RandomNPC – Video Game RPG Reviews, Editorials, and Features

Ah, 16-bit-era Shadowrun. Come for the cyberpunk revenge plots and foxgirls, stay for the considerable XP/money grind so you can break the game in half. Good times, both SNES and Genesis. Anyway, on to the news:

• Sony’s financial woes catch up to them, doubling their loss forecast and forcing 10,000 layoffs.  “Holy s***, now what?” indeed, Mr. Hirai.
• Jack Tramiel, Commodore International founder and the man behind the C64, died at 83.  Yet another legend in the tech field that I knew almost nothing about.
• Peter Molyneux speaks out about leaving Microsoft for his indie venture.  Will it change the world, or will it OH JUST REMAKE SYNDICATE ALREADY GODDAMNIT
• The Better Business Bureau weighs in on the Mass Effect 3 ending furor, which is my personal “this has gone way too far” threshold.
• Meanwhile, Victor Ireland rather gloriously misreads Steam’s effect on RPG sales, while his own Clash of Heroes 2 Kickstarter falls well short of its goal.  Time to serve the Newell?  I’d say so.
• Wired’s Chris Kohler takes a scalpel to the argument that used games are hurting the industry.  The conclusion: the industry is hurting the industry.
• Project X Zone‘s creators are among the least likely to localize anything, Wasteland 2‘s Kickstarter coasts to a comfortable finish, and more!

 
Continue reading ‘What Happened This Week – And I’ll Keep Lying, I Promise’ »

Hello and welcome, everybody! It’s that time again. GDC occupied a lot of the news this week, but among that we have the following:

• Valve’s marketing director clarifies that they are not working on a Steam box… for now.  Actually they left off the “for now” part, but let a man dream :3
• Peter Molyneux leaves Lionhead and Microsoft to start his own company once more.  Shine on, you awesome fibber.  Shine on… or go on to develop social/iOS games like other gaming legends.
• Blizzard offers a rather hefty bounty returning bonus for players who bring friends back to World of Warcraft…
• …which doesn’t quite distract from their announcement that Diablo III will not have PvP at launch.
• A quartet of big names – Will Wright, Sid Meier, John Romero, and Cliff Bleszinski – offer various insights on the state of the industry, ranging from concerns about self-referential development to homeless simulators.  It makes sense in context.
• Tim Cain gives a postmortem on Fallout, sharing the dirt on how the now famous post-apocalyptic RPG almost never saw the light of day.  Short answer: blame Windows NT.  Watch the whole thing if you can, it’s enlightening stuff.
• Two men make more or less the same complaints about Japanese games, with vastly different levels of tact (and authority), I suggest the big picture might be a bit more complicated, and more!

Continue reading ‘What Happened This Week – There He Goes Again On His Own’ »