Team Fortress 2: Robotic Booglaoo is the first major Team Fortress 2 update crafted entirely by community members – and ladies and gentlemen, it is a doozy. Admire the trailer below; check out this amazing gallery of artwork; read both pages of back story; and marvel in the fact that it even comes with a comic. A full list of all the contributors is available if you’d like to send some mad props.

Following on from cuts to the Rift team in December, Defiance developer Trion Worlds has made another round of lay-offs.

“To best position Trion in a rapidly changing industry, we have reorganized our teams and are expanding our free to play offering,” the company said in a statement.

“With Defiance, we delivered a great game that more than one million gamers registered to play and continue to enjoy. As we progress from launch to ongoing development of the game, we are adjusting our staffing levels to deliver new content and improved features. RIFT, and our other titles in development, were unaffected by these changes.

“We are very much looking forward to the free to play release of RIFT and are excited by the other new titles currently in development.”

There were some pretty furious rumours flying around about the lay-offs, including that up to 80% of staff had been affected; that staff were escorted from the building; and that senior employees would not receive due severance packages. Trion Worlds has said that the 80% figure is exaggerated – without providing a new one – and that the other claims are completely false.

However, the developer has not yet denied IGN‘s claim that all studios were affected, but the Defiance team and generic support groups were the hardest hit.

Defiance is expected to spawn five major expansions in the next year, so it’s hard to believe the MMO’s development team has been gutted.

Source: IGN

The glory of the legions and/or the screaming hordes they march against is proving highly attractive, with Sega announcing that Total War: Rome II has already collected six times as many pre-orders as Shogun 2 did, months out from its September 3 release.

As such, Rome II has set a franchise record for the most and fastest pre-orders – maybe the pre-order bonus of The Greek States Culture Pack explains why?

Sega said that the Collector’s Edition has been quite popular, with half of all copies slated for the US spoken for already.

While it was having a bit of a gloat, Sega noted that the Total War series managed two million sales last year, despite the lack of a major release.

Source: VG247

I’ve had a good run, writing for an all PC website, but Konami has ruined all that. The spell-check hostile Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (it actually is a real word) is headed to PC.

Hideo Kojima revealed the news on his Hideoblog, and it was later confirmed in English on Twitter by Platinum Games creative producer Jean Pierre Kellams.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance released on consoles in February this year. It was developed by the action specialists at Platinum Games – the team behind Bayonetta and Vanquish – with management by Kojima Productions. In fact, it began life as a Kojipro game, but halfway through the team realised their core mechanic of “you can cut anything” made for a pretty ridiculous final game and handed it over before it exploded.

No details regarding the PC port have surfaced as yet, but we may hear more at Konami’s E3 2013 presentation. It’l be interesting to see who develops it; Platinum Games has never produced a PC game, although it is a young studio with some very experienced veterans of other developers.

Source: Hideoblog via Joystiq

There is so much stuff in The Elder Scrolls Online. As well as all the usual stuff you’d expect to find on your adventures – plants, minerals and animal products – you’ll have access to stuff right off the bat in the first town, where you can able to rifle through people’s possessions and nick all their stuff, like food, drink and ingredients. You can then craft all this stuff into other, better stuff. And that’s not the end of the stuff! The world is full of stuff to collect, for quests, to improve your skills, or just because you can. Learn about all of this stuff in the video below.

In response to former THQ president Jason Rubin’s eye-opening account of working conditions at Metro: Last Light developer 4A Games, creative director Andrew Prokhorov has stoutly refused the suggestion that the team deserved a better critical response as a result.

“We deserve the ratings we get. After all, the final consumer doesn’t care about our conditions. And this is right. We need no indulgence,” he said in a comment on the article – as Rubin predicted he would.

“It is a fact that our work conditions are worse than those of other developers outside Ukraine. I don’t think anyone can doubt that – yes, it’s true that American and most of European developers operate in a country far more comfortable than Ukraine. And yes, the publishers pay them more. This is clear: the more ‘reasonable’ the country the less the risks. And we don’t want to be all dramatic about that – after all, better conditions are earned, and we strive to do this as soon as possible.”

Prokhorov thanked Rubin for his article, noting that in the ten year the former S.TA.L.K.E.R. team had worked with THQ, he was the only executive to visit and observe the team’s working conditions. He noted that Rubin didn’t have enough time to try and fix the situation – but also asked him to be less harsh towards Deep Silver, which 4A Games believes did the best it could in a bad situation.

The developer even said that 4A Games was itself keen to make a multiplayer mode, but admitted that it ended up wasting a lot of time and resources before cancelling it.

Source: GamesIndustry via VG247

Ubisoft has finally dropped a little bit of information about the multiplayer side of Watch Dogs, its upcoming surveillance state and hacking open-world epic.

Although you’ll always be playing in an individual session, creative director Jonathan Morin told the PlayStation Blog that these sessions can temporarily overlap according to Ubisoft’s “pacing”. Once the encounter is over, you’ll go back to playing entirely alone.

Morin admitted that players don’t necessarily want somebody else in their game, potentially ruining everything – but said Ubisoft has been working on this problem in a pretty interesting-sounding way.

