gaming Archives - Argyll Free Press

Electronic Arts Wants to Support Indie Game Developers

June 13, 2016 By Deborah Campbell Leave a Comment

Electronic Arts revealed its new EA Originals initiative at this year’s E3, which seeks to offer support to independent game developers for their various projects.

It is noteworthy that in last year’s E3 event, one of the main attractions at the EA press conference was Unravel, a game showcasing spectacular visuals by Coldwood Interactive, which was assisted by EA in bringing it to consoles.

After the E3 in 2015, Unravel got released for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC, showing that the partnership is able to follow through with the promise of getting the game out to the gaming community.

EA Originals is a follow-up on the partnership with Coldwood over Unravel, and it wants to support even more indie game developers. On the stage at E3, VP Patrick Söderlund, one of the EA Studios executives, talked about the three pillars that support the EA Originals initiative.

The first is the goal of bringing and unique gaming experiences to the masses while the second is offering small developers the necessary support to develop their projects, market and eventually publish them.

Furthermore, the third pillar is all about providing indie game developers with financial security by allowing them to keep all the profits generated by the game they created. Needless to say, this is an incredibly valuable thing for small studios that are just launching their brand in the industry.

Following Söderlund on the E3 stage was Klaus Lyngeled of Sweden-based Zoink! Games. His presentation revolved around Fe, the first game created and published under the EA Originals initiative.

Fe allows players to explore a dark forest while they control a small creature that looks like a fox. The game begins by showing the creature waking up alone in the forest, and it is up to the player to help it survive in the unknown universe.

The presentation of the Zoink! developer revealed that Fe shares a narrative about the relationship with nature. The players will encounter other creatures and animals, each with a unique song; learning the songs will enable the access to more parts of the world.

In advance of E3, Electronic Arts revealed the list of all the games that will become available in small events in Los Angeles and London dubbed as EA Play.
Image Source: Quarter Disorder

Introducing YouTube Gaming, Twitch’s Competitor

August 29, 2015 By Michael Turner Leave a Comment

YouTube Gaming is Twitch’s main competitor. YouTube was already a big player, but Google doesn’t want it to become old and stale. The big G, starting with the 26th of August, has begun promoting YouTube Gaming as a separate dedicated website and app aimed at, go figure, gaming.

Users who want Call of Duty search results won’t have to go through Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe.

Yet, this wasn’t the main problem.

Esports popularity has grown tremendously over the past five years and Twitch was the main hub for it. Google can’t let this happen. If they succeed in their endeavor, if the company manages to separate different gaming content, they can rest assured that people will use it.

If you build it, they will come.

Lui Calibre, whose site has 3.5 million subscribers, holds a cookie in the shape of the YouTube Gaming App’s heart logo. Photo: Susan Karlin.

YouTube Gaming resembles Netflix when it comes to watching a stream. It stays true to it roots, but you won’t notice the vanilla components that made the video service popular. Comments can be seen on the side, you can give a streamer either a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down and you can subscribe to their channel.

It’s really not that hard to use, and I’m inclined to think that the main YouTube page would benefit from looking like this.

The biggest difference lies in its essence. It’s gaming-oriented. There’s a list where you can see what games are trending, there are featured channels, and there are even landing pages for certain games.

Results are divided into categories like live shows, popular videos and pre-recorded Let’s Play vids.

The Android app looks a lot like Twitch’s, but its desktop counterpart is more fine-detailed. It looks sleeker, better organized and easier to use.

But this isn’t how you poach users from Twitch. Better features and great content creators will, however. The benefit of rewinding a stream in case you’ve missed its beginning is definitely a start.

Currently, Twitch’s most viewed channel racks-up approximately 32,000 viewers. YouTube’s most popular channel has around 11,000 – these may be users who are just trying out the service. Also, because YouTube features channels on its front page.

People don’t think of YouTube as a live streaming hub, but they’re starting to.

YouTube Gaming - PewDiePie Content Creator

Felix Kjellberg aka PewDiePie

Let’s take PewDiePie. He’s a huge part of YouTube and YouTube Gaming. He creates content especially for the video service. Because he uses Google’s video platform as his second home, he keeps people coming back.

If Felix Kjellberg decides to leave for Twitch, the majority of his fan-base will leave along with him. I’m curious to see if dividing YouTube in two will be worthwhile for Google, or if it’s a big mistake.

