While the shift has been great for consumers, who are enjoying an unprecedented, and largely free, game experience, it has been devastating for publishers and shareholders, who are seeing sales and profits decline.

Let’s dissect this, first he talks about a ‘shift’ in the multiplayer experience (from what I gather anyway, the source doesn’t explicitly quote what this shift is). Multiplayer gaming hasn’t changed at all since it’s humble beginnings with Quake and UT. You buy the game, and can then play however much multiplayer you want. Next let’s talk about his quote on the cost to the consumer of multiplayer gaming, of which he says is ‘largely free’, which is bollox considering Activision have raised the price of CoD:MW2 to beyond £40 at launch, almost twice what most other multiplayer games charge. Not to mention that the new DLC costs £10 for 3 new maps (and 2 ported ones from CoD4). Finally, lets talk about how he thinks publishers have been devastated by the fall in sales and profits. Come again? That’s rich when you come to Modern Warfare 2 which broke all records of day 1 sales (including records set by movies and other multimedia), and has broken the billion dollar sales mark. Kotick himself has stated that “We’ve heard that 60 percent of [Microsoft’s] subscribers are principally on Live because of Call Of Duty”.

Obviously this guy is an idiot, but never-the-less what he recommends Activision to do is likely going to come true in one way or another.

It is too early to tell whether that will be a monthly subscription, tournament entry fees, micro-transaction fees, or a combination of all three, but we expect to see the company take some action by year-end, when Call of Duty: Black Ops launches.

Kotick even said that he would implement a subscription service tomorrow if Microsoft and Sony would allow it. A CoD MMO has been on the planning tables for a while now, and it doesn’t take much imagination to see where this could lead for the series. Essentially Activision can brand Call Of Duty an MMO by slightly revamping the statistic and leveling system, labeling it an MMO, and charging an extortionate fee or microtransactions for people to play it.

It is likely that Activision will ease the pain of consumers, and will continue to offer some form of free multiplayer, at least for a while, but we believe it is imperative that the company begin to capture some value from the huge number of hours spent – 1.75 billion hours on Xbox Live alone through mid-April and we estimate that this figure is approaching four billion hours combined through today on Xbox Live and PSN

We are quick to point out that the average single player game has an expected play time of under 30 hours, suggesting that a staggering 133 million units of equivalent game play have been spent (so far) playing Call Of Duty online, with Activision only seeing revenues from the original 20m units sold, plus an estimated eight million map packs sold.

Source

This is also very very worth a read, a short history of Activision Blizzard. Basically how Activision are destroying Blizzard from the inside out.

Dragon Age 2 is coming in early 2011. Trailer is being released on the 17th of August. Yay!

Embark upon an all-new adventure that takes place across an entire decade and shapes itself around every decision you make.

Determine your rise to power from a destitute refugee to the revered champion of the land.

Think like a general and fight like a Spartan with dynamic new combat mechanics that put you right in the heart of battle whether you are a mage, rogue, or warrior.

Go deeper into the world of Dragon Age with an entirely new cinematic experience that grabs hold of you from the beginning and never lets go.

Discover a whole realm rendered in stunning detail with updated graphics and a new visual style.

Lets just hope they don’t radically change anything, Dragon Age was a near perfect game in my eyes, I just want more of the same.

A few days ago, Blizzard made an announcement that shocked the whole World Of Warcraft community, people who used to play but have quit, and even people who have never played the game before. Everyone seems to have an opinion on this, and almost all of those opinions are massively negative towards the idea.

The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID — that is, their real-life first and last name — with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it. These changes will go into effect on all StarCraft II forums with the launch of the new community site prior to the July 27 release of the game, with the World of Warcraft site and forums following suit near the launch of Cataclysm. Certain classic forums, including the classic Battle.net forums, will remain unchanged.

The official forums have always been a great place to discuss the latest info on our games, offer ideas and suggestions, and share experiences with other players — however, the forums have also earned a reputation as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild. Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before. With this change, you’ll see blue posters (i.e. Blizzard employees) posting by their real first and last names on our forums as well.