“When we watch people play together in Watch Dogs, most of the time they don’t even realise that it was another player. There are no signs. There is a great thing there that someone can be in the experience and naturally enter a situation. They become part of the story. ‘That was another player? No way! That’s awesome!’ They didn’t notice. That’s spectacular!

“As a developer, I can immediately tell when it’s another player in a game – jeez, that guy doesn’t walk like an AI, that’s a player. But in Watch_Dogs, players won’t notice that immediately. It’s a new form of emotion and it fits perfectly in the Watch_Dogs universe where everybody watches everyone else.”

Naturally I’m a little bit dubious as in my experience multiplayer gamers tend to be fairly obvious – it’s the teabagging that gives it away – but the Assassin’s Creed series has created a whole new genre of “pretending to be an NPC” in its multiplayer modes, so let’s see what Ubisoft can pull out of its bag of tricks.

Source: PlayStation Blog EU

Ubisoft recently filed its fourth quarter and year end reports for fiscal 2013, reporting total sales of €1.26 billion for the year ($1.66 billion), an 18.4% increase on FY2012, and €175 million for the quarter ($230 million), an 8.7% year-on-year increase.

Far Cry 3 was one of the major movers and shakers behind this bounty, having shipped 6 million units, but The Settlers Online and Just Dance were also major performers, with Ubisoft highlighting the performance of free-to-play and casual games. The publisher noted that Assassin’s Creed and Just Dance had joined the ranks of the 20 best-selling franchies in the industry during the year.

It also revealed that the tepidly-received Assassin’s Creed III managed to ship 12.5 million units, including digital sales. During a post-release call to investors, Ubisoft said that it isn’t banking on Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag to do the same.

“In our numbers we expect less than last year,” CEO Yves Guillemot said.

“We are actually pushing to achieve more than last year because we think the pirate segment is a great segment that can generate a lot more on a worldwide basis than what was achieved last year. But we wanted to be prudent on our expectations so that it can probably be a bonus if it comes.”

Other reveals from the call include word of the shelving of Patrice Desiléts’s 1666.

Source: Ubisoft IR via Blue’s News

The second gameplay trailer for Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag takes us a little bit deeper into the life and past of Edward Kenway. It also has a bit where a dude gets eaten by a shark. Any trailer with sharks in gets the thumbs up from me! Now, apparently ol’ Eddie used to work for a King, presumably of England. But it sounds like he got fed up with that and went rogue, pillaging and plundering and generally doing whatever the hell he wants. Good on him, I guess.

We’re introduced to his crew in a vague and general way, but mostly there’s just lots of images of Kenway jumping off buildings directly into the spines of his enemies. Maybe you’ve seen this before – it’s called Assassin’s Creed: Any of the Other Ones. Anyway, it looks pretty and if it’s anything like the ship battles of what is colloquially known as Ass Creed 3, it should be a lot of fun.

Ass Creed 4 is due for release on October 31, and already has a metric butt-tonne of junk for preordering and/or special editions which you can find at your local retailer.

A new trailer! A teaser trailer, specifically, for the new Batman game, Batman: Arkham Origins.

There’s not much to see in this trailer as it is, after all, a teaser. We have Batman (*gasp!*) engaged in a hand vs. staff battle against what seems to be anti-Batman, Deathstroke. Aaaaand that’s it.

Like I said, there’s not a lot to go on, and there’s no gameplay. But it does tell us that the full trailer will be ready for your viewing consumption on May 21 and that Arkham Origins will see release worldwide on October 25. Check it out below and tell us what you think!

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing is due out in a matter of days, and includes an interesting feature for an ARPG — customisable lair-building. You’ll be returning to your lair frequently and your enemies will try to attack you even there, so it’s important to build up your defences with traps and upgrade your generator to unlock more crafting options. Interesting stuff! If you want to get in now, you can pre-order at the official site.

Source: VG247

The fifth Battle Arena Melbourne fighting game tournament kicks off at Melbourne’s CQ tonight, with around 300 players expected to fight it out across 11 different games.

The Couchwarriors crew have been responsible for some of the most impressive gaming tournaments in Australia, including their corroboration with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra last year.

Along with three days of frenzied, adrenaline-filled action, this year’s BAM will feature a live performance from chiptunes artist Pselodux. Tom Taylor, author of the Injustice: Gods Among Us prequel comic, will be signing comics on the Saturday, while the NewGamePlus TV crew will be hosting a qualifier in association with Monash University’s High School eSports League.

This, of course, is an entree to the main course, which includes the following: Events for Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition (2012), Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3, The King of Fighters XIII, Street Fighter X Tekken, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown, Dead or Alive 5, Street Fighter 3: Third Strike, Super Smash Bros Brawl & Melee, as well as the first Australian tournament for Injustice: Gods Among Us and an exhibition event for Mortal Kombat.

If you want to watch the action for yourself down at Melbourne’s CQ, a $10 spectator pass will cover the whole weekend. You can also watch the action live from Friday to Sunday on Shadowloo’s TwitchTV channel.

The full schedule is available over on the BAM website, and as always, go Sydney.