| Quantic Dream hiring for mobile Jun 25th 2013, 14:25 Heavy Rain studio seeking user interface artist and designer to create 2D artwork and graphics for unspecified project. 
Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls studio Quantic Dream could be moving into the mobile space. The Paris-based studio has posted a job listing for a UI artist/UI designer that suggests the company is at work on something for mobile platforms. "This position involves designing and creating 2D artwork and graphics for the UI Interface as well as other 2D items on various mobile and console platforms," reads a line from the job description with emphasis added. Last month, a NeoGAF forum member found a Quantic Dream job listing for an Android programmer, though it was housed on a third-party job board and not the developer's official website. None of Quantic Dream's other five job listings include mention of mobile platforms. Beyond: Two Souls launches in October and Quantic Dream is already at work on an "incredibly exciting" PlayStation 4 title. This game may include multiplayer, according to a past job listing, which would be a first for Quantic Dream. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
|  | CT senator talks role of violent games in mass shootings Jun 25th 2013, 13:27 Chris Murphy says exposure to violent games can put those with mental illnesses or predilection to violence "over the edge"; supports Obama's plan for more research into violent games. 
In the wake of December's schoolhouse massacre, which left 20 children and six adults dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., violent games have been a talking point for politicians across the country. The talk turned to action in January, when president Barack Obama ordered more research be done to investigate the relationship between video games and real-world violence. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), supports this plan, which allocated $10 million for the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health to conduct its studies. Speaking during a recent Google Hangout, Murphy responded to GameSpot's question regarding why he chose to single out video games during a speech in January and what message he has for the video game industry at large. "Obviously, this is a very sensitive issue in Connecticut. Newtown is still in crisis," Murphy said. "Not enough healing going on there in the wake of the murder of 26 children and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School. And you know, what we know are the facts about that crime. What we know is that this young man, deeply mentally ill walking the school with an assault weapon armed with 30-round magazines. What we know is that he was very, very severely mentally ill; that his mother had been trying to get him help for years. And what we also know, is that he spent a lot of time playing violent video games." The Sandy Hook shooter was reportedly a "deranged gamer" who sought out the elementary school so as to "outscore" past mass murderers. It was also reported that he killed himself during the attack so that he would not give away these "points." Murphy said the Sandy Hook shooter's violent outburst cannot be pinned on any one element, but claimed that a trend does exist that shows past mass shooters had "exposure to these video games." "What we admittedly don't have…is any peer-reviewed studies or research that tell us that there is a definitive link between exposure to violent video games and violence." "Now, nobody can sit here for certain and say that without any one of those things; without the powerful weapons, without the mental illness, without the exposure to video games, this wouldn't have happened. We can't put ourselves in his mind," Murphy said. "But we do see a trend where some of these shooters do have exposure to these video games." Murphy acknowledged that legitimate studies do not exist that prove a correlation between violent games and violent behavior, which is one of the reasons why he has supported the ongoing initiative from Obama and vice president Joe Biden. "What we admittedly don't have…is any peer-reviewed studies or research that tell us that there is a definitive link between exposure to violent video games and violence," Murphy said. "What researchers will tell you, is that if you already have a severe mental illness, and a predilection to violence, perhaps the video game exposure can put you over the edge. But in and of itself, there is no research showing that there's a link." "It's one of the reasons why I've supported president Obama and vice president Biden in their efforts to have the CDC and the NIH do more research on the root causes of gun violence; one of the things they are going to do research on now is that link between exposure to violent video games and to violent episodes because I admit that we don't have the research there to back up what we see anecdotally in the case of Adam Lanza, for instance." "And before we pass any legislation, which would limit the exposure that people have to these types of video games, I think it's important that we have the research and the data and that's what we're trying to do right now." Speaking during Senator Dianne Feinstein's (D-CA) press conference in January introducing a bill that would ban assault weapons and high-capacity gun magazines, Murphy said the Sandy Hook massacre may not have occurred if games did not glorify guns and violence. "I think there's a question as to whether he would have driven in his mother's car in the first place if he didn't have access to a weapon that he saw in video games that gave him a false sense of courage about what he could do that day," Murphy said at the time. Biden met with game industry leaders earlier this year to discuss the link between violent video games and gun violence as part of a wider task force into gun control measures. It is unclear what was discussed. Biden recently made headlines for saying there would be no legal problem with taxing violent games, despite the landmark 2011 decision from the Supreme Court that ruled games are protected free speech under the first amendment. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
| | Ouya available today Jun 25th 2013, 12:33 [UPDATE] Android-powered microconsole now publicly available at select US and international retailers for $99; sold out on Amazon. 
