Posts Tagged "sci fi"

• MindArk giving away Entropia Universe land deeds

  Hots Games
  

  Filed under: Sci-fi, Entropia Universe, Business models, Game mechanics, Free-to-play, Promotions

  MindArk has given new meaning to the term phat lewt with its latest update for Entropia Universe. Players may now acquire one of a thousand Planet Calypso land deeds simply by hunting, mining, or crafting while in game.

  Each land deed carries a real-world value of $100 (and deeds are often sold for much more on the open market), according to a MindArk press release. The deeds also provide revenue sharing through the game’s citizenship program. Deeds began dropping yesterday, and MindArk says that they will continue to do so throughout 2012.

  Planet Calypso is the oldest planetary playfield in Entropia Universe. The game boasts more than one million registered accounts and over $400 million in annual user-to-user transactions.

  [Source: MindArk press release]

  MindArk giving away Entropia Universe land deeds originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 16 May 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Cryptic developer: Star Trek Online PvP is ‘fail’

  Hots Games
  

  Filed under: Sci-fi, Game mechanics, MMO industry, PvP, News items, Star Trek Online, Free-to-play

  How many times have you read a forum post that says insert-random-MMO’s PvP sucks? Well, in Star Trek Online PvP actually does suck, and that’s straight from the mouth of a developer. It’s so bad, in fact, that Dan “Gozer” Griffis makes no bones about the fact that it could even be removed from Cryptic’s sci-fi MMO.

  “Right now because PVP is in such bad shape we (the developers) have to decide if we think we can turn this problem around. Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way.”

  Griffis goes on to say that he is the only developer currently working on PvP, and as such he has to make some hard choices. He has a plan, and though he hasn’t shared specifics on it yet, he says there are huge changes in store over the next year.

  [Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

  Cryptic developer: Star Trek Online PvP is ‘fail’ originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 12 May 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Hyperspace Beacon: Holocron Files — Miraluka

  Hots Games
  

  Filed under: Sci-fi, Classes, Culture, Lore, Opinion, Star Wars Galaxies, Races, Roleplaying, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Hyperspace Beacon

  As I mentioned in my Why I Play Star Wars: The Old Republic piece, Dark Forces and Jedi Knight were two of the Star Wars video games I enjoyed most. Obviously, this was before Knights of the Old Republic. In Jedi Knight, the main antagonist was Jerec. Although it’s never mentioned where Jerec comes from or even what species he was, his most distinguishing feature is the cover over his eyes. At the time, players thought it was a type of cybernetic implant similar to that worn by Geordi LaForge in Star Trek: The Next Generation. It wasn’t until the Tales of the Jedi comic book series that we learned that Jerec and others are a part of the Force-seeing humanoid species known as the Miraluka.

  If you choose to play a Jedi Knight or a Jedi Consular (or if you have 1.5 million credits to unlock it through the Legacy system), you can play as a Miraluka. I have been fascinated by this species since Jerec of Jedi Knight and Shoaneb Culu in the Tales of the Jedi after that. So this week, let’s talk about this captivating species, its culture, its connection to the Force, and what its role is during the time of The Old Republic.

  Continue reading Hyperspace Beacon: Holocron Files — Miraluka

  Hyperspace Beacon: Holocron Files — Miraluka originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 08 May 2012 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Inhabitat’s Week in Green: the Water Discus Hotel, magnetic LED bulbs and pig poo electricity

  Hots Technology
  Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.

  Man-made islands; indoor ski slopes; temporary ice hotels. We thought we had seen it all in Dubai, and then the Middle Eastern city went and outdid itself with the Water Discus Hotel, a hotel that will feature a series of sci-fi styled discs, one of which will be located 21 stories underwater. For those who prefer to stay above water, Antwerp will open one of the world’s largest floating swimming pools this summer. Made from an old ferry boat, Badboot will be 120 meters long and it’ll be part of a larger facility that can host as many as 600 people. And across the point in New York, the One World Trade Center skyscraper was just crowned the tallest building in NYC.

