Speaking to GamesIndustry, Former THQ president Danny Bilson, who was ousted before the publisher’s collapse, has said the company had financial issues the whole time he was there. The one-time executive said this was due in part to an ongoing tendency to rely on licenses, which had served THQ so well from 1991 to 2007, and weren’t shucked fast enough.

“We were shutting studios the whole time, and I was the guy going out there and giving the bad news,” he said. “It’s like the worst thing that… it’s the worst. I’ll stop right there. Awful.

“When I left a year ago, we didn’t see what eventually happened on the horizon. I’m not kidding, okay: we knew we were in trouble, but we knew we had a good line-up, and I thought we had enough money put away to support that stuff, finish it, and market it properly. We had a plan to live another day.

“And this is honest, honest, honest: I do not know what happened after I left. No idea. I’m not privy to what went on in there and I didn’t try to find out. I needed to move forward. I really wasn’t engaged at all, and then the news came in December.

“This was happening to my friends. I felt terrible. I just felt terrible.”

Bilson has never made any comment on his exit from THQ ahead of the appointment of former Naughty Dog lead Jason Rubin as president, and said he has to count on influential figures in the industry and press knowing the truth.

“Do I take responsibility for being involved in the decline of a company? Absolutely. Will I tell you candidly that it was the hardest job I’ve every had in my life? Well, it was. But I gave it my best, and I didn’t see the end result coming at all,” he said.

“On my watch, we, meaning my team, took [THQ] from one place and got it to another. We made a lot of improvements, but obviously it wasn’t enough; it wasn’t fast enough and it wasn’t good enough. I take responsibility for that. I’m proud of the portfolio my team built under duress. My team helped to raise the quality bar at a company that was built on something else entirely.”

Source: GamesIndustry

I am sorry, friends, but it is time to let go. After eight years and a successful sequel, ArenaNet has announced it will cease development of new content for Guild Wars. Take heart, through; the game will not be shuttered any time soon, and the team hopes to continue supporting loyal players via an automated system.

“Our focus has shifted to updates that not only help maintain Guild Wars but help the game maintain itself. With this focus in mind, we’ll no longer be releasing any new content for the live game except in support of automation,” ArenaNet said.

“Our goal is to get the game to a place where it can continue to run and be available to all of our fans. We have a lot of love for Guild Wars—it’s the game that made us what we are today—and we want to continue sharing it with everyone!”

The Live Team will remain on hand to address critical crashes and the like, but the tournament system will be fully automated; events will run over the course of a week rather than a weekend; and festival tokens and birthday presents will allow you to pick up older unique items missing from your collection.

For more information, check out the May 16 developer post on the subject.

Source: Guild Wars – News Updates

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

If I’ve learned anything from the decade of my life I’ve poured into Sid Meier’s magnum opus, it’s that life is never easy if you’re hell bent on guiding your nation through a peaceful course of prosperity, science and trade.

The Mayans were one of the first ancient civilizations that focused much of their efforts on developing a society that rewarded intellectual, artistic and economic development. Throughout the initial few thousand years of their existence, significant inroads were made into equalisation of labor, educating the masses and building a strong trade system that allowed for infrastructure development and growth. The benefits of this ground work peaked during the “Classic” period in the early AD’s, where the Mayans were leaders in perfecting some of the most important technologies of the era; in particular the foundations of writing, the modern calendar and astronomy.

But at some point during the 8th and 9th century, Maya experienced an almost systematic collapse of the entire state, to the point where the entire population disappeared and the facilitation of construction, art and inscriptions ceased immediately. Because the extent, speed and enormity of this event was so severe,  there is still no universally agreed rationale to explain what actually occurred during that 100-year downfall. Theories range from the attack and subsequent displacement of the population by the Spanish, the hand of whom the Mayans had suffered almost constant harassment and attempts at colonization for decades. An alternate thought was that due to overpopulation and lack of available land, the Mayans could no longer support themselves and fell due to their own successes.

History lessons aside, the story of the Mayans and the mystery of their disappearance from the world is a circumstance I’ve always wanted to replicate, but have been unable to within the existing framework of Civilization… until now. Firaxis have blessed me with a restricted (Single Player, Fixed Nation, Fixed Map Size) preview of their promising new Civ 5 expansion, Brave New World, which finally returns focus to three of the most undervalued elements of the game – culture, trade and science. Overhauling trade, adding a set of new policies and widening culture based victory avenues are just a few of the new additions to the game.

