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August 1st, 2011, 18:45 Posted By: wraggster
Online payment service PayPal has released data that shows more than 12 million of its users pay for Facebook games every month.
In a report on VentureBeat, Paypal also revealed that its users favoured World of WarCraft, Final Fantasy, Bejeweled, and FarmVille.
"In massively multiplayer online games, the number of paying gamers keeps going up," said Carey Kolaja, Paypal's senior director of emerging opportunities.
"The perception about digital goods is that they lead to micro transactions, which are small. But the average purchase for a paying user is in the mid-20s (in dollars). It is on a positive trajectory."
Most MMO players, 54 per cent, spend between $10 to $50 on virtual currency. 27 per cent spend more than that, while just 19 per cent stick to smaller purchases of under $10.
In social games just 9 per cent spend more than $50, while 22 per cent of "casual web site games" players send over the $50 mark.
Paypal also reveals that more than 40 per cent of adults are playing games online, and claims that 70 per cent of gamers use PayPal.
Paypal launched in 1998 and now has over 100 million users and $1 billion in quarterly revenue.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...facebook-games
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August 1st, 2011, 11:54 Posted By: wraggster
Blizzard has revealed that the long-awaited Diablo 3 will require players to be constantly connected to the internet, even after an initial authentication process has been completed.
According to Blizzard's executive vice president of game design Rob Pardo, this requirement is due to the implementation of numerous new Battle.net and Auction House features.
Those features include the following:
A persistent friends list.
Cross-game chat via the RealID system.
Persistent characters that are stored server-side (no more having to play online once every 90 days, nor item duplication cheats).
Persistent party system.
Player-versus-player and public game matchmaking.
Dynamic drop-in/out for co-op
Larger item stash that gets shared among all of your characters (at the moment, up to 10)
The auction house (allows players to sell loot for real money)
The Achievement system and detailed stat-tracking, both of which feed into the final point:
The Banner system, a visual way to display your skills that take into account earned achievements, the number of PVP victories etc. Banners can be clicked to teleport to other players.
Blizzard's confirmed that Diablo 3 will be playable at GamesCom in Cologne, which takes place mid-August.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...et-connection/
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August 1st, 2011, 11:44 Posted By: wraggster
MMO Diablo III will offer players the chance to use real world currency to trade game items.
The service will be on an item by item basis via an eBay style auction house system and entirely optional. Gold based auction houses will be available for players who don't wish to spend their money in-game.
Blizzard explained its motivations in an official statement, citing player behaviour and security.
"The item-based nature of Diablo game play has always lent itself to an active trade-based ecosystem, and a significant part of this trade has been conducted through unsecure third-party organisations."
"This has led to numerous customer-service and game-experience issues that we've needed to account for. Our primary goal with the Diablo III auction house system is for it to serve as the foundation for a player-driven economy that's safe, fun, and accessible for everyone."
Players can purchase gold, weapons, armour and runestones via their registered Battle.net accounts. Blizzard will not sell "game play affecting" items, and stated it has no plans to post items directly to the auction house, leaving trading to the players.
When selling, players can use the money they earn to purchase other other Diablo III items through the auction house, purchase Battle.net products, such as World Of Warcraft subscriptions, or claim the cash through third party services.
For each item sold for real currency players will be charged an unspecified "nominal fixed transaction fee" by Blizzard, which will vary by region and whether or not the item sold. Players will also be charged a fee for withdrawing sales proceeds from their Battle.net account.
Blizzard has said it will not be introducing the system to its other MMORPG, World Of Warcraft, due to differences in the game play. It also clarified that it has no plans to provide support for the auction house system to mobile devices.
Diablo III still has no official release date, but is currently recruiting players for a beta test. Diablo II was released in 2000, but still has a large online audience.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...lo-iii-article
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August 1st, 2011, 01:55 Posted By: wraggster
Programmers don’t need to get good at a game to achieve a high score, they code a bot for that instead. Take [hypnotizd] for instance. He was learning to write in the C# language and decided to make a bot that plays Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook. He figures he took between 48 and 72 hours of coding over a couple of weeks, but remember, he was learning the language at the same time. We think you’d be hard pressed to achieve a 1.5 million range score by yourself, even with that amount of practice time.
