Criterion co-founders Alex Ward and Fiona Sperry have left the Burnout/Need for Speed studio to pursue careers in the high-octane underground street racing scene - or to form a new company, if you prefer the truth. Ward tweeted yesterday that "the news breaks. Along with @FionaSperry I have left @CriterionGames. Welcome to the REAL #tothefuture". Sperry later tweeted that "so I guess its now official! The future starts here..."

It turns out all that talk of "the future" was referring to the new games company Ward and Sperry are setting up, as revealed in this further tweet by Ward. Will the pair make games about driving/smashing up beautifully shiny cars? Only time will tell, but Criterion were/are rather good that, I seem to recall.

EA (who, you'll remember, bought Criterion in 2004) confirmed to Polygon that "Alex Ward and Fiona Sperry have decided to leave EA. We appreciate their many contributions through the years and wish them well in their future endeavours.

"The incredibly creative and talented team at Criterion are hard at work on a new project for next-gen consoles as new IP continues to be a major priority across EA. Matt Webster is leading development of the new game and the Criterion studio moving forward. Matt has been part of Criterion for years and has an exciting vision for this new game."

Criterion had developed a couple of games in EA's Need for Speed series, before the majority of the company (80% of it) was moved to EA's new Ghost Games UK studio to work on the recent Need for Speed Rivals. Criterion Games still exists, as noted above by an EA spokesperson, but it's not been revealed what the newly slimmed down studio is working on yet.

Thanks, Eurogamer.

Tonight, 8PM GMT! Westwood's Blade Runner adventure game isn't just considered a fantastic conversion of one of SF's most beloved movies, but one of the greatest adventures ever created. But Richard has... well, let's just say always had more than a few issues with it. Have time and distance made its flaws disappear like tears in the rain, or will style and substance continue their bloody feud all the way to the neon streets of 2019?

Stream Archive

Phew, that was a long one! A few technical gremlins aside, that was fun. In particular, the chat box somehow slipped under the screen early on, and it was a while before it was noticed. And later on, what felt like a bug turned out to be a plot gate, while the game carefully avoided a couple of its most infamous screw-ups. Damn you, Izo. Even in death, your plot hole ridden carcass continues to annoy.

Next stream should be some time in February, celebrating or commiserating this year's Aching Solitude Awareness Day. Hope to see you then! (Follow my Twitter for updates)

Watch live video from ProbablyRichard on TwitchTV

Given the importance and success of games like Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2, and more recently Dota 2, Valve's modding DNA is pretty iron-clad. A new interview with co-founder Gabe Newell in the Washington Post gives some insight into just why it is that modders and their work seem to find a home at Valve.

It's not about having a "PhD from an Ivy League school," but rather seeing what people can accomplish on their own, according to Newell. Grades, for example, "don't tell you anything," he says.

"Well, the traditional credentialing really doesn't have a lot of predictive value to whether people will be successful," Newell says. "One of the things you have to do to be successful in our business is to be responsive to reactions that people have. You can give ten people the same set of forum posts and only one of them will actually take it in a productive direction. So the fact that somebody has been able to build something and ship it and not get sort of bogged down and give up and then deal with the gush of responses you get, filter through that in a useful and productive way and iterate is really the core of product design and development in our world."

While he points out that successful people often earn good grades, those who "have shown that ability to engage and entertain and respond to an audience" are demonstrating a vital attribute for people interested in working at Valve.

"So when you see somebody who has already done that, especially if nobody was teaching or leading them to do that it's a really good sign that they're going to be successful," Newell says.

It's worth noting that we've seen other cases of modding work taking a person to a job at a large game company. Remeber Alexander Velicky and his Skyrim mod? He works for Bungie now. You can also read here how Philipp Benzenzimmern Weber went from modding the Witcher 2 to a job at CD Projekt RED.

The entire interview, the first of two parts, is a good read for anyone interested in how the industry-leading company functions on the inside. Newell touches on the process of relating to customers, what he learned from the Diretide situation, as well as more on what it takes to get talented people to commit to Valve. We'll be keeping an eye out for part two when it surfaces.

