This week’s articles are dedicated to Shamus, a Great Dane belonging to my family, who passed away this weekend. Shamus was a rescue dog and died peacefully in his sleep overnight. We believe that he was around nine years old, although his true age is uncertain, and while he was only in the care of my mother for two weeks, they were two weeks of being pampered and spoiled.
He will be missed.
A team of Greek developers have combined their powers in order to create a video game for Amnesty International. The aim of the game is to bring awareness to Amnesty International’s push to end the death penalty in the countries where it still exists. Players take the role of an AI advocate in several countries that still push the death penalty, including the United States, China, and Iran. The player must open an Amnesty International office and raise public support for banning the death penalty.
You may recognize a few of the names on the group roster: Tasos Flambouras, Irene Zeleskou, and Allan Stellakis from the Darkfall developer Aventurine. Well, you probably recognize Tasos Flambouras anyway.
“The hardest part was to find an idea that could become a game but not betray the issue. We had seen something developed in the past by a French company for Amnesty International — it showed people being shot by an execution squad and the player had to stop the bullet with his hand. We thought this gave the entirely wrong message — the issue is not as simple as stopping the bullets. We needed an idea that worked for an issue that is so depressing and dire, but that was also fun to play. It also needed to put across Amnesty International’s message without portraying the inmates as angels — they are scum and they’ve committed crimes, but there are other reasons why they shouldn’t be executed.”
-Tasos Flambouras
Amnesty: The Game is available to play from the group’s website, linked below.
(Source: Game Politics)
(More: Amnesty: The Game)
In the past, I’ve discussed the ongoing “fight” between Turbine and Cryptic Studios over how Cryptic’s upcoming Neverwinter MMO will directly compete with Turbine’s Dungeons and Dragons Online. After an undisclosed settlement with Turbine, Cryptic made it clear as day that Neverwinter is not an MMO, and never will be an MMO. That being said, when Perfect World Entertainment purchased Cryptic, the developer did a flip and announced that the game would be a full open world MMO.
According to DDO Cast, Turbine has been busy purchasing domain names relating to Dungeons and Dragons, as well as Forgotten Realms. The optimist in me wants to believe that Turbine is planning on throwing the first punch by expanding the game into Forgotten Realms territory, and pulling back any customers who might have left for Cryptic’s game. The pessimist in me, however, feels the need to point out that companies buy domain names all the time for a variety of reasons. A selection of domains are below:
ddounderdark.com
ddoforgottenrealms.com
ddo-motu.com
lolthiscoming.com (Lolth is coming, thank you comments.)
But why is this relevant? The Dungeons and Dragons community is fractured (to say the least) when it comes to Eberron and Forgotten Realms, to the point where some won’t even touch Turbine’s MMO because it takes place in the former rather than the latter. In the event that Turbine does launch a Forgotten Realms expansion, it would offer a substantial increase to their potential player base.
(Source: DDO Cast)
Additional Links:
I allowed the group to write up some information about themselves. Never again.
Tune in for new episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
I like Gods & Heroes, in fact it was the game the spurred on the “Why Aren’t You Playing” editorial series I’ve been neglecting. Despite how I feel about the game, Heatwave Interactive met with a rather low reception since launch last year, and mentioned in July that the developer was considering a free to play option at some unknown point in the future.
Well January 2012 is that unknown point. In a post today, Heatwave Interactive announced the end to Gods & Heroes subscriptions. Until the full free to play launches, subscription fees are being removed.
The Gods & Heroes team has been working hard over the past few months to secure the future of the game by taking it to a free-to-play model. Such a change is a significant undertaking; one that requires a large investment in time and resources to make this major transition a success. In the interim, we have made the decision to eliminate subscription fees and offer G&H players immediate and unlimited access to all areas of the game until the new Free-to-Play model has been finalized and implemented.
You will still need to buy the client, however, and Heatwave Interactive will be bringing the price down starting next week to $9.99.
(Source: Gods & Heroes website)
(Additional: Why Aren’t You Playing?)
Compared to the number of MMOs out on the market, the odds of your MMO shutting down less than a year after release is rather low. Still, having some sort of guarantee by the developer for a minimum amount of support sounds great, especially when the developer is an indie team. I don’t know much about Miner Wars, other than that it is a space shooter coming out hopefully in Q4 2012, but I do know that the guys over at Keen Software House have guaranteed at least two years of operation, directly on the preorder page.
We guarantee at least 2 years for the game to be supported on our servers (2 years from the initial release of the MMO). In case there comes a sequel (ie. Miner Wars MMO 2), we guarantee MMO 1 to be supported on our server for at least 1 year (from the release of MMO 2), but still at least 2 years from the initial release of MMO 1. However, these are “minimum” support times, the game may be supported for even longer!
