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Blizzard to fund competitive gaming at the college level
The world of competitive gaming revolves around young players, but it's not always easy for them to participate -- many of them are college students without the resources to host large tournaments. They'll soon get a helping hand from Blizzard, however. The StarCraft II developer is now promising support for college gaming groups that are part of the The eSports Association (TeSPA); as groups get larger, Blizzard will offer increasing amounts of cash, in-game bonuses and promo material. Groups with over 200 members will even get special guests. While the move is no doubt meant to sell more games, it could also create a stronger eSports community that nurtures rookies until they're ready to hit the big leagues. [Image credit: Glenn Batuyong, Flickr]
The Nexus Telegraph: WildStar's greatest opponent is WildStar
Your real opponent is pretty much always yourself. I could spend the next several years of my writing career trying to be a better writer than, say, Justin Olivetti. I'd fail, for starters, because look at the guy. But even if I could succeed, I'd never be living up to my potential. I'll always be the guy trying to be better than the last thing Justin wrote, never coming up with my own things, never really advancing myself. The only way to be truly good is to try to be the best writer I can be, regardless of who else is out there. What does this have to do with WildStar? Simple. I mention other games here, other releases looking at the same window, but WildStar doesn't need to be better than those games, up to and including The Elder Scrolls Online. WildStar needs to be the best version of itself that it can be. Its only real opponent is itself, not other titles.
Google's ready to give away over $2.7 million to folks that hack Chrome OS successfully
But not if you hack from the comfort of your own home. Instead, you'll have to travel to the CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver this March to showcase your skills at Google's Pwnium 4 competition. For those who aren't familiar, Google's been holding these Pwnium contests for years as a means to crowdsource the finding of security bugs in both the Chrome browser and Chrome OS. This year, like last year, Google's offering $110,000 for each "browser or system-level compromise in guest mode or as a logged-in user, delivered via a web page," and $150k to anyone who can "compromise with device persistence: guest to guest with interim reboot, delivered via a web page." We don't understand exactly what that means, but we feel certain that with so many dollars at stake, there will be no shortage of interested parties who do. Plus, there are "significant" bonuses available for "particulary impressive or surprising" exploits -- so feel free to get creative, folks. Would-be winners should also know that the offers are good for hacks performed on the ARM-based HP Chromebook 11 or the Intel-packing Acer C720, and you've gotta register by 5PM Pacific Time on March 10th to compete. No time like the present, y'all.
Rogue co-creator helps pick 'Ultimate Roguelike' winner
Participants of last month's Ultimate Roguelike Challenge game design competition had a lot of pressure on their shoulders; along with creating a game using only a tileset provided by contest organizer Christopher "Oryx" Barrett, the end result would be judged by Glenn Wichman, co-creator of the original Rogue. Other judges included Barrett and Cardinal Quest creator Ido Yehieli. Adventuring Company by Slothwerks took home the gold, which is kind of appropriate since it's a game about trying to take home gold from a great red dragon. It's available now on Android and in-browser. The rest of the entries can be seen on the Oryx Design Lab website.
Make presents: Raspberry Pi Make:Off competition at Expand!
As if there wasn't already enough fun to be had at Expand, with our incredible lineup of speakers and our Insert Coin competition, we've got another treat for attendees. We're gonna have a Raspberry Pi Make:Off hosted by Matt Richardson of Make Magazine! Here's the deal: two teams of four contestants will spend the weekend building a project with tools and components from our electronics "pantry." The competition will kick off at 10 am on November 9th and a winner will be announced at 3:30 pm on November 10th. If you think you have what it takes to take home the proverbial gold (note: we will not be handing out any actual gold), you can enter your name here on Facebook. If you're chosen to be one of the eight participants, you'll receive a Getting Started with Raspberry Pi kit and a free ticket to Expand. What's more, the four members of the winning team will be featured in Make in an article by Mr. Richardson himself, chronicling the build. The submission period ends at 5 pm ET on Monday November 4th, so get your applications in now!
Star Citizen unleashes the Next Great Starship design contest
So you've already pledged your Kickstarter funds, but now you want to be even more involved in the development of Star Citizen. What's a fan to do? Luckily, Cloud Imperium Games has announced a new competition that gives any potential player the chance to design, model, and rig Star Citizen's next spaceship. The modding contest will see three-person teams compete for a grand prize of $30,000, the inclusion of the winning ship design in the game, models of the ship, 3D modeling software, and more. Registration runs from October 31 through December 31 with the grand prize being announced in June. Check out the video after the cut and the main site for more information. [Source: Cloud Imperium press release]
France approves law stopping Amazon from shipping discounted books for free
French lawmakers have had it up to "here" with Amazon's book-selling tactics and they're not going to take it any more. In a rare alliance, France's ruling Socialist Party and the opposition UMP Party approved a new bill banning the company and other online retailers from shipping discounted books for free. It comes in the form of an amendment to a 32-year-old law that sets the value of new books at fixed prices. Amazon, you see, heavily discounts books, but also ships them at no extra cost, heavily undercutting aggrieved brick-and-mortar retailers. The restriction forces Amazon to cut free shipping for new books sold at reduced prices, but it won't stop French consumers from getting second-hand titles and music pas cher.
