Posts Tagged ‘epic games’

Epic Games and EA pave the way for Bulletstorm

Monday, January 17th, 2011

Epic Games, Warsaw based People Can Fly (an Epic Games studio), and EA have recently announced that the demo for their anticipated action shooter, Bulletstorm will soon be available. Beginning January 25th, the makers of Gears of War and Unreal will unleash a world of guns, action, and attitude, in a title Entertainment Weekly describes as, “an intense, outrageous shooter.”

A unique shooter in it’s own right, Bulletstorm features three game modes; sci-fi themed, single-player campaigns, all-hell-breaks-loose Anarchy multiplayer mode, and Echo mode. Options one and two, we’re all very familiar with, but Echo mode provides a unique experience that tracks and compares players’ scores while they make their way through various campaign modes. Think of it as “Ghosting” within racing games, whereby your performance is measured against previous players’ top stores. The upcoming Bulletstorm demo features a view of Echo mode, whereby players navigate through a collapsed building on the planet Stygia as Ex-Dead Echo leader Garyson Hunt.

Bulletstorm features a “skillshot” system, as players utilize futuristic assault rifles, known as the Peace Maker Carbine, as well as a damage doing Flail Gun, which fires two, chain linked grenades at the target. If handguns are more your style, Bulletstorm serves up the Screamer, a revolver that converts targets from living matter into fireworks.

As New York Times journalist Seth Schiesel puts it, “the name should say it all; big guns, lots of lead and over-the-top mayhem.”

The Bulletstorm demo will be available for download on January 25th to all North American XBOX LIVE and PlayStation owners, with European players joining the party on the 26th. The Bulletstorm Epic Edition will be available for Xbox 360 gamers, and will include an early access pass to the Gears of War 3 beta, as well as feature additional in-game bonus content. PS3 owners will have the opportunity to purchase the Bulletstorm Limited Edition title, also featuring bonus in-game content. A full release of Epic Games/People Can Fly/EA’s Bulletstorm is expected to drop on February 22nd in North America and February 25th in Europe.

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North Carolina grants tax credits to spur digital media growth

Friday, July 23rd, 2010

North Carolina is already home to a number of pixel generating firms, and with the passage of a new law that’s designed to spur growth in the digital media industry via financial incentives, there could be a whole lot more in store for the Tar heel State.

sealSigned yesterday by North Carolina Governor Beverly Purdue, the new law will take effect January 1, 2011, and incentivize companies to either grow or found their business in North Carolina by providing a 15 percent tax credit on employers’ payments to employees, provided they operate in the development of interactive media, or a platform that runs said media.

One of North Carolina’s most prominent players in this field, Epic Games’ president Dr. Michael Capps comments, “North Carolina is host to a growing hotbed of talented individuals working to develop cutting-edge game technologies and exciting new ways to experience entertainment, visualization and training software. This law provides North Carolina with a tremendous opportunity to grow and develop our community into a world leader for information technology.”

To commemorate the occasion, House Bill 1973 was signed by the Governor at Epic Games’ headquarters in Cary. Driving this bill were State Representatives Pryor Gibson, Grier Martin and Chris Heagarty and Senators Marc Basnight, Dan Clodfelter, Floyd McKissick, Josh Stein, and Clark Jenkins. They, and numerous other state officials were on hand to witness the signing.

“The passage of this legislation marks a significant investment in the future of North Carolina’s interactive digital media industry,” said Alexander Macris, president of the Triangle Game Initiative. “Our state is home to one of the largest concentrations of game development companies in the United States. These incentives will not only help keep North Carolina competitive on the national stage, it will produce compelling ROI for the state’s graduates, skilled work force and research and development infrastructure.”

The bill even garnered the attention of The Entertainment Software Association (ESA – the E3 folks). ESA gave the bill high praise and noted that in 2006, the gaming industry contributed $73.4 million dollars to the state economy, and had 14 various game developers and publishers calling NC home.