[UPDATE] Following the publication of this story, Ouya wrote on Twitter that all units at Amazon in the United States and United Kingdom have been sold out. Systems remain available for purchase at GameStop, Best Buy, and Target, as well as through the official Ouya website. The original story follows below. Less than a year after the highly successful Kickstarter campaign for the Ouya console came to a close, the Android-powered microconsole is now publicly available at select retailers. The console can be purchased for $99 at retailers Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, and Target in the United States. Participating international retailers include Amazon Canada, Amazon UK, and Game. Systems can also be purchased directly through the Ouya website. Included with every Ouya order is the console, a wireless controller with removable faceplates, an HDMI cable, two AA batteries, and a power adapter. The original Kickstarter campaign for Ouya concluded last August with $8.6 million. The company secured an additional $15 million through venture capital funding last month. Every Ouya title is available to try via free demo. The platform currently has 173 games, according to the official Ouya website. These include titles from Sega, Double Fine, Airtight Games, Robotoki, Polygon, and Square Enix. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
| | Final Borderlands 2 campaign DLC out now Jun 25th 2013, 11:57 Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep available today, is the "most substantial add-on campaign in the franchise's history." 
Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep, the fourth and final add-on content campaign for Borderlands 2, launched today for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. The content is included with the $30 Borderlands 2 Season Pass and is also available as an individual download for $10. Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep features Tiny Tina as she becomes Bunker Master in a game of "Bunkers and Badasses." Players will find more enemy types in Dragon Keep than in all previously released add-on campaigns combined, Gearbox said. In a statement, 2K Games president Christoph Hartmann said Dragon Keep is the "most substantial add-on campaign in the franchise's history." The $30 Borderlands 2 Season Pass includes four expansions: Dragon Keep, Captain Scarlett and Her Captain's Booty, Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage, and Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
| | World of Warcraft accounts at risk, Blizzard warns Jun 25th 2013, 11:10 Blizzard acknowledges a recent increase in unauthorized logins via Battle.net and mobile armory application. 
Blizzard has issued a warning to World of Warcraft players after a recent increase in unauthorized logins via Battle.net and the mobile armory application. Affected account owners who are not using the Blizzard Authenticator are in the process of being e-mailed with details on how to reset their account. World of Warcraft customer support will restore in-game gold and items on affected accounts upon request, Blizzard adds. Writing on Battle.net, Blizzard says that no method of account security is guaranteed, but that passwords should be regularly changed. "At this time we have no reason to believe that accounts currently using an authenticator are at risk," added a Blizzard customer service representative. In response to the situation, Blizzard has taken the World of Warcraft mobile armory application offline temporarily. Blizzard says the website bug was fixed on Monday. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
| | Dark Souls II director explains "accessibility" Jun 25th 2013, 10:48 "I think that balance is something important" says Dark Souls II director, but upcoming RPG will maintain the difficulty level of the original. 
