Opening Night Live is the main draw

Like every other video game expo this year, Gamescom had to either adapt to the pandemic or bail. That meant shifting from a physical gathering with way too many people in Cologne to a worldwide, a?ll-digital event with "world premieres, news, games, and events." It also means a slight date change.

This year, the digital-on??ly Gamescom 2020 will run from Thursday, August 27 ?to Sunday, August 30.

For our purposes, that first date is the one worth jotting down – that's when Geoff Keighley is returning to host the news-centric Gamescom: Opening N??ight Live show. It's tough to keep this stuff straight year to year, but we covered quite a few headlines from Keighley's 2019 presentation,? including:

• Gears 5?? gives us a very Mountain Dew trailer t?o kick off Gamescom
• Man, I really hope Predator: Hun??ting Grounds turns out well
• Pissing outdoors ?is great, here's a Dea??th Stranding gameplay trailer

Somethi?ng about The Game Awards (and now Opening Night Live) gets us fired u??p.

The rest of the schedule will be devoted to new streaming shows l??ike Awesome Indies ("news about the most anticipated indie titles"), Daily Show (highlights), and the developer inte?rview-focused Gamescom Studio. The award ceremony, Gamescom: Best of Show, will wrap things up on August 30.

"Our digital concept is showing the way forward in the event landscape ??and many of the innovations will become an integral part of Gamescom in the years to come," Koelnmesse managing director Oliver Frese said in a press ??release. That's something I've wondered about for 2021 and beyond.

Meanwhile, "on-site events in Cologne, such as the? business area, entertainment area, Gamescom Congress, and Gamescom City Festival, will not take place this year given the current situation."

When the time comes, you can keep tabs on the Gamescom Now hub. Otherwise, we'll see you in roughly one hundred days for Opening Night Live??. (It frea??ks me out to hear it phrased that way.)

Start the countdown.

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It's finally official

[Update: ?Yesterday's order from the German government did, indeed, spell the canc??ellation of gamescom in 2020. Convention organizers released the following statement confirming that the on-site show won't take place, but that it still hopes to be "the world's biggest event for games" through a digital presence.]

Official statement regarding #gamescom2020 â¬‡ï¸ pic.twitter.com/fHaN4GOULM

— gamescom (@gamescom) April 16, 2020

Original story: As restrictions around the COVID-19 pandemic get extended further and further into 2020, we're seeing the postponements and cancellations of events that seemed safe only a few weeks ago. For instance, gamescom organizers said at the beginning of A??pril that it planned to make a decision about the Cologne-based convention in mid-May. The German government seems to have already sealed ??its fate.

Today, German officials issued a ban on large event gatherings through the end of August. That includes the likes of sporting ?matches, concerts, and video game conventions. This seems like the de facto cancellation of gamescom -- at least as a physical event -- even though organizer?s haven't issued a formal announcement. This year's gamescom was set to take place from August 25 through August 29.

Anyone who has ever been to gamescom knows firsthand how impossible the show seemed as long as there are social distancing restrictions. Video game conventions are always crowded, but gamescom is uncomfortably crowded. The attendance in 2019 was 373,000. You're ??always brushing shoulders with people on the show floor. Getting through the main hallway between the exhibit halls feels like trying to walk through the floor of a packed concert.

However, gamescom 2020 will evidently exist as a digital show. The organizers tweeted to acknowledge that the ban will "definitely affect planning," but confirmed that gamescom will have some sort of streaming presence. Last year, Geoff Keighley produced "Opening Night Live" at gamescom and that worked well as a press conference-type showcase of upcoming games. There were also regular streams from stages at the convention. More of that seems to be in store for 2020, because the German government mandates that the Koelnmesse keep??s its doors locked.

Großveranstaltun??gen bis 31. August untersagt [NTV]

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Censored and Uncensored

Bethesda has announced that both Wolfenstein: Youngblood and Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot (the VR spin-off I'm sure many of you have forgotten about) will be receiving two versions when they launch in Germany. A censored version with all Nazi imagery removed will be the standard release while a completely uncensored version with no localization will also be availa??ble. This will give German customers the choice between which version of the game they want, even if they won't be able to understand the uncensored one.

The history of Wolfenstein and its German releases is a long and complicated affair. Due to laws put in place after World War 2, the use of Nazi imagery in media has been banned in Germany for obvious reasons. Whether or not you agree with that is a different debate, but this effectively stopped the Wolfenstein series from ever being released in the country until somewhat recently. The first game to receive an official release was Wolfenstein: The New Order and it did so by scrubbing a?way everything that made reference to Nazis.

The reason Youngblood and Cyberpilot will be releasing without edits is due to a change in Germany's USK rating board system. Instead of blanket banning any game with Nazi symbolism, the board now looks at the context in which said iconography is being used. Since Wolfenstein is clearly not a piece of propaganda, it can be r?eleased without edits in the country.?? Now everyone can kill Nazis instead of having to pretend they are doing it.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood and Cyberpilot will be released uncensored in Germany [The Sixth Axis]

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Lack of refunds cited as being illegal

The German Consumer Protection Authority (VZBV) will be taking legal action against Nintendo for its harsh eShop "no refund" policy. Currently, users that buy items from the Nintendo eShop will not be able to request a refund for any reason. Even pre-orders for unreleased games are not allowed to be cancelled, which Nintendo is clai??ming is because of the pre-load process.

This is coming off of a campaign from the Norwegian Consumer Council earlier this year. They are involved because Nintendo of Germany resides in Norway, thus putting it within the legal confines of the country. After many months of deliberation, the ??council has decided to go ahead with legal proceedings and is expected to enter court within the next month.

In defense, Nintendo has cited a specific article of the European Consumer Law Directive that it claims protects their policy. According to article 16, Nintendo claims, they don't need to offer refunds if, "the performance has begun with the consumer's prior express consent, and with the acknowledgment that he will lose his right of withdrawal?? once the contract has been fully performed by the trader."

The Norwegian Consumer Council countered with, "The company plainly states that all purchases are final. According to the right of withdrawal laid down in the Consumer Rights Directive, such terms are illegal. Until the game can be downloaded and launched, the seller cannot prohibit the consumer from cancelling their pre-o??rder."

Whatever decision is? reached in the case, this will have an impact on the entirety of the ??European Union. If Nintendo is found guilty of breaking consumer protection laws, then it seems like our friends across the pond will be getting a better deal on digital purchases. Only time will tell what happens next.

Germany will take Nintendo ?and its no-cancel eShop pre-order policy to court [Eurogamer]

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Wolfenstein: Youngblood might just match MachineGames' vision

Around the time that Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus was released worldwide (27 October 2017), I remember visiting my local hardware s?tore, Saturn. There were banners advertising the game running the entire length of the escalators that lead you up to the games section, and I remember finding that very strange. I was also a little taken aback by the cynicism of it all. How could a Wolfenstein game be shouted out, loud and proud, here in stores, when the localisation team had been backed into a corner and forced to? change its DNA?

