Here’s my news post about Northern Shadow, a kick-ass looking new game up on Steam Greenlight.
Enjoy!
http://fronttowardsgamer.com/2014/05/31/northern-shadow-the-most-exciting-game-on-steam-greenlight/
News
News; whether site based or actual gaming news, it’s all here.
A link to my news post about the new FTL content update!
Super excited about this – I know exactly what I’ll be doing all of April 3rd!
Especially hyped for the new music and events – tons of new unlockables as well!
The world of video game journalism, and video game development, is as rife with sordid espionage and clocked threats as other forms of media it seems.
TotalBiscuit recently uploaded a video criticising FUN Creators’ new game Guise of the Wolf, titled “Let’s NOT Play Guise of the Wolf”. As has happened before with a TotalBiscuit video, namely the critical commentary of Day One: Garry’s Incident, the developers have seemingly filed a complaint ticket with YouTube against the video, enforcing copy-right claims.
Now, as any whom are familiar with copy-right law knows (and it would appear that anyone who wishes to be a content creator on YouTube needs to be, these days) critique is protected by fair use, thus protecting it from such claims. The whole point of that law existing is so that products, companies and corporations should be subject to criticism and appraisal, thus allowing people to receive an informed opinion about the product. FUN Creators’ attempt to take this video down tells you much about both their opinion of the media, as well as their fear that their game will fare poorly if its faults are brought to light.
It is not quite so simple as Day One: Garry’s Incident however, as that company at least decided to apologize and rescind the copy-right claim. This time, a battle is being fought over twitter between @Totalbiscuit and @FUNCreators; the indie-games developer is claiming that the emails that @Totalbiscuit links, and the entire allegation that @FUNCreators is filing a claim, is false. Not only that, but @Totalbiscuit is photo-shopping emails, trying to discredit the company for… whatever reason.
The situation is still developing, and it is an interesting one because it is not immediately apparent whether this is merely a lack of communication between the PR team who runs the twitter and the legal team of the company, or the ham-fisted attempt to cover their bases after trying to blackmail and censor a critic.
Have a look at the list of @FUNCreators deleted tweets and form an opinion yourself.
UPDATE: FUN Creators’ have seemingly sent another threat to TotalBiscuit, threatening further legal action, and the promise that they will claim any posting of this proof as fake. This is now going into the absurd. Either this is a deliberate PR move, or someone has truly idea what they’re doing at FUN Creators!
Dogecoin is a joke. It is a joke at its origin (the Doge meme), a joke in the face of the seriousness of other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Litecoin, and it’s a joke in the face of those who believe something so silly could ever become so popular, successful and interesting.
For those not familiar with the cryptocurency world, Bitcoin (one could say the original digital currency in this context) blew up in value and publicity about a year ago, with coins that might have been bought for a few dollars suddenly becoming worth thousands. The success of Bitcoin inspired other cryptocurrencies to appear; along with this followed the development of Scrypt-based mining, notably used by Litecoin and it all it’s derivatives. This allowed people with less high-tech computers to participate in helping mine the currency, which in turn allowed more people to jump on the train to the moon as well.
Then, came Dogecoin.
Relatively new, Dogecoin started as a complete joke and just… kept growing. People were drawn to the silliness and friendliness of the community that the coin created; no longer were Cryptocurrency people considered market analysts or thought of as quite so serious. Instead, the Shibes (named for the dog in the Doge meme, the Shiba Inu) gathered a reputation as stupidly friendly, prone to randomly tipping one another with increasingly large amounts of Dogecoin.
Charity drives such as the project to send the Jamaican Bobsled team to the Olympics, and various other charity incentives like Doge4Kids, cemented Dogecoin’s community as a giving and, most importantly, a caring one.
And now, it’s starting to get bigger. And bigger.
The value of Dogecoin has, in the last month, risen incredibly. Thanks to the continuous publicity of the coin, the value has continued to grow, and grow. As we Shibes say, the currency is on it’s way to the Moon. The value in recent days has taken on a slight downward trend, but to the uber-friendly community it is but a short blip on the radar of their orgy of happiness and charity. As in any journey, there are going to be pit stops, short breaks to the bathroom – hell, we might even get lost for a very short while – but what’s important to remember is the journey continues. In this journey, I have personally been tipped on Reddit roughly 10,000 Doge on Reddit from various people over my time with Dogecoin. The generosity of people is always amazing; certain users such as silentShibe are known to tip people 1000 doge at a time. Someone recently calculated that he’s given away over 2 MILLION Doge to random people. That’s at least £1500 at today’s conversion rate.
