Tag: PC Games

Video Games Fighting Sex Trafficking

A group of researchers from Texas, U.S.A. are utilising a federal grant to use a video game as a tool designed to extract data from the myriad of press releases and other datasets. Datasets that would normally be very inaccessible, and time consuming to sift through.

Instead, players of the game called “Dark Shadows” will be able to assist. How does it work? Players will get to act as an investigator for a fictional crime. As the player solves the crime and finds clues, actual human trafficking data will also be sorted by proxy. In time, the AI driving the program will learn to sort more effectively, and it is hoped that the algorithm may be able to make connections between various datasets for people to investigate.

GameStop’s Chairman Thinks GameStop Should Make Money

Ryan Cohen, chairman of GameStop, a major games retailer, has written a passionate email about the need to practise “extreme frugality”, and how “the company has no use for delegators and money wasters”, as the company continues to struggle.

GameStop has already initiated waves of layoffs in 2022, Ryan has already fired the CEO he himself picked, and the company has already tried NFTs and meme currency, so it’s not too clear what else could be done, however Ryan did finish his email with:

“I expect everyone to roll up their sleeves and work hard. I’m not getting paid, so I’m either going down with the ship or turning the company around. I much prefer the latter. It won’t be easy. Best of luck to us all.”

Who Is Crossing Over With Magic: The Gathering?

That’s right! Fans of both Doctor Who and Magic: The Gathering can look forward to five new cards, all themed around the good doctor and their timey-wimey adventures.These cards will be coming to the commander decks. Here’s what they’re called:

All of History, All at Once a Sorcery card.

Regenerations Restored, an Enchantment card.

Rory Williams, Legendary Creature – Human Soldier.

The Pandorica, a Legendary Artifact.

The Wedding of River Song, another Sorcery card.

Gaming Laptop Spotted In Court!

Donald Trump’s lawyer has been using what looks like an Asus laptop, complete with an underglow cycling from blue to orange, in court. There’s no point to this, it’s just a little funny to imagine.

And now for some upcoming games!

October 6

• Detective Pikachu Returns – Switch
• Sunshine Manor – PS4, XBO, Switch
• Sword Art Online Last Recollection – PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO

October 10

• Forza Motorsport – PC, XSX
• Lil Gator Game – PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO
• Roblox – PS4
• Wild Card Football – PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch

October 11

• The Front – PC
• Honkai Star Rail – PS5
• Total War: Pharaoh – PC

October 12

• Company of Heroes Collection – Switch
• Haunted House – PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch

Chillin’ out on Zed Games this week, Maylee, Caroline and Cameron talk the IP buyout trend in this weeks Gaming News discussion, Caroline dives deep into gameplay loops in a review of Dave the Diver, & Maylee tries to get to the relaxation station in Metro Mini.

Call of Duty Uses AI To Find Toxicity

Call of Duty is no stranger to less-than-pleasant behaviour from players, like many massively popular games with an online component. What is Activision doing now to combat it? Activision is now teaming up with Modulate, an AI program developed specifically to filter through voice chat in order to flag, and deal with, problematic behaviour.

It’s still in its early stages, with ToxMod, the tool being used, entering beta testing on North American servers. The tool is already used in a number of online games, but Call of Duty would certainly be a large task.

The program isn’t capable of banning players, but instead will monitor voice chat in real time, flag problematic behaviour depending on context, and then provide this information to moderators to take action. In theory, you can still cuss out your friends when they’re taking their sweet time getting to you, so players shouldn’t be worried about being boisterous.

Goodbye Volition

The game developer company, Deep Silver Volition, developer of titles like Saints Row, and Red Faction, has closed its doors after 30 years of development. It hasn’t been a smooth journey for the company, with Volition’s Saints Row reboot facing negative criticism upon reveal. After a transfer from Embracer, and a multi-billion dollar deal collapsing, Volition has been shut down while Embracer goes through some pretty significant restructuring.

