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Fighting depression in the video game world, one AFK at a time
Matt Hughes took his own life in the fall of 2012. He was a freelance reporter covering the video game industry, and before he committed suicide, he sent emails to some of his editors, noting that he wouldn't be able to turn in more stories for one simple reason: He'd be dead. His suicide surprised nearly everyone who worked with him. Speaking with Kotaku days after Hughes' death, his former editors said things like There weren't any red flags and This was a complete shock. Hughes wasn't the only person in the video game industry to take his own life that year, and as the tragedies piled up, it became impossible to ignore their commonalities. Complete surprise. No one knew. She seemed fine. For Russ Pitts and Susan Arendt, two editors who had worked with Hughes and regularly interacted with dozens of other freelance reporters, these suicides were more than a shock. They were a wakeup call.
Shooting the Arabs: How video games perpetuate Muslim stereotypes
Islam has an image problem. And it's not just recent world events that have led to an undue level of scrutiny and prejudice. The media has been pigeonholing Muslims for years. You need only watch a few episodes of 24 or Homeland to see that Muslims, particularly those of Arab descent, are almost always painted as the enemy.
Backstage with the winners of the IGF and GDC Awards
The Independent Games Festival and Game Developers Choice Awards are the highlight of GDC week. They both honor the best games of the past year in two glamorous, back-to-back ceremonies in downtown San Francisco. This time around, Her Story took home the IGF's $30,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize, and The Witcher 3 nabbed the coveted Game of the Year prize during the GDC Awards. Other winners across a range of categories include Undertale, Ori and the Blind Forest, Rocket League and Life is Strange. Nine members of the Girls Make Games program, which offers summer camps designed to encourage young women to break into game creation, walked away with the ID@Xbox Rising Star award for their project, The Hole Story. We spoke with some of the big winners on-camera directly after they received their awards, and they had plenty to say (and celebrate).
GDC 2016 Revisited: Virtual reality takes a big leap
And just like that, GDC 2016 has come to a close. But, before the Engadget team says goodbye to the gaming conference, we wanted to give you a look at some of the highlights of the week. Virtual reality was definitely the hot topic of conversation, with plenty of interesting news from Sony, Oculus and other companies. We'll see how these announcements play out over the next few months. Now, who's ready for E3 in June?
This is the future of video game development
The Girls Make Games initiative aims to encourage young women to dive into the rich industry of video game development, and it seems to be doing the trick. This year at the Independent Games Festival awards ceremony, nine young ladies from Girls Make Games collected the ID@Xbox Rising Star award for their work on The Hole Story. It's a top-down RPG featuring an archaeologist named Wendy who digs a portal to a fantastical dimension in her backyard. Yeah, it's pretty neat. We caught up with the winners right after they collected their prizes and had one question for each of them: What do you want the future of video games to look like?
Insomniac's CEO on the challenges of making games for VR
As the Founder and CEO of Insomniac Games, Ted Price is responsible for esteemed console games like Ratchet and Clank, Sunset Overdrive and Fuse. Then there's Song of the Deep, a gorgeous 2D platformer that's slated to release this summer with GameStop as the publisher. But for Insomniac and other developers, virtual reality's arrival onto the scene has opened up a world of new possibilities in game-making. And Price's team is already dipping its toes in VR, with projects such as Edge of Nowhere, an insane third-person adventure designed for the Oculus Rift. To that end, I sat down with him at GDC 2016 to talk about developing for virtual reality, the promise of PlayStation VR, Oculus and the relationship between Insomniac and GameStop.
'Below' is hiding more mysteries than you think
Capybara Games made a classic mistake in the middle of developing its latest game: announcing the release date too early. Capy unveiled Below, a moody and mysterious exploration experience, back in 2013. A year later, the team revealed plans to release it in 2015 on Xbox One and PC. And then, 2015 came and went. "Microsoft gave us a really good opportunity to show it for the first time a long time ago," Capy Creative Director Kris Piotrowski explained during GDC this week. "Then we went home and kind of realized the game was like 100 times bigger and more complex than we anticipated."
The Sulon Q has insane mixed reality ambitions
Earlier this week, Sulon Technologies unveiled the Sulon Q, which it claims is the world's first tether-free all-in-one headset that combines AR, VR and spatial computing in a single device. That means that instead of attaching it to a computer, like the Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive, or relying on a smartphone, like the Gear VR, the Q is a computer in and of itself -- it even has a battery pack attached. Think of it as wearing a computer on your face. On top of that, it also has a multitude of sensors that promise real-time hand-tracking and environment mapping. It all seems a little far-fetched, which could explain why Sulon released a "Magic Beans" video to demo the tech (see below). We also took the opportunity to speak to Sulon CEO Dhan Balachand here at GDC 2016 and tried the (non-working) headset on our heads.
Head of Xbox Phil Spencer apologizes for sexist GDC party
The technology and video game industries have been unwelcoming to women in a variety of ways for years now, with the "booth babe" at big events being a prime example. Despite an ongoing backlash against such exclusionary tactics, Microsoft seemed to think it was appropriate to have a party last night at GDC featuring scantily-clad women as some form of entertainment, and the backlash has been swift -- so much so that head of Xbox Phil Spencer just released a statement apologizing for the event.
