This is more like it! All this messing about with old men's faces has been great and all, but it's not really what games are about. Games are about grey corridors, faintly futuristic military hardware and hovering robots that go "WOOWOOWOOWOOooooooooooh" as they fly by. Epic have given us all of that and more with their Unreal Engine 4 tech demo, Infiltrator, unveiled at GDC.



I know, right? When Ghosty McSkullface looked out over that cityscape, I had to pick my jaw up off the floor too. The demo was built to show off the engine's capabilities for next-gen development. Epic even proved it was real-time at the event, dropping out the real-time lighting and showing wireframe only versions of the demo's assets.

Thanks, Polygon.

Dota 2 has been updated with its first new hero in six weeks. Rigwarl the Bristleback is the phlegm chucking pig-hedgehog thing in question. He's kind of what I imagine a dark, gritty reboot of Sonic the Hedgehog would look like. Except yellow. An initiator, Bristleback can slow enemies with a stacked attack, has a 360 degree spike attack, and location-based damage resistance.

Here's what Bristleback's hiding under his spiny sleeves.

Viscous Nasal Goo: A mucal discharge attack that lowers armour and reduces movement speed. Gross.
Quill Spray: 360 degree projectile attack which gets a damage bonus if you repeat within 10 seconds. Ignores damage blocking items and abilities.
Bristeback: This eponymous ability reduces damage from the side and back, and auto Quill Sprays for every 250 damage he takes from the back.
Warpath: A passive buff to movement speed and damage that stacks with every spell cast.

And you can see him in action, courtesy of this DotaCinema video:



Also! Vengeful Spirit gets a new model, Wisp gets renamed Io, and Beastmaster has some voice work done. Full patch notes here.

Thanks, PCGamesN.

Photo source: Polygon.com

As part of this year's GDC Game Design Challenge, Jason Rohrer, the creator of The Castle Doctrine and Sleep is Death, revealed that he'd made and hidden a game in the hope that it wouldn't be played for thousands of years. The game, called A Game for Someone, was buried by Rohrer somewhere in the Nevada desert. Of course, by the time it's unearthed we could all be enslaved by aliens, robots, mutants, even mice-spiders. Who knows if we'll get breaks for gaming?

The challenge - a sort of Gamejam for your head - asks participants to imagine a game around a particular theme. This year, the theme was was "Humanity's Last Game". Will Wright, Steve Meretzky and Harvey Smith all took part, but it was Rohrer's idea that won. Presumably because it was both real and mad.

"I wanted to make a game that is not for right now, that I will never play and nobody now living would ever play," Rohrer said.

The board game was created by programming the rules into a computer, and letting an AI find balance issues, then iterate upon them. This ensured that Rohrer himself would also never play the final version. He then created 18 by 18 inch board, and pieces, from titanium, copied the rules to archival, acid free paper, sealed the pages inside a Pyrex tube, then put the tube inside a titanium baton. He then buried it all somewhere in the desert.

In the hope it will found someday in the future, Rohrer gave each session attendee an envelope containing multiple GPS coordinates - over one million in total. Rohrer estimates that if one person checked one location every day, it could take over 2,700 years before the game is discovered.

The coordinates were collected up by GDC volunteers for collation, in the hopes of discovering it a little earlier. If they get posted online, we'll probably have it within the week. ARG players are nothing if not dedicated.

Thanks, Polygon.

YouTube are planning to make it easier for developers to insert live streaming tools into their games. The API, announced at GDC, will give game makers an easy way to provide their community with integrated tools to stream directly to YouTube, as well as insert breaks for ad placement. Thus they set the stage for the Great Blackout, when the internet will buckle under the weight of Farming Simulator 2014 streams.

YouTube have offered similar features in the past - Black Ops 2 currently features direct livestreaming - but a full API would open the service up to more developers, as well as enable streaming through iPhone and Android devices.

It's an interesting move, and one that seems directly targeted at the popularity of Twitch. Whether this API will offer enough flexibility to tempt existing streamers into an integrated platform remains to be seen. But an easy-to-use solution will no doubt prove attractive to developers looking for an easy way get their player-base sharing video content.

Thanks, The Verge.

Eidos Montreal have released a staggeringly short teaser trailer Thief. It shows a candle, an arm and the promise of more information on April 2nd. But what information could it be? Maybe the location of a box in a highly secured mansion that, when successfully pinched, will reveal a USB stick containing a video of Garrett's other arm. Isolate the audio from that video and run it through a spectrographic analyser and you'll get the co-ordinates to another mansion. Prowl through that, systematically knocking out all of its patrolling guards, and the combined snores will spell out the URL of a fuller trailer in morse code.

