Last month, the Entertainment Software Association announced this year's E3 conference in Los Angeles will be open to the public—having been exclusive to media and industry folk previously. If you're able to attend, there's a good chance you'll be able to get your hands on Fallout 4 VR. 

Announced at the Bethesda conference at last year's E3, the developer's Todd Howard has since spoken excitedly about the Commonwealth's virtual reality incarnation on a few occasions, however vice president Pete Hines has confirmed it'll be at this year's LA event. 

Speaking to Hip Hop Gamer (via GameRant), Hines told the prominent YouTuber that Fallout 4 VR will feature at E3 2017 and that Howard had recently told him it's "the most incredible thing you've ever seen in your life."

Expectedly enthusiastic, Hines adds: "You can’t even imagine what it’s like, playing in VR and how realistic it looks and everywhere you turn your head. It is going to blow your mind. It is the craziest thing you’ve ever seen."

While Hines doesn't say whether or not Fallout 4 VR will be playable at the conference, I'd wager something will be given the fact Howard has previously suggested it can be played "from start to finish right now", even if there's still work to be done. In an interview last year, Howard said movement was, at that stage, governed by teleportation, but that he and his team were "experimenting with a few other techniques."

And if something is playable, can we expect a concrete launch date this June? I guess we'll find out in less than three months' time.

Every time you watch a match of the LCS, it’s apparent who the stars are: there’s the five guys on each team, and also their coach. The casters are pretty important too, actually, because they’re narrating the match. There’s the referees and technical support stepping in, and... well, okay, there’s a lot of people, and that includes people who don’t show up on cameras or to the studios on game day. In fact, the entire esports industry is reliant on these people. Like a mighty iceberg, there’s the visible tip and then a massive, lurking depth that you don’t see. Also similar to icebergs? The fact that these hidden jobs have the potential to absolutely sink the industry.

Meet the industry 

So, who are these hidden people? Well, while you see a coach go out on stage with the players, he’s often just one guy, and there’s an entire infrastructure staff you’re not seeing. There are multiple coaches (positional coaches, life coaches, head coaches), and then there are squads of analysts backing them up. There are sports psychologists and life management people involved too, working with these players to ensure that no one gets scurvy or goes bankrupt as soon as they leave the organization. These people often have managers who, well, manage their daily operations.

Keep in mind, too, that all of this needs to be funded. Enter content creators and social media people. While their work appears, on the surface, to be fluff, they’re actually curating the lifeblood of an organization. Tweets and posts go out, contests go live, fan engagement increases... and with it comes sponsorships. Andy “Reginald” Dinh, the founder of Team SoloMid, remarked in an interview with Thorin that TSM employed two staff for every player they had.

Is it possible to get by with less? Absolutely. Smaller organizations are forced to mostly funnel funding into their players. Once you get into the big leagues, though, teams can live or die by their management of these resources. It’s not enough to win—you have to translate that into something meaningful. Consider, if you will, the ROX Tigers. They were one of the biggest teams in the world, made top four two years in a row, and had arguably some of the best players in their roles. Not only that, but these guys were genuinely likable. Unfortunately, ROX couldn’t translate this into sponsorships. This suggested that they lacked the staff who are experts in doing this, and so their dreams died at Worlds 2016.

Best of the bunch 

So, these people are essential, so they must all be qualified, prepared, and good to go, right? While orgs work hard to find the right people, there’s a massive talent problem. Have you ever sat down with a young relative, eager to talk to them, and asked, “hey, so where do you want to work?” They reply “GameStop”, not because they’re interested in stocking shelves or dealing with customers, but because they like games. You grimace and politely change the subject, because you don’t want to kill their dreams.

Well, the same thing is true of esports. Every position is mobbed by people who are eager to get into the field, but are running off enthusiasm, not experience. In short, applicants tend to be esports fans first, and qualified second. The end result is a constant barrage of noise before any signal can be sorted out.