At first, not too much seems to be different. Two years of patches have smoothed out much of the bugs and glitches, tidying up the interface and providing more information to what’s happening during turns. A new tutorial system pops up at various points during the match, alerting the player to new features and functions (as well as, annoyingly, some old features that most players are already well and truly aware of) and offering information on how to effectively utilize them. Experienced players will notice the new Ideology tab on the Social Policies screen, which comes into play during the late game and provides a secular form of pressure via cultural influence, in the same way religion did in Gods and Kings.  It doesn’t take too long, however, before we’re introduced to the Caravan, Brave New World‘s most attractive new feature.

Caravans, and eventually, Cargo Ships, offer the ability to effectively generate “free” wealth for both of the civs involved, as well as shifting trade items like horses and iron. Each route lasts for roughly 30 turns before it can be re-evaluated and changed, all the while being boosted via scientific advancement and bonuses. Essentially, they work in the same manner as workers – you set and forget them. One of their better functions is the ability to traffic food from one of your cities to the other, effectively saving part of your populace from starvation and facilitating growth in desert or ice cities that may not usually do well on their own (Las Vegas, anyone?).

On their own, trade routes don’t really become essential parts of a burgeoning superpower until you meet all of your neighbours; once other nations grow jealous of your growth and wealth, it becomes imperative that your relations with them (and city states) are managed effectively. War is still not good for business.

Improvements aside, it can still feel a little difficult to avoid conflict with other countries without simply bribing them, although the AI has drastically improved since the atrocious algorithms that created sociopathic warmongers out of almost all of your opponents. The new World Congress (precursor to the UN) helps quell (or exasperate, if you prefer) a lot of the heat, allowing you (if you’re leading it) to force civilizations into treaties and regulations that disallow them from accessing tech or over-militarising to a point that threatens your existence. Spies can also now be turned into Diplomats, who can lobby and bribe parts of the “world vote” into your direction.

The creation and use of Great People and Great Works have also drastically expanded, via new buildings and research points, in turn making their spawns much less random and generally more strategic, especially if you wish to win the respect and cultural reputation that allows for victory. Works, such a famous works or art or poetry, developed by these units feeds into a new “Tourism” element, forming a type of “offensive culture”, that is physically stored within your cities’ various cultural buildings. Tourism points flow into the overall pool, ballooning your territorial influence.

During my recent interview with Civ 5 lead Dennis Shirk, we discussed how the original “static” cultural victory left players turtling inside their territory, pooling culture until the count ticked over. His promises to overhaul this have borne some element of fruit – while balancing the various options that “Great People” provide (speeding up development or boosting influence) is certainly more interesting, it doesn’t truly dull the war drum inside, with the game practically begging you to build a little self defense if you refuse to.  “Come on man”, your military adviser beckons, his eyes shifting to the side like the evil genius that he is, “what’s the harm in setting up a little nuclear deterrent?”

Has Firaxis succeeded in letting us recreate the mysterious rise and fall of Mayan history? Well, it’s come pretty damn close. The improvements to trade and culture significantly raise their in-game status and strategic power to the point where they can no longer be ignored or exploited via military means alone. A strong, focused and commercially minded pacifist could easily push influence across a wide area of the map, if left unchecked. The World Congress throws a odd shaped spanner in the works and looks like it could be a hell of a lot of fun in multiplayer, although that particular element was not included in the preview. Keep an eye out for our review closer to the expansion’s launch.

Gigabyte, makers of all things gaming, have decided to celebrate the launch of Metro: Last Light by offering the games.on.net readers the chance to gear up and take on the unforgiving underground of the Russian metro.

That’s right: win this competition, and you walk away with a brand new Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660… and a brand-new Aivia Osmium mechanical gaming keyboard (with Cherry Brown MX switches). With these babies attached to your rig, you’ll have everything you need to crush the mutants into submission.

But wait! There’s more!

These are the special Metro: Last Light editions of the GTX 660 — so you’ll score yourself a free copy of the game as well! Very nice.

There are two prize packs to win, and each one contains the card (with copy of the game) and keyboard — so don’t delay!

Wondering how good Metro: Last Light looks on PC? Why not check out our detailed, nine-minute long video review and see for yourself!

Holy crap! How can I enter?

Good question! To enter this competition, all you need to do is in 150 words or less, describe one of the mutated creatures now living in the radioactive Russian underground. It can’t be an existing Metro enemy, it has to be something you made up. It can be as serious or zany as you like: the two most creative entries as selected by our judges will walk away with the prize.

