5 MORE Conspicuous Absences from Steam Greenlight
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/27/13 at 07:16 PM CT
Back in August, I took a look at several upcoming PC games that have been pinging my radar since they were announced, yet hadn’t managed to make their way onto Steam Greenlight, the community-based approval system. After getting positive confirmation from the developers of several of these games that they would indeed be coming to Greenlight, currently none of them have.
However, those 5 games don’t exist in a vacuum, and they have been joined on my radar by other games I’ve either only recently learned of or that were recently released on other platforms. In every case, none of them appear on Steam Greenlight, and I can’t understand why. Do these developers not want to invest a minimal $100 donation to Child’s Play for the opportunity to get their game in front of hundreds of thousands of gamers?
1-3. “Beggar Prince,” “Legend of Wukong,” and “Star Odyssey”
These three games form what is called the “RPG Trifecta” by their developer, Super Fighter …
Open Letter to Trendy Regarding “Dungeon Defenders II”
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/20/13 at 01:08 PM CT
Dear Trendy:
On October 8th, your Studio Director David Loyd wrote a blog/forum post announcing that “Dungeon Defenders II,” which was initially revealed to be a MOBA-style PVP game, was being rolled-back to square-one and restarted as a true sequel to the original hybrid of Tower Defense and Hack ‘n Slash RPG. This announcement was met with great enthusiasm by Nick (MeltedJoystick’s software engineer and obsessive “DunDef” player) and by some of our site’s most vocal and active members. As someone who once loved “Dungeon Defenders,” but came to barely tolerate the game as it progressed, I can only say that my enthusiasm at this announcement was tempered by a large dose of skepticism.
Trendy, you are a company that does not have a long or spotless track record with making games. Outside of various iterations of “Dungeon Defenders” and DLC for that game, your only other finished release is an obscure (and unsupported) iPhone game called “Chicken Coup” …
What is STEM, and Why Should You Care?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/13/13 at 01:22 PM CT
STEM has been in the news a lot lately. It seems that American students are shying away from studies in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. I’m not proud of the fact that I’m a part of this statistic, but when not everyone has an aptitude for those fields, and when given a choice between keeping a 3.8+ grade point average (and the accompanying scholarships) studying Humanities or washing out of one of the STEM fields, I think most people who value their tuition dollars would choose the sure bet. Indeed, the best way to encourage more prospective members of the American workforce to study STEM fields would be to remove the harsh penalty for failure: Tuition should be free.
What? Oh, we’re not talking about that STEM, but the similarly-named gaming product!
That’s right, the people at Sixense have decided to cut the ties that bind them to Razer and instead crowdfund their successor to the Razer Hydra with a Kickstarter campaign. The Kickstarter ended …
Backlog: The Embiggening - October, 2013
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/05/13 at 02:22 PM CT
Welcome to another look into the near future. 2013 seems to be following a suspicious trend: Each month leading up to the Christmas Spendstravaganza, one massively-overhyped, overbudgeted, and underwhelmingly mainstream “AAA” release is coming per month, destined to overshadow anything and everything else releasing alongside it. In October, the elephant in the room is “Battlefield 4,” a franchise that essentially serves as the hipster version of ‘Call of Duty.’
Like last month, however, the developers of shovelware have no fear of the month’s dominant release, and are continuing to churn-out incredible quantities of excrement. Superheroes seem to be the dominant theme for licensed games this month, with a “LEGO Marvel Superheroes” game, a tie-in for the rebooted “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” movie, and yet another Batman game in the ‘Arkham’ series. Aside from superheroes, there are also plenty of licensed games coming based on cartoons, including …
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