We spoke with [hypnotizd] yesterday afternoon to get a bit of background on how he made this happen. His code (he’s not releasing it so you’ll have to write your own) scrapes the screen image as input. You can see at the beginning of the video after the break that he sizes his app to properly align each jewel in its grid. The program then identifies each game piece by finding the center of the cell and taking a 25 square-pixel average color. Many of the jewels are easily recognized in this first pass, but some are harder and require several different tests to identify. That’s the difficult part, choosing the best move is just a matter of coming up with your own rules on how the bot should play the game.
http://hackaday.com/2011/07/30/bejew...look-just-sad/
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July 31st, 2011, 23:17 Posted By: wraggster
The PC has been the master of the FPS, adventure and strategy genres for over a decade with some genre defining games along the way, so it’s little wonder that this author values the gaming platform so highly. There’s also very little in the way of PC gaming magazines digitally archived around the globe, so we at Out-of-Print Archive try to address that problem with the first issue of PC Player. This is also an official Maverick Magazines release with the permission of the company’s publisher to release all the issues at OoPA.
PC Player is virtually unknown among retrogamers and was certainly an underdog in the PC magazines scene at the time, but don’t any of those facts get in the way of this fantastic publication. Publisher Hugh Gollner stated in his interview at OoPA that PC Player was “probably the best games magazine [he] was involved with. For serious gamers it was just perfect — big fat, thorough reviews of serious strategy, simulation and adventure games.” And I can’t agree with that statement more. Yes admittadly, the design is, as Hugh also pointed out, a bit of a rip-off from Edge, but with such great content, with up to six pages per review, it doesn’t matter a jot.
One of the more unique features of PC Player were the additional comments within the reviews. Nothing unique about that you may say, but these “Expert Opinions” were from idependent experts in their own field (i.e. for the RPG reviews, PC Player drafted in Dave Renton, the editor of Role Player Independent). Then there were Making Of…, game profiles and developer profiles integrated into some of the bigger reviews, something which definitely wasn’t the norm back in 1993.
That’s not even mentioning the superb design and layout, the use of five-star ratings, the in-depth articles, reviews, previews and players’ guides. PC Player was a magazine that certainly showed lots of potential and initiative when the PC gaming scene was just starting to explode. It was a shame then that the magazine seemed to fade out of existence when Maverick Magazines itself faded out. Or was that the case? There are some suspicious adverts for PC Gamer, Future Publishing’s then fledging PC gaming mag, adorning the latter issues of PC Player. Now that was something you didn’t see often.
The PC Player archive would never have existed without the generousity of Paul Mallinson. The deputy editor on PC Player very kindly donated his spare copies, including the very important first issue that is available now. Also thanks to John Davison (editor), Paul Mallinson (again), Jason Simmons (art editor), Alex Simmons, Keith Sloan (writers), all the contributors and, of course, Hugh Gollner (Publisher), who granted us permission to realease the back catalogue of PC Player at Out-of-Print Archive.
PC Player issue 1 can be found at Out-of-Print Archive, where you will find the full contents and editorial details of the issue, online material chosen from the magazine (reviews of Return to Zork and Privateer and previews of Alone in the Dark 2 and Beneath A Steel Sky) and the all important download links in both full PC resolution and portable device resolution
http://retroactionmagazine.com/retro...gital-archive/
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July 31st, 2011, 19:02 Posted By: wraggster
When Google Chromebooks started arriving without the Netflix streaming we'd been promised we were predictably bummed, but that may be rectified soon. While Chromebook owners attuned to beta channel updates first noticed an entry for a Netflix plugin last month, it still couldn't actually play movies and didn't appear on older, single-core Atom powered Cr-48 laptops. Fast forward to the present, where one of our friendly comment moderators, masterofrandom has spotted this updated v1.0.2 plugin lurking in the depths of his murdered out 12-incher. There's still no playback to be had, but we're figuring Netflix didn't update the version number past 1.0 because it's finally figured out the perfect queue management system. Chromebook owners or prospective owners (and by extension, Linux users) still awaiting Watch Instantly streaming -- your alert level is at Vermilion.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/31/n...icial-release/
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July 31st, 2011, 19:00 Posted By: wraggster
Machines running the decade-old Windows XP make up a huge reservoir of infected PCs that can spread malware to other systems, a Czech antivirus company said. Windows XP computers are infected with rootkits out of proportion to the operating system's market share, according to data released Thursday by Avast Software, which surveyed more than 600,000 Windows PCs. While XP now accounts for about 58% of all Windows systems in use, 74% of the rootkit infections found by Avast were on XP machines. Avast attributed the infection disparity between XP and Windows 7 to a pair of factors: The widespread use of pirated copies of the former and the latter's better security. Vlcek assumed that many of the people running XP SP2, which Microsoft stopped supporting with security patches a year ago, have declined to update to the still-supported SP3 because they are running counterfeits."