The world of weird video games at Alt.Ctrl.GDC
Video games aren't all about fancy graphics on HD televisions and high-end PCs. Back in the day, innovation relied partially on building better cabinets, ramps, buttons, joysticks and all manner of arcade-based hardware. This aspect of the industry hasn't disappeared -- the third-annual Alt.Ctrl.GDC exhibition at the Game Developers Conference is packed with outlandish new games that use wild, wacky and weird input methods. We tried out a few of the games on display, such as Crank Tank, a two-person base-race game where each player controls a vehicle with a giant, wooden crank machine. There's also Hello, Operator!, which takes place at the helm of a refurbished telephone switchboard from the 1930s, and Please Stand By, a game that exists inside of a 1951 Capehart television, bunny-ear antennae and all.
'Hellblade' takes real-time motion capture to the next level
Yesterday, during the Epic Games keynote at GDC 2016, Ninja Theory showed off a live motion capture demo for Hellblade, its upcoming AAA indie title. The results are absolutely stunning. Tameem Antoniades, Ninja Theory's chief creative director, described the real-time animation performance as historic, and people at the event seemed to validate his excitement. Interestingly enough, the game has been renamed Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, paying tribute to the main character in this combat-heavy story. But you're probably here for the video, so have at it -- we promise it doesn't disappoint.
Oculus founder on Rift, 'Eve: Valkyrie' and VR's next steps
Bundled along with every Oculus Rift kit is a copy of Eve: Valkyrie, a multiplayer dogfighting shooter. So as soon as you take the headset out of the box, you'll be able to strap it on and jump right into an epic space battle (after going through a bit of setup, of course). "There'll be very few people who buy the rift and don't at least try it,' said Palmer Luckey, Oculus co-founder and CEO, at a journalist roundtable at GDC 2016. We had a chance to play a session of the game with Luckey as well as CCP Games CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, and talked to them about the Rift, motion sickness, those Touch controllers and where VR is going moving forward.
Breaking down PlayStation VR with Adam Boyes
PlayStation is banking big on virtual reality. It's the only major console manufacturer to build its own VR headset, PS VR, which is exclusive to the PlayStation 4 and is set to launch in October for $400. Sony expects to release roughly 50 PS VR games by the end of the year and it has 230 development teams working on experiences for the headset. This ecosystem -- the hardware, software and hype -- doesn't materialize overnight.
A VR experience transported me to a live soccer game
The virtual reality space is still a work in progress. While there are already many use cases for it, from gaming to education, developers continue to find new ways to fiddle with the technology. A pure example of this is Virtually Live, a startup designing immersive VR experiences for live sports. Here's the gist behind its project: Once you've strapped on a virtual reality headset, you can follow games in real-time and feel like you're close to the action.
The late Satoru Iwata honored by Game Developers Choice Awards
The video game industry lost one of its most passionate members last year when Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata passed away. He's been honored before, but there really isn't such a thing as paying tribute to him too many times. During tonight's Game Developer's Choice Awards the governing body debuted a heartfelt animated video touching on various aspects of the legendary game developer's life including the conception of the Nintendo DS, the Wii Remote and Nunchuck and much more. Iwata may be gone, but his legacy will live on for a very, very long time.
Survive underground in Capy's 'Below' this summer
After almost three years we finally have a better idea when developer Capybara Games' Below will finally release: this summer. Other details on the procedurally generated, subterranean survival game are still scarce, but hey, there's an ominous new trailer and screenshots just, ahem, below.
Razer's 'Core' external GPU ships in April for $500
Razer announced pricing and availability for its new Core external graphics box at GDC on Wednesday. The device is available for pre-order starting today and units will begin shipping in April. It will set you back $400 if purchased in tandem with a Blade Stealth or $500 if you buy it separately. But don't worry if you didn't take our advice and have already purchased a Blade Stealth, you'll still get the $100 discount.
Watch the 2016 IGF and GDC Awards live right here!
Now that the GDC show floor is officially open to attendees, it's time for the routine trophy ceremonies. It all starts with the Independent Games Festival Awards at 6:30PM PT/9:30PM ET tonight, followed directly by the Game Developers Choice Awards. And because we care deeply about you, our readers, we're embedding a livestream of the back-to-back events in this post. We'll also be talking to the 2016 winners as they come off the stage -- more on that soon.
Hands-in with the gloves that virtual reality needs
When most people strap on a virtual reality headset for the first time, their immediate instinct is to look down, attempting to see their hands. And, the majority of the time, they'll be sorely disappointed. VR is a new frontier for hardware developers and so far the focus has been on improving graphics, decreasing latency, upgrading lenses and crafting believable visual worlds. Hands are second-tier -- sure, they're in some demos, but they're not your hands. The fingers don't bend, they can't grab and they don't move as your appendages do in the real world. The Manus VR gloves fix this.
How a startup is making it easy to build virtual reality worlds
My most recent virtual reality experience was created by a 9-year-old. That's according to Martin Repetto, CEO of Voxelus, a platform that lets you build, share and play your own VR games. As I roam through this Minecraft-like world, steered by a Gear VR headset, Repetto tells me that a kid is the one who designed what I'm seeing. But for Voxelus, which launched last year at the Oculus Connect 2 conference, there's a clear goal: to let anyone, young or old, make VR games without a single line of code.