Jake Solomon, lead designer on the game at Firaxis, takes us through a gameplay sample previously only available behind closed doors at E3 and PAX. Watch as Sid Meier leads a team of elite commandos against high level aliens.
Fall is here — which means it’s finally time for Halloween! Each year UNICEF distributes Trick-or-Treat boxes that make the rounds in neighborhoods around the country.
Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF is a 60-plus year tradition that began during World War II to help children abroad, and it’s been going strong ever since. One great thing about Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF is that it gives kids a chance to help others — something that children inherently love to do.
This year, kids can get even more involved by designing their own Trick-or-Treat collection boxes. Whether they want to go retro-orange or create their own monster, there’s no limit. Kids can also enter their designs into our Create-a-Character Contest. The winning designs will be included in next year’s limited edition Box Collection.
To order your collection boxes, enter the Create-a-Character Contest and visit www.trickortreatforunicef.org for rules on how to enter, browse entries and win.
To learn more about how Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF began, click here.
Portalarium announced that it has partnered up with Zynga to distribute Ultimate Collector on Facebook and Zynga’s network. Available now on Facebook in Limited Beta, is Portalarium’s first original social network game and is developed under the guidance of famed designer Richard Garriott.
“We couldn’t be more pleased to be rolling out Ultimate Collector on Zynga.com,” said Portalarium CEO, Fred Schmidt. “With its millions of players worldwide, Zynga provides the best vehicle for us to put our game in front of the biggest audience. Plus, Zynga understands social gaming better than anyone else in the world.”
“Ultimate Collector is really three games in one,” says Garriott, Portalarium’s co-founder and creative director. “It’s a collecting game where players go on a major hunt for collectibles ranging from toys, gadgets, historical weapons, novelties and famous art and display those collections in their homes. It’s a shopping game where players can visit shops and stores in our game, some of them from national retailers, to purchase items and add to their collections. And it’s a world building game that allows players to outfit a home, show off their collections to their friends, sell virtual items to other collectors and make in-game money to upgrade their house and grow it even larger.”
iPhone 5 is easily one of the most anticipated smartphone launches from all time, as it is believed to be the last piece of hardware that Steve Jobs had a direct impact on. The devices is being so heavily hyped, Piper Jaffray analyst believes as many as 10 million iPhone 5s could fly off the shelves within the first week.
While some sales expectations put iPhone 5 first quarter sales around 22-23 million devices, it could expand to 30 million if the revelation goes well on September 12. Last year, Apple sold 4 million iPhone 4S in just the first three days.
Source: VR-zone.com
A recent doodle on the front page of Google celebrated the 46th anniversary of the show Star Trek with an interactive doodle that conjures up images of Captain Kirk fighting a reptilian Gorn and incapacitating it with a self-made cannon, similar to the episode Arena. Ryan Germick, who headed up this Google doodle, commented on its inspiration.
“We often talk at Google about how awesome it would be to talk to a computer and get exactly what you want and have that kind of engagement, where the computer just knows all [like in Star Trek], and that’s what we’re moving toward,” Germick said. “Other than that, it just seemed like a perfect fit. There are so many Star Trek fans, myself included, it seemed like such a fun thing to celebrate.”
Source: Entertainment Weekly
Terry Cavanagh revealed that Super Hexagon sold around 10,000 copies in three days and entered the top 25 on the iPhone charts. The indie developer has also created VVVVVV, At A Distance and Don’t Look Back, though this is his first game for iOS.
“I didn’t see that coming at all – I’d really gone into this expecting the game to be a super niche thing that only a tiny handful of iPhone gamers would be interested in, and I’m really glad to be proven wrong,” said Cavanagh. “I’m feeling very warm and fuzzy about Super Hexagon right now. I think it’s the best thing I’ve made in a very long time, and I love that it’s so different from most of my other games.”
Source: Reddit
Double Fine released its free-to-play game Middle Manager of Justice on the iOS App Store accidentally. Project lead Kee Chi claims responsibility for releasing the unfinished and buggy version of the game to the public before it was ready.
