Stampede Racing Royale just got a splash of fun with a Dave the Diver crossover! Race in wetsuits, enjoy new aquatic-themed gear, and battle it out with 60 players.
Astroneer’s first paid expansion, *Glitchwalkers*, is coming soon—bringing glitchy worlds, wild new mechanics, and even some hostile creatures! Ready for chaos?
It seemed like Helldivers 2 was unstoppable but midway through 2024 it has fallen down to where Bloons TD 6 and Fallout 76 rest on the charts. This fall from the top wasn’t really from any single incident, but a collection of decisions that consistently drove player counts down from the unexpected hype of its release. You may think the account linking fiasco is what destroyed the player counts, but the game was actually in free fall long before then: HELLDIVERS™ 2 – Steam Charts. The problems were not only fundamental to the game’s design but the developers and publisher both didn’t rectify the obvious game issues rapidly enough before they lost the vast majority of players due to attrition. Note: This is only notable due to the anomalous nature of Helldivers 2 holding a strong player population for an extended period of time and then losing it, not specifically…
Exploring the controversy surrounding Dragon’s Dogma 2, we delve into the heated debate over its microtransactions. Despite the backlash, the game offers a complete experience without requiring additional purchases, embodying Capcom’s traditional approach to optional DLC.
The fall chill was in the air, in 2007. It was another Hallow’s End and the decorations, quests and festivities in World of Warcraft were the exact spirit of Halloween. The world felt like a fantasy novel had come alive and the holiday had this sense of true meaning. Now it’s as if a holiday is more side quests, you don’t really want to mess with unless the game offers some kind of inresistable reward for the effort. Players complain frequently about the lack of connection with holiday events or, even worse, they get almost little press and fanfare being more or less automatic gestures of the change of time. Why in two decades has gaming changed so much from the cozy, comfy connected holiday experience to what tad amounts to almost ignorable window dressing in online games? While I think it wouldn’t be fair to answer that with a…
Tim Cain is known as part of the legendary trio behind Fallout 1 & 2. He also worked at Troika and programmed Vampire: The Masquerade and one of my favorite games Arcanum. He recently released a video lambasting Carbine and NCSoft while disclosing some deep interpersonal issues at Carbine. Tim’s video is authentic and his recount is accurate by all means. I covered WildStar heavily from 2011 onward and the stories back then were well known. Carbine was a toxic and unhealthy workplace which had the potential to release the best MMO of the golden age but instead failed with 9 years of development time and a further four post-launch to win back everyone ala Final Fantasy XIV. The video is very misleading in some ways. It argues that there was a lack of unified vision. That’s true, but it was also completely the fact that everyone at Carbine was…
It seems that G/O Media, owner of Kotaku, has made the transition to AI content. This in turn has alienated the editorial staff who have taken to social media along with their union. The use of AI generative text is currently extremely controversial, with Gaming Tier List parent owner Yurika Corporation banning its use on all properties. There’s a lot of reasons for that, which we’ll get into, but first let’s get the information from the source. Relevant Tweet What Is G/O Media Doing and What Does AI Mean? We need to be really fair here for a moment and explain what the business, G/O Media, is saying instead of focusing on the hype. What they’re arguing is that they’ve begun using generative text to create articles that are reviewed and fact checked by an editor. The editor then approves the post to go live, assuming that it has been…
Gaming is the most social activity online. The only other more social activity is FaceTime, due to its liminal space intrusion into your life when someone calls. Social activity requires platforms that allow users to connect. The entire basis of the Internet is to send and receive from other users in other locations. Twitter has recently rate limited users on a temporary basis, which has greatly slowed the flow of information between communities. There’s a crisis unfolding on the Internet’s most social town square. Twitter’s pathway to monetization continues to be rocky. Decision after decision has left users a gasp at what to do when their normal that had been consistent for so long rapidly changes day after day. The long and short of the current crisis is that new users, regular users and paid users all have different amounts of posts they can view per day. The limit seems…
Dave the Diver Developer: MintRocket MSRP: $19.99 – Steam Dave the Diver captivated me within the first few minutes of playing. After dinner I was on my PC exploring the Blue Hole with Dave and loving every second of it. Dave the Diver is an action 2D/3D mash-up that has you exploring the Blue Hole with Dave while running a seaside Sushi resturant. There’s so much more though jammed into this amazing must play game. Dave the Diver is definitely well put together, the pixel art is striking and the game systems are considerate and have been iterated on efficaciously through the game’s early access. We don’t give any sort of numerical or percentile ranking to games, but if anything about Dave catches your eye then I would definitely say it’s worth the full price admission. It does everything it promises and it does it well and my nights with…
Hi-Rez Studios is removing the mantel of being a game studio and undergoing a transformative business process, to say the least. The community is biting its nails about what this means for the games they love dearly, but the people who are being put in charge know what they’re doing. Let’s break down the announcement and I’ll share some of my expert thoughts on the recent changes. The announcement was posted to LinkedIn. Hi-Rez Studios to Become Hi-Rez Ventures This is just a means of branding themselves away from developing games and being a multi-channel organization that supports games and funds the development of games as well. The branding around “Hi-Rez” as the prominent owner of any particular game will likely disappear in the near future as “Hi-Rez” becomes a “parent company.” The subsidiaries have already existed as modulars within Hi-Rez, but this reorganizes them into clearly defined self-contained entities.…