Roundtable: Has The Industry Grown Up?

Was this the year that gaming grew up? GameIndustry ask their international staffs this question. Four persons bring us to the hard look at the industry’s growing pains. What’s your opinion?omething seems to have changed in the last year or so. We’re not sure when it started, but nearly all of us could point to a spot where we noticed it happening.You might have seen it on Twitter, arguments cast in 140 characters or less. It may have been the sudden, vicious turn of a comment thread or the undertone of dissatisfaction in a headline. You might even have felt like this all along. Things are being challenged, conventions called to account.

 

Gender imbalance, the lack of inclusivity, the corruption of journalists, issues of maturity, sex and violence, copycatting, the exploitation of the customer – all these issues have been pushed to the fore over the last twelve months. Turned over and inside out, vaunted or ridiculed – there seems to have been barely time to draw breath this year between long, hard looks in the mirror.
For some it’s been a welcome change, the relief of realising that there are other people who feel just as angry, marginalised or outright excluded. For others it’s been an unwelcome distraction, unnecessary navel gazing which only leads to a pointless stirring of the pot and no real progress – frenzies whipped up by the press for cheap hits and self-glorification.
Whatever you feel about them, many have been almost impossible to ignore. Whether it’s the storm of abuse endured by Anita Sarkeesian, the crisis of confidence ignited by Rab Florence or marketing tactics which are somewhere on a scale between condemnable and very clever, this has been a year in which our industry has been pulled from many ruts, asked to reassess and re-examine.
How much has actually changed is debatable, but what is clear is that it’s unlikely we’re going to see these issues swept back under the carpet. Like it or not, these debates aren’t going away. We’ve hosted and participated in all of these discussions, and more, but we rarely get to comment on them directly. So, read on as we ask our international staff – was this the year that gaming grew up?

New Content and Language Features Enhance Gaming Experience for A.V.A

Aeria Games is excited to announce the launch of several action-packed content updates and the multi-language client to its hit First-Person Shooter game Alliance of Valiant Arms (A.V.A.). The game’s loyal and dedicated fans can now play A.V.A. in German, French and Spanish, on five new maps, amongst other content updates.

The ever-expanding A.V.A. community has resulted in the release of A.V.A. in three new languages. Choosing a language is easy, with players able to select their language before launching the game. This change has no effect on players’ settings, and regardless of the language chosen, all gamers will still be hosted on the same server, meaning the action remains just as intense, just in time for new content updates.
Five new maps await players with the new content updates! Players must battle against NRF marines in order to secure research data in the E-Space escape map, while teams can fight for victory in the new Radar Demolition map.  Gamers can also play as the exclusive new character Marek, taking to the field with the new AK200 rifle, as well as enjoy the new capsule guns and many new surprises in the Web item mall.
These new features come on top of the anti-hacking tool and new clan page announcements made recently by Aeria Games. A.V.A. is always striving to improve game play for its many fans, and of course it will always be free to download and free to play. Keep up to date with the news on the official site and watch the trailers for E-Space and Radar now!

Guild Wars 2: Lost Shores Player Rewards are Coming

It has announced by ArenaNet that players who joined connectivity issues during last month’s Guild Wars 2 Lost Shores event will receive a participation reward via in-game mail. Devs alsourge players to be patient as the script could take several hours to run.

As we mentioned last week, for those players who were not able to get the rewards for the final Lost Shores event because they were suffering connection issues, we will provide rewards for their participation in the event. Thanks for your patience while we worked to resolve this.We will hand out the rewards via In-game mail today – Quick FYI… it might take several hours to run the script, so do not panic if you do not immediately receive it. ~RB2

In addition, a fan make a Guild Wars 2 “Looking for Group” app which has been released. According to a thread on Reddit, “Arxae” has created a way for players to find groups across servers and to avoid the tiresome spamming of “LFG”.

  • Great way to find a group even across different home servers.
  • No need to stand in Lions Arch spamming chat for a group.
  • Quick way to advertise you are looking for a group.
  • Quick way to pick up that last needed member.

Guild Wars 2 is competing with other games in MMOsite Reader’s Choice event. Vote for it now!

League of Legends: Changing Bad Player Behavior

League of Legends developer Riot Games has established a new anti-griefer task force it calls the Player Behaviour and Justice Team. It’s job is to stop being being “jerks” online.In an interview with Gamasutra, League of Legends lead producer Travis George explained that the task force was set up to monitor foul play and griefing as a means of better understanding it, and to devise more effective ways of putting a stop to unscrupulous actions.

He said, “Nobody wants to play a game with somebody who’s mean. There’s a line, and that line generally is people being mean for the sake of being mean – telling you what to do, telling you how bad you are. And I think we can actually fix a lot of that.”

“We actually have built a team around this. We call it, lovingly, the Player Behaviour and Justice Team. There are a lot of really talented folks on that team, including two PhDs. One’s a cognitive neuroscientist and one’s a behavioural psychologist.”