PlanetSide 2 hosts pre-season territory control event
The competition in PlanetSide 2 is all in good fun, assuming that you consider crushing your opponents in a bid for global dominance to be "good fun." But starting today the game is being ramped up a notch with the World Domination Series pre-season event. It's a contest to see who can actually control the most territory for the longest period, running a weekly competition from now until October 21st. And to the winners go prizes. You might think domination of the world is the prize, but no, the prizes are experience boosters and special decals. How do you win them? You earn more points than the other empires. Fight on the side of the winning empire in a given week to help earn points. A captured small outpost is worth 1 point, a captured large outpost is worth 2 points, a facility is worth 5 points, and a full territory is worth 3 points per hour that it remains under the empire's control. At the end of the week, values will be tallied, and the next week will give everyone a chance to fight it out again.
Ubisoft tackles eSports with 'The Next Level' competition at PAX Prime
Ubisoft is set to enter the eSports market with "The Next Level," a livestreamed gaming competition debuting this weekend at PAX Prime in Seattle. The Next Level features a selection of Ubisoft-published games, offering prizes ranging from scholarships to trips to upcoming events. The contest is aimed at players of all skill levels, and branches out from traditional eSports offerings with competitions for the motion-sensing dance sim Just Dance 2014 and the free-to-play RPG The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot. The PAX Prime event will also host challenges for Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, The Crew, and Rayman Legends. "The Next Level brings all the elements of eSports style competition that make it engaging and fun to watch but tests player's skills with challenges in different games and genres opening up the playing field to anyone interested in competitive gaming," said Josh Milligan, Ubisoft's senior director of player engagement. After PAX Prime wraps up, Ubisoft will continue The Next Level with online competitions and upcoming events at E3 and New York Comic-Con.
The Nexus Telegraph: The impact of WildStar's new release window
It merited only a footnote when the business model was announced, and it was easy to miss for all of the screaming between players who refused to listen to the other sorts of players, but WildStar isn't aiming for a 2013 release any longer. Not that this is exactly a shock, of course; I said about a month ago that I would prefer to just be told that the game wouldn't release until 2014, which already looked to be the case. But there's something interesting to be unpacked with that almost offhand mention of the game's targeted release date, especially when you consider how many huge holes there are in our present knowledge of the game. We'll learn more at the end of the week as PAX Prime starts up, but I find myself filling in some blanks both in terms of upcoming revelations and what we've not been told yet.
Samsung's flexible display contest offers cash for device ideas, business plans
Samsung's been so busy getting its flexible displays (aka "Youm") consumer-ready, it's now got no clue what to actually do with them. As such, it's decided to pay others to be idea-men, launching the "Flexible Future Business Plan Competition" in the US. Starting August 29th and running to October 6th, the contest is calling for nifty gadget concepts that use one to 20 inches of flexible display at up to full HD resolution. They'll be judged on how important a flexible display is to the device, as well as design, practicality of hardware and business plan. The winner will receive $10k, with second and third place taking $5k and $2.5k, respectively. Samsung hopes you'll head to the source link for the full lowdown, because there are only so many bendy smartwatches one can sell before you need other gear to put wobbly panels in.
Guild Wars 2 discusses upcoming arena changes
Guild Wars 2 isn't always about stories or elections or even dynamic content. Sometimes it's just about players getting into an arena and smashing each other to pieces. Players fond of the game's Rated Arenas can look forward to some upcoming improvements and additions, starting with a split into solo and team formats rather than the current catch-all header. While the game mechanics will be identified as both, Solo Arenas are composed solely of people queueing up alone, thereby ensuring that both sides of a match are thrown into a random group rather than a premade team facing several assorted members. The arenas will also implement a 72-hour debuff for players who abandon their matches, with five stacks preventing players from queueing up again. The full discussion of these changes goes on to promise more map randomization, spectator mode, and new permanent finishers for fans of rated PvP. It's good news for everyone, unless you made a long habit of joining rated games and then leaving for no reason.
The Art of Wushu: Being a master or an apprentice
Fun facts for fans of the Art of Wushu: I wrote three articles about Age of Wushu for this week. I started off writing something lame, but I scrapped it because I didn't like the topic. The second is one about reaction times, perception, and brain chemistry. However, I realized somewhere in the middle of writing it that I used terms about "skill levels" that I have never really defined, and I figured it would be a good thing to do that before I went any further. So this time, we're going to talk about skill levels and what they mean. All of them are fairly discrete, and they are pretty universal, whether you practice swordsmanship or carpentry (or do either in a video game). I have probably used the term "expert player" over 9000 times while writing for Massively, and I've held an opinion on what an intermediate player is since long before I was blogging. This is a good way to identify where you and others stand, which is how you'll know what kind of advice you need to get to the next level.
