It’ll be a while before eSports ever gets the credit it deserves from the mainstream establishment but that doesn’t mean that it already isn’t a massive industry. The recently held Dreamhack Winter 2013 had over 20,000 visitors on-site, almost 8 million unique views of the live streams, a near half-a-million dollar prize pool and a live performance by Darude.
For this and more neat info about Dreamhack Winter 2013, we have a handy infographic for your perusal.
(more…)
With all the retro remakes of classic games have been coming out, it was only a matter of time before I reviewed one of them here. I had never played the original Speedball games when they were released on the Atari ST (and the dozen or so other platforms it was also available on) but given the lack of sports games on PC, I thought I’d give it a try.
All that ended up happening was me questioning the need for HD remakes of classic games.
Slowly but surely, refunds are becoming more common in the games retail business. First, EA announced the refund policy for their digital games on Origin. Now, GOG is getting in on the action with a new policy that allows for refunds of games that won’t work on your PC.
When this week’s set of new comics hits the shelves, we’ll be only two weeks away from Christmas. I hope you’ve been doing your shopping. Personal experience tells me that shopping is nearly impossible beyond this point. I know because I very nearly botched Christmas shopping the last two years.
Anyway, this is a comic book release post so maybe I should talk about that. Marvel’s new Inhumanity series continues with spin-off Inhumanity: Awakening #1. Over at DC, the heroes of the Justice League travel to the year 3,000 or were they taken there in Justice League 3000 #1.
Elsewhere, Professor Moriarty has survived his plummeting down the Reichenbach Falls but he encounters a new foe before he can resume command of his criminal network in Sherlock Holmes: Moriarty Lives #1. Dark Horse continues their video game and sci-fi tendencies with Halo: Escalation #1. I won’t pretend to know what it’s about because I really don’t care for Halo. And the WWE gets a new series written by Mick Foley starting with WWE #1.
Have you played Super Hexagon and thought that you’d enjoy it more if it was a little less bright, vibrant and high-res? Well, Paul Koller has answered your prayers with his de-make of Super Hexagon for the Commodore 64 called Micro Hexagon. You can download it for free from the Commodore 64 Scene Database.
Here’s a video of Micro Hexagon in action. Just like the real thing, this makes me dizzy and nauseous too. I guess I won’t be playing this either.
For all of Geoff Keighley’s pre-event hype, it sure sounds like the whole awards aspect of VGX didn’t change. According to the /r/Games live thread, seven awards were handed out during the show of VGX’s 23 total awards. At least it sounds like celebrities weren’t paraded out to promote their own stuff though it did sound like host Joel McHale was very much annoyed that he was forced to spend the whole show reading from a teleprompter verbatim.
Apart from the handful of awards and McHale doing nothing to hide the fact that he didn’t have anything to do with the jokes during the show, there was a bunch of news and announcements from the show. It’s almost like a mini convention based on the importance that publishers put on the show for making news with big announcements. So here’s a roundup of the news and trailers from VGX.
I didn’t watch the 2013 edition of the re-branded VGX. Between having company over Saturday evening and watching Jaedong win his first premier level SC2 tournament, I didn’t have the time to. Apparently, though, the only change was dropping the D-list celebrities shilling their own stuff. It was just as bad as ever when it comes to handing out the actual awards on screen.
Anyway, if you missed it too, you can check out this short highlight video of this year’s VGX.
Very quietly, YouTube is making some behind-the-scenes changes with their monetization changes for channels affiliated with networks. Currently, the big advantage of being a YouTuber signed with a multi-channel network (MCN) is that you can upload your videos and monetize it instantly without having to go through any checks, or audits as they’re known to YouTubers, for unauthorized copyrighted content while getting more revenue through network sold ads. The trade-off is that those channels give up a portion of their add revenue to the network for that benefit.
YouTube has quietly announced that they are changing the current monetization rules for MCNs come January. Now, MCNs have to add a designation to channels to determine whether they will get the instant monetization or whether they’ll have to go through the auditing process just like every other unaffiliated channel on YouTube.
Apparently my definition of a two-part season finale and SyFy’s definition of a two-part season finale are different. I thought that we’d get both parts of the two-part season finale this week. Nope. It’s Part 1 this week and Part 2 next week.
This week, we see what happens when everyone is pushed to the brink having to deal with a Troubled person that pushes everyone to the limit as people all over Haven die.
If there’s a golden boy at Gawker Media, it’s Neetzan Zimmerman who Gawker can count on to generate millions of page views each month. How does he do it? [Wall Street Journal]
After the PS3 was slagged for its interface, it’s the Xbox One’s turn this generation. [Edge Magazine]
Are you an aspiring professional League of Legends player but want to make a buck streaming games other than LOL? Well, you can’t do that if you’re in the League of Legends Championship Series. Riot’s contracts with players has a banned games list that players can’t stream. [onGamers]
Well, since I gave Forza 5 a hard time over its microtransactions, equal treatment of Gran Turismo 6’s microtransactions is needed. Also, why didn’t I know GT6 was out this week? If I had known, I would have tried getting a review copy or at least bought it. Oh well, no loss, right? [Eurogamer]
With Porn Hub announcing PS4 compatibility recently, Destructoid asked the porn website about the viewing habits of console users. Naturally, Porn Hub provided them a detailed analysis of the last console generation with some NSFW details. [Destructoid]
et geekera 