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‘Minecraft Earth’ adds seasonal challenges for its AR builders
Minecraft Earth, Microsoft’s blocky answer to Pokémon Go, continues to evolve despite still being in Early Access mode. The latest update adds three important new features to challenge players and make it easier to keep track of past feats.
Netflix's '3%' gets its own voice game on Alexa and Google Assistant
Following the success of its Stranger Things and Dark Crystal games, Netflix is adding another title to its gaming catalog: The 3% Challenge, based on hit Brazilian series 3%. The free-to-play episodic game, coming to Amazon Alexa today and Google Assistant later this week, is a prequel to the Netflix series, taking players into a dystopian future where citizens of the impoverished Inland have a lethal chance to make it to the affluent "Offshore" society.
The NFL's new TikTok account is all about highlights and sideline moments
The National Football League is hyping up its 100th season with a TikTok partnership. Today, the NFL is launching an official TikTok account with packaged highlights, sideline moments and behind-the-scenes footage. To get things started, it's promoting a #WeReady challenge. Today through September 5th, the NFL is asking fans to share videos about their favorite teams with the hashtag.
The Pokémon constant: Someone will always beat it with Magikarp
Worthless. Pathetic. Horribly Weak. Virtually useless. This is how Pokémon games' in-game encyclopaedias describe Magikarp, a hapless fish-creature that is widely regarded as the "worst" monster in the game series' ever-growing list of fighting creatures. It only has three attacks, and one of them literally does nothing. So, naturally, someone beat Pokémon Sun And Moon using nothing but the worthless flounder. Because why not?
Marvel's STEM challenge gives one teenage girl an internship
Alongside the next installment of its Cinematic Universe, Marvel is hosting a STEM challenge for teenage girls. The studio teamed up with Dolby, Synchrony Bank, Broadcom Masters and the National Academy of Sciences for the Captain America: Civil War Girls Reforming the Future Challenge. The contest seeks submissions from girls age 15 to 18 (grades 10-12) "who are inspired to create a positive world through science and technology."
Amazon hosts a robot competition to automate its warehouses
Amazon leans heavily on warehouse robots to assist workers and fulfill your orders on time, but these machines still can't pack items quickly enough to replace humans. However, the internet giant is determined to make these mechanical helpers more useful. It's holding a competition at a conference this May to see who's best at producing an autonomous robot that grabs products off shelves and stuffs them into boxes. This may sound like a relatively straightforward challenge, but it isn't -- the bots have to grab a variety of objects while breaking as little as possible, including fragile things like food.
Wurm Online adds in a new Challenge mode
Sometimes you don't want to fuss about with leveling; you just want to jump into the meat of a game and start accomplishing things. Wurm Online's new Challenge mode is all about that, giving new characters created just for these month-long challenges enough skills to get started right away and a faster advancement rate to boot. It sounds pretty magnanimous until you realize that the other two sides are also starting ahead and moving just as fast, so players are going to need to step up fast if they want to keep going. The Challenge server offers a 64 square kilometer space for three player factions to feud over control. Everything on the server remains persistent for a month, after which point prizes are awarded to the players and factions that have advanced the furthest in specific categories. The update also includes siege weaponry, strategic resource spawns, and defensive fortifications to hold off attackers. It's the equivalent of throwing players in a box and shaking it until the fireworks start flying; if that sound like fun, you can jump into that box now. [Source: Code Club press release]
NASA challenges you to design experiments for Mars and beyond
Want to play a significant role in NASA's space exploration efforts without spending years in training? You now have a better chance of making your mark. NASA has launched Solve, a site that makes it easy to find all the agency's public competitions and crowdsourced projects. You'll mostly see previously announced efforts there right now, but the inaugural offering is definitely worth a look -- the $20,000 Mars Balance Mass Challenge asks you to design an experiment or technology payload that will double as ballast on future Martian explorers. You'll have until November 21st to submit your brainstorms, and you'll find out if your work is Mars-bound sometime in mid-January.
Destiny unlocks its first raid and goes on sale
Destiny hasn't been out for every long now, but if you've been power-leveling along, you might very well be level 26 or above. And that's a good thing if you want to take on the game's first raid, which has just been unlocked for players. The Vault of Glass can now be entered, with hardcore enthusiasts already rushing to be the first one to clear its challenges. As with all of Destiny's raid content, a fire team must be assembled out of members of your friend list, as there is no matchmaking option for Vault of Glass. Haven't yet picked up the game? Well, you can do so now at a discount; despite the short amount of time Destiny has been out, retailer BrandsMart is reportedly offering the game for $30, which larger retailers such as Target and Wal-Mart may or may not price match. (Reports are conflicting.) While you likely won't be ready for the Vault of Glass if you take the offer, you will be able to get in on the ground floor a fair bit cheaper, so it's still a win. Kotaku argues that as of this morning, Destiny has "resoundingly mediocre review scores" with "76.29% on GameRankings and a 77 on Metacritic." Our sister site Joystiq reviewed the game this morning, giving it four out of five stars.