Leave your entry as a comment on this article below. Remember! 150 words or less. This competition is also open to Australian residents only.

What else do I need to know?

This competition runs from now until 11:59 PM Adelaide time on Sunday 26 May. It is governed by the terms and conditions on this page.

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.

Editor’s Note: After we ran our massive interview with Nate Mitchell, VP of Product behind the Oculus Rift VR headset (read part one here, and part two here) we were contacted by Neil Schneider from Meant To Be Seen 3D, the core developers behind the open source Vireio Perception drivers that many gamers have been using to turn games into VR-capable 3D experiences.

He asked us if he could issue a statement to clear the air around the issue of Vireio drivers vs. native Rift support, and we agreed. So without further ado, take it away Neil…

***

Let me begin by saying that I’m supportive of the Oculus VR SDK and Nate is 100% correct that a native VR game has competitive advantages over anything a VR or stereoscopic 3D driver can deliver. Oculus’ strategy is the correct one, and Vireio Perception’s role is to fill the need for games that don’t or won’t have native VR support. It’s not our intention to replace or substitute the benefits of true VR rendering and programming.

Nate’s remarks as they are written are misleading, however, and I would like the opportunity to answer his criticisms.

Andres Hernandez (Cybereality). Toy Gun!

First, Cybereality, whose real name is Andres Hernandez, is an MTBS forum moderator. He’s helped out with coding parts of the website and has contributed a lot of time to the community over several years. He still does. The same goes for Palmer Luckey, who also has roots as an MTBS moderator for years, and still maintains the role.

Long before the Rift was launched, Andres announced plans to release commercial stereoscopic 3D drivers for VR devices like the Oculus Rift. What made these drivers unique compared to the other products is that they supported head tracking which is a core feature of the Rift and is available through other means by off the shelf products. This isn’t a simple “mouse look” as Nate’s comments suggest. The game rolls and turns with your head movements; it does this by using a combination of mouse look and adjusting the projection matrix so that you get all three axes of rotation.

Head roll, deep 3D, table corner is protruding with Vireio Perception

Realizing that he was getting hired by Oculus VR, Andres decided to release his VR drivers as open source so he could put most of his energies into Oculus VR. Since that time, Vireio Perception went from one solitary programmer to three talented volunteer coders who are collaboratively working to build the next iteration of the software.

According to the article, Nate’s primary concern about the Vireio Perception drivers is latency, and that this latency is somehow disorienting for gamers. While I will be the first to tell you that Vireio Perception has a major problem (I mean MAJOR), it has little to do with latency.

Stereoscopic 3D, a core feature of VR and the Oculus Rift, requires that the left and right view appears on the screen at the same time. If the software is working correctly, you should see the left and right view, next frame, left and right view, next frame, etc. etc. Each frame has to show both views simultaneously.

Vireio Perception drivers are a software hack to get the same results from games that weren’t designed to do this. On the fly, the drivers take existing video game data from DirectX API calls, create a second camera view where none existed before, and pass on a left and right view to the display – in this case the Oculus Rift.

When Andres was working on the Vireio Perception code he got nearly everything correctly, but for whatever reason, the left and right views were out of sync. So even though things are happening faster than our eyes can easily perceive, the left and right views are not being updated at the same time in each frame. That was a piece of the puzzle he just didn’t have enough time to solve, and that’s how the drivers have been behaving right up to the current build.

This is one of those errors where you know something is wrong, but you can’t quite put your finger on it. Nate is calling it latency, but it’s really something very different. There is a happy ending to this story, and I will get to that shortly.

The biggest problem with Vireio Perception is the user interface (UI). The Oculus Rift is designed in such a way that the screen’s field of view goes beyond what your eyes can actually see. The majority of games place the HUD elements in the far corners of the screen which means that even though the UI is there, you can’t see it! This is a real problem when you are dependent on in-game menus or health and ammo indicators. There is also the issue of the game’s crosshair not being accurate in 3D mode because it wasn’t designed for that purpose.

Now the good news!

Convergence Portion of SHOCT Mechanism

First, the time differential problem between the left and right camera views is largely corrected. As long as users follow our settings guide and use the SHOCT tool (Schneider-Hicks Optical Calibration Tool), we think the next public build is going to be a lot more comfortable for extended gaming periods.

While Vireio Perception started as just supporting DirectX 9, we have been hard at work adding DirectX 10 and 11 support. We also think the crosshair problem will be easily solved with an add-on 3D crosshair or something similar, and we are experimenting with different methods to get existing game HUDs more VR friendly. This problem hasn’t been licked yet, but we have ideas.