“Yeah, it was totally my fault,” he said. “With the way you submit things on the App Store, you have to specify what the release date is, and a while back we had set the date to September, but at the time we didn’t know if that would be final or not. Once we submitted the game, we realized we had a lot of things we still needed to tweak and fix, but at the same time, we didn’t want to remove it from the [submission] process in case Apple catches other things we need to take care of, and we didn’t want to do a double submission.”
While this was happening, the “tentative” September launch date was in effect for the game. “So I was on the train heading to work this week, and I get a call from our tech director saying, ‘Hey, um, so it looks the game is live in every territory.’ And I just went, ‘What! ‘” said Chi.
“It wasn’t what I wanted the world to see quite yet,” he said. “At Double Fine, we pride ourselves on putting a solid product out there, so having something out there that was buggy and not quite ready yet was really frustrating.”
Since many players had already downloaded the game, Double Fine reached out to players to get their feedback for what was going to be the full official release. “I guess it kind of just turned into a beta test,” Chi said. “I mean, if people find bugs that we haven’t found internally, I’d love to know about them so I can fix them.”
Chi indicates that Double Fine has received plenty of feedback to both eliminate bugs and make the game’s free-to-play elements less restrictive for non-paying players. “If anything, I welcome these suggestions from people, because we’re still learning and we plan to work on this well after it goes live to make the game deeper, and luckily this means we’ll get an early start on that process,” he said.
Source: Gamasutra
The actor known as Jerry Lambert is perhaps best known among gamers for his role as Kevin Butler, Sony Computer Entertainment’s VP of whatever they need. He’s been one of the more visible promoters for PlayStation over the past few years . . . which makes the below ad that much odder to watch . . .
Now, Lambert is a comedic spokesperson first with any loyalties to his personas a distant second – he was paid to play Kevin Butler, and he was paid to appear enthusiastic over Mario Kart Wii in this commercial. Still, one wonders when or if he’ll ever resurface again as the fictional Sony VP; his last appearance was in 2011.
The Kindle Fire is at $159 but it isn’t the floor when it comes to prices this holiday season. Toys R Us is planning the launch of a 7-inch Tabeo ‘kid’s tablet’ for $149 for this holiday season.
Cheaper than even that will be the Novo 7 Crystal tablet from Ainol at $139. Despite carrying the low price, the 7-inch tablet has a 1024 x 600 resolution, is powered by a 1.5 GHz processor with 1 GB of RAM and will feature Android 4.1, a.k.a. Jelly Bean.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Revolution Software has announced that they have reached their Kickstarter goal of $400,000 for Broken Sword: The Serpent’s Curse. Like many successful Kickstarters that reach their goal weeks ahead of time, the company has announced stretch goals.
“When a Broken Sword game is conceived, Charles’ vision is inevitably too expensive and too ambitious to make,” said the company. “With your help, we’d like to rip up the rulebook and add more content, more characters, and more gameplay to bring you the most epic Broken Sword adventure yet!”
At $500,000, the company will bring back various characters, puzzles, Easter eggs, art, and dialogue for the “director’s cut” version of the game. $650,000 will see the game add locations in the Middle-East and North Africa.
“When Charles first proposed the Serpent’s Curse he devised a whole swathe of adventuring in the exotic cradle of civilization, exploring lost ruins and uncovering long forgotten secrets,” said the company. “We thought this was far too ambitious, but when we reach this goal, we can take George and Nico to these thrilling locations packed with fun, danger, and monkeys! (Pick two.)”
At $800,000, they will add classic antagonists and a Director’s Commentary option. Finally, the $1 million goal is the most ambitious of all — Beneath a Steel Sky 2.
“So where can we take you after fulfilling our ambition For many years we have wanted to write a sequel to our 1994 classic adventure. If we reach this goal we will start work on this exciting, much-demanded project, and implement Easter eggs in Broken Sword: the Serpent’s Curse, offering a glimpse of this futuristic dystopia,” concluded the company.
Source: Kickstarter.com
