It’s been an action-packed month so far and various tournaments are nearing the finish line, while others are just getting started. There’s still plenty of action from the Dota 2: International 7 Main Qualifiers to the Hearthstone: Wild Open Playoffs. We even have the CS:GO: PGL Major Kraków 2017 Offline Qualifier to look forward to. All the details on this weekend’s events can be found below.
League of Legends: NA LCS
Immortals continued to dominate the competition in week four coming out on top in their match against Counter Logic Gaming with a 2-0 sweep. The first game started out with a strong early-game from Immortals, but they struggled to turn that lead into any significant objectives. This quickly changed when CLG made several poor teamfights that resulted in IMT taking objectives. CLG struggled to defend their base as structures fell all around them and they eventually fell to the mounting pressure. Dardoch started game two with some strong early ganks that gave CLG and early lead, however, CLG suffered the same problem as the first game and they constantly engaged in unwinnable team fights. Meanwhile, IMT simply punished CLG’s over-aggression and methodically took objectives until they closed out the game. Week 5 starts today and we shall see whether anyone can contest IMT for the top spot. The full schedule and stream can found by heading over to lolesports.com.
League of Legends: EU LCS
Fnatic still remain at the top of the leaderboard and they show no signs of slowing down as we enter week five of play. The ultra-aggressive attrition approach employed by FNC has been extremely successful and ROCCAT has been the only team that has been able to punish their playstyle. However, H2K decided not to follow in ROCCAT’s footsteps, as they chose to engage Fnatic head-on. This decision proved to be extremely detrimental and FNC’s aggressive playstyle simply went unpunished. FNC constantly continued to ramp up the pressure throughout both games and secured a quick 2-0 victory, putting them firmly at the top of the leaderboard. FNC will be aiming to continue this success when they face Splyce today. The full schedule and stream can found by heading over to lolesports.com.
Dota 2: International 7 Main Qualifiers
The Dota 2 International main qualifiers wrapped up for most regions yesterday, but China will finish their qualifier matches today. For many professional teams these qualifiers are the most important steps towards a successful season. The main qualifier features a two stage format and only 60 teams (10 from each region) will eventually make it to the gruelling group stage of the tournament. The winning team will secure their share of the massive $1,600,000 prize pool and claim international glory. The full schedule and stream for each region can be found by heading over to dotabuff.com.
CS:GO: PGL Major Kraków 2017 Offline Qualifier
Sixteen teams from various regions have made their way to the PGL Studio in Bucharest, Romania where they will clash to determine the eight participants who will be joining the eight Legends in July 16th. CS:GO teams GODSENT, G2 Esports, Team Liquid and Team Dignitas are just a few of the teams that will participate in the PGL Major offline qualifier. These teams will battle their way through a best-of-one Swiss format over the course of four days. The Teams that manage qualify will be invited to participate at the LAN finals in Poland, whilst those who fail will be packing their bags for the disappointing journey home. Today’s matches begin at 00:00 PDT / 09:00 CEST and continue throughout the day. The stream can be found by heading over to Twitch.
Overwatch: Apex Season 3
Overwatch Apex Season three continues to heat up as the top teams from each group head into today’s semifinals. The finals are fast approaching and every team will be trying to claim the $177,055 prize pool. Today’s match will see AF.Blue take on Lunatic-Hai at 03:00 PDT / 12:00 CEST, while the match between KongDoo Panthera and Team EnVyUs starts July 4 at the same time. Make sure to check out the full stream over on Twitch.
Hearthstone: Global Games
The Hearthstone Global Games tournament enters week 12 of play today and every team has been fighting hard to claim the top spot in phase two. Half the teams from the original 48 have now been knocked out and the remaining players will be hoping to make it to the next stage. Group C and Group D’s matches concluded yesterday for US viewers, but those of you in Europe can catch all the action today at 03:00 CEST. It’s a long road ahead for the pros and every team will be fighting hard to secure the $300,000 prize pool in phase two of the tournament. The full schedule and stream for week four can be found here.
Hearthstone: Wild Open Playoffs
The first ever official Wild Open Hearthstone tournament will take place this weekend where 64 players from the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific will battle it out. Competition will be fierce and only the best players will have a shot at claiming the $25,000 prize pool. The Hearthstone Wild Open will be played in a best-of-five Conquest format with one ban. Online qualifiers took place June 9 and now the top two players from the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific will advance to the single elimination playoffs, where they will be joined by the top two players from China. The playoffs start Saturday at 10:00 PDT / 19:00 CEST and continue at the same time tomorrow. The full schedule and stream can be found here.
Heroes of the Storm: Global Championships Phase 2
Phase two of the HGC is well underway and teams from around the world will continue to battle it out for the $425,000 USD prize pool. Gale Force eSports still remain on top and they will be aiming to take down Tempo Storm this weekend. However, Roll20 did manage to maintain an even footing with Gale Force and while the team eventually lost, they did show some promising plays that they will be aiming to improve in week two. Each team has their eyes firmly set on the next Western Clash in August, so every victory will help increase the chance of taking the title. Make sure you head over to heroesofthestorm.com to find the schedule and stream for all the matches being played this weekend.
For those who bounced straight off Rain World due to its difficulty, the game's forthcoming expansion will be a good reason to return. Among other things, the update will usher in two new playable characters, basically coloured variations of the game's slugcat protagonist.
The new yellow slugcat (aka The Monk) will attract less ire from the game world's volatile inhabitants and is, overall, "more at peace with nature". Meanwhile, the new pink slugcat (aka The Hunter) will up the difficulty further. "The hunter must make predators into prey, killing and eating larger creatures such as lizards to survive," so says the description.
"Its heightened metabolism makes it faster, stronger and more dangerous, but also means that it requires significantly more food to survive hibernation." Good luck with that, masochists, though the hunter will be able to carry more spears.
