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What we're playing in February
Welcome back to Gaming IRL, a monthly segment where Engadget editors dive into everything they've been playing lately. We're well past the holidays and finally recovered from CES -- it's the perfect time to sit back and pick up a controller. Unfortunately, we haven't played one of the biggest recent releases, Resident Evil 2, but you can take a look back at our preview from E3. This month, we have a comparison between Assassin's Creed Odyssey and Origins, a look at New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, and one of our editors dives back into the glory of StarCraft 2. We'd also love to know what you've been playing, shout out in the comments below!
DeepMind AI AlphaStar goes 10-1 against top 'StarCraft II' pros
After laying waste to the best Go players in the world, DeepMind has moved on to computer games. The Google-owned artificial intelligence company has been fine-tuning its AI to take on StarCraft II and today showed off its first head-to-head matches against professional gamers. The AI agent, named AlphaStar, managed to pick up 10 wins against StarCraft II pros TLO and MaNa in two separate five-game series that originally took place back in December. After racking up 10 straight losses, the pros finally scored a win against the AI when MaNa took on AlphaStar in a live match streamed by Blizzard and DeepMind.
'Starcraft II' finally gets a store for player-made maps
Newer Blizzard titles like Hearthstone and Heroes of the Storm are free to play, but they do offer as many paid extras as you can shake a stick at. That's normal these days, of course, but StarCraft II was first released in 2010 -- a simpler time when you tended to just buy a video game and play it. There have been many paid expansions and cosmetics added over the years, but Blizzard originally promised a marketplace through which the community could sell custom-made maps and take a cut of the revenue. This feature was first mentioned way back in 2009, before StarCraft II even launched, and nine years later it's finally debuting in the impending 4.3.0 update.
After Math: It's bobsled time!
The 2018 Winter Olympics are starting up but Pyeongchang won't be the only place crowning champions. This week we've already seen Waymo win out over Uber in court; Sasha 'Scarlett' Hostyn, the most successful woman in eSports, was victorious in an Olympic-backed Starcraft 2 tournament; and Amazon came up with yet another way to dominate the delivery market -- 2-hour Whole Foods deliveries. Numbers, because how else will you count the scorecards?
Top female player wins Olympics-backed 'StarCraft 2' tournament
Sasha 'Scarlett' Hostyn is one of the most skilled and successful women in eSports, and she just won a major StarCraft 2 tournament. Not just any competition, either: An Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) tournament was held in Pyeongchang ahead of this weekend's Winter Olympics and, most importantly, is the first competition backed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). In other words, as Polygon pointed out, Scarlett became the first female winner of a big international StarCraft 2 tournament, which itself is a promising foray in eSports and Olympic collaboration.
Blizzard is making a 'StarCraft II' campaign free to play
Blizzard is taking StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty's campaign free to play. As Polygon reports, come November 14th, you'll have access to the entire narrative and if you already own that, you'll get the Protoss-themed Heart of the Swarm campaign for free. The other narratives will run you $15 each. Unlike StarCraft II: Starter Edition that included free multiplayer, the adversarial mode that comes in tow here will feature ranked play -- not just casual, unranked matches.
Google and Blizzard invite you to train AI with 'StarCraft II'
Google, apparently tired of trouncing human players at Go with its DeepMind AI, set its computer intelligence up with Blizzard's video game Starcraft II last fall. It seems that was more than a stunt: Today, Google announced it has built a whole research environment around training its AI to play the space-age strategy game -- and it's publicly available. Anyone who wants can tinker with DeepMind's new toolset, SC2LE, to facilitate their own AI research.
Twitch and Blizzard partner for broadcasts and 'Overwatch' loot
Twitch and Blizzard are teaming up in a big way this year. First up, if you're a Twitch Prime member you've got some loot boxes coming your way for Overwatch. "Starting June 20th, Twitch Prime members will receive an Overwatch Golden Loot Box containing a guaranteed [note: emphasis is Twitch's] legendary item, along with three additional in-game items like emotes, voice lines or character skins," according to the Twitch blog post. And more on that note, Prime members are going to get 10 more loot boxes this year.
