During the EA Play Pre-E3 press conference a former RTS mainstay made its return in the form of Command & Conquer: Rivals – A presumably Free to Play title similar to Clash of Clans and other action hybrid titles.
Longtime staples of the genre like resource collection and unit production are still present in this scaled down, e-sports focus take on Real time Strategy. Two players square off against each other on a small map to claim a central point and launch a pair of nukes at their opponents to claim victory. Several iconic units from C&C history did make an appearance in Rivals brief appearance on EA’s stage – groups of marines, the mammoth tank, tiberium harvesters and flamethrower units were all accounted for.
No word on how Command & Conquer: Rivals will be monetized and the game is still in pre-alpha. North American Google Android users can head on over to the Play Store and pre-register for access to the pre-alpha release. An iOS release is set to follow sometime later this summer.
EA’s last attempt at reviving the long dormant Command & Conquer franchise happened half a decade ago, all the way back in 2013. Originally announced as “C&C: Generals 2”, 2013’s cancelled entry was focused entirely on multiplayer and was cancelled soon after a closed alpha test concluded.
The 2018 edition of the Games Developer Conference has come to a close but there is still a lot more for us to show including gameplay videos, developer interviews and exclusive hands-on with several AAA and indie titles.
In this post I’d like to take a quick jaunt through some of the cooler booths on display at this year’s show. By “cooler” I don’t necessarily mean “elaborate” or “expensive” but visually impressive or booths that offered attendees a unique experience.
Epic Games Booth
A booth with a ride-able Fortnite llama in place of the traditional riding bull is a win in my book. This tough looking llama was a draw for the entire conference, sadly I didn’t get a chance to go for a ride.
Above said conquerable llama was a large screen that showcased the Fortnite live-stream that Epic had going during the entirety of show-floor hour.
Folks check out the PlayStation 4 Pro version of Fortnite Battle Royale.
Not to be left out, the mobile version of Fortnite was fully playable on a large TV.
Day of the Devs
Double Fine’s indie focused Day of the Devs event took place off-site as per usual but this elaborate skull themed display greeted attendees when taking the escalator down from the South Hall. In addition to playable demo stations you could also catch some of the developers behind featured games like Exo One, Minit and Knights & Bikes.
IGF Pavilion
The 2018 Independent Games Festival awards took place alongside the Game Developer Choice Awards on the Wednesday of GDC week. Throughout the show-floor days (Wednesday – Friday) all of the nominees could be played at a single station in this circular configuration. Games like Night in The Woods, Baba is You, Cuphead and Shenzen I/O were playable by attendees. In years past it wasn’t uncommon to actually meet the developers behind these games while playing them at the IGF booth – sadly I didn’t get to meet anyone from the excellent Night In The Woods team this year ☹.
Train Jam 2018 Booth
Over 80 independently created games & experiments were playable over at the Train Jam booth. I was lucky enough to take part in this year’s 52 hour game jam and our game Emotional Support Cat Girl was also playable at this booth as well. Creators from the Train Jam are also GDC Attendees for the most part so it wasn’t uncommon for creators to hang out at the booth and walk folks through their creations.
I didn’t have much time to go 1 on 1 with folks to show them Emotional Support Catgirl in person but I will have an exhaustive blog post outlining our amazing cross-America journey later on in the week.
Microsoft Azure Services Booth
A large Azure Services booth greeted attendees when taking one of the two main elevators down to the expo show-floor. Microsoft had a large floor presence this year aimed squarely at game developers and the cloud based development services that can help devs collaborate, test and deploy their upcoming projects.
Services like Azure Application Monitoring– which gives developers real-time reports on the use of their games and applications, Visual Studio Enterprise – Microsoft’s premium integrated development environment and the Xbox Live Creators program – which allows independent developers to publish on the Xbox One platform – were all on display.
By visiting four of the available demo stations developers were able to score both $2500 USD worth of Azure Credits for virtual machine testing and a free Xbox One controller. Disclosure: as a member of the Microsoft Developer Network and Bizspark Program I was not the intended audience for these workshops, I already have access to all of these services. The free controller will definitely be useful for my development work, however.
Google Booth
Google uses its presence in the mobile space with Android and its real-world presence in Silicon Valley to attract Android developers to GDC. Not only do they host a keynote focused on the future of their mobile platform but also full day workshops for developers on pre-launch and post-launch support of their mobile games.
Aside from the giant G logo and familiar Google Employees in blue shirts there wasn’t much on display at their booth to speak of. At GDC Google did announce the interesting “instant app” addition to the Play Store which allows customers to download a small 10MB trial version of a game and play it within seconds without needing to install anything on their device. Given the size of some Android Games 10MB could be as small as a 30 second sample of the gameplay, while other smaller games have the chance to offer players a much more feature complete experience within those confines.
PlayStation Booth
Sony always has a huge display at conventions like PAX East, E3 and PAX West but did the development focus of GDC stop them from bringing some of the latest creation on their platform? Of course not!