Because modern Wolfenstein in Germany, until now, has not been the same Wolfenstein series you would see in Washington, or London, or practically anywhere else in the world. This has solid legal reasoning behind it, but the legal reasoning been contorted to extremes over time. Now, anti-totalitarian messages are purged to avoid accusations of spreading totalitarian propaganda. Due to a number of factors, the strict approach should be relaxed from now on (as reported by us earlier on this week) in favour of approving games on a case-by-case basis. Because of the current p?olitical climate, not only around the world but specifically i?n Germany, this change could not come soon enough.

An unrecognisable Wolfenstein

There have been plenty of comparison videos and articles discussing the differences between uncensored Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein as it appears in Germany. The video below is a particularly strong example of whe?re the mes?sage of The New Colossus has been diluted in favour of playing it safe with the USK (Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle&n??bsp;– Germany's ratings authority for games and game trailers).&??nbsp;

This scene is particularly important because it depicts Hitler as a pathetic, decrepit yet? still murderous old man. The director (presumably modelled after Leni Riefenstahl, a prominent female producer of filmic Nazi propaganda) and those audit?ioning for the part as Blazkowicz couldn't be more sycophantic to a figurehead who is no longer a mirror image of strong ideology, but instead a limping husk. It's a great depiction of how National Socialism is crumbling over time, and how it always was weak at its core.

This part of?? the story is unchanged for “The Regime” and a bunch of renamed character models?? in the German version of The New Colossus, but if you can't apply what's going on to real life as easily, so it becomes less powerful. For me, it's no longer associated with video footage I've seen showing a younger Hitler riling up a crowd, or to Hitler's specific?? paranoia about Jews as he is pointing a gun at one of the auditioning actors. You get the same sort of game, but the messages are distorted through a filter, and the player doesn't experience everything through the horrible nightmare of “World War 2, but the Allies didn't win&r??dquo;. You would think that in Germany, it would be particularly important to see that nightmare unfold in full on screen.

Eurogamer also did a? video showing some of the changes in The New Order, which came a couple of years earlier and was the first Wolfenstein release in Germany. The change spread beyond the localisation team to the art department, with a lot of the imagery being redesigned to obscure its origins. Once you know a bit about the law in Germany and Wolfenstein's past there,?? you can't really blame anyone involved in producing the game for being cautious. It's still a shame?? that they felt the need to go to such lengths.

The legal background as it stood

I? have a lot of sympathy for Bethesda and MachineGames here, because getting on the wrong side of the law regarding Nazism and Nazi imagery is no laughing matter: it's a criminal issue. Section 86a of the Criminal Code deals specifically with “unconstitutional images”, and while there is no prescriptive list of such images, all of the standard logos associated with National Socialism doubtlessly fall under this category (not just the swastika but also the sig runes, the “Totenkopf&rdqu??o; skull design, etc.).

Section 86a Use of Symbols of Unconstitutional Organizations

(1) Whoever:

1. domestically distributes or publicly uses, in a meeting or in writings (Section 11 subsection (3)) disseminated by him, symb??ols of one of the parties or organizations indicated in Section 86 subsection (1), nos. 1, 2 an??d 4; or

2. produces, stocks, imports or exports objects which depict or contain such symbols for distribution or use domestically or abroad, in the manner in??dicated in? number 1,

shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than three years or a fine.

 

But? that only covers imagery, not renaming Hitler or removing his moustache. This comes under the broader topic of disseminating propaganda, under section 86 of the Criminal Code. It even has a special sub-category for depictions of Nazism. The consequences ??of flouting this law, e.g. by ignoring a ban, would be severe even for a company as large as Bethesda. Even if Bethesda simply tried to get an uncut version of the games awarded a rating by the USK, the court costs might not make it worth the effort.

Section 86 Dissemination of Means of Propaganda of Unconstitutional Organizations

(1) Whoever domestically disseminates or produces, stocks, imports or exports or makes publicly accessible through data storage media for dissemination domestically or abroad, means of propaganda:

1. of a party which has been declared to be unconstitutional by the Federal Constitutional Court or a party or organ?ization, as to which it has been determined, no longer subject to appeal, that it is a subs??titute organization of such a party;

2. of an organization, which has been banned, no longer subject to appeal, because it is directed against the constitutional order or against the idea of international understanding, or as to?? which it has been determined, no longer subject to appeal, that it is a substitute organization of such a banned organization;

3. of a government, organization or institution outside of the territorial area of application of this law which is active in pursuing the objectives of one of the pa??rties or organizations indicated in numbers 1 and 2; or

4. means of propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization,

shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than three years or a fine.

 

As you can see from the statute, there is an exception for artistic expression and criticism. In fact, it is a mighty stretch to describe the Wolfenstein series as disseminating propaganda in the first place. But if you have someone who is heavy-handed in applying the law, and this goes unchallenged, then the letter of the law can be stretched. And this is what happened in the past with Wolfenstein 3D.

id Software went in all guns blazing on releasing Wolfenstein 3D with all of its Nazi imagery in Germany, and were met with hostility. In 1998, it was decreed that the game would be banned. It would be a massive headache to go back to the drawing board and apply censorship methods to a game such as The New Colossus after the fact, so MachineGames wisely pre-empted trouble and produced a censored version. The environment simply wasn't there to push for?? a?n uncut version.

This is made all the more ludicrous whe??n you look at examples of fiction and film that have seen a release in Germany, are about Nazism and could be seen as taking National Socialism in jest. A few years ago, the book Er ist wieder da (“Look who's back”) was released, which im?ages Hitler coming back from the dead and trying to re-establish his political power in 2014. It has since been made into a movie. The film Dead Snow, about Nazi zombies attacking a bunch of ??young travellers in Norway, is on wide release in Germany. There seemed to be a special level of fear when it came to the interactivity of games.

Why it was time to change

The announcement by GAME (the Association of the German Games Industry) that the rules on the depiction of Nazism would be relaxed came after another embarrassing incident at a games festival. As reported on by Ian Boudreau of PCGamesN, Attentat 42 tells the story of people thrown into turmoil by the Nazi occupation of Bohemia and Moravia durin?g World War 2. It won best game at the A MAZE Festival in Berlin, despite not being legal to play in the very coun?try in which it won the award.

The chilling effect of the approach to Nazism in games also seemed to have a disproportionate effect on indie devs. Sure, Bethe??sda ?is a massive company and could possibly have scraped together the change to fight in the courts for uncensored release; an indie dev doesn't have a cat in hell's chance of securing a release in the event that the game is not awarded a rating or banned, because they simply don't ha?ve the tools to fight it. And for games that are purely story-led, as opposed to having a fighting element that can be focused on in lieu of story, prescriptivism can be particularly c?rippling.

But it wasn't just a specific incident in the games industry that probably precipitated change. The need to fight against neo-Nazism hadn't gone away in the wake of World War 2 and the fall of Communism? in East Germany, but has become more urgent in recent times.

Just a few weeks ago, Beate Zschäpe was sentenced to life in prison after a mammoth five-year court case on the National Socialist Underground: a group of Neo Nazis who murdered small business owners with migrant backgrounds. The case revealed that authorities hadn't?? done enough to shut down these dangerous groups; police officers had initially presumed that other migrants were responsible for the killin??gs, in what many people have argued was institutionalised prejudice.

