Battlefield 1943: developer commentary

Battlefield 1943 Wikipedia page

Ghostbusters: 6 minutes of gameplay

I haven't the slightest intention of paying for this, but the video is interesting nonetheless:

Unreal Engine 3 tech demo

There's a link to the HD version when you mouse-over the video pane.

Prototype: Top 10 reasons you should give us your money

"Modern Warfare 2," but no "Call of Duty" in sight

This might not mean anything, but the teaser trailer for MW2 gives no explicit indication that the game, due in November, is the continuation of the Call of Duty franchise. Simply put, while "Modern Warfare 2" features prominently at the end of the video, the words "Call of Duty" are nowhere to be found:

http://modernwarfare2.infinityward.com/

Commence speculation.

L4D update released

From Steam News:

Game and client changes

■ Introduced fatigue to the melee attack in versus mode. You will see a HUD display when your melee swing is cooling down
■ Boomer vomit will now pass through common infected
■ Addressed some surround sound detection issues
■ Fixed a rare crash when exiting Left4Dead on Windows Vista
■ Fixed a case where the complete all expert campaigns achievement was not being rewarded

Dedicated server changes

■ Corrected an issue where Windows based dedicated were sending spurious shutdown notifications to the master causing them to delist temporarily
■ Fixed dedicated servers not resetting the versus team swap correctly--you could join a dedicated server that had a previous game that was swapped and arrive on the other team than what was selected in the lobby
■ Renamed the tags for sv_search_key to use "key:" in the server tags instead of "sv_search_key." This should help with issues of the 63 character limit of server tags
■ Fixed an occasional server crash related to voting

There's also a blog update: Building a Better Apocalypse.

FileFront closing on March 30

This is horrendously bad news:

Dear FileFront User:

We regret to inform you that due to the current economic conditions we are forced to indefinitely suspend the FileFront site operations on March 30, 2009. If you have uploaded files, images or posted blogs, or if you would like to download some of your favorite files, please take this opportunity to download them before March 30th when the site will be suspended.

We would like to give a warm thank you to all of you who have been part of the FileFront communities we have built together. Your support has had a meaningful impact for all of us here at FileFront. Again, we want to give you a sincere thank you" for your support over the years and wish you all the very best.

Keep gaming alive,

FileFront Management and Team.

Contact_us@filefront.com

As promised, a Runes of Magic review

Eurogamer has hated a lot of games that the American gaming press has treated kindly, which (for me, anyway) enhances its credibility. Daniel Etherington gave RoM a 6 out of 10:

But Runes of Magic is by and large a robust, enjoyable game. As a free-to-play title, it's impressive. Although Western gamers will still have their reservations about amorphous RMT versus those nice straightforward subs, Runes of Magic is something of a landmark: it won't dislodge the subscription-based model in the West by any stretch of the imagination, but it does demonstrate that free-to-play doesn't necessarily mean rudimentary, shallow, cheap or totally brutal in the integration of RMT. Runes of Magic is a reasonable-quality MMO that, despite its derivative aspects, offers proper graphics, proper classes and an involved, involving world.

Full review here.

Hear that? Might be the death-rattle of DRM.

All in a day's worth of news, we see a pattern developing:

DEFCON 3 - despite rampant piracy (and the resulting scourge of "consolization"), the PC platform is still king. Hail to the king, baby:

A new report from the PC Gaming Alliance into the state of the platform in 2008 has revealed that the "largest single platform for games" took around USD 11 billion over the course of the 12 months.

It also noted the growth of digital distribution on the platform, driven by the continuing success of services such as Steam, the growth of free-to-play titles utilising micro-transactions, and the sale of game cards at retail chains.

MMOs were cited as one of the major sources of income for the PC games industry, noting World of Warcraft's USD 1 billion-plus contribution as well as several Asian MMOs taking USD 100 million apiece. (from gamesindustry.biz)

DEFCON 2 - Valve declares DRM obsolete. (As an anti-piracy measure, it always was. Legit users are the ones that actually feel the pain.) Says Steam News:

Headlining the new feature set is the Custom Executable Generation (CEG) technology that compliments the already existing anti-piracy solution offered in Steamworks. A customer friendly approach to anti-piracy, CEG makes unique copies of games for each user allowing them to access the application on multiple machines without install limits and without having to install root kits on their PC.

DEFCON 1 - one (non) word: OnLive. Gamasutra has the details from GDC:

OnLive, a tech company that has been in self-described "stealth mode" development for seven years, has unveiled new technology that allows even the most complex PC games to be played on a television set or any PC.

The ambitious venture, which hopes to revolutionize the gaming world by removing the need to continually upgrade PC hardware or buy new gaming consoles every generation, makes use of cloud computing -- doing all of the game's video and audio processing on remote servers, then streaming the resultant images and sound back to the user quickly enough to play games in real time.

What's most important though, says OnLive founder and CEO Steve Perlman and COO Mike McGarvey, is that the system works with any standard PC game, and does not require developers to code for a proprietary system.

As is the case with most innovations, industry adoption of these types of game-changers is likely to be painfully slow. Still, we may yet live to see the day when SecuRom and its ilk are dead as Dillinger.

IT()E L4D server!

We ain't dead yet...

Swatter and I just set up a Left 4 Dead server. The IP is 205.234.159.214:27015.

That's the easy part. Now I just have to figure out how to admin the thing.

CryEngine 3 video

Crytek are ready to premier their next-generation, multi-platform graphics engine at GDC 2009, and IGN has the footage:

I can't wait to see what kind of rig it's going to take to run this.

TF2 / Day of Defeat updates

If TF2 has been crashing on you in the last couple of days, good news:

Updates to Team Fortress 2 and Day of Defeat: Source have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The specific changes include:

Team Fortress 2 and Day of Defeat: Source

■ Fixed screenshots being black when Multicore Rendering is enabled.
■ Fixed sprays not showing up on some surfaces.
■ Fixed decal crash during changelevel.
■ Fixed crash caused by setting the decal limit too high on some machines.
■ Fixed crash caused by decals in the world render loop.
■ Fixed crash caused by convars changing while rendering is queued.

A (mostly) free MMORPG

Free download. No monthly fees.

Pretty words, taken with a health dose of skepticism.

Runes of Magic touts itself as a free-to-play fantasy MMORPG. Some might call it a World of Warcraft clone, but it remains to be seen whether RoM's production values put it in the same league. It seems that Frogster intends to generate revenue through micro-transactions, by allowing players to purchase individual items instead of trying/hoping to find them in the game world:

"Runes of Magic is a free-to-play game, and we want to ensure we are creating a game that appeals to the widest possible audience," said Sean Kauppinen, president and CEO of Frogster America, Inc. "Many players don't have the time to wait for randomly dropped items that could enhance their overall gameplay experience. For those players, and players that have their heart set on a specific item, we have opened the item shop and are looking forward to delivering a fun, immersive, and social online game that appeals to the widest possible audience."

Mr. Kauppinen seems to be suggesting that those "inclined to grind" can grab new toys without ever opening their wallets. Creating a 100% optional market doesn't sound like much of a business model, though, so players should probably expect "dropped" (and thus free) items to be rather uncommon.

In any event, the absence of monthly subscription fees should prove enticing to many. Here's what the game looks like: