TSBasilisk

Don't be ludicrous. They don't sue until they're done blackmailing you.

BioWare develops a game engine, translates a PnP ruleset into a viable electronic form, and makes KotOR1 in 4 years. Obsidian makes KotOR2 in 1 year, with help from BioWare. Notice a slight gap in there?

I imagine many, if not most, people were brought to these forums by their interest in Obsidian's cRPGs, and that got me to wondering what everyone's first cRPG experiences were like. For me, my first cRPG experience was thanks to a computer virus. The virus messed with the BIOS, and even after we got it running again, it never performed the same. This cut me off from my favored game, Wing Commander: Privateer. So looking for a game that could play without game-breaking lag, I found a collection disc my dad had bought containing Might and Magic II. I had played the game in the past, but never got fully into it. Without any other game to reliably play, I fell fully into the game and explored every nook and cranny without a guide or walkthrough to tell me what to do. My main complaint about it remains, to this day, the fact that winning the game requires you to abuse game mechanics.

Volourn, you were the first, and so far as I can tell, only person in this thread to claim it cost a billion or more dollars. That means you cannot take yourself seriously. Regardless of that, profit from an MMO isn't based solely on volume of units sold, it's based on length of subscriptions or the success of micro-transactions. They need to make enough money off those to warrant running the servers and continuing to produce content. As usual, it wasn't the rollicking success the developers hoped for, and they've been adjusting their methods ever since to maintain a stable population and revenue. --- In other overly-optimistic MMO endeavors gone wrong: Impossible Stuidos is closed If you didn't keep abreast of the chaos less than a year ago, Impossible Studios was formed from survivors of Big Huge Games who went under when Kingdoms of Amalur failed to meet expectations, killing the envisioned MMO empire. Now, Epic has closed Impossible down, though they had the good grace to give the employees severance pay and has even allowed them to keep the rights to the Impossible studio name and logo if they want to reopen it independently.

Angry Birds: NASA Edition The Kennedy Space Center is looking to install an Angry Birds Space Encounter exhibit. I can only presume the intent is to better illustrate how differently objects move in space as opposed to on Earth... not a bad idea.

Very much belatedly, I'm playing the original Dead Space after snagging it during a Steam sale. I hadn't played it before because... I'm a wuss. I got freaked out playing Aliens vs Predators, and that was when I was playing the Alien! Currently cursing years of FPSs training me to fire while looking; keep flailing wildly at the air while a Necromorph walks up for a bear-hug.

Polygon info-dump Some posters have reasoned out an interesting concept: What if the murder being investigated is your own? I'm interested...

Hm... that is a very interesting looking pitch. I'll be keeping an eye on it. Wildman is T'lan Imass. Oh my hat I am reading Toll the Hounds at the moment, I am loving the whole series. I didn't think too many people knew about Steven Erikson Was gonna comment that any pig-man race would be Jaghut, and any raptor-man race would be K'chain Che'malle, but held off. Good series... but I stalled mid-book... on Toll the Hounds.

A new Ouya model every year Milking that magic cow for all its worth, it would seem... Death in Star Citizen I approve of this mechanic and making the results of dying obvious in more than just a statistic. The comments do indicate there will be places to reset your counter in-game, for those who are flush with in-game cash and don't want to take the death-ding.

At The Gates A 4X turn-based game where you play the Barbarians and have to take the place of the declining Roman Empire by capturing its capital. An interesting reversal of the standard Civ concept, and adds some new concepts: Supply lines are a major part of supporting your forces and the seasons have an actual impact on the environment and the resources it supplies. It certainly seems to have sparked some interest. Nearly halfway to its $40,000 goal in one day.

And you STILL won't get Episode 3. http://gamasutra.com/view/news/186166/Bastions_argument_for_doing_away_with_crossplatform_development.php Bad title, but good content The mind behind Bastion notes that by staggering development and release of ports, they managed to make superior products than a simultaneous port, and they still sold very well. If only this mentality was more wide-spread...

Huh, I'm surprised he is so unhappy with Greenlight. I guess he envisioned it as something better, but I thought it was a pretty good way to get indie developers spotlighted. But the process is also very slow and heavily driven by voice-of-mouth. How many people go there to vote for one game because they heard about it from a friend, and vote on nothing else? Beyond that, it's slow. There have been, what, thirty games approved since it started, with how many still in the queue?

David reminds me of my high-school English lit teacher who assigned us nothing but morbid, depressing stories that ended in the protagonist's abject failure. When I asked why all the stories were all like that, she told me true literature was depressing. I think he also has too high an opinion of Hollywood and too low an opinion of the industry. Both produce a lot of gems and a lot of schlock.

http://www.polygon.com/2013/2/6/3959018/age-of-wonders-3-launching-on-pc-this-fall After a decade hiatus, Age of Wonders is making a return with a third installment. Never played the originals, personally.

http://www.polygon.com/2013/2/5/3954410/square-enix-posts-61m-loss-struggle-due-to-difficult-console-sector Square Enix is blaming consoles for its losses, and says PC sales are doing well... Oh how times have changed...