While old-fashioned and inflammatory right-wing parties such as the NPD (Nationalist Party of Germany) have all but disappeared, more family-friendly, “I'm-not-racist-but” alternatives, such as the aptly-named Alternative for Germany, have won ground, clothing Islamophobia and brutality in a smarter exterior. AfD currently has representatives in 14 out of 16 of the German federal states, and has representatives in the national ??and European parliaments.

An AfD local poster, with the slogan, "Our country, our home."

On an anecdotal level, Hamburg, where I live, took in a very large number of Syrian refugees a couple of years ago. The response in my local community was to protest against accommo??dation being built, lest it ruin the picturesque village. I was saddened that my neighbours were unabashed “not-in-my-backyard” folk, but unfortunately, there is a current climate of “fear of the other” the world over that makes privileged people become defensive.

M??ost countries now are now at a turning point in their politics where they have to take a good look at themselves and the values they wish to uphold. Games such as Wolfenstein: The New Colossus serve to remind us not only what past wars were fought over, but how self-interest that encourages totalitarian ??regimes?? to flourish leads only to self-destruction. We need games critical of all kinds of extremism, so that we can put the thought processes behind the regimes under the microscope. The time was absolutel??y ripe for Germany to relax its stance.

The only problem with this development is that nothing h?as changed in the German Criminal Code, just the approach of the USK in applying it. Whether concrete change actually manifests, or whether they lapse back into old, cautious habits, remai??ns to be seen.

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USK to change ratings 'effective immediately'

Germany is relaxing its stance on video games with Nazi imagery. In a new regulatory change from the Entertainment Software Self-Regulation Body (USK), any game that tackles "unconstitutional organizations" can be assessed by the?? classification board on a per case basis.

Previously, titles that dealt with Nazism would either be outright banned or heavily censored to see release (such as Wolfenstein II being altered beyond recognition). While the regulations weren't strictly made to tackle Nazi iconography, they usua??lly resulted in games with Nazis or stories focused on World War II being denied release in Germany.

According to the German Game Industry Association (Game), the USK will be able to apply age ratings to video games with similar content "effective immediately." Felix Falk, Managing Director for Game, stated, "This new decision is an important step for games in Germany. We have long campaigned for games to finally be permitted to play an equal role in social discourse, without exception. Computer and video games have been recognized as a cultural medium for many years now, and this latest decision co??nsistently cements that recognition in term??s of the use of unconstitutional symbols as well."

As for how the USK will decide which games are allowed access, they will be put up against the "social adequacy clause" found in section 86 of Germany's Criminal Code. This section is written to assess whether or not "those symbols [Nazi imagery] serve an artisti??c or scientific purpose, or depict current or historical events." As stated above, this will be on a per case basis, so I wouldn't expect previously banned titles to suddenly be appearing on German shelves overnight.

Germany relaxes stance on Na?zi symbols in video games [GamesIndustry.biz]

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A stark departure from how things are done now

The video game pre-ordering process just got a little tougher in Germany. In recent years, retailers would immediately list newly-announced games, and customers would pre-order them without knowing when they'd actually release. It's mostly ??an innocuous system, as the customers don't get charged until the game ships. Still, Germany is cracking down on this status quo.

The Higher Regional Court of Munich has recently ruled that retailers can't list products for sale with generic phrases like "coming soon" or "this item has not yet released." Instead, they must st?ate when the product is expected to ship. Otherwise, a pre-order can't be offered. Düsseldorf Consumer CEO Wolfgang Schuldzinski (excellent name) said "When consumers order goods on the intern?et, providers must specify by when the goods are delivered."

While this ruling will apply to video games, it wasn't born out of any particular incident related to games. Rather, it stems from an incident where a consumer protection claim was made re?garding a Samsung Galaxy S6 pre-order offer in August 2016. However, this is applicable to all products, and that includes games.

This will be a slight shakeup to the way video games are marketed in ??Germany. It'll be interesting to see if retailers completely follow the spirit of the ruling, or if they find loopholes like entering placeholder dates and altering them when real release dates are announced.

Urteil zum Online-Shopping: Liefera??ngabe „bald verfügbar“ reicht nicht [Heise via Eurogamer]

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Rocket League, StarCraft II, Hearthstone, Pokemon Championships, and LoL

DreamHack, which began over two ?decades ago as a Swedish LAN party event, has cata?pulted into the global space. Now it's a multi-event tour-de-force that spans from Europe to North America, and the next event is happening in Leipzig Germany this weekend.

Billed as a gaming festival and LAN party, DreamHack has also pivoted in recent years into the eSports arena, and several large tournaments are happening alongside of it. Rocket League, StarCraft II, Hearthstone, Pokémon Championships, and League of Legends are all having events, 

Rocket League is set to be one of the highlights, as the long-awaited $50,000 Leipzig tournament will see G2 eSports, Method, PSG eSports, and Gale Force square off. The latter, mind, just won the RLCS World Ch?ampionship last November, and the exact same lineup of Turbopolsa, ViolentPan??da, and Kaydop are returning.

This year's StarCraft II showing is also notable given DreamHack's partnership with Blizzard in forming the first StarCraft II World Championship Series Circuit event of the year. This one has a $100,000 prize pool and features 16 players, one of which is Artur "Nerchio" Bloch from Poland, who is frequently seen in the top 20 in worldwide rankings for the game.

The regional Pokémon Championship will feature Sun and Moon play as well as the TCG (trading card game), and will be held on January 27-28, with free play opportunities. Here entrants will have the opportunity to accrue "Championship Points" that determine their placemen??ts for the Pokémon World Champions??hips.

League of Legends' showing is through a more relaxed tournament with an EUR 2,500 prize for first place, and Hearthstone's total pot for the "Win the Winter" event (which featur?es no direct invitations as an open tourney) ??is EUR 8,250.

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Oops

Nintendo Labo is basically a combination of cardboard and software ?designed to spur the creative spark in all of us. Unless you mistake it as literal cardboard and almost throw it out.

This story from the German ratings board (USK) is chuckle-worthy -- according to a tweet from the board, their cleaning crew almost threw out the sample Nintendo had sent. Translated, the tweet states, "Finally we can tell the story, when we had the latest Nintendo hardware, it was almost dumped by the cleaning crew as waste paper. In the past no one? would have believed this story, anyway."

I'm not sure what to think about Nintendo Labo yet. I mean, I can dig the idea of marketing STEM concepts to kids. It's been a pretty widespread trend? the past year with a handful of startups, so it makes perfect sense why a major player would be getting in on the fun.

But! This is Nintendo we're talking about here. The inventor of the Game Boy Printer, and the Wii Vitality Sensor. I had to read droves of ar??ticles about how the latter would "change the industry forever," until it was silently canceled four years after it was announced. Labo seems like a more concerted effort, and ??pre-orders are even up right now, but if it doesn't take off I can see Nintendo canning it.

