Killer Instinct has swapped out its first free playable character as of a new 675MB update. Since launch in November, Jago has been freely available to test out. Now, it's Sabrewulf.
The full list of patch notes from developer Double Helix can be viewed at the link below. There's balancing and general improvements, like a forced pause when player two's controller is removed and the display of rank-up/rank-down notifications for both players at the start of a match.
As someone who hasn't been playing the game and can't comment on specific gameplay tweaks with any real confidence, I will say it's nice to see those nasty "Chosen One" Achievements reduced. Previously, players needed to 2,000 matches completed with each character. That number is now a more sane 200 wins, which should be great news for completionists.
KILLER INSTINCT 1/2/2014 Update w. Dev Notes [Double Helix Games via OXM]
In an interview with The Washington Post, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell described the company's inner workings which have been the topic of discussion time and time again. Did you know, for instance, vacation time isn't tracked? And for those who have wondered why Half-Life 3 hasn't happened yet, a few quotes bring the point home.
"When we started out we were a single-player video game company that could have been really successful just doing Half-Life sequel after Half-Life sequel," explained Newell, "but we collectively said let's try to make multiplayer games even though there's never been a commercial successful multiplayer game ... Then we tried to do Steam."
Elsewhere in the interview, he talks about how "specialization in gaming is sort of the enemy of the future," noting "...being really good at Half-Life level design is not as nearly as valued as thinking of how to design social multiplayer experiences."
While Valve undoubtedly has the money to bring that long-awaited next installment to market if it so desired, collectively, that's not been a priority for employees. I can't say I blame them, either. Not with the success of Steam, Team Fortress 2, and Dota 2. Newell is thinking much more long-term than a single game, even if it is a game we desperately want.
Gabe Newell on what makes Valve tick [The Washington Post]
There’s no way to make Football Manager grabs look sexy. This is as good as it gets.
Revisiting Football Manager has become a little Christmas ritual of mine, one which I look forward to (almost) as much as devouring a turkey luncheon or consuming life-threatening amounts of cheese. It is an indulgence I only allow myself over the festive season because playing Football Manager swallows such enormous swathes of time – time not readily available at any other time of year. Once, incalculable late December hours disappeared with a laptop resting on my knees and a tipple in one hand; not so in recent years, as the iPad edition of Sports Interactive’s venerable series has become the preferred indulgence.
On PC it has become increasingly complex, but its handheld iteration remains relatively lean and, well, a little rough around the edges. Its look and feel recalls the older games in the series, and its play does too – the match engine sometimes feels a little erratic, and as the seasons pass, managers and players end up at the unlikeliest clubs. But all of that is part of this game’s beauty – an overly realistic football management game would be a depressing slog, make no mistake. Football Manager Handheld’s trick is to absorb you in a likely footballing future while including enough just enough madness so as not to break the spell.
And so among more predictable occurrences, we find recent £18 million Chelsea signing Andre Schurrle plying his trade at Championship side Brighton in 2016, Andre Villas-Boas managing Manchester United and Phil Jones a contract rebel, openly and shamefully demanding more cash in the national press. Each and every new game generates an entire alternate universe a little different from the last, one held together by a swathe of player statistics and one made fascinating with the constant clash of those numbers. During matches, an unpredictable dash of luck – just like the real sport – creates thrilling, unlikely victories and bewildering second-half surrenders.
For some, an unwieldy sea of words and numbers. For others, an alternate footballing world ripe with possibility.
The gameworld it presents is absorbing, but actually playing Football Manager Handheld needn’t require constant attention. It can be played idly, with languid pokes and swipes of the screen, and it only advances when you say so. Often I’ll set a match running and go and do something else, knowing that the match won’t progress past half time without my input. Indeed, for much of the game there’s little to actually manage, the game reduced to a procession of fixtures with minor media tussles, contract negotiations or injuries to catch your attention. Play only intensifies during frantic transfer windows or near the end of a season when trophies are at stake or relegation – or the sack – threatens your game.
Does that sound a little dry? It isn’t. For a game which appears to be about statistics and probabilities and the strict management of resources, it creates a special kind of drama. If Ken Levine is looking for dynamic narrative, a set of rules within which player interactions create a near-infinite number of outcomes, then he can find a primitive version of that in each and every game of Football Manager.
