This week comments on the crapshow that is going on with most of the third party publishers. That, and some updates to games that people really care about.
The news includes:
Let us know what you think.
This week’s Gaming Podcast gets down and dirty, with plenty of AAAA goodness. The Darkness II contest is still going on this week, and winners will be announced next week.
In the meantime:
All that, plus Reader Feedback.
Although we reported the latest 3.0.2 World of Warcraft patch Live yesterday, we weren’t considering the sheer amount of gamers that would be jumping on to try all the new content. Honestly, the realms were up and down for hours – more down than up for our realm.
This update is absolutely huge and game changing. This is probably one of the largest updates since Burning Crusade in changes, updates and additions to the game play. Map changes, talent updates, game balancing and entirely new additions and a profession to boot.
We found ourselves spending a lot of time on the talent tree because this wasn’t a simple re-balance but a restructure of many character talents. Not to mention hunters pets getting their own talent trees. We tried to get our talents distributed and tested but the realm would go offline. Apparently, it’s been all smooth sailing today so hopefully gamers can actually… game.
Of course, the world is reacting to adjustments to the new profession. Because it relies on herbalism you may notice peacebloom and other basic materials sky rocketing to 12 gold in price, for what should typically be a few silvers. The “free market economy” is out of control with the changes, hopefully some of these will die down as gamers settle into their new profession.
Next, find 3.0.2 addon updates for everything we were used to. That’s a long road ahead.
In a world driven by the Internet, global economics and the short attention spanned reader we’ve been bombarded with social networks and 140-character micro-blogging. We’re constantly finding ways to promote ourselves, promote our brands or tell people what we’re eating for dinner. Is this obsession with ourselves and our creativity bridging into video games?
It’s games 2.0 people!. A time when we’re inventing our own video game stages, characters and full blown casual games! Not only are people getting a chance to design their own games with Microsoft’s XNA, Adobe Flash or from small independent casual games, but we can design our own stages in games like LittleBigPlanet.
Microsoft wants to remind us that Boku is much like LittleBigPlanet in its user generated video game content. Seen in this video below:
It’s obvious their going down the same path as Sony has gone with creating your own stages with LittleBigPlanet and creating a new way of gaming: playing other people’s stuff. You can find some similarities with Guitar Hero: World Tour‘s ability to create your own songs and publish them for others to play.
Are we heading down a generation of games where some of the best stages are created by fellow dedicated gamers? Or, is this just a distraction and means for developers to have gamers invigorate and create more of a demand for the games they are making the money on?
(Thanks, Destructoid)