 

Waiting for a reboot of one of your favorite franchises can be emotionally draining. Will it reignite an old flame like XCOM: Enemy Unknown, or defile your memory of it like SimCity? Stardock CEO Brad Wardell knows you're probably really stressed out about the Star Control reboot he's been working on for the past six months, but it's cool he said a bunch of things in an interview with Ars Techinca that should calm you down. Most importantly, he said that reboot will be a prequel and that it will include a multiplayer mode. "We plan to start the game around 2112 with aliens first contacting the Earthlings and the formation of Star Control," Wardell says.

Wardell says he has a lot of respect for the creators of the Star Control series, Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III. The two can't officially work on the reboot because of their commitment to Activision (where they're working on Skylanders), but Stardock is "talking to them" about the story, so as to better respect their vision. However, even with their support, Stardock isn't quite prepared to meddle with the future of that universe, which is why it's taking the series back in time.

Wardell also says that the multiplayer will bring bacc ship-to-ship combat. It will include the Super Melee mode from SC2, and maybe completely new, "more sophisticated" modes that Wardell says resemble Dota.

As he explained when he first announced the project, Stardock's reboot will draw its inspiration from Star Control 2. Its unique mix of role-playing, space combat, and adventure gameplay is commonly considered the high point of the series, and the reboot aims to hit the same notes only with much improved presentation provided by Oxide's impressive Nitrous engine.

Wardell doesn't expect to even consider a release date until late 2015, but he does expect PC to be the lead platform, and that that the reboot will be available on all platforms that the Nitrous engine supports.

Indie Lovecraft-alike Eldritch landed big last fall, earning itself a positive review and some kudos after only a few months of development. Now its designer, David Pittman, formerly of 2K Marin and BioShock 2 fame, has written up an extensive post-mortem on the dark, unknowable secrets inside the black heart of indie game creation. In addition to talking frankly about the game s budget and income, Pittman also revealed the absolute power of a Steam Sale to spike a game s numbers.

Eldritch has received a good amount of press coverage... but nothing has made as big an impact on traffic and sales as being featured on high profile Twitch and YouTube channels, Pittman writes. As YouTube and some major publishers continue to make it harder for these creators to monetize their videos, I encourage independent developers to make it easier. Get in contact with YouTubers, and make it easy for them to get in contact with you. Make preview builds readily available. Publish a written statement authorizing monetization of footage of your game. Game developers and YouTubers can have a very healthy symbiotic relationship, and if that s something that the industry heavyweights aren't interested in, indies will eat their lunch.

For launching after a mere two months of publicity, Eldritch saw slow but steady sales throughout October and November, with big spikes hitting any time the game was featured on Steam. Then, the game was discounted to 80% off as an overnight flash deal during the Steam Winter Sale. Here s what that looked like:



Image: David Pittman

I thought I was looking at the wrong numbers at first; Eldritch had literally doubled its units sold overnight! Even at such a low price, the revenue from the flash sale exceeded the total revenue of the Autumn Sale and the rest of the Holiday Sale combined, he writes.

Pittman s look back at his first indie title is a must-read for anyone making a game and trying to keep themselves fed at the same time. For more on Eldritch, check out the full analysis on Pittman s blog, read Chris s review of Eldritch, and check out the game on Steam.

In 2013 Valve told us that it s making a controller, an operating system, and is sanctioning PC manufacturers to create Steam Machines. The three-pronged campaign to put Steam in your living room, deliberately revealed ahead of the launch of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, was the biggest PC gaming news of the year. It s a move that establishes Valve as something that resembles a platform holder, something it s been hesitant to do despite being the PC s biggest online retailer.

We re glad that Valve is removing some of the obstacles to playing Civilization V on our couch. It gets us imagining PC gaming as a more social experience for friends, family members, and whatever other human beings you let into your house. That picture will come into focus at CES next week, when we expect a second wave of information from Valve on its initiative.