Makes the twenty dollars I sent Keen Software House feel that much safer. The game looks great, and Keen Software is releasing a single player version which can be bought for $20, and allows players access to the pre-alpha version now while the game is developed. The MMO will feature no subscription fees, and is referred to as an expansion to the single player game on the store.
Granted this likely does not preclude the MMO shutting down due to sudden bankruptcy, but guarantee is still a nice touch.
(Source: Miner Wars Store)
Back in November, I discussed a growing problem in RuneScape: Gambling. The introduction of dice brought with it an underground casino-style ring of players setting up shop by the Grand Exchange (RuneScape auction house) and betting on dice rolls. In order to combat the in-game street dice, Jagex removed the item entirely, at the same time making way for the less popular gambling techniques to fight for control of the market. Enter horsing:
Toy horses were introduced by Jagex way back in 2004 on April Fool’s Day joke, as a gag item for players who had asked for horse mounts. The horses can be played with, where they broadcast one of three phrases randomly. In its use in gambling, a player would offer his wager (trade money or items to the house) and place a bet one which one of the three phrases would appear. Then the house would activate the horse, and the player would win or lose depending on what the horse said. As with the dicing, this carried the risk of the house simply walking away with your money, regardless of whether you won or lost.
In a hotfix today, Jagex removed all three of the horse’s phrases, replacing it with one: “Just say neigh to gambling!” On the forums, Mod Emilee posted to announce the change, reminding players that gambling is not supported by Jagex. Players should be alert for scams, especially in a game like RuneScape where Jagex does not return any coins/items stolen even if the scam artist is found guilty and banned.
Still, this doesn’t stop the multiple other gambling methods in RuneScape:
These are just the gambling methods I discovered after about fifteen minutes of searching, so no doubt more exist. Jagex is going to have a long fight on their hands to get rid of every easy form of gambling available to players.
(Source: RuneScape forums)
(From MMO Fallout:
The moment many dedicated trolls have been waiting for since Rift launched last year has finally arrived. According to Rift Junkies, players are being greeted in-game with a new Message of the Day detailing upcoming server mergers. According to the MotD, the last day to move yourself to a new server will be January 18th, when those servers will be marked “trial servers” and character creation will be locked. Otherwise, the Rift server transfer is still in effect, and players can choose to move to whatever server they please.
Last year I pointed out that Rift was performing a soft shut down of servers by calling them trial servers and suggesting that players move off of them. There has been no announcement by Trion on the forums or website, outside of the in-game MotD. The servers will be merged as follows, according to information gathered by Rift Junkies:
Transferring Shard: –> Receiving Shard:
PVE
Belmont –> Millrush
Galena –> Millrush
Atrophinius –> Greenscale
Crucia –> Greenscale
Alsbeth –> Shatterbone
PVE – RP
Estrael –> Faeblight
Shadefallen –> Faeblight
PVP
Sunrest(PVP-RP) –> Deepstrike
Freeholme –> Deepstrike
Dayblind –> Deepstrike
Faemist –> Briarcliff
RuneScape’s roots go back ten years, to 2001 where the game was a simple at home project by Andrew Gower. With the Gowers now mostly absent (they resigned from the Board of Directors in December 2010), the torch has been passed to Mark Gerhard to keep the developer moving in its upward trend. Granted, Jagex has multiple MMOs in production (Stellar Dawn and Transformers Online, to name just the two slated for release this year), so the rise in revenue but dip in profits reported for 2010-2011 was to be expected at some extent.
But fret not, investors and gamers. To the former, Jagex isn’t some cheap floozy willing to take just anyone’s money. In an interview with Games Industry, Mark Gerhard wants to set the record straight that Jagex dates very, very selectively.
Nothing has changed as far as the company goes. It’s the same management team, we’ve obviously been at the helm for quite some time and to the best of our knowledge and expectation it will continue to be so. Sure we therefore have some American shareholders, but the management and the culture and the ethos and everything else is the same people, in the same hands, and staunchly British.
Gerhard attributes the dip in profits to Jagex investing more in the company instead of paying dividends, a move which apparently began around the time Insight Ventures attained 55% ownership in Jagex (end of 2010). He also paints a picture that, regardless of the shift in majority ownership, nothing has changed at Jagex since Insight Ventures took the majority vote.
Jagex has quite an interesting year ahead of it, what with continued investment in RuneScape, the recent launch of their HTML-based game 8Realms, and the upcoming launches of Transformers Online and Stellar Dawn.
(Source: Gamesindustry.biz) You’ll need to be registered to view the article.
Age of Empires Online has always had one major downside: You had to do some major grinding in order to unlock all of the units in the game’s standard leveling mode. What ever happened to a fun skirmish in Age of Empires with everything available? Well the team over at Gas Powered Games has heard your pleas, and has introduced the Skirmish booster pack, allowing for just what the doctor ordered: Massive battles without the need to grind out your units.
The pack is free, but only for a limited time. You’ll still need to go through the process of buying it from Games for Windows marketplace, however.
MMO Fallout 