USK [Twitter via Game Informer]

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The award-winning student team talks to me about VR, tall players and dealing with pesky headset wires

The well-deserved winner of the Most Innovative Newcomer award at the PLAY creative games festival, held in Hamburg, Germany from 1–5 November, was Tell Me What You See, a co-op VR puzzle-adventure game. It is being developed by Pesky Bees, a Copenhagen-based student dev team. A lot of the games on display at the festival showed creative flair in their own special ways, but Tell Me What You See had a distinctive style and charm, and earned brownie points in?? making use of tricky HTC Vive VR technology.

The build I played at the festival was a two-player demo. One player would sit at a computer screen, and would have a zoomed-out overview of the entire level, which is a diorama of a child's bedroom. The other player would wear the Vive headset, and would be in the life-s??ized bedroom. Communicating via headset microphone, the player at the computer monitor assists the second player in escaping the room, using machines straight from a child's vivid imagination that are made out of cardboard boxes.

The art style is a joy, and all of the interactions with objects in the game feel natural. As an aside, I'll admit this was my first attempt at a VR game, and ?I embarrassed myself a fair bit. I was so taken ab?ack by everything being in front of my face that I giggled uncontrollably – and loudly – throughout the entire experience. I also collided with one of the team, who were running the demo booth themselves, and was not very graceful in plonking myself on the floor to "climb" into an object.

But out of all of the exhibits, it was the one with which I had the most fun &nda??sh; which is why I loved this game so much, and why I just had to get an interview with the developers. Keep on reading for my chat with the te??am! 

What made you specifically want to develop a VR game?

While the economic sustainability of developing for VR seems to be uncertain, we do consider it a format full of potential for expressiveness and innovation. However, making the game in VR was just the beginning of the plan. We know more students creating projects in VR than in any other platf?orm, so that would definitely not set us apart. If we chose VR is because we had a very specific take on it and we wanted to see how far we could go with that idea.

What specific difficulties did you encounter making a VR game compared to a "normal" game?

VR adds a new layer of difficulty on top of every part of the development process. First of all, the production phase demands higher requirements for hardware?? and actual physical space than any other kind of game. Also, setting up playtests, rec?ording playthroughs, traveling to festivals... becomes more challenging. The fact that our game was also online didn’t make things easier.

But most importantly, making a game? for VR sometimes requires a completely different mindset. Level design, for example, needs to consider the actual physicality of the player. For a long time, one of the puzzles in the game was based on the VR player not being able to reach a certain object. That worked until our first player who was two metres tall tried the game a??nd proved the design to be wrong.

Why did you decide to make a game that required working in pairs?

I think that most people who try VR realise that there is something magical about that? digital space that you are suddenly inhabiting. Somehow, even if the hardware is still far from perfection, the trick works and we feel transported to ano??ther place. With our game, we wanted to open a window for a second player to accompany the VR player through this experience.

The main g?oal was to see how those two players would ??collaborate in a common space that is presented to them in such a different way. That was the foundation of the project and we always tried to make our design, sound, and visual choic??es based on that concept because we considered it to be worth exploring.

From there, it was all about making the game enjoyable for both parts. We didn’t want the PC player to just enable the fu??n of the VR player. We tried to understand the strengths and weaknesses of both platforms and build a game in which those technologies were not competing but enriching each other’s experience. This required careful puzzle design and many iterations of the mechanics that can be performed by both players.

You developed the demo as a student project. Do you think the process of working on a game as a group of students is any different to working on one full-time at an independent studio?

S??ince our roles were clearly defined from the start (programmer, artist, game designer, and sound designer) the workflow was surprisingly similar to the one of a small independent studio. However, there were of course some differences. A negative one is that we couldn’t commit full-time to the development. The positive side is that our decisions were not constrained by the economic viability of the project; the priority was always for the game to be as close to our initial vision as possible. We knew that this situation was not likely to be re?peated in the future, so we enjoyed the process of developing with that freedom.

I think I accidentally punched one of the people working the booth when playing your game. How often have you been hit by people trying out the demo?

We became experts at untangling cables while remaining unnoticed by the players?. What we couldn’t avoid is some of them trying to lie down on what is just a digital model of a bed and falling as a result.

Oh dear. Thanks for the interview, guys! The game is still in development, but follow the team on Twitter for further updates.

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Coming to PC and consoles in 2018

I'm admittedly late on covering this one but it's much too special to pass up for that reason alone. Trüberbrook is a sci-fi mystery adventure game set in 1960s Germany that owes inspiration to The X-Files and Twin Peaks.? Best of all, it uses digitized models to achieve a stunning ??handmade aesthetic.

I caught a glimpse over the long, food-filled holiday weekend and knew I'd have to mention the game come Monday. It's one thing too pull off this look (see also: The Neverhood, Skullmonkeys, and The Dream Machine) but you also need a story, world, and characters? to make worthwhil??e use of it.

On that front, Trüberbrook follows an American physics student, Hans Tannhause??r, who unexpectedly wins a trip to a German village full of strange folks and weird happenings. It turns out there's far more to his visit than just luck. In fact, he's meant to be there. He's meant to save the world.

The game is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter with just over two weeks to go. It's a clear success at this point, and any extra funding will go toward goals like an audio commentary and making-of materials. Trüberbrook is aiming for "late 2018" on PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

TRÜBERBROOK – A Nerd Saves the World [Kickstarter]

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Let's play with matches

Last week, I went to the PLAY creative gaming festival, which takes place every year in Hamburg, Germany. PLAY17 was both entertaining and educational, with something for people of all ages, including workshops, talks and even a game-themed poetry slam. The highlight of the long weekend, though, was the exhibition spaces, which were filled to the brim with prototypes and new/recent releases by indie developers and students from all over Europe. I had the opportunity to play most of them, and none of them were disappointing. (Except Snake Pass. Hated the controls.)

I'm not really sure what sort of games I expected beforehand, but I vaguely im??agined developers playing around with stories, engines and art styles. I don't think it had popped into my head even once that devs might desi??gn their own controllers: as a person coming to games from a consumer perspective, the concept of a game as an exhibition piece, rather than as something in the home or on the go, was completely new to me. So of course, I will now gush about all the shiny new specimens I found at PLAY17 that have their own very special controllers.

This piece involves fire, air and...er...dots.

1. BloodBank (Sébastien Beureux, Marianna Czwojdrak, Vincent de Vevey, Laurent Monnet)

BloodBank had the distinction ??of being the only stand in the entire exhibition hall with a bucket of water at the ready. And, despite its name, you were more at risk of? burning yourself than losing bodily fluids when trying out this perilous game (hey, you in the comments, stop sniggering).

The content of the game is fairly standard: man wakes up in dark spooky hall; man must try to escape dark spooky hall with nothing but a candle and a snotty handkerchief on his person. And the candle can go out...if the player's "controller" goes out. Yes, when you step up to the booth to try out BloodBank, the demo assistant hands you a lit safety match, which you hold up to t?he screen to guide your character in the right direc?tion.

Needless to say, really, I loved BloodBank, because just as the character on-screen is all alone aside from his candle, you are all alone aside from your match. You h?ave no other way to issue prompts to the character, and as your ember fades, you even lose the ability to see your surroundings. There was an added element of danger for me, because I get very n?ervous around fire, so I was being extra-cautious with my match. The time taken to play the game was obviously very short because a lot of people's matches extinguished very quickly, but I suppose you could hog the booth and go through several, or cheat with a candle lighter. 