Playable games at the PlayStation Booth included the recently released Shadow of the Colossus remake, Monster Hunter: World, Gran Turismo Sport and Ni No Kuni: Revenant Kingdom.
Sony also held a number of developer talks and workshops across the five days of GDC focusing on the visual arts achievements that Sony has made on the PlayStation 4, how devs can help fight fraud in an online gaming space and a Final Fantasy Collaboration focused workshop.
Unity
Unity has quickly become the darling of indie creators and the engine that powers some of the most notable AAA releases as well. Upcoming titles like Escape From Tarkov, In the Valley of the Gods, Praey For the Gods and Hollow Knight all use the suite of tools made available for free by Unity Technologies.
While Unity might not offer the complete beginner friendly experience of something like Game Maker or Clickteam Fusion but it does offer a great gateway to full fledged game development. Alongside a whole range of professional grade 3D, 2D and lighting tools – developers also get access to some of the most exhaustive documentation systems around. Also the Unity community has probably answered almost every question asked about the engine at this point.
I’m not trying to come off as a paid Unity shill or that this section of the post is an advertisement – it’s not. But I’ve been personally making games in Unity for the past 2 years as my full time gig and it has been such a rewarding experience. What you lose in easy prototype-ability you gain in coding experience, game making fundamentals and probably the most beneficial to me personally – learning how to properly debug a game from conception through to post launch support.
In terms of what was on offer for newly budding developers and experienced veterans – Unity offered a quiet lounge space for Unity devs to hang out, grab a coke and just relax from the high stress environment. This space wasn’t entirely ultrisitic however – staffers from the engine developer were also on hand to inform visitors about upcoming Unity focused events like their Rendering Bootcamp, Keynote, Work Flow workshop and also to recruit for Unity Europe. Also on the floor of the West Hall (where most GDC panels take place) was a large “Made With Unity 3D” booth which gave folks the chance to check out multiple games made in Unity 5.
Ark: Survival Evolved Mobile
Lastly I’d like to highlight something I spotted at Unreal’s massive booth. Sandwiched in-between all of the Fortnite chaos, live engine demonstrations and AAA games was the mobile version of ARK Survival Evolved that had just been announced days prior. I didn’t get a chance to snag any off-screen video of the game running (tho I wish I had) but I did manage to snag a few interesting stills that I’ll post in the coming days. Suffice to say that the upcoming mobile conversion for ARK looks and plays rather faithful to the original – oh and there’s also the upcoming Nintendo Switch port of ARK, which was not on the show floor.
Pokemon GO is one of the few unique mainstream games that rewards players for going out into the real world and exploring. Whether they’re walking down the block or across their entire city to hatch eggs, Pokemon Trainers the world over have racked up quite the tally – over 9 billion KM have been tallied by trainers the Pokemon Company since its July launch.
If you need a comparison to help you comprehend just how massive 9 billion KM is, here is what the Pokemon GO blog said:
“We are pleased to share that—as of December 7—the Pokémon GO community has collectively walked more than 8.7 billion kilometers. That’s more than 200,000 trips around Earth! Fun fact: A commercial jetliner would take more than 1,000 years to cover the same distance. While covering this distance, Trainers also caught more than 88 billion Pokémon along the way. That’s roughly 533 million Pokémon a day!”
Even with all of this walking, Pokemon GO Players haven’t crossed the entire solar system yet – who knows if Nintendo will make an interstellar announcement once players cross the 287 billion KM mark (the diameter of our solar system).
Alongside their blog post Niantic also included the following animated info-graphic:
I4U’s Luigi Lugmayr placed Niantic’s Product Marketing Manager, Yennie Solheim Fuller, at the center of the blame for Niantic’s poor communication with their fanbase.
Why is Niantic basically silent throughout the turmoil of viral growth that cause all kinds of issues?
The person who is responsible for PR and Marketing at Niantic gave birth two days after the launch of Pokemon Go. Yennie Solheim Fuller is on maternity leave.
First of all, I am not sure how Lugmayr decided that Fuller was responsible for the PR of Niantic. While she previously acted as the Marketing & Communications Manager when Niantic was still under Google, she left that position for her role as a Marketing Manager a year ago. Although she still may have been responsible for public relations before her maternity leave, there are no indications anywhere online that is the case.
Secondly, if Fuller gave birth two days after launch, you can bet that Niantic had months of time to plan for her absence. If Fuller had been in a car accident instead, Niantic wouldn’t have had months to prepare, and would she have still have been blamed? Though this is a rather moot point if Fuller was not in charge of public relations at all.
Lugmayr does state later in the article that “Because nobody at Niantic anticipated the extreme popularity of Pokemon Go, the company has likely not prepared a replacement for Solheim while she is on maternity leave.” Though this statement removes some of the blame from Fuller, it falls painfully short after blaming her maternity leave from marketing as the reason for Niantic’s public relations failure.