New creatures, flora and fauna will be added too, and will feature depending on which of the three slugcat varieties you're playing as. But most interestingly, a new multiplayer mode will be introduced. It's a four-player arena-style mode which take place in "over 50 unlockable new rooms".
Finally, Steamworks compatibility is being worked on too, with a level editor scheduled to roll out with the update. As for when that happens, there's no official date yet, but we'll let you know. Read the full update post over here, or read my review of the game.
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind® Game of the Year Edition
Just between you and me, the first time I played Morrowind it was on an Xbox. It was still a great game, but getting the PC version and being able to mod it made it even better. We praise it for being the last truly weird Elder Scrolls game, but we should also remember Morrowind as one of the clunkiest. To enjoy its mushroom trees and settlements built in dead insects meant putting up with rough combat, a leveling system that needed gaming, plenty of bugs, and a bit too much walking.
In the 15 years since its release modders have done an intimidating amount of work making Morrowind better. The best Morrowind mods are now spread over sites like Morrowind Modding History, the Morrowind Nexus, and Mod DB. Here's our collection of the greats, though even this list only represents the tip of a big iceberg.
If you've never played Morrowind before it's worth trying unmodded to see which parts you'd most like to alter before diving in. It's also recommended to use a loader like Wrye Mash or Nexus Mod Manager to organize mods once you start. And even when using them, always read the installation instructions.
A massive effort committed to fixing bugs and mistakes, from savegame corruption and missing objects to the in-game calendar not having the correct number of days in each month. There are plenty of optional changes, including modern resolutions and an over-the-shoulder version of the third-person view. The Morrowind Code Patch is also an essential foundation for the Tamriel Rebuilt mod, but can conflict with leveling mods like Galsiah's Character Development or Madd Leveler if you don't turn off skill/attribute uncapping when installing it.
Bethesda isn't great at seamlessly inserting DLC into their games, and in Morrowind that manifests in Dark Brotherhood assassins trying to murder you in your sleep until you start the Tribunal expansion. If you're not interested in being assassinated at level one or surviving the attempt but then scoring assassin gear that's way too powerful for you, this mod puts off the nightly murder visits.
Each Elder Scrolls game has one of these, tidying up hundreds of minor leftover bugs ranging from spelling errors in dialogue to problems with quest progression. If you've ever had a quest stuck in the journal after you've finished it, or noticed “Edryno” spelt “Edryon” this is for you. It also fixes a lot of errors relating to NPC barks playing in the wrong situation or not at all.
If you're sick of the rigmarole of going through the Census Office at Seyda Neen every time you make a new character, this mod lets you race through character creation and then choose which of the island's ports to disembark at. It also puts some basic equipment in your inventory, suited to your skills.
User interfaces have never been a strong point for Bethesda's open-world games. If looking at Morrowind's borders makes you miss the Skyrim color scheme and slightly cleaner look, this mod adds that while keeping the basics of the UI the same.
Getting around
Why run when you can run really fast? New methods of transportation and tweaks to existing methods make life in Morrowind less tedious.
When you're crossing the Ashlands for the fifth time or bouncing back and forth between distant NPCs for certain quests, you really need a more convenient way to travel than a muddled network of giant fleas. This mod makes roadside signs into fast travel points. Look at the sign pointing to your destination, press spacebar, and you'll arrive with six hours added to the clock. Mods that add new landmass can make it a bit hinky and I did once travel to Gnisis only to find myself stuck in the middle of the ocean, but it's still worthwhile for journeys free of Cliff Racers.
Another way to speed up Morrowind is to increase the running speed, which makes a mockery of the incremental increases to the Speed stat you can buy at level-up but is worth it to reduce a lot of the slog. There are multiple speeds to choose from, with Fastest a solid choice if you want to run like a Looney Tunes character but still be able to see the world as you zip past it.
Cool as it is having giant fleas that can be steered by twiddling their central nervous systems hanging around settlements, the Silt Striders always seemed underused in Morrowind. With this mod you can actually see them travel across the land when you hire one, though they're less jumpy than I expected. Their speed is adjustable in case you want to zip over to Vivec but don't have half an hour to watch scenery go by.
If walking up to a ship's captain and asking for a lift to Ebonheart isn't doing it for you, Sell N Sail makes both a small boat and an expensive galleon (205,000 septims!) available for purchase. The galleon has a fancy below decks area you can make your new home, and both craft can be sailed around via slightly fiddly controls. Buy them from the island just off Gnaar Mok.
The Mark and Recall spells are essential for returning to out-of-the-way locations, like your home once you build one or that mudcrab merchant with loads of gold. Normally you can only have one place Marked at a time, but Melian's Teleport Mod lets you cast Mark as much as you like and name each one individually.
Visual overhauls
Morrowind's showing its age after 15 years, but these mods go a long way towards maintaining its otherworldly beauty.
The landscapes of Morrowind were impressive in 2002 and can still look surprising today, but the faces were always a mess. They look like photos stretched around cubes. Better Heads is one of many mods that improves the way faces look in Morrowind, an easy to use choice that's low on compatibility issues. However, if you're interested in other options with varying degrees of fidelity to the original looks, here's an old Comparison of NPC Head Replacers.
While you're at it, maybe you'd like nicer body textures as well? These were based on high-res scans of the modders' own skin. There are versions that let you leave your medieval underwear on and also a nude version, though given that some enemies run around in their underpants that's more likely to be disconcerting than anything.
The easiest way to make Morrowind's buildings and scenery look better is with this combination of five existing texture packs. Follow that up with Mesh Improvements to get small objects like bowls and candles looking noticeably less angular.
On a modern PC the draw distance option in the menu can easily be pushed to the max, rolling back Vvardenfell's fog. If you want to go even further the Morrowind Graphics Extender XE mod will let you see Vivec from Pelagiad with ease.
The ash storms, drifting clouds, and starry night skies can be made to look a lot prettier with this mod. It changes the way weather is rendered as well as replacing repeating sky meshes with unique ones, and there are multiple options for changing how you'd like the moons to look.
