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Media Molecule embraces the glitch in new PS4 video
A warning straight away: There are a lot of flashing lights and colors in the above video, so if you're sensitive to that sort of thing, be careful. That should give you an idea of just how mad this latest Media Molecule madness is. What you're watching is taken from Media Molecule's unannounced PS4 project, but it's all the result of a rendering error. After discovering the glitch, the LittleBigPlanet dev decided it was freaky enough to publish, so it layered some techno music over the top and sent the video forth onto the Internet. As first looks at a game go, it's... different.
Working As Intended: Dabbling in indie sandbox Villagers and Heroes
Villagers and Heroes is not the sort of sandbox that gets a lot of coverage in the gaming press. You can't gank in the game. No one will murder you for your ore or your logs. There are no petty internet crime lords generating scandals or developers being ousted for cheating. Clichéd zombies are not waiting to slaughter you come nightfall. You cannot fall off a cliff or treetop pathway to your death. You never have to walk 10 miles uphill in the snow both ways to get to your house. You don't have to wait in line for an instance. You don't really have to fight at all. In fact, the worst thing that might happen to you is that you'll run out of energy.
The Think Tank: Non-combat roles in MMORPGs
Two recent topics have collided to create this week's Think Tank topic: Massively's Justin wrote about pacifist characters in MMOs, and Camelot Unchained reminded me that while there's no PvE, it'll be possible to play as a pure crafter to contribute to PvP. These shouldn't strike us as novel concepts. The genre has seen several MMOs (A Tale in the Desert, Glitch) that shed combat entirely, and many sandboxes (Star Wars Galaxies and Ultima Online, to name just a few), allowed players to roll pure crafters who raised neither blaster nor kryss to attack a foe. Yet many modern gamers still think of pacifist play as an anomaly, having been bred to believe combat is the end-all, be-all of an MMORPG experience. I polled the Massively team members for their thoughts on pacifist play and non-combat roles in MMOs. Have or would they play such characters and games?
Reprogram your surroundings in Glitchspace, now on Early Access
First-person puzzler Glitchspace is now available through Steam's Early Access service for PC, Mac and Linux. The alpha version of the game from developer Space Budgie is available for $6.99 on Early Access and $6.49 through the game's official site. Described as a "first-person programming" game, Glitchspace has players navigating a cyberspace-style world to locate a place that is a "by-product of cyberspace and its various glitches" known, appropriately enough, as Glitchspace. Space Budgie focused on emergent mechanics for the game, as players can identify glitches in the game and "exploit them in various different ways." Objects in the game are both programmable and non-programmable thanks to the "Null" programming system in the game created by the developer. Programmable objects include a "canvas" in which players can add functions to affect them, such as forces to move them, scale them, duplicate them and a myriad of other possibilities. The game includes a sandbox mode for players to toy around with as well as Oculus Rift support for those that want to immerse themselves in the matrix-like world. Space Budgie expects to launch the full version of Glitchspace in Q2 2014. [Image: Space Budgie]
PAX East 2014: Erin Roberts on Star Citizen's development
Star Citizen's backers have been waiting to see the game's dogfighting module in action for quite some time now, and it finally happened just before PAX East 2014. Unfortunately, it also wound up having some technical difficulties right at the beginning, which wasn't exactly what anyone had in mind when showing off the whole thing in action. It wasn't quite as bad as having the computer running the module burst into flames and die, but it was bad. Do the developers regret it? Not a chance. We got a chance to sit down and talk to Squadron 42 producer Erin Roberts and were told, in no uncertain terms, that even hitting technical hiccups like that don't make a more private development cycle feel better. In a way, having the development cycle be so public actually makes technical hurdles less problematic for the company when they're encountered because the language is in place to keep a meaningful dialogue going with the fans.
An analysis of the Glitch auction house
Glitch is gone, but it lives on in our hearts, and it makes for a fascinating case study. The game arrived, enraptured, and departed so quickly that a great deal can be extrapolated about the game. A new analysis over on Gamasutra focuses on looking at the game's economy over time, seeing how it kicked off and where it wound up, and uses that to draw conclusions about handling player-run economies in other games as well. The article outlines how Glitch handled currency and items, then notes the market trends and how players interacted with both one another and the economy. It concludes that in addition to monitoring the economy, designers need to keep an eye on the small number of players who serve as major economic drivers and watch them closely. The behaviors of players will also vary over time, meaning that past data have to be checked against more recent data to be relevant. If this is your sort of analysis, by all means, read the article in its entirety.
Missing tweets? It's a bug that Twitter is investigating (update: tweets restored)
This afternoon Twitter users started noticing that they couldn't get to certain tweets, including Ellen's most-retweeted Oscar selfie. From Major Nelson to Justin Bieber, "Sorry that page doesn't exist" is all that exists if you try to link directly to the missing posts. According to Twitter Support, a bug is to blame and it is investigating, although there's no word yet on when the posts will be back. Update: As noticed by The Verge, Twitter has announced that the error's been resolved and that it's restored the missing tweets and their respective favorites and retweets.