  Continue reading Inhabitat’s Week in Green: the Water Discus Hotel, magnetic LED bulbs and pig poo electricity

  Inhabitat’s Week in Green: the Water Discus Hotel, magnetic LED bulbs and pig poo electricity originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 06 May 2012 20:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• EVE producer: F2P converts were "failing," subs still viable

  Hots Games
  

  Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Business models, Culture, Interviews, MMO industry, New titles, News items, Free-to-play, DUST 514, Sandbox

  The death of the subscription model has been greatly exaggerated according to CCP. This view isn’t terribly surprising, given the fact that the company’s fortunes ebb and flow with sub-based EVE Online. What is somewhat surprising is the frankness with which EVE producer Jon Lander talks about the free-to-play mania that’s gripped western dev studios in recent years.

  “You look at the companies who did go free-to-play. They retrofitted it on, and that was because their games were failing. They didn’t care about the tiny nugget of players who were still playing, because they knew they would get a huge number of other players and it would be more profitable,” Lander told PC Gamer, before going on to explain how such a retrofit would kill EVE’s essence.

  Overall quality and the desire for long-term play also factor into a title’s business model, Lander says. “If you have a really good game [...] and people want to spend a long time playing it, not like a month or two but like EVE players for years at a time, they’re prepared to pay a subscription fee for a good quality gaming experience.”

  He also mentions EVE’s PLEX system, which allows for real-world money to be injected into the EVE economy sans shady third-party brokers. And of course CCP is experimenting with free-to-play via its new DUST 514 shooter, which Lander says was built from the ground up for the new business model. It’s not necessarily the future, though. “People say the subscription MMO is dead. I fundamentally disagree with that. It’s simply not the case,” he says. Hit the jump for video excerpts from the interview.

  Continue reading EVE producer: F2P converts were “failing,” subs still viable

  EVE producer: F2P converts were “failing,” subs still viable originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 03 May 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Tribes: Ascend puts together a beta infographic

  Hots Games
  

  Filed under: Betas, Sci-fi, Culture, News items, Free-to-play, MMOFPS

  Tribes: Ascend has finally launched, and that means players everywhere can experience the simple joy of logging in, gearing up, and then skiing at high velocity across the ground while firing explosive munitions at distant targets. All right, maybe that joy isn’t quite as simple, but the point remains that the game has successfully cleared its beta test. And what better way to celebrate that a bit belatedly than by pulling together some interesting stats on the overall beta experience?

  Past the cut, you’ll find an official infographic tallying things like total kills, total number of flags captured, and the ever-important question of how many people met their end by falling. In a game with jetpacks and high-speed skiing, that number is a bit higher than you might otherwise think. So take a look at the full collection of stats, sigh wistfully in memory, and then start gearing up for another round.

  Continue reading Tribes: Ascend puts together a beta infographic

  Tribes: Ascend puts together a beta infographic originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• BioWare publishes this week’s SWTOR community Q&A, preps for next week

  Hots Games
  

  Filed under: Sci-fi, Game mechanics, MMO industry, News items, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Community Q&A

  BioWare has published a selection of community questions (and answers) on its official Star Wars: The Old Republic website. The firm is making a concerted effort to reach out to its players lately, and the Q&A is the latest effort that comes on the heels of a website revamp and the in-game rakghoul plague.

  Combat designer Cameron Winston fields a query about SWTOR’s threat mechanics, while lead designer Damion Schubert talks about the logic behind the equipment available at commendation vendors. “We don’t want you to get all of the pieces of an armor set from any one source of gear. We want you to do multiple activities in the game to build out a full set of gear. This is a conscious decision on our part to encourage and reward playing multiple facets of the game. So you should do other things — heroics, check the GTN, etc. — the full set of gear is out there,” he explains.

  BioWare has also made two new discussion threads available on the forums: one for this week’s questions and one for next week’s Q&A.