This is a game I could see myself playing on an Autumn evening, with a big bag of mini-??Milky Ways left over from Halloween and some red wine, were it not for the technical limitations of releasing this on Steam. I discussed with a fellow festival-goer how this would work, and we guessed that it made use of the computer's webcam. We were told later that experiments in getting this to work with a webcam were unsuccessful due to too much background interference; instead, infra-red detectors from a Wiimote were used to pick up the?? flame. Still, I'm going to keep my eye out for this game at other indie festivals in the future, because I definitely want to try again. And again. And again.

2. Close the Leaks (Henning Steinbock, Samuel Chapman)

I'll admit, I walked past Close the Leaks a f??ew times, because I am painfully shy and this game requires four players. I was eventually persuaded to try it out a couple of days into the festival, and while in many ways it is an introvert's worst nightmare (you need t??o communicate with your teammates or you will absolutely muck it all up), it's one of the most inventive and fun games I demoed during the festival.

The core game reminded me very much of Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime - use thrusters placed at 90-degree angles around a spaceship to guide yourself t??o certain targets, avoiding enemies and fixing your battered ship. But the game does so much more on top of t??his.

The thrusters work by blowing o?xygen out of the ship – lose too much oxygen and everyone in the s?hip pops their clogs; conserve all your oxygen and you won't progress to your goal. Each of the thrusters is controlled by a piece of tubing protruding from the display case, and you have to cover the hole with your hand (or some other body part, I suppose...?) to keep the air in, and release it in controlled spurts. You have to make quick decisions with your teammates as to who should release air and when.

Once again, my presumptions about how this game worked on a hardware level were all wrong. I had gone into it thinking that the sounds of air rushing "out of" the tubes were produced in-game, to create an illusion, and the tubing ends had sensors on them that could tell when your hand was covering them. But when I tried it out, I realised actual air was blowing through the pipes. BloodBank and Close the Leaks are both games that allow you to suspend your disbelief very easily, because they incorporate elements of the game so well into the real world – but the finishing touch to Close the Leaks??'s controller put a great big silly smile on my face.

3. RotoRing (Gregory Kogos)

RotoRing goes even further than BloodBank and Close the Leaks. The developer, Gregory Kogos, designed the hardware for the entire game – it was displayed at PLAY17 in its "vanilla form" (see the video above), an adorably quaint wooden box that could almost act as a travel version of the game. A dial and a push button are all that you have to control RotoRing, but it works beautifully.

RotoRing is a very stripped-down game, but that's precisely what you need sometimes when you are at a??n event full of games plucked from the weirdest corners of people's imaginations. The display features two rings made up of LED lights. A single light is brighter than the others; that is your "dot." The button allows you to move your dot between the rings, while the dial allows you to rotate your dot around the ring you're currently on. You have to get your dot into the empty spot, all while avoiding the red dots of death. As you progress through the levels, the game starts to demand punishing accuracy (e.g. where it seems like every other dot is red) and impeccable timing (e.g. in levels where the red d??ots spin around both rings at different speeds, in an almost hypnotic fashion).

It's a really simple but compelling game, and one that you'll wish you could own. Unfortunately, you'll? have to wait until it comes to a festiv??al near you. 

***

What ?the exhibits at PLAY17 taught me, above all else, is that being creative is a holistic process. It's a process that involves venturing beyond what you already think a game looks like, even if this means going completely back to the drawing board instead of worki?ng with established hardware. Even if it means creating something that is meant for the exhibition hall, and not so much for your living room at home.

Have you seen any weird and wonderful controllers at festivals or game jams? Have you made any funky controllers yourself? What do you think of the games I've featured in my article? Let me know in the comments down below!

The post Three games that ditch standard controllers appeared first on Destructoid.

Everyone was kung-fu fighting!

An advertisement from a German gaming magazine (now archived on Reddit) has spoiled the announcement of a brand new open-world action RPG from THQ Nordic. Called Biomutant, the game features a post apocalyptic setting with anthropomorphic characters utilizing kung-fu. Sounds absolutely bonkers (no pun intended), if you ask me.

The game is coming to PS4, Xbox One and PC sometime next year with the leaked ad translating to "beginning 2018." That could mean Q1 or just that the game is releasing, so speculation is all we have. The developer will be Experiment 101, a Swedish studio formed by ex Avalanche members (developers behind Just Cause).

Over on LinkedIn, Experiment 101's creative director, Stefan Ljungqvist, said this about THQ Nordic's upcoming Gamescom announcement (more than likely Biomutant):

"We will be demoing the studio's first title on the show floor at Gamescom - an open-world action-RPG no?t like anything you've seen or played before. We've been hard at work on this for some time and I am happy to finally be able to share it. Really looking fo?rward to it. Made with UE4."

If that was this game, then the cat's out of the bag. They can't scurry away from this one. They'll be coughing up furballs in frustration. Mice will take over the office. ?Some other cat related pun.

THQ Nordic making open-world post-apocalyptic kung-fu action-RPG called Biomutant [Eurogamer]

The post German magazine leaks THQ Nordic’s Biomutant appeared first on Destructoid.

Claustrophobia triggered

Wolfgang Peterson's 1981 epic WWII movie Das Boot, about a disenchanted German U-boat crew fig??hting pain and mental anguish during a stormy winter, is to be adapted as a VR game.

The combination of an iconic brand like "Das Boot" with an exciting technology like VR has instantly energised and excited a lot of people," says Remote Control Productions CEO Hendrik Lesser. "This is a long-term commitment for RCP. We're looking forward to making Das Boot a global success in the gaming world."

It feels odd, and a tad distasteful, to hear the sombre and upsetting Das Boot referred to as an "iconic brand" but I suppose games such as Medal of Honor and Call of Duty have been adapting real-life war events into video games for years. This isn't even the first time for Das Boot, as the original novel was adapted into an Amiga gam??e way back in 1990.

It would be an absolutely terrifying VR experience, assum?ing that the game retained the story's strong anti-war message and depicted the suffering and claustrophobia ?of the crew of U-96 in a thought-provoking way. If it ends up being a Michael Bay-esque stunt-fest with shooter elements, then maybe this project needs to stay 100 fathoms below.

Either way, it's a intriguing choice for a VR game and, done right, could be more unsettling and harrowing than an?y jump-scare horror game could ever imagine being.

The post All the fun of Das Boot, now in VR form! appeared first on Destructoid.

Standing on the edge of a revolution!

Germany has a long history of banning violent video games from sale. Doom had been outlawed until 2011 (which is just insane) and Wolfenstein was barred because of its use of Nazi imagery. Fallout 3 wasn't allowed until this year, as well.

Now, though, Red Faction is finally legall??y available in Deutschland. Nordic games announced that the game is no longer on the list of titles deemed "damaging" to the country's youth. One down, severa??????????????????????????l hundred to go.

