H1Z1, SOE s upcoming zombie MMO, continues to draw ideas and feedback from the growing community and new subreddit. In a new post, SOE s John Smedley has shared some notes from a recent meeting on monetization that is, how the free-to-play H1Z1 will make money for its developers. The short version: character customization and wearable items will be up for sale.

We will be selling wearables. We felt like this will be a good, fair revenue generator, Smedley wrote in a post to the H1Z1 subreddit. However we recognize how important finding wearables in the world is so you'll be able to find and craft a lot of stuff. We agree that's something important. In a free-to-play game, what s not being sold is more important than what is. Anything that gives players an edge, from extra-large backpacks to weapons, medicine, and food, gives paying customers an unfair advantage over unpaid, usually newer, players. Smedley confirmed that We will NOT be selling Guns, Ammo, Food, Water... i.e. That's kind of the whole game and it would suck in our opinion if we did that.

The most encouraging thing about Smedley s posts is his deep involvement with the community and his frank answers. In a previous story, we praised Smedley for tackling head-on the game s resemblance to DayZ (which, let s be honest, is pretty stark). Smedley praised forum posters for their involvement in a thread brainstorming monetization ideas, which he says turned out to be a terrific source of ideas.

H1Z1 is still quite a way off, but so often we blast developers for being tone-deaf to the needs and feedback of their communities. Continuing to keep a community happy while you develop a game is a challenging tight-rope to walk, but Smedley s tone and engagement gives me some cautious optimism for the game s future.

Time to dust off that Kerrigan cosplay custom and maybe save some money. Blizzard just announced the dates and location for BlizzCon 2014, when tickets will go on sale, and for how much.
Tickets will go on sale in two batches, the first on Wednesday, May 7 at 7pm PT, and the second on Saturday, May 10 at 10am PT. You ll be able to buy them through the online event ticketing service Eventbrite at $199 a pop, not including applicable taxes and fees. If you really want to break the bank, there are also a limited number of tickets to an exclusive pre-BlizzCon Benefit Dinner, which will go on sale Wednesday, May 14 at 7pm PT for $750 (also not including taxes and fees). These include admission to BlizzCon, and will benefit Children s Hospital of Orange County.
You can find more information on the BlizzCon Ticket webpage.
The convention will take place at the Anaheim Convention Center in Southern California on November 7-8. As usual, if you go, you ll be able to get hand-on time with the latest version of Blizzard s games, attend the StarCraft II World Championship Series Global Finals, attend various panels with Blizzard developers, and take home all the convention swag you can carry.
If you re unable to attend, Blizzard also said that it will announce an option for a Virtual Ticket at a later date, which will give you access to a multichannel internet stream of the event.

With both the Tekken and SoulCalibur series to it s name, Bandai Namco clearly knows how to make a fighting game. It s not a genre that gets a lot of traction on PC, which is why the announcement of Rise of Incarnates, a free-to-play fighting game exclusive to the PC, is so intriguing.
Bandai Namco boasts that the game is from the creators of the Tekken and SoulCalibur franchises, but it doesn t at all look like a traditional fighting game. It will feature unfettered 3D combat, where teams of two run, fly, and battle through destroyed cities. From watching the trailer, you get the feeling that players aren t locked into the same 2D plane, but free to roam around big environments. If anything, it looks more like Namco Bandai s Naruto and Gundam fighting games, or the GunZ games, which are also free-to-play.
If you re interested, you can sign up for the Rise of Incarnates Alpha on the game s official site. It s also where you ll find more background on its delightfully ridiculous post-apocalyptic setting and characters. There s even a short comic book about it packed with ka-booms, pows, whumps, and other onomatopoeias you d expect from a story consisting mostly of violence.
Bandai Namco says Rise of Incarnates is set to release in the latter part of 2014.

Indie developer Digital Eel has released the third of its roguelike space adventure Infinite Space series, Sea of Stars, to Steam Early Access. A single-player strategy game with turn-based movement but real-time combat, the move to Steam follows the developer's developer successful Kickstarter funding campaign from 2013.

"The current Early Access build allows you to have short free-form adventures in the sandbox-like Infinite Space universe that is randomized each time you play, with a simple scoring system," reports the developer on its Steam page. "You can also set up combat scenarios with any of the existing ships and weapons in the Combat Simulator."



As we can see in the latest trailer above, IS3's approach to its science fiction universe isn't lacking in a certain kind of charm, as long as the risk of permadeath doesn't scare you off. The developer contrasts IS3 with previous Infinite Space games by pointing out the interactivity it's building into the roguelike:

"Locations like star bases will be real places with more to do than just trade items, and you may have to attack or defend one in combat," according to Digital Eel's website. "Individual NPCs as well as alien war fleets will go about their business that may or may not be aligned with your interests, and you will have to pick sides. Technology available to you as well as others will advance as time passes, including larger ships showing up."

Digital Eel is planning to have the game finished by the end of 2014 and will set the launch price at $10 the same as Early Access, according to Steam. There are even a few more videos documenting the game's progress, if you're interested.

