Icons dev Wavedash Games lays off ‘majority’ of staff
Oakland-based indie studio Wavedash Games published a blog post today announcing it has laid off “the majority of the development team” after failing to hit some (unspecified) goals.
It’s a rough blow for Wavedash, which set up shop in 2015 and launched its free-to-play platform fighter Icons: Combat Arena on Steam’s Early Access service earlier this summer.
How many people remain at the studio is yet unclear, but the post makes it clear that the game is meant to continue in some form.
“Sadly, we have fallen short of our goals,” reads an excerpt of the post. “Having learned this day was approaching, the team has been hard at work on a ‘Definitive’ version of Icons that will continue to live on, fully playable, for the community. We’ll post about what that looks like next week.”
Gamasutra has reached out to Wavedash for more details on how many jobs were lost and whether or not those who were laid off today will receive appropriate severance. As always, if you or someone you know has been affected by this closure you can email Gamasutra to share your story confidentially.
Video Game Deep Cuts: Uri Geller’s Pessimistic Starlink
The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutras community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from video game industry ‘watcher’ Simon Carless (GDC, Gamasutra co-runner), rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend.
This week’s highlights include Uri Geller vs. Pokemon, why we need pessimistic games, a look at Ubisoft’s Starlink, & lots more besides.
One fun thing this week is that I’ve started helping out Gamasutra’s editorial staff, by commissioning some ‘straight to the point’ Q&As with smart indies who are being (at least moderately!) successful right now.
So far it’s been Joel Couture & John Harris chatting with the creators of The Universim & the Parkasaurus devs respectively – but there’s lots more to come! And is a good way to highlight games and creators at the same time on VGDC, too.
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (or, Of Movies and Games and Whether the Twain Shall Meet)(Jimmy Maher / The Digital Antiquarian – ARTICLE)
“Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the game arises from the fact that its designers were adapting from the shooting script rather than the finished movie, which they got to see in the Skywalker Ranch theater only when their own project was in the final stages of bug-swatting and polishing.”
How developers harvest your data to make their games better(Alex Wiltshire / PC Gamer – ARTICLE)
“Barth can see how many players reached every one of the levels in his games, and how many succeeded. He can see how long they took and how many got stuck and never come back. He can see where the difficulty spikes are and do something about them, and he can take what he learns from one game and apply it to the next.”
Years in the Making: The Long Game of Boyfriend Dungeon(Tanya X. Short / Gamasutra Blogs – ARTICLE)
“Overnight successes don’t exist, from what I’ve seen. There’s usually years and years of work behind the scenes and then MAYBE your game blows up, but mostly not. Plenty of people work for years and their game still doesn’t blow up — that’s certainly what happened for our previous games. I guess it’s possible SOME game out there enjoyed overnight success.”
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is big, beautiful, and shallow(Daniel Starkey / Ars Technica – ARTICLE)
“While the series struggled under an accelerated release schedule some years back, Ubisoft’s tentpole franchise is on a more solid pacing again. That means a return to what Assassin’s Creed does best: expounding on and remixing prominent game design ideas and serving them up an aesthetic and conceptual cocktail. Odyssey, much like last year’s Origins, takes ideas from its best contemporaries and reassembles them into a new whole. [SIMON’S NOTE: people generally seem to dig the game – & there are lots of romance FAQs, too.]”
Beneath a Starless Sky: Pillars of Eternity and the Infinity Engine Era of RPGs(David Craddock / Shacknews – ARTICLE)
“But stars come before constellations. In 2003, three producers left Black Isle Studios, publishers and developers of the Infinity Engine quintet, to found Obsidian Entertainment. Their sky was dark and blank, save for those five stars: Baldur’s Gate and its sequel, Planescape: Torment, and two romps through Icewind Dale.”
Thumbs down: how the video games industry is battling Brexit(Marijam Didžgalvytė / The Guardian – ARTICLE)
“Brexit and Wetherspoons, Brexit and fashion, Brexit and bananas … It seems as if so much of our everyday lives will be affected by Brexit – and if you play video games, you can certainly expect changes. The British video games industry adds £5bn to the economy and employs more than 12,000 people, 35% of whom are EU citizens.”
Ubisoft’s ‘Starlink’ Designed For ‘Gamer Kids’ and Their Parents(Brian Crecente / Variety – ARTICLE)
“Ubisoft’s upcoming action-adventure toys-to-life game “Starlink: Battle for Atlas” is the byproduct of creating for one of the many new sorts of audiences blossoming within the video game space. [SIMON’S NOTE: this game still seems kinda ‘under the radar’ – but maybe it’ll get somewhere with that unique approach?]”
