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Preys-World - Speakers confirmed for EIF 2009

Monday 22nd of June, 2009 - 17:49:38 GMT

The Edinburgh Interactive Festival today announced that Kristian Segerstrale, CEO and Co-founder of Playfish, and respected industry consultant, Margaret Robertson, are both confirmed to speak at this year’s event. Segerstrale and Robertson join an impressive list of guest speakers: including, among others, Peter Moore, President of EA Sports and Peter Cowley, Managing Director of Digital Media for Endemol UK.

Segerstrale will be addressing the audience with a session titled “Lessons from Social Games - or How Today's Social Networks Will Change the Way You Make, Play and Sell Games Tomorrow”. He leads Playfish, one of the largest and fastest growing social games companies in the world, which creates titles for friends to play together over social and mobile platforms such as Facebook, MySpace, iPhone and Android. Each of the company’s seven games has been a top 10 hit on Facebook, including Pet Society, the platform’s most popular game enjoyed by more than 11 million people every month.

Segerstale will discuss how social games – or games designed for play with friends on social networks such as Facebook and MySpace – have experienced explosive growth and are right at the centre of broader industry trends such as free-to-play, games-as-a-service, social game design, user-generated content, and digital distribution. He’ll also offer some predictions of how the game industry might change as a result.

Kristian Segerstrale, CEO of Playfish, said: “I'm delighted Playfish has been invited to deliver a keynote presentation at this year's Edinburgh Interactive Festival, an important showcase event for the gaming industry.

"Social gaming has attracted tens of millions of enthusiastic players and rapidly risen to become a key gaming sector. I'm looking forward to offering insight on how companies such as Playfish and social networks are changing the way games are created, played and sold."

Industry consultant and former EDGE magazine editor, Margaret Robertson, will offer the Edinburgh crowds a rare insight into the videogames industry with a session titled ‘Stop Telling Tales’.

As a consultant and advisor to companies such as EA, Sony and Channel 4 on game design and industry trends, Robertson will draw on her consultancy experiences across a wide range of story-based games. While breaking down concepts and highlighting elements to which fans relate and demonstrating how studios might deliver these to consumers in a more timely and cost-effective fashion.

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Preys-World - E3 - Posted Updates ForumThread

Monday 1st of June, 2009 - 22:01:44 GMT

E3 is an annual runaway train and there will be footage from all angles, at all times of the day.

As always we'll try to sift through it and bring you the best of it, but the best place for immediate posts and updates is the now annual E3 forum thread at the PW forums. As with the site it began when our site hosting was sorted out, and includes elements of the keynotes from today. The biggest games will have their news presented separately as with Crysis 2 and Left 4 Dead 2.

You can find the forum thread here.

- Ken

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Preys-World - Fans Campaign for Duke Voice Actor in L4D

Monday 1st of June, 2009 - 18:41:03 GMT

Fans are trying to raise the money to allow the Duke Nukem voice actor Jon St John, to re-voice the entire vocal track of at least one character from Left 4 Dead. Following this, the assumption would be that the voice pack would be released as a free mod. They require USD 300 for the fee so if you'd like to contribute or keep up to date with the campaign, then visit the CS Nation site here.

- Ken

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Preys-World - Free Hunting Game Ready For Download

Thursday 28th of May, 2009 - 18:30:31 GMT

The Hunter was a free hunting game that first surfaced in November 2008 in beta. Now the full game is out to download.

Find the full game here the forum here and finally, the quick guide manual here.

We'll certainly bring you our views in an upcoming podcast but the thread for the game is here until we talk about it.

- Ken (forum story by Prey)

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Preys-World - Back!

Thursday 28th of May, 2009 - 17:51:39 GMT

We're still waiting for a report from our hosting company as to why the news site and magazine went down for two weeks, but now we're back, it's back to business as usual. Apologies to our readers, but we hope you were still able to access the podcasts during this time.

- Ken

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Preys-World - Windows 7 and Cash on Delivery 6, October 2009

Tuesday 12th of May, 2009 - 20:29:48 GMT

Both the latest instalment in the Call of Duty Series and the newest version of Windows are rumoured to be launching in October this year. Whilst Activision hardly seems to need the money, Microsoft certainly hopes that the new OS will tempt those who skipped Vista.

