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Red Dead Redemption adding free outfits and ... jackalopes
Red Dead Redemption's "Hunting and Trading Outfits Pack" will be released for free next Tuesday, October 12, on PSN and Xbox Live. The DLC's "Savvy Merchant" outfit will grant the wearer the power to purchase guns and ammo for half price, while the pelt and hide adorned "Expert Hunter" outfit will double the amount you earn from selling your skinned trophies. That's not the best part, though. The best part of the free outfit pack is that it will add the Jackalope (pictured) to the game. Though, considering there are soon to be zombies in the Wild West, this horned jackrabbit seems pretty darned ordinary.
Cryptic Studios clarifies microtransactions in Star Trek Online
We noticed quite a stir in our last post about microtransactions in an upcoming Cryptic Studios game. The post in question was about Champions Online, which explained how Cryptic plans to keep the microtransaction system balanced. Quite a number of commenters at Massively expressed the view that the game should either be subscription or microtransaction-based, one or the other, and not a hybrid of the two. That debate isn't confined to Cryptic's superhero MMO, however. The company's approach to microtransactions with Champions Online will be applied to Star Trek Online as well, according to a recent forum post by Jackalope (Jack Emmert) from the Cryptic Studios dev team.
Jack Emmert named as GenCon industry guest of honor
Jack 'Statesman Jackalope' Emmert is to be one of the Industry Guests of Honor at GenCon, to be held Aug. 14-17 in Indianapolis. Best known for his work on City of Heroes, in which he took over from original lead designer Rick Dakan, Jack is now the chief creative officer in the Cryptic team working on Champions Online.Jack Emmert is definitely qualified to speak about iterative game design, as the City of Heroes design process featured no small number of clinkers that were identified as such by the player base, despite looking good at the design stage. Jack's self-deprecatingly frank about his early mistakes, and explains how he's learned from them: 'We assumed a player would get the mission, go into the instance, realize that he was facing a "boss," leave the mission, find a friend, and then tackle the "boss" together. I was pretty darn naïve back then.' Jack's willingness to engage with the player base had the unfortunate secondary effect of giving dissatisfied players an articulate target for their frustration. Even now, Jack is still remembered in some quarters as a sort of uber-bogeyman armed with a colossal nerf bat.