  BioWare publishes this week’s SWTOR community Q&A, preps for next week originally appeared on Massively on Sat, 21 Apr 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Another Siri-Like App, Voice Answer, Hits The App Store For Those Of Us Without The iPhone 4S

  Hots News
  

  Looks like Apple might be loosening its grip even more on voice recognition apps? Or, it simply just feels that the competition is not as good as its own native Siri. We’ve just gotten word from Netherlands-based developer Sparkling Apps that its voice-response app, Voice Answer — rejected by Apple for the nearly three months — has been approved by Apple and is now live in the App Store, and usable on any iPhone, iPod or iPad running iOS 4.2 or later.

  It took “almost three months of negotiating, tweaking and pushing,” developer Martijn van der Spek tells TechCrunch. Like Siri, the app is based on data from Wolfram Alpha, among other sources, and lets users ask questions by either speaking to the app or typing in a question. It’s priced at £2.49 ($3.99).

  He says the company is now going “full speed ahead” implementing more features into the app. These include location-based place finding and email/SMS and more voice function commands. Additionally it’s adding in a bit of sci-fi kitsch: it’s planning to create an animated robot for the interface. You can see the video of how that will lookbelow.

  The news comes on the back of other voice recognition apps making a splash and then facing rejection issues with Apple, perhaps most notably Evi.

  Sparkling Apps in March had a free voice recognition app, Talk to Eve, also rejected for being “too similar to Siri” that was subsequently approved in March.

  With the voice-recognition space currently very active right now, the big question is whether any of these third-party developers will be able to gain traction against Apple, and what they will all do next to make themselves relevant and indispensable to users. Offering APIs to other app developers could be one lucrative route.

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• EVE Online streamlines the process of figuring out who’s crippling your ship

  Hots Games
  

  Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Game mechanics, Patches, Previews, News items, Sandbox

  If you’re playing EVE Online, you are going to lose a ship sooner or later. It’s as inevitable as the tides. Sometimes you’ll be outnumbered and outgunned, and while that can be frustrating, there’s no real shame in it. But when you’re having your ship locked in place by an attacker you can’t see and you don’t actually know what’s happening, that is a different matter. It’s particularly infuriating, and it’s something that the game’s next update is aiming to fix.

  Starting with the next patch, the new Effects Bar will show a quick overview of all the effects currently in place on your ship as well as the source of same. So if there are two people attacking you, an icon will pop up, and you’ll be able to target and counterattack appropriately rather than fumble through more clumsy interface methods. If the blog entry explaining the system isn’t clear enough for you, check out the short preview video just past the break.

  Continue reading EVE Online streamlines the process of figuring out who’s crippling your ship

  EVE Online streamlines the process of figuring out who’s crippling your ship originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 18 Apr 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• EVE Evolved: Fixing the wardec system

  Hots Games
  

  Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Expansions, Game mechanics, PvP, Opinion, EVE Evolved, Sandbox

  EVE Online‘s new Inferno expansion is almost here, bringing with it a massive PvP revamp. CCP will try to resurrect the dead faction warfare system, and new modules will be introduced to significantly shake up the PvP landscape for the first time in several years. The war declaration system is also getting a complete overhaul, with the goal of forcing the aggressor to commit to the war and making wars more structured and meaningful. Unfortunately, the implementation described at Fanfest doesn’t look like it will achieve that and doesn’t fix any of the system’s other problems.

  The attacking corp can no longer stop a war mid-week, and the defender can hire mercenaries to join his war, but this doesn’t add any risk for the attacking corp and doesn’t force it to commit. The attacker can always stop paying the war bill, and the war will then finish at the end of the week. As most empire wardecs are initiated by small shell corps full of PvP alts, the attacking players won’t mind logging out for a few days if the war backfires. The current war system is plagued with issues, from a complete lack of victory conditions to the fact that the attacker can pay for the war indefinitely. It allows bizarre asymmetries, like tiny alt corps declaring war on major military alliances, and offers no way for even the most militarily powerful defender to win the war.

  In this week’s EVE Evolved, I lay out some of the problems with EVE Online‘s upcoming wardec revamp and propose an alternative system that fixes them.

  Continue reading EVE Evolved: Fixing the wardec system

  EVE Evolved: Fixing the wardec system originally appeared on Massively on Sun, 15 Apr 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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