How The Universim’s ‘god game’ twist charmed Early Access players(Joel Couture / Gamasutra – ARTICLE)
“Gamasutra spoke with Alex Koshelkov of Crytivo, developers of The Universim, to talk about making living worlds and beings that react to player decisions rather than directly obey them, and the challenges that have come for the game as it moves through Early Access towards full release.”
We Need More Pessimistic Games(Cameron Kunzelman / Waypoint – ARTICLE)
“The vast majority of our games produce heroes; the heroes have stories fit for heroes; the world changes in response to the player’s tectonic actions. Our blockbuster video games are plagued with the optimism of gameplay.”
Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 devs on balancing Blackout battle royale mode(Matt Cox /RockPaperShotgun – ARTICLE)
“There’s a new Call Of Duty around the corner. Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 is out on October 12th, so I sat down with Treyarch’s studio design director David Vonderhaar and Jason “Director of Zombies” Blundell to quiz them about the game’s new battle royale mode, Blackout, why they’ve left regenerating health behind, and how they handled no longer making a singleplayer campaign mode.”
Queens of the Phone Age: The Narrative Design of Reigns: Her Majesty(Leigh Alexander / GDC / YouTube – VIDEO)
“In this 2018 GDC talk, writer Leigh Alexander shares her narrative design process around the tricky political tightrope of women’s power, especially when it has to be both violent and funny.”
Occult Space | Cultist Simulator(Sam Zucci / Heterotopias – ARTICLE)
“The real draw of Cultist Simulator is its occult topography. The Mansus—the game’s occult centre—is another name for a feudal unit of land measurement and so expectedly, progress through the Mansus is framed as spatial, as the player moves from The Wood to the White Gate and so on.”
There’s not enough videogames; everyone should be encouraged to make them (or, videogames are just art)(Brendan Keogh / BRKeogh.com – ARTICLE)
“The problem with much of the Indiepocalypse discourse is that it perpetuates the misunderstanding that ‘making videogames’ is first and foremost an economic activity. Of course, for a whole lot of people, making videogames is an economic activity; it’s their job! The thing is, you can make videogames without it being your job.”
The Little Things That Matter A Lot(Ben Brode / YouTube – VIDEO)
“Ben Brode kicks off PAX Dev 2018 with a talk about the little details of game development that can end up having a huge impact on players and developers… Come laugh and hear a few stories from the former Hearthstone game director as he transitions into his new role as chief creative officer of Second Dinner.”
Breaking fences, escaping dinosaurs?! Oh my, it’s Parkasaurus‘ developers(John Harris / Gamasutra – ARTICLE)
“Canadian microstudio Washbear’s new simulation, Parkasaurus, recently released on Steam Early Access to general delight from players, since it’s a lighthearted romp into the world of dino management and theme park wonder with a jovial ‘sim’ bent.”
The state of indie dev and why it will not get easier(Cliffski / Cliffski’s Blog – ARTICLE)
“In practice it seems that indie development is still seen as attractive enough that there is another decade or so of new entrants coming in to replace every developer who drops out when their finances run dry. I really cannot see the ‘number of games released on steam this week’ metric dropping a lot in the medium term.”
The future of GOG: mod support, Steam rivalry and problematic tweets(Robert Purchese / Eurogamer – ARTICLE)
“Almost 10 years ago to the day, CD Projekt launched the online digital game store Good Old Games. The operation and scope was small – a handful of people salvaging iconic old PC games for modern operating systems – but the prices, customer service and DRM-free message were right, and slowly the service grew. And grew, and grew. And today things are different.”
The Tragic End Of Telltale Games(Megan Farokhmanesh / The Verge – ARTICLE)
“When employees showed up for work on Friday, September 21st, at Telltale Games, there was nothing to suggest the day would be different than any other. The second episode of The Walking Dead’s final season would ship the following week; developers across multiple teams were busy with plans for in-progress titles. But only hours later, 250 people would find themselves with no job, no severance, and health insurance that would be gone by month’s end — just nine days.”
A Brief History of Speedrunning(Kat Brewster / Read Only Memory – ARTICLE)
“A good speedrun is hypnotising to watch – this goes for ones showcased at GDQ, or the ones which get circulated around the internet for their insane jumps or cutscene skips or lightning fast movement. They’re a dizzying show of hard won skill and palpable effort.”