“North Carolina is among states leading the charge to embrace computer and video games as a job engine and a magnet to recruit and retain talented artists. These incentives demonstrate the state’s commitment to encouraging the expansion of the entertainment software industry,” said Michael D. Gallagher, CEO of the ESA. “We applaud Governor Perdue and members of the North Carolina Legislature for taking action that will stimulate technological innovations and the state’s economy for years to come.”

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Steamworks to support microtransations

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

As always, many a new product, title, concept, and methods were discussed at this year’s GDC. While some announcements were highlighted stronger than others, there are always a bit of tidbits which may or may not have been announced at the convention, and how much media coverage said announcement receives.

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One such bit o’ info was spotted by a few eagle eyed editors over at BigDownload.com. Apparently, Valve Steamwork’s popular game service game development tools PDF brochure reveals that Steamworks will now support in-game microtransactions.

This unannounced addition has been subtly slipped into the fine print, seemingly while we were all ogling over the Mac client support and Epic Games’ adding Steamworks support to Unreal Engine 3 based titles. In addition to the microtransaction support, Valve also managed to slip in an 100 fold increase in cloud storage limits, up to 100MB per game, as opposed to the previous 1MB.

From Steampowered’s overview of changes site:

Want to offer your customers a scabbard for their sword? New tires? The latest in night vision goggles? Now you can through microtransaction support in Steamworks. Your item server can now be easily integrated with Steamworks so that Steam users can buy and instantly use the items they want – all without leaving the game. Steam handles all of the billing through the user’s Steam account.

And while microtransactions are most seemingly a welcome addition to many developers, it’s also an interesting situation for Steam to be in. Could these microtransactions (and associated support) be paving the way for free-to-play games on Stream? And if so…does this then in turn open the door for free-to-play titles being based on Source and Unreal game engines? If so….. wow!

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If you build it they will come

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

New European gaming portal, Key To Play believes that an active conversation with customers and meeting their needs, rather than turning a profit is the key to success.

Key to Play creative director Toni Garcia recently spoke with Rob Purchese of gamesindustry.biz regarding this simple, yet effective strategy.  Garcia believes that high quality portals are the future of online gaming, and that Key to Play can deliver high quality games to set themselves apart from other portals.

“We are gamers, all of us. The point is: we don’t want to make money. We want to make a big, quality portal. Money’s not our priority at the moment,” Garcia explained. “We want to make things that people, if they like our service, will pay for – because we need to live! At the end of the day this is a business, but it’s not our priority. That’s the difference.”

“Maybe other portals are gamers but they don’t care as much for their gamers because they only want them to pay. That’s why we decided to go ahead with Key To Play, because in the future people will only play portals offering good service,” he added.

First up on Key to Play’s offerings list will be Pristontale 2, the successor to the South Korean 2003 Best Game of the Year, Prisontale.  With 4 years of development work, support provided by Epic Games and powered by the Unreal Engine, Prisontale 2; not a shabby choice.  If high quality free-to-play’s are really going to set Key to Play apart from its competitors, Prisontale 2 is a rock solid choice.

Key to Play is planning on monetization through microtransactions via in game items and equipment.  Garcia sees free-to-play/microtransactions as a much more valid model than yesterday’s subscription basis as it gives players the freedom to test run a product and decide for themselves if they want to drops a few coins here and there to upgrade their equipment.  Hopefully, Key to Play will also follow the growing trend of providing only temporary benefits and/or cosmetic upgrades and not providing an unfair game balance.
While not letting the cat out of the bag, Key to Play promises another MMO from Japan as it’s second offering.  Garcia stresses that online worlds are/will not be the sole focus for Key to Play, as the next title COULD be a first person shooter, or maybe even a casual title.

“The main thing is to look for good games, it doesn’t matter where they come from,” he said. “If you do things well then at the end of the day the money will come.”

Here’s to hoping that Key to Play’s wide eyed enthusiasm (and hopefully well stocked bank account) will carry over to meet players high expectations.

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