Publishing director Jans Binsmaier stated that the company went through numerous discussions and had to ut?ilize power forms of persuasion to have the game removed from Germany's blacklist. "At THQ Nordic, we were aware of the implications of this momentous decision, and needed to adopt a bold approach," Binsmaier said.

I'm happy that the game is going to finally be available to our gaming friends overseas. There was no mention of any censorship being placed on the game, similar to how Wolfenstein: The New Order changed Nazis to "The Reg?ime" and r?emoved any symbolism from World War II.

Red Faction No Longer Considered Harmful to Germany's Youth [GameSpot]

The post German gamer?s, the ?time has come: Red Faction is now legal in Deutschland appeared first on Destructoid.

CONFIRMED!

Half-Life 3 is not confirmed, despite what you may see out of Germany. A giant, orange banner outside of gamescom reads, "Half-Life: 3" in large prin??t. Beneath it lies arcane, ??inscrutable text (what the fuck is "redakteure"!?) that is meant to follow the "3," which is separated from the "Half-Life" via a colon (in Cologne, Germany!).

Some A++ trolling going on at the entrance to Gamescom this year. pic.twitter.com/yXBOZAaPBJ

— Aoife Wilson (@AoifeLockhart) August 16, 2016

Thankfully someone can parse these runes.

@orphandroid @AoifeLockhart Nah, it's not a :?3, it's "Half-Life:" and "3 editors who played it back then". The 3 belongs to the editors.

— Kristin Knillmann (@kristinthefox) August 16, 2016

Ahhh.

Fuckers.

The post Beautiful Half-Life 3 tr??oll greets gamescom attendees appeared first on Destructoid.

This party isn't doing the Germans any favors

The sexual-punishment-themed Criminal Girls 2: Party Favors jumped some hurdles in its localization for a western audience that included, "redrawn art, terminology changes, no native language dialogue, and? no motivat?ion scene dialogue."

This was not enough for Germany, whose video game ratings board, USK, declined to rate the Vita RPG for the country, according to NIS, which currently precludes it from releasing in Germany. Criminal Girls isn't banned in the country. You might remember that the USK initially refused to rate the violent Mortal Kombat X, though it finally would release five months later with an USK 18 rating.

Elsewhere in Europe Party Favors is releasing with a PEGI 16 rating on September 23, while it's coming to America on September 20 with an M (for Mature) rating. While Germany tends to refuse ratings on a basis of violence (just read the USK 18 description), there's some irony in the country stereotypically represented in American pop culture as XXX BDSM sex fiends objecting to the BDSM JRPG. Of course the country has far more chances to reject classification on the basis of violence given the types of games that are typically made. I think the real crime here is that I played the original, pre-localization Criminal Girls 2 in Tokyo last year and didn't get horny at all.

The post Crimin??al Girls 2 denied rating (and release) in ??Germany appeared first on Destructoid.

So you wanna be the master of Pokemon?

As we all know, this year is Pokemon’s 20^th anniversary. As part of the celebrations, this year’s National Championships in the UK, Germany and Italy wi?ll all b??e streamed via Twitch for the first time.

Three different, Englis??h-language streams will be run for different eve??nts at the championships:

• The trading card game will be streamed on twitch.tv/pokemontcg_eu.
• Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire and X & Y championships can be found on twitch.tv/pokemonvgc_eu.
• Pokken Tournament will be aired on twitch.tv/pokkentournamentEU.

These streams will cover all three of the European national events. The first will be the UK tournaments, held in Liverpool on May 14-15, then the week after will see the German tournaments in Kassel on May 21-22. Finally, the Italian event will be hosted in Milan on June 11-12.

Finally, if you’re lucky enough to be able to physically attend one of these events, you’ll be able to get a special Shiny Machamp for X, Y, Alpha Ruby or Omega Sapphire. Fr??ee shiny Pokemon and a weekend watching others fight it out are?? always good things in my book!

The post You’ll be able to watch this year’s European Pokemon National Championships on Twitch appeared first on Destructoid.

Hell yeah, actually

Inbetweengames, a studio founded by former YAGER staff, recently announced its first major release, All Walls Must Fall. For those keeping score, this is the game teased back in October of last year. It takes place in an alterna??te-history Berlin, where the Cold War is mostly fought in the past -- the United States and Russia are constantly one-??upping the other via time traveling spies.

All Walls Must Fall is ostensibly a real-time strategy game, albeit one set in Berlin nightclubs where players can time travel and action moves to the beat of the club banger de jour. The game ????takes place over the span of a single night, where players must stop a rogue nuclear strike before it happens. Time travel!

"For sci fi references, we're drawing from two main sources: sci-fi noir and time-bending mindfuck," programmer Isaac Ashdown said in an email to Destructoid. "Philip K Dick is a big inspiration, and while terrible on many levels, movies like Next and Paycheck are going in the right direction. Run Lola Run is a Berlin classic that shows off the city, techno, and the possibilities of alternate realities all in one go. And finally, Hanna (also in Berlin), Lucy or the club scene of John Wick are pointers for how we'd like combat to feel."

From where I sit, those are a lot of disparate references, but I can also see how they'll fit together. If you're interested in what Ashdown is selling I'd actually recommend starting with Run Lola Run -- it can get weird, but is definitely worth watching if the idea of mundane parallel realities excites you. Think Braid meets Guy ??Ritchie meets German Expressioni??sm.

Ashdown also spoke with us about my favorite science fiction topic: future drugs! "There's a dumpling shack by Berghain in Berlin that's got a real great character working there, a guy who's seen everything, and that's made me think that we sho??uld name all such substances after various eastern European snack food - Red Pelmini, Spicy Pierogi, Black Blini, Mushroom ?Spätzle... subtle, yet for people not from around here, a bit obscure. But maybe too obscure? This area is one I'd say we're still in the prototyping stage."

Joke's on you, man! Spätzle was actually a childhood staple of mine, I know exactly what that is. It'?s delicious. "Black Blini" is dope, though.

All Walls Must Fall is currently set for an Early Access release this fall, with a full launch in 2017. The group is currently seeking funding from Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg -- the wing of the Ger??man government responsible for financially supporting film and media projects in Berlin and Brandenburg. 

The post All Walls Must F?all is the new game from ex-Dead Island 2 ?devs appeared first on Destructoid.

Reverse censorship!!!

Germany banned Fallout 3 in 2009 over its violent content (it also missed India and, briefly, was under fire in Australia). Eventually a censored version was offered for German players, but the or??iginal, uncensored version is no longer banned in the country.

Bethesda "initiated a difficult and rarely-successful trial," according to IGN Germany, with the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Minors (BPJM) to delist Fallout 3.

"In the case of Fallout 3, the request for delisting was granted even though only seven years passed since the game was banned," a BPJM member said in a statement. "The Big Council decided at its meeting on 4 February that Fallout 3 will be removed from the list because its content is no longer classifie?d as harmful to minors from today's perspective."

The ban was set to expire in three years anyways. Why would Bethesda go through the time-consuming, costly legal trouble to get it repealed? Well, Fallout 4 was uncut in Germany (and plastered all over the country at gamescom ahead of its release) and probably made a lot of money. Fallout 3 is alrea??dy available via&??nbsp;Xbox One backward compatibility, but it could also see a full, Dishonored-style console re-release.

