Posts Tagged ‘MMO’
Dragon Age To Be “Massively Single Player” Game
Go to the website for any video game and along the base of the screen you’ll see logos for anyone and everyone involved from the publisher to the system(s) it’s being released on. Trailers also feature these helpful little reminders at the end and apparently in a trailer for Bioware’s upcoming Dragon Age: Origins two of the logos featured were somewhat unusual for a game: Twitter and Facebook.
It seems that as with Spore the overall aim is to blur the line between single player and multiplayer. With Spore you created creatures who existed in a universe populated by the creations of others. The developers are looking for some method of connecting the community of Dragon Age players through a ‘network of manually and automatically shared content’.
Some of that will be more passive, similar to the stat-tracking features of games like Halo 3 where you can nip over to Bungie’s and check out lifetime game stats for yourself and others. Given that they’ll be including a suite of content creation tools though there could be some other aspects to it. In-game merchants selling weapons and armor others have created is a possibility, as well as other people’s characters being used for NPCs or hirelings.
Blizzard trademarks ‘Cataclysm’, raises eyebrows
Blizzard has been working on a secret MMO for some time now and details have been ridiculously scarce ever since the project began. However, if a recent trademark filing is anything to go by we might be one step closer to discovering what the game’s title will be.
Cataclysm is the filing and was filed for use in the field of online games, computer games and paper based products. There’s no telling if this is actually the MMO’s title but those 3 fields look pretty convincing considering the MMO would be an online computre game and most likely have some sort of trading card game like World of Warcraft.
Read (Joystiq)
Gamers Get Less Sleep: Gamers Ask “They Needed a Study?”
We’ve all been there. You sit down to play a few levels of whatever you’re plowing through at the moment and the next thing you know it feels like someone’s glued sandpaper to the inside of your eyelids and the clock taunts you with an obscenely late hour. A study presented at the recent SLEEP 2009 event told the world what millions of World of Warcraft subscribers already know: gamers get less sleep.
The study also showed that people who reported their gaming interfered with their sleep got 1.6 hours less shut-eye than everyone else and those who reported being addicted to gaming slept an hour less on weekdays. Only a third of those who reported being addicted felt that it interfered with their sleep.
While it’s easy to blame this on escapist, socially inept stereotypes, it’s quite easy to get caught up in games. Sandbox games can be particularly time-obliterating since there’s no obvious landmarks to call your attention to how long you’ve been playing. Bizarrely, the easiest I’ve ever been drawn into a game without concern for time was Viva Pinata. I haven’t played it since out of fear of losing entire days to its colorful world.
JCE Launches First MMO Basketball Game
North Americans are going to love this new MMO basketball game called “Freestyle”. Known to be one of the world’s popular sports today, JC Entertainment Corp. (JCE), an online game developer from South Korea, announced the launch of the MMO basketball game “Freestyle” in the North American market.
“Freestyle” is an online basketball game with streetball gameplay against other online gamers, and is one of the most popular online games in Asia since 2005. “Freestyle” was previously serviced through Sierra Online of Vivendi Games in North America market and already has more than 80 million users around the world, but JCE now provides the game service directly through its own global game portal “www.gamekiss.com”.
“Freestyle” combines hip-hop and street basketball through unique characters and gameplay. Each character has unique ability according to their basketball position, and the players can play 3 on 3 half court or 5 on 5 full court basketball game. “Freestyle” users can maximize their fun by creating multiple basketball moves through simple game interface with just A, S, D, and W key and arrowkeys on the keyboard.
In order to enjoy “Freestyle”, users can download Freestyle at www.gamekiss.com for free game client and learn more about the game in the “Freestyle” webpage.
(Source) Press
Bethesda Considering Legal Action Over Fallout MMO
Fans awaited the arrival of the long-over due Fallout 3 with excitement, only to weep when it was announced that Interplay was ceasing work on the game. A tech demo hit the internet which only rubbed salt in the wounds of many but Bethesda swooped in and picked up the rights. While fans are still hotly debating whether or not their take on the universe was well executed or not, others are waiting with the same contained anxiety for the planned Fallout MMO.
When Bethesda purchased the Fallout IP from Interplay they left behind the MMO rights as part of an agreement that hinged upon Interplay beginning ‘full scale’ work on the game by April fourth as well as having secured funding for the development of the title. Bethesda is considering legal action as they claim that Interplay has fulfilled neither of these conditions.
Interplay is denying all of these claims and their work on a game called ‘Project V13′ hints that there might be more going on than Bethesda is aware of. Unfortunately for Interplay if Bethesda goes ahead with legal action and wins, they’ll have lost all rights to the license and that could lead to problems with the financing as MMOs based on a brand new IP have a low rate of success due to the colossal grip WoW has on the market.
Chinese Online Game Market To Exceed $5.5 Billion In 2012
In a time of economic downturn you see where people’s real priorities are. In the current global slump certain industries are struggling, especially the automotive industry. Yet others are continuing to flourish as people tighten their belts and restrict their spending. Despite the crunch many are feeling, restaurants continue to flourish; not only the low priced chain joints but gourmet restaurants are still drawing in crowds. No industry though can claim to be doing better than the video game industry.