——————
[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at tinyletter.com/vgdeepcuts – we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to [email protected] MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra & an advisor to indie publisher No More Robots, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]
New Preview Beta and Delta (subset) 1810 Update – 9/29/18
Starting at 2:00 p.m. PDT today, members of the Xbox One Preview Beta and Delta (subset) Rings will begin receiving the latest 1810 Xbox One system update (180925-1920). Read on for more about the fixes and known issues in the latest 1810 system update.
NOTE : Today a subset of Delta Users are receiving the 1810 build. We are doing the subset of users as we are targeting the upgrade process and will move the remaining set of Delta users in over the next week as we flight new builds to test the upgrade process.
Fixes:
Audio – Blu-Ray Playback
Fixes to resolve BluRay playback errors out in pass-through mode when playing discs with trailers that have different audio formats. The user is no longer forced to restart the application and try again.
Matchmaking
Fixes to the stability of matchmaking when a user attempts to join a session from a console.
System
Fixes to the performance of the Virtual keyboard
System Memory and Performance fixes in this build.
Localization fixes in this build.
Virtual Keyboard
Fixes to the performance of the Virtual keyboard
We have fixed the issue with special characters and emjoi’s when using the Virtual Keyboard.
Known Issues:
Avatars
It can take up to 10 seconds to view an Avatar on the profile screen after creating a new Avatar.
My Games & Apps
We are aware that some users are experiencing crashing of a game or the Youtube app when you are either launching or resuming the Youtube app.
If you are in the Youtube app and then Resume to a Game the app/game and console may hang or crash.
We are aware that some users are experiencing challenges navigating the Ready to Install Filter options in My Games and Apps. Some users are unable to select the filter options at all and we are investigating.
Power
We are tracking an issue in which the console is fully powering off when it is placed into Instant On mode.
Profile Color
Sometimes users may encounter the incorrect Profile color when powering on the console.
Fortnite Is Getting A $30 Physical Edition On Switch Courtesy Of Warner Bros.
Fortnite is getting its very own physical, retail edition thanks to a partnership between developer Epic Games and Warner Bros. Interactive. The bundle will be available on Switch and other consoles later this year.
Called Fortnite: Deep Freeze Bundle, this new retail edition will include the standard, free-to-play Fortnite Battle Royale game, as well as premium content including the Frostbite Outfit, Cold Front Glider, Chill-Axe Pickaxe, Freezing Point Back Bling, and 1,000 V-Bucks which can be used to purchase in-game items.
The game itself will naturally be the very same game available for free directly from the eShop, with the cost covering the extra items that are supplied alongside the game. This new bundle isn’t exclusive to retail stores, however, as players will also be able to purchase and download the content digitally from the eShop or Nintendo’s websites.
The bundle launches for Switch, Xbox One, and PS4 on 16th November and will be available for £24.99 / $29.99, securing the extra shelf space and visibility in stores that it (definitely doesn’t) need.
Are you thinking about joining in with the Fortnite craze? Will you be grabbing a copy of this bundle to get stuck in? Let us know with a comment.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 10-10-2018, 06:07 PM - Forum: Windows
- No Replies
Microsoft’s new Copenhagen lab accelerates quantum materials research
Microsoft is pleased to announce the recent opening of our new Quantum Materials Laboratory in Copenhagen, Denmark, on September 21. We have high expectations for the new lab. It’s where the heart of our quantum computer—the topological qubit—will be developed under the direction of Scientific Director Peter Krogstrup.
Reporting to Krogstrup is a team of skilled mechanical engineers, materials scientists, and quantum physicists. Together, they’re synthesizing ultra-clean quantum crystals, the building blocks of future quantum computers. The Copenhagen lab will supply these crystals to Microsoft Quantum labs located in Delft, the Netherlands; Sydney, Australia; Santa Barbara, California; and other locations.
It’s fitting that Copenhagen should host this groundbreaking new lab. After all, it was Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted who in 1820 discovered the link between electricity and magnetism—a breakthrough that in time helped lead to the use of electricity to run our world. Another Danish scientist, Niels Bohr, received a Nobel prize in physics in 1922 for his work on quantum theory. Bohr later founded the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen. Our new quantum lab will lead to discoveries that are equally groundbreaking.
Given that people such as Oersted and Bohr are household names in Denmark—with streets and parks named for them—it wasn’t surprising that the opening of our new lab was a newsworthy event. Danish Minister of Higher Education and Science Tommy Ahlers was among those attending, and later joked on Twitter about a TV interview he gave: “Everything was going fine until they asked me to explain the physics behind quantum computing!”
