The Drs Bioware recently lectured at BAFTA in London, talking to the assembled throng about the art of making RPGs, with particular reference to some fairly big games they’ve made recent, the Mass Effects and The Old Republic. They even bravely attempt to answer questions fielded by the BAFTA audience. I’ve posted an except below (via VG247) a more extensive version of the thing can be seen over here on BAFTA Guru. It’s worth a watch. (more…)

Aha! The first proper footage of the RPG based on the fantasy tomes by George ‘lecherous old tease’ R. ‘making it up as he goes along’ R. ‘all that money and he still won’t buy a beard-trimmer’ Martin. After the well-intentioned but ultimately miserable strategy game Genesis, this RPG looks to be rather more lavish – and, perhaps vitally in a commercial sense, related to the TV show. The music! The Iron Throne! The armour! The glowering! (more…)

Our post about The Ship giving away all the ships for free prompted lovely Wired UK chap (and writer of our Sim City 2000 retrospective) Duncan Geere to mention Velvet Sundown. And thus, there was yet another ship. This is one of a slate of short story-like online roleplaying games from Finnish outfit Stagecraft that throw away the numbers and the NPCs, and focus purely on players inhabiting their characters. Velvet Sundown specifically is set on board a luxury yacht, with each player assuming the role of one of its passengers.

Crime, romance, the trading of poetry and wearing sunglasses indoors: my sense of it from the video below and Duncan’s write-up was of a cross between the ad-hoc storytelling of Sleep is Death and the cheesy melodrama of a late-80s US soap opera starring rich people with too much make-up and over-large shoulderpads. (more…)

Oh thank flipping goodness, Skyrim inventory mods are appearing. Big thanks to Rick Lane who let us know about SkyUI, which does wonders for the ridiculous inventory system with which Bethesda saddled the game. It’s not perfect, mostly because a giant great image of the item still dominates the screen, but it’s a darned site better than it was before. For instance, you can see everything on the screen without having to scroll until your fingers fall off.

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Hey you? Yes, you – the one with the face. Would you like to watch a trailer for Hedone? You would! Awesome… I’ve put it down somewhere.

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Bargain King Lewie Procter alerts me to new that the new owners of Half-Life mod-gone-pro The Ship are offering a Christmas present to existing owners of the comedy assassination game. And yes, they do openly admit it’s also “a transparent attempt at some shameless marketing”, which makes it an even easier pill to swallow. Basically, if you’ve bought (or decide to buy) The Ship at any point between its release in 2006 and the end of the current Steam Winter sale, you’ll be gifted two bonus copies of the game to give to anyone of your choosing. If they then activate it, they too get a free bonus key to giftify to someone else. It’s like a chain letter, but with activation keys for an agreeable multiplayer videogame about silently murdering toffs on a 1920s cruise liner. (more…)

Twenty one. It’s a good number. Three times seven. Less occult than 23, but more interesting than boring old 20. Right next to handsome 22. (They’re getting married.) It is the perfect number, therefore, to introduce our twenty first game of Christmas. Can you guess what it is?

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RPS is probably the most visited website on the internet, knocking Google and YouTube into an embarrassing runner-up position. I don’t have accurate data, but it was.

Meanwhile, we’ve just received an email letting us know that Techland’s Tomasz Gawlikowski says, “Dead Island is probably the best selling new IP in this year”.

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A giant V-formation of free-to-play air combat is on the horizon: World Of Warplanes from the makers of World Of Tanks. To find out a bit more of what to expect from a persistent dogfighting game, I had a chat with Wargaming.net’s Anton Sitnikov, and he explained exactly whether a Spitfire could take a jet-propelled plane in a fight.> (more…)

Because it’s a download. I mean I guess maybe that is still physical in some sense. It is a configuration of atoms on hard-drives… This is a rubbish line of thinking. Look over there>, a free thing! It’s out and free, says Battlefieldblog. It’s new guns, as trailered below. So are you Battlefield 3 purchasers still playing Battlefield 3? Or has the lustre worn off? (more…)