IPs including Saints Row and Red Faction will be transferred to another subsidiary, Plaion.

“For 30 years now you have played our games – sometimes you’ve loved them, sometimes you’ve been disappointed with them, but you’ve always been there… We can’t thank you enough for sticking with us throughout this time.” Volition says in a letter to its community.

STRAY MOVIE

Did you like that cat game that came out last year? The one where you’re a little kitty cat in a futuristic city populated by robots? Well, it’ll be hitting the big screen! Annapurna Animation, who developed the film Nimona, will be developing an animated film based off of the game.

“It’s a buddy comedy about a cat and a robot, and there’s such a hilarious dynamic. So, there’s comedy inherent in this, but there’s not one human being in this movie. I think it’s one of the reasons why the game was incredibly popular,” says Robert Baird, Annapurna Animation boss.

Annual Diablo Expansions

Blizzard will be releasing multiple expansions for Diablo IV on an annual basis, with each year being broken up into quarterly seasons, with long-term storylines promised.

This roadmap isn’t unusual for developers, to space out new content on a regular basis. The 11 year long gap between Diablo III and Diablo IV has also been cited as a reason, and it’s hoped that this approach will help rectify that.

Season 2, Season of Blood, has been announced as part of GamesCon opening night.

Arcane Season Two!

Season two of Arcane, the Netflix animated series based off of Riot Games’ League of Legends game, will be premiering in winter 2024 (or summer for us Aussies). Woohoo!

And now for some upcoming games!

September 7

• The Dragoness: Command of the Flame – Switch
• Toss! – PC VR, Quest, PSVR 2

September 8

• Fae Farm – PC, Switch
• NBA 2K24 – PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch

September 12

• Eternights – PC, PS5, PS4
• The Isle Tide Hotel – PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch

September 13

• Heretic’s Fork – PC
• Super Bomberman R 2 – PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch

September 14

• Ad Infinitum – PC, PS5, XSX
• AK-xolotl – PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch
• The Crew Motorfest – PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO
• Heavy Duty Challenge – PC, PS5, XSX
• Sugar Shack – PC

That’s it this week in gaming news!

This week join the Zed Games crew of Zahra, Hazel & Peter, as they discuss the news hot from the News Press of Paul. Peter makes their Deview (debut review) with a review of musical shooter City of Beats, and Zahra takes second fiddle to a Lobster with a review of Frog Detective The Entire Mystery.

This week Paul takes Zahra and Caroline on a journey through Escape Academy, with a review by Zahra, and The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, with a review by Paul. Maylee brings it all together with the week in gaming news!

Who Wants Activision’s Transformers on Game Pass?

Does anyone remember those Transformers games for the Xbox 360 developed by Activision? The ones you can no longer buy digitally? Well, Hasbro has expressed an interest in bringing it up for the Game Pass. The problem? Hasbro initially claimed that it was because, “apparently Activision’s not sure what hard drives they’re on in their building. When a company eats a company that eats a company, things get lost…”

They did also follow-up with an apology for saying that Activision lost its Transformers games, stating that the comments were “made in error”.

Hasbro do really want Transformers on the Game Pass however, “Hope is that now that the deal is moving forward with Microsoft and Xbox they’ll go through all of the archives and every hard drive to find it all because it’s an easy Game Pass add.”

So, who knows?

The Last Of Us Knockoff Is Dead

A budget Switch game called The Last Hope: Dead Zone Survival, bore a striking resemblance to Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, down to the gruff-dad character with an Ellie-like companion. And as you can imagine, it did not last long, with the game being pulled from the Nintendo eShop, and the game’s trailers disappearing from YouTube.

The game’s trailers were less than awe-inspiring, and for those who decided to give The Last Hope a try found their hopes dashed when the entire game is around 20 minutes long and horribly buggy.

While the trailers being pulled can be clearly attributed to Sony submitting copyright claims, The Last Hope’s disappearance from the eShop might be due to caution from the developers, Sony themselves, or Nintendo covering their six o’clock.