The difference is that all of the colour in that narrative takes place in the players’ imagination. It becomes difficult not to layer a little humanity on top of these little bundles of numbers – one grows oddly fond of a veteran player who has never let you down; on signing a newer, younger, more promising player in the same position, there’s a twinge of sadness as you place the former on the transfer list, your club’s finances unable to support any extra baggage. One imagine this tricksy young winger turning up late for training in his sports car with a ridiculous new haircut and an arrogant smirk on his face, and you feel for that discarded player, the harsh realities of football conspiring to leave a faithful club servant unwanted and punted out to a lower league side.
You insert a version of yourself into the fantasy, too. An attacking, direct style of play allied with a ballsy 4-3-3 formation makes me picture my patchy Stevenage squad as the cavalier upstarts of the Championship’s 2015-16 season, a newly-promoted side bravely taking on far mightier clubs with a fearless mix of youthful vigour and a little naivety. Ludicrously, I imagine posturing in post-match interviews as a mixture of Harry Redknapp and Jose Mourinho – a wheeler-dealer with a sharp tongue and an arrogance which can’t help but inspire respect. (Incidentally, I hope the kind of press interactions of the PC version never make it through to the Handheld game – this silly fantasy is infinitely more appealing than selecting a response from a set of pre-prepared responses.)
Not the most nuanced of tactical approaches, certainly, but one which creates real end-to-end drama.
So robust is the Football Manager fantasy that it sometimes spills out into real life. I’ve heard of FM players wearing a suit when they play out a cup final, shaking hands with a doorknob as if it were the opposing manager’s hand. In another tale, a friend of mine gave a real life player short shrift upon meeting him in the flesh, confusing the player’s in-game transfer request for a real-life betrayal.
Even better, longstanding rumours suggest that some Premier League managers have monitored and then signed players based on their potential in the game. And famously, the game has been cited as a factor in 35 divorce cases – as good a reason as any to carefully restrict play to the Christmas period. And yet my fictional career at plucky Stevenage continues, my Football Manager relapse extending out into the new year. At some point, I must begrudgingly bring my annual dalliance to an end, forcibly removing myself from its world and deleting the game from my iPad just to be safe.
But not just yet. My humble local team sits on the verge of an unlikely promotion to the Premier League, and there’s plentiful drama yet to unfold from this unassuming, brilliant clash of numbers and probabilities.
The post Still Playing: Football Manager Handheld – a Christmas ritual, and a welcome relapse appeared first on Edge Online.
Clumsy Ninja is the App Store hit which turns the titular assassin into a kind of physics-powered virtual pet.
With so many studios lamenting the current state of the mobile games market, it’s a little surprising to find so few actively trying something different. Many millions of new iOS and Android devices were unwrapped and eagerly filled with new apps this Christmas, and yet, compared to the great flood of infinite runners, free-to-play town builders and other familiar mobile fare, apps like Clumsy Ninja and Toca Hair Salon represent the tiniest trickle.
They’re digital toys rather than videogames, and their chart performance suggests that creating interactive entertainment for tablets and mobile needn’t rely on traditional videogame structures. If anything, breaking free of familiar game ideas – of challenge, testing player skill, progression and failstates – opens up a broader, more freeform and ultimately more accessible kind of play.
The studios behind these games, NaturalMotion and Toca Boca, appear to have have understood this more than most. Clumsy Ninja, Toca Lab and Toca Hair Salon 2 have been fixtures near the top of the App Store charts for weeks, and for good reason – they are all smartly designed apps with high production values and cheery playfulness at their heart. And yet compared to the number of games going live on the App Store every week, there’s a surprising lack of these playthings. Or at least, there’s a surprising lack of digital toys this good.
“There are so many blue oceans – unexplored genres that are ready to be invented or re-invented,” says NaturalMotion CEO Torsten Reil. “We’ve never understood why so many studios just clone other games. You end up competing for the same audience and spending more and more cash on user acquisition. The only way to get off that hamster wheel is to create something new and fresh; and preferably something that can’t be easily copied.”
