Dark Orbit rakes in $2.6 million selling super-powered Drones
You want me to toss in a couple bucks for a sweet mount in your F2P MMO? Sure thing. 10 bucks for a huge content pack? No biggie. Over a thousand dollars for one little drone– wait, what? It may sound crazy to normal folks like you and me, but Bigpoint’s Dark Orbit, a browser-based F2P spaceship MMO, recently sold 2,000 of their in-game drones in just four days, priced at 1,000 Euros each! The sales net Bigpoint around two and a half million dollars.
PC Gamer US Podcast #296: Happy Gamesgiving
Happy Gamesgiving, everyone! We celebrate the Turkeyist time of the year with another hearty podcast loaded with the usual news discussion and a heaping side of what we’re thankful for this year in games. Josh fills us in on everything TOR-related now that the embargo has been lifted off his weary shoulders. Greg plays an instant classic out of the Vietnamese shooter 7554, and we all can’t help ourselves from talking about the Muppets.
Behind-the-scenes with Songhammer, the epic band that rocked BlizzCon’s music contest
You might not have noticed, but there was another band (on top of the Foo Fighters and Blizzard’s own Level 90 Elite Tauren Chieftain) worthy of your praise at BlizzCon last month: the almighty Songhammer. We sat down with the two gamers that formed the army of epic rock, wicked guitars, and WoW-centric lyrics that won third place in the Original Song Contest at this year’s BlizzCon. Between bursts of guitar riffs and giant dragons breathing fire, they told us their tale and talked about some their top songs, like “We are the Horde” and “Armies of the Light.”
Read on to learn more about this rocktastic duo and grab free MP3s of their premier songs at the end of the interview.
And in other PC gaming news…
So, what happens if you collect the weapons and armour of every man you’ve ever killed in Skyrim, and then use the unrelenting force shout on them? This burning question was recently answered by Redditor JuicytheZombie. You can almost feel the game engine buckling under the strain of all the physics items it has to deal with, but it somehow survives, although Juicy explains the game had crashed during several previous takes.
Check inside for a stack the the PC gaming news of every man I have killed.
Ghost Recon Online being free-to-play is a counter to piracy, says Ubisoft producer
Ghost Recon Online producer Sébastien Arnoult says that free-to-play games are a response to piracy – and an alternative to the restrictive DRM that’s annoyed PC gamers in so many recent Ubisoft games.
“We are giving away most of the content for free because there’s no barrier to entry. To the users that are traditionally playing the game by getting it through Pirate Bay, we said, ‘Okay, go ahead guys. This is what you’re asking for. We’ve listened to you – we’re giving you this experience. It’s easy to download, there’s no DRM that will pollute your experience.’”
While Ghost Recon Online is exclusive to PC, Ubisoft’s other Ghost Recon game, Future Soldier, uses a traditional payment model and will only be available on console.
“We’re adapting the offer to the PC market. I don’t like to compare PC and Xbox boxed products because they have a model on that platform that is clearly meant to be €60’s worth of super-Hollywood content. On PC, we’re adapting our model to the demand.”
Firefall trailer gets classy, talks heavy weapons and fast assault
Class balance is the subject of the new Firefall developer diary, but it’s hard to listen to the disembodied voices of the devs when jetpacks and explosions are happening all over the screen. It’s not just the giant laser beams and group battles against invading alien vessels that makes Firefall so attractive, or even that it’s going to be free to play. It’s just refreshing to see a game that’s so damn colourful. Less post-apocalyptic wastelands and more mushroom forests, please! You can sign up for the Firefall beta now on the Firefall site.
New Bioware game teased. Could it be a new Command & Conquer?
A new trailer for the Spike TV Video Game Awards shows the briefest blip of the new Bioware game. It’s set to be announced at the show, and is in development at a new studio.
The clip shows a tank column blowing apart a procession of trucks, and is the only thing the public has seen of the game outside of this image.
There’s only one thing for it. Time to don the hat of speculation, stroke the beard of unknowing and take some stabs in the dark. What could it be? There are some who think it could be a new Command &; Conquer, others say it might be a new Mercenaries game. We’ll know for sure when it’s fully revealed at the VGAs on December 10.