They are trying to justify the move by saying it will make the forums a better place with less trolling and spam, but it’s not hard to see that there is a lot, lot more behind this move than what’s on the surface. If their sole reasoning was to remove trolling, they could have made you post with your account, and not a specific character (at the moment, you can make a level 1 character and post completely anonymously), if your whole account was being shown, you would be more careful with what you post. Instead, Blizzard look to be moving into Facebook territory. A move to Facebook integration with Battle.net could make a lot of money for both parties. As everyone knows, Farmville has a lot more players even than World Of Warcraft, and if Blizzard were able to tap into that market they could make a lot of money. It’s not long before we see updates on Facebook saying, “John Smith needs one more Primordial Saronite for his Uber Epix chestplate, can anyone help him?”, or, “Kate Bloggs has completed 75% of the achievement ‘Collect 200 top hats for the homeless’, that’s amazing!”.

However, in doing so, they are risking the security and privacy of all the people who post on the forum. In a community of millions of players, the chances are that some people are going to disagree with you and in very rare (but still possible) cases, want to take it further than just replying on the forum. Giving away your full name makes it incredibly easy to find out where you live, what your email address is, where you work, basically everything and anything about you. If the forums didn’t show this information, it would be incredibly hard if not impossible to find out anything, unless you explicitly told the person your email/name. It’s almost guaranteed that woman are not going to post on the forums anymore, as many hide behind male avatars so they don’t get harassed and stalked online by lonely men. Employers will search for your name when considering you for a job and will find posts by you explaining why this DPS rotation is better than that one, and like it or not they might reject you for it. A fine demonstration of this going wrong was when Blizzard employee Bashiok, the poor fool, posted his real name on the official forums, and an hour later everybody knew his phone number, house, family, and lots more.

The choice is, post on the forum and give away your identity to ANYONE who wants it, or don’t post on the forums at all. This will obviously drive away a huge number of the best posters on the official forums, making them a worse place than before, even without the spam. What happens when you get redirected to a technical forum to ask a question? I know I’ve had messages from GMs that say, ‘please post on the suggestion forum’, or error messages that say ‘please post on the technical support forum’, what will I do then? If I don’t want to give away my identity I have no choice but to let my thought go unheard.

As such, I don’t see how anyone can agree with this. This goes a LOT LOT deeper than simply stopping spam and trolling on the forums, and in my opinion this could be the start of the fall of WoW if Activision-Blizzard decide to stay on this route.

Alec Meer, Rock Paper Shotgun
Ciderhelm, Tankspot
Long forum post by Natti

I’m more pleased by the actual announcement than the fact that this will be in 3D. A sequel to the popular Russian linear horror shooter wasn’t hard to guess, because the first was based on a book which also had a sequel called Metro 2034. The game is the fourth game from THQ to use 3D technology, the first being the original Metro 2033.

Metro 2033 was known mainly for it’s amazing visuals, probably the best looking game on the PC at this moment in time. It was a great linear horror shooter, though it suffered from having rather boring and generic enemies. It received unfairly average reviews in my opinion and I just hope that the developers can improve upon the ideas in the first and make a really defining horror game, which we haven’t had for a long time (except Penumbra).

Lets also hope that the 3D development doesn’t take precedence over making the game actually good. 3D games are just a gimmick and will never fully catch on, only being fueled by the popularity of 3D movies. From what I understand, not only do you need a special monitor to play 3D games, you also need twice as much processing power, making the game run slower or look worse, as the game is rendering two images, one for each eye.

Metro 2034 in 3D

This is a review I wrote for the game when it was released, on 16/05/2009. I thought I’d post it here because the game is currently on sale and I’ve been playing it a bunch with some friends who purchased it a few days ago.

On the last day of August, everything changed in the bustling city of London. You are an anonymous British military soldier dropped in to clear the area and put an end to a failed secret government program designed to clone soldiers for the army. Killing Floor, developed by Tripwire is a remake of their UT2004 mod by the same name, pits you against waves of cloned zombies who would like nothing better than to cleft you in twane and eat you for breakfast.