The other barrier to qualified applicants is that they have to pay their dues first. I am extremely lucky to say that I am currently writing about esports enough (including a staff writer position with an org) that I am paying my bills. It took me a solid year of working in esports to get there, and I still consider myself extremely lucky. If I didn’t have a husband to support me, I would not be working in esports today. The most uncommon part of my story is that I very quickly started getting paying work due to luck and circumstance. Anyone who wants a job needs to go through a similar trial: work for peanuts, and pray it pays off.

This is difficult for writers and content creators, but they actually have a better shot than coaches and analysts. There are fewer analyst and coach positions, and unless you’re working with a big org and living in-house, they tend to pay relatively poorly. The end result is that you have people who are living, breathing, and working esports while living on the dime of a spouse or a parent, hoping that this gamble pays off.

What comes next?

Not all of these jobs are created equal; a content creator and a strategic coach have very little in common. While content creators and writers have the ability to find freelance work or set up shop on YouTube and Patreon, analysts and support staff don’t have these options. That means you have competent analysts, coaches, and support staff who are walking away to find a line of work that puts food on the table. Even low-level support staff who are working with LCS orgs can struggle to make ends meet—what of their peers in Challenger?

Every year, we all like to write thinkpieces about the gap between NA, EU, and China. The answer that is always floated is ‘well, they have more infrastructure’. It’s always exciting to compare big plays and speculate on team drama. “We have to pay more people more money so they do more work”, by comparison, is a little dry. That’s where we’re at, and the weird middling state that the market is in means that these experts we need to compete are difficult to find under a screaming horde of applicants who boast a couple of YouTube videos. There’s no quick fix... but the first step is probably a healthy dose of awareness about just how many people it takes to run a team in esports. 

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered, aka the game you can only play if you buy some other game, is getting a big expansion soon. Well, it's getting a big expansion right now if you happen to be playing on a PS4, but since you're probably playing it on PC (if at all) then you'll have to settle for "soon".

As far as map packs go it's a generous one: it ushers in four classic maps, completely remastered and re-textured, including Broadcast (must include a broadcast studio), Chinatown (must be set in Chinatown), Creek (must have a creek in it) and Killhouse (must be a house where you kill things).

The expansion also features "10 rare supply drops". No idea how much this will cost as they're not talking PC yet, but there's a taste of what's coming in the trailer below.

Tripwire Interactive says the new, free Descent Content Pack for Killing Floor 2 marks a "significant update" to the game with the introduction of "an all-new type of map." Descent, the map that gives the pack its name, is built for the new Holdout sub-mode that confronts players with randomized dungeon layouts with each new wave of Zeds. 

As the patch notes explain, Holdout "stitches many rooms together differently each time you play," adding an extra layer of complication to the Survival mode because you don't know where the Zeds are going to come from. Tripwire first revealed the mode in mid-February, saying it "will combine rooms together dynamically as players traverse the dungeon via drop-downs to enter the next floor (with the only constants being the starting area and the boss room)." 

The update also brings the community-created Nuked map into the official lineup, and introduces a pair of new weapons, the Spitfire revolver, which can be wielded individually or akimbo, and the Stoner 63A light machine gun. The Stoner looks like an especially fun piece of hardware: Dual pistols are cool, but nothing says meat grinder like a Vietnam-era LMG with a 150-round drum magazine in a tightly-packed hallway. 

The Killing Floor 2: Descent Content Pack is free, and Killing Floor 2 is going free on Steam this weekend too: From 10 am PT on March 23 to 10 am PT on March 27, you can play it all you want at no cost and, if you dig it, buy the full game for half-price. 

It seems a little odd to me that the Persians weren't in Civilization 6 right from the start, but better late than never, and today 2K announced that the Achaemenid (Persian) Empire, with Cyrus the Great at its head, will be added to the game in an upcoming Civilization and Scenario pack. 

The Persian unique unit is the famed Immortal, a replacement for the Swordsman unit, which boasts a ranged attack and strong defense in combat, while its unique improvement, the Pairidaeza—Persian Gardens—provides culture, gold, and appeal, with bonuses for adjacent tiles. I won't even try to spell its unique ability (related to satraps, as best I can make out), but it gives Persia a free trade route, and bonuses to internal trade routes, when Political Philosophy is unlocked. 