What do you think? Is Google making a mistake? Will Twitch reign supreme? Tell us in the comments section down below.

Image Source: 1, 2, 3, 4

Alienware Rolls Out 4 Gaming Laptops And X51 Desktop

August 28, 2015 By Karen Jackson Leave a Comment

The in-house PC gaming brand owned by Dell has just made it public that they will be updating some of their devices. The announcement took place at the PAX Prime gaming convention that is held annually in Seattle. The gaming PCs include 4 gaming laptops and one desktop.

Alienware stated they are not putting out new designs, but rather enhancing their existing products. Alienware X51 is a desktop that is famous among professional gamers who require full power systems for touring.

X51 is getting a boost and jumps straight to the sixth generation Core i5 and Core i7. We can also expect faster DDR4-rated RAM. More news about Alienware’s 4 Gaming Laptops is expected from the IFA tech trade that will be held in Berlin in a week.

Another cool feature the new X51 promises is an optional liquid cooling. This translates into a combination of a pump and a radiator in a single device.

The design of the new X51 won’t blend in with your decor, but it promises a lot of high end features. The device is matte black with a green strip on the sides. The inside space is limited, so the CD drive has been sacrificed and expelled from the new model. But instead users get a removable tray for the GPU to compensate for that.

X51 R3 will be compatible with its Graphics Amplifier. However, before you go all out and buy yourself one of those, you should keep in mind that the amplifier is half as big as X51. Kind of a turn off, to be honest.

With two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports, built in 802.11ac Wi-Fi, 8GB of RAM and a CPU liquid cooler, Alienware seems to have worked hard to please the gamers’ niche and meet their demanding requirements. But have they succeeded?

What do early verdicts predict? We can’t deny the updated features are pretty attractive. However, this would be a wise choice only if you were specifically looking for a small gaming PC.

Props to the clever cooling solution as well. Alienware hit the nail on the head with that one. But the additional costs of a buying a separate graphics amplifier and also an external graphics card fail to fully justify this purchase.

If you’re a gaming enthusiast with a liking for small PCs and you want a sleek frame, the X51 R3 meets most of the expectations but leaves some space for improvement.

Image sources 1, 2, 3

Melbourne Is Now The Capital Of Virtual Reality Games

August 17, 2015 By Roxanne Briean Leave a Comment

Buckle up, virtual reality games are gathering speed and are getting ready to conquer the world. The latest update is the new “free roam” gaming center that just opened in Melbourne, Australia. Called Zero Latency, it already has players hooked and lining up to try it out.

The 4,300 square foot warehouse is equipped with 129 PlayStation Eye cameras. Users have to wear a set of virtual reality head mounted displays, Oculus Rift DK2 as well as a backpack that contains an Alienware Alpha PC, powering the Oculus Rift. As science fiction as this sounds, gamers’ reaction didn’t delay to praise Zero Latency and compare it to “being in a video game”.

Once connected to everything, the players are free to roam in the massive warehouse. As its name suggests, the game was designed to create zero latency, which translates into what the users see in virtual reality games matches up with what they’re doing in real life. By setting such high expectations, it’s no wonder the virtual reality games are already fully booked for the first weeks after opening.

Does this mean we can say good bye to laser tag and paintball? While these kind of gaming centers are only budding here and there, I think it’s safe to say they’re here to stay. If you’re from Melbourne or plan to visit, you and five friends can play Zero Latency for one hour and pay around $65 each.

The game’s description presents it as a totally immersing experience. The creators encourage you to imagine a game that doesn’t feel like a game at all. You control everything with your body in a place where digital meets real life. With each of your movements, the game moves with you. After working on the facility for three years, the makers of the virtual reality games guarantee an experience like no other.

Virtual reality games are not the result of a single man’s work, and they surely didn’t have a linear development throughout the years. With continuous development from the 60s till nowadays, 3D pictures have certainly come a long way.

The simplest way to grasp virtual reality games is to think about them as a three dimensional world generated by a computer. They are founded on concepts like immersion, dealing with data depth and breadth, and latency, the lag time between a user’s change of perspective and the entry of another perspective.

Exactly how much virtual reality will be taking over our lives remains to be seen. While it’s still in its incipient days and it seems limited to games and videos, we’re all eager to take it for a spin and see what it can do.

Image sources 1, 2, 3

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