New locations and quests
It's a whole new world. Seriously: you can add enough content to Morrowind to keep playing it forever, and the ones we've highlighted here are the best of them.
Bethesda had planned for the entire nation of Morrowind to make it into the game, but focused instead on the island of Vvardenfell to its ultimate benefit. If you dream of exploring the mainland however this mod will let you do it, greatly expanding the map and adding some gorgeous new cities. The quests are a little rudimentary, but mostly you'll just want to explore all this new land.
If you wish Morrowind felt more like Vampire: The Masquerade, then your dream's come true. The Underground is a questline based around a nightclub for the undead hidden in the Balmora sewers, where sexy vampires will send you on quests and one of them can even be romanced. From the moment the club starts blaring songs by The Beastie Boys and Garbage you'll feel a long way from the atmosphere of Morrowind, but it's goofy, gothy fun nonetheless. You'll want additional mods that add a walkthrough book, and if you finish the questline one that clears up a couple of lingering issues like, oh, infinitely spawning spiders.
The kookiness of The Shivering Isles (a classic Oblivion add-on) has inspired mods for several Elder Scrolls games, and Immersive Madness is the Morrowind equivalent. It lets you join the cult of the Madgod Sheogorath by visiting their shrine south of Molag Mar where you'll find quests to recover an Orc's stolen buttocks, defeat a rock and then a puddle, win a staring contest against a rival cult, and other similarly wacky missions.
Once you've played Morrowind long enough it stops feeling uncanny and becomes familiar. To regain some of that feeling, try the complete overhaul Morrowind Rebirth. Each settlement is recognizable but different, with more houses and NPCs. There's also new equipment, creatures, music, and more. Morrowind Rebirth on its own is enough to make another playthrough worthwhile.
If you got Morrowind from GOG it will already have this selection of plugins made by Bethesda. If not you can grab them from the Nexus, either individually or collected. They include quests to restore the propylon travel network and take an island fortress back from the undead, more armor, arrows, and sounds, and an option to entertain the drinkers at the Eight Plates in Balmora.
SureAI are a German team you may know for their Oblivion total conversion mod Nehrim, or Enderal for Skyrim. Arktwend and Myar Anath were where they started, total conversions that replaced Vvardenfell with a slightly more traditional fantasy world, though one with some gothic touches. They're not as polished as Enderal—you'll get killed by huge mobs of enemies a lot and hear some characters speak German even with the English patches—but they're still impressive achievements.
Creatures and NPCs
Inject more life into Morrowind, and make those critters prettier, to boot.
If you're sick of squinting at the font for Morrowind's dialogue, journal, and menus then the Better Dialogue Font mod ups the resolution on all of them. Meanwhile, if you're sick of NPCs rehashing the same paragraphs of information the Less Generic NPC project has been working to give every character their own dialogue, which is a heck of an undertaking.
In the spirit of Better Bodies and Better Heads, this adds new textures for lizard-people and cat-people, making the Argonians and Khajiit look plenty nicer. If you're playing as one you'll have a few new head options as well.
Bothered by the absence of kids? Ma'iq the Liar would like a word with you. If you need to have rugrats running all over the place this mod will do it for you, though as with all mods that add NPCs en masse it can cause slowdown and they absolutely will get stuck between you and a door at some point.
Bethesda staff member Gary Noonan, known to modders as WormGod Elite, made Morrowind Advanced to add more challenging encounters. It rebalances existing creatures as well as adding new ones like Centurion Rippers and Giant Earth Golems, and eventually you'll have to deal with high-level raiders too. A few new dungeons and some new equipment thrown into rebalanced loot tables round it out.
Adding new animals to Vvardenfell is tricky because the existing ones are so alien. Horses would just feel wrong. Modder Piratelord walks a fine line in new additions that feel appropriate to the setting like the Ash Poet and Land Dreugh as well as more vanilla creatures added sparingly, like moose and butterflies. As an added bonus this mod makes Cliff Racers less aggressive the more of them you kill so that eventually the damn things will leave you alone.
Combat and Skills
Overhaul Morrowind's clunky combat with some some welcome changes, like removing the dice roll behind each melee strike and increasing the pace at which you accrue skill points. Now go out there and be a warrior.
One of the more straightforward balance tweaks available, with Faster Skill Increases all it takes is a single attack or a few seconds of running or jumping to make the relevant skills go up. You'll get sick of the angelic sound that plays with each increase, but you'll also be able to tackle the interesting quests a lot quicker without grinding around in Ratmurder Town forever.
Even if you're not playing a spellcaster you'll want access to the occasional Levitate to cross a mountain or Mark and Recall to bounce back to a quest-giver. Wizards have to nap a lot in Morrowind though, because magicka regenerates at a glacial pace. If you're not ideologically opposed to the idea of making Morrowind more like Oblivion, this mod borrows its rate of magicka replenishment and honestly it's a godsend.
Whether an attack hits or misses in Morrowind is based on a random roll behind the scenes based on your skill. In a more abstract RPG that's fine, but in a 3D one where you can see that spear hit someone to then be told by the math that it whiffs it can be jarring. With Accurate Attack any blow that looks like it hits actually hits.
The lovely, thunky speed of arrows in Skyrim was inspired by a mod for Oblivion that made them less dodgeable but much more fun to shoot. Projectile Overhaul puts some of the same arrow juice into Morrowind, increasing the velocity of everything you can launch, including throwing knives, shuriken, and spells.
Install Madd Leveler to take away the worry about effectively leveling and grinding the appropriate skills, as it'll do all that for you. Madd Leveler raises attributes based on which skills you've been using and does it quietly in the background so you don't even notice. There's also Galsiah's Character Development, which is a bit more complicated and can be restrictive if you're trying to play the kind of hybrid character who doesn't fit a single class.