Mutant Turtles Invade Minecraft

No no don’t worry, the sea turtles in Minecraft are fine. But our favourite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will be crossing over with Minecraft, which includes a special DLC texture pack featuring Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo, special maps for exploring the turtle’s favourite haunts, and you’ll even be able to battle enemies such as Shredder and Krang.

This is of course on top of the pizza-scented Xbox controllers we mentioned the other week. All leading to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film coming out in a few weeks. Hype!

Zoom Zoom Guardians

If you’re participating in this year’s Solstice in Destiny 2, you will be thrilled to learn that you can now use Sparrows in the European Aerial Zone, so you can get to the bad guys really, really quickly, and beat them up quicker than it took me to finish this story. Happy Solstice!

And now for some upcoming games!

August 3rd

• Adore (PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch)
• Flutter Away (PC)
• Tiny Thor (Switch)

August 4th

• Death Becomes You (PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch)

August 8th

• Gord (PC, PS5, XSX)
• Tower of Fantasy (PS5, PS4)
• WrestleQuest (PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch)

August 9th

• Legend Bowl (PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch)

August 10th

• Atlas Fallen (PC, PS5, XSX)
• Stray (XSX, XBO)
• Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical (PC, PS5, XSX, PS4, XBO, Switch)

That’s it this week in gaming news!

The Queensland Games Festival (formally known as Game On/GO 423) is the biggest celebration of games made right here, in sunny Queensland. Held on the 22nd of July at the Brisbane Powerhouse, this year Zed Games got to witness more games, more developers, more teams, and more interest in this wonderful event.

Our role? To host the Game Dev Hot Seat throughout the day, interviewing devs live on stage so that they may tell us all about their projects. With a massive variety of games, from narrative to first person shooters, to VR games to board games, and games that blend the borders between them all, at this year’s Queensland Games Festival we got to see it all! And after a long day of gaming, it was a tonne of fun to wrap up with an End Game session, with notable figures in the games industry duking it out against the game-master (with a bit of help from the audience!).

On top of that there were also a number of workshops, and discussions, such as the Emerging Developers Room, for those taking their first steps into the industry, and Gameloft Creative Kids, where children had the chance to meet the artists behind My Little Pony, and create some art of their own.

Missed out? Want to know what was shown? Got there and had so much fun and want to check out the games? Here you go:

Sea of Survivors by Nah Yeah Games

Verbal Void by EnderLost Studios

Crash Course Builder by Wombat Brawler

Go-Go Town by Prideful Sloth

Sumorbit by Tournameta

Frogreign by Arkanpixel

Fire Noodle Eating Champs by Jason Tam

Knight by Mark Baker

Isle of Feathers by Daniel and Juno

Ribbet

My Little Pony: Mane Merge by Gameloft

Bears In Space! by Broadside Games

AND Metal Evil, Halloween Cat-tastrophe, On Point VR, Maiwar VR, Curses and Covens, Gem Hunters, Battlemage vs MechaDinos, Scarlet Pages, and Fossil Diggers VR!

The Queensland Games Festival is made possible with government support through Screen Queensland’s Culture Funding program.

It’s a new week, so lets go #Glorbo
This week Zahra, Hazel and Caroline go (hedge) hog with gaming news, a recap over the who, what, where, when, and that of this years Queensland Games Festival, and then the team talks of the sadness that the lackluster new series of Sonic Prime brought them.

Zed Gamers, welcome to another week of audio glory!
This week Hazel’s organised a special treat, so with Cameron they welcome Jed Dawson & Finley (Fin) Cameron from Screen Queensland to talk how they can help YOU get your game and game creation career off the ground (paid internships now available)!
Hazel then talks Nova Lands and the problems with automation in gaming.
So fill in your forms and submit them by listening in, or head to your nearest podcast department and find us cowering under the desks of democracy.