I know this sounds crazy, but not one of our programmers have received their Oculus Rift yet! Imagine the improvements that will be made once they have the actual SDK in their hands!

So this begs the question: does native VR support have a real advantage over VR drivers like Vireio Perception?

Yes, and this is why. Vireio Perception makes it possible to track nearly all your head’s movements. It’s kind of like a mouse look, but it’s much more advanced. However, unless the game is designed to behave differently, your body and head movement are one and the same.

Native VR games let you look around and walk as two distinct movements just like real life. Depending on the game, there are additional hacks and modifications that can be found to replicate this behavior, but it’s not a simple driver fix. It’s also likely that there is a lower latency with native code as Nate describes, but this hasn’t been reported as an issue by excited Vireio Perception gamers with mid to high range PC gaming equipment.

I will finish by saying that I’m very proud of the Vireio Perception development team for their continued technical innovation and their positive problem solving attitude. When he got wind of Nate’s remarks, Philip Larkson’s first comment was “all we can do is keep improving it (Vireio Perception)”. With a Skype smiley, Chris Drain said “Doesn’t mean I don’t want to replay old stuff that’s never going to get first party support though!” As for John Hicks, he didn’t have to say anything. He’s just setting an example and is hard at work on the next wave of Vireio Perception.

I should point out that there are other products out there. There is a lot of excitement for Vireio Perception because it’s free and open source, but there is also a commercial package called VorpX in development, and with the help of NTHUSIM HMD, I think that established brands like Dynamic Digital Depth’s TriDef Ignition and Nvidia’s 3D Vision drivers will be able to repurpose their established 3D software for VR. At least, it’s something I’m hoping for. I don’t know if the NTHUSIM / 3D driver mix will have head tracking, so I’m looking forward to seeing what they cook up.

Palmer Luckey & Neil Schneider at CES 2013

Let me finish by saying that whether people love or hate VR drivers doesn’t matter. What matters is that VR is being taken very seriously by game developers and gamers alike for products in the not-too-distant future. I expect that there will be plenty of AAA titles and independent game releases with innovative VR support someday soon. In the meantime, MTBS’ community is just happy to help fill the large gap of games leading up to that point. After all, helping foster community driven ideas is what we do best.

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!

We’ve been carefully evaluating the entries to our BenQ Gaming Monitor giveaway, where three lucky people will be heading home with a brand new BenQ RL2450H gaming monitor. These monitors were custom-made in accordance with the direction from some of South Korea’s top StarCraft II players, resulting in an experience powered by a dynamic contrast booster to adjust levels on the fly and keep you at maximum alertness.

But enough about that! Who are the winners? Well I’m very pleased to announce, after much deliberation, that our winners are…

Writing Category

We had a lot of great entries and tales of terror in this category, but unfortunately there could be only one. And our winner, with the worst sob story of them all, is assa46.

I currently have only 1 monitor (21″ BENQ-G2220HD) the fact that is tiny is only half of my problem, whenever I am playing a game, midway through the screen goes black and I usually die before I can turn it back on. It has been doing this for over a year now, I can’t even play games now without the worry of it shutting off. Getting a new monitor would be really great and I would be able to return to gaming once again.

A tiny 21″ monitor that blacks out in the middle of games? We must help this person. assa46, a shiny new 24″ BenQ RL2450H is on its way to you.

Drawing Category

Once again some very stellar entries in this one, but the judges felt that forum regular a3gis‘ entry showed a truly terrifying scenario of global extinction should the man lose at a game of Solitaire.

Congratulations, a3gis! Please don’t kill us all.

Video Category

Very few entries comparatively in this category, but all of them top notch — unfortunately, only one entry could win and it was tarvang whose madcap jumping and arm-flapping genuinely told the judges that he was the one who would get the most excited.

Some great runner-up entries from xsphera and AuV2 Jason, respectively. Check them out!

Tarvang, if you could please post a follow-up video once your monitor arrives showing the real happy-dance in action, that would be perfect.

Congratulations to all the winners!

I’ll be contacting you by private message on the forum shortly to organise your prize collection. Thanks to everybody who entered, and thanks to BenQ for supplying the prizes. Look out for our next competition very soon.

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

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 Windows 8.1, Nintendo’s method of monetising fan videos, and the $325,000 burger that you probably wouldn’t want to eat.