The Daily Grind: What's the most challenging MMO you've played?
I've played my fair share of challenging MMOs over the years. From obtuse interfaces to steep learning curves to tough-as-nails combat, the myth of MMOs being nonstop faceroll games has been disproven time and again. However, if I had to pick the single most challenging title, it would be The Secret World, hands-down. Nothing about The Secret World comes easy. The combat has you struggling sometimes against standard mobs, the game's many systems are complex and non-intuitive, the story isn't spelled out for you, and some of the quests tax my brain far more than my reflexes. Don't get me wrong; I love TSW to its core, but it's stupid hard at times, so much so that it's kept me from seriously pursuing an alt. What would you say is the most challenging MMO that you've ever played? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Massively Exclusive: Previewing Path of Exile's Tora, Master of the Hunt
The newest expansion to Path of Exile is all about the eponymous Masters -- their goals, their attitudes, and what they can teach the player. Tora is fairly straightforward in all of the above. She is all about the hunt, taking out the monsters that surround Wraeclast, and in her own words, she wants to root out the corruption that has taken root in her world now, before it does any further harm to the natural balance. I had a chance to speak with producer Chris Wilson about Tora and the expansion as a whole the other day, and he happily shared details both about Tora herself and one of the new challenge leagues that will be going live with the expansion on August 20th. Hop on past the break to see Tora's video introduction and to learn more about what players can expect from the huntress, the challenge league, and the expansion in general.
The Massively April Fools' Day Quest [We have a winner!]
As a citizen of the internet, you know what to expect on April Fools' Day: lots of sites trying to trick you into believing outrageous lies or attempting to make you laugh. As Massively is a paragon of both truth and humorlessness in journalism, we promise to do neither today. Instead, we challenge you to a quest: a Massively April Fools' Day Quest. We have created a super-secret page here on the site that can be discovered only by finding five special words. So your task is to play scavenger hunt with our posts today -- specifically, to look at the tags at the bottom of each post that goes out during the day and find five separate tags (total) that clearly do not belong with the rest. All posts published today are eligible! Once you find these five words, you'll use them to assemble the url, starting with "massively.joystiq.com/" and then adding the five words separated by hyphens. For example, if the five words were apple, banana, pear, mango, kiwi, you could try "massively.joystiq.com/apple-banana-pear-mango-kiwi" to see if that worked. Yes, part of the challenge of the quest is to experiment with the order of the words because there is only one path to the solution. If you complete the quest, please be a good sport and keep the answer to yourself. The first person to figure out the solution and leave us a tip with the correct answer in it will have his or her name added to this post and will forevermore be internet famous. Good luck! [Update: We have a winner! Reader Nathan was the very first person to submit the correct URL, followed by Greaterdivinity just a few minutes later. Congrats to both of you! Here's the "prize page" with the words in order -- don't look if you're still working on the puzzle.]
The Mog Log: No one likes FFXIV's Pharos Sirius
Every night, I sit down at my computer and I play the high-level roulette game in Final Fantasy XIV. There are five possible results. Amdapor Keep and Wanderer's Palace are the "win" results, the super-easy runs that can't even scrape dents into my armor. Copperbell Mines and Haukke Manor take a little more doing and a bit more attention on my part, and my shiny white Paladin armor is looking a bit scuffed up by the end. But they're still not bad. They're certainly doable. But there's always that 20% shot that I'm getting thrown straight into horror. The camera pans in to show a ruined lighthouse filled with crystals and a couple birds, and as soon as the cinematic ends, people are already asking "can we vote to abandon?" This seems to be the consensus: that it's not even worth trying to do Pharos Sirius start to finish. And when you look at the dungeon as a whole, it's not hard to see why no one likes it.
The Soapbox: There's nothing wrong with easy
The word "easy" gets a really bad reputation in gaming, an unfair reputation, at that, because there's absolutely nothing wrong with something's being easy. A while back, we hosted a great column about how we tend to call things easy when they really aren't. (Seriously, go read that.) That's all well and good, but that's also not what I'm talking about here. Gaming as a community seems to have decided that easy is just plain bad, that it's a horrible insult, and a game being easy is like saying that a game is worthless. But easy isn't bad. Playing a single-player game on easy difficulties isn't a mark of weakness, and having an MMO that's easy on a whole doesn't mean it's a bad game. Having easy content isn't just an acceptable thing; it's an outright good thing for a lot of player. There is absolutely nothing wrong with easy.
Final Fantasy XIV sums up its Tokyo Game Show letters
Final Fantasy XIV has been playable for just about a month. Gamers being what we are, a lot of us are already asking about what comes next for the game, because there's slightly less unexplored content than there was before. But fear not; the official live letters from producer and director Naoki Yoshida have been translated and the highlights recapped on the official site, giving everyone a closer look at what's coming from housing, PvP, and the new Crystal Tower. Yoshida explains that Crystal Tower is meant to be easier than the Binding Coil of Bahamut currently accessible, although it is still inteded to be high-end content (he mentions the possibility of requiring relic weapons). Housing will be launched for Free Companies first, with the team closely examining the strain caused by these before putting in individual houses. Players can also expect every craft to be involved in providing decorations for housing rather than just a few, helping to make everyone's contributions relevant. Take a look at the full roundup for all the details, although the team remains mum on the price of houses.
