I really love gaming advertising in the 21st century. Years ago gaming hype was a couple of screenshots, some spasmodic banner ads, and a few carefully crafted tidbits from someone in the marketing department. It was lame, boring, and never really gave anyone an idea as to whether or not they should buy the game. It was a $60 gamble that sometimes paid off, but sometimes didn’t. But those days are in the past, these days we’re exposed to almost every aspect of gameplay either through demos or extensive video walkthroughs well before investing even a dollar into a title. That’s why I wasn’t surprised when I saw an hour long Borderlands 2 walkthrough today on YouTube, but just because I wasn’t surprised doesn’t mean I didn’t appreciate the honest and open way games are sold to consumers these days, well some of them.
I haven’t watched all of it yet, but so far Borderlands 2 looks like everything it’s been promised to be; more guns and badassery packed into a much more polished version of the original. Even the new Gunzerker class looks like it fits right into the game’s overall theme. I mean who doesn’t want to dual wield both a rocket launcher and a sniper rifle at the same time? The gameplay video showcases a bunch of new combat tactics available to the player, including the ability to shoot the limbs off of some enemies, forcing them to lose the ability to fire at you. If I was on the fence about the game I’m not any longer. Thanks to Gearbox for having faith in their title, giving us a robust preview of their game, I’m definitely going to invest in Borderlands 2 as soon as it’s available.
—
Like every MMO before it, Guild Wars 2 seems to be having some growing pains, this time in the form of 11,000 hacked passwords. As Ars Technica points out the game has only been out for little over a week, but most of the damage seems to be from users that have already had their information compromised from secondary websites or malware. ArenaNet has been proactive in getting ahead of the problem, e-mailing users when someone logs into an account from a new location. They’ve also advised to change both the e-mail and password used to log-in to the game if users feel they’ve been hacked. I don’t know about you, but I’m really beginning to wish there was a better way of logging into a game in this day and age.
Source: Venture Beat
PC Gamer has done a comprehensive review of Awesomenauts the side-scrolling action-RTS available on Steam. I’m a big fan of the action-RTS genre, but after seeing some gameplay I wasn’t sure if this game was for me. It looks like a side-scrolling MOBA with two teams battling against each other and waves of AI controlled droids. After reading about it and seeing a bunch of reviews, I still don’t know where to stand. I might have to give it a shot for the simple reason that I tend to like these kids of game, but so far reviews have been mixed. The biggest complaint most people have is regarding the game’s controls and that they feel clunky and awkward. Still the game does look pretty so I’m torn. Maybe I’ll just wait until there’s some ridiculous Steam sale before investing in it.
—
I don’t know anyone that didn’t spend at least some of their N64 years playing GoldenEye. It was on everyone Christmas list and if you didn’t get a copy you knew someone that did. Gamasutra has an hour long postmortem on the game which outlines its humble beginnings and all of the problems they had developing the influential title. So if you played the game and enjoyed it, why not take the time to see what the developers thought of the whole experience.
—
Physical retail has been in trouble for the past few years. While most companies are quick to blame digital distribution, I think much of the fault lies with them in failing to diversify their business strategy in the face of obvious unwavering competition. GameStop tends to be the exception however, offering first the ability to return used games for store credit and now getting into the vintage games business. Joystiq is reporting some of the plans CEO J. Paul Raines is providing for their GameStop’s plans to sell vintage games. I’m not sure if it will be enough to save them from growing digital distribution sales, but it may still get some in the door to browse through the memories that may soon line their store shelves.
—
By now everyone knows that if you want to generate revenue for a game one of the best places to go is Kickstarter the popular crowdfunding site. What you might not know is that Kickstarter isn’t just good for games, but games are good for Kickstarter. Kotaku had an article this week which outlined just how much revenue games have been generating through Kickstarter. Only a few years ago games generated less than $50,000 through the site, but this year that number was over $50 million. While most of this success has come from only a handful of titles, I think it’s safe to say that Double Fine Adventure helped to start it all. Now all they have to do it make the games, if they flop then all of this hype will have been for nothing. I remain hopeful however.