Windows 8.1 is nigh, free, and feature-filled

The previously-named “Windows Blue” update for Windows 8 has been officially dubbed Windows 8.1, and will be released for free. According to a recent Microsoft press release, a public preview of Windows 8.1 will be made available via the Windows Store on June 26, to coincide with the 2013 Build conference in San Francisco. The major difference between Windows 8.1 and past service packs is that 8.1 will include a slew of unannounced new features and visual changes, the likes of which are traditionally reserved for major revisions.

In fact, Microsoft have been careful to avoid referring to Windows 8.1 as a “service pack” at all, further shoring up the fact that Windows 8 and the latest revision of Office are signs of a Microsoft that has finally learned that their decrepit licencing model won’t last, and that something needed to change in order to keep consumers buying into their latest and greatest releases.

Nintendo will forcibly add advertisements to amateur Let’s Play videos

The concept of the Let’s Play (LP) has been around for quite a while: lengthy videos of gameplay that are narrated by the player, which give viewers some deep insights into the featured game. As time has gone on these videos have become an incredibly valuable tool for gamers, as they show a lot of detail without being caged or focused by PR. It seems that Nintendo has finally come to this realisation itself, and reacted swiftly and harshly. Automated takedowns were issued by the venerable purveyor of family-focused games, which caused popular LP’er Zack Scott to complain loudly on Facebook about the situation, saying “It jeopardizes my channel’s copyright standing and the livelihood of all LPers”.

After his post was reported by GameFront, Nintendo responded officially stating that the blocks would stop, but that ads would be added to the videos, “For most fan videos this will not result in any changes, however, for those videos featuring Nintendo-owned content, such as images or audio of a certain length, adverts will now appear at the beginning, next to, or at the end of the clips. We continually want our fans to enjoy sharing Nintendo content on YouTube, and that is why, unlike other entertainment companies, we have chosen not to block people using our intellectual property.”

Google I/O 2013 heralds major new features for many Google products

Google’s annual I/O conference has rolled around again, and this year they have announced a set of new features and UI revisions for a large number of their products. As well as updated UIs for Google Plus, Google Music, and Google Play, the Mountain View crew has added All Access, a $9.99 per-month subscription service to Google Play that provides access to the entire Google Play music library in a fashion similar to Spotify and rdio; a new service called Hangouts which aims to unify all Google-based communications systems into a single platform for use on PC, and your mobile devices; “hot wording” replaces Google’s voice search, now all that is required to search with voice is to say “Hey Google…” at Chrome, and it should respond by performing a search based on what you say next.

A lot more was announced, the details of which can be found at this handy round-up at The Verge.

Eric Schmidt says ‘Don’t be evil’ was the “stupidest rule ever”

In more Google news, executive chairman Eric Schmidt has told National Public Radio that Google’s ‘Don’t be evil’ rule is “the stupidest rule ever,” though the his reasoning isn’t as controversial as it sounds. More of a motto than a rule, ‘don’t be evil’ was designed to allow and remind staff to speak up when something that was potentially “evil” was being discussed at Google. According to Schmidt, the rule is stupid because the definition of evil is quite broad, “there’s no book about evil, except maybe, you know, the Bible or something.” This has apparently caused problems in the past, and he cites an example: “What happens is, I’m sitting in this meeting, and we’re having this debate about an advertising product. And one of the engineers pounds his fists on the table and says, that’s evil. And then the whole conversation stops, everyone goes into conniptions, and eventually we stopped the project. So it did work.”

It is also difficult for a large-scale business to avoid doing any evil whatsoever, as many common business practices could be easily classified as at least a ‘little bit evil’, such as dodging taxes by putting offices in countries like Bermuda to avoid millions of dollars’ worth of taxes each year. When NPR asked Schmidt whether he could “flip a switch on [his] office computer and read [our] emails,” Schmidt replied “Yes, and I would lose my job and be sued to death.” But would anyone even find out? “Someone would find out, trust me,” says Schmidt.

The $325,000 in-vitro burger

Do you like burgers? Are you worried about the impact your carnivorous tendencies are having on the world around you? Well, Dr. Mark Post of the Maastricht University in the Netherlands has come up with a method for obtaining meat that could one day have a positive impact on the world livestock industry. This might appeal to your conscience, but what about your appetite? Dr. Post’s method involves taking stem cells from the necks of cows obtained from slaughterhouses, and causing these precursor cells to transform into cells specific to muscle that is good for eating.