ICYMI: Mobility scooters that autonomously get around
try{document.getElementById("aol-cms-player-1").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: MIT's Computer Science and AI Lab have cooked up another autonomously driving vehicle, but this one is a disability scooter. In this newly posted video, you can watch as the scooter navigates around human obstacles when taking a person on the way to their destination. In other AI news, Google and Blizzard Entertainment are teaming up to use Deepmind to train the system to autonomously play Starcraft II. If you, too, have a fondness for Big Mouth Billy Bass, the singing fish trophy, you need to see how one was hacked to be the voice of Alexa. It's pretty terrifying. And if you haven't yet played the New York Times' Voter Suppression Trail, you're missing out on both nostalgia and maybe sadness. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Google DeepMind and Blizzard partner for 'StarCraft II' AI research
Google's Deepmind AI has already learned how to best humans at Go, but now Deepmind's resources will be pointed at an entirely different game: Starcraft II. Blizzard just announced at Blizzcon that it is partnering with Google to open up Starcraft II as a research platform for those building AI programmers. "Blizzard will release an API early next year that will allow researchers and hobbyists around the world to build and train their own AI agents to play Starcraft II," said Oriol Vinyals, a research scientist at Google DeepMind.
Sky takes a first step into eSports tournament coverage
With millions of fans regularly tuning into services like Twitch and YouTube Gaming to watch their favourite titles being played at the highest level, traditional TV broadcasters are starting to take note. Last year, BBC Three dipped its toe into the world of eSports with live League of Legends tournament coverage, and today Sky will become the latest UK provider to tap into this growing audience. Airing at 10PM tonight on Sky 2, a two-hour show will cover highlights from the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends and Starcraft II tournaments that've taken place at the ESL Intel Masters World Championship over the past five days.
Professional 'StarCraft 2' players, coach accused of match-fixing
South Korean authorities have arrested nine people, including two professional players and their coach, on charges of fixing professional StarCraft 2 matches, according to translated reports on the Team Liquid forums. The site says PRIME head coach Park Wae-Sik ("Gerrard"), and professional players Choi Byeong-Heon ("YoDA") and Choi Jong-Hyuk ("BBoongBBoong") have been arrested and charged with manipulating the outcomes of five matches throughout 2015. They're suspected of receiving between 5 million and 20 million won ($4,400 and $17,600) for fixing the games. At least three other people have been arrested and charged with match-fixing in the same sting, and two additional people have been indicted but not arrested. One other is at large, the report says. The Korean eSports Association plans to ban Gerrard and YoDA from the organization for life, a statement translated on TeamLiquid reads.
Watch the first-ever TwitchCon keynote right here!
What do you do when you're a burgeoning video game start-up that gets bought by Amazon for just under a billion dollars? Well, if you're game-broadcasting platform Twitch, you take over the Moscone Center in San Francisco for a few days and host all manner of panels featuring the top people in your community, game developers and maybe even a few musical guests. TwitchCon kicks off with a keynote address at 1 pm ET / 10 am PT today and you can watch it below via, you guessed it, a Twitch streaming window. In addition to the opening address the weekend's panels and interviews will be broadcast as well.
The second 'StarCraft II' expansion arrives November 10th
It's been a long time coming, but the second StarCraft II expansion is nearly here: Blizzard has announced that Legacy of the Void will arrive on November 10th. As with both the original game (Wings of Liberty) and Heart of the Swarm, this latest title will focus primarily on one species. In this case, you're reuniting the mysterious Protoss so that they can confront a dire threat and reclaim their homeworld. You'll also get new units for all factions, and there are fresh multiplayer modes that include shared bases and objective-based co-op. It's not really a revolution, then. However, this also represents the end of the StarCraft II story line -- if you're determined to see the conclusion to Blizzard's five-year sci-fi saga, you'll want to check this out.
Korean StarCraft pro among first foreign eSports competitors to obtain athletic visa
Thanks to support from the competitive gaming community, one of Korea's most impressive eSports athletes has found a home in the US. Kim "Violet" Dong Hwan has ben trying to take his competitive StarCraft 2 career stateside for awhile, but a string of visa denials made his tournament schedule pretty sparse. With his country's mandatory military service looming over his head, Hwan was facing early retirement if he wasn't granted US-entry. Luckily that didn't happen. Hwan's manager rallied Blizzard Entertainment (StarCraft 2's publisher), Twitch.tv and Machinima execs, and over the course of seven months, they penned a 500-page application to immigration services. According to The Daily Dot, this tome included every article ever written about Hwan, translated into English. The result? A P-1A pro-athlete visa that will allow Hwan to compete in the country for the next five years. This is only the second time an eSports competitor has gotten an athletic visa, and now, the government may view them on the same level as, say, baseball players. For the full story (including a harrowing tale of how Hwan's house caught fire just after he sat down for a tournament) we urge you to check out the source. [Image credit: Team Liquid]
A fully realized Starcraft MMO is in the works, but it needs to be Kickstarted first
If you're a dedicated World of Warcraft player, you may have already spent a good deal of time wondering when developer Blizzard would give its StarCraft property the MMO treatment as well. StarCraft Universe is that MMO, but it's not being made by Blizzard; a group called Upheaval Arts is creating the game as a mod for StarCraft II, and if its Kickstarter campaign meets its goal, you'll be able to play it on your Mac (or Windows PC) early next year. StarCraft Universe takes the real-time strategy franchise and gives the player control of a single character, complete with class abilities, questing, leveling and all the other mechanics MMO players have come to expect. The campaign is roughly halfway to its US$80,000 goal amount, and has a further 20 days of fundraising left to go. If you're interested in the mod, but don't currently own StarCraft II, you'll be happy to hear that Universe can be played using the trial version of the game, which can be downloaded for free.