The general premise for the game is to survive, there are no objectives to complete except to repel a number of increasingly difficult waves until you face the end boss. The number of waves you face and the difficulty is set by the server. Short, medium, and long games being 4, 7, and 10 waves respectively. The four difficulty levels are easy, normal, hard, and suicide. Normal difficulty is default and I have yet to kill the final boss on normal. Scuicide difficulty the two times I have played it, my team didn’t get past the 2nd wave. You get money for killing zombies, and for completing the wave alive. If you die, you will respawn when your team kills the final zombie of the wave, however you will have lost all your weapons and will have to buy new ones.

You spend money on weapons, ammo, and armour in a merchant’s shop which opens at a random location in the map. You have 60 seconds from the point when you kill the final zombie to get to the shop and make your purchases, before you are booted out to face the next wave. There are about 5 possible locations for the shop on each map, which means you have to move between locations and quickly find a good spot to take out the zombies in the wave. Near the end of the wave, your team should be looking to move towards the next location of the shop (shown by an arrow) so they get there in time. This constant moving makes the games much more interesting. Another interesting mechanic is the welding gun. You can weld shut any doors you can close, effectively creating chokepoints by closing all entrances but one. Zombies will beat down on welded doors and will break through eventually but you can often flank them as they are knocking it down for massive grenade damage.

There are a total of 9 enemy types in the game, Clots are your basic zombie, slow and weak but high in number. Gorefasts are Clots with darker skin and a machette, who will charge at you when close, doing huge damage. The Bloat if similar to Left 4 Dead’s Boomer, he pukes corrosive acid over anyone close enough which does heavy damage and distorts vision. The Skrake and Fleshpound are even tougher zombies who can take and deal huge amounts of damage. There are three other rather different enemies, the Crawler which is small fast and dangerous, the Siren lets out a deafening screech, doing area of effect damage to anyone nearby, they must be taken out at range, finally there is a type of zombie who has very low health but can cause huge damage because they are almost invisible up to the moment they strike you.

The range of firearms in the game is small, however there are still more than in Left 4 Dead. There are two pistols, each of which can be dual wielded. A multitude of melee weapons, shotguns and rifles, and a gun similar to a P90. Special weapons include a flamethrower, LAW (rocket launcher), and crossbow. Your inventory is limited by weight, a typical setup would be a gun such as a shotgun or P90, a pistol, and 5 grenades. Special firearms are heavy so you need to pick carefully for the situation. You start with a pistol for the first wave, then you can buy new guns in the shop as you acumulate more money. Gunplay is incredibly satisfying, animations are the best i’ve seen in a FPS, and slow motion works fantastically, slowing the game down if you make an especially awesome shot. This slow motion effects the whole team so it doesn’t happen often, and even if it wasn’t you that triggered it, it lets you line up a perfect shot and let rip for massive damage.

Gameplay overall is very addictive, and is made even more so by the inclusion of perks, a total of 7 perks overall include Beserker, Sharpshooter, and Firebug. Each perk caters to a specific playstyle, melee combat, precision headshots, and flamethrower damage respectively. As you complete the criteria for each perk it goes up in level and you get bonuses to damage, reload time, and price reductions. Healing is performed by a syringe gun which recharges over time. Injecting yourself is possible but has more effect on teammates, encouraging teamwork.

There are a few minor critisizms which could be ironed out in future patches (Tripwire released a patch solving connection and server browser issues just 2 days after the game was released). At the end of a wave, there is sometimes a group of zombies which you have to go and hunt down, which can detract from the pace of the game. The voice acting for the merchant gets very annoying, she reminds me of the black woman from 28 days later, the lack of different lines can also grate, when you heal somebody else you always hear, “hold still i’m trying to heal you”, even if they aren’t moving. My only other complaint is the difficulty. After the final wave, you face the Patriarch, supposedly the leader of the experiment, who is armed to the teeth with a chaingun, rocket launcher, health kits, and who spawns dozens of minions. His difficulty doesn’t scale well and on normal he can kill you in a couple of seconds with his chaingun if you aren’t behind cover. This makes it very hard for a random group to take him down, however a co-ordinated group shouldn’t have much trouble.