Gibt es Pläne für Fallout 3 HD? [IGN Germany]

The post Ger?many lifts Fallout 3 ban en route to re-release speculation appeared first on Destructoid.

And it all makes some kind of sense

"Dragomon Hunter is one of the games where we've made the most changes [to appeal to the western audience]," Aeria Games' Product Marketing Manager Alexandre Bousquet tells me. That doesn't mean shaving the points off of spiked hair tips for use as beard stubble or turning onigiri into jelly donuts. The anime-styled MMO is currently in open beta for France and the United States, two western territories that are down with Asian-influenced animation. Even the name, Dragomon Hunter, is meant to spark the heart of anime fans.

But, wait, why is a German company releasing?? an anime MMO in the USA and France?

It doesn't clear anything up, but Aeria Games actually started in Santa Clara, California almost a decade ago. It expanded globally, including into Berlin, as a a publisher and online portal (maybe you noticed the logo playing Tribes: Ascend) before being purchased by multi-billion-dollar German media conglomerate ProSi?ebenSat.1 M??edia in 2014. But even before getting Katamari'd up, Aeria boasted over "40 million players" and turned enough of them into paying players to finance continued publishing.

"They basically leave us alone," Vice President, Global PC Games Business Tom Nichols said of his parent company. Of course, the advertising deals that affords alone are helpful. "The German market is much easier for us especially in regards to competition, it's easier for us to be visible," Bousquet said. "It doesn't always?? means that its necessarily a success. There's still a high dependence on the games and their mechanics and if they appeal to this audience. For instance, anime games, they work okay, but the two big markets are really the English and French markets. Germany's not really into anime stuff."

The extra advertising oomph, helpful in Germany when Aeria is peddling more regionally popul??ar medieval fantasy is somew??hat emblematic of Aeria's strength, which is packaging something up for consumption by a new audience. As Nichols explained, "What Aeria does is take games that have been successful in Asia and brings them to the west."

So the aforementioned "most changes [to appeal to the western audience]" for Dragomon Hunters are not for a general western audience, but knowingly for, "a much smaller audience...much more niche within anime MMOs," and that is the ultra chibi style. It is for western anime fans. The Japanese Dragomon Hunter publisher -- no, it's not a Japanese game -- brought on well-known anime voice actors (from the likes of Bleach and Naruto) and the western landing page has a link to a video excitedly pointing to, "the original Japanese voices" in t??his French and American localization by a German company of a game originally developed by Taiwanese developer X-Legend.

I chuckled about anime-game fans who threaten boycotts over digital-only releases or the l?ack of dual language audio. "It's a very special audience," Bousquet said.

The original title is Dragon Slayer. Bland, but much less of an obvious, broken-neck nod to Monster Hunter (the game is slightly more action oriented than many MMOs) and Pokemon (collecting). "We thought it didn't fit the genre or didn't communicate what the game was about," Bousquet said. "Dragon Slayer sounds like a game title you've heard a hundred times. You have a basic idea of the setting, but you have no idea what the game is. We wanted a title tha??t caught attention just from hearing it." That's one way to do it.

"I know some people, the first time they see it, they kind of interpret it as, 'oh, this is a ripoff,' but we feel it's much more of a tribute and a nod [to Monster Hunter] than a ripoff. If you look at the game closer, there are some similarities and .... th??e idea of collecting materials from slain enemies and using them for crafting is not a new idea, but this is an MMORPG at its core. It's not an action?, skilled game. It takes cues from this existing game style, but takes very few elements from that."

Playing up the [anime life]style isn't restricted to the title. The translated script is reference filled for game and anime fans (the story is sparse, so it doesn't necessarily come in at odds with a greater tone). "[Dragomon Hunter has been localized by anime and game fans for an?ime and game fans. We're not shying away from being referential and doing a few nods here and there."

But the biggest changes in Aeria's fourth collaboration with developer X-Legend (you can still play the first, Grand Fantasia) have been on the gameplay side. "M??ost of the Asian RPGs are very grindy, like super hardcore grindy, which is something we try to get away from a little bit and be more action-player friendly." There are "better drop rates"?? and everything can be bought with in-game currency (versus spending real money).

The tendency for Asian players in these types of games is to try out diff?erent classes and explore all the game's options, whereas western audiences seek out of w??hatever's figured to be the strongest class and work towards maxing levels and the like most efficiently. The archive system for the over 100 in-game mounts (all of the enemies have a chance at dropping an egg upon death, at which point you can use the monster as a means of transportation) doesn't exist in the original, but was added because, "Americans and Europeans like to collect things." Historically true!

Dragomon Hunter also features controller support, something developer X-Legend neglected to mention because of how much of a non-feature it was in Asia, but that's a bigger deal in the US. And while Dragomon Hunter doesn't lean as far towards pure fighting game as something like Blade & Soul, movement is ostensibly important. I didn't find it too necessary in the early goings, the few hours I played from level one, but watching some high-level co-op plays against much more imposing baddies and opting to steer clear of a big, incoming a?ttack is a smart move. Otherwise there are classes to choose from, monsters to catch (or buy), and Hoppalongs, your companion rabbits you design at the onset after making your player avatar. They're super cute and can be classes to balance and pair well with your character.

And of course there's the need to preempt "pay-to-win" complaints that inevitably crop up around free-to-play properties in the west."What most companies ?like ours were doing was looking at game monetizing and saying you know what, we have those whales -- those few people who are spending crazy amounts of money and that's enough, so let's just focus on those people," Bousquet explained.

"But that means it's extremely difficult to get people into the game because you're bringing in new people who are not going to have fun. They're going to go in there and the paying players are going to have fun slaying them, and those [new] people are not going to stay. What we're trying to do now is only focus demonetization on convenience and vanity...in those anime games it is very important and does resonate with an audience. If people want to buy their mounts, that's up to them. If they want to hunt them down and get them as drops from the monsters that they slay, anyone can do that." The ai??m is to reward "people coming in and logging into the game often enough and staying in the game," versus just reward those who are "paying money up front."

For a fun counterpoint to Dragomon Hunter, there's the trading card game Immortalis Aeria published on mobile. It took a card game that was successful in Japan and replaced the art assets wholesale while keeping the original gameplay mechanics. The more western fantasy art style worked and the release has a big success for Aeria. The company has gotten good in predicting what will s??ell and how.

This year's fantasy MMO Echo of Soul was the biggest launch yet. "There's nothing about the game that makes it really stand out in terms of, 'oh, this has an innovative feature,'" Nichols said. "The MMORPG genre is really crowded so it's hard to come up with a new feature that nobody has done before, but EoS is just reall??y polished and has all of the fea??tures an MMO gamer would want."

Aeria seems to know what MMO gamers want; it's a fair, mid-Mel-Gibson-era claim when you're still running your first-published anime MMO six years later and simultaneously launching your fourth from the same developer. And Aeria is diverse, blending anime and fantasy MMOs with shooters and mobile development all while reaching interntional audiences. "The Turkish market loves shooters. They don't spend a lot of money, but there's a lot of players," Nichols said. You can still play WolfTeam, a shooter that lets you ??transform into a powerful wolf (that aspect is most popular in Germany).

