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Proceeds from Diablo III auction house exploit to be donated to charity
At this point we all should be pretty familiar with what happened in Diablo III with the release of patch 1.0.8. The patch contained a bug in the way the auction house functioned that allowed for people to make lots and lots of gold - far more than they were intended to. The bug was fixed very quickly, but for the last few weeks Blizzard's been busy auditing both their code and the accounts of the players who exploited the bug. Late Friday evening, John Hight, the production manager for Diablo III, put up a post on the Diablo forums explaining in detail both what happened and what Blizzard has been doing about it. The actions taken seem fairly straightforward and sensible - Blizzard has evaluated the necessary code to check for any other potential weaknesses, and they have either banned or rolled back the accounts of players who abused the bug's existence. That seems pretty typical. But, what's nicest to read is the fact that Blizzard is taking any real money generated by these auction house transactions - including their own transaction fees - and donating them to Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. We have no idea as of yet what that amount might be, but it's certainly a nice gesture. The full blue post is after the break.
Diablo III restores auction house, donates duped proceeds to charity
Is there a light at the end of Diablo III's auction house woes? Blizzard is putting its best foot forward in an attempt to make it so. After a nasty gold duping exploit and the subsequent suspension of all services, the Diablo III auction house is back online -- and Blizzard is looking to save face with its return. Production Director John Hight gave a lengthy explanation of what happened with the situation and why Blizzard responded the way it did. "Only a relatively small number of players had the billions of gold necessary to exploit the bug, and only 415 of those players chose to use this exploit for personal gain," Hight wrote. "We elected not to roll back the servers in the Americas and are instead working to remove duplicated gold from the economy through targeted audits and account actions (as indicated above) without taking away progress that our players rightfully earned." Hight said that the studio is donating all proceeds from auctions conducted by dupers to Children's Miracle Network Hospitals.
Diablo III playable offline on PS3 and PS4
Thanks to last week's announcement, players already knew that Diablo III was headed for both the PlayStation 3 and 4 consoles. Now, Blizzard Production Director John Hight and Senior VP Chris Metzen have revealed that the game will not need an internet connection for local multiplayer games on either console. In the video interview with GameTrailers, Hight also talked about new features, including a new evasion ability and having all four players in co-op mode on the same screen instead of spit onto four separate ones. Players eager to test the game out on the consoles can look forward to a hands-on experience at PAX. In the meantime, you can watch the full interview after the cut.
Diablo 3 on PS3 and PS4 will allow offline play
Diablo 3 will not require a constant internet connection for local multiplayer on the PS3 or PS4, Blizzard production director John Hight has confirmed. "You can have four people on the same screen - no split-screen, we just zoom the camera out. Or if you're offline," he tells Geoff Keighley on GameTrailers.It's around the two-minute mark where Hight goes into the changes to Diablo 3 for PS3 and PS4 in the episode above – specifically, the talk about the camera and local multiplayer. Hight reveals there's also a new evasion ability to help players quickly escape large encounters.Diablo 3 launched on the PC and Mac OSX with a required connection to Blizzard's Battle.net service, even when playing single-player. Blizzard previously revealed the PS3/PS4 versions will have a different UI and feature all major PC updates.%Gallery-179451%
God of War 3 'right within budget' -- a $44 million budget
Anger management simulator God of War III cost $44 million to create, according to director of production development John Hight, which is "right within budget." Speaking with Giant Bomb, Hight revealed that the team of 132 staff required to finish the third installment was more than double the crew (of about 60) on hand to wrap up God of War II, with the biggest growth occurring in the graphics and art departments. Considering the ultimate Kratos adventure will likely go on to become a phenomenal sales hit, the $44 million budget isn't as ridiculous as it might seem. Consider that Gran Turismo 5's budget, at last count, had reportedly ballooned to around the $60 million mark. On the other hand, Ken Levine previously put the first BioShock's budget at about $15 million. With such variation in current-gen development costs, in the end, the price is just a number -- and in the case of God of War III, it was certainly worth the dough. %Gallery-44594% [Via Edge]
Interview: John Hight, God of War III director of product development
John Hight runs Sony's Santa Monica studio and oversees the entire God of War 3 team. He makes sure that everyone is happy, that the game is going to ship on time, and that it's going to be something you'll want to play. Read on to learn more from him about the the future of the franchise, the possibility of multiplayer, the God of War movie and why he hasn't played Dante's Inferno (yet).