“We’ve actually developed specific trends, and our own set of metrics that we look at for measuring what percentage of times we think that players will encounter a negative experience in a game, and how severe that negative experience is,” says George. “And then we have to build things or be responsive or message the community in a particular way to address those things.”

 

RaiderZ – St. Fhannel Monastery Trailer

Following the recent launch of RaiderZ, we’re pleased to share a brand new trailer highlighting St. Fhannel Monastery, one of the monster-hunting MMO’s high-level instances. This multiple wing instance will find veteran hunters banding together to clear this sacred area of an unholy corruption.”One of my favorite things about RaiderZ is its incredibly unique boss fights,” says Senior Producer Mark Hill.

“It’s not unusual to face situations where players can break off limbs from bosses and equip them as weapons or instances that find players dodging and blocking over-the-top air attacks and dangerous grappling moves. But in addition to St. Fhannel Monastery’s deadly guardians, the layout and flow of multi-wing dungeon is also a great example of how RaiderZ manages to push the boundaries of what we’ve come to expect from MMOs.”

In RaiderZ, players must “Hunt Together or Die Alone” if they hope to succeed in battle against Rendel’s most deadly creatures. With its action-oriented combat system, flexible class system, unique and engaging boss encounters, and stunning environments, RaiderZ introduces a change of pace for fans of the genre. The best part: RaiderZ is free-to-play.

Dragon Knight online: Is this worth your time?

So since I haven’t really seen any proper detailed review or thoughts on the game that can give people a good idea of what the game basically is, I thought I would do just that to give those people an idea if your still pondering on “is this even worth trying?”.

The customization is really basic for this game, I was originally hoping it would have more as we come closer to 2013 but I should really start remembering that not all company’s have the funds to make everything as great as possible, leading from customization of characters to the texturing of the game world.

So anyway what we have is simply 4 things to work from, 5 selections of faces, 5 hair styles and 3 colours to them, 5 accessory’s and 5 face decorations (which seems to be some random face paint) and lastly you can choose from 3 different colours for your starter armour, also at the top right you can preview your future armours which seems to be an every 10 levels thing into which they change appearance.

So from what the game really has to offer in terms of PvE so far is all quite basic, it’s simply a pick quest up from y NPC, kill x mobs required for the quest/kill mobs for x item and hand it back to y npc (as you can see in the screenshot at the right hand side of the screen), since the quests wasn’t overly difficult I didn’t really mind doing them too much, what kept me interested to some degree was how you could build your characters skills since there’s 2 trees you can go down and you’re not limited to 1, e.g for the sorcerer it’s more of a Fire tree and an Ice tree (though the skills in each of them arn’t just limited to fire and ice skills only) and in order to unlock the next tier of skills below you would have to spend x amount of points in the tier above first, also from what I’ve heard is that when you fully complete 1 tree you will unlock a new one (may need confirmation but it looks that way anyway).

I did like the idea that you got some AoE skills to play around with when you eventually unlocked them as it made the game more fun to play when you could finally start gathering mobs and just blasting them with AoEs, which of course made the questing faster and grinding for exp much easier as well.

Maplestory Mesos are sweeping through every part of the industry

Nexon, the administrator of accepted online amateur like Dungeon Fighter Maplestory Mesos Online, has appointed Min Kim as the arch controlling at its important North American business unit, replacing Daniel Kim, who will acknowledgment to Seoul to yield on new duties at the ancestor company.The administration change is absorbing back Nexon is one of the a lot of able online bold companies in Asia (it aloft $1 billion in an antecedent accessible alms endure December) and is amidst an amplification in the U.S. and Europe. Other high-profile bold companies such as Zynga and OnLive accept hit harder times, but Nexon continues to grow.

Min Kim was advanced confined as Nexon America’s chief carnality admiral of Live Games, and he oversaw bold assembly and marketing. In 2005, he helped authorize Nexon America and launched MapleStory in North America. That bold became the aboriginal commercially acknowledged free-to-play, microtransaction-based bold in North America. Now free-to-play amateur are across-the-board through every allotment of the industry. Min Kim aswell helped with the acceptance of agenda agreeable cards which consumers acquirement and again actuate so they can buy things in online amateur at retail.

We acknowledge Daniel for his abounding contributions and administration in North America and attending advanced to leveraging his talents in Korea to advice abide to abound Nexon’s business,said Seungwoo Choi, the admiral and CEO of Nexon. Looking ahead, Nexon is acutely well-positioned to abduction the advance opportunities in North America enabled by the advancing admeasurement of accelerated broadband and the accretion acceptance of the free-to-play business model. Min has been with Nexon America from the alpha and brings aberrant expertise, industry abyss and administration to this role. He is the appropriate being to advance Nexon America forward.