Beyond research and development, another role for the new Copenhagen lab is to help educate the public on the field of quantum computing. It’s been designed such that passersby, families with children, students, and others can see researchers at work behind large glass windows creating materials that will make scalable quantum computing possible. The lab’s neighbor is the Technical University of Denmark, where half of Denmark’s engineers are trained. Students there are finding inspiration in the Microsoft lab and charting their own futures around quantum computing.
The Microsoft Quantum Materials Lab’s impressive array of scientific equipment speaks to the exciting research it’s tackling. One of the problems researchers there will investigate is how to create quantum states that are more easily interpreted. “Quantum states are extremely fragile and therefore very difficult to maintain and read,” lab director Krogstrup says. “And quantum materials must be perfect. That means not one atom can lie in the wrong place—literally. This is among the things we need to do more research in.”
Quantum computing is a complex concept and can be a challenge for people to wrap their heads around. But the potential of the field is clear—creating computers far more powerful than anything available today, with the ability to solve some of the most difficult computing problems imaginable. We look forward to delivering that reality with the Quantum Materials Lab.
The Humble Store has been killing it lately with its Humble Monthly subscription. Recent bundles have included blockbuster games like Overwatch and Destiny 2, bundled with a handful of smaller games, all for just $12 per month. Humble has unveiled November's early release titles, and it's already shaping up to be another great month. If you join for just $12, you'll instantly unlock Hitman, Hollow Knight, and 7 Days to Die, with an additional set of mystery games to be revealed on November 2. The only drawback is that you won't know what the mystery games are until it's too late to get the November bundle.
Hitman is the latest game to star the bald, barcoded killer. It came out episodically throughout 2016, but this is the complete, finished game, containing all six sprawling levels that act as murderous sandboxes in which you can get creative with your assassinations. In our 8/10 Hitman review, Brett Todd wrote, "This 2016 take on Hitman is a brilliant game. Expansive level design and nearly unlimited replay value courtesy of so many routes to your assassinations (and so many methods with which to carry them out) make the experience almost completely different each and every time you play."
Hollow Knight is an elegantly crafted side-scrolling game that has you gradually exploring a massive underground environment. You unlock dozens of new abilities as you play, which help you face a variety of challenging bosses. Reviewer Alessandro Barbosa gave the game 9/10 in his Hollow Knight review, writing, "Hollow Knight feels exceptional because so many of its smaller, expertly designed parts fit so well together... But its expansive enemy roster and routinely surprising areas and platforming challenges ensure that your journey through this fallen bug kingdom is one you're unlikely to forget."
Finally, 7 Days to Die is a fitting game to play in October, seeing as it's a survival game that's stuffed full of zombies. But judging by our no-punches-pulled negative review, you might want to save this one for last. They can't all be winners.
You can join Humble Monthly here for $12, and you can cancel at any time. The games you get come in the form of Steam codes, and they're yours to keep and play forever. Other perks include access to all the games in The Trove, 10% off everything in the Humble Store, and access to exclusive deals. Plus, 5% of your payments goes to charity. If you want to assemble a nice collection of Steam games, this is probably the cheapest way to do it.
Linux-Based Airtame 2 Offers an Enterprise Alternative to Chromecast
One category that often gets overlooked in the discussion of Linux computers is the market for HDMI dongle devices that plug into your TV to stream, mirror, or cast content from your laptop or mobile device. Yesterday, Google announced an extensively leaked third-gen version of its market-leading, Linux-powered Chromecast device. The latest Chromecast upgrades the WiFi radio to 5GHz and adds 2.4GHz Bluetooth while also overhauling the physical design.
Here, we look at a similar Linux-based HDMI dongle device that launched this morning with a somewhat different feature set and market focus. The Airtame 2 is the first hardware overhaul since the original Airtame generated $1.3 million on Indiegogo in 2013. The new version doubles the RAM, improves the Debian Linux firmware, and advances to dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, which is now known as WiFi 5 in the new Wi-Fi Alliance naming scheme that accompanied its recent WiFi 6 (ax) announcement.
In its first year, Copenhagen, Denmark-based Airtame struggled to fulfill its Indiegogo orders and almost collapsed in the process. Yet, the company went on to find success and recently surpassed 100,000 device shipments. With a growing focus on enterprise and educational markets, Airtame upgraded its software with cloud device management features, and expanded its media sources beyond cross-platform desktops to Android and iOS devices.