I think people weren't entirely sure what to make of the game early on, so after the initial surge of fans it didn't gain much traction with the wider audience. The drama when Taylor decided it was better for his employees to be fired now and get severance, rather than wait and possibly get none if the KS failed, gained him more attention, but also made people reluctant to donate due to fears GPG won't make it through development. While a little sad Wildman is struggling, I'm still more worried about Unwritten. That one really sounds good...

I haven't played them yet, but from what I've seen the game is more along the lines of Resident Evil meets Aliens. The atmosphere and difficulty are some of the main selling points I recall. The first and second game should probably go for cheap on Steam if you want to test them before leaping into the new game. Worth your money if you're into survival horror games. The new game's gotten some flak from fans due to implementing co-op and the marketing's emphasis on the action-y aspects, but will have to see how that turns out. Personally, I bought the first two during the Summer Sale and have been... well, not playing anything really. Need to get around to clearing my backlog...

They have two auction houses, one for real cash and one for in-game cash. Nobody is forced to go onto the RMAH; they can stick with the Fake-Money AH or they can, you know, go farm stuff themselves. The game doesn't revolve around or force players into the RMAH. Anyway... do we really need another three pages of griping, this time about DLC, in this thread? http://www.polygon.com/2013/2/5/3953788/ouya-to-sell-on-amazon-gamestop-target-and-best-buy-for-99-99-pre Ouya will be sold at retailers and on-line alike; pre-orders will be $100.

http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/122/1227334p1.html Dyad's confirmed, but Steam-Halo has been denied.

Not quite. The program granted temporary control of the Citadel's security system; it allowed Shepard to open the Citadel arms and allow the fleet to attack Sovereign. The Relay could be activated again, but there wasn't a reason to. The Citadel had two purposes: Concentrating the government and military bodies into one location, and allowing the Reapers immediate access to said location without warning. The failure of that meant the entire Reaper armada flew in under standard FTL; there was nobody to come through the Citadel Relay. As for the government, the Reapers likely took the long view after Sovereign's destruction. The Citadel will have a strong fleet guarding it, the population present is relatively small, and the government has had time to decentralize itself with news of the invasion. Instead of risking ships immediately for little gain, they focus on hitting the major population centers first. This disrupts commerce and food production. As noted in-game, the economy is less than a year from complete collapse if things didn't get any worse, which they did. In a few months, anyone on the Citadel would be forced to flee or starve to death.

The fact that it took them this long since the release to start making a fuss says something about how many layers they've already scrapped off the bottom of the barrel. In WTF, UBER MODDER news: http://www.polygon.com/2013/2/4/3950928/half-life-2-modded-to-add-head-and-gun-tracking-ahead-of-oculus-rift Yeah, a modder has done half the work in getting Half-Life 2 ready for Oculus, and it should work for related games like the Episodes. I wonder if Black Mesa will work too... or Portal for some real brain-breaking.

Maybe so, but any sales would be largely due to the Halo name rather than desire for an FPS. Beyond that, what really kept the games alive was the multiplayer rather than the story. That makes the timing a bit peculiar, given the recent closing of the Halo 2 multiplayer servers.

I think you need a maxed out Paragon or Renegade option to get the persuade, which I think is a lot harder in this game. The persuade lets Anderson live, yeah. There is a third choice if you get 4000+ points, or something like that. It somehow merges biological and synthetic life so they can coexist... which is so bizarre, you can understand why some people refer to it as a Space Jesus moment.

I have to honest, I have an issue with the marketing of this type of game on KS. If someone says the game will be bare-bones when it reaches its target then why should I support it . Set the right target to make the game playable and enjoyable. I see this almost as a type of blackmail because most fans of this game will feel obligated to commit more money On the other hand, there's the whole "how much can you reasonably expect to garner" factor. Small, relatively unknown studios like this don't have the recognition of Obsidian Entertainment, or Tim Schafer, or Brian Fargo, thus they can't reasonably expect to be able to raise something like half a million. Due to the nature of Kickstarter, if they don't reach the funding goal then they get nothing. With that in mind, it seems perfectly reasonable to set the funding goal at the bare minimum to release the game at all, while adding stretch goals/hoping for more funding to make the game bigger/better/more fleshed out. I'm keeping an eye on this particular KS since a Zelda-like with a more robust RPG system sounds pretty freakin' awesome to me. If they confirm a Linux version (they've said they are looking into it but can't commit 100% as of yet) then I'll jump on board. Ask and ye shall receive. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/robaato/cryamore-a-true-first-class-take-on-the-action-rpg/posts/397441 Their final stretch goal will be a mutli-platform release, including Linux. They're a bit less than than halfway to that stretch goal with 23 days to go. Hopefully their estimate of the costs involved are realistic.

http://www.polygon.com/2013/2/1/3940546/german-consumer-group-sues-valve-over-refusal-to-allow-resale A German consumer group wants Valve to allow resale/transfer of Steam game licenses. It'll be interesting to see which ruling the court decides to uphold.