As for Cyrus, he brings the Fall of Babylon ability to the table, which provides bonus movement to Persian units following the declaration of a surprise war. He also suffers reduced diplomatic penalties for declaring surprise wars, a handy trait if you're the sort of ruler who gets along well with others but really can't be trusted. 

2K said Persia "can be very successful with sneak attacks," but it also used an image of Tomyris of Scythia when talking about Cyrus' military acumen, and she, you may recall, reportedly cut the man's head off and dunked it in a bucket of blood when he messed with her. Kind of mixed signals on that point, then. On the other hand, Persia can also be grown into a wealthy and powerful nation through the more peaceful application of Wonders and the Pairidaeza, so maybe that's a better way to go. 

A release date hasn't been announced, but 2K said Persia will be one of two nations included in an upcoming Civilization and Scenario Pack. Based on previous releases, you can expect it to set you back $5, and it will be free if you own the Civ 6 Digital Deluxe edition. 

The open qualifiers for Dota 2’s Kiev Major were an opportunity for teams and players throughout the world to earn a shot at one of the biggest prize pools in esports. According to tournament organizer FACEIT it drew the most teams of any open qualifier for a Valve event yet, with over six thousand teams across the globe entering the various regional qualifiers. Unfortunately, even in an esteemed tournament, large crowds can draw troublemakers.

Case in point: a team called ‘Holocaust N****rs’ was able to progress through the first five rounds of the European open qualifiers. When a Reddit user drew attention to the team's name in a thread that has since disappeared, outrage and debate followed as the team continued through the event. The matter even drew ire from OG player Fly.

Many on Reddit and Twitter found themselves wondering where the FACEIT admins were during this period. When reached out for comment, a representative for the site explained that the team had worked around the administrators by using the offensive name in match lobbies. When used as a lobby team name, the FACEIT tournament system wouldn’t display the name to human FACEIT admins.

“Their name while on the FACEIT platform was absolutely normal and contained no offensive language” FACEIT told us. “While on the FACEIT platform all team names are visible to our admins and can therefore be controlled.” “However, once the tournament has started and in-game lobbies have been formed, teams can then use a different in-game name from their FACEIT team account name. So in this instance once they joined the Dota 2 in-game lobby what they do within the new server client is outside of our control as it cannot be seen by our team and it’s no longer part of our platform. By the time the issue was raised the team had already lost the tournament so we were unable to take any action.” 

They point to their policies, which state that an inappropriate name or avatar is cause for a one-week matchmaking ban. Had the team been caught before their loss, this means they would have been barred from playing for the duration of the tournament. This also raises the question of whether opposing teams or spectators in earlier rounds were willing to bring up the issue with the admins, or were aware of the anti-obscenity policies in place (or cared at all). 

Dotabuff co-founder ’Lawliepop’ also responded to the controversy, sharing the site’s official stance:

“This is a cut and dry situation. Names including hate speech are completely unacceptable,” she says. She explains that they already have anti-obscenity and anti-hate policies in place, including censoring avatars and team or player names. However, there’s only so much the site could do, given that they merely scrape data from the Valve API. 

“I think with this particular name, it's an egregious situation due to the fact that it is in a Valve qualifier,” she says. “Ultimately, this is a place where Valve has the opportunity to improve the standards they have for names in Dota. Anything Dotabuff does is just a band-aid on the problem and not a real solution.”

While the Dotabuff staff often comes together to figure out how to implement anti-hate policies, even the moral question of doing so as a data aggregator is tough to answer.

“I want to remove the names, but at the same time I feel conflicted. This is a part of the community, and often Dotabuff will be the only record of it. I don't want erasing the existence of hate to convince the community that these things don't happen. I don't think that part of playing a game should include subjecting yourself to hate speech to participate.”

“I really hope that 5 years from now we can look back on this as part of Dota's ugly past and something we have moved on from.” 