Or they might just post something to the internet. If they want to be boring.

Back to this trailer. According to Eidos Montreal's Adam Badke, "The coolest thing about this video is that it was completely captured in-engine, in real time. And YES, I can confirm that what you’re seeing is Garrett’s actual 3D mesh that is used in the game." How indecent!

Thanks, RPS.

In 2000, six years after its release, X-Com: UFO Defense had sold 470,000 games and made the Gollop brothers just over £1 million in royalties. But, according to Julian Gollop at his GDC post-mortem of the game - it nearly didn't happen. Twice in the project's development it faced cancellation and, for a brief while, it was officially dead. Sure, had it not been revived we'd have been spared from Enforcer. But at what cost?

The first time was just after the initial pitch with Micrprose. They suggested some alterations, and asked Gollop to produce a design document.

"I went away and I designed the game. I came up with a design document which was just 12 pages long. I'd never written a game design document before in my life, by the way. And the problem with it was that it didn't really work for Microprose - they didn't understand how the game worked.

"I actually had to go there and personally explain things and have a lot of questions thrown at me. Steve said the document was very poor and if it hadn't been for the fact that we'd done Laser Squad, he would have cancelled the project there and then."

Cancellation threat #2 happened when Microprose was acquired in 1993 by Spectrum Holobyte. In fact, it was more than just a threat.

" came to review the projects in development in the UK and they took one look at X-Com and said 'Nah, we don't like this - cancel this project'. The project was actually officially cancelled.

"However, Pete Moreland, Adrian Parr, and Paul Hibbard got together. They had a meeting and decided no, we're going to continue with this project. They didn't tell Spectrum Holobyte this, by the way.

"So really, thanks to the support from Microprose UK, the project was saved."

Later, when Spectrum Holobyte wanted a game release for the end of the financial year, March 1994, Microprose had just the thing. "Pete Moreland said, 'Well, you know that project you told us to cancel... Well we've still got it."

Gollop admits that the game wasn't in a playable state at the time. "The last three months were particularly painful, because both myself and Nick were working seven days a week, 12 hours a day to get the game finished."

Gollop also praised Firaxis' work rebooting the series, after it lost its way with games like Enforcer in 2001: "I would have to say that the Firaxis XCOM saved the day. It's like a phoenix rising from the ashes of the X-Com disaster, to be honest, because I think the whole team at Firaxis did a tremendous job of creating something that was familiar but at the same time different and fresh. And it's amazing that after 20 years, a brand that had gone so badly in the wrong direction has finally been put right."

Below is a screenshot of the only remaining X-Com: UFO Defense concept art. It was taken from this Gamespot video of the full post mortem.



Probably a good thing that they went with the Chryssalids over the giant bunny rabbit.

Thanks, Eurogamer.

If you're concerned about the state of innovation in modern shooters, don't paint a bullseye on the genre just yet. Intruder, an upcoming multiplayer FPS from the two-man Superboss Games, features plenty deviations from popular Dutyfields of today in the hopes of offering a more tactical approach to online shooting.

Initially emerging as an Unreal mod project, Intruder switched over to Unity so Superboss could expand its features. It's reminiscent of older multiplayer fare like the Rainbow Six and SWAT series, with similar leanings on strategy and careful fireteam coordination. Also familiar to fans of those games is the use of gadgets for surveillance and sabotage.

Both teams in Intruder use gear such as mirror cams, remote charges, concussive grenades, and sensors to help track and hinder enemy movements. A random set of doorways on the map will be locked, so a set of lockpicks is needed to access crucial flanking routes. Lockpicking is especially tense, as the chosen squaddie needs to focus on manually aligning each of the lock's tumblers while his teammates keep watch.

Intruder is an impressive refreshment of the value of strategizing in shooters, but some of Superboss' sampled applications of its gadgets might not hold up in actual gameplay. Lacing a walkway with remote charges and a sensor might not be as effective as simply camping the far end with a sniper rifle, and players typically tend to adopting the fastest and easiest method of victory at the cost of elegance. Still, I love seeing a shooter emphasizing clever item usage alongside the run-and-guns of today.

Intruder's official website is here. Check out some early alpha item testing footage below.

