In advance of next week's PC Gaming Show, a few of our participants are sharing their perspectives on PC gaming and game development. Today, Alex Hayter, Senior Brand Manager at Torn Banner Studios, writes about why the developer of Chivalry: Medieval Warfare isn't rushing to make a sequel.

Where's Chiv 2?

After a huge seller like Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, the most obvious path to immediate success would be for our studio to develop a direct sequel, sit back and watch those 3.5+ million players and their Benjamins roll back in. Instead, the next title from Torn Banner is a magic fantasy action game that's more Arabian Knights meets Game of Thrones than medieval European fantasy. This isn't a world of chivalrous knights and kings but flame throwing mages and occult assassins. Gone are the castles and catapults, replaced by Middle Eastern-inspired marble palaces and magic seals.

It's Mirage: Arcane Warfare a new first person multiplayer slasher that is much less a direct sequel and more like Chivalry s magically gifted cousin. By developing a unique new IP, rather than Chivalry 2, our studio is aiming for long term creative and commercial success instead of grabbing at low hanging fruit.

In our development of Mirage we've already begun to look at key aspects of Chivalry s design from a perspective we never had before. We ve been able to deconstruct and rebuild our melee-focused combat system from scratch which in turn will enable us to approach such problems in a Chivalry sequel with fresh eyes and new solutions. Had our studio gone directly into working on Chivalry 2, underlying problems may have simply persisted between game one and its sequel.

A new title allows us to shock and surprise people in a way that is tougher with a sequel. A fast turnaround sequel ties a developer down to certain realities minor tweaks and a slightly better version of something you've played before, without the development time or perspective to truly innovate. We aren't looking to cash cow Chivalry, because we love it. We don't want Chivalry 2 to just be the same game on a new engine but a genuinely unique and amazing experience.

With Mirage, we re attempting to innovate in the multiplayer genre by combining ranged and melee combat into a single system, where players can block projectiles and leap through the air to slam down with melee attacks. We re trying to bring the mechanics of fighting games to a multiplayer FPS, where heavy attacks that land first will interrupt your opponent and blocking will give you the initiative. We had great success with Chivalry's melee combat, and we wanted to improve that but also bring something fundamentally new to the table.

At the heart of PC gaming is this spirit of innovation and experimentation the quest for the new. Console is where we've always had the tried and true, but PC? That's where the mavericks live. That's why our studio is opting to create a new IP and Chivalry 2 will just have to wait. With Mirage, we also chose to introduce players to a unique new fantasy setting, inspired by a world region that has few creative references in games. We wanted an opulent and peaceful background for our players to smear the glory of battle upon because it s unexpected and it s the opposite of the gritty dark medieval world of Chivalry. Our goal is to make using magic in a game feel dangerous and visceral we haven't had that yet.

After announcing Mirage, many Chivalry fans showed tremendous excitement. But from some, we also heard: I never asked for this! and Where is Chiv 2? We ask those people to consider that we are trying to do something fresh and creative, and that by this process we can create better games. Today's PC landscape is rife with strong franchises, but also constantly burgeoning with the hope of exciting new IPs: No Man's Sky, We Happy Few, Paragon, Routine, Squad, Necropolis, Tacoma... Celebrate these new experiments! Constant, no-holds-barred innovation is what keeps PC gaming at the forefront of the industry.

This approach of doing new things and taking risks even if it means not giving players what they immediately want was precisely how Chivalry was born. Like Mirage, Chivalry was a risk at the time! It was a niche idea that no one had really made yet, because the idea of doing a medieval FPS in multiplayer was simply too risky and challenging. The success of such a strange project much like experiments by other talented studios around the world has fostered an environment at Torn Banner centered around supporting our team s creativity at the forefront. Our decision not to make a Chivalry sequel (yet) is centered strongly around keeping our studio healthy and passionate about what we do which enables us to make the best possible games for players to enjoy.

The process of making a game isn t just a conveyor belt from concept to v1.0, it s a pile of people spending years of their lives making something: late nights, fast food, (virtual) blood, sweat and tears. When we do make Chivalry 2, we want it to be the best possible version of it. By taking on a new project rather than grinding into back-to-back sequels, our team has the opportunity to design from the ground up, hit "refresh" on our minds, and learn how to make the most awesome games we can. As a result while Mirage is still cooking away we're now even more excited about eventually making Chivalry 2 because we re confident we ll do so much of a better job.

The indie approach of siding with innovation and creativity over risk management is gradually seeing more support on other platforms, but this mindset is at home on PC. With PC indie, we have the perfect storm: unconstrained, creative studios creating games on a platform that champions innovation. Small indie studios like ours are more willing to take these risks than AAA. Indie developers are lead by the creative will of our studio; the only reason we're making games is because of passion. While we want to keep our studio financially above water, none of that would be worth it if we weren t building the games of our dreams.