Each Elder Scrolls game makes sneaking a little less ridiculous, but even in Skyrim we're still crouch-walking invisibly in broad daylight because our skill's high enough. This mod doesn't make stealth perfect, but it does add modifiers based on the time of day, weather, what armor you're wearing, and whether you have a weapon out. It also increases sneak attack damage to x10 so it's worth all those potential penalties.
If you found yourself being unexpectedly and repeatedly smoked in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare online combat over the past day or so, you can blame the new Proteus rifle that was added in the June 27 update. It's sniper rifle/shotgun hybrid that enables the user to select highly-concentrated long-range fire or a heavy up-close punch as the situation warrants. It also, for a brief while, came with its very own built-in aimbot that enabled shooters to kill up to three enemies at once, just by pointing it in their general direction.
The video above, via PCGamesN, clearly illustrates how the Proteus worked when it went live, which is absolutely not how it was supposed to work. As you'd expect, users of the Infinite Warfare subreddit, and the Call of Duty and Steam forums, were less than happy with the development. It's the sort of thing that's fun for a few minutes, but quickly stops being fun once it becomes clear that everyone's doing it, and nobody's going to stop.
Fortunately, Infinity Ward quickly took notice of the problem and issued an update, including patch notes that are almost comically understated: "Fixed an issue with the sniper mode of the Proteus having Target Assist enabled." It sounds so innocuous, doesn't it?
Naturally, some players aren't happy now that it's no longer a point-and-click murder stick: Redditors in this thread are calling on Infinity Ward to bring it back, or create a can't-miss weapon in the same mold, for use in custom game modes.
Following a round of closed beta testing, Boss Key Productions is about to kick off an open beta period for LawBreakers that will run from June 30 to July 3. If you own a GeForce GPU, you can prepare for the beta by downloading the latest Game Ready driver package, which is available through GeForce Experience.
The latest 384.76 WHQL driver package is not yet available on Nvidia's website, though it does appear under the "Drivers" tab in Nvidia's GeForce Experience software. In addition to optimizing code for LawBreakers, it also boasts Game Ready status for the Spider-Man: Homecoming Experience, which launches June 30 as well.
Beyond game optimizations, the latest driver release adds a debut option to the Help menu in Nvidia's Control Panel. Users will also find a new SLI profile for FIFA 17.
As with most driver releases, this one contains a list of bug fixes, most of which are minor. They include:
[Nvidia Control Panel][Command & Conquer Tiberium Alliances]: Fixed a typo in the game name on the Stereoscopic 3D Compatibility page.
[3DVision]: CPU bottleneck occurs when 3DVision is enabled.
[GeForce GTX 1080/1070/1060][Prey (2]: Large amount of stuttering occurs throughout gameplay.
[Gamestream][DirectX 12 titles]: DirectX 12 titles fail to capture when streaming.
[Firefall]: The game does not run.
[GeForce GTX 970][SLI][Norton 360]: SLI cannot be enabled unless Norton 360 is disabled or in Safe mode.
[Doom 2016][Vulkan API]: Glitches occur when using the Vulkan API.
[No Man's Sky][SLI]: Texture corruption appears in the game with SLI enabled.
[Windows Store video app]: Video playback is choppy with V-Sync OFF.
LawBreakers will be free to play during the open beta. After that, the new multiplayer arena shooter will launch in final form on August 8 for $30.
For those of you who need it, you can download GeForce Experience here.
At this year's E3, PC Gamer spoke to Sega Europe's senior vice president of commercial publishing John Clark about the possibility of porting as yet unported Japanese console games to PC—not least Yakuza and Persona. We were told the pair, and possibly a number of others, are "on that list" of games the publisher would love to bring to desktops, and that Clark himself felt it would be "incredible" to deliver those games to a PC audience.
Below is the full conversation between our Samuel and Clark which offers an interesting peak behind the velvet rope of console-to-PC conversions.
PC Gamer: As part of your Searchlight program, you're looking for developers to collaborate with. You just announced a collaboration with Two Point Studios, with former Lionhead staff Mark Webley and Gary Carr. What can we expect from that?
John Clark: We released a game called Motorsport Manager with Playsport Games and they're a very talented startup—industry experts, great developers, just wanting to bring a vision and develop this franchise and develop this community.
Same with Two Point—a group of veterans which are starting up, ex-Bullfrog, ex-Lionhead. They have their vision, they have a vision which aligns with [the] principles we’ve got in franchise building and developing community and delivering really strong, valuable experiences.
What was the process behind signing Two Point? Did they approach you, did you scout them out? How does that conversation start?
A bit of both, really. So we have our A&R (artists and repertoire) guys, we’re constantly coming to shows such as [E3] and others where we’re always talking to developers, to people who know developers, and to channel partners who say “these guys over here, they’re doing something really, really cool.” We just keep talking to people and telling them what is driving us at Sega and we do end up finding some really, really cool opportunities.
And we’re looking to do more of that. We’ve started our relationship with Playsport Games and we’ve released a game and we want to work on more and build a franchise together with them. We hope to get to the stage with Two Point where we’ll launch a fantastic gaming experience and we’re really excited—we’re not saying what it looks like at this stage, but we think that that’s going to be the start of something big to come.
Great. Do you think we’ll hear more about that game later in the year?
Yeah, I’m trying to think about what we’ve got internally and when we’re going to release things but yeah, towards the end of the year I’m hoping we’ll give you more of an idea of what the project’s all about. You’ll love it.
You’ve had a lot of success from PC ports of Japanese console games—what motivated the decision to push hard in that direction?
Two things to that. One is over the last few years, we’ve built a really strong business around Steam—it’s been a long-standing partnership, [and] we’ve been operating on Steam in a particular way for many years. Medieval II: Total War was one of the first games to be tied into Steam when it went 'open'—and we really cherish the business that we’ve built together with Steam. Along the way, we’ve learned what’s really important to the PC audience. So that’s happening over one side of the business—we’re optimising that business and growing it and making it really relevant.
