Gigantic
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Third-person MOBA 'Gigantic' to close on July 31st
Gigantic's long and troubled development cycle is finally over. The colorful, hero-based MOBA will be shut down on July 31st, developer Motiga announced in a blog post yesterday. Ultimately, the game "did not resonate" with as many players as the studio had hoped, limiting the viability of future updates and support. As a result, the January Update — which contains new hero T-Mat, various skins and computer-controlled bloomer creatures — will be "the final content update." Microtransactions have been switched off, making all heroes free to unlock, and store items will be heavily discounted for anyone who has leftover cash to spend.
'Gigantic' creator layoffs show that MOBA games aren't easy
With Blizzard, Riot and seemingly everyone else making a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game, the field is getting pretty crowded... and unfortunately, it's clear that some of those developers are facing greater challenges than others. Gigantic creator Motiga has revealed that it's delaying its take on the genre to 2016, and is laying off 16 employees to make this happen. This is a startup with "finite" resources, the company says, and there's only so much it can do without letting people go. It's no doubt a tough decision -- here's hoping that Gigantic can stand out despite the heavyweight competition, and that Motiga's former workers land on their feet.
PAX South 2015: Slaying giants in Motiga's Gigantic
Motiga's Gigantic is one part Team Fortress, one part Dota, and one part Monster Hunter. The basic match structure will sound familiar to MOBA lovers -- two teams of five slug it out for superiority by controlling resources, leveling up, and killing one another -- but the skill-based mechanics, multiple maps, and shifting strategy priorities make the game more than a three-lane farm fest. Gigantic isn't about last-hitting or memorizing meta. Instead, it's about slaying giants and aiming true. I hopped in on a quick Gigantic match with some other press folks this afternoon at PAX South 2015, and in the midst of delivering an absolute drubbing to the scrubs (kidding!) on the other side of the table, I was able to get a feel for the game's combat system, characters, and the way its massive guardians change the way battles play out.
Gigantic wants to greatly expand its alpha test
Gigantic's alpha program is progressing fairly well, but the team is concerned that the pool of available testers have yet to push the servers to their limits. The solution: expand the MOBA's alpha test. "The whole point of the test is to find out how many players it takes to push our game systems and our server capacity over the cliff," Motiga posted this week. "So bad news for us is good news for you: We desperately need more of you, so we will be adding more alpha testers throughout the fall season. Thousands of new testers." The studio is also working to expand the alpha past North America to other regions and is hiring more team members to support a worldwide rollout.
Motiga's Gigantic makes a big first impression
In Motiga's Gigantic, a team of five players choose unique champions who must work together to effectively control a map and slaughter their enemies – another team of five players – with the ultimate goal of destroying the opposing team's Guardian, a valuable asset that lies in wait at the opposite end of the map. On paper, it sounds like yet another MOBA, the rapidly-expanding genre pioneered by games like League of Legends and Dota 2. In practice however, while the game's DNA is undeniably colored by the m-word genre, you'd be doing the game a ... well, gigantic disservice to think of it as another imitator.
StarCraft, Guild Wars veterans go big with Gigantic
Gigantic is a five-player, free online game from Guild Wars and StarCraft veterans at Motiga. Players team up as a ragtag group of quirky characters with a giant guardian to protect, and one to kill on the opposing team. Guardians attack the enemy, and they're killed by a blow to the heart. Think of the guardians as the teams' mobile, violent bases – protect and destroy. The Gigantic alpha is due to start soon, with sign-ups on the official site. [Images: Motiga]
Motiga's new multiplayer game, Gigantic, is a MOBA
Are you ready to let another MOBA into your life? How about one with stylized cartoon art and a twist that some might call... large? Gigantic was formally announced by Motiga today, and it's got a couple of tricks the usual MOBA doesn't. For one thing, it's all about third-person play, and you'll be hopping about with your keyboard rather than by clicking your mouse. For another, players are aided by enormous Guardians, behemoths that use their own massive attacks and will force players to contend with an even more powerful force on the field. Players can get a sense of the game's style just past the break in the game's first announcement trailer and sign up for alpha testing on the official site. The game will be at PAX Prime, as well, which should be something for fans to keep a close watch on. It might just be big, you know.
[1.Local]: Gigantic
Reader comments -- ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week. Yes, I am just naming this column after Pixies songs so I can embed them and not even attempt a theme. Thank you for noticing. I do have a gigantic love for many of our comments, though. They are fun to read and the threads are gigantically entertaining. I also really like when a gigantically different viewpoint is presented for discussion. My love for the new guild perks in Cataclysm is gigantic, and so is Cyanea's: This list is the reason why we couldn't have "guild talents" and why we get all of them instead. Any hardcore PVE or PVP guild that doesn't have either the Honor point or the Hero point gain talent is not going to be competitive. A lot of more casual guilds could've easily picked them both up, but when you're in a hardcore guild striving for world/realm firsts or whatever the equivalent is for PVP you're going to go for the most effective point distribution, forcing players who do both (like me) or who are in a primarily PVE guild and mostly PVP and vice versa to leave their friends and find other guilds just to stay competitive. All that whining about Guild Talents was pointless. Pointless indeed. Turn the page for some more gigantically fun and/or interesting comments from the past week.