It’s already become a tricky situation. In the brief time between the statement and the time of writing, a Reddit user claimed that the word ‘negro’ got filtered out on the Dota 2 results site. This drew claims of anglocentrism: while the word is a slur in many countries, specifically both American continents (especially in the USA) and Europe, it’s the direct translation of ‘black’ in Spanish. 

Controversy surrounding racism and other “-isms” isn’t new to the Dota 2 community by any means. The most pertinent example of a race-related meme is 'three Merlinis,' referring to the respected Asian analyst, player and caster. The joke is meant to imply that three Asians on a stream look similar, even if they’re far from it.

Most recently, caster TobiWan became upset when a similar 'fat, normal, skinny Tobi' joke rose to the front page of the Dota 2 subreddit, featuring three white, blond men of different sizes, including Tobi in the middle. While the community came to support him when he expressed his discomfort, many pointed out that when woman personalities faced similar harassment, Tobi himself told them to deal with it or grow a thicker skin, highlighting a double standard in the community for different personalities.

Veteran player Singsing was also recently brought into the spotlight when his channel submitted and had approved racist emoticons, featuring blatantly crude black stereotypes, as well as mods with crude commands for ASCII art, including one that spelled out the n-word in a fancy font. It was also noted that Sing had some of the ASCII commands and modded bots for at least a few months, if not years. While Singsing himself was put under blast for the emoticons themselves, it brought Twitch’s credibility into question given they approved the emoticons. Plus, there was the issue of how Twitch staff would let the streamer use these tools when many staff would spectate and often participate in the stream and its chat.

The community and developers in the Dota 2 community have had mixed experiences with, and reactions to, the various offensive and crude happenings that come with such a vast and diverse international community. While the developers of the game and its peripheral sites hold a degree of power over what makes it into the public, the community has the ability and responsibility to discuss and inform about harmful actions that could hurt both those within the game and onlookers, especially given how user-centric the Dota 2 scene is. A politically turbulent age brings those looking to escape from everyday life into Dota 2, and the scene will have to learn how to confront hostile and exclusionary viewpoints so everyone can play fairly and safely.

Causal Bit Games' Chris Obritsch and his young daughter Madelyn are developing Battle Princess Madelyn, a Ghouls N Ghosts-styled retro platformer that was born from Madelyn's love of watching her father repeatedly defeat the sidescroller's first Shielder boss. It's been successfully crowdfunded and, at the time of writing, has racked up just shy of CA$120,000 with 24 days to go—having asked for just half of that total from the off. 

"[Maddi] has this thing for the boss in the first Ghouls N Ghosts level, and she would make me play it over and over again," says Chris Obritsch in the following Kickstarter campaign video. "Finally one day I was playing and she said: 'daddy, I wanna fight Greenhead,' and I was like, 'what do you mean?' She said: 'I wanna be in the game, and I want to be the character fighting Greenhead.'" 

Obritsch was then forced to explain Ghouls N Ghosts is someone else's game and that this can't be done. He then suggests building their own game, whereby Madelyn takes centre stage. Madelyn replied: "But Daddy, girls can't be knights", to which Obritsch responded: "Pfft, what colour do you want your armour?"

Already Greenlit, Battle Princess Madelyn now has a Steam page and a "TBA" release date.  With 24 days to go on its Kickstarter campaign, and fast closing in on 200 percent of its original ask, the scope of BPM is sure to grow—particularly as it continues to hit successive Stretch Goals in turn. 

Whenever it does land (Kickstarter rewards for digital copies are, for now, expected in February 2018), players can expect ten levels each with up to five stages, ten weapon types which change alongside the game's three armour sets, up to ten unique enemies per level, and a ghostly dog companion named Fritzy, to name but some of the platformer's features. Here's a glance at Battle Princess Madelyn's latest teaser: 

And here's the devs on what it's all about: 

"Battle Princess Madelyn is a game that follows the journey of a young knight in training, Madelyn, and her ghostly pet dog Fritzy. They set out on a journey to save her kingdom and her family from the clutches of an evil wizard.