29/06/2010 update: Since the game has been released, Tripwire have been updating the game with map packs and new weapons. In total, an additional 8 maps have been added to the original 5, and there are new top level guns for each perk, for example the SCAR, M14, and M32 Grenade Launcher. Obviously this greatly increases the replayability of the game, as each of the new maps and guns have been lovingly created to the same quality as the original game. Two optional character packs are also available for less than £1 each, allowing you to play with a different model and skin.

Positives
+ Fantastic visuals, animations, and effects.
+ Large range of guns and maps let you experiment with different loadouts and defensive positions.
+ Addictive gameplay, perk system keeps you coming back for more and gives you goals.
+ Cheap, only £7.50 in the half-price sale.

Negatives
- Repetitive character dialog.
- Needs an organized group using VoIP to complete harder difficulties.
- Gameplay doesn’t differ much from shooting specimens, and shooting more specimens.
- Can play solo but game is balanced for co-op.

AltTabbed score: 9/10

Changelog:

Server – Some potential sources for lag/rubberbanding have been eliminated
Server – The old reserved slots has been replaced by a kick-on-demand system like in BF2
Server – Log file for server admins: all remote admin interface commands/events are logged
Server – Log file for server admins: major server events + all chat messages are logged
Server – Idle kick is controllable
Server – Profanity filter can be disabled
Server – Teamkill-kick system is controllable
Server – Ticket counts and bleed rate are controllable per-level
Server – Infantry only mode available per-level
Server – Initial spawn delay and respawn delay are adjustable
Server – Server description can be up to 400 characters, and use “|” for line breaks
Server – Banlist can contain up to 10.000 entries
Server – reduced latency in packet handling

Admin Interface – fixed the player.onKill spam that occasionally happened
Admin Interface – ensured that player.onJoin events always report the player name
Admin Interface – events triggered when people spawn
Admin Interface – much more info on kills
Admin Interface – detailed stats are reported at end-of-round

Gameplay – Various minor level bugfixes
Gameplay – Helicopter handling has been tweaked
Gameplay – Weapon tweaks have been implemented based on PC public feedback
Gameplay – Tracer dart gun speed has been changed from 300 m/s to 200 m/s
Gameplay – Fixed technical hang when a crate was armed outside of the combat area
Gameplay – “Victory is near” message was shown for the wrong team on Valparaíso, this has been fixed
Gameplay – Countermeasures can be fired when driving a helicopter
Gameplay – The brightness of the pilot view in the Russian helicopter has been reduced
Gameplay – Advanced Spotting scope works better
Gameplay – Knifing people in the back works again (we backed out the change that we had done for Server R11)
Gameplay – Hit box for moving targets expands based on the speed of the targets movement
Gameplay – G36 now has crosshair when in Hardcore mode

Server Browser – Servers are sorted into 3 categories: Normal, Modified, Hardcore depending on their settings
Server Browser – Added support for retrieving update progress
Server Browser – Now refreshes information
Server Browser – Join queue system when attempting to join a full server
Server Browser – All settings are automatically saved between sessions
Server Browser – Pings are sent via an alternate mechanism, which should work for non-Administrator users as well

Client – Fixed DX9 issue, which likely caused graphics glitches and perhaps crashes
Client – Fixed some crashes
Client – Toggle/hold crouch is user controllable
Client – Toggle/hold zoom is user controllable
Client – Vsync bugfixed for DX10/DX11
Client – Rewritten how settings are written to disk; this should reduce/eliminate the spawn lag
Client – Fixed bug where a player could join a server before the stats has been downloaded causing faulty stats in “EOR- unlock progression”-screen
Client – New chat system allows chatting when dead (but not during end of round) and keeps a 100 lines log
Client – Improved Play Now functionality
Client – Removed K/D ratio and Skill Level filters in the leaderboards
Client – Any points you get while being dead will be added to your score
Client – Reduced negative mouse acceleration
Client – Increased health on the Cobra to match other vehicles
Client – More informative disconnection/kick reasons
Client – Support for Map Packs so PC gets future VIP maps at the same time as consoles

The Balance tweaks are as followed:
Slightly increased the damage of the UZI at long range.
The AKs74u now has more felt recoil when aiming.
The G3, VSS, and all SemiAutomatic rifles now settle slightly faster between shots when aiming.
The PKM, Type 88LMG, G3, An94, and 40mm shotgun have returned to their former glory.
Increased the damage of the MG3 to bring it in line with the rest of the LMGs.
Fixed a bug where the Saiga12 with slugs would do too much damage at long range.
Fixed a bug where the SVU would do too little damage at long range.
Fixed a bug where M95 rounds would not kill armored targets with headshots.