In more recent news, Dogecoin has made a decision to change the growth of our currency to an inflationary one. Here’s some explanation of what it means. Essentially, a good thing long-term for the currency.
There is so much more information I could share about Dogecoin, but the problem is the community is updating constantly with new and interesting things – revelations, new charity drives and new ideas – that I could hardly keep up.
So, come join our journey to the moon! If you’re interested in getting started, be sure to visit the Dogecoin Subreddit, Dogecoin’s site itself, and also ask any questions you have in the comments section and I’ll be sure to answer them!
Haven’t been this excited for an update to a game in along time; FTL is getting a complete update, filled with new events, gameplay and a new sector, and it’s all free! Props to the developers for making it free – honestly, it’s going to re-drive the hype train and get more sales, so it’s pretty smart anyhow.
Paradox Interactive recently teased an upcoming expansion for Crusader Kings 2. It leaked about an hour before the livestream that’s going on right now, however!
The expansion is called “Sons of Abraham” and is an overhaul of the Catholic religion, the Catholic church and the Pope system, and tons of stuff more. It also comes with a huge patch update that changes a lot of base features of the game!
Here’s the Dev Diary for it as well!
Edit for Updates: Wheeew they’ve added Jews to the game! There are now three different sects of Judaism in the game; we can now play as Jews!
Edit again: 18th November is the release, with the usual Dev Diaries every few days until then.
Pirates of the Burning Sea – currently being developed by Portulas Games after having been let go but Sony Online Entertainment (and thus the dissolution of Flying Lab Software) – is an MMO with fantastic promise. It’s also sadly been a failing MMO for some years now. A lack of player population, somewhat due to being quite a niche game but also due to rather newb-unfriendly game mechanics that drive off new interest.
It’s also been a game I hate to love, and return to it very frequently. About two weeks ago, I succumbed to my addiction once more and rejoined the game.
I’ll be making more posts about this fantastic game (seriously, it has the best PvP I’ve ever played in any game) but for now the important news is that it’s currently gone on lock-down
This game has a very limited player base, but at the moment it appears that a good portion of them have had their security information compromised. The extent of this issue is so grand that Portulas Games are having to completely re-design their website from scratch, as well as completely shut down their game for the foreseeable future.
I imagine the game won’t be down for too long, but this is still quite immense! An actual entire community of gamers who play a niche game, many of the more skilled players all know one another and come online every day. And then, suddenly, the game, site and forums are just… gone.
I can’t find anyone else having any kind of discussion about the game! No one seems to be talking about it; I can’t even find a subreddit for the damn thing!
So, if you play the game – or have at least heard about it… – leave a comment and talk to me about the game!
Shame too; I had just spent the night convincing a group of people to install it at the pub! All my efforts wasted…
Big news for League of Legends and hell, even bigger news for E-Sports as a whole – LCS is now considered on par with other frequent sports competitions held in the USA!
Not just is this a great thing for the movement of E-Sports forward as a whole, but practicly it means that LoL players can now get Visas if needed to play with teams in the USA.
This recognition is another movement forward in the endeavour that has existed since E-Sports as a concept first began – to be considered alike to professional sports like Football, Basketball and the like.
So, great news for LCS and great news as a symbol to E-Sports!
Any fans of Paradox Interactive must know about Crusader Kings 2.
This game is… Let’s face it, it’s like crack. I go through periods of binging on this game that last a week or two; this typically occurs every few months.
I want to be a stand-up member of society. I want to encourage you all to not buy this game, so that you don’t suddenly discover that massive stretches of time have disappeared. I don’t want you guys to become addicted, I mean it. It’s horrible… The enjoyment, the satsifaction… Oh god, the sense of accomplishment in this game! It ruins you.
I want to be a good man. But I can’t. I’m weak. So, you’re going to go take a look at Gamersgate and you’re going to go any buy Crusader Kings 2 and all the relevent DLC, and then you’re going to thank me. At first.
Then, you’ll curse me. You’ll loathe me. But in the long run, it’ll be worth it, just trust me on that.
The new DLC “The Old Gods is also available for pre-order here. I am so damn excited for it. Might be good to give you guys a list of the Developer Diaries, the episodic teasers by Paradox about the DLC:
