OK so Im a little late on this one but I do have a wife and child to feed!
CroTeam have provided a new launch video to celebrate the release which has got me itching to play it. I managed to get it installed yesterday but sadly no game time yet.
The graphics and the environments look fantastic, I just hope its maintained the same level of humour as the previous games.
Cant wait to play this co-op… Anyone else tried it yet?
If you haven’t heard of the Humble Indie Bundle before now, then this really is something for you to look into.
Basically the premise is that a bundle of Indie games go on sale and you can pay what you want. You can then split the amount you are giving between the developers, charitable organisations and the bundle organisers. If you pay more than the average amount (which is usually less than four dollars) you will get access to bonus games and prototypes.
Buying games, supporting independent development and giving to charity? There is basically no downside!
Best of all this bundle is predominantly from the developers Introversion giving you access to the simply fantastic Uplink and Defcon games.
For more details go to their website… do it!
As you know, next March we will try to have the third edition of the YWBL4DA tournament. And usually we start preparing it around this time of the year, by looking for good fun games and brainstorming ideas about the format. The first year it was all about 1 vs 1 and the second year it was about creativity.
I want to send to the community an open question:
If you have ideas, suggestions and specially games that you would like to see in next year’s tournament, drop me a line at joeduck@ywbl4da.com, on Steam or even better, send me a private message in the forum. I will be very glad to have some pointers. In terms of games, I am specifically looking for games that meet certain requirements. They have to be free, as we do not want to ask participants to buy a game. It should be a game with a clear way to know who wins or loses. If possible, we should be able to spectate or at least record the match. It should be simple to learn and fast to play. And ideally, participants should be able to compete directly against each other.
The cherry on the cake would be to find a genre that we have not yet explored.
And the most important, it should be FUN!
So there you go, keep your eyes peeled for games that could be used for the tournament and if you see them, tell me.
I have just read in PCGamer that Sony have seen a massive increase in not only their player base (I believe it was at 2000% at last count) but also their revenue.
For me DC Universe is the perfect comparison of the traditional ‘pay monthly’ subscription based MMO to the, becoming increasingly popular, free to play model.
DC Online represents a big budget game with a recognised developer/publisher dealing with a subject with comparatively wide appeal. More interestingly is that in the space of 2011 than have transitioned completely from the regular payments model to the free to play model and in this way can almost be used as a benchmark for how successful this transition can be.
I say ‘can be’ as credit has to be given to SOE here and their application of the free to pay model has been handled well. Getting the balance where the free players are given enough of the game but still encouraging some level of investment in value without over rewarding paying players and effecting the balance of the game is the real challenge facing any developer considering this switch. Many have already tried and failed with one of the more recent victims being the Lego MMO.
The point that interests me the most however is, is there a future for games wanting to charge a traditional model? Both the Starwars MMO and World of Warcraft follow this model and both are, or in the case of one of these, have the potential to be, massive releases.
2012 is going to see the release of a lot of new games that will fall into the MMO mould and will be competing for your cash, in the same way that DC Universe has successfully transitioned, I dont think it will be long before you see these last great releases make the change to free to play as well.
After many many whiskys, Joe and I decided that we were in the perfect frame of mind to create a website. Behold our efforts and tremble!!!