Source

Mind = blown. Not even a week after Steam’s EA week finishes, Valve announce, starting today, a massive summer sale going on until the 4th July with sales on pretty much everything in the Steam Store. There are developer packs ranging from 25% off to 75% off, two indie packages of 5 games each, and separate sales on a bunch of great games.

From the looks of it, there will be daily deals throughout the duration of the sale, so it’s going to pay to keep and eye on the Steam Store page for the best ones. These are the best deals I can see currently available.

Company Of Heroes (+ 2 expansions)
Metro 2033
Warhammer 40k (+3 expansion)
Warhammer 40k II (+1 expansion)
Titan Quest (+1 expansion)
+ more
£26.49

Call Of Duty (+1 expansion)
Call Of Duty 2
Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Call Of Duty: World At War
£21.99

DiRT
DiRT 2
FUEL
GRID
£16.99

Blueberry Garden
Bob Came In Pieces
Crayon Physics Deluxe
Plain Sight
Saira
£14.99

Darwinia
Multiwinia
Defcon
Uplink
£5.00

Individual Titles

Trine £3.40 (today only)
Bioshock 2 £9.99 (today only)
Killing Floor £3.75 (today only)
DiRT 2 £7.50 (today only)
Borderlands £14.99 + DLC (don’t get Mad Moxxie) £4.72
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director’s Cut £4.41
Beat Hazard £3.49
Men Of War Gold £7.49
King’s Bounty Gold £8.74

Updates coming tomorrow. Take a look at the whole sale here.

Update: Added The Witcher, Beat Hazard, Men Of War, and King’s Bounty

Of course, the engine is also compatible with the Mac OSX, which doesn’t affect PC gamers a whole lot unless you also have a Mac (or a Macbook), apart from giving us some ‘noobs to pwn’ (sorry). The statistics recorded are very detailed, including which maps you’re best on, which guns you are most accurate with, number of windows you’ve shot out, et-cetera, which could prove interesting once you’ve been playing a while and racked up a large amount of data. There are 144 new achievements added, ranging from getting a number of kills with each gun, winning rounds, and earning money, most of which are achievable through normal gameplay, except maybe one which has you and 4 friends on the same server buy the same loadout.

Most of the community seem to be receiving the patch positively, with the occasional 12 year old yelling at Valve for destroying their game. Most changes don’t affect gameplay at all, and most of the additions can be turned off in the server config, including kill cams and dominations (and most servers I’ve been on turn kill cams off). Valve’s usual perfection has been swept aside for some reason when creating the GUI for the new menus, but that’s only a minor point.

A few real negative points to the update come in the fact that the updated engine has reduced frames by a rather large percentage for some players on lesser specced machines, which is a fair complaint. Even with the new HDR lighting turned off, people are reporting losses of up to 50% FPS, presumably because they have an ancient graphics card that can’t handle the new shaders. I couldn’t say for certain the performance loss I’ve had, but it’s still running comfortably at over 150 most of the time so I’m not complaining.

Finally, the updated engine has broken all surf servers for the time being, because of the small changes to the physics used, on which surf was so reliant. I’m unaware if this is permanent or a workaround could be found, which is a shame because I did like a quick game of surf now and again. Other mods such as GunGame should be working fine with possibly a quick update.

A fantastic update then, thanks Valve. We can but wonder which game is next on Valve’s update list, Half Life 2: Deathmatch perhaps? Oh, and CSS is 66% off for two days, but I hope nobody still needs to buy it *evil look*.

