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Why You Shouldn’t Always Trust Job Listing Sites For Video Game News
Recently, Japanese job site CareerIndex posted that game developer Cave was looking for staff for a Yakuza game. The listing was, apparently, a mistake. According to IT Media, Cave’s stock shot up 7.1 percent. Cave is famous for its bullet hell games, but these days, it mostly makes smartphone games. The listing said Cave was…
By Brian Ashcraft Published March 22, 2018 -
Tokyo Just Got A New Godzilla Statue
While this statue isn’t life-sized, this is a fitting tribute to a giant of Japanese cinema. The Shin Godzilla statue went up in Tokyo’s Hibiya, where Toho Studios was born. The plaza was previously called “Godzilla and Toho Plaza” and featured a much smaller statue that was unveiled in 1995. The plaza is now called…
By Brian Ashcraft Published March 22, 2018 -
Surprise, Zelda Won Game Of The Year At The Game Developers Choice Awards
Nintendo’s latest Zelda adventure followed up its winat the 2017 Game Awards with GOTY honours at tonight’s Game Developers Choice Awards, held as part of the 2018 Game Developers Conference. It also won Best Audio and Best Design. Tim Schafer, meanwhile, was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award, and upon receiving it gave a lengthy,…
By Luke Plunkett Published March 22, 2018 -
The shittiest kidnap van I’ve ever seen was doing laps around GDC all today. I guess if you want to kidnap kids you spray-paint “Free Candy” on the van but this is what you do if you want to lure in tech bros? When it fills up do they drive them straight to Burning Man?
By Chris Kohler Published March 21, 2018 -
Sonic’s Original Backstory Took Place In World War II
The backstory of Sonic the Hedgehog used to involve a fighter pilot with Sonic painted on the nose of his plane, the game’s designers said today. Game designer Hirokazu Yasuhara and character designer Naoto Oshima were on hand Wednesday at Game Developers Conference to present a “post-mortem” of the design of Sega’s classic 1991 mascot…
By Chris Kohler Published March 21, 2018 -
Tomb Raider LEGO Has Some Cool Moving Parts
This fan-made Tomb Raider piece is of course not an official LEGO product. There’s a bit too much going on for that. Less of a playset and more a mechanical diorama, it’s got a collapsing plane wing and, more impressively, a moving river/waterfall for Lara to navigate. It was made by Kevin Wanner, and you…
By Luke Plunkett Published March 21, 2018 -
Harold Halibut is an adventure game where everything is handmade. “Almost every object you see in the game exists in real life,” one of the game’s developers told me during an Xbox event at GDC yesterday. The demo I played felt like a streamlined take on standard point-and-click adventuring (with some worrisomely clunky dialogue), but…
By Nathan Grayson Published March 21, 2018 -
Runescape’s 13-Year Pirate Quest Is Coming To An End
With the recent release of “Pieces of Hate,” the long-running MMO Runescape finishes up a quest line that’s lasted for 13 years. In 2005, Runescape started the Pirates series of quests with “Rum Deal.” Pirates is the story of the villainous, tentacle-armed Rabid Jack laying siege to the pirate base of Mos Le’Harmless, whose rum…
By Gita Jackson Published March 21, 2018 -
What’s Really Going On With All Those Hacked Fortnite Accounts
In small fits and spurts, a Fortnite hacker recently typed out some sentence fragments over Discord: “maybe tomorrow / i get a letter / from epic games / holy fuck / paying 25k for fraud.” What if, after a month of lucrative work, Epic Games shut him down with a firm letter from their lawyers?…
By Cecilia D'Anastasio Published March 21, 2018 -
EA Finally Unlocks Every Hero In Star Wars Battlefront II
Star Wars Battlefront II’s new update overhauls the game’s loot box laden progression system. One of players’ biggest complaints since before the game was even officially out was how hard it was to unlock iconic characters like Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader. A new patch finally unlocks every hero character in the game. Prior to…
By Heather Alexandra Published March 21, 2018 -
Sea of Thieves is made to play with friends, sailing the high seas in search of treasure and frantic ship-to-ship battles. But what if you want to play solo? Well, it turns out it can either be a calm journey of self reflection or just straight up boring. Here’s a look at what it’s like…
By Paul Tamayo Published March 21, 2018 -
One Of The NES’s Weirdest Controllers Gets A Modern Update
Remember the NES Max? It was a weird boomerang-shaped controller from 1988 that was, like so many things, ahead of its time. Decades later, a retro modder has given the peripheral a more modern feel—specifically, the feel of an Xbox One analog stick. Modder Nick Neitzel recently shared his creation on Reddit and YouTube, which…
By Ethan Gach Published March 21, 2018 -
Riot, Blizzard, And Twitch Are Teaming Up To Fight Toxic Gaming Behavior
For years now, gaming companies like Riot, Blizzard, and Twitch have been fighting online abuse and harassment in their own ways, to mixed results. Now they’re trying something different: Working together. The Fair Play Alliance is a coalition made up of over 30 different companies, including Riot, Blizzard, Twitch, CCP, and Epic, that aims to…
By Nathan Grayson Published March 21, 2018 -
Splatoon Was Originally A Game About Rabbits
“You’re a rabbit now; you’re a kid now” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but Splatoon almost went there. Nintendo’s stylish shooter once starred bunnies, and before that, tofu blocks. During a panel at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco today, Splatoon producer Hisashi Nogami gave a presentation on how he and…
By Jason Schreier Published March 21, 2018 -
Ark: Survival Evolved is coming to Switch this fall. According to Studio Wildcard, the Switch version will have the same features as on PS4 and Xbox One. No word yet on whether it will be cross-play with the PC version. Either way, you’ll soon be able to poach dinosaurs on the go.
By Ethan Gach Published March 21, 2018 -
I Fed A Neural Network 1200 Video Game Names
A lot of the time, video game names sound like they were generated by a machine. So, I decided to see if I could teach a neural network to name a game. Sometimes it’s hard not to groan at some video game names. There was a period of time when I kept confusing Absolver for…
By Gita Jackson Published March 21, 2018