http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/07/3...kit-Infections
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July 31st, 2011, 00:24 Posted By: wraggster
Ubisoft riled the masses with news that Driver: San Francisco will have always-on DRM, requiring that players be constantly connected to the internet for the game to function. Ubisoft has used constant DRM in previous titles, such as Assassin's Creed 2 and Splinter Cell: Conviction, arguing it combats piracy. Players argue DRM is an unfair, frustrating hassle, and Ubisoft is now counter-arguing this point, with the announcement that always-on DRM has been "a success."
Ubisoft said it has seen "a clear reduction in piracy of our titles which required a persistent online connection, and from that point of view the requirement is a success," speaking with PC Gamer. Ubisoft has also successfully angered many fans, who say its DRM policies only hurt those who pay for the game, and citing previous DRM titles that have been cracked, pirated and hacked anyway.
Ubisoft has previously removed DRM from its titles, but this year the restriction is making a comeback -- and we'll get to decide if it's on the level of Justin Timberlake or Vanilla Ice.
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/07/30/ub...-are-confused/
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July 30th, 2011, 02:21 Posted By: wraggster
Supermarket ALDI has been selling malware-infected hard drives in Australian stores, prompting the country's Computer Emergency Response Team (AusCERT) to issue a security alert to users on behalf of the government. ALDI has had to issue a recall on the products, which contained components of Conficker, and remove the product from its stores. AusCERT noted that the worm should be picked up by antivirus given it is extremely old and past its heyday when it infected Australian Banks and transport infrastructure."
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/1...ed-Hard-Drives
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July 30th, 2011, 02:05 Posted By: wraggster
Electronic Arts has said it wants to "work out an agreement" with Valve that will see its games return to the Steam download service.
Sources have previously told MCV that the ongoing disagreement between EA and Steam derives from the publisher's decision to sell DLC for its games exclusively through its own download service, Origin.
This has now been confirmed by an official statement that suggests the publisher is working on a resolution with Valve, according to Kotaku.
"At EA, we offer our games and content to all major download services, including GameStop, Amazon, Direct2Drive and Steam," the statement reads.
"Unfortunately, Steam has adopted a set of restrictive terms of service which limit how developers interact with customers to sell downloadable content. No other download service has adopted this practice. Consequently some of our games have been removed by Steam.
"We hope to work out an agreement to keep our games on Steam."
So far, Crysis 2 and Dragon Age II have been removed from Steam and Valve has declared the service will not be selling Battlefield 3 when it released later this year.
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/ea-ho...h-steam/082546
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July 29th, 2011, 00:40 Posted By: wraggster
Ubisoft's controversial DRM strategy that demands a persistent online connection for many of its PC titles has successfully reduced levels of piracy, the publisher has claimed.
A company spokesperson told PC Gamer that the strategy had resulted in "a clear reduction in piracy of our titles which required a persistent online connection, and from that point of view the requirement is a success."
As revealed earlier this week, Driver: San Francisco is the latest Ubisoft PC title to demand users only play when they have an internet connection, following in the footsteps of Settlers 7 and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, among others.
It launches on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on 2nd September.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...y-is-a-success
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July 29th, 2011, 00:21 Posted By: wraggster
A new games rental service, OnePlayS, has gone live across Europe following a successful beta test in Denmark.
The service offers subscriptions from €4.99 per month, and counts Lass Jensen - one of the founders of Lovefilm International - as its CEO.