Lugmayr also fails to recognize that Niantic has been wellknown for its slow responsetimes and lack of communication with its community. The “silence” his article focuses on as a huge issue has been Niantic’s normal behavior ever since they launched Ingress in 2013.
Articles like this are extremely detrimental to the game industry and the women who are part of it. It is no secret that the game industry has problems with sexism and low amounts of female employees, only 22% according to IGDA’s 2015 survey. The women who are part of the industry are often victims of harassment, are paid less than men, and rarely receive maternity leave at all.
Calling Fuller’s maternity leave the “sweet reason” that Niantic is being unresponsive will make companies shy away from hiring women and providing maternity leave, and discourage other women from pursuing careers in games knowing that they may be unfairly incriminated for a failure of their company.
This shameful article not only places unwarranted fault on Fuller, but it features her image as the banner photo along with the jeering “sweet reason” in the title, effectively painting a target on her. Fuller’s Twitter is full of harassment and blame.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”><a href=”https://twitter.com/YennieSolheim”>@YennieSolheim</a> You are doing a horrible PR & Marketing. Quit NOW!</p>— Réudrigo (@Aristeaux) <a href=”https://twitter.com/Aristeaux/status/759936407284527105″>August 1, 2016</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”><a href=”https://twitter.com/YennieSolheim”>@YennieSolheim</a> so the reason that <a href=”https://twitter.com/NianticLabs”>@NianticLabs</a> has been silent since the game released is that ur on maternity leave?</p>— Venkat Krishnan (@krish_ven) <a href=”https://twitter.com/krish_ven/status/756236892056715265″>July 21, 2016</a></blockquote>
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Women in the game industry need support of the public and press, not to suffer attacks for failures outside of their control, especially while on leave. It is shameful that Lugmayr would make Fuller the scapegoat for Niantic’s habitual lack of communication. With a USA Alexa rank of 31239 and a global Alexa rank of 82870, one would hope that I4U would have better quality journalism than is contained in Lugmayr’s article.
Some bad news for Canadian Pokémon fans who might be looking to get the complete experience once the mobile app launches above the 49th parallel -it looks like the optional Pokémon Go Plus bracelet that can be paired with the game may have been delayed.
In an email I received from Amazon.ca about my pre-order for the Pokémon Go Plus, I was notified me that the item had been delayed. Originally I pre-ordered at the end of June and Amazon had expected the bracelet to be available by the end of this month. Their updated Pokémon Go Plus page now lists the item for a September 2016 release. That is a full two-month delay for the peripheral.
In part the email from Amazon.ca said:
“Hello from Amazon.ca.
We wanted to let you know there’s a delay with one or more items in the order you placed on June 29, 2016
“Nintendo Pokemon Go Plus – Not Machine Specific – Nintendo 3DS Standard Edition”
Estimated ship date: September 06, 2016″
Of course, it doesn’t matter if the Go Plus is available here or not while Pokémon GO is still unavailable in the Canadian Google Play or Apple App Store. This hasn’t stopped thousands of people in Canada from side-loading the game via an SD card on Android or changing the region of the IPhone in order to play the game. According to some unofficial statistics, Pokémon Go might be installed in as many as 6% of Canadian Android devices.
Nintendo has yet to provide a release date for Pokémon Go in Canada, but if you are playing the game in another country or through side-loading then you might find our Beginner’s Guide for New Trainers interesting.
Google, Nintendo, and the Pokemon Company are reportedly pouring money on to Niantic Labs, the developer of Pokemon GO. Pokemon go the recently announced AR pokemon game made by the company that made Ingress was launched to incredible fanfare in early September of this year. Initial reports said the PR demo video was too good to be true, but reports coming out of the company now cite Google, Nintendo and The Pokemon Company as each pouring at least 10 million dollars each in to the games development. Initial worries that the game was not to be a core property and that it would suffer a quality drop because it was a mobile game, seem to have been silenced by this avalanche of money.
The CEO of Niantic, John Hanke, spoke briefly about where the newly acquired funds would be headed.
“The Pokémon Company, Google and Nintendo are incredible investors and strategic partners to help build the next chapter for Niantic. We will be using this capital to continue the development of Pokémon GO, to evolve and grow Ingress and its thriving global community, and to build out our real-world gaming platform.”
We still know very little about how the new game might work, but Ninite has experience developing AR games in the past, and I for one trust them to not take this IP and damage it. To see what we do know about the game already check out the video below.
Google has done it once more and has changed their mega-popular search engine into hours of potential fun. Today when you decide to Google search “zerg rush” on a whim you will be treated to just that. With a horde of tiny letters, the letter O to be exact coming and picking away at the health bar of all the search results.
Of course these little “Googlings” have health too and you can combat them by clicking them to death. It gets pretty hectic, but for a simple Google Easter egg, it’s pretty fun if even for a couple minutes. At the end you’re given the option to submit your score. Where this goes, nobody knows.
