Warp Zoned Presents
Author: Josh Griffiths
“Authentic” new Brothers in Arms game in development at Gearbox
Randy Pitchford has been having a busy week. After confronting fans and critics alike during his Develop Brighton keynote address earlier this week, Pitchford revealed that Gearbox is working on Duke Nukem 5. But who cares about that, because he also said Gearbox is working on an “authentic” new Brothers in Arms sequel.
Speaking to IGN, Pitchford confirmed that work has begun on a new entry in the franchise:
“I feel we have unfinished business there with both the fiction and the history and I’d like to get into that. I spend a lot of time thinking about it,” he said. “I think the next Brothers in Arms game has to be authentic and we have been working on that.”
The last Brothers in Arms game, Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, was released in 2008. Three years later, Gearbox announced Brothers in Arms: Furious 4, a Tarantino-inspired spinoff, at E3 2011. Eventually, the “Brothers in Arms” title was dropped and the game morphed into Furious 4… which further transformed into Battleborn:
“So the thing about that… Furious 4 is not a thing anymore, right? Creative development is a trip. The idea that something that started as a Brothers in Arms game through some absurd convolution ended up as Battleborn is evidence of what’s possible.”
Much like with the proposed Duke Nukem game, Pitchford says the team will need help in order to make it happen:
“Sadly it takes a lot of resources, energy and money to do what must be done, so it’s not something I feel I could completely do alone,” he said. “I need good partners for it, so we’ve been talking to great folks but it’s really putting all that together that’s the limiting factor. Once we put all the partnerships together in terms of publishing, collaborators and creatives, we can talk about it.”
I’m glad we’re finally getting another Brothers in Arms game, but I’m not sure if 2015 Gearbox is the same team as 2008 Gearbox. And it might not even happen at all given the company’s need for a development partner. So keep your fingers crossed and your helmets strapped.
Posted in News
Tagged Battleborn, Brothers in Arms 4, Furious 4
Randy Pitchford’s #AskRandy Q&A goes horribly wrong for the developer
Twitter is a wonderful place. But sometimes, it can be a truly horrifying place where your worst nightmares come to life. That’s the position Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford found himself in Monday when he agreed to participate in an #AskRandy Q&A for Develop Brighton.
The intended goal was to get people to ask Pitchford questions about game development, which seems fair enough. The only problem was the timing. On Friday, Pitchford made a statement in regards to Sega’s agreement to a settlement concerning the lawsuit centered around Aliens: Colonial Marines. Sega and Gearbox were being sued by gamers who argued that Sega used false and unrepresentative demos, trailers, and screenshots to sell the game. Gearbox was included in the lawsuit as the developer of the game, though most of the work was reportedly outsourced to TimeGate Studios, and Gearbox was dropped from the suit similar this year.
Pitchford went on the attack in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, saying, “the legal system failed as it was being manipulated by what appeared to me to be, essentially, mafia-style extortion tactics.” He continued by stating the free market was the only judge for the game: “The market proved it was doing its job perfectly. The market is dispassionate — rewarding what it likes and punishing what it doesn’t. There is an objectivity and fairness in the open market’s harsh, firm justice.”
Of course, the whole lawsuit was about the game being sold on a bed of lying screenshots and trailers, and the infamous E3 2013 demo, but that’s neither here nor there.
Monday also marked the release of the latest episode of Jim Sterling’s Jimquisition show, “Aliens: Colonial Marines – Game Over, Randy,” in which he disagreed with Pitchford’s comments from Friday. This coincided with Develop Brighton’s launch for the hashtag campaign, and with the powder keg primed, angry fans were handed the match.
A sampling of the tweets Pitchford received can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Aliens: Colonial Marines
Sega releases trailer for fictional “Shia LaBeouf DLC” for Sonic Generations
As a game critic and commentator, it’s my job to commentate on things like this. But… what is there to say? Sega has posted a video on it’s official forums advertising a “Shia LaBeouf DLC” for Sonic Generations. This is definitely a real thing that is definitely not happening, but it was uploaded to the official Sonic the Hedgehog YouTube Page yesterday, and is being promoted by Sonic’s offical Twitter account.