Interview: God of War III ends trilogy, but not franchise, Sony's John Hight says
While God of War III will conclude the trilogy, it won't spell the end of the franchise, Sony Santa Monica's John Hight reveals in a recent interview with Joystiq. With the third game "capping off what we started with God of War," Hight says we should expect more God of War games to follow, but the decision on where to take the franchise after the initial trilogy (and portable prequel) won't be taken lightly. "We're going to be really careful about what we do next," he assures. The full interview can be viewed in its entirety above. Select portions of the interview can be read in the following transcription: Can you explain the new technology that you're showing off today? So what we've kept under wraps until this time is dynamic environments. It means we can take literally anything in the game, including creatures and in this case, extremely large thousand foot plus creatures, and turn them into an environment that Kratos can now navigate, battle on, engage other creatures on, find treasures, you name it. Even since the very first God of War, we keep a running list of features that we'd like to have. So you're in the middle of making something ... some of them make it into the game, and some of them get moved to the next game. And this was the case of definitely a feature that the team has thought about for a while, but God of War 3 and the technology of PS3 enabled us to actually build it.
Interview with SCEA's Hight confirms PSN redesign in April, Warhawk expansion, PS1 games
Wow, more and more rumors popping up on the interwebs are proving to be true. This time around, the rumor about an April PSN store overhaul has been confirmed in an interview with John Hight, SCEA's director of product development. Hight is quoted saying, "I think you will see a pretty big change in the PlayStation Network in the early part of April, where we roll out some new interface stuff largely based on customer feedback." So, we now know there's definitely a redesign coming, but we're still in the dark about new content like, oh say, that rumored video download service.Also in the interview, Hight confirms that the rumored expansion for Warhawk should hit the PSN by April, too. Hight stated, "We just released an expansion on Warhawk in September, and we'll release another one in April." Further more, when questioned about Japanese PS1 games on the American PSN store, Hight had this to say, "I'm pretty darn sure they will [appear on the American PSN], but I don't know which titles." Now hold your horses, what that probably means is that we could be seeing a similar title catalog, and not that Japanese version games will appear on the US PSN. Nice, but not a guarantee. Well, we'd be happy if we could just get Resident Evil 2 in our store ...
SCEA's Hight: PlayStation Store overhaul, Warhawk expansion coming in April
A redesign of Sony's PlayStation Store is coming in April, according SCEA's Director of Product Development John Hight. In an interview with Gamasutra, Hight said, "I think you will see a pretty big change in the PlayStation Network in the early part of April, where we roll out some new interface stuff largely based on customer feedback."The changes, according to Hight, amount to simplifying the system and "cutting down on the number of mouse clicks, making it easier to find stuff that you want to find."High also said in page four of the full interview that another Warhawk expansion is due out also in April. Said Hight, "We just released an expansion on Warhawk in September, and we'll release another one in April."[Via PS3 Fanboy]
PS3 E-distribution explained -- more or less
Gamasutra recently interviewed John Hight, who is heading up the PS3's E-distribution project, getting a few interesting tidbits about Sony's online service along the way. Advantages of E-distribution? Selling online makes it simpler to go international, to niche and remote markets. Also, inventory no longer comes as a risk since there are no physical units being carted around (this also lowers the stacks of used games sitting at our favorite stores -- everyone knows how many copies of Madden 20xx there are when the new Madden 20xx +1 rendition appears). Another advantage that always gets mentioned -- "This new form of distribution will lower the barriers of entry for new developers. We can try out new ideas in a low risk, quick feedback environment." Hooray, mom and pop joints! Now if only they were getting the dev-kits on time like the bigger companies...What kind of titles can we expect to be distributed via this E-contraption? "We fund development for 1st party games and we are open to self-funded games." So many of Sony's internal studio games will come to the new console this way, if the E-distribution system works properly. If they don't sell well, hopefully they'll take a note from XBox Live and let any third-party into the ... party. Want to design a game and have it distributed via Sony's new system? Hight demands that we: "Create a high concept or, better yet, build a working prototype of [your] game. Then register on our developer website www.playstation.com/beyond." While the submission site isn't exactly brand spankin' new, it does imply that some games (possibly our submissions) may be set up to download as a subscription or a one-time purchase. Should Sony really go the subscription route? How about for small developers using their E-distribution? Hopefully it will be a "subscribe" or "purchase" option for each ... kind of like a rental, then a purchase, for the cautious among us.
