With Eve‘s consolebox tie-in Dust 514 appearing soon – and persistently defying sense with its failure to appear on PC (I give it six months before a PC announcement) – as well as the tenth anniversary of the game looming, CCP have started ramping up Eve things. One such promotional moment is a new video (below) which charts the origin on the Eve universe, as well as its future. It’s fascinating to see the game poised to expand into other dimensions of play, and it certainly has covered some distance in that decade.

Makes you wonder if it really could make it another ten. (more…)

Update: Well, that was a disaster. It turns out the silly game only lets you start a guild if all members of your current party are over level 15, or bought a Founders pack, or transferred Zen into the game. So it didn’t happen tonight. However, if those who tick any of those boxes want to email me either via above, or in the game (jennifer@bothererer), we can try to organise something soon.

Sorry I wasn’t able to respond to everyone’s questions in game – that tiny little chat box and the sheer volume made it impossible.

Cryptic’s Neverwinter has just gone live into open beta, not half an hour ago. Which means that now all and sundry can return to the Sword Coast to swash, thieve, bludgeon or feyly dance through it’s grrrrr-based adventures. And so it is that it only seems appropriate for there to be an RPS guild within. If you’re interested in joining, we’ll need some help getting it going – details below.

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Do you remember that there were decades previously to this one? Far Cry 3 seems to think it does, with the appearance of an expandalone spoof of the 1980s, Blood Dragon. How does this mini-adventure hold up? Here’s wot I think:>

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There will be a new GTA game soon. Maybe it’ll be on PC. It has three characters, all of which are violent, sweary men. It has some improvements to the graphics. It’s spent a lot on music and voice-acting. It has the same sort of gags as the last dozen GTA games/expansions, but with different words>. It really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really wants to be a movie.

Here are three new trailers, cunningly combined into one, and focusing exclusively on the story rather than on what you get to do. With crushing, miserable inevitability, there is a strip club scene, because there is always a strip club scene. IGN or someone will have a shot-by-shot analysis any second now, but you can watch the plain old videos below if you really want to. (more…)

Yeah, Notch’s game got a mention on its own, because a big name is a good way to encourage those who otherwise wouldn’t be interested to take a look at the many splendid things created as part of the twenty-sixth Ludum Dare global game jam. It is very important to reiterate, in this case via the medium of a post (and in addition to the one below singling out The Unseen), that you will be generously rewarded for looking at LD anyway, regardless of whether or not anyone you’ve heard of is involved. Ludum Dare – and many other speed-development events across our blue’n'green marble – is the bleeding edge of game-making, where ideas and pure talent hold far more sway than fancy graphics and big-budget explosions. It is ur-game and omni-game, a wild, wonderful badlands for all the potential that software holds. (more…)

Given that Ludum Dare 26 spawned several trillion games, we’ll probably be talking about it for the next 30,000 or so years. I will, however, almost certainly do a round-up sooner or later, seeing as the theme – minimalism – has led to a teetering tapas tower of bite-sized, sometimes seconds-long experiences. Don’t get me wrong, though: I have come across a few slightly meatier efforts. Of those, The Unseen stands out as well worth a mention, if only because I’d love to see it take on a life beyond LD26. Doubtless, it’s got some oily, hair-strewn warts on its style-savvy skin, but the core idea is brilliant on a number of levels. See, you’re dead. And how’d you die? Well, while searching for your body, you’re almost certainly going to find out. Agonizing step by agonizing step.

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The Kickstarter to create a new Realm Vs Realm MMO successor to Dark Age Of Camelot has just two days left on the clock. They need three hundred thousand dollars at the time of writing. A tense time, then, for its lead Mark Jacobs. I spoke to the man behind Dark Age Of Camelot and Warhammer Online, and asked him about the story behind Camelot Unchained.> (more…)

Over the course of my many years as a game-enjoying human fleshcreature, I’ve been on many adventures that could be described as hell raids. I cannot, however, claim to have experienced the> Hellraid – which might also be some kind of lava-themed rollercoaster/water slide/burrito. But now, with Dead Island and Call of Juarez developer Techland claiming hell and the raiding thereof as its professional purview, that’s all about to change. And by change, I of course mean “bear a rather strong resemblance to either devil-thwacking Dead Island or first-person Diablo.” Here’s hoping for more latter and less former. Details after the break.

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We may have reached a point where many developers are attempting to coexist semi-peacefully with the big, bad, money-chomping wolf that is piracy, but that certainly doesn’t make the situation ideal. Pirates are still sauntering away with sloshing tubs of developers’ blood, sweat, and tears, so I think a little (or more than a little) spite is only fair. In the past, that’s meant theft-thwarting failsafes like Batman: Arkham Asylum’s flight-impaired hero and Serious Sam 3′s immortal pink scorpion, but Greenheart’s recently released Game Dev Tycoon might just be the best yet. In short, the pirated version makes your games crash and burn once they’ve hit the market because of – wait for it – piracy.

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I hate Adam Foster, creator of last decade’s rapturously-received Half-Life 2 mod series MINERVA (not to be confused with BioShock 2: Minerva’s Den) and more recently a Valve employee. I hate him not because he is talented, not because he works at a cool place and not because I have a pathological distaste for people called ‘Adam.’ (Smith, you’re fired). I hate him because today he has made me feel SO OLD.

One of the first long-form pieces I ever wrote for RPS was an interview with Mr Foster about his excellent, thoughtful mod, and its fine accomplishments in level design and mood. That was in 2007. Now it is 2013. Six years> later. And I am posting about MINERVA again. He now works at Valve, and meanwhile I’m still typing words into the same CMS, but older, grimmer, fatter. At least I’ve changed my chair twice since then. Something Foster has also done is repackage and spit’n'polish his mod for a well-deserved re-release on Steam today. (more…)