The retirement of Greg “IdrA” Fields gives the world of eSports an opportunity to address a deeply uncomfortable topic, Alex Walker writes.

Either Zenimax Online has been playing a bit too much Blood Dragon recently or there’s some corner of Tamriel we’ve yet to explore in our wanderings through Bethesda games, because I do not recall a single instance of electric lizards prior to this trailer for The Elder Scrolls Online.

In defence of the Wamasu, this footage looks like it comes from Coldharbour, Molag Bal’s corner of Oblivion, which doesn’t obey the same rules as the earthly planes. We’ll probably be spending a lot of time there.

Source: PCGamesN

One time Rockstar Games producer Jeremy Pope has said that he feels a bit embarrassed sometimes to have his name linked to the Grand Theft Auto series. Even though he loves the games, he’s ashamed to tell his Grandma he worked on titles that’ve become a byword for egregious violence, and feels that the games industry in general could stand to focus on more complex themes – as well as to stop recycling other companies’ ideas.

“We need to be pushing ourselves. With any storytelling medium or any medium at all, you want to have conflict because that’s how you can generate interest, and oftentimes the simplest or most base way to do that is through violence that isn’t necessarily tied into a deeper, more meaningful story,” he told GamesIndustry.

“I think it’s often easier to do violence than it is to generate meaningful, interesting conflict through non-violent ways.

“I would agree in that sense that we need to push ourselves and get away from sequels and rehashing, and taking what technology affords us and using that as a primary means to justify another rehash; in other words, we’re just souping up what’s already been done.”

Thanks, Stefan.

Source: GamesIndustry

In most MMOs, your job is to kill things and that’s pretty much the end of character development. In Carbine’s Wildstar, you can take alternate paths to glory as a scientist, settler or explorer in addition to your bog-standard soldier. That said, the hazards you’ll face along the way seem pretty similar, as the video below demonstrates. Losing is fun? I hope? If you’d like to know more, there’s also a developer diary which goes into greater detail on the differences between the paths.

Source: PCGamesN

The mysterious teaser trailer below makes mention of a man who “created a Bullfrog Masterpiece” in 1996, and who has plans to “redefine the genre”, before ending with a mention of a June Kickstarter.

According to Rock, Paper, Shotgun, the game is Syndicate Wars and the man is Mike Diskett, so it seems perfectly reasonable to get very excited. There’s a countdown site, too; both video and site bear the name “Satellite Reign”.

Source: Blue’s News

Well done, everybody! In a surprise last-minute surge of pledges, Jagged Alliance: Flashback met its Kickstarter goal of $350,000, even managing to score a little bonus of $18,614 to put a cherry on it.

The reboot of the classic turn-based tactics title, which has players recruiting and kitting out squads of mercs, is being developed by Danish team Full Control, who made Space Hulk – as opposed to the crew behind last year’s less-than-stellar effort, Back In Action.

Flashback is expected in late 2014, but in the meantime, you may wish to check out Jagged Alliance Online, a free-to-play effort which is due to relaunch on Steam shortly.

Source: Kickstarter

Firaxis have revealed a new video for Civilization V‘s upcoming Brave New World expansion that discusses the new social policy trees of order, autocracy and freedom. Each one has its own unique wonder, and can apparently lead to tanks flattening people. Always good to know!

If you’d like to know more about Brave New World, why not check out our massive recent preview?

As the title of this article so laboriously explains, EA and DICE have released three more Battlefield 4 screenshots from the single-player campaign of the upcoming game (which hits our shores around the end of October). Only one of them is actually hi-res as EA have only been releasing them through Facebook and Twitter, but you’re welcome to enlarge ‘em anyway.

EA are promising we’ll learn more about the multiplayer side of things at E3, so stay tuned.

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Clearly, staying true to the spirit of an IP is hard… really hard. Some developers do manage, such as Firaxis’ excellent remake of XCOM. But most will fail miserably, like Aliens: Colonial Marines. It’s time then, to look at what actually ensures these remakes and IP games are actually true to the franchise.

Techland and Ubisoft have released Call of Juarez: Gunslinger into the wild west internet, and have also released the accompanying trailer. It’s a refreshingly honest trailer in a world of marketing spin, and point out that you can buy the game for quite a reasonable price ($17.95 on Steam) and then spend a good amount of time shooting in the faces of your enemies. Alright! Let’s do this, then.

EA’s Chief Technology Officer Rajat Teneja has used a post on LinkedIn to put forward what may prove to be a very unpopular opinion — that the next-gen consoles are already wiping the floor with PC gaming.

“These architectures are a generation ahead of the highest end PC on the market,” he claimed. “Our benchmarks on just the video and audio performance are 8-10 times superior to the current gen.”

Teneja went on to point out that these next-gen consoles allow them to focus the system resources in a more efficient manner.

“The compute capabilities of these platforms and the data transfer speeds we can now bank on, essentially removes any notion of rationing of systems resources for our game engines.”

While it’ll be several years before we see what the next-gen consoles are really capable of, by that time PC gaming will have advanced even further. At that point, perhaps, we can start making relevant comparisons.

Source: GamesIndustry (Thanks James)

Welcome to the Friday Tech Roundup! Contained herein is a weekly dose of some of the best tech news from across the Internet, rounded up for your edification and entertainment. Read on for all the details of the wholesale price of the GTX 780, 3D printed food, and bomb-loving bees.