Tag Archive

ARK: Survival of the Fittest Video Interview With Jesse Rapczak

Posted on March 25, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

Studio Wildcard, the minds behind last year’s smash Steam hit ARK: Survival Evolved have taken the concepts from their first prehistoric title and fashioned what they call a M.O.S.A or Multiplayer Online Survival Arena. Ark Survival of the Fittest pits a number of different players in  Survival Evolves‘ world map and gives them a limited number of time to craft weapons, tame dinosaurs all in a bid to be the last one standing.

We got a chance to sit down and talk with Studio Wildcard co-founder Jesse Rapczak about the challenges of adapting the ARK world to this new game type, how tamable dinosaurs change the pace of the game in relation to other Battle Royale style games and just why did Studio Wildcard release Survival of the Fittest with no monetary model?

Check it out below:

[youtube id=”LLNu8ymTMCI”]

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ARK: Survival of the Fittest, New Free To Play Game, Out Now

Posted on March 16, 2016 by Rae Michelle Richards

Ark: Survival Evolved

Quickly played action-oriented survival games appear to be all the rage lately, with some of the bigger titles like H1Z1 splitting their offerings into multiple games. It should come as no surprise then that ARK: Survival Evolved would join in on the fun.

Titled Ark: Survival of the Fittest, this new stand-alone ‘multiplayer online survival arena’ (MOSA???) allows players to literally drop into the world of ARK and rush to supply rich locations before their opponents do. Survival of the Fittest offers a number of different play-styles: there’s the traditional free-for-all battle royale and 2/4/6 player team competition. If the title of the game sounds familiar that is because we covered the massive e-sports tournament that launched last year featuring the Survival of the Fittest game mode.Read More

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Illaoi, the Kraken Priestess Gets Her Own Browser Game As Riot Releases New League of Legends Champion

Posted on November 24, 2015 by Broken Joysticks

Illaoi

Illaoi, the Kraken Priestess, is the newest playable character for Free To Play money printing machine and biggest E-sport on Earth League of Legends. To celebrate, Riot has created a promotional browser-based minigame meant to show off her powers and backstory.

Really it’s nothing more than a cutscene and a bunch of quick-time events, but it is a pretty neat way of introducing a new Champion to the roster. I’ve always liked how much effort Riot puts into making sure all the designs for their Champions are distinctive and have a clear personality to them. Let’s hope this new one doesn’t break the game. Again.

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Mechwarrior online is coming to steam.

Posted on November 14, 2015 by Fionna Schweit

We haven’t had a good Mechwarrior game in a very long while. The current form of the much beloved 90s game franchise where you take control of a giant mech and shoot at other mechs in the sci-fi universe of Battle Tech, exists only in a multiplayer online only, free-to-play format.  Mechwarrior online is that Mechwarror game that people love to hate, its full of micro transactions, caters heavily to harder core players, and has a small but dedicated community of players who keep it running. So its a surprise when this week the games developer Piranha Games have announced that the game will be released on steam in December. Here’s Piranha Games announcing the move on its site, while noting that there’s a a contest going on in Vancouver to celebrate it in, which 50 people will be able to win tickets, and air fare.

Will this help or hurt a game thats heavily centered on micro-transctions? It will at the very least likley grow the player base, which is never a bad thing. For my money I prefer my mech action to be in Hawken, but as this game is much more in depth and in one of my favorite sci-fi universes of all time, I will probably at least give it a look.

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Guild Wars 2 Goes Free To Play

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

ArenaNet’s 2012 MMORPG Guild Wars 2 has an expansion incoming and at their PAX Prime panel this weekend the developer announced that previously “pay once play forever” base game is free-to-play starting this weekend.

For those looking for a gratis pass to the world of GR2 will be faced with some restrictions unless they purchase the full game from a retailer or buy upgrades individually. Free accounts have fewer character slows, fewer bag slots and they also have communication restrictions and bank restrictions so that gold sellers and RMT (real money trading) can’t crash the game’s economy.

For a full breakdown of the differences between free-to-play accounts and paid accounts or to download the game client check out ArenaNet’s official page here. The next expansion to Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thrones is expected to be released on October 25th of this year.