Dark Souls II director Yui Tanimura has clarified what the development team at From Software means by calling the upcoming sequel to the notoriously difficult RPG more accessible. "The reason why we used the word accessible was not to say that the game is going to be easier by any means," said Tanimura to Game Informer. "We…re maintaining the difficulty and we think the challenges are required. What we meant was, there are certain aspects of the game where it didn…t really have a direct connection to the sense of satisfaction of overcoming. There were things that were a little bit time consuming or a little bit tedious that we wanted to streamline--sort of carve away all the fat so we could really deliver the lean pure expression of what Dark Souls tries to communicate, which is the sense of satisfaction of overcoming." "In terms of accessibility, what we meant was a more streamlined experience to deliver the more pure essence of Dark Souls." Speaking further about the fine line between challenge and frustration in difficult games, Tanimura said that "we try to implement this difficulty for that added level of satisfaction and happiness when you are able to overcome. But there will be aspects of the game where there are some areas that will be more of a pain to get through than others." "I think that balance is something important. It…s hard to answer directly, but we took a lot of care in terms of tuning each instance of the so-called challenges so that we reached an overall good balance throughout the game," concluded Tanimura. The Dark Souls II demonstration at E3 2013 showed a new boss, The Mirror Knight, which could conjure additional adversaries from his shield. Dark Souls II will be released for Xbox 360, PC, and PlayStation 3 in March 2014. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
| | Titanfall developer tackles Xbox One cloud "confusion" Jun 25th 2013, 09:43 Respawn Entertainment engineer explains how Microsoft will make use of its cloud technology for Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC. 
After seeing "a lot of confusion online," a Respawn Entertainment engineer has explained how multiplayer shooter Titanfall will make use of Microsoft's cloud technology across the Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC versions of the game. Many current multiplayer games use peer-to-peer matchmaking, explains Joe Shiring on Respawn Entertainment's website. The downsides to this method are lag, host advantage, host disconnections, bandwidth, and potential opportunities for cheating. Shiring said many developers use player hosted servers to save money. "Running hundreds of thousands of servers can be extremely expensive," he said. "EXTREMELY expensive. Like 'oh my god we can…t afford that' expensive. So your player experience gets compromised to save (large amounts of) money." The alternative is dedicated servers, which cost a lot more money for developers as it requires a separate computer to host the multiplayer game. "I personally talked to both Microsoft and Sony and explained that we need to find a way to have potentially hundreds-of-thousands of dedicated servers at a price point that you can…t get right now," said Shiring. "Microsoft realized that player-hosted servers are actually holding back online gaming and that this is something that they could help solve, and ran full-speed with this idea." Shiring also said how Microsoft's cloud service Azure--which is it using to power its Xbox Live cloud--will power more than just dedicated servers. "The Xbox group came back to us with a way for us to run all of these Titanfall dedicated servers and that lets us push games with more server CPU and higher bandwidth, which lets us have a bigger world, more physics, lots of AI, and potentially a lot more than that!" The term 'cloud' can be confusing in itself, Shiring added. "Cloud doesn…t seem to actually mean anything anymore, or it has so many meanings that it…s useless as a marketing word." "Let me explain this simply: when companies talk about their cloud, all they are saying is that they have a huge amount of servers ready to run whatever you need them to run. That…s all." The costs associated with accessing Microsoft's cloud technology is reasonable, too, according to Shiring. "Most importantly to us, Microsoft priced it so that it…s far more affordable than other hosting options--their goal here is to get more awesome games, not to nickel-and-dime developers." "So because of this, dedicated servers are much more of a realistic option for developers who don…t want to make compromises on their player experience, and it opens up a lot more things that we can do in an online game." "Over time, I expect that we…ll be using these servers to do a lot more than just dedicated servers. This is something that…s going to let us drive all sorts of new ideas in online games for years to come," concluded Shiring. Titanfall will launch for Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC in 2014. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
| | EA on why Dragon Age: Inquisition is not titled Dragon Age 3 Jun 25th 2013, 09:21 Reason for title change is a combination of marketing decision and focus on "big story choices". 
