In The News
2014 seems like a long time ago, but I bet you all remember the case of 2 teenage girls who attempted to stab another girl to death as a sacrifice to Slender Man.
One of the two attackers, Anissa Weier, now 15, has pleaded guilty “to attempted second-degree homicide as a party to a crime, with use of a deadly weapon,” according to The Associated Press. “She initially faced a charge of attempted first-degree intentional homicide in the 2014 attack on Payton Leutner in Waukesha.”
What better place to describe video game player ratings than at a wedding? That’s what 2K Games’ Ronnie Singh ended up doing while attending Harrison Barnes’ (of the Dallas Mavericks) wedding in Rhode Island, HoopsHype’s Alex Kennedy reports.
“’I was at Harrison Barnes’ wedding and a major point of contention was Wesley’s rating,’ Singh said. ‘He found out that he was an 83 overall and he got pretty upset about it. He kept talking to Rick Carlisle about it. Well, Rick was the MC of Harrison’s reception. It got to the point that during the reception, in front of about 40 NBA players, Rick gets on the mic and says, ‘Ronnie, we have to address this rating thing right now. You need to come up here.””
THQ Nordic now owns Black Forest Games after acquiring all of its shares. Black Forest’s founders and 50-person team will all stay on board. “THQ Nordic noted that Black Forest is currently working on an unannounced project for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, with further details to be revealed soon,” James Brightman at GamesIndustry.biz reports.
Hearthstone is responding to player criticism directed at the Druid class. Jade Druids have apparently become too oppressive after Kinghts of the Frozen Throne’s release. Dot Esports’ Callum Leslie reports that game designer Dean Ayala hopped onto the Reddit thread discussing Druid to provide some context, saying in part, “As with every early metagame, we are monitoring play rates, win rates, and player sentiment on a daily basis.”
Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney is giving the keynote for the first Devcom Developer Conference in Germany today. He spoke with AListDaily’s John Gaudiosi beforehand to talk a bit about “the new opportunities video game technology like Unreal Engine 4 is opening up for new industries like Hollywood and automakers, and how small game teams are developing huge hits.”
Here’s a portion: “At Epic we’re game developer, and the Unreal Engine is an engine written by game developers for game developers. It really aims to solve the hard problem of enabling you to build a high-quality competitive game and then ship it efficiently…”
Chinese Super League will put over $15 million into “plans to create online games based on” soccer, Reuters explains. CSL is working with Crazy Sports “to produce online soccer games in its first foray into gaming as it searches for new sources of revenue.”
SNES Classic Edition comes with a rewind feature. “This allows you to load up a suspended save and rewatch a period of gameplay–ranging up to several minutes, depending on the genre. While doing so, you’re free to jump back in and pick up the action from any point in the clip,” GameSpot’s Chris Pereira reports. “A screensaver kicks in when the system is left idle for long enough, and rather than a generic screen of some sort, it will instead show your gameplay footage on-screen.”
Easy mode! Horizon Zero Dawn is set to receive a mode for players that would like to spend less time running for their lives and more time enjoying the story. Gamasutra’s Bryant Francis writes that “this difficulty mode drives down the damage inflicted on the player by the game’s robotic monsters and increases the amount of damage the player inflicts in return.”