June 24, 2016

Elite Dangerous With Top Tier Gear Is A Whole New Galaxy of Fun

Posted on June 24, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

At E3 developers at Frontier and representatives from Thrustmaster invited me to check out the manufacturer’s upcoming hardware refresh for their high-end HOTAS line with a convention exclusive demo version of Elite Dangerous. As I’ve written before, Elite Dangerous is one of my favorite VR experiences and it was the first VR title I tried – Elite proved to me that the magic of VR is possible, even with limited vision. So, to get the chance to use some of Thrustermaster’s upcoming toys while piloting an interstellar space ship was a no-brainer, I jumped at the opportunity.

In terms of the in-game demonstration, the version of Elite built for the show introduced players to a lot of the key concepts that are required to be successful while exploring the Milky Way. My demo began with an experience that is very familiar with me – looking around the cockpit of my ship and waiting for whatever space station I was situated at to release my ship so that I could fly out and begin exploration. As the computerized voice in my ear belted out “ship released” my fingers instinctively pressed the button on my right joystick to retract my landing gear as my left hand pushed the throttled to push the ship out of the docking bay. Once the ship was out of the bay I got to fly around in total freedom for a few moments before a waypoint suddenly lit up on my HUD.

Once my ship was aligned to the new jump point my craft entered hyper-drive, blue and purple particles whizzing past my head as I looked up into the top-side window in my cockpit. As my ship began to decelerate from the faster than light travel I noticed that I had entered orbit around a sun in an unexplored system I was not at all familiar with. As I grabbed my right joystick to move my ship out of the gravitational pull of the sun I noticed something – the look of Thrustmaster’s upcoming joysticks and the button placements are almost exactly 1:1. Representatives from both companies would later confirm to me that this was intentional and that the particular HOTAS setup I was using was designed with Elite in mind.

There wasn’t much time to stare at the magnificent sight that was the sun I was escaping from as enemy units showed up on my ship’s HUID. Pressing the button on my right joysticks I raised my hardpoints and pulled the thruster forward as far it would go. My first few laser blasts missed, the on-board computer needed a few more moments to lock-on. Just as my reticule was about to lock on my foe did a quick dive upwards, but I was ready. I cut power to my engines, aimed my nose up with the right joystick and pushed the thruster full blast again, getting back on my foe’s tail. Once my sights were aligned I got off four shots that destroyed my target just as the demo automatically whisked my ship away.

Rae using the HOTAS for Elite dangerous

It is hard to convey just how well the presence of the Elite Dangerous E3 demo worked. I was playing on a Oculus Rift CV1 in a very specific set-up that was designed specifically for Elite. To say it was immersive is an understatement, it is probably the closest I’ll ever get to flying in a real spaceship anytime soon – or short of winning the lottery and building the mammoth gaming rig / hardware configuration that Thrustmaster and Frontier brought to their booth.

The HOTAS actual hardware used at during the demonstration was an upgraded version of Thrustmaster’s Warthog line – representatives told me that the controllers on display were actually prototypes, one of only a couple the company had at the moment, and that the final versions will hit retail sometime close to December. Current versions of the Warthog retail for around $349.99 and consist of two discrete parts – the joystick and throttle components. The company also makes lower cost options such as the T.Flight – which do not include as many physical buttons but can still get the job done – which retails for $79.99.

My experience with Elite Dangerous at E3 just confirms that it is one of the most immersive spaceship experiences available on any platform. Elite Dangerous and its first expansion Horizons is available on both Windows PC and Xbox One. Look for more coverage of Elite, including a video interview with the developers next week.

E3 2016 E32016 Elite Dangerous: Horizons Elite: Dangerous Frontier Preview Thrustmaster Virtual Reality VR

PC Previews

Key Resellers a Huge Threat to Indies

Posted on June 24, 2016 by Renee Gittins

Key resellers have a reputation for being sketchy and potentially harmful to the game industry. Recently, the magnitude of their negative impact was shown.

Earlier this week, tinyBuild, an indie game development studio and publisher, revealed that the key reselling site, G2A.COM, sold thousands of keys of their games without tinyBuild ever seeing a dime. Almost $200k was pulled in by G2A, though tinyBuild has noted that the keys sold at retail value would have been worth $450k.

tinyBuild’s calculations of sales and lost sales based on sales information from G2A.