"We are extremely happy that our beta-testing have been a success and therefore is it a real pleasure to offer our services to all the European gamers," offered Jensen.
OnePlayS has over 1500 titles, charges no late fees, and offers an unlimited games per month subscription for €10.00.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...-across-europe
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July 28th, 2011, 23:46 Posted By: wraggster
US retail giant GameStop is encouraging customers to come in to its shops to pre-order downloadable PC games.
It's not as daft as it sounds, as it lets customers use trade-in credit against the cost of the game or buy with cash.
The first game that customers can pre-order is Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Those who pre-purchase the digital edition will also receive digital versions of Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition, Deus Ex: Invisible War and the Explosive Mission DLC for Human Revolution.
It comes as GameStop completes the integration of the Impulse download service into its GameStop website.
"This is a great illustration of how the digital distribution model and in-store experience really complement one another," said GameStop general manager of digital Steve Nix.
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/games...r-shops/082531
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July 28th, 2011, 00:41 Posted By: wraggster
Call of Duty developer Infinity Ward has played down concerns over would-be critics who attempt to link in-game events and real-life tragedies. Here's looking at you, Daily Mail.
Asked by msxbox-world if he worried about how players and non-gamers will perceive the Russian assault on New York depicted in Modern Warfare 3 given the city's history of terrorist attacks, creative strategist Robert Bowling said:
"I'm not too worried about it because the conflict that's raging in Modern Warfare 3 is very different from any real life scenario because this is a war, this is a full-on Russian military invasion of the entire US that started in Modern Warfare 2.
"They have already disabled Washington DC and the war has just organically been progressing off the East Coast and the New York is a major city that would... So this is very different because it's full-on military fighting through the streets, so I think that's going to be very clear once people play it and get hands-on and see what type of conflict this is, and then it spreads to the other major cities."
Modern Warfare 3's global brand of warfare will also be visiting London, Paris and Berlin, among other locations, leaving tube trains derailed and who knows what other carnage in its wake.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...ferent-to-911/
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July 27th, 2011, 23:48 Posted By: wraggster
MS-DOS is 30 years old today. Well, kind of. On 27 July 1981, Microsoft gave the name MS-DOS to the disk operating system it acquired on that day from Seattle Computer Products (SCP), a hardware company owned and run by a fellow called Rod Brock.
SCP developed what it at various times called QDOS and 86-DOS to run on a CPU card it had built based on Intel's 8086 processor.
Command line: MS-DOS 1.19 still running after all these years
The company had planned to use Digital Research's CP/M-86 operating system, then still in development. But, having released the card in November 1979 - it shipped with an 8086-compatible version Microsoft's Basic language interpreter-cum-operating system - and reached April 1980 without CP/M-86 becoming available to bundle, SCP decided it had to create its own OS for the card.
Enter, in August 1980, QDOS. It really did stand for Quick and Dirty Operating System. That's actually what it was: a basic but serviceable OS good for coding and running programs written in 8086 assembly language - the x86 instruction set. It was written by SCP's Tim Paterson, who had joined the company as a programmer a couple of years previously and began work on it in April 1980.
On the cards: Seattle Computer Products advertises its wares
Some observers later claimed that QDOS too closely resembled CP/M for comfort. Paterson himself would later say that QDOS' design criteria specifically included the abililty to support programs written for CP/M and compiled for the 8086. That's not at all surprising given that SCP undoubtedly saw QDOS as a temporary stand in until Digital Research (DR) shipped CP/M-86.
The picture we have today is muddied by the claims that IBM originally wanted to use CP/M-86 in its first personal computer. IBM and DR famously failed to come to terms that would allow CP/M-86 to be bundled with the PC, and IBM turned to Microsoft for an alternative. Digital Research founder Gary Kildall, who died in 1994, would later allege that Microsoft's product was a rip off, fuelling plagiarism claims that Paterson has always denied - he reverse engineered it.
http://www.reghardware.com/2011/07/27/ms_dos_turns_30/
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July 26th, 2011, 22:46 Posted By: wraggster
Microsoft is giving away a whopper of a gaming windfall in the US - one million MSP.
