In the middle of the week I spend my time looking for a digital buffet of gaming goodies – I post them here on the Humpday Bump.
This week’s bump features an interview by RockPaperShotgun with Endless Space developer Amplitude Studios’ CEO Mathieu Girard who talks about their mindset in creating the epic turn-based space strategy game. Distributed through Steam, Endless Space has gained a pretty substantial following in a short amount of time. The interview not only outlines how they got here, but future plans for a strategy game that seems to be just getting started.
I spent some time with this game over the last week and I have to say if you’re a fan of the Civilization series then Endless Space is for you. Not only are some of the basic systems similar, or even the same in some cases, but many of the menu’s and resources function the same as well. That’s not to say it’s a bad thing, to be honest I can’t stand when I company re-invents the wheel for no good reason. The game is crisp, polished and has a level of gameplay usually reserved for a sequel. I highly advise any strategy enthusiasts to check out this game immediately.
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Growing up as a gamer in the 90s it was nigh impossible to avoid the music and sounds of Trent Reznor. Not only was NIN played on almost every radio station available but he made the sounds and music for Quake, and more recently he earned an Oscar for his work on The Social Network. Now it seems he’s going to bring his iconic sound to the Call of Duty franchise with his upcoming work on Black Ops II. Game Informer has an interview in which he speaks candidly about making the music and sounds for the gaming medium.
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Gamasutra has posted five simple rules for making believable open world cities, and they’re pretty much right on the money. The article focuses on the lack of variety currently in open world games, specifically regarding reactions by NPCs towards the player. The piece notes that while complexity can be good, it’s variety that most players are looking for. If NPCs and the game’s environment react to the player in a believable way then there’s isn’t as much need for extreme amounts of polish for the sake of polish.
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Looks like Heroes of Newerth is doing something news worthy for the first time in a long while. Starting July 20th, HoN will be releasing all of the 107 heroes for free to everyone who has the game. The plan is to use their in-game shop to generate revenue by selling alternate hero skins, announces, and other aesthetic changes. League of Legends may have helped to make Free-to-play what it is, but this goes well beyond that. Now it’s just a matter of whether or not S2 Games will be able to make enough money off of nothing but aesthetic changing items.
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According to Joystiq, Mike Morhaime, Blizzard CEO, has issued a statement on the Diablo 3 forums addressing the struggling game’s biggest issues. Most notably is the RMAH which Morhaime says was created to give players “piece of mind” in lieu of using sketchy third party systems. He also mentions that high-level players should have something to do besides farming loot. I would give Blizzard and Morhaime credit for addressing the game’s issues if this whole statement wasn’t about a month too late. They spent years testing and polishing Diablo 3 and no one realized there was nothing to do at level 60?
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And finally, it appears as though the uDraw isn’t quite finished creating headaches for THQ. Their shareholders have decided that THQ misrepresent just how bad early uDraw sales were (didn’t they notice no one bought one?) and have decided to file a class-action suit. I’m not a legal expert and I don’t own a large company, but isn’t this typical behavior? I mean, is it really surprising that a large company would attempt candy-coat their failures when explaining to the board?