As for the future beyond Dragomon Hunter? Nichols sees, "fewer PC MMOs and shooters coming out of Asia" because of the mad dash towards mobile, "as a result, our PC business is kind of stable. We're launching one or two games a year at this pace, whereas two years ago we were launching four games a year. The growth strategy for our business is coming from mobile. We have four games all set to launch early next year. Each one of those games was very successful in its native market in Asia. We're optimistic that a game that can be successful in Asia will be ??successful in the West as long as we make the art and style of the game appropriate for the Western market."

But mobile is getting full ??up, too. "We're seeing some signs that some of the developers are shifting back to PC because the mobile market is so competitive," Nichols said. "I thought, Capcom and Konami, they're late, because they've be??en so focused on consoles."

"Even huge companies like Supercell are doing TV advertising in Korea -- that never happened before in Korea." You might remember Supercell's $9 million Clash of Clans commercial that aired during this year's Super Bowl in the states, unless you mute commercials and use the time to thumb thro?ugh your phone or grab a drink. "And all the Korean developers are like 'what the hell is this,' because they can't spend that much money." 

The post Dragomon Hunter: Anime MMO fan service by way of Germany ?and Taiwan appeared first on Destructoid.

How not to keep a girlfriend

A 23-year-old German man has been fined $746 after drugging his girlfriend so he could continue playing video games with his friend. His gi??rlfriend had just came home from a 10-hour shift when he slipped "four or five drops" of some undisclosed drug into her tea, kno??cking her out till noon the next day and allowing him to carry on playing games. 

Wouldn't it just be ea??sier to break up with your girlfriend than to drug her? Though the old saying goes, bros and video games before girlfriends...or something like that. 

German gaming addict fined for?? drugging girlfriend to keep playing video games wi?th his mate [news.com.au via NeoGAF]

The post Man drugs girlfriend so he can keep gaming appeared first on Destructoid.

Sensible hair will come as DLC

IT’S TIME TO D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-delve in to the German ratings board’s latest classifications, as they include something of interest to those rare few who’re still in to Yu-Gi-Oh!.

Konami have apparently had time off from utterly shitting the bed to file trademarks for Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist for Xbox One and PlayStation 4. This will be the first current-gen release the series has seen, with the last console release being in 2014 with Yu-Gi-Oh! Millennium Duels.

We don’t know anything about the game other than its name and that it’s coming to those platforms. Whether it will feature characters from the current Arc-V series of the anime, or pick from previous series is also unknown, but with a name like Legacy of the Duelists it sounds possible we’ll be seeing Yugi-boy aga??in. And card games on motorcycles better be included...

The post Konami’s releasing a new Yu-Gi-Oh! game appeared first on Destructoid.

Germany people were trampled

Clearly PS4 lust has been germinating in the country for some time, because Germans went crazy for the PS4 l??aunch last week. It's like store owners were poking them ??with electric cattle prods outside the gates as if they were rodeo bulls. Germany people were trampled in the fray.

Of course, it might be germane to mention this still has little on Black Friday. Check out this depressing Black Friday Death/Injury Count.

The post Germany’s PS4 launch was dangerous chaos appeared first on Destructoid.

Working on 'unannounced project'

Todd Papy, as some may recall, recently left his position at SCEA Santa Monica (where he worked as game director for God of War: Ascension) without revealing what he'd be up to next, except that he'd be relocating to German??y.

Well, a month later, it's been confirmed that Papy is working over at Crytek as game directer on an "unannounced project" after he updated both his Twitter and LinkedIn profi??les with the new information, promising mo?re details "...in the future."

Anyone have an idea of what this mysterious project? ??could be?

Todd Papy [Twitter via NeoGAF]

The post God of War: Ascension director joins Crytek appeared first on Destructoid.

NIS America likely to publish Atlus RPG in Europe

Perpetually angry European Atlus fans needn't worry too much about Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennim Girl. The Nintendo 3DS dungeon crawler has been processed by the USK, Germany's s??of??tware ratings board, indicating an impending European release. 

The charming portable role-playing game launched earlier this month ????in North America, but has yet to be confirmed for PAL territories at this time. 

According to the listing, NIS America will be handling distribution duties in the region. The publisher has recently acted as an intermediate for Atlus in Europe with titles like Dragon's Crown and Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers. 

Überraschun?g: Etrian Odyssey Untold von USK getestet [JPGames]

The post Etrian Odyssey Untold rated for releas??e in Germany appeared first on Destructoid.

It's a deep burn

Whoever manages eBay Germany's Facebook page must be a hug?e Nintendo fan -- or at least is a master at capitalizing on current gamer worries and frustrations.

It's apparent that Xbox One is charting a dark path, and the jury's still out on whether PS4 will follow suit. That leaves Wii U as the only machine we know for certain is not saddled with the same level of anti-consumer "features." With that in mind, eBay Germany took to Facebook to post a picture of the Wii U ZombiU bundle with the following caption:

-Keine Gebraucht-Spiel-Sperren
-Keine Online-Pflicht
-Kein Gedöns

Translated, it reads, "No used-game locks, no online requirement, no fuss."

Ice cold!

eBay.de Timeline Photo [Facebook via NeoGAF]

The post eBay Germany supports Wii U’s lack of restrictions appeared first on Destructoid.

With new Xbox, we're sure

I'm still kind of mad about Microsoft not showing up to gamescom or Tokyo Game?? Show last year. It was like going to a party where you expected one of the regulars to show up, but the whole experience just ended up being awkward wit?hout them. 

Hey, where's Microsoft tonight?

Oh, uh, they were busy. Washing their hair or something.

Microsoft says that they're ready to party this year, though. Marketing manager Graeme Boyd said so on Twitter:

Xbox will be back at gamescom ??this August. "Next chapter of Xbox gaming experiences" on show. Can't wait, LOVE gamescom?.

If we do hear?? about a new Xbox system in the coming weeks, gamescom would be a good place and time to show it off. 

I've already got my party hat on, Microsoft.

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Come one! Come all! To Nintendo's House of Smut and Sadism!

Nintendo has been trying its best to prove that its hardware is not just for children, but then things happen and it's back to the kiddie corner. The most recent roadblock has been a nonsensical eShop restriction that prevented anyone i?n the European territories from purchasing 18+ rated games until the wee hours of the night. All because Nintendo of Europe was adhering to some backwards German television law that should have had no bearing on digital software distribution.

Well, no more! A notice has appeared on the European eShop stating that the restrictions have been lifted on? both 3DS and Wii U, allowing users to browse and purchase mature content at any time. Once again, it was all down to Germany's Entertainment Software Self-Regulation Body, the USK, which was finally convinced tha??t Nintendo's parental controls were adequate enough to prevent little ones from looking at naughty things. Oh Germany, you rascal.

Now that the ??gates have been thrust wide open, the European youth will no doubt sink into a pit of depravity from all that hardcore sex?? and violence Nintendo was trying to shield them from. Or not.

Nintendo of?? Europe removes age restrictio?n on both eShops [GoNintendo]

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