For us gamers, it's just another layer of potential incompatibility, in spite of any other benefits which may arise as a by-product of the new launch. This potential for old games no longer working doesn't isn't lowered when paying the premium for the virtual XP mode in two of the higher featured versions.

As with all Microsoft OS, we'll have to see what the early adopters say or simply wait for a service pack in 2010.

- Ken

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Preys-World - Darkfall Online Review Comment

Friday 8th of May, 2009 - 13:02:56 GMT

As the second edition of the Preys-World Magazine was launching, which you can read here, the big spat regarding a bad review for the MMO Darkfall reached us and continued to burn throughout the week. Though entirely online, Eurogamer, offshoot of GamesIndustry.biz, prides itself on quick first reviews of new game launches.

The problem arises when, as quoted in one of the opinion pieces, it’s an MMO, so knowing how many hours you can play before you release your review will always be a measurement with a piece of string. Every other time we've commented on review methods by gaming journalists the subject has been scores that appear grossly inflated, or reasonable to below average like six out of ten. This is the first time there has been a backlash to a critical drubbing with such a low score.

We don’t have the pressure of having to be first with a review, even if there would be some cachet to having your review in the crowd. With the kind of games that get heavy attention from PW contributors such as TF2, Left 4 Dead, Empire Total War (the latter discussed in our recent podcast ), such games receive either incremental or game-changing content updates which either enhance, improve or worsen an opinion of a game. With MMOs, rapid constant changes go beyond simple patching; they’re the lifeblood necessary to keep players interested in the game world. The allegation is that whether it was a playing time of three hours as claimed by the developer, or nine hours over both accounts as claimed by the contributor through Eurogamer in its response, Darkfall wasn’t played for long enough to allow the slating and record low score of 2/10 bestowed upon it by Eurogamer.

In an attempt to resolve the dispute Keiron Gillen has been drafted in to write another review of the game thus giving two perspectives on one game in the style of PC Zone’s earlier days. Given his status in the games media, there’s certainly more trust of his opinion. In my view that's a good enough concession to the fans, as there are no winners from the current situation. Attempts to tough it out against the fans' flaming comments in the style of a print games magazine like PC Gamer would help no-one.

It would seem that the flaming fans have done their job – a bad review isn’t great for the business side, but if enough people like and buy your game, supporting it month by month, then the media will be proved wrong – as shown by PC classics Vietcong and Hitman Codename 47.

- Kenneth Henry

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Preys-World - Eidos Releases Lara Sales Figures

Saturday 25th of April, 2009 - 15:34:11 GMT

Over at Kotaku Eidos has released the sales figures for the Tomb Raider games from 1996's original to last year's Underworld. To find out that the games are still clearing a million is, in the current climate, good news for the Square Enix imprint.

Much like the shift from analogue to digital television, the record of 8million copies for the original game will be extremely difficult to recreate in modern times. Digital downloading is currently, for the PC market anyway, replacing the boxed retail budget edition of a game, so that will distort the figures. Only Guild Wars at 6million and Call of Duty and World of Warcraft have recently come anywhere near, or surpassed, 8million original copies sold in recent times, and there is still piracy to contend with.

Nevertheless, it's nice to see that the series has established its own line like a franchise of successful films.

- Ken

Guild Wars Sales Info: Kotaku.com

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Preys-World - Smug Pirates Walk The Plank

Monday 20th of April, 2009 - 11:06:02 GMT

The other big story from last week was the jailing of the four smug members of the Pirate Bay, who made allusions to piracy as some kind of artistic freedom. When you're going to facilitate piracy, it helps to be a little less smug and also have enough cash to pay your fines, which in this case mounted up to just under GBP 3million.

We talk enough about piracy in our podcasts and for once, we let The Guardian, BBC and other mainstream media make a circus out of this one. Speaking of Podcast 13, it's over 50% done and will arrive this week. Sorry about the delay from Easter, but birthday celebrations got out of hand...

- Ken

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Preys-World - Happy Easter!

Thursday 9th of April, 2009 - 15:14:17 GMT

You will receive the next podcast over the long weekend but for now, we'd like to wish all our readers a happy and peaceful Easter holiday break.

- Ken

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