"Set in the vein of Ghouls N' Ghosts and Wonder Boy 3: The Dragon's Trap, the instantly classic and familiar gameplay will transport old-school gamers back to their heyday. The self-adjusting difficulty will allow for even the most novice of gamer to pick up and play.

"Join Madelyn as she battles through graveyards, swamps, castles, countryside and more! Polished gameplay, breathtaking visuals, jaw-dropping dual soundtracks and epic adventures await!" 

Fancy any of that? Battle Princess Madelyn has a free pre-alpha demo. Head this way to download it on Steam, and over here to do so on IndieDB. 

Last week, a Dark Souls 3 livestream teased some of the new features heading to Lothric by way of its second The Ringed City DLC. A substantial patch is en route to the base game this Friday—which From Software and Bandai Namco have now outlined via extensive patch notes. 

Update 1.1 lands on March 24, and will see PC servers down for maintenance from 8am-10am GMT/1am-3am PST and everything in between. 

Besides the Dragon Ruins and Grand Roof PvP areas previously detailed, a host of tweaks and adjustments befall matchmaking, such as a new function that allows "one team of players to match with one password, and the other team to match with another password"—something which should in turn make partnering with pals much easier. 

The update will also usher in a number of bug fixes, as well as a range of alterations to animations and attack motions. The correction value for Sharp and/or Heavy weapons upgrades has been improved, as has the Bleed build-up of Blood infusions and the Poison build-up of Poison infusions. 

"Along with improving correction value for Sharp or Heavy weapons' upgrade, adjusted correction value for Refined weapons' upgrade," reads update 1.1's patch notes. It adds: "Improved defense and also increased weights for heavy armor."

Dark Souls 3's 1.1 update rolls out at 2pm GMT/7pm PST on Friday March 24, and its full list of patch notes can be viewed here. Its Ringed City DLC—the game's second and final portion of DLC—is due one week from today on Tuesday, March 28.  

Unreal Tournament's Facing Worlds is easily one of the best multiplayer maps in the history of multiplayer maps—with its towering end-to-end monolith bases, arched thoroughfares, and gorgeous space-faring backdrop. Omri Petitte once described the arena as a "sci-fi uppercut right into your eyeballs", which I think is a pretty wonderful synopsis. 

An unnamed Counter-Strike: Global Offensive modder feels the same, it seems, having brought the 17-year old map to Valve's perennial war-torn shooter (with modder Jeisen having cleaned it up and filed it on Steam Workshop). 

As published by YouTube person Mr Error, here's a gander at Facing Worlds in all its reworked CS:GO-inspired glory: 

While I'm unsure if Facing Worlds would work quite as well in Counter-Strike, hearing that theme tune, marvelling at far-off planet Earth, and watching the player scoot around vantage points by way of teleportation really takes me back. 

Jeisen's Facing Worlds (UT 99) Final can be subscribed to over here. Before you go, let me share Omri's 'Why UT's Facing Worlds is one of the best multiplayer maps ever' video in full: 

Thanks, Kotaku. 

Yesterday brought word of Square Enix's up-to-75-percent-off sale, and today brings with it news of Humble Store's THQ Nordic Week limited-time discount period. 

Offering up to 80 percent off select games, the THQ Nordic Week sale casts its wallet-friendly net over some of the publisher's games (Nordic Games, you may recall, rebranded last year) such as the Red Faction Collection—which includes Red Faction, Red Faction 2, Red Faction Guerrilla, Red Faction Armageddon and Red Faction Armageddon's Path to War DLC—for £7.99/$11.99. 

The Darksiders Franchise Pack comes with the Darksiders Warmastered Edition, the Darksiders II Deathinitive Edition, and 13 slices of DLC for £8.99/$9.99; while the Arcania and Gothic Bundle—which houses Arcania: Fall of Setariff, Gothic 1, Gothic 2: Gold Edition, Gothic 3 and Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods Enhanced Edition—is going for £7.99/$9.99. 

Humble's THQ Nordic Week sale can be viewed in full over this way, and, as always, I'd love for you to share your own bargains of choice in the comments below.

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