Battlefield 4's shiny reveal earlier this week in a gameplay trailer that provided a 17-minute window into the visuals of a fully armed and operational Frostbite 3 engine, but DICE is discouraging players and press from focusing too much on BF4's eye candy. In an interview with Eurogamer, Executive Producer Patrick Bach states a raw display of Frostbite tech isn't enough to attract gamers anymore, with more importance lying with how the studio intends to use the engine to advance the gameplay experience.

"We’ve come to a point where it’s not important to talk about Frostbite that much," Bach says. "Frostbite is a tool. We've passed the point where we'll impress people by talking about the technological wonders. What'll impress people is the experience we’ll get from the output from when you use the engine."

It's a thought likely applicable to other notable engines—Valve's Source, for one, touted strong technological accolades during its reveal but quickly became known as a simple vehicle for all kinds of playstyles, experiments, and genres.

Frostbite 3's graphical prowess is definitely cutting-edge—BioWare's slotting it into its next Mass Effect and Dragon Age, even—but Bach believes the concept of a next-gen Battlefield "needs to be more than just more polygons."

"To us, it’s like, how do we evolve the gameplay?" he explains. "How do we evolve the narrative? How do we evolve the things around the technology? How do we make it more Battlefield? So, moving elements from multiplayer into single-player is one way of evolving it. How do you get people to care about the characters, is also lifting the bar, rather than just doing the stereotypical stupid shooter, where you don’t care about the missions or why you’re doing what you’re doing, and why do these guys around you even exist?”

Though we've only been granted a glimpse of Battlefield 4, the initial gameplay trailer didn't do much to unsettle us from the thought that BF4's campaign will be just what Bach is bringing up: a stereotypical, cliche-ridden military campaign. Hopefully DICE has some surprises up their sleeve.

When words fail and swords glint out of their scabbards in Torment: Tides of Numenera, InXile wants the ensuing scrap to pack in more meaning beyond "clicking a mouse and letting it roll." Speaking with GameBanshee, Creative Lead Colin McComb sets forth a few combat commandments for the most-definitely-Kickstarted RPG.

"First, it needs to be avoidable in at least most situations," McComb begins. "We don’t want to force people into combat. Second, the player must be able to make meaningful decisions before combat: what to wear, what to equip, what to ready, and how to affect the environment so that it can work to their advantage as well. Third, players must be able to make meaningful decisions within combat, rather than clicking a mouse and letting it roll. We want the combat to be tactical, but we’re also well aware that too much complexity changes the focus of the game from the narrative to the combat, so we want to make sure that combat is connected to the narrative, rather than being a random encounter."

I'm sure all the eager Last Castoffs will be heartened over InXile's pledge to liven Numenera's combat, especially since its spiritual ancestor, Planescape: Torment, didn't exactly grant much prominence to battle with its sporadic and lackluster fights. I'm hoping I can continue my RPG tradition of talking my way out of any confrontation whatsoever, though I presume the game's diplomacy will be more complex beyond pointing in the distance and yelling "What's that over there?" before running away.

Numenera's crowdfunded budget continues stretching far past its original $900,000 mark. The most recent stretch goal will add Planescape designer Chris Avellone to the team at $3.5 million.

Well, this is a surprise. During a panel talk at GDC (via Joystiq), former Diablo 3 Lead Designer Jay Wilson addressed head-on the ongoing controversy of the game's gold and real-money auction houses, saying the markets ultimately "really hurt the game."

The crux of Blizzard's troubles with the auction houses arose from an underestimation of user numbers and the scale of item pricing, according to Wilson. He also said the team initially thought the player-driven economy would combat scams and provide a useful service.

Eventually, Blizzard became strongly aware of the differences between its expectations and the actual performance and reception of the markets. Wilson claimed the entirety of Diablo 3's community—1 million players daily and around 3 million per month, he noted—used either auction house at some point, with "over 50 percent" of players using them regularly.

The convenience of amassing a fortune in gold from bartering items dimmed the game's primary motivation of experiencing its story and killing Diablo, Wilson explained. That echoes a previous sentiment from Blizzard Game Designer Travis Day earlier this year, who wrote on the team's efforts to "refocus players away from farming the auction house and onto farming monsters."

In hindsight, Wilson stated, Blizzard would "turn off if we could." Whoa. However, Wilson went on to elaborate that the size of Diablo 3's playerbase makes the problem "not as easy" as abruptly unplugging item bartering. He said a solution is being worked on that avoids eliminating an existing feature entirely, but he didn't go into details.