We ll also hopefully leave Vegas with a better understanding of how versatile the Steam Controller is, which we ve been investigating. But even if Valve s controller exceeds our expectations and plays a very wide set of games comfortably, there s an serious need for a keyboard and mouse platform that can be used effortlessly on a couch. I m challenging accessory makers like Razer and Logitech to make one.
Control issues
Just 290 of Steam s 2,459 games feature full controller support, and 502 feature partial support a cumulative third of the library. Even if we give generous consideration to Valve s claim that the Steam Controller older games into thinking they re being played with a keyboard and mouse, I m still going to need to edit command lines, to chat with my Steam friends, to Alt + Tab, and no amount of virtual keyboards, haptic feedback, and autocomplete will ameliorate that. In particular, I don t have high hopes for how well hotbar-heavy games like Dota 2, Starbound, Path of Exile, RTSes and MMORPGs will handle on the Steam Controller.

The Phantom Lapboard. "Do you like typing on a keyboard that s locked at a significant angle to the natural plane of your hands? Of course you don t," Maximum PC wrote in 2010.

The peripheral, though, isn t actually the problem it s the absence of a stable surface in the living room that rests above your legs. Our friends at Tested put it this way in an article from last July: If you just put your mouse and keyboard on the coffee table and perch on the edge of your couch, you're gonna hurt your neck and back, craning your neck to see the TV. Conventional mice and keyboards can work in the living room, but not without a desklike platform to rest them on.

Infinium Labs yes, that Infinium Labs now known as Phantom Entertainment, produced one of the only commercial solutions to this problem, the Phantom Lapboard: a $110, wireless, cantered keyboard and mouse combo. It s bad. The bottom line is that this thing is bad, our sister site Maximum PC said in its 2010 review. The keyboard only tilts at a single angle, the mouse only features two buttons and a scroll wheel, and there s no lip on the surface to contain it. The second you take your hand off the mouse to type something, that sucker s clattering to the floor, MaxPC wrote.



The Couchmaster is the weirder and even more expensive alternative, a hulking, 24 -wide, upholstered thigh prison that at least provides a stable, ergonomic surface. But it s a frown-inducing $180, and its cumbersome shape doesn t seem conducive to easy storage or use in any living room that doesn t feature a wide couch.

Apart from Ikeaing something wooden and rigid together, the two options PC gamers have are pricey and strange. If anything, they show us two designs that any future lapboards should avoid, or at least iterate on aggressively. With Valve s initiative, third-party manufacturers should be scrambling to produce a lapboard that accommodates gaming mice and keyboards, if only because it s an item that will help them sell more mice and keyboards. Razer has a small history of experiments like the Artemis prototype and the Razer Hydra, but more practically, they already make left-handed keypads like the Orbweaver and Nostromo, devices that would be the perfect starting points for a compact lapboard. Logitech would be another good candidate; they make plenty of mainstream wireless peripherals, and on the gaming side they have an ambidextrous keypad we like, the G13.

Valve should want such a peripheral to be available as an alternative to its controller. After all, a sturdy, inexpensive, versatile gaming lapboard would absolutely increase the adoption of living room PCs and SteamOS. Valve s goal isn t to sell controllers, it s to get you playing PC games on your couch, and we should all want that proposition to be as effortless as possible.

An innovative controller can t and won t replace the decades-long relationship PC gamers have with WASD because PC gamers don t like compromise we expect high framerate, high resolution, low cost, and total freedom to modify our devices and games. And while we re grateful for a controller that s built with PC gamers and PC games in mind, it s essential that we get a compromise-free way of bringing the core implements of our hobby, the mouse and keyboard, into the living room.

The holidays were good to Next Car Game and its particular vision of motorized mayhem. After Bugbear Entertainment's Kickstarter to fund its latest racing game fell short of its goal in November, the developer asked for support through the project's website. Backers there have contributed more than $490,000, well clear of its original crowdfunding goal.

With a scheduled release window of "early spring," the studio released a playable, early-access version of the game to right before Christmas to its supporters. A separate free "technology demo" has also been available from Bugbear if you sign up for the developer's newsletter, with more than 50,000 downloads already taking place, according to VG247.

"Since it was the first time we were going to show the game to everyone for real, we were very anxious to hear the feedback, but we really couldn't have asked for a better Christmas present: the response has been great!" reports Bugbear on Facebook. "Although our game is still at a pretty early stage, and as such, contains missing features and numerous bugs, you have been loving most what we've got. We ve also received a plenty of smart suggestions for future improvements, some of which will find their way into the final game."