G2A’s response to this reveal was not an apology, but demands that tinyBuild produce a list of the keys that are fraudulent (a rather difficult and absurd request), and a criticism of tinyBuild’s loss estimate, clearly not understanding what “retail value” means.

G2A.COM calls for tinyBuild to provide their list of suspicious keys within three days from the date of this transmission.

The CEO of tinyBuild, Alex Nichiporchik responded that:

The way our business works is we work with a ton of partners, and tracking down individual key batches is an insane amount of work. Even if we did that and deactivated certain batches, each one of them will have a bunch of ‘legitimate’ redemptions… I [also] believe [G2A would] just resell those keys and make more money off of it.

Alex’s distrust of key resellers is understandable, especially considering the response from G2A. Instead of taking down tinyBuild keys or providing compensation of the sales to the studio, G2A is still happily making money off of assisting scammers.

One of tinyBuild’s games, Punch Club.

Key resellers seem to have a pretty reasonable business model at first glance: a person gets a key for a game they don’t want or already have, and sells it on a key reselling website to make a few bucks and put the key in the pocket of someone who will use it.

The internet is not a kind place, though, and key resellers provide an opportunity for fraudsters to easily cash out. They use stolen credit cards to purchase keys, like from Humble Bundle and even key resellers, then turn around and resell them on the key reselling sites that are more lenient in their security. The key is resold and gone on to more legitimate hands long before the first seller is hit with the charge-back from the stolen card. Publishers and developers lose, while scammers and sketchy key resellers win.

“They’re basically helping people launder money” noted Mike Gnade, from IndieGameStand. “This scam really pisses me off – mainly because these people aren’t stealing from large rich corporations but taking advantage of smaller companies and indie developers.”

While stolen credit cards are a large part of the problem, there are other places that these key reselling merchants are finding keys: bots and scammers.

Bots happily search streams, Facebook and other channels for posted codes to snatch up and resell, and the losing side is always the developers. Not even the smallest game studios are free from these risks.

My inbox often gets emails like the following:

Hello!

My name is Anas, nice to meet you.

I found in the Steam list your game Potions: A Curious Tale and would like to submit it on my channel.

I plan to try your game on one of the my closest twitch-streams, and if I liked it – make a full review on YouTube channel.

I will be very grateful, if you send me few extra keys as a small thanks for advertising (I want give them to my friends, who are just beginning to engage a streaming).

Thank you for your time. I hope to hear your answer, even if it is negative.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/MrLebledart/

Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/lebledart

Sounds pretty cool, right? Someone wants to stream Potions: A Curious Tale, and, wow, they have 1.6 million subscribers on YouTube. An amazing opportunity, right?

Probably not. It’s like that this person is just phishing for keys. They’ve made a gmail account with an address that seems similar to what this streamer would use and are probably using a bot to write emails like this. Notice how the only detail about my game is the name of the game itself, and, of course, they want multiple keys, not just one.

With an unreleased game, I am particularly sensitive to requests like this, because the game is not intended to be released to the general public yet. Reselling of my keys would be extremely harmful to Potions: A Curious Tale, not just due to lost revenue, but because the game is unfinished and may be received poorly.

Luckily, there are services like Distribute(), created by Vlambeer to help indie developers sort legitimate requests from illegitimate ones. They offer tracking of “Verified press contacts [to] help you ensure press requests come from a trusted source. Verified press contacts help you avoid fake requests from video content creators or people pretending to be from larger websites or YouTube personalities.”

Still, the night is dark and full of scammers.

G2A indie dev key reseller party hard punch club scammer speedrunners tinyBuild

News

Move or Die rolls out “toxic” update

Posted on June 24, 2016 by Fionna Schweit

The game that ruins friendships, Move or Die is adding more content and more great features. With the addition of chat players can use the online chat feature to scream at their friends when they die. Emote spam in coming! This new update also adds a large number of emotes Let the Ruthless taunting begin!

The skinny

To prepare for the onslaught of chat insults, Move or Die is now available for the Steam Summer Sale price of $8.99, a whopping 40% off the standard retail price!

To prepare for the update check out the trailer which I have embedded above! Cant wait to see you out there, and get mad at you for beating me!

Where can I get this gem of a game?

Available for $8.99 for a limited time during the Steam Summer Sale, Move or Die has gamers battling each other in an ever-growing list of game modes.

