the fourth in a series of gameplay videos and heralds the imminent start of the open Beta and the New “Overworld.”

You can view the first three gameplay trailers a trailer on class introduction for Mythos on FileFront.

CCP is proudly celebrating EVE Online’s fifth year. The sci-fi based futuristic space MMO has a very loyal niche following. CCP is honoring the occasion by offering its subscribers a surprise in-game gift. Just log on to claim your loot.

“As the EVE universe has evolved into a sophisticated society, it has attracted and maintained the interest of highly skilled, enthusiastic players at steadily increasing growth rates,” said Nathan Richardsson, executive producer at CCP. “Looking ahead, CCP is focused on making EVE Online even more immersive and invigorating, and advancing the online gaming industry as a whole.”

The latest free expansion, Empyrean Age, will introduce Factional Warfare. Players can expect EVE Online: Empyrean Age sometime this summer.

via Business Wire

Virtual Worlds Management has announced that Linden Lab and The Multiverse Network have sign on as eaerly sponsers for Virtual Worlds London. The conference and expo for European companies looking to use virtual world technologies for enterprise or consumer business opportunities is scheduled for October 20-21 2008 at The Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre.

“We are pleased to welcome two virtual world technology leaders,” said Christopher Sherman, Executive Director of Virtual Worlds London. “The United Kingdom and Europe are extremely important markets for virtual world technology. Additional sponsors, supporters and exhibitors will be announced shortly.” 

Corey Bridges, co-founder and executive producer of Multiverse, believes this is the breakout year for virtual worlds. “Not only will we finally see deep integration with social networks, which will bring virtual worlds truly into the mainstream, we’ll also see ultra-useful ‘killer apps’ for the enterprise, with measurable ROI,” Bridges said. “The innovators who are building this future will be in attendance at Virtual Worlds London this fall.”

Both companies are also signed for the Virtual Worlds Expo in Los Angeles, California which is scheduled for September 3-4 2008.

The push for the integration of social networks into MMOs is the current trend. These expos are gaining in importance and popularity as the emphasis grows. I think we’re bound to see more of this type of direction in other video game conferences over the next few years.
via Business Wire

They may have launched a teaser site for Quantum of Solace recently, but the one thing that Activision failed to mention about the game was that it will run on the same engine as CoD4.

While sitting here at my computer listening to the boring audio from the conference call - and wishing I had Irished up my coffee just to make it through the thing, I heard this interesting tidbit after the news that the game would launch the same day as the movie.

According to Chief Executive Officer of Publishing Mike Griffith, Quantum of Solace, “uses the Call of Duty 4 engine and technology to bring Bond games to a new level.” Since the game will be released onto multiple platforms, it will be interesting to see how it will differ from port to port. CoD4 was not released for the Wii, so I imagine (correct me if I am wrong) that either they will have to tweak things a bit or use a different engine for the Nintendo Console. Plus, a myraid of developers will be creating the game for different versions. Treyarch (Xbox 360 and PS3 developers), Vicarious Visions (handheld developer), Beenox (confirmed as the developer for the Wii) and Eurocom (PC devlopers.)

What this means, is that like most multiplatform games, you can expect each one to look drastically different from the next. Unless of course you are looking at PC/PS3/360 comparisons, which mainly just differ in matters of clarity - or so I have found. Of course, this could be because I added a bit of whiskey to my espresso earlier.

For more information on the Activision conference call, check out all the posts related to this bevy of information by hitting this link.