The PC Gaming Show returns to E3 on Monday June 13, featuring game announcements, updates to existing favourites, and conversation with top developers. You can find out what to expect here, and also book free tickets to attend in person at pcgamingshow.com. The PC Gaming Show will be broadcast live through twitch.tv/pcgamer from 11:30 am PT/2:30 pm ET/6:30 pm GMT, but be sure to tune in beforehand to check out The Steam Speedrun, in which one lucky winner will buy as many games as they can in three minutes.

Chivalry: Medieval Warfare developer Torn Banner Studios has announced that its next project is an online multiplayer combat game called Mirage: Arcane Warfare. The studio said it will feature fast-paced combat gameplay and bloody weaponry, which makes it sound an awful lot like its less-wizardly predecessor, but with a much more vibrant color scheme. 

The website at miragearcanewarfare.com is pretty thin at this point, containing just the teaser above and a countdown timer with slightly less than six days remaining. Once it zeroes out, the full trailer, and presumably some proper details about the game, will be revealed.

Despite the relative dearth of information, I'm actually kind of excited by the prospect. Chivalry's first-person melee combat is fun in a way that only teeing off on someone's skull with a sword the size of a small tree can be, and magic is a natural fit with that kind of experience. It matches up thematically (although admittedly more with giant swords than the medieval angle) and it could also be an interesting way to deepen the combat without having to dramatically change it.

The countdown timer will finish ticking off, by my calculations, on March 9.

A week after confirmation that Rocket League will get special Chivalry: Medieval Warfare flags and decals, comes news that Payday 2 will get a similar (though more substantial) crossover. Dubbed the Gage Chivalry Pack, the $4.99 DLC adds all manner of medieval weaponry to Payday 2, which is great, because now you can shiv robbers with swords instead of, you know, shooting them.

Available on September 10,  the video above features cops and robbers smited by swords, shields, spears, crossbows and maces. More definitively, you get three ranged weapons, one throwing weapon, four melee weapons and masks, as well as new achievements, patterns and materials. Why not, I guess.

Torn Banner Studios is holding a Chivalry Community Fest, which will see the addition of new maps and weapons to the bone-crunching first-person brawler Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, some exclusive in-game swag, and free access to the game over the weekend.

Chivalry: Medieval Warfare earned a very respectable review score of 81 around these parts (though you'll have to take my word for it, the review itself isn't online), and while I was less impressed by the Deadliest Warrior DLC that came out in 2013, I still had some stupid fun going full Braveheart with it. And as of 10.00am PDT today you'll be able to try it out for yourself at no charge on Steam.

Chivalry is also being updated with seven new, community-created maps and nine weapons and helms, an exclusive in-game "brand," and a swanky—you might even say foppish—"Muffin Top" hat for players who follow the game on Steam. And finally, if you like what you see, you can snag the game for keepsies for 80 percent off the regular price, which works out to $5/ 4.

The Chivalry: Medieval Warfare free weekend wraps up at 11 am PDT on May 31, while the sale price will hold until 10 am PDT on June 1. Enjoy the bludgeoning!

The Steam Workshop is a giant thing, containing over 24,000 Skyrim mods, over 413,000 Portal 2 levels and, for some reason, over 100 Goat Simulator characters and mutators. It's also a profitable thing. Team Fortress 2, Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive all have curated Workshops—letting players pick the community-made items that will go on sale in the game.

Valve has now announced that, since the launch of the Workshop in 2011, the total payments to individuals for the creation of in-game items has surpassed $57 million.

Previously, only Valve games had curated item Workshops—something Valve attributes to the "sheer number of challenges required in order to scale to a global audience of creators and players". Seemingly, these hurdles have been overcome, as the Workshop is now hosting curated item Workshops for Chivalry: Medieval Warfare and Dungeon Defenders: Eternity.

"Purchases of this great new content directly enables those community members to continue practicing their craft and making more awesome content," writes Valve, before going on to say that they expect more curated Workshops in "the coming weeks and months".

'Chivalry' is a word which here means 'hitting men with swords until their arms fall off and their legs fall off and maybe they don't have a head'. It's sad that modern warfare has lost this sort of gallant behaviour, but at least it's alive and well in Torn Banner's multiplayer men-hitting action game. Chivalry: Medieval Warfare has had a few free Steam weekends before now, and now it has another one. Look at it there, all temporarily free to play for the next two-ish days. As is the custom, the game is also 75% cheaper if you'd like to keep it after your sworded time is up.

Our Chivalry review doesn't appear to be online, but I'm reliably informed that we gave it 81%. That's quite a bit higher than the score Andy Chalk doled out to its Deadliest Warrior DLC, which "has neither the depth nor the polish to stay in the fight for long".