For more on Next Car Game, check out our recent hands-on report on the kind of wreckage you can expect to see. If nothing else you can take a look at just how much carnage you can cause with Bugbear's game engine, which is also demonstrated by the developer in the video below.



 

Dragon Age: Inquisition producer Cameron Lee has made a suspiciously uncommitted statement about a multiplayer mode for the game: "The Mass Effect multiplayer stuff is really good, so we've certainly looked at options like that, but we haven't decided on anything in terms of multiplayer at this point," Cameron tells OXM at a preview event. The statement is the latest in what is now a years-long tease about a multiplayer mode, which would be quite the novelty for a fantasy role-playing game of this type.

We first heard rumor of the multiplayer mode in 2011 when "industry insiders" slipped a few details to Kotaku, with the extra juicy tidbit that you'll actually get to play as a dragon, allegedly. We were also just starting to learn more about Mass Effect 3's multiplayer mode at that time. BioWare seemed to be pretty happy with how it turned out and critics didn't hate it either (though we weren't big fans), so its overall success should encourage BioWare to add a similar mode to Dragon Age: Inquisition.

However, Dragon Age: Inquisition is currently slated for a Fall 2014 release, giving BioWare almost year to cut or commit to multiplayer. Also, as Cameron points out in the interview, it'll be more challenging to implement such a mode in Dragon Age: Inquisition than it was in Mass Effect 3, which became more and more like a shooter with every release, a genre where multiplayer is far more commonplace.

Either way, it seems like BioWare is trucking along with Inquistion. We last reported on the game when the team announced it was going to play through the "Holiday Build," which includes the complete storyline and all gameplay systems.

Assuming that the game is now stable enough in order for you to take advantage of it, Battlefield 4's double XP weekend for Premium members begins today. Previously scheduled to ring in the new year last Sunday, December 29, the event was postponed due to the "intermittent connectivity" issues we've been covering since the game launched in late October last year.

The event will last until 9pm PST on Sunday, January 5. That leaves you a little over 50 hours to level up, so go ahead and pretend that you're still on Holiday break and marathon BF4 for another couple of days. Not doing so would be irresponsible. You didn't pay that $50 Premium subscription fee for nothing, did you?

If you've somehow been playing BF4 this whole time unscathed by these issues and also managed to avoid our incessant coverage of them consider yourself lucky. The game launched in a pretty bad state, with many players unable to connect or stay connected to games, and many game breaking bugs. It got so bad that DICE announced it's halting development on all other projects, and posted a "top issue tracker," listing the known bugs on different platform and DICE's progress on fixes for them.

It was such a troubled launch, in fact, that multiple law firms are looking into class action lawsuits against Electronic Arts, claiming that EA executives misrepresented the quality of BF4 and how they expected the game to preform at launch so they can sell stocks at an inflated price. To be clear, these are nothing but some strong accusation at the moment, as no legal action was taken yet.

War might never change, but the owners of it do. That can problematic if you've been selling that war, and suddenly find your previous contracts have been cancelled. You know what, this metaphor was flawed from the start. Law. Law never changes. That's why Steam, GOG and any other digital retailers were forced to remove Fallouts 1, 2 and Tactics from sale (although, not from the libraries of previous buyers), after ownership of the franchise transferred from Interplay to Bethesda at the start of the new year. Naturally, it would make sense for the new owners to also want to sell their wars, and - for one store at least - they say they're working hard to do that.

Hey, Bethesda! Do you have a tweet that neatly encapsulates your public statement on the matter?

We re working to return classic @Fallout games (1, 2, Tactics) to Steam and will provide an update when they re ready to go.— Bethesda Softworks (@Bethblog) January 2, 2014


You'll notice the absence of any distributor not called Steam in that statement. Shortly after, responding to a question, Bethesda stated "we ll have a look at other options once we handle Steam."

As for GOG in particular, they later specified why the Steam deal is taking priority.

@karimchelli @Fallout we're not currently a publisher on GOG, which is why it's a little easier returning them to Steam.— Bethesda Softworks (@Bethblog) January 3, 2014

So the lack of an existing deal doesn't preclude the eventual creation of one. Which sounds positive for an eventual DRM-free re-release of the GOG versions, even if we're a long way from confirmation.

We've reached out to GOG for comment on a possible deal.