Online matchmaking client GameSpy is shutting down on May 31, which means that the games that still rely on it will have to either transition to a new solution or go offline. It looked pretty grim for a long list of games when we first heard the news, but since then most of the popular games announced that they will not go silently into the night. Today, we got the great news from 2K that there might be bit of downtime, but that Borderlands and the Civilization series will be transitioning to Steamworks.
Beginning May 31, 2014, select legacy titles from the Borderlands and Civilization catalogs will temporarily go offline while service is transitioned to Steamworks, 2K said on its website. During the transition, players will experience interruption of several features, including online play, matchmaking and voice over Internet protocol (VOIP). Players will not experience interruptions to offline play.
Here s 2K s full list of games that are switching to Steamworks:


Borderlands
Civilization III
Civilization III: Conquests
Civilization III: Play the World
Civilization IV
Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword
Civilization IV: Colonization
Civilization IV: Warlords

As we ve previously reported, Electronic Arts, Activision, Epic Games, and Bohemia Interactive all announced that some or all of their games will survive the GameSpy shutdown.
So far, the biggest casualties seem to be the online multiplayer modes for Crysis and Crysis 2. If you re really upset by that, there s even an online petition you can sign.

Every week, keen screen-grabber Ben Griffin brings you a sumptuous 4K resolution gallery to celebrate PC gaming's prettiest places.

We've featured a lot of highly detailed 3D worlds in the screenshot showcase, now it's time to give some excellent 2D art the 4K treatment. Broken Age looks fantastic at ordinary resolutions, but now you can see Double Fine's finest work at crisp, detailed 4K res. Click on the links to see the full-size versions, and be sure to zooooom, unless you have a 4K monitor, in which case, just sit back and bask.



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Minecraft 1.8 will soon be released, and with it comes an overhaul to world generation. As of the upcoming patch due sometime next month a new option will let players tweak world generation settings, allowing for even wilder terrain types. A new video teases the update, and the number of values that can be adjusted. As someone who can't tell his Main Noise Scale from his Depth Noise Exponent, I'll be taking the less refined approach: crank it all to the max.

"There are 16 sliders which can be used to affect various aspects of Minecraft's terrain generator," explain Mojang, "but you can also type in values directly. You also have complete control over things like the sea level and what structures you want to generate."

In addition to the tweakable sliders, a number of presets will be made available. In the video, we get brief looks at Crazy Mountain Place, Crazy Island Place and Crazy Water Place. The list of options shown suggest that Crazy Lava Place and Crazy Cave Place will also feature.

For a full list of Minecraft 1.8's planned features, head over to the version update page of the Minecraft Wiki.

Steam's Portal 2 Workshop is filled with unique twists on the space-bending puzzler's central mechanic. With such creativity lurking in the primordial soup of the Workshop, it would take something special to crawl out and into the main Steam storefront.

That something is Thinking With Time Machine, and it fits the bill for two reasons. Firstly, it introduces a new time recording mechanic, in which you can replay your actions to create a temporary clone in-level. Secondly, it lets you look at your legs.

I've only made it through the first tutorial section so far, but already it looks to dramatically expand the complexity of the original game. Despite some wonky sections, the time machine device is an excellent creation giving a full picture-in-picture replay of the actions that you've recorded.

Over the weekend, plenty of bugs were reported, but it seems that today's patch has fixed many of them. If not, you can find workarounds to the most common issues with this forum thread.

You can grab Thinking With Time Machine from Steam. While the mod is free, you'll still need Portal 2 to play it.

Maybe you remember Prisoner of War, the 2002 third-person action adventure about escaping a PoW camp. If so, it's likely more due to its excellent premise than its shonky execution. For all that game's bugs and control quirks, it remains a compelling setting for a game which is why I have high hopes for The Breakout. It's a point-'n-click adventure that emphasises stealth, preparation and recruitment. But before you can plot your own getaway, the game has to escape the financial hole of a Kickstarter campaign.



"After nightfall, the camp becomes your domain and Guy s thievery skills come into play as you sneak out of your cell, past spotlights and guard dogs, picking locks and stealing tools as you go," the Kickstarter page explains. "If you are caught breaking any rules or sneaking around during lights out, your inventory will be confiscated and you will be thrown in the cooler. If you are caught trying to escape any of the perimeter fences, the tower guards will shoot on sight." The pitch goes on to explain that "not all is as it seems", with plot elements suggesting a supernatural theme to the game.

It's a strong idea, although there are some obvious worries. Point 'n click adventuring seems like a natural fit for a prison escape theme, but traditionally the genre isn't so good at action objectives like stealth. If these are fail-state minigames within the game, the developers will have to put a lot of work into ensuring they aren't to use a technical term annoying as all balls.



So far the campaign has raised almost 9,000 of the 49,500 goal. The Breakout has already made it through Steam Greenlight, and should it be successfully funded is due out July 2015.

Thanks, Indie Statik.

What was looking to be a year packed full of epic RPGs has become a little more spacious thanks to The Witcher 3's delay. Fret not, though, fans of magic, monsters and mead, for Dragon Age: Inquisition is still on course to land in the back half of 2014. Bioware have now confirmed the game's release date, announcing their October 7th target alongside a new trailer for the RPG sequel.

Dragon Age: Inquisition will put the player in a much more proactive role than previous games. As the founder of the Inquisition, and the only person able to close the fade rifts of the world, you're a more immediately instrumental actor in the series' plot. You can find more on the story, and Bioware's approach to the third Dragon Age game, in Chris's interview with executive producer, Mark Darrah.