Review by Andy Chalk

If you're familiar with Spike's "Deadliest Warrior" television show, then you know what's in store with Chivalry: Deadliest Warrior, the newest DLC release for Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. It pits six warrior archetypes from throughout history Samurai, Ninja, Viking, Knight, Spartan, and Pirate against one another in brutal online multiplayer combat, the hook being that each class brings unique strengths and weaknesses to the battlefield. Heavily armored knights are slow and lumbering but hit like an angry Hulk, while Ninja are protected by nothing but speed and smoke but will kill you five times before you hit the ground.

A rusty axe...

Deadliest Warrior s simple, single-player tutorial is where I got my first hint that all is not as it should be. Hit detection was imprecise, as the lines tracing my weapon's path in "Visualization Training" would sometimes cut through an enemy's extremities without causing damage, while thrown weapons that missed the target would occasionally still come close enough to "stick" and end up orbiting just outside their intended victim. The one-minute countdown timer in the "Ranged Training" area is broken to the point of near-uselessness, and the trainer bot named John the Chef Master don't ask me to explain respawned whenever I entered a training room, and then died (spontaneously and explosively) when I left. I didn't learn much about fighting, but I killed an awful lot of Johns.



Rather than teach me anything beyond the game's basic controls, the tutorial s various modes simply reinforced the idea that this is a half-baked effort. The sub-par graphics, stiff animations, and low-stamina heavy breathing sound effect betray Warrior as a low-budget, low-effort tie-in to a television show that was canceled two years ago. But something unexpected happened when I threw in the towel on training and leapt into the online action. I actually had some fun.

...Can still cut

It's by no means a good game, but it is undeniably and appropriately visceral. The shouts of angry men mix with the clang and thud of weapons on armor, meat, and bone, and are surprisingly affecting. Taking a guy's head off with a well-placed (or lucky) swing is alarmingly rewarding. One of the highlights came when I turned around to see a samurai wielding a club the size of an oak tree rushing at me from behind. I had just enough time to marvel at the insanity of it all before he swung, sending everything from my neck up into the next time zone. It's meaty, it's crunchy, it's downright personal; I didn't just kill guys, I messed them up. Bad.



Game modes range from ritualized one-on-one duels to massive, 64-player free-for-alls. Sadly, maps suitable for 64-player brawls seem awfully big and lonely when just a half-dozen warriors are slugging it out in a free-for-all. With no overhead map to help find the action, I often felt like I was spending more time looking for a fight than actually fighting one. Clipping errors are common, and a couple of times I found myself running past a thrown axe that was just floating in the air, seemingly stuck in some invisible, untouchable wall. Even when Chivalry: Deadliest Warrior is at its best, there's an inescapable roughness to it.

My favorite move is Last Team Standing, because it encourages a certain degree of sleaziness: Teams will sometimes find a quiet place to lie low while everyone else beats the hell out of each other, and then come charging in like God's personal room service to clean up whatever's left. Relatively short time limits on matches ensure that they don't turn into overlong Camporees and while not everyone approves of these tactics, the up-close-and-personal nature of the combat makes ganking some half-dead sucker a sweeter experience than you might imagine.

That's really the appeal of Chivalry: Deadliest Warrior. It's like forum trolling, except instead of wielding words you're driving a virtual longsword through someone's digital thorax. But it doesn't take long before the thrill of dressing up like a pirate and rushing headlong at an armored knight wears thin; and then everything that characterizes this as low-budget shovelware sinks in. With a night or two of good times under your belt, you'll likely find yourself moving on to better things.

Games are great at solving ridiculous arguments. Who would win in a fight between Batman and Spider-Man? Or between pirates and Spartans? Or between motorbicyclist Valentino Rossi and former Guns 'n Roses guitarist Slash? You could spend hours in the pub imagining and solving these vital conundrums, or you could just turn to games. Sure, the answers would be no more definitive, but at least there's a time limit on bouts.

And precisely one of those examples is the subject of Chivalry: Deadliest Warrior, the alt-history battle royale expansion for Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. The DLC pack is due out on the 14th of November, and a new trailer has been released, giving you an idea of what to expect.

That trailer comes in two flavours: an original and extended cut. I'm posting the latter, because if you've not got the time to watch a two minute video, what are you even doing browsing a PC gaming website? If you really are pressed for time - or just don't want to listen to grown men screaming at each other for that long - here's the regular version.



The game will give you the chance to side with the Samurais, Spartans, Vikings, Knights, Ninjas and Pirates, in a variety of maps each themed around one side's home turf. It also features a new game mode, called "Multi-Team", pitting all six warrior types against each other at once.

Chivalry: Deadliest Warrior will cost £12/$15.