But at the same time, Sega has a real fantastic catalogue of titles. Pretty much everyone that works at Sega, they’re fans of Sega so we love all the games that we bring out, whether it’s Total War or Football Manager, or whether it’s the historic titles like Sonic the Hedgehog or Crazy Taxi or Bayonetta and Vanquish—we love those.
As gamers we play on Steam, we see our franchises on Steam, [and] we’d love to play all of our games on Steam. So when we’re looking to bring games like Bayonetta and Vanquish, [we] make sure that they’re relevant today. On one hand it’s getting the game ported to PC but on the other hand we need to make sure that they’re good PC games, making sure that technically they really, really deliver what the community wants and for what the tech-savvy community wants on Steam.
Things like frame rate is important to us, graphics card compatibility, mouse and keyboard, Steam features...we’ve managed to develop a way of working which really connects with that specific consumer as well.
When we launched Bayonetta, straight away on Steam I saw somebody say 'We want to see these games on Steam now, we want to see... Sega, we want to see you working on these...' And we re looking at that and we say 'Yeah, we know! We know!'
John Clark
I’d say more so than any other publisher with Japanese roots—we’ve seen a few publishers move into that area—you seem conscious of the demands from a PC audience.
Yeah, ultimately whether you look at console, PC or mobile, you make games specifically for the way that they’re played on that platform. I think there are quite a lot of games that don’t necessarily take the platform idiosyncrasies into account, and that’s something that we understand on PC. We see this huge platform in Steam, in the same way that on mobile you can’t just put a game on mobile and expect it to appeal to everybody.
You have to make sure it’s aligned to how the audience interacts with that game—giving it a little bit more time, a little bit more detail and making sure that the consumers are really engaged with that game and how it’s aligned technically to the way that they want to play.
What motivates your choices of games to bring to PC?
If I asked you to write me a list of the ten games you want Sega to bring out on PC, it probably isn't any different from the list [we have]. What motivates that, as I say, [is] that people just have an affinity with [our] games, and there’s no surprise in the games that would be on that list.
We recently launched Bayonetta and Vanquish, and prior to that we launched Valkyria Chronicles. Further back, we launched Typing of the Dead—and all of these games that are either sort of delivering the experiences that the community wants, or they’re enabling us to understand how the community plays those games and how the community interacts. What inspires or motivates us... I think when we launched Bayonetta, straight away on Steam I saw somebody say “We want to see these games on Steam now, we want to see... Sega, we want to see you working on these...”
And we’re looking at that and we say “Yeah, we know! We know!”—and we want to work on them as well and we haven’t finished. We just haven’t finished with Vanquish and Bayonetta, we’re still there—we are actively working on other games as we speak... we’re not ready to tell you what they are, but there will be news coming out in the next few months.
What are the challenges of porting a game to PC? Vanquish never ran at 60FPS, for example—what's the process behind that?
First, [depending on how old the game is], what’s the archiving of the source code like? Does the engine and the way that the game was built enable us to elegantly port it onto PC? As you say, they weren’t built for variable frame rates or 60 frames per second, so we worked with Platinum Games on that. But we also bring in our own expertise from some studios that we work with in the UK, and some talent that we know understand how we want to align PC games to the audience.
So there’s the technical aspect, there’s the source code, the status of the source code. There is everything from licensing and past agreements, but it could be anything from music or what items are in the game. Are we drinking a particular type of beverage, are we eating a particular type of food, or driving a particular car? That’s all relevant through a lot of Sega games, and we do need to check all of those, and it does have an influence on what is the next one on the list that we can get to.
I wonder if the success of the Japanese games you’ve ported so far has shaped any of your decisions behind the scenes in terms of what you do next—has it made you consider further collaborations with Platinum and did it affect the future of Valkyria, which now has a new entry coming out on consoles?
I can’t say explicitly if that is responsible for it, but I think it really shows that the vibrancy of the audience for any given IP—the fact that it can be multiplatform, it can exist side by side, [that] we should really, really consider the feedback of the community. We can see that, we can develop that relationship. Having the games on something like the PC platform where we’re able to really understand that relationship a lot more, when we look at further launches of Valkyira, it just makes sense to embrace that, doesn’t it?
It gives us that validation that these games are not just fond old memories—they are still relevant today and we can keep building the audience and building the community.
I know Valkyria exceeded your expectations by a long way—would you say that the Platinum stuff is doing so too?
Yeah, we’ve got strong expertise in the way that our analytic teams and our data teams work on that—a lot of it is about the speed with which the community rally around to support these projects. If we look with Bayonetta especially, the amount of support that you’re getting people to recommend they buy this game because maybe Sega will make more of them—that doesn’t go unnoticed, and therefore that’s why it’s important for us to deliver that quality.
It also drives the way that we reach out to the community with it as well, so with Bayonetta we did a specific way of communicating which was different to issuing a press release and having a pre-order campaign. We were more creative with how we engaged the community—and that’s really important to us as well, it feels as though the community is playing an active role in being evangelists of the game, and that builds a lot of value and it certainly makes us all feel really, really warm towards the community and really grateful that they’re so passionate.
The Vanquish announcement went down really well.
Yeah—for Vanquish we dropped in a Steam achievement that was, for anybody who knew Vanquish it was recognisable from Vanquish, and that was telling them that Vanquish was coming out, and it didn’t need us to put out a message whatsoever—that was messaged by the community.
Prior to that, with Bayonetta we launched the 8-Bit Bayonetta as a free game on April Fool’s Day and within that... it [took] people sixty seconds to finish this game, there were a whole load of features in there that led people to discover a URL which gave them a countdown timer, the community really got around that and really amplified the message. We don’t just want to tell you, we want you to feel part of that messaging, we want you to feel ownership because the community is so important in bringing these games back to life.
Are there any projects from your past where it’s just tangled up licensing wise or logistically to be able to do? Is that just a challenge that you face with some older games?