The key difference with Chromecast is that Airtame supports mirroring to multiple devices at once, as long as you’re video is coming from a laptop or desktop rather than a mobile. Chromecast also requires the Chrome browser, and it lacks cloud-based device management features.
Combined with Chromecast’s dominance of the low-end entertainment segment, thanks in part to its $25 pricetag, Airtame’s advantages led the company to focus more on the enterprise, signage, and educational markets. Unfortunately, the Airtame 2 price went up by $100 to $399 per device.
Airtame 2 extends its enterprise trajectory by “re-imagining how to turn blank screens into smart, collaborative displays,” says the company. Airtame recently released four Homescreen apps, providing “simple app integrations for better team collaboration and digital signage.” These deployments are controlled via Airtame Cloud, which was launched in early 2017. The cloud service enables enterprise and educational customers to monitor their Airtame devices, perform bulk updates, and add updated content directly from the cloud.
Twice the RAM, five times the WiFi performance
The Airtame 2 offers the same basic functionality as the Airtame 1, but it adds a number of performance benefits. It moves from the DualLite version of the NXP i.MX6 to the similarly dual-core, Cortex-A9 Dual model. This has the same 1GHz clock rate, but with a more advanced Vivante GC2000 GPU. Output resolution via the HDMI 1.4b port stays the same at 1920×1080, but you now get a 60fps frame rate instead of 30fps. As before, you can plug into VGA or DVI ports using adapters.
More importantly for performance, the Airtame 2 doubles the RAM to 2GB. In place of an SD card slot, the firmware is stored on onboard eMMC.
The new Cypress (Broadcom) CYW89342 RSDB WiFi 5 chip is about five times faster than the original’s Qualcomm WiFi 4 (802.11n) chip, which also provided dual-band MIMO 2.4GHz/5.2GHz WiFi. The Airtame 2 has twice the range, at up to 20 meters, which is helpful for its enterprise and educational customers.
Other hardware improvements include a smaller, 77.9 x 13.5mm footprint, a Kensington Lock input, an LED, and a magnetic wall mount. A USB Type-C port replaces the power-only micro-USB OTG, adding support for HDMI, USB host, and Ethernet.
As before, there’s also a micro-USB host port that with the help of an adapter, supports Ethernet and Power-over-Ethernet (PoE). Ethernet can run simultaneously with WiFi, and can improve throughput and reliability, says Airtame. We saw no mention of the new product’s latency, but on the previous Airtame, WiFi streaming latency was one second with audio.
Once again, iOS 9 devices can mirror video using AirPlay. However, Android (4.2.2) devices are limited to the display of static images and PDF files, including non-animated PowerPoint presentations. Desktop support, which also includes a special optimization for Chromebooks, includes support for Windows 10/7, Ubuntu 15.05, and Mac OS X 10.12.
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 10-10-2018, 12:00 PM - Forum: Windows
- No Replies
‘Forza Horizon 4’ sees 2M players in its first week
It has been one week since we launched Forza Horizon 4 and we are humbled by the overwhelmingly positive feedback we continue to receive from players around the world. We are proud to say that in this first week alone, there are currently two million players driving around Forza Horizon 4’s Britain. On behalf of everyone at Playground Games, thank you for supporting Forza Horizon 4 and making the game such a success!
With such incredible global engagement with Forza Horizon 4, the game is now the highest-rated Xbox exclusive of this generation* and Forza continues to be the best-selling racing franchise of this console generation**. We also want to share some fun stats with you from the community:
More than 4.6 million hours of Forza Horizon 4 gameplay have been watched across Mixer, Twitch, YouTube and Facebook as of Oct. 9***
Players have logged more than 822.7 million miles – that’s probably not covered under manufacturer warranty
The community has settled in quite nicely living the Horizon Life, purchasing more than 4.1 million properties and owning more than 74.4 million cars
More than 377.7 million roads discovered – you’ve been looking for miles and miles and miles…
To say this is an exciting time for everyone would be an understatement and as Ralph shared on Inside Xbox during Goodwood, there’s a lot more to look forward to in the next few weeks including our biggest fan requested feature – Route Creator, coming on Oct. 25.
Forza Horizon 4 is now available with Xbox Game Pass and globally on Xbox One and Windows 10. Xbox Game Pass members can start playing Forza Horizon4 Standard Edition on Xbox One and Windows 10, as part of their monthly membership. The membership includes over 100 more great games, including highly anticipated new Xbox exclusives the day they’re released, all for one low monthly price.