SRK contest produces a 26-button Starcraft II arcade controller, probably won't stop Zerg rushes (video)
Almost as a dare, Shoryuken (SRK) challenged its fans to produce a fighting game-style controller for Starcraft II. Mauricio Romano took them up on that contest and won with a surprisingly polished arcade stick of his own. Its cornerstone is a heavily modified Ultrastik joystick that's turned into an on-controller, two-button mouse. You didn't think a PC gamer would cling to a plain joystick, did you? In the process, the usual 101 keys of a typical keyboard have been pared down to a set of 26 buttons most relevant for Blizzard's real-time strategy epic. Packaged up in a single, polished USB peripheral, the one-off prototype's design is good enough to imagine a Major League Gaming pro taking it out on the road. We'd put that idea on ice for now, though: as Mauricio shows in the video below, the learning curve is steep enough that most players won't be fending off diamond-league marine and zergling blitzes anytime soon.
StarCraft vs. Warcraft: What is the WoW community missing?
For the past year or so, I've been living a double life. To some, I am a skilled and tenacious night elf priestess, adventuring through Azeroth at the charge of the Holy Light, healing the injured and saving the incompetent. To others, however, I am but a lowly brood mother, commanding a swarming, parasitic army with occasional success against my enemies across the Koprulu sector. Don't follow me? Basically, I've just been playing a lot of StarCraft 2 whenever I'm not raiding. Still, being heavily invested in WoW and StarCraft has really felt like living two lives at times, especially when you consider how dramatically different they both are. And I'm not talking about the gameplay; obviously one would expect an MMORPG and an RTS to be incomparable. What I mean is that that the culture and community that surrounds these two games are distinctively different, despite the fact that the games share some of their playerbase with one another. You'd think that one game community would be pretty similar to the next, but they're not. The whole thing has left me with a lot of questions to turn over in my mind. Is it possible that the WoW and StarCraft communities could learn from the other? Seven years in, is it even possible for the WoW community to change in any significant way at this point? And if so, is there something missing in the WoW community? To explore the idea further, I started making a list of all the things I thought the StarCraft community had that the WoW community was lacking.
Yoogames yoinks assets from EVE Online and others, faces retribution
Let's get ready for a lawsuit! Yoogames has been called out on the EVE Online forums for using images from EVE in order to promote its own game, Planet War. But it's not just EVE Online getting ripped off here; keen-eyed forum-goers have spotted pictures of StarCraft 2's Protoss Yo-Mommaship and Star Wars' Trade Federation space station. What will become of this, no one knows... oh, who are we kidding? This is lawsuit city. CCP's own CCP Fallout stopped by the thread to thank the OP for pointing out the infringement and to say that he is "notifying the relevant parties in the company." So grab some popcorn, sit back, and enjoy the show. We'll be sure to bring you the latest in courtroom entertainment as it develops.
MSI outs its latest GE620DX gaming laptop, orcs prepare for virtual slaughter
Spilled Mountain Dew on your last laptop during that marathon session of Starcraft II? MSI's got your back buddy, with its newly announced GE620DX. There's a serious bit of dedicated gaming punch lying under this notebook's brushed metal finish thanks to its 2GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, an NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M card and the audio tag team of MSI Premium Sound and THX's True Studio Pro. In addition to its 15.6-inch 1366 x 768 HD display, this "dream machine" sports a 720p camera, an HDMI out port and USB 3.0. The company's also thrown in a GPU Boost feature, which frees up the internal graphics chip should you be running any graphics-intensive apps. Unfortunately, your zerg Swarm-slaying hands will have to wait for an official price and retail date, but when you do get a hold of it, make sure to keep that caffeinated brew far from the keyboard.