It’s growing steadily and is getting a huge foothold in a substantial marketplace: China. In 2008 the online video games market in China grew by 63% to reach $2.8 billion. Analysts at Pearl Research are expecting this trend to continue, with a projected market of over $5.5 billion in the next four years. Industry members attribute much of this growth to the rising popularity of social networking sites which make it easier for users to be introduced to new games, which in turn gets them bringing their real-world friends on board.
The three most popular games are all of Asian origin, two being from Chinese companies and one a Korean company. World of Warcraft however holds a strong foothold on the market with one million users. Some might attribute the greater popularity of the other games over Western-world dominating WOW to cultural bias, but it seems some of the appeal of the other titles could be simply financial as all the other titles are less graphically intensive than WOW and thus require less computer upgrades.
GONG Now Available at Target
Goal or No Goal (Gong), the free-to-play, multiplayer, online soccer game and community, is now available at Target. GONG!, available for Windows PC, is already being played online in nearly 20 countries, including the United States, Brazil, Vietnam, Egypt and Mexico.
This three vs. three multiplayer online soccer game has established itself as the one of the hottest online soccer game communities on the Web. The exclusive retail product features a premium subscription that provides faster leveling-up and increased rate of earning stars, access to VIP events, as well as 800 starter coins that can be used for in-game transactions.
“GONG! Goal or No Goal is a family-friendly game whose distinctive fusion of social interaction, casual sports MMO and online community experience have already made it a global success,” said Wim Stocks, vice president of Sales and Strategic Partnerships for THQ.
For a suggested retail price of $19.99, consumers who purchase the game at Target will receive a VIP package totaling more than $60 of retail exclusive content. Developed by Sleepy Giant, GONG! Goal or No Goal is rated E for everyone.
(Source) Press
The West Review–Sometimes You Get What You Pay For
It probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone that, following the massive success that is World of Warcraft, that there was more than a little “me, too!” action going on. And, perhaps also surprisingly, is the growth of a new business model in MMORPG that involves free-to-play RPGs located totally online. One of these that I found just recently is called The West.
You’ll start out in The West much as those who actually went that way in the United States’ westward expansion did–by hitting the dusty trail as a dirt-poor laborer. And from there, you’ll do odd jobs for cash and take on quests until you build up your resources and reputation. From there, you can do harder jobs, stage gun battles with other players, and do pretty much everything that you could’ve done in the ACTUAL Old West.
The only problem is, that it’ll take about the same amount of time. For instance, my first hour with The West allowed me to do the following–put on a t-shirt and shoes (apparently there are no pants out west), take a bottle of whiskey to the sheriff, pick a leaf of tobacco and pick a bit of sugar cane. That was IT. For an HOUR. I played Warcraft, and I tell you this, in an hour’s time if I was in the right place I could have a drift of corpses piled up sufficiently deep to make a decent-sized house from their bones. It maybe took me an hour to do all the research for the Drifter’s Guide to the Wasteland in Fallout 3. But this game thinks it’s doing me a favor by letting me blow an hour to PICK TOBACCO and not CHARGING me for the privilege.
On the up shot–surprisingly, there is an up shot–The West is an incredibly compartmentable game. One click on a button is sufficient to start the twenty-minute time clock that allows me to pick one round of sugar cane, so in the meantime, I can go play a couple small flash games, browse some forums, read a book, watch most of X-Play or The Chaser’s War On Everything, whatever. And all the while my poor little character is off a-slavin’ in the sugar cane field so that later on I can have actual fun on the money he made.
The game is fair enough, especially for a free game…the graphics aren’t terrible, the sound is nonexistent (it’s a text-only game) and the mechanics aren’t that hard to work with. The elephant in the room here, meanwhile, is the incredibly slow gameplay. For instance, I read about one fellow who’d had a particularly rough time with the game despite almost ludicrous endurance–he’d been playing for a month, got to level eighteen, and even at that point he was armed with a slingshot, and about the only things he could do involved picking beans and repairing fences. Why? Because the only gun available in the store was a “rusty shotgun” with a price tag of FIVE GRAND. In terms of the game this is several months’ wages. In terms of the REAL west, you could buy a TOWN for five thousand dollars.
The West tries desperately to be the Wild West, but the most it can manage is the Mild West.
Unreal Engine 3 getting MMO features
Epic’s Unreal Engine 3, the de-facto standard for the current generation of pretty titles (like Gears of War, Unreal Tournament 3, Mirror’s Edge etc.), is getting an addition of MMO features.
The new version of the engine will be getting a full MMO dev suite, including scalable statistics, data management backend and a content browser. More details about the new features will be detailed at GDC, where another heavyweight engine will be showcased, CryTek’s CryEngine 3, which also features MMO functionalities.
Warhammer Online shutting down 63 servers
Mythic, developer of Warhammer Online, is shutting down 63 game servers — 43 servers in North America and another 20 in Europe — in an effort to move the online population of the game to more popular and populated servers.
Warhammer Online, an MMO based in the Warhammer universe, launched with over half a million new registrations in its first week. Since then, the online population has dwindled to around 300,000. Despite the closure of servers, Mythic and EA are both said to be committed to the game.