Absolutely. And [it's] a challenge that we accept and a challenge that we dive into and for us, it’s [about] figuring out a way through it, and we’ve got a really progressive attitude in that we want to see certain games come to market, and we’re committed to get certain games to market that fall into that exact category that you’ve just said.
It s something that of course we re talking about... Yakuza is out on console and it seems as though it would just be incredible to bring that to the PC audience.
John Clark
One thing that you haven’t done yet is bring any Atlus games to PC—I was wondering what the nature of that relationship is and whether that is something we could possibly look at in the future?
The great thing about being involved with Atlus and you see it through Sega America and Atlus—they’re bringing out Persona 5, which is an Atlus title but they’re bringing out new editions of the Yakuza titles, they’re doing that together —and so it just makes sense that we all talk together about extending all of those, incredible IP, across to Steam and recognise the fact that the PC audience adds to those community and consumer experiences, it doesn’t detract from it and it isn’t anything that they need to be concerned about, so... those conversations definitely happen.
We see our role as educating our business about PC and Steam as well as driving our business forward in sort of retail and on console as well, and we’re all aware of the opportunities that are across all platforms for the IP.
Everyone has that wish list of games they want to see on PC. You seem to be really conscious of that.
Yeah, if you send that list to us and I’ll you which ones we can tick, which ones are on our list, which ones are possibilities, which ones are not possibilities, which ones we’ve talked about, which ones we’re talking about, which ones we’re working on—they’ll be on that list.
Yakuza, is that a possibility on PC?
It’s on that list, you know? It’s something that of course we’re talking about, we can see that Yakuza definitely is out on console and it seems as though that would just be incredible to bring that to the PC audience.
I guess, along the same lines—Persona?
Of course, of course—I keep saying ahead of you, I’m trying to guess what you’re going to say next...
Sorry, I know you can’t confirm any of this.
No, absolutely. But we don’t feel that anything is off the table in terms of these conversations. The fact that as an organisation, we’re having these [conversations], they’re healthy conversations, they’re constructive, we recognise the value, we recognise the value of the community, we recognise the value of the IP.
The IP has got continued life to grow bigger and yeah, we’re having those conversations.
What the hell just happened? Your first go of Nex Machina will leave you feeling pleasantly dazed, as this exhilarating and ferociously tough twin-stick shooter sucks you in and spits you back out. It’s the kind of game to make you shuffle forward a little in your seat, as you take a deep breath and prepare to dive in for another attempt.
It comes from Finnish developer Housemarque, which has all but cornered the market in classic arcade shooters with a contemporary sheen on PlayStation consoles in recent years. This time, however, it’s free from Sony’s shackles, and working alongside the great Eugene Jarvis, whose work Housemarque has essentially been riffing on for quite some time. So there’s a smattering of Defender in there, a more generous helping of Smash TV, and, by extension, a great big wodge of Robotron 2084.
Like those games, it dispenses with the niceties to get you into the action that much quicker. All you need to know is that it's sometime in the future, we’ve all been too busy gawping at our phones to notice the machines getting smarter than us, and lo and behold, they’re keen to assert their authority over humans by wiping us out. That’s your lot as far as the story goes, but that’s really all you need. As the game starts, your brave little warrior rides into the fray on their futuristic space bike, leaps off and mayhem subsequently ensues.
The default difficulty setting on the main Arcade mode is called Rookie: that name alone will encourage a certain type of player to scoff and start on the next level up, Experienced, but Nex Machina tells you this is the ideal place to learn the ropes for a reason. You should take that advice, not least since Housemarque pulls off one of the hardest tricks in games.
Often, on this type of game, the lowest difficulty can feel slightly patronising, as if it’s going easy on you. That’s not the case here. The action is still fast, still intense. The arenas are still unsettlingly cramped. Enemies still march toward you in overwhelming number. The main point of difference is that they move slightly slower and explode slightly quicker, so you don’t quite get that same why-won’t-you-die horror as you retreat into a corner, furiously unloading round after round into a giant spider-tank thing that’s soaking up the best you can dish out and asking you if that’s really all you’ve got.
Even so, you’ll still get those moments where your back’s against the wall, and you’re barely a pixel’s width from death when an aggressor falls—you then yell out in simultaneous triumph and relief, while strolling straight into a bright pink projectile that seems to have been floating lazily towards you for the past several minutes (in reality: two seconds). Complacency and lapses in concentration are ruthlessly punished.
But daring? Daring can get you somewhere. Nex Machina is tailored towards moments of mad heroism, as each level gives you a number of humans to rescue before they’re harvested. Your high score depends greatly on how many you save, but also on the timing of their retrieval: after grabbing one, a combo meter will slowly drain, refilling only when you rescue the next. Then again, worrying about your own survival will be priority one for a good while. Still, even here you’re encouraged to take the odd risk: a smart bomb power-up, for example, invites you to dash close to clusters of machines before squeezing the trigger to detonate them and free some space for yourself.
Rather than having to constantly back away from waves of enemies (though you’ll spend plenty of time doing that), or herding them round in a circle (that, too) you can press the left trigger to quickly dash in whichever direction you choose. When all seems lost, this can get you out of the tightest of squeezes, not least once you’ve collected a pickup which triggers a small explosion within a narrow radius for each dash. Pair that with a triple-dash power-up and you’re laughing.
There are optimal routes through the mayhem, but they have to be teased out over dozens upon dozens of repeat attempts. Eventually, you’ll reach the stage where you’ll find yourself waiting until the last possible second to rescue a human to keep your chain going as you weave through this deadly traffic. Until then you’re adapting, improvising, desperately trying to control the flow of enemies while attempting to prioritise threats.
You could be forgiven for thinking it’s nothing more than pure chaos, but it’s meticulously organised chaos. Most of the time it’ll look like you’re winging it, and you often will be. But if you need some tips, you can watch replays of the best players from the leaderboard menu and see how it’s really done.