You can watch the full Guild Wars 2 PAX Panel below:

[youtube id=”2upa3CpMtt0″]

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SEGA Ruined My Favorite Free To Play Game With One Update

Posted on June 7, 2015 by Rae Michelle Richards

SEGA has yet to launch the blue blur’s latest free to play title Sonic Runners in the United States and other countries but thanks to a soft launch here in Canada I’ve been enjoying the addictive endless runner for the past few months thanks to its excellent gameplay. Unfortunately after SEGA released the latest patch for the game I had no choice but to delete runners from my phone.

Prior to the last patch players were allowed up to five lives to be stocked before hitting a paywall. The wait for lives to regen pre-patch wasn’t too bad either, you would gain one live every ten minutes. SEGA is putting on the squeeze on existing free-to-play players by changing the lives cap to 3, making us wait even longer to re-gen lives and reducing the login bonus.

Rather than trying to gain additional revenue from players like myself who have been playing this game for months by gating off features that we have been receiving for free it would have been nice to see SEGA developing some new premium content for the game. If SEGA had released additional characters for say $3.99 a piece or extra zones for a small price I would have been happy to pay up. I can only see this strategy coming back to bite SEGA in the butt. I’ll be looking for another title to scratch that platforming itch because it is clear that SEGA has messed up Sonic Runner’s monetization strategy.

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Deep Down Will Be Free To Play, Available Next Feb

Posted on September 22, 2013 by Rae Michelle Richards

Just in time for the PlayStation 4’s Japanese launch this coming February, Capcom has revealed that their futuristic time traveling Dungeon Crawler will be a free-to-play title. This announcement was originally made at the Tokyo Game Show before exploding on to twitter, unfortunately we know next to nothing else about how the pricing model for CapCom’s next game will work.

Deep Down was originally revealed as the code name for their most recent game at the PlayStation 4 unveiling this past spring. After skipping E3 we got an extended look at the game via livestream, which you can watch below.

Set in 2094 DeepDown is set in the year 2094 and tasks players with finding magical artifacts that transport them back in time several hundred years in order to explore dungeons.Read More

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Next Tekken Game Free to Play, Out This Tuesday on PSN

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Rae Michelle Richards

The Iron Fist tournament goes free to play this coming Tuesday with the announcement of Tekken Revolution for the PlayStation Network. In a bit of a surprise announcement, Namco Bandai announced the title yesterday, with a release date just a few days from now. So, right in the middle of E3 you can beat the living crap of people in this latest Tekken title.

Eight characters have been confirmed for Revolution, all of them returning from previous games, including Asuka, Jin, Lilly, Steve Fox and more. Players will be able to level up their characters in a variety of categories including strength, endurance and vigor. This is a first time character progression ha sbeen featured in the series, in previous entries gold was earned for finishing matches, but the currency was only good for cosmetic items.

We don’t know if all 8 characters are unlocked from the start, or if you’ll get only one or two at start and have to unlock the rest through in game currency/real world micro transactions. There is the potential for these eight characters to be available off the hop with more as optional purchases. Also, no details on the amount of stages available, and whether or not those will be hidden behind a pay wall.

Look for our impressions after E3 wraps up, make sure to check out the trailer after the jump.Read More

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Community Corner: MMO’s Going F2P

Posted on June 5, 2013 by Trish Bennon

With intense competition pressed upon massively multiplayer online games by the explosion of the casual gaming market, developers are re-evaluating their businesses models to maintain not only their competitive edge but their overall player base.

In 2010 Turbine tossed out subscriptions for Lord of the Rings Online and replaced it with a free to play (F2P) model.  Two years later, Sony Online adopted the F2P experience for both Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies.  On June 12th, Trion Worlds will be the latest developer to climb aboard the F2P train. Historically, this shift has proven extremely profitable for developers.  The question on player’s minds is:  Will this be profitable to the veteran community?Read More

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Ubisoft Announces Closed Beta for Anno Online

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Rae Michelle Richards

Players have been able to world breathtaking worlds in Ubisoft’s Anno franchise for a number of years and now the publisher is targeting a wider audience with the launch of the closed beta for Anno Online. Now anyone with an internet connection will be able to jump into the strategy action as long as they have a working internet connection and a modern web browser.