The Toxic Update adds to the friendship-destroying mayhem with seven insane character skins, three crazy game modes, rockin’ soundtrack packs, and a new in-game announcer – Stereotypical Russian Guy! Dasvidaniya comrade!

Move or Die News PC

News PC

Turtle Beach announces Elite Pro headset at E3 2016

Posted on June 24, 2016 by Fionna Schweit

I don’t usually consider the thing that sits on my head while I am gaming a premium piece of hardware. Usually it’s just whatever headphones I use for editing video or audio. Turtle beach wants to change that with their newest set of headphones, the Elite Pro headset. The Elite Pro sells for $200USD and Turtle Beach have pulled out all the stops making this one.

Here you can see the adjustment for how tight the headset sits on your head

E3 2016 with Turtle Beach

The first thing turtle beach said to us was that this headset has been designed with “competitive gaming” in mind. I was a skeptical, but when Turtle Beach sat me down and started to tell me about the features this headset had, I started to believe that claim.

E3 is a crazy haze of booths, competing with noise, colors, and size for the attention of the people who enter the Los Angeles Convention Centers two main halls. Turtle Beach knowing this had a full stage for E-Sports set up and was blasting a loud speaker, full tilt, e-sports of one sort or another. Their booth was full of colors and lights, and loud announcers; this struck me as odd because the new headset is anything but flashy.

You can just see the fabric peeking out of the leather ear cups in this shot

Ancient history

If you have been a gamer since the PS2 and Xbox era you probably remember when Turtle Beach was the absolute last word in gaming headsets. Their wireless sets dominated the market for years, with their precision sound allowing hard core gamers to hear their enemies before they ever saw them. Sadly as the years rolled on Turtle Beach began to focus on more options, and their ultra high end sets started to suffer a bit as they played to the dominant market force of low cost. As brands like Astro and Razer rose, Turtle Beach found themselves in an increasingly crowded market with too many products and no focus.

Enter the Elite Pro

The Elite Pro Tournament headset is their answer to that problem. Created they say from the ground up for ESports team OPTIC, and clearly marketed at the very top end of all gaming headsets, Turtle Beach is hoping that the Elite Pro can see them return to the top.

The first thing I noticed about the Elite Pro was that it wasn’t wireless. For me at least this is a good thing, if you want maximum performance, you don’t use a wireless headset. The second thing I noticed was the muted colors, many gaming headset are very concerned with the idea of having you be seen wearing the headset, Turtle beach have gone instead with a muted black color scheme with a few orange accents.

In this shot you can also see the $200 TAC

yah but what does it do?

Features wise the headset has a pair of 50mm drivers, that Turtle Beach says use “NanoClear” technology, when I asked what that was, I was told it was proprietary, so I have no idea what that is at all. These speakers nest in a huge set of foam ear pads which are very round and have plenty of cushioning. One really neat feature with the ear padding is a sort of pull that allows you to create a channel in the padding for glasses. The cups use combined leather and fabric the leather provides a beautiful finish while the fabric prevents major ear sweating during long gaming sessions.

Beyond the comfortable ear cups, the headset does a few other things with comfort in mind. Turtle Beach says they have designed this headset with long gaming sessions in mind, and so have put in some features to help that. The set uses a well-padded floating headband to try and prevent any painful contact points on the head itself. As well as an adjustment on the headset band itself for tightness. This one seems like it’s a bit excessive but if the shoe fits.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to try any of these comfort features so I can’t tell you if they really make a different feel, and the only set that was available for a demo unit wasn’t hooked in to anything so perhaps more importantly I can’t tell you what it sounded like to have them on. What I can tell you is that the marketing people really sold the set as being gaming first.

Gaming Performance

Turtle Beach promises that this is first a gaming headset, and so they haven’t spent a ton of time working on the sound response. Instead they have focuses on making sure that you can hear your opponents coming and that your team mates can hear you when your talking to them.

To that second point, Turtle Beach have said that they have deigned an all new microphone with the same quality as a boom mic so your teammates never miss your call out of one enemy at B site. There is an inline mic mute and volume control. The headset will work with any 3.5mm jack, but Turtle Beach recommends plugging it in its 200USD Elite pro Tactical Audio Controller (TAC) for best results. Again I was totally unable to try the microphone so I can’t speak to its ability to block outside sound (a major feature of tournament grade microphones) or its fidelity.