Doom 3 source code now free to all
The Doom 3 source code has been released and is available now on Github. According to John Carmack’s Twitter feed, the source code was delayed when lawyers had a bit of a wobble over some patent problems. With the addition of a few lines of code and the tweaking of a few more, the release was good to go. Releasing source code is a bit of a risky move, and takes time and money to do, so it’s heartening to see id dishing out the data for free. Indie devs and code enthusiasts, go forth and conquer!
Tuning Skyrim on the PC Gamer Rig
Another week, another chance to hunt down bargains for the PC Gamer Rig. Like the well loved broom that’s had many new handles and quite a few heads over the years, the Rig is continually evolving to be the best value machine for under £1,000/£1,500 it possibly can be. No part is the same as it was this time last year: but its essence of Rigginess remains.
This week, as you might expect, it’s been mostly playing Skyrim.
Spec Ops: The Line trailers return to ruined Dubai, introduce evil flaming doom tower
Spec Ops: The Line has been AWOL for a while. When we first saw it, it was masquerading as a military man shoot featuring gruff soldiers doing war at each other in the bombed out ruins of Dubai. The Line has re-emerged, with a trailer and two montages showing some fire fights. The gruff men remain, and Dubai is still the setting, but there’s a gruesome undertone to the ruins that wasn’t there before. I’m pretty sure the giant evil flaming tower is also new. See footage of the game in action below.
Dead Island Bloodbath Arena DLC is out now
The promised Bloodbath DLC for Dead Island has arrived on Steam. The pack includes four survival maps, described as being both “deadly and hazardous.” In each map you must fend off infinite waves of zombies for loot and XP. These survival mode spoils can then be carried back into campaign mode and unleashed on the unsuspecting zombie citizens of Banoi.
There are leaderboards, too, and a new weapon called “the brain wave bomb,” which sounds like it should cause an explosion of ideas and creative solutions to the zombie outbreak, but is more likely to involve the cooking of zombie brains. It costs £7.99 / $9.99, but if you pre-ordered Dead Island, you’ll get it free, which is nice.
Cave Story+ tunnels onto Steam
Superb indie platformer Cave Story has sauntered on Steam, boasting a sheen of upgraded graphical loveliness and a remastered soundtrack. It also comes with a few bonus modes for those who have played it to death, but still can’t get enough of the endearing tale of a robot trying to save a race of oppressed rabbit dudes from “the Doctor.”
Cave Story comes from the mind of developer Daisuke Amaya, and was originally made available for free. The free version is still out there if you want to give it a whirl before a full purchase (don’t forget to install the English translation patch before playing). Cave Story+ is available with a 15% discount this week on Steam, which means you can grab it now for £5.94 / $8.49.
Humble Introversion Bundle is live, pay what you want for every Introversion game
Introversion are the latest indie devs to get the Humble Bundle treatment. You can pay what you want for all of their games. You’ll even get a few interesting tech demos thrown in for good measure, including the procedural city generator that the team developed for Subversion.
The Humble Introversion Bundle includes IGF Grand Prize winner, Darwinia, nuclear war simulator, Defcon, tense hacker sim, Uplink and the multiplayer version of Darwinia, Multiwinia. If you pay more than the average donation (which currently stands at $3.82), you also get Crayon Physics Deluxe and gorgeous platformer, Aquaria as well.
Rift kicks off six week holiday celebration, Fae Yule
The holidays are a perfect time for family, food, and ignoring both while you experience the exciting events in your favorite MMOs. For Telarans, Rift is launching their six week event, Fae Yule, today. As an Ascended, you will have to fight off Crucia, the Dragon of Air, as she tries to enslave the Fae and bring an end all the festivities. Dragons are cool, but no one messes with Telaran holiday cheer!
Interview: The Secret World’s Bylos and Bruusgaard, Pt 1
We’ve got a giant blowout of Funcom’s excellent-looking MMO The Secret World (with exclusive first looks at special missions, dungeons, and PVP) headed your way in an upcoming issue of PC Gamer, but magazines are made of paper. Fickle, fickle paper. Sadly, there are only so many trees in the world, and apparently “but it’s for a really great videogame article” isn’t an acceptable excuse for widespread deforestation.
However, I spent upwards of an hour quizzing lead content designer Joel Bylos and lead designer Martin Bruusgaard over nearly everything imaginable, and I figured you fine folks might be just a teensy bit interested. So, after the break, you’ll find many of the best bits – including balance concerns, how the game’s like Lost, lamentations about the lack of difficulty in MMOs, and more – broken up into handy categories.