The Daily Grind: Are we ever going to get over our disdain for browser MMOs?
Go into any WildStar discussion and you'll see people decrying the graphics as too cutesy, and that's WildStar -- a robust AAA MMORPG with a custom client that taxes even a strong gaming PC. For browser games, that stigma is even worse. Either the graphics are too cutesy or people convince themselves that no game in a browser can ever rise above social spamalots like FarmVille. It's silly since so many deep and detailed MMOs have browser clients or exist only in a browser. Glitch may have been superficially cutesy and may have been Flash-bound, but it was a serious sandbox with incredible exploration, clever questing, an impressive crafting system, skill-based advancement, and a unique and completely customizable housing system with loads of player-generated content. And for all that, a lot of people, even sandbox fans, refused to even try it because it was lodged firmly inside Chrome or Firefox. Are we ever going to get over our disdain for browser MMOs? Can we judge games based on their content and not on stereotypes about their delivery? 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!
The Game Archaeologist: The care and feeding of older MMOs
When an MMO has reached a certain age and dwindled to a certain player population, what do you do with it? Do you put it out to pasture, nurture it, or put it down? With some of our older graphical MMOs approaching their 20th anniversaries, the question of what studios should do with aging titles is becoming very important. It's not just important for the games in question but as a precedent to the population of games that will one day become just as old. Lately we've seen different studios act on this topic in a wide variety of ways, all of which I find fascinating. Some of these games have seen tragic ends, while others may be entering into the enjoyable golden years. If nothing else, it's shown me that there isn't just one set answer for this and that some devs are hoping to do the right thing by their companies and their players.
Toyota recalls 1.9 million Prius hybrids to fix flawed software
Toyota has shipped over 3.5 million Prii since the first models hit streets in 1997, and now it wants more than half of them back. The company announced today that it's recalling 1.9 million hybrids (713,000 of which are in North America) thanks to a nasty software issue that could affect cars made between March 2009 and February 2014. The glitch may cause parts of the car's hybrid system to overheat and malfunction. That would normally put the car into a failsafe mode where it can still be driven with reduced engine power, though it's possible it could shut down entirely. The bug was first reported back in 2011 but, miraculously, it doesn't appear to have caused any accidents yet. You can check to see if your Prius is one of the afflicted on Toyota's recall site and schedule an appointment at your local dealership. Thankfully, you wont waste your whole day in the waiting room: a spokesperson told Automotive News the update process only takes about 40 minutes.
Lichborne: The death knight in non-WoW games
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. So we're kind of officially in the lull between expansions. A lot of guilds have Garrosh on farm. By now, maybe you've at least defeated him in raid finder once or twice, and maybe you have full Timeless Isle gear for every one of your alts. So maybe it's time to dust off the console or the hard drives and spend a little bit of time getting into other games. But with Hearthstone still tragically lacking a death knight hero, how do you get your death knight fix? Death knights aren't completely unique to WoW, but they're not common either, at least not in the general concept of necromantic knights trying to break free of their dark past to good with their evil powers. Here's a few ideas, both mechanically and thematically, for playing death knight style in other games. Skyrim: To be a dragonborn dark knight Yes, I am playing Skyrim right now, so it's kind of fresh in my mind, but I'd argue, at the very least, that Skyrim's relatively flexible spec system allows you to play something similar to a death knight. For example, right now my Dragonborn is using heavy plate armor and dual ebony swords I have enchanted with frost and fire and renamed Lichborne and Hellmouth. While he mostly beats people (and dragons, giants, and bears) up with the swords, he also has a decent amount of work in conjuration tree, summoning and/or resurrecting undead minions. Once I get to level 100 in that skill, I can even get me a perma-ghoul if I want.
Google glitch flooded at least one poor guy's inbox
Users around the world dealt with Gmail woes earlier today, but at least one faced an even stranger Gmail problem. David Peck, a private banker from Fresno, California, has been receiving thousands and thousands of emails from strangers -- all because of a bizarre Google search result glitch that apparently kicked in yesterday. The culprit? A dodgy link that appeared when users perform a Google search for "Gmail." If they were logged into a Gmail account at the time, clicking that link opened a blank email aimed at Mr. Peck's Hotmail address, and more than a few curious users decided to fire off messages. Some of those myriad emails were questions, some were blank, but Peck told TechCrunch that he was receiving about 500 emails an hour.
Final Fantasy 6 crashes at midpoint on Android, fix coming soon
If you purchased Square Enix's revamped Android port of the classic Super NES RPG Final Fantasy 6 after it hit Google Play last week, you may want to put your playthrough on hold while its developers sort out a major bug affecting player progress. Currently, the game crashes at a critical point, making the latter half of its storyline inaccessible. Players report that the glitch occurs during a climactic battle between Kefka and General Leo in Thamasa at the game's halfway point. A crash during a cutscene renders the game unbeatable, as story progress is stalled until required events unfold in Thamasa. Publisher Square Enix acknowledges the bug in the game's Google Play description, and promises that an upcoming fix will soon allow players to travel to the Floating Continent and beyond. A release date for the patch has not been announced.