Anyone in the first 2,500 people who make a Games For Windows online purchase between July 25 and August 1 will be sent an email containing a code for 400 free MSP.
The giveaway celebrates the joining of Games for Windows, Xbox.com, and the Games for Windows Marketplace.
Although the code is obtained with a PC-based purchase, the MSP can be used on any relevant platform, including Xbox 360.
Codes will be emailed out four to six weeks after the offer closes.
Microsoft announced its full-year financial results earlier this week, with the Xbox division starring.
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...a-million-msp/
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July 26th, 2011, 21:05 Posted By: Shrygue
via Eurogamer
Garry's Mod has passed the one million downloads mark, six years after it was first made public.
"This is a pretty big deal for me considering this all started off as a tiny tiny modification about six years ago," wrote creator Garry Newman on his blog. "This is more than I could have ever expected or wished for!"
Newman added that he had hoped to have a "big secret update" ready for when the milestone was passed, but it's running behind schedule.
"Anyway – thanks to everyone that's contributed to Garry's Mod – whether that be directly by dedicating your time to creating new content for other players or indirectly by playing and enjoying all that Garry's Mod has to offer!"
Garry's Mod is a physics sandbox 'game' modded from Half-Life 2. The $10 download lets you manipulate and mess around with objects and characters from most Source-powered Valve games.
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July 26th, 2011, 02:29 Posted By: wraggster
via http://www.aep-emu.de/PNphpBB2-file-...c-t-17310.html
The GemRB Game Engine is is a port of the original Infinity Engine (the one of Baldur´s Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, etc...) to Linux/Unix, MacOs X and Windows with some enhancements.
Quote:
GemRB V0.6.5 (2011-07-24):
New features:
quickspell support
keymap.ini handling
yet more unhardcoded PST projectiles
area comments, party npc interactions
ios port and enhanced touchscreen support
Improved features:
performance
squirrels and other small game don´t die instantly
stores and stacking
effects, triggers, actions, dialogs
secret door detection, turning undead
bugfixes and internal cleanups
Applied patches:
ios support patches from Brad Allred
android and touchscreen patches from Beholder
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July 26th, 2011, 01:28 Posted By: wraggster
The usual faces are all present on this week's UK PC sales chart, with The Sims 3: Generation once again taking the top spot.
Also holding last week's positions are Football Manager 2011 at No.2 and The Sims 3 at No.3.
A mid-chart shuffle sees The Sims: Medieval rise to No.4 and The Sims 3: Late Night chart at No.5.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm finishes at No.6, ahead of Fable 3 at No.7 and a trio of strategy games in the form of Shogun 2, StarCraft 2 and Civilization V.
GfK/Chart-Track PC Top 10 (week ending July 23):
01. The Sims 3: Generations (EA)
02. Football Manager 2011 (Sega)
03. The Sims 3 (EA)
04. The Sims: Medieval (EA)
05. The Sims 3: Late Night (EA)
06. World of Warcraft: Cataclysm (Blizzard)
07. Fable 3 (Microsoft)
08. Shogun 2: Total War (Sega)
09. StarCraft 2 (Activision Blizzard)
10. Civilization V (Take-Two)
http://www.computerandvideogames.com...ames-dominate/
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July 26th, 2011, 00:53 Posted By: wraggster
BioWare hopes massively multiplayer online game Star Wars: The Old Republic will last for decades.
The game has 19 major worlds, senior creative director James Ohlen said during a Comic-Con panel reported by the wonderfully-named Darth Hater.
"Well, I can say that we have 19 major worlds," he said. "Then we have an indeterminate number of minor worlds. And our goal, obviously this being an online game, that we're hoping is going to last for decades, we're going to be, obviously, adding more to the galaxy map as the game progresses.
"We want to add dozens of worlds. Hundreds of worlds eventually. In 2025, we'll hopefully have 500 worlds."
Each of the six Star Wars: The Old Republic classes packs 200 hours of gameplay - excluding crafting, raiding and "the multiplayer" - according to EA.
EA Games boss Frank Gibeau described the in-development MMO as "gigantic", although he wishes the game hadn't cost quite so much money to make.
Last week publisher EA confirmed a 2011 release date for The Old Republic.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...st-for-decades
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