Red Dot Studios has announced that Car Mechanic Simulator will release on April 14th. The game puts you in the role of a mechanic. Players have to repair cars as they slowly expand their repair service empire. Read more …
Underworld Ascendant Reaches Kickstarter Goal
Otherside Entertainment has raised the $600,000 it had set for the Underworld Ascendant reboot. As a result, the developer has made a few adjustments to the game’s stretch goals. The goals stretch all the way to $1.2 million in funding, and will unlock things such as co-op play and companion creatures. Here are a few of the stretch goals: Read more …
Star Citizen Passes $60M In Crowdfunding
Upcoming space epic Star Citizen has reached yet another milestone in its huge crowdfunding campaign. Roberts Space Industries has announced that the game has raised over $60 million since the start of its campaign. The game’s creator Chris Roberts announced the news via a post on the RSI blog. He notes that a surge of backers and pledges came following the reveal of First-Person Shooter gameplay in Star Citizen.
Roberts was the designer of the classic Wing Commander series, and managed to draw in $2 million from Kickstarter alone. The rest of the project’s funding has come from fans buying access from starter packs and in-game ships at the Roberts Space Industries website.
The game has grown exponentially through the funding. Players will now be able to exist ships, walk around planets and can engage in first-person shooter combat that implement zero-gravity physics. The $60 million milestone added a new deep space fighter to the game.
Star Citizen has not yet been given a release date, although early estimations put its release somewhere in 2016.
A Dangerous Precedent
In the last couple of years, we’ve seen the rise of Kickstarter and a subsequent surge in games being sold in an Alpha or Beta state. It began slowly, as most things do, but has now become almost the norm when it comes to indie games development. Steam hasn’t helped matters with its lax enforcement on Greenlight and Early Access; these two services have contributed to an environment that almost actively encourages releasing games before they’re ready.
While I’m not against pre-purchasing or pre-ordering in and of themselves, we have to be careful how these services are used, promoted and portrayed. No amount of disclaimers are going to keep the masses from spending their money. Early Access warnings are the equivalent of End User License Agreements, Terms & Conditions and whatnot: we’re all supposed to read them, but very few of us do. Up until now, this has been a purely digital affair, but developer Uber Entertainment has changed all of that this week. Its upcoming title, Planetary Annihilation, has been spotted by a Reddit user in a brick and mortar store.
It’s an early access title that’s already got a physical release. The developer have confirmed it and don’t see any problem with it. To be clear, this is a physical copy of a game that isn’t even finished. Let’s talk a bit about why this is not OK. Read more …
Monochroma
Kickstarter is a marvellous thing for the games industry, isn’t it? It gives exciting and interesting prospects like the Octodad of recent memory a chance to be made. It produces its fair share of drama, but when it can help produce games like Monochroma, it can only be a good thing. Read more …
Most Gamers are Awesome
A lot of my articles recently have been rants about one thing or another. Quite often, this attracts the wrong sort of attention, with people who disagree with me choosing to vent their displeasure in childish and unacceptable ways. Writing on the internet will always entail the risk – and often guarantee – that a certain subset of readers will choose to twist your words, call you names or otherwise distort or disparage you or your work. It shouldn’t have to be that way, but malicious trolling is (for now) just something that needs to be dealt with, usually via ignoring or moderating it appropriately.
But I know that these people are just the vocal minority; a subset of the wider, much better gaming community. I know this because gamers are among the most awesome people in the world. Read more …
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