The winners of Indies Crash E3, an initiative to send ten indie studios to Los Angeles' AAA-dominated mega-tradeshow, have just been announced—but this isn't just a feelgood project to get some lesser-known names in the limelight. The ten winners will be affecting some serious change in the entire industry, says Ian Kinsey, director of SemiFormal Studios and the Indies Crash E3 project.

"I foresee us being able to affect a serious change at E3, and in the industry as a whole," Kinsey tells PC Gamer, when asked their reasons for doing this. "Indie games are arguably where most of the innovation and creativity come from, so getting more players addicted to those clever indie titles will force big developers to compete with equally compelling gameplay."

"Nothing against profit-seeking—if E3 didn't make money, it wouldn't happen—but being a show for the industry, we think E3 needs to be accessible to all facets, not just the most profitable ones."

Fans were asked to nominate their favorite indie studios, with Saibot Studios, Kaiju Combat, and Project Neumann topping the list—the full list of winners can be found at the Indies Crash E3 site. Each of the winning studios will receive two passes to the tradeshow, as well their nominator. Kinsey, himself an indie developer, admits that while other conventions and conferences are much more indie-friendly, it's important that indies have a right to be at E3 too.

"Frankly, E3 is the gaming show in terms of coverage," he explains. "E3 is an event meant to showcase what's going on in the industry; the big boys rule that playground. Yes, we indies are more welcome elsewhere, but we're a big part of the industry and it doesn't sit right that we don't have a major presence at an industry event."

 

We envision SimCity's residents sadly shaking their heads, mourning the students that never return from their commute to university—as well as the lack of a place to shop. These truly troubling issues, among others, are getting fixed in a patch tomorrow.

First off, some new additions. Early adopters of the game finally receive the SimCity Launch Park. Also, the newly introduced Edgewater Bay is a region with room to spare for seven cities and one great work site.

Dynamic changes in the Global Market prices will be re-enabled, as will leaderboards—EU West 3, Pacific 1, and Pacific 2's leaderboards will be up first, with other servers following suit throughout the day.

Meanwhile, fire stations have been busy training their drivers to not take such obtuse routes when responding to dire emergencies, but in the case they still find themselves caught in traffic, hey, Solar Farms now have a reduced fire risk. A fix will be deployed for the sad story of the college students who disappeared after figuring out how to cross the road, and there are also tuning fixes to Sim happiness now, especially in places without commercial zones. It seems I'm finally being listened to when I say that retail therapy is a very necessary thing in life.

Those are the most notable changes, but you can head on over to the EA forums to check out the full list of fine-tuning changes. Slowly, SimCity gets back up on its feet. Now how much longer do we need to wait for larger maps and subways?

If you’ve been itching for more Don’t Starve content, Klei Entertainment has just added some dark, dank caves for you to explore in an update today.

According to Klei’s blog post, you should find at least one cave entrance on the survival maps you played before the update, where you’ll discover spiders, bats, and bunnies that just want to welcome you to the neighborhood – with their teeth. You might, however, have better luck finding your underground pals in a newly generated map, which is supposed to have additional entrances to the caverns below.

Alongside the completely friendly, non-homicidal cave critters are some new controls to help make inventory management a little easier. Also, the NPC characters Abigail and Chester will no longer trigger any nasty traps. They could probably teach that useful skill to the other characters, but, you know, survival of the fittest and all that.

But before you go off spelunking for scraps of food, you should know that this is just the first in a series of updates, and there’s a chance you’ll find the non-creepy crawly kind of bugs during your stay in Don’t Starve’s underworld. Klei has said it's looking to squash those bugs while adding new monsters and objects in three or four additional updates.

We'll be stocking up on torches and poisoned carrots in the meantime. You know, the essential camping gear.

In a lengthy guest editorial at Kotaku, former EA CEO John Riccitiello wrote at length about what, in his view, the upcoming next generation of gaming consoles must deliver to succeed. The editorial was published before Microsoft's reveal of the Xbox One yesterday, which may require owners to check in to the Internet once every 24 hours.
After first reassuring readers that there will be plenty of space for mobile games and more involved console/PC games to coexist, the focus of Riccitiello’s essay shifts to the connectivity features available to next-generation consoles. Though he’s no longer the head of one of the biggest publishers in gaming, his opinions still shed some light on where gaming might be headed. This is, after all, the CEO who established Origin and oversaw the DRM plans attached to EA games since 2007.

“Gamers will want, and learn to love, the good parts of consoles being more connected to our digital lives than was possible with the machines launched eight years ago,” he wrote. “Some gamers fear the new consoles could be more about a DRM-walled garden than about enabling new types of connected gameplay. More about squashing second-sale (used games) than allowing us to play the games we own at our friends houses, in dorms or at home, without having to bring the disk with us. I don’t believe consoles managed as walled-gardens will succeed longer term.”