Anno Online is based off of Anno 1404, allowing players to experience build and develop medieval cities using a highly detailed economic simulation. Starting out with just two building, a warehouse and harbor, players can trade with others using ships. These trade routes are key to success and comprise the social componet of the game. As your cities build and flurish new inhabitants will move on in and you’ll need to unlock new buildings and capture new islands, to help your community thrive.

Check out the official website to sign up for the closed beta or watch the game’s new trailer after the jump.

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Dota 2 On Your ipad? It Could Happen Says Valve Boss

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Rae Michelle Richards

Dota 2, Valve’s upcoming free to play MOBA game has been in closed beta for a while. According to Kotaku we could be enjoying the game on the next generation of tablets if a quote from Gabe Newell is spot on.

Valve tried to get the game running on some current tablets but they weren’t up to the job. Mr.Newell speculates that tablets of the not so distant future will have the horsepower to make Dota 2 run smoothly in the palms of your hands.

“We were working on getting Dota 2 running on some tablets .. That ended up being kind of a disappointment. But the good news is that tablets are getting faster very quickly, so I think we’ll get the kind of performance we want and other game developers want in the near future.”

I wonder what kind of hardware they are testing it on. Perhaps they are using the ipad 4, that is certainly one of the more powerful tablets out there. Then again there is always the quadcore Asus Transformer as well if they are playing with android. We’ll just have to wait and see if this project comes to fruition. Valve is known for playing with various ideas, even if they never pan into commercial products.

Source:Kotaku

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Zynga Layoffs Hit Multiple Studios; 100+ Laid Off.

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Jason Bassett

Zynga seems to be hit with the worst luck, it seems. It appears that Zynga has announced layoffs on nearly 100+ people within multiple departments within the company. Zynga has announced that a major scale down of their game The Ville and has pulled the plug on another IP called Zynga Bingo and laid off all of the team that was working on the game.

Another horrible part of this is that the Boston studio has closed completely. The Boston division was working on title called: Indiana Jones Adventure World  and a Chicago based office may also be into trouble, but there is no confirmation.Read More

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The Next Command & Conquer Game Will Be Free To Play

Posted on August 15, 2012 by Rae Michelle Richards

The battle over ore and tiberium has raged on our computer screens for the past 17 years almost unabated. Even with the closure of original developer Westwood Studios in 2003 publisher Electronic Arts was able to bring the series back in true form with Command & Conquer 3 just four short years later. Can they re-invent the franchise once again after failing to resurrect the Generals sub-series?

The shift from a “premium experience” (ie. full $60 disc based games) to an all digital, free to play platform has slowly engulfed some of the PCs biggest multiplayer titles . Following the footsteps of converting Star Wars the OId Republic into a free to play title the next C&C title will also be available free of charge.Read More

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MechWarrior Online Community Day and Centurion Mech Announced

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Daniel Shannon

Mechwarrior Online Developers Piranha Games have been very busy this week. First, they released a video showcasing the upcoming free-to-play game’s latest Mech, the Centurion. This medium sized Mech is sort of like the T-34 of Mechs, boasting a good mix of speed, armor, and firepower. You can watch the video with some pretty gameplay footage below.

[youtube id=”3m24i6iTeyc” width=”600″ height=”350″]

Additionally, Piranha games, Nvidia, and Infinite Game Publishing (the publisher of Mechwarrior online),  are hosting a MechWarrior Online Community Day in Santa Clara, California at 5 p.m. on July 27th. The event, an invitation only affair, will let the chosen few join the developers for drunken debauchery, beer, pizza, and some Mechwarrior Online lanning. There will be a tournament, prizes, and chances to play around with unrevealed Mechs as well as the newfangled Razer Blade laptop. Read on to see how you can score an invite to this event.

Read More

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New World of Warplanes Dev Diary Released

Posted on July 17, 2012 by Daniel Shannon

Wargaming.net has released the fourth developer’s diary for their upcoming free-to-play aerial combat game World of Warplanes. This diary focuses on the game’s control schemes: keyboard, keyboard and mouse, gamepad, and joystick. The developers promise that while “every control option comes with its own unique style and feel,” none will “grant you any in-combat advantage.” Certainly, an individual’s skill will play a great role, but we here at Broken Joysticks, after rigorous and totally unbiased testing, have come to the conclusion that joysticks are inherently superior.

You may watch the developer’s diary after the jump, but beware! It is in Byelorussian, so you’ll have to read subtitles.Read More

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