Blizzard recently introduced a new item into their video game, World of Warcraft, that allows player to use and gain 30 days of playtime. Players may buy these tokens for $14.99 (the cost of 30 days playtime) or ~21,000 gold (in-game currency). This item and the way that Blizzard has made sure to keep the game balanced with it has worked out pretty well from what I have seen. Real World Trading (RWT) is a system where players in a video game exchange virtual items in-game for real world assets, typically money. This system has looked down upon by many players and video game companies for years now. So all a player has to do is simply buy a token for $15, then proceed to sell the token in game for ~20,000 gold. This is a good system for those both ends of this deal. For Blizzard, they sell a month of time in game for $15, like they always have. People can buy these tokens in game and get to play for free (minus their virtual money). So Blizzard is losing no money during all of this and players now have an alternative method of playing. Overall, I like how this is balanced and well thought out on Blizzard's end of the deal.
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Next month the highly anticipated Mad Max movie will finally come out. The original Mad Max movies came out in 1979, were a huge success and now the same director is coming back at us with a lot more on the plate. The CG I have seen so far has looked incredible. Director George Miller want to bring us this movie over a decade ago, but back in 2003 they were filming in Namibia, starring Mel Gibson, and the Iraq War put a stop to the production. I have been excited for this movie, but recently I found out that there will be a game to go along with the new movie. Not much has been said on the game yet, but it seems to be pretty interesting. It will be an open world style game, which will be great for how the movies are set. I could even see Telltale Studios making a spin off of this for their series of shows/movies that they turn into games. But the Warner Bros. production seems it will please plenty people. This game is highly anticipated, hopefully it will be as good as the movie is going to be.
This new style of video game has become huge and different TV Shows and other game companies are reaching out to Telltale to get them to make a game series based off their show or game. They recently just partnered with Lionsgate and are working on a new "Super Show Hybrid" which leaves us all wondering what it could possibly be. Telltale has had great success in the last two years and have done great things with that success.
Last weekend Intel hosted the IEM (Intel Extreme Masters). League of Legends was a part of the invitational. The top 2 teams from each region were asked to play in a double elimination tournament. The winner of the tournament was awarded with a $100,000 check from Intel. I noticed at the end of the tournament the players of the winning team, Team Solo Mid, were all wearing Nike shoes. I was amazed! I couldn't believe Nike agreed to sponsor a professional video game team. The funny thing with this is that the only time you see a players shoes are at the very end of the game when the winning team walks over to the losing team to shake their hands. This makes me believe that Team Solo Mid reached out to Nike for the sponsorship and they agreed to something small, like shoes. Although this is just a small step, it is still huge for the eSports community. Maybe soon we will see these kinds of tournaments on ESPN. Minecraft, a game that has inspired hundreds of game like it since its release, is now used in schools around the world. It is used for anything from A to Z, literally. From agriculture to zoology Minecraft is now being taught to students and is used any many different ways to assist students with topics they are studying in class. TeacherGaming is the company responsible for making this happen, they have done the same thing with another game, Kerbal Space Program. MinecraftEdu is growing rapidly and it is beneficial for Mojang, Microsoft, and TeacherGaming.
A couple weeks ago, Bethesda announced they will be holding their own personal press conference on June 14, 2015, in Los Angeles, CA. This is the first time they have ever done this, and it has already drawn anyone and everyone in and making all of us wonder what they have in store for us all. Bethesda made one of the best video games of our generation is Skyrim. They also have brought us the entire Elder Scroll series (which is what Skyrim is a part of) and the Fallout series. No game has been released in either of those huge series is quite a while, which can only lead everything to believe that the sole reason Bethesda is having this press conference right before E3 is because they are planning on announcing a new installment to either or both of these series. This is huge for Bethesda, after the release of their last big project, Elder Scrolls: Online, Bethesda has been need something big to get them back in the picture as a AAA video game company. This is their chance. This is what they need as a company, and those games are what we need as gamers. We have waited long enough for a new game from Fallout or Elder Scrolls on the next gen consoles and now we just might have that.
One game that has mastered the art of this is Five Nights at Freddy's or FNaF for short. FNaF is a game developed by Scott Cawthon. If you click on the link to take you to his website, you will see almost nothing. This website the one used to release new information about the new addition to the FNaF series. This is a great example of websites being used for teasers. This is the first video teaser released for FNaF 3, as you will see, there isn't much of anything in the video in terms of gameplay. So what makes teasers work? They show us what we want to see, they get us hyped up for these games, talking about them with our friends, and raising awareness for them.
One thing that has started to happen is the companies will make trailers and teasers for new games they are making. Then once they get everyone's interest, they make a small portion of the game, with bad textures. Then they tell everyone their plans for new updates, and keep people buying the game hasn't even been released yet. Then, they release the game but nothing like the trailers and much more simple. This scam has become a huge problem recently, one game that has done something similar to this would be H1Z1.
How much longer until something is done about this? Steam could easily make developers sign contracts to avoid them from scamming us like this. Making the developers assure quality, could be a simple solution to this problem. Grand Theft Auto Five, or better known as GTA V, was released on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 in September of 2013, then were released on next generation consoles in November of 2014. Now the game is coming out this year in March. Rockstar Games is offering a very nice reward to those who pre-order the game. If you buy the game before the release date, they are giving $1,000,000 in game, plus a $300,000 bonus. That is a lot of money in the game, which has attracted so many more players to buy the game. Businesses have been offering these bonuses out more and more lately. The tactic was adapted early by Bungie, when releasing their earlier Halo games. It seems to be highly effective by how much this strategy has evolved in the last 8 years. Hopefully it doesn't get too out of hand one day where it begins to ruin the game from how much they give out to the players. Back in 2013 when the next generation consoles were announced, there were a couple of games mentioned that we all were excited for. One of the games was Dying Light, a zombie apocalypse survival game. Zombie survival games have quickly become the most anticipated genre of games in the past few years. I recently bought Dying Light, and personally, I was not pleased. I was so excited for this game because Techland, the developers of the game, went above and beyond for marketing this game. They brought so much to us, showing a variety of game play, and some of the online features. Dying Light is a great example of extreme marketing for video games. But not to focus on Dying Light so much, there have many other zombie survival games that have just been awful. But everyone always get so excited for these games, and most always turn out bad. I wonder why this happens, Maybe because developers are just wanting to spit out these games as fast as possible just to try and get some quick cash. I would be willing to say that by the end of this year, we should see a decrease in the number of zombie survival game coming out. I think other people are starting to realize the decrease in quality. |
AuthorJacob Cullison Posts by Month
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