NaturalMotion’s willingness to break free to familiar videogame tropes has earned it another App Store smash, following on from My Horse and the colossus that is CSR Racing. It won’t be quitting free-to-play anytime soon.
NaturalMotion’s Clumsy Ninja – a cute, pet sim-like plaything powered by its impressive physics tech – is still riding high in the ‘top free’ and ‘top grossing’ App Store charts, and could be considered more game-like than Toca Boca’s playthings. The Swedish studio’s apps are similarly beautiful to look at and intuitive to interact with; amidst so many licensed apps of dubious quality, it’s heartening to see good design appreciated and rewarded with chart success.
The latter studio’s co-founder Emil Overmar agrees that game developers are missing out on a big opportunity to apply their skills to this kind of app. “I would really love to see more apps as playthings, not just for kids but for people in general,” he tells us. “Especially since smartphones and tablets lend themselves well to be just toys. The question I would like game designers to have in their heads is: ‘is the experience I’m envisioning better with game mechanics or does it work better as a toy?’ I think the Japanese are much better in understanding playthings and taking them for what they are, even as adults.”
The two studios certainly don’t agree on how to sell their products, though. After generating some phenomenal revenues through free-to-play downloads like My Horse, CSR Racing and now Clumsy Ninja, NaturalMotion is very much a free-to-play specialist; Toca Boca, on the other hand, continues to charge upfront for its apps. It’s an increasingly rare and defiant stance.
“Kids are not stupid and they appreciate good design,” Overmar tells us. “I think our success proves that there are enough adults around that appreciate the products we make and think they are worth paying for. We’re really glad they like them so we can continue making the experiences we believe in, instead of products that make money in the most efficient way.”
Toca Hair Salon 2 is an effortlessly charming demonstration of what Toca Boca does best – beautiful, intuitive freeform play. Hair by my nephew, Dylan.
Scale is vital to NaturalMotion’s business model, so despite the console-grade polish applied to its apps, it’ll never charge for its games at the point of download, says CEO Reil. “Our first five games were paid apps, and the average ROI was five times – so paid games can definitely work,” he tells us. “However, a free-to-play hit like CSR Racing will blow these ROI figures out of the water, and your audience will be much larger, making it possible to build new brands faster. It’s therefore unlikely we’ll return to the paid model.”
Toca Boca isn’t against free-to-play, as such, though Overmar raises questions of parental trust where in-app purchases are concerned. He prefers to tackle a tricky marketplace by conceding that his studio’s paid apps will attract fewer downloads, but inspire better word-of-mouth, better rankings in the charts and possibly attract the attention of kingmakers Apple, Google and Amazon – and lead to a ‘featured’ slot.
“It’s harder to stand out and get people to notice your product if you put it in the ocean of free apps that all spend lots of money to acquire users,” says Overmar. It’s the developers defying prevailing trends that’ll be rewarded, he says. “I think we’re seeing a creative decline in the App Store right now, unfortunately from the burden of free to play,” he continues. “I want game, app and toy creators to invent new things, experiences that enriches our lives through play. These experiences does not seem to work well in a free-to-play world so I think we as creators need to take risks and create the things we truly believe in, and hopefully people will see their value and pay to able to enjoy them.”
NaturalMotion boss Reil shrugs off these criticisms of free-to-play. In fact, we ask him if it’s getting a little tedious sticking up for free-to-play. Clearly, it is. “We stopped defending free-to-play a while ago,” says Reil. “Most critics have since gone through all five stages of grief and are now accepting free-to-play for what it is: the dominant business model for games in the future; not perfect, but with attention and ethics an incredibly rewarding way to make games, both financially and creatively.”
Toca Boca’s apps for kids often revolve around role play, extracting fun from playing at being a chef, hairdresser, train driver, doctor, tailor and more.
Though they disagree on the subject of how to sell apps on digital marketplaces, both Toca Boca and NaturalMotion make a compelling case for other creators to snap out of developing familiar, reliable, traditional videogame types to dabble in the world of digital playthings. Where branding, user acquisition and often sheer luck have all become factors in whether a mobile game makes any money, these studios appear to have done so by focusing on quality design and simple, accessible fun. A heartening trend.
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