Hold on—isn't a game requiring an always-online connection a perfect example of a walled garden? It's a scenario where the publisher has total control over players' access to the content of the game. There are some fantastic things that connectivity can bring to games, like massive multiplayer battles and the ability to play with friends around the world. But one need only look at the recent launch of SimCity to be reminded that when always-online is wrapped around a game in a way that's even slightly unnatural, it can guide development to bad places as easily as it can guide it to great places.

Check out Riccitiello’s full editorial here.
Image via Ars Technica.

While the internet took cover from the barrage of Xbox One announcement news yesterday, some pertinent details for us PC gamers slowly rose to the surface of the TV-TV-Sports-Dog news conference. Among them were the release date for Battlefield 4, what the Xbox One might mean for PC gamers, and the hint that the Kinect 2.0 will eventually be available for Windows.

Via Polygon, Microsoft’s Ben Kilgore confirmed that Kinect support will be released on Windows “at some point down the line.” Since the new Kinect sensor will be shipping as a part of the Xbox One retail unit, will there be a standalone Kinect offering? Or will we have to shell out for the full Xbox One to get access to a Kinect for Windows gameplay? We don’t know.

The implications of a Windows-connected Kinect are intriguing, but not groundbreaking. Windows drivers were created independently not long after the first Kinect sensor released, and its usefulness is questionable—how will a desktop Kinect read players sitting about two feet away, as opposed to reading players sitting across the living room? Meanwhile, LeapMotion is working on desktop motion control that tracks hands in close proximity.

MechWarrior Online has been releasing new content and updates like clockwork over the past several weeks, which is great for a game still in the beta stage. Now a new canyon map has been released along with a new sniper-style mech of the month.

The Canyon Network map features sniper perches and tons of places to hide and ambush. It seems ridiculous to think about a multi-ton mech sneaking around with a sniper cannon, but just go with it. The canyon map features “vast arrays of slot canyons, small steep valleys and high plateaus,” according to the press release.



The new mech of the month, meanwhile, is the Blackjack, a 45-ton medium scrapper with jump jets and the capability for sniping and close-in damage. It is built for taking the high ground and raining down fire, so use it wisely in the altitude-shifting canyon environment.

Also returning in this update is the Champion Jenner, a new version of the popular speedy mech, and faction logo medallions to hang from the cockpit, presumably dangling on the rear view mirror.

Most people would be glad to get out of the unrelenting despair of a post-apocalyptic existence. But 4A and Deep Silver are hoping we'll want to jump right back into it, having announced the DLC that will be making its way to Metro: Last Light in the coming months. I suppose it's possible that their content plans include a cheery holiday to the underground equivalent of Blackpool. Although, on second thoughts, that'd be the most harrowing experience to date.

"Artyom’s story may have been concluded in Metro: Last Light, but there are other characters with stories to tell, some familiar locations that fans of the Metro series wanted to revisit, and some new challenges that 4A wanted to explore," teases 4A creative director Andrew Prokhorov. "Since completing the game we have been working on these new stories and hope to release them throughout the summer."

Those stories include the Faction Pack and Chronicles Pack, both being single-player content that "expands on the Metro: Last Light universe". In addition, there'll be the Tower Pack, which is billed as a "unique solo challenge to Metro veterans". Perhaps more interesting is the Developer Pack, which 4A cryptically say will "give creative players some interesting tools with which to explore the world of Metro."

As is the way of things now, you can pre-purchase all of the DLC through a Season Pass, giving you a slight discount for the gamble of paying sight unseen for four unknown content packs. Season pass buyers also get an in-game "Abzats". It's a semi-automatic shotgun with an alternate fire mode that fires six shells at once - which sounds like a fine way to completely waste some ammo. Notably Season Pass owners don't seem to get Last Light's other DLC purchase, the Ranger Mode unlock.

The Faction Pack will be up first, and it's due out in June.

Good news for people who think the only way to truly show dominance over an opponent is to rip out their spine: NetherRealm's 2011 version of Mortal Kombat is finally getting a PC release on July 3rd. Which should give you something to do over the summer months. Because given your fondness for hyper-violent competitive finishers, your friends probably aren't going to invite you to the local pub quiz.

Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition is being converted to PC by High Voltage Software. It will bundle all the game's DLC, including the characters Skarlet, Kenshi, Rain, and, for some reason, Freddy Krueger. You'll also get some old-school skins (hopefully attached to their character's bodies), along with three "Klassic Fatalities". Okay guys, we get it. You've misspelled your game. There's no need to overcompensate.

If you're the sort of person who prefers to forego digital purchases in favour of collecting plastic boxes, a physical release will follow on August 2nd.