EA has explained why it dropped the number "3" from its upcoming RPG Dragon Age: Inquisition, the long-awaited follow-up to Dragon Age's I and II. EA president Frank Gibeau said that the decision was part narrative and part marketing (according to an IGN news post). "We felt like we wanted to bring more attention to the word Inquisition, because that…s more the story arc of what it…s like. There…s a whole bunch of gameplay and features and big story choices related to how you go through this Inquisition that happens in the world," he said. "There wasn't anything that strategic about [removing the "3" from the original title], to be blunt. We just wanted to draw more attention to the fact that Inquisition is an all-new chapter inside of the Dragon Age universe, as opposed to people expecting a follow-on to Dragon Age 1 and 2 in a literal, linear sense." Gibeau also said that EA will release Dragon Age: Inquisition for next-gen consoles due to the capabilities of the Frostbite 3 engine. "We…re going to have PS3 and Xbox 360 and PC versions of Dragon Age III, so there will be a very broad-based experience there, but the new platforms are giving us the opportunity to tell stories in much larger worlds with more features and more things. From our perspective, we didn…t want to launch a "current-gen" game in a next-gen market. We took the opportunity to add resources, add time, and we brought in new technology. Frankly, we…ve raised our expectations." Dragon Age: Inquisition was officially revealed during EA's press conference during the week of E3 2013. Check out GameSpot for more information on the RPG. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
| | Saints Row IV banned in Australia Jun 25th 2013, 08:25 Next instalment in irreverent, open-world game denied classification rating in Australia because of implied sexual violence and drug use. 
Saints Row IV has become the first game to be refused classification in Australia since the introduction of the R18+ adult rating on January 1 this year. According to a statement issued today by the Australian Classification Board…s acting director, Donald McDonald, the game was refused the maximum R18+ rating for games due to its implied sexual violence and drug use related to player incentive. …In the Board…s opinion, Saints Row IV, includes interactive, visual depictions of implied sexual violence which are not justified by context," the statement said. "In addition, the game includes elements of illicit or proscribed drug use related to incentives or rewards. Such depictions are prohibited by the computer games guidelines.… To date, 17 games have successfully been granted the R18+ rating, including Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge, Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition and Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel. The refused classification status of Saints Row IV now effectively bans it from sale nationally. GameSpot contacted the game…s Australian distributor, but a spokesperson was unable to comment on the announcement, or whether the company plans to appeal the decision. Saints Row IV was slated for release on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC on August 22 this year. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
| | Age of Empires coming to Android and iOS Jun 25th 2013, 06:21 Real-time strategy series Age of Empires will make its iOS and Android debut. 
Microsoft's Age of Empires series looks set to appear on iOS and Android devices this year as a result of a licensing agreement between Japanese developer KLab and Microsoft. Japanese newspaper Nikkei (gated link), reported that Microsoft has struck a deal with KLab to develop Android and iOS versions of its first-party games. A Microsoft representative has confirmed with GameSpot that a mobile version of the Age of Empires series is being developed for mobile devices as a result of the partnership, with no other games currently announced. The mobile version of Age of Empires will follow a free-to-play model, and will be released by the end of the 2013 financial year. The Microsoft representative told GameSpot:
"Today, KLab Inc announced a licensing agreement with Microsoft Corp to develop a mobile version of Microsoft Studio…s 'Age of Empires' franchise…some reports included incorrect information about additional Xbox Live-based games on iOS and Android, but there are no further announcements beyond 'Age of Empires' at this time." Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
| | Baldur's Gate 3 may be possible despite "legal hell" Jun 25th 2013, 06:20 Developer Beamdog adds that Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition is on hold. 
Despite the enhanced edition of Baldur's Gate being taken down from digital stores last week due to legal issues, developer Beamdog said that its long-term goal of making Baldur's Gate III was still possible. According to company president Trent Oster (in an interview with website Rock Paper Shotgun), the chances of the company resuming work on the original Baldur's Gate franchise was mixed. "Best case, we can sort this out soon. Worst case, this could be in legal hell for a while. I like making games, but this contractual dispute [issue] keeps me up at night," he said. Despite this, Beamdog has yet to give up on making Baldur's Gate III happen. "Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition is on indefinite hold, as is the current patch. Baldur's Gate III, we are still interested in the concept, but currently I'd say we were very demoralized." The developer declined to name name the publisher that is pursuing the trademark. Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
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