The process is adapted from that which tissue engineers use to grow tissue and organs for use in medical research and procedures. Reading into the procedure even a little bit was enough to turn this writer’s stomach, but if the idea of eating 20,000 strips of lab-cultured meat, grown in foetal calf serum, and packed into a US$325,000 burger patty which “tastes reasonably good” sounds good to you, go check out the New York Times explainer piece.

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.

News of Maxis’ upcoming Sim City expansion has accidentally hit the internet, with Green Man Gaming posting a listing for the DLC on their site (and then quickly removing it).

Maxis have since confirmed the expansion on their Facebook account, saying “Some of you may have seen thrilling new SimCity content that arrived too early at the gate. It’s coming May 28th. We think you’ll be amused.”

Unfortunately it wasn’t pulled down quickly enough, with one quick-thinking YouTube user catching the whole thing below.

Source: VG247

Metro: Last Light is the direct sequel to Metro 2033, and promises to fix all the complaints about the original while simultaneously looking drop-dead gorgeous and pushing your PC as far as it can go. Does it live up to the claims? Find out in our video review.

WARNING: Metro Last Light is rated R18+ in Australia. The following video contains scenes and language that are not suitable for viewers under 18.

Editor’s Note: At the time this video was being cut together, the FOV patch had not yet been released. It was made available overnight, and Steam users should update their game now to get it working.

A HD download of this review from our file library is coming soon.

Good:

• Drop-dead gorgeous
• Amazing atmosphere and attention to detail
• Great PC support (aside from the lack of FOV control)
• Meaty gunplay and clever mechanics

Bad:

• Ultra-linear and in love with its own story
• Bad voice acting, poorly-written characters
• Makes you crawl at a snail’s pace everywhere outside of combat
• Heaps and heaps of quicktime events and silly contrived situations

Back in February, Avalanche Games’ CEO released several blurry sepia-toned screenshots of what looked for all the world like a new Just Cause game. “Just Cause 3?!” I screamed excitedly, ripping my pants off in anticipation — but it was not to be.

Avalanche’s chief creative officer Christofer Sundberg has revealed to Edge that the screenshots were actually “from a steampunk-style game we had in development that we put on ice.”

“I really love that art style, and to combine it with sandbox gameplay is a dream of mine,” he said. “Fortunately, being an independent developer I can control my own destiny and we’ll make something in that world sooner or later.”

Well! I’d better put these pants back on then. So what ARE Avalanche working on? “We are developing for both current and next-gen, but the earliest we’ll be able to talk about it and go into any detail is after the games we are working on are announced,” he said.

“We’re also announcing new, interesting tech development that we do internally, but that is not until later this year.”

Source: Edge Online

A website for a MOBA called Dawngate has appeared overnight, offering a chance to be a part of a MOBA that “looks and feels familiar while offering a whole new way to experience MOBA gameplay”.

“Dawngate empowers you to forge the champions you love for the roles you want in a competitive arena,” claims the site, “shaped by ever-evolving, community-driven content and story.” And, well… that’s all there is to know so far, other than the fact that EA have signed on to publish it.

You can hit up the official site to sign up for beta, or perhaps mine meticulously through the source code for clues. With EA on board though, I should think we’ll be hearing more about this next month at E3. Stay tuned.

Source: Blue’s News

It’s been a while since we’ve seen anything about DARK, the vampire stealth game — perhaps it’s been quietly recovering its strength in a casket of native soil. In any case, there’s a new trailer out that shows off the various skills in the game, which you can see below. It’s a somewhat underwhelming bit of gameplay video and doesn’t seem to look as good as early-released screenshots, which doesn’t bode well for its upcoming PC release in the next few months. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

Source: Blue’s News

Former THQ boss Jason Rubin has revealed that 4A Games worked in gruelling conditions to finish Metro: Last Light, including being packed together on folding wedding chairs and with power and heat going off for days at a time.

“4A’s staff sat on folding wedding chairs, literally elbow to elbow at card tables in what looks more like a packed grade school cafeteria than a development studio,” writes Rubin in a revealing post on GamesIndustry International.

Rubin explained that power and heat were unreliable, with 4A staff working “in their parkas and struggling to keep their fingers warm in temperatures well below freezing”. The team also apparently had to deal with constant corruption, with Rubin saying that “When 4A needed another dev kit, or high-end PC, or whatever, someone from 4A had to fly to the States and sneak it back to the Ukraine in a backpack lest it be ‘seized’ at the border by thieving customs officials.”

The whole blog post is very eye-opening and worth a read, so check it out.

Source: GamesIndustry International