It’s a lovely game to watch, too, the dashes adding dynamism to your character’s movement, the bright, colour-coded outlines ensuring the action stays readable even when things are exploding into hundreds, maybe thousands of voxels around you. Even the transitions between stages are glorious: the six worlds take place on huge, complex superstructures, which your hero navigates by jetpack. Sometimes they’ll dive down to a lower level, or climb way above the previous area; sometimes, they’ll zip over the side of a stage and it’ll flip 90 degrees as they touch down on the next.
To some, six worlds (each comprising 15 sections) might seem a shade on the slender side, especially since a single run takes less than an hour. Beyond tackling the Arcade mode on higher difficulties, there’s an Arena mode for individual worlds, and variants where bullets and enemy spawns move faster, or where your score only increases while your human combo is still running.
For the voracious consumer, who sees games only as something to devour rather than savour, that mightn’t seem like particularly good value. Everyone else, however, should buckle up and settle in for a breathless modern arcade classic that delivers more thrills per minute than almost anything else out there.
Earlier this month, Tom teased some then never before seen screenshots of Warframe's completely revamped Earth maps. They've now arrived as part of the free-to-play shooter's latest 'Chains of Harrow' update, which also brings with it a new lore-based quest, new weapons, and a neat Void power-harnessing priest playable character, among a host of other things.
From front to back, new Warframe Harrow is Lotus' newest Warrior who relies on four main abilities: Condemn, which casts a wave of energy and chains foes together; Penance, which sacrifices shields to boost reloads and fire rates; Thurible, which channels Harrow's energy to generate buffs; and Covenant which helps protect nearby allies by way of an energy-powered force.
Here's a wee look at Harrow in action:
On the weapons front, the Chains of Harrow update adds a new pistol named the Knell which increases Critical Chance for a limited time by virtue of headshots. Harrow's spear blasts targets with "corrosive plasma projectiles", which sound like a nightmare for the dry cleaner.
Nox is a new Grineer Enemy that wields a toxin-fuelled gun and explodes upon defeat, whereas Digital Extremes describes the latest lore-based mission thusly:
"A disturbing transmission from Red Veil's spiritual medium leads to an abandoned Steel Meridian vessel adrift on the outskirts of Earth. Inside, strange whispers echo throughout the lifeless vessel. What force unleashed this evil and how can it be stopped? (The Chains of Harrow Quest will appear in the Codex for those who have completed The War Within and unlocked Mot in the Void.)"
Warframe's Chains of Harrow update is live now. The game's fan festival TennoCon is also around the corner—July 8—so keep your eyes peeled for more updates around then.
The Swords of Ditto is a neat looking action RPG unveiled in the week leading up to E3. Published by Devolver, it has a minty fresh Saturday morning cartoon aesthetic and, most importantly, a protagonist with a box for a head. There was a trailer issued back then, but now we've got a solid 12 minute video showcasing its gameplay.
It looks fun and straightforward enough: you wander a beautifully illustrated world, whittle down enemy health bars with your sword, talk to whimsical non-violent characters and occasionally bash the hell out of trees.
The game is due to release some time early next year. Here's the video:
In early April, just a month and a half after it released on consoles and two weeks after it launched on Steam, action-RPG Nier: Automata passed a million sales. Despite a few performance issues on PC, Nier launched to acclaim and racked up thousands of positive reviews. It was the surprise hit of the year until PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, and a wonderful success for quirky director Yoko Taro (whose previous few games combined likely sold less than Automata did in a month). And then, on April 28, this happened:
1,113 negative reviews slammed Nier's Steam page in a single day, essentially doubling the total number of negative reviews overnight. That's not enough to sink a game like Nier, but it is enough to drop its ‘recent reviews’ from positive to ‘mixed’ in early May. What happened? Why the sudden rush of negativity? On April 27, Square Enix released Nier: Automata in Asia—without Chinese language support. And hours after release, they doubled the price in China. It turns out that's a really, really good way to piss off thousands of players.
By users, China is now Steam's third largest country, with around 17 million, behind only the United States and Russia. But by bandwidth consumed, China is actually in second place, swallowing up nearly 10 percent of Steam's total traffic (the US accounts for 19.7 percent, Russia only 5.8 percent). It's a huge audience, and it's growing quickly. This presents PC developers a huge opportunity to sell games to millions of players they couldn't reach just a few years ago. But that opportunity comes with new risks, too.
Tried-and-true review bombing
Even without tapping into a whole new audience in China, developers in 2017 have to keep in mind the possibility that their game could be review bombed for any number of reasons. Maybe a political or social issue will draw an angry mob; maybe gamers will voice complaints about a glaring performance issue or a price they consider unfair.
We've seen two high profile cases of this in just the last month. Take a look at the recent reviews for Grand Theft Auto 5 and Crusader Kings 2.
If you've been following the news, you'll recall GTA5 publisher Take-Two decided to shut down popular mod tool OpenIV, racking up about 35,000 negative reviews in a few days. Crusader Kings 2 accrued just a few hundred negative reviews over Paradox's decision to raise the prices of its games in some regions. In both cases, Rockstar and Paradox backpedaled after an overwhelmingly negative response.
Did those negative reviews actually affect sales of either game? Hard to say for sure, but probably not—both have already sold loads of copies. "On the per-game basis, it seems that review bombing doesn't hurt short-term sales much," writes Sergey Galyonkin, creator of SteamSpy. "Payday 2 sold more in the month after the [2015 microtransaction] controversy than in the month before, but they had a pretty big discount :) And Ark sold twice as more in the month after the review bombing [over its expansion] than in the month before despite having a smaller discount during that period and no F2P event. Of course, this kind of reaction is usually because of the diminished players' trust in the game, but it's something that is hard to measure."
This kind of reaction is usually because of the diminished players' trust in the game, but it's something that is hard to measure.
SteamSpy's Sergey Galyonkin
As Galyonkin says, damage to community goodwill is likely the bigger concern. And directly commenting on the actions of an angry fanbase is a touchy subject; unsurprisingly, the developers and publishers I reached out to for comment who have experienced Steam review bombing either declined to talk or did not respond.