IndieCade teams with Oculus Rift for 'VR Jam,' a game dev competition culminating this October
The Oculus Rift sure is super, super neat, but outside of mods to existing games, it's still a bit light in the custom-made software department. And that's exactly why Oculus is ponying up $50K in prizes and teaming up with IndieCade this October for a game jam competition specifically meant to bolster that software support. One lucky dev / team will snag the grand prize of $10K and a chance to debut their game at this October's IndieCade Festival in Los Angeles -- they'll also head out to Orange County to meet with the team at Oculus, including wunderkind Palmer Luckey. Should you wish to get in on the VR-centric action, you've got the following three weeks to get things going (starting August 2nd and ending on August 25th). And if you don't have one of Oculus' Rift dev kits just yet, you'll have access to playtesting at various "playtest hubs" set up worldwide (NYC and LA locations are the only two confirmed thus far, with "more locations to be announced soon"). For the full stipulations on the contest, head below.
Guild Wars 2 ramps up for the first Invitational Tournament
Do you think you've got what it takes to be a champion? Guild Wars 2 is hosting its first Invitational Tournament and invites all players to take part in the matchup. With $7500 for the winning team and a studio tour for every qualifying team, there's plenty of reason for experienced players to gather allies and fight for the right to be the best team across North America and Europe. The rules are fairly simple. Each team of five must register on the official site to take part in the Regional Qualifiers, which are July 27th and 28th for European players and August 3rd and 4th for North American players. The actual tournament is on August 31st in Seattle. Both tournaments are single match elimination, with the qualifiers playing for best two out of three and the invitational playing for best three out of five. If you've got a team ready to go, head on over to the official site and get ready to play for the prize.
Nikon feels the pressure from smartphones, says it needs to 'change the concept of cameras'
With slumping point-and-shoot camera sales and falling earnings, even a conservative company like Nikon can see the writing on the wall. President Makoto Kimura told Bloomberg that the number of people dropping compact shooters in favor of smartphones is "exploding" and that his company has created a new imaging business team to address the problem. He said that its task is "to create a product that will change the concept of cameras," adding that such a device will come to market in less than five years. Kimura didn't respond when asked if Nikon might build its own smartphone, though he said "(a new device) could be a non-camera consumer product." Whatever it turns out to be, given the current trend in smartphone sales and the fact that its imaging division nets 84 percent of Nikon's revenue, a little more diversification surely couldn't hurt.
World of Tanks celebrates July 4th via a big tank tournament
Tomorrow is the fourth of July, and if you're not aware, in the United States that date is kind of a big deal. So the staff behind World of Tanks decided that the best way to celebrate America's independence day is by having a bunch of armored vehicles take potshots at one another for big prizes. A tournament is running through the weekend for Tier III through Tier X tanks, with a big package of microtransaction cash going to the winning teams. All teams will be paired up into groups, fight other teams in the same group, and be scored according to victory or loss. Battles will be limited to 10 minutes maximum. The big winners will be the teams with the highest score after the dust settles. If this sounds like it's your sort of celebration, there's still time to gather your team and register; if you'd rather just play the game, there are also plenty of promotions running over the holiday weekend just the same. [Source: Wargaming.net press release]
Apple's French offices raided by competition authorities
Apple's French headquarters was raided recently. Over a 24-hour period, French competition authorities entered Apple's offices and went through documents involving Apple and the distributors it works with, looking for some sign of impropriety. The raid was reportedly brought on by a French company called eBizcuss, which went to the French authorities to complain that Apple (whose products eBizcuss sells exclusively) was holding back stock for its own stores rather than sharing new products with distributors. eBizcuss filed a complaint, and that led to the investigation. The French government has bumped up against Apple on competition before, first in its iOS App Store and then regarding the price of digital downloads. But so far, no charges have been brought forward, so we'll have to see what becomes of whatever information was found during this raid.
Apple France raided over claims that it gives resellers the cold shoulder
Few would doubt that Apple prioritizes its own stores -- they're ambassadors for the brand. However, France's Competition Authority has just raided Apple and its distributors over complaints that this preference comes at the expense of resellers. Recently bankrupt retailer eBizscuss claims that Apple both stalls on delivering products to third-party stores and denies those outlets any flexibility in pricing. In other words, it's allegedly impossible to compete fairly when Apple holds all the cards. We've reached out to Apple for comment, although the Competition Authority is so far willing only to confirm to Les Echos that the raids took place. Whether or not the searches lead to any substantive legal action, Apple may face extra heat in France -- the Authority is reportedly investigating accusations that the American firm unfairly hiked the minimum pricing for iBookstore periodicals.
Samsung buys 10 percent stake in rival phone maker Pantech
Hang around these pages long enough and you're bound to come across Pantech, the South Korean purveyor of everything from giant 1080p handsets down to... giant 720p handsets. Samsung has noticed this rising star too and, so says Yonhap News, has now made a $50 million investment in the smaller company in return for a 10 percent stake. Implicit in that is that the Korean government has allowed Samsung's ever-expanding influence to infiltrate a potential rival, since Pantech is now the No. 3 phone maker in that country and only Qualcomm and a state-run bank possess larger stakes than Samsung's. As a result, the acquisition could have an anti-competitive aura to it -- but then, Pantech has actually been struggling of late, not least with large debts, and it has relied on big backers to bail it out.