Sonic’s social media accounts have been extremely interesting, to say the least, over the last few weeks. Allow me to demonstrate:
Because there is no "L" in "Freedom". pic.twitter.com/z9Flj0ctMM
— Sonic the Hedgehog (@sonic_hedgehog) July 4, 2015
A haiku of speed
For you, oh great internets,
I must go quickly
— Sonic the Hedgehog (@sonic_hedgehog) July 8, 2015
Eggman asks the important questions. pic.twitter.com/F4juftZZ7q
— Sonic the Hedgehog (@sonic_hedgehog) June 27, 2015
This could be the start of a recent attempt by Sega to regain the public’s trust after publicly apologizing for recent missteps. I can see an old man at Sega HQ saying, what better way to reconnect with “da kids” than by quoting memes (like Shia LaBeouf’s “You can do it!” message) and posting bizarre jokes to Twitter? Maybe he’s got his feet up on the desk, with a big fat cigar in his mouth, yelling at Peter Parker to get those pictures of Spide-Man while he’s at it.
Posted in News, PC, PS3, Xbox 360
Tagged Sonic Generations
Personal user data exposed after a hack of Epic Games forum
Epic Games, the creator of Gears of War and the Unreal Engine, has released a notice detailing a hack of their community forums. The full details of the hack and what Epic is doing to fix the problem can be read right here:
Dear Epic Games Forum Member,
We have just discovered that the Epic Games forums located at https://forums.epicgames.com were compromised by a hacker. We are sorry to report that the incident may have resulted in unauthorized access to your username, email address, password, and the date of birth you provided at registration.
We have taken https://forums.epicgames.com offline. When the site reopens, your password will be reset. If you use the same password on this site which you use on other sites, we recommend immediately changing your password on those sites as well.
The affected forum site covers UDK, Infinity Blade, Gears of War, Bulletstorm, and prior Unreal Tournament games. However, the separate forum sites covering Unreal Engine 4, Fortnite, and the new Unreal Tournament were unaffected.
We apologize for the inconvenience this causes everyone. To further understand what’s happened and prevent it in the future, we’re working with a computer security firm to identify the nature of the compromise. We will report further information on the forums when they reopen.
While the investigation into the security compromise is ongoing, we are reaching out to you directly to let you know of the potential unauthorized access to information you provided at registration. It is possible that any information stored or sent by you using the forums may have been accessed. Since this is a public forum, we do not collect or maintain financial information, but we advise you to be alert for suspicious email such as phishing attempts.
Thank you for being a part of our community, and for your attention to this issue.
Best Regards,
The Epic Games Team
Best of luck to everyone affected by this hack.
Marvel is working on a batch of “developer-focused” and “quality-focused” console games
Marvel has arguably revolutionized the modern film industry with the introducion of their layered and multifilm-spanning Cinematic Universe. Their superhero movies have consistently performed at the top of the box office charts for years, but they’ve mostly put their video game projects on the back burner. At least, until now.
During this weekend’s San Diego Comic-Con, Producer Mike Jones confirmed that Marvel is working on several console games, which will be announced in the coming months.
“We are very much focused on what our console strategy will be for the future. Obviously console games take a lot longer to incubate, so that will be a slower process for us,” he said in response to a question from a fan. He went on to say, “We are very much taking a controlled, less-is-more, quality-focused, developer-focused strategy, but it is very top of mind, and we’ll have a lot more announcements probably next year.”
While this is great news, this announcement opens up a lot of questions. Which heroes (or villains) will be getting their own games? And will the games be connected to the Marvel Cinematic Universe or will they stand on their own? Last year, Marvel executives revealed they were creating a “Marvel Gaming Universe,” so we know the games will sync up in some way.
You may also recall that Telltale Games announced an episodic series based on a Marvel property a few months ago. Could this be the start of Marvel’s big gaming push? Only time will tell.
[Source: Polygon]
Posted in Mobile, News, PC, PS4, Wii U, Xbox One
Tagged Comic-Con 2015, Guardians of the Galaxy
Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata dies at age 55
It’s a sad day today, as Nintendo has announced the death of President and CEO Satoru Iwata due to a bile duct growth. He was 55 years old.