The Summoner's Guidebook: League of Legends is hard but satisfying
I am not the only person to ever say League of Legends is a hard game. If you've ever read a message board for a game that isn't LoL (or any general gaming board), you have likely heard about how hard League of Legends is compared to whatever other game is being discussed. Some veterans insist that LoL is not a hard game. Recently, a pretty famous internet blogger set out to prove that indeed, League is not hard and anyone can be good at it. Ultimately, I don't like his methodology, but he did not disprove my point. League of Legends is a hard game. MOBA veterans and people who read and study guides don't find it that difficult, but if you're coming to LoL and don't read guides on how to play, it will be hard for you too. That doesn't mean it's a bad game; both awful players and experts can enjoy the game equally. It's the biggest game in the world. That means there has to be a way for bad players to feel comfortable too, right?
Redact offers £10,000 if you crack its messaging app, bets UK government you can't
Software developers looking to kickstart (or simply brag about) their security have a common trick up their sleeve: give away prizes to successful crackers. Redact is trying just such a strategy with its Secure Messenger app for iOS. It's offering £10,000 ($15,482) to anyone who can visit London and successfully intercept an encrypted message delivered through the company's peer-based, PIN-to-PIN communication system. Entrants have until June 1st to prove that they're worthy of making an attempt. Redact has more reason to hope we lose beyond its pride and a big fat check, however -- it wants approval for handling the UK government's secure data, and it wouldn't hurt to have proof that the app design is airtight. If you're convinced that it's all just bluster, you can challenge the company yourself at the source link.
The Daily Grind: How important is endgame progression to you?
For some players, the real meat of an MMORPG begins when you don't have any more pesky levels to worry about. Leveling is training, but using all that training to clear through the hardest content in the game is what you signed up for. Whether it's in World of Warcraft or Guild Wars 2, these players feel that the real push is to have the best possible gear and optimize your character specialties. For other players, the endgame is just an addition, sometimes even an unwelcome one. Having the best gear or the best build is nice, but it's not worth pursuing at the detriment of your enjoyment. Far better to just do dailies in Star Wars: The Old Republic or level a new character in Champions Online. These players can be just as dedicated to the game, but they just don't care for the endgame push. So which category do you lean toward? Is the progression track at the top what you live for, or is it just a distraction? How important is endgame progression to you? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Microsoft's Kodu challenge invites the younger generation to design games
As part of its encouraging Imagine Cup, Microsoft is giving young ones that are aged between 9 and 18 the chance to enter a game design challenge dubbed Kodu. With a renowned Xbox controller being used as the main interface, Kodu will allow kids and teens to create games on a PC or Xbox "via a simple visual programming language" -- which allows them to virtually layout anything from sculpted landscapes and decorated trees, to creating their own scoring system, gameplay and, of course, characters. The Imagine Cup Kodu Challenge, as it's more formally known, is now open and will remain this way until May 17th, with the eventual winners set to be awarded up to $3,000. Finalists in other Imagine Cup categories, meanwhile, will nab a trip to the event in St. Petersburg, Russia, where they could end up taking home a range of prizes, including cash, grants and other goodies -- but, perhaps most importantly, also the utmost respect of all other challengers present.
NYFi wins NYC's Reinvent Payphones 'Popular Choice' award, would serve free WiFi (update)
Although six designs were awarded in New York City's Reinvent Payphones competition, it remained to be seen which of the six would be the people's favorite. After about a week's worth of voting on NYC's Facebook page, the people have made their choice: NYFi will serve is their favorite concept for street-side payphone overhauls. It's not hard to see why, as the proposal would theoretically solve several urban hassles at once. Each NYFi hub would dish out free WiFi, taking the load off of the cellular network. It would also use open, smartphone-like software and easily adaptable touchscreen hardware to consolidate many of the boxes that clutter the sidewalks, such as ticket machines and bike sharing stations. We'll admit that most of the concepts sound a little optimistic to us -- we wouldn't be surprised if any finished city project fell short of the ideas. Even if we don't get a WiFi hotspot on every corner, though, the reinvented payphone will likely be a welcome replacement for landline phones that have mostly collected dust in recent years. Update: We've adjusted the post to clarify that NYfi is not, per se, the overall winner. During the initial demo event five awards were up for grabs from the city, and a sixth award, Popular Choice, was to be chosen by the public. Whether NYC ends up using one of these designs as a direct inspiration will remain to be seen. The awards are more or less a way for the city to see what the public would propose and potentially use those ideas when it comes time to request for designs within a mandated set of specifications. Check out our post about the event for more details.