For many gamers, leaving a negative Steam review is the only actionable way to make their voices heard. It's more direct, and likely more effective, than tweeting or posting on a message board. The system may be abusable, but in some cases it's working as intended: players are simply commenting on a game and giving prospective buyers valuable information. And Valve has taken steps to limit some potential issues with the system by removing reviews tied to free copies from a game's overall score.
Another change to Steam has also had a large positive impact: refunds. "Refunds are so great," says Lars Doucet, the developer of tower defense game Defender's Quest. "Now that they have refunds, if someone hates my game, they're going to ask for a refund, and usually the grumpiness that they would have directed at a review gets shouted into the refund system instead. Now I don't have an angry player, and the angry player gets their money back and isn't angry any more and probably doesn't feel like they have to post a nasty review (some will still do it, but not most). I have a separate channel for reading messages from people who wanted refunds, which is now where most of the really nasty comments go. That's fine. They can stay there. This system doesn't solve everything but it was a major plus for both developers and players in my eyes."
Doucet frequently blogs about Steam on a variety of topics, offering up some great data analysis and savvy commentary on Steam's Discovery system, reviews, the Controller, and more. Though Defender's Quest has a 97 percent positive rating on Steam, I thought Doucet would have some insight into review bombing, generally. He pointed out one issue he's written about before, with suggested improvements to how Valve sorts games based on user ratings. If Valve did improve its sorting, that could, potentially, change the visibility of some games on Steam with fewer reviews but higher positive percentages. And that could, in turn, make review bombing a more powerful tool.
If you're a small developer and you catch that storm you're fielding that red hot fire with your own face, and these mobs can get really nasty.
Lars Doucet
I also asked if he thought review bombing was a result of the review system working as intended, or if there's a better way for players to make their voices heard.
"Obviously as a developer the idea of being flooded with a torrent of hate over something players didn't like makes me super scared, especially when it's not something 'merely' personal like your twitter feed, it's my store page which has a direct connection to my livelihood," he says. "However, it's hard for me to feel too sorry for a big AAA company that does something obviously tone deaf and anti-consumer and pays a public price for it. At the same time, if you're a small developer and you catch that storm you're fielding that red hot fire with your own face, and these mobs can get really nasty. The one limiting factor here is, unlike in a Twitter mob, the only person who has a right to leave a review is someone who's paid for your game [on Steam]."
Doucet said that there's a trade-off with that new requirement, since developers who work to build an audience outside of Steam, through a Kickstarter, for example, lose out on the value of those positive reviews. "On balance, I will make the trade—I prefer being slightly less vulnerable to random hate mobs who just happen to have bundle keys for my game over boosting my user reviews with crowdfunding keys. Others feel differently, of course. I think if they smoothed out the hard thresholds using the Wilson score method [mentioned in his article on reviews], this tension wouldn't be as sharp."
Doucet has also written about the huge opportunities for indie developers in the Chinese market, which brings us back to the original topic. On top of these concerns, which have been building on Steam over the past few years, developers now have to consider the dangers of releasing a game in China without localization.
In October 2016, Chinese players filed hundreds of negative reviews against Football Manager 2017 protesting the lack of a Chinese localization. Some of the anger stemmed from comments made by the studio's director five years earlier, saying more sales in China would justify a localization. More anger came from the developer's decision to make community translations part of the game's Steam Workshop (it officially supported 16 languages at launch).
Publisher Sega stepped in after the outcry and announced a Chinese translation, which was released in April. On SteamSpy's review chart, you can see the jump in positive reviews and a decrease in negative reviews as some players reversed their earlier thumb down.
Still, many of the negative reviews remained; Football Manager 2017 still has a 44 percent positive overall rating on Steam. And the negative reviews didn't just affect FM2017; on the same days it was review bombed, so was Football Manager 2016.
Several Square Enix games suffered collateral damage after Nier: Automata's pricing debacle. Chinese players also review bombed Rise of the Tomb Raider on April 28, giving it negative reviews to punish Square Enix for Automata's price change in Chinese currency. It was the only significant spike in negative reviews after Rise of the Tomb Raider's first week of release.
Even more recently, Darkest Dungeon developer Red Hook launched the Crimson Court expansion and saw a smaller wave of criticism from a Chinese playerbase tired of waiting for a localization that had been talked about as far back as 2015 and still not materialized. (Darkest Dungeon has had a community-driven Chinese localization in progress for months, but it's not yet finished).
As always, it's hard to draw any real correlation between these negative reviews and a tangible impact on sales. It's a lesson all developers will soon have to take note of: If Chinese players are promised a localization, they expect it, and Steam reviews are how they’ll let you know.
With localization, Steam's rise in China could also be a new lifeline for smaller developers.
But with localization, Steam's rise in China could also be a new lifeline for smaller developers struggling to make a profit amid the dozens of games hitting Steam each day. Getting the pricing right for the region and properly localizing a game can be a huge windfall. As Doucet wrote about releasing games in China earlier this year:
"I have never had a localization pay for itself this quickly, not to mention this unambiguously… Of all the revenue Defender's Quest has earned from China on Steam in its entire lifetime, 45% of it was earned last week. That's right, we basically doubled our lifetime sales from China almost immediately!"
Of course, it's not quite that simple—there's no guarantee every game will be a smash hit in China, and there's not even a guarantee that Steam will even remain available in China. Games are routinely banned in China, but so far Steam has escaped government regulation, possibly due to Dota 2's popularity. Megacorporation Tencent is re-launching a Steam competitor in China in July, which could massively upset the PC market there. The only real constant here is how fast things are changing.
But as long as Steam exists in China, expect the Chinese audience's influence to grow. 17 million players and counting are hard to ignore.
Data gathered from SteamSpy.Thanks to Sergey Galyonkin for an invaluable tool.