“Nintendo Co. Ltd. deeply regrets to announce that President Satoru Iwata passed away on July 11, 2015 due to a bile duct growth,” was the company’s only statement to the public. In the hours since the news was released, Nintendo of America posted the following message to Twitter and Facebook: “In remembrance of Mr. Satoru Iwata, Nintendo will not be posting on our social media channels today.”
Iwata had been with Nintendo since the 1980s, starting out as a programmer at HAL Laboratory (where he worked on Balloon Fight and EarthBound, among others), before reaching the level of CEO in 2002. The executive also had a close relationship with Nintendo’s devoted fans. He regularly made appearances at industry events, hosted Nintendo’s monthly Nintendo Direct videos, and conducted Iwata Asks, a regular interview series in which he would talk to the developers of Nintendo’s games. Iwata had been battling this illness for several years, missing last year’s E3 Expo due to a surgery. But he made his final public appearance as part of this year’s Nintendo Digital Event @ E3 just last month.
Above all, Iwata was a principled man in an industry that’s dead set on nothing but making money and treating customers like cattle. When Nintendo failed to reach its financial projections in 2013, Iwata voluntarily cut his salary in half for the next five months.
There is no word yet who will be named Nintendo’s next President and CEO, though it will be extraordinarily difficult to replace a man like Iwata.
Mega Man Legacy Collection art contest launched by Capcom
Here’s something that might interest you if you’re an artist. Capcom is holding an art contest as part of their promotional efforts for Mega Man Legacy Collection. They’re asking fans to re-imagine the covers of the first six Mega Man games for a chance to win a copy of the upcoming compilation. The contest runs until August 14th, and you can find all the details at the Capcom-Unity blog.
With all the great Mega Man fan art online, I’m sure this is going to be a tough challenge. At the very least, I’m sure a lot of the drawings will be better than the original Mega Man cover. But who knows, this is the Internet we’re talking about.
Alternatively, you could go online and pick up the Mega Man Anniversary Collection on Amazon for around $10. Granted it’s not free, but it does come with Mega Man 7, Mega Man 8, and two games that were never released in the US. That’s more than you can say for the Legacy Collection, which only goes up to Mega Man 6 (though it does include HD visuals and a Challenge Mode). Not to mention Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10 that came out after the Anniversary Collection.
But hey, winning a competition and getting free stuff is always great. Even if the thing you win is inferior to a product released 10 years ago.
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain producer responds to “downgrade” criticism
With a little less than two months to go before the hotly anticipated release of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Konami is probably glad the drama surrounding the title is coming to an end so they can get on with further imploding.
Kojima Productions recently showed a ton of gameplay footage at this year’s E3 Expo (an extended version of the “Free Infiltration” demo is available for viewing after the break), and while the overall reaction was positive, there has been one constant complaint. Several commenters online are saying the game doesn’t look as good as it once did. This has prompted Ken-ichiro Imaizumi, a Senior Producer at Konami Computer Entertainment Japan, to take to Twitter yesterday morning to defend the game.
If you know game making process. We normally don't change or downgrade in this phase. Always have to be comes first. https://t.co/SgT3p6hj48
— Ken-ichiro Imaizumi (@Ken1555) July 8, 2015
If anything, Tweeting in defense of your game will only raise more awareness on the issue. I didn’t realize anyone thought the graphics looked downgraded from past iterations, but now that it’s been brought up, I can kind of see it. Or maybe that’s the placebo effect talking. Either way, Mr. Imaizumi has made some great Tweets since:
He is a genius creator. I'm just a guy. Glad you like the demo. You can enjoy it for a rest of the year for sure. https://t.co/8rBYnvayec
— Ken-ichiro Imaizumi (@Ken1555) July 8, 2015
I hope Konami recognize my tweet work during early in the morning….Na lol https://t.co/VUztJfqPge
— Ken-ichiro Imaizumi (@Ken1555) July 7, 2015
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain will be released for the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One on September 1. A PC release (via Steam) will follow on September 15. (more…)