Update: It seems like Surf servers are back, though they don’t feel as fast as before.

Bearing in mind that this is a beta product, with over three months until release, let’s get stuck in. The first thing that is shown to you is the main menu, which is obviously ported directly from console versions, designed for navigation with a gamepad and with large fonts. Play is obvious. Career contains your ranks, medals, ribbons, and leaderboards, much like Bad Company 2. Options lets you change video settings and adjust your TV display. Exit Game lets you exit the game, I haven’t used this one yet because the game crashes when it thinks I’ve played enough. Let’s hope DICE has the time to improve this for us PC users. Medals and ribbons are awards you can earn in ranked servers, including the Action Commendation you can see below. Each medal or ribbon you earn in-game will increase your score and help you on the way to your next rank, earning you new weapons and attachments.

There are three classes in the game, Rifleman, Spec Ops, and Sniper. Riflemen have assault rifles, grenade launchers (sigh), and can unlock LMGs. Spec Ops have SMGs and rocket launchers. Snipers have sniper rifles, though they start out without a scope, and C4. All pretty generic modern combat shooter stuff, and unfortunately that’s a theme throughout Medal Of Honor, everything you see in this game has been done before, and done by two games. If there ever was an offspring of two games, this would be it. Those games are of course Modern Warfare (2), and Bad Company 2. Running off the Frostbite engine, it looks and feels a lot like Bad Company 2, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but in it’s current state BC2 is a better game, so one could ask oneself what’s the point in Medal Of Honor?

Guns are as close to recoilless as you could get, though EA have said they are going to tweak that during the beta. The two maps available, Kabul City Ruins and Helmand Valley, are too small. Helmand Valley is very linear, there is one capture point at each stage (think BC2 rush map) which focuses all combat on a single point with usually only two paths up to that point, unlike in BC2 where the maps are more open and you have more freedom to flank. Kabul City Ruins is even worse, if I were to draw the map in ASCII, it would look something like this;
___
|_|_|
|_|_|

the four empty squares each have a building in it which you can enter, but the map is basically an urban four-square court, and the teams rotate spawn points around the center every few minutes.

Visually, the game looks good, a lot like Bad Company 2 but different enough to be called it’s own game, which is a good thing because they most likely won’t be changing during the beta. Controls are what you’d expect, no prone or lean. Crouch can be toggled (yay), but it doesn’t work yet (aww). DICE is known for poor server browsers, every game they make they seem to forget how to make them and start again from scratch, Medal Of Honor’s server browser is no exception, their worst one yet. Performance for me at least is better than BC2 at high settings, though I was forced to play on DX9 to even start the game, which may be helping my FPS somewhat. I’d like to comment on the kill-streak bonuses, but I haven’t had any yet. Not because I suck, but because the game crashes to desktop whenever I have enough points to obtain one, eagerly awaiting a fix to that one.

While the beta doesn’t make me want to cancel my pre-order immediately, if DICE doesn’t work hard to improve the game over the next three months, I’ll probably save myself £30. There is still the singleplayer game of course, which could turn out to be worth playing. Could.

So E3 2010 has ended, no announcement of anything new from Valve *cough*Half Life*cough*, or Bethesda *cough*Elder Scrolls V*cough*, which was disappointing. The PC was generally overshadowed by console stick shaking technology from Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo. There were however a few interesting announcements on the second and third day of the event, which I will quickly mention below.

Trine 2

Trine was a beautiful game, a classic platformer with charm and style. We knew a sequel was coming, and this is the trailer that was shown. More enemies, more abilities, more settings, and co-op.

Project Dust

The spiritual successor to Populous, which I haven’t played. It’s a god game like Black & White (which I have played), and looks fairly interesting, at least it’s something different.

Rock Of Ages

Aka. Medieval Bowling. You roll rocks with faces down hills to destroy paper soldiers and towers. You can also build your own defenses, which I assume you have to dodge while rolling the boulder. It’s from the guys who made Zeno Clash, which was known for it’s craziness, and this game looks no different.

Swarm

I couldn’t find much information about this, but it looks like it could be a lemmings style puzzler. Worth keeping an eye on.