Category: video games

  • Xbox E3 2017 Briefing Notes

    Every E3 has an Xbox press event, this year Microsoft is leading it off with a brief history of different resolutions that their hardware has supported. Or at least it has upscaled games to that. If you’re new to my writing, I’ll note here that I worked for Microsoft over a decade ago on the…

  • Steam Greenlight Shutdown; Direct Starts June 13th

    Valve’s Steam Greenlight program has finally been shut down in favor of Steam Direct (which launches June 13th) after months without clarity about when this changeover would occur and what the cost would be to developers submitting their games into the new Steam Direct program. There’s this interesting note in the announcement from Valve’s Alden Kroll:…

  • Steam Direct Update from Valve

    Back in February Valve announced that they were going to replace Steam Greenlight with Steam Direct. There was some confusion because Valve had not yet decided on a price per game for submissions, or a timeframe for this change to occur. The original announcement only gave a vague date of “Spring 2017.” Well, Summer starts on…

  • Heroes of the Storm’s Great Updates

    Kat Bailey has this interview with Blizzard’s lead designer on Heroes of the Storm, Travis McGeathy titled On its Second Anniversary, Heroes of the Storm Has Finally Turned a Corner. It’s a sentiment I completely agree with, and I’ll slightly disclaim my discussion of this game by noting that a good friend works at Activision. When I first…

  • Geneshift in Early Access

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOFMNI4Wh88 Everyone loves games with a retro aesthetic. Even if that aesthetic isn’t very authentic, an older art style makes it possible for an indie game developer to communicate their gameplay ideas without spending all of their resources on art. Many games choose a lo-fi art style for that reason, sometimes it’s pixely, Geneshift is…