This is the full list of accessories for the Pro line

accessories

Turtle beach are also making two accessories to go with the Elite Pro Headset. First you have the $200 TAC, and then the Elite Pro noise canceling microphone ($30). The TAC’s purpose is the same as the old Astro mixamps, to control the levels of various things.

To use the TAC you’ll need to plug in the headphones, the microphone, and the controller you are using. On the back you’ll find an Aux in port, a stream out port, a selector switch to tell the amp which device you are on, Ethernet in and out, and optical in and out. There can be no doubt that the TAC has a lot of cables when it is all plugged in, but what you get in exchange is a huge degree of control over in game sound. The Ethernet ports are not for internet, but instead daisy chaining multiple mix amps together.

On the front you have a large volume knob, and 4 sliders. Each slider has a center click to tell you when you are at 50%. The 4 controllable sliders are for game volume, background noise cancellation, outbound mic boost, and mic monitor level. Since this is a powered amp your going to be able to do a lot more than you would with a just the headset. The TAC comes with 4 preloaded presets, but if you are spending 200 USD on an audio set up, you should probably be setting your own levels.

The second accessory is the $30 noise canceling microphone. This microphone has a bit of magic in it, with a front mounted mic that pics up noise around you, and then uses the mixamp to filter it out that noise. Once again I have only the word of the rep giving the presentation to go by on this one, but hopefully independent testing will arrive in the future to verify this claim. According to the current reviews that are out there the consensus seems to be that there was very little difference between the default Elite Pro headset and the extra offered microphone.

There are a lot of ports on the back of the TAC

The final word

Overall this headset looks promising, unfortunately I am unable to bring you and real “testing” of the set as Turtle Beach have not provided a review model, but I can say this. This is a very well-constructed pretty headset. The Elite pro is designed with comfortable long gaming sessions in mind. It is a project that comes from a need in the space for a dedicated tournament grade headset. If you are in the market for a new high end headset, this should for sure be on your short list. Hopefully when Turtle Beach has the available inventory for reviewers, I can get one set for you our audience to do a full run down with.

E32016 Hardware News Turtle Beach

Hardware News PC Sony Xbox

VIZ Media to parther with OverDrive to provide digital manga titles at participating libraries in the U.S. and Canada.

Posted on June 24, 2016 by Fionna Schweit

lovers of manga who were alive in the 90s and early 00’s, will remember when you could walk in to a Barns and Nobel, or a Borders, and find shelves and shelves of manga. Most of this manga was readable in store. I can remember spending long hours waiting in the stacks of those book stores wishing I had the money to take some of that manga home. Kids of today have a better option. Services like OverDrive bring digital titles to libraries across the United States and Canada, and now VIZ media has announced that they will be joining OverDrive.

VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), the largest publisher, distributor and licensor of manga and anime in North America, has announced an agreement with OverDrive to provide a wide variety of its most popular digital manga (graphic novel) titles at participating libraries in the U.S. and Canada.

What is overdrive?

OverDrive is a leading digital distribution platform, supplying the industry’s largest catalog of eBooks, audiobooks, streaming video and periodicals to 34,000 libraries, schools and retailers worldwide, including 90 percent of all public libraries in the U.S. “OverDrive’s digital platform offers an innovative, cloud-based and fully scalable channel to offer a diverse selection of age-appropriate digital manga content to library patrons and our partnership with the company will ensure that users have access to some of the most popular titles from the VIZ Media catalog,” says Kevin Hamric, Senior Director, Publishing Sales & Marketing, VIZ Media.

What about the manga?

Viz will begin offering through the Overdrive service several popular and award-winning VIZ Media titles such as NARUTO, DEADMAN WONDERLAND, VAMPIRE KNIGHT, and NEON GENESIS EVANGELION. Viz is placing these titles in digital collections at libraries around the country for young readers to check out. Viz plans to keep adding more titles as the year goes on with many more already planned. If you are interested you can review the full list at www.overdrive.com/publishers/vizmedia.

“VIZ Media is a proven leader in manga publishing and we are very excited to add some of their most popular series to our service,” says Karen Estrovich, Director, Collection Development at OverDrive. “OverDrive delivers a large catalog combined with intuitive, easy to use eReading apps. Manga continues to be one of the most popular categories at libraries and we invite readers to discover all of the exciting new VIZ Media titles with our service.”

Anime Books Manga reading Viz

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