Users report PlayStation 4 error corrupting save files
PlayStation 4 early adopters are experiencing a widespread data corruption error resulting in lost progress and unplayable games, according to frequent reports in a 34-page PlayStation Forum thread. Joystiq reader "Jim" wrote in to report the loss of 30 hours' worth of progress as a result of a glitch that the PS4 console identifies as "Error CE-34878-0." The bug isn't isolated to a specific game, as PlayStation community members report lost progress across several titles in the PlayStation 4's library, including NBA 2K14, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Battlefield 4, and Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag. In rare cases, "CE-34878-0" prevents users from starting any PlayStation 4 application, rendering the console unusable. PlayStation forum members suggest a variety of solutions to the issue, ranging from save file deletion to a full console replacement. We've reached out to Sony for comment and await a response.
SpyParty's new art brings eerie new glitches
Developer Chris Hecker recently added attractive new art to multiplayer espionage game SpyParty. With the new aesthetics, however, come entertaining new bugs that turn a suspiciously quiet dinner party into a squamous freakshow of floating bodies and contorted limbs.
The Game Archaeologist: Four efforts to preserve dead MMOs
As I type this, we are now living in a post-Warhammer Online world. You can probably tell by all of the rampant looting, devastating earthquakes, and heart-rending sobs coming from your neighbors' homes. For me, it's a strange thought that this game simply isn't there at all any more -- and there's no way to go back and play it, ever. Or is there? When it comes to MMO sunsets, there are varying degrees of death. Sometimes a closure isn't as final and complete as we might assume, and between the passion of developers and those of fans, we're able to revisit these games long after their expiration date. For a writer who is keenly interested in preserving MMO history, these efforts are of great interest. So today we're going to look at four ways that people are trying their hardest to preserve dead MMOs -- and even let you play them once more. And I'm going to write about this without using the forbidden "E" word, too!
Jukebox Heroes: MMO holiday tunes
Last year I celebrated Christmas with y'all by sharing several holiday music tracks from MMOs, and this year I thought I'd keep the tradition alive. It's not always the easiest thing to find holiday-specific music from these games, as not every game bothers to make new tunes for time-limited events. Still, there are a few that have been sitting in my folders for a while that I'd like to share, including one very special piece of music that pretty much nobody's ever heard before. So as we wind down the year and relax with friends and family, I'm volunteering myself to be the DJ at your abode. Just put these tunes on and mix up a batch of your best egg nog because the two will be a combination that will make your relatives rave about your refined taste.
Pokemon X/Y patch fixes exploits, uses flying type on bugs
A wild patch appeared in the eShop region for Pokemon X/Y! It seems pretty willing to add itself to your collection though, so approach it expecting a Magikarp-tier fight. Patch 1.2's details note a fix to a problem involving the Wonder Trade feature - Pokemon that evolve due to being traded through Wonder Trade will now be capable of learning new moves. An issue where "certain captions" for Trainer PR videos weren't properly unlocking in Lumiose City has been addressed as well. The notes also list an update to an "internet communication issue," which Destructoid reports is related to curbing the use of unofficial tools called Battle Analyzer and Instacheck. Pokemon Champions will need to download this update before they can return to proving their abilities against opponents in online battles. If you've neglected your collection of new friends since October, Patch 1.2 also includes a previous patch addressing a saving glitch in Lumiose City.
Take a convoluted trip to North Yankton via this GTA Online glitch
A GTA Online glitch reveals the snowy streets of North Yankton can be found in the online component of Grand Theft Auto 5, suggesting the area may feature (officially) in some future update. North Yankton, if you recall, is the state in which the very first mission takes place, set some nine years before the main events of the game. If you fancy revisiting the area in GTA Online, this CVG video shows you how to get there. To summarize, you'll have to replay that prologue mission, then get to a certain point and stand in a certain place, then get a friend to invite you into a GTA Online closed session. After that you'll have to call a helicopter, and head to some mountains floating surreally in the bottom right of the map. Simple, no? Well no, no it's not, but it is a bit clever. Anyway, get your snow boots on while you still can, because it seems likely Rockstar will shut off the route in a future patch.
Glitch fan remembers Tiny Speck title with massive avatar poster
MMOs come and MMOs go, and while every game was someone's favorite, there are a few enormously influential MMOs that continue to be enormously influential long after they've closed down. Star Wars Galaxies was one. City of Heroes was another. And while Tiny Speck's Glitch was only around for a fraction of those titles' long-lived lifespans, it nonetheless made an impression. Don't believe me? Check out artist Cami Avellar's contribution to the one-year anniversary of Glitch's demise. It's a poster featuring over 250 Glitch avatars, and it took over three weeks and 100 hours to make! [Thanks Danielle!]
