Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- BAFTA Games Awards: All the Winners from 2003 to Today
- Clair Obscur Completes the Sweep by Winning “Best Game” at 2025-2026 BAFTA Games Awards
- Boss Fight Books to Get a New Look for Richard Moss’s “Age of Empires”
- GDC Awards: All the Winners from 1996 to Today
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Wins “Game of the Year” at 2025-2026 GDC Awards
Warp Zoned Presents
- Video Game Research Library
- We Pitched a Museum a 1993 Game Hint Line (And They Actually Said Yes) – Yarn Spinner (2026)
- The History Of The Word “Metroidvania” And How It Spread – A Critical Hit (2025)
- Creator of Hit Game Shovel Knight Is at a ‘Make or Break’ Moment – Bloomberg (2025)
- Shadow of the Colossus: An oral history – Design Room (2025)
- In 2005, games started rewiring our brains – The AV Club (2025)
Author: John Scalzo
Amazon launches Lumberyard, a free-to-use game development engine for PC and consoles
Amazon has been trying to break into the video game industry for years. First with their Fire Tablet, and then later with the Fire TV and the formation of Amazon Game Studios. But today the web retailer is going one step further with the launch of Lumberyard, a free-to-use 3D game engine that will attempt to compete with Unreal Engine 4 and Unity. Amazon also gave the green light to GameLift today, a paid service that offers assistance with “deploying, operating, and scaling session-based multiplayer games.”
Lumberyard is currently compatible with PC and console game development, and Amazon hopes to add support for mobile games and virtual reality experiences in a future update. In addition to a development environment that includes easy access to Amazon Web Services, the engine will be closely integrated with Twitch, the world-famous game streaming service that also happens to be owned by Amazon.
Some of Lumberyard’s other features include:
Create the Highest-Quality Games — Amazon Lumberyard helps developers build rich, engaging, world-class games—from a full-featured editor, to native code performance and stunning visuals, and hundreds of other features like performant networking, cloth physics, character and animation editors, particle editor, UI editor, audio tools, weather effects, vehicle systems, flocking AI, perception handling, camera frameworks, path finding, and more. Developers also have full access to Amazon Lumberyard source code, making it easy to customize the technology to create differentiated gameplay.
Build Live, Online Features in Minutes — Live, online games enjoy higher engagement and retention than offline games. Amazon Lumberyard’s visual scripting tool, with its drag-and-drop graphical user interface, makes it easy to build connected game features that access AWS, such as DynamoDB, Lambda, and S3. In minutes, game designers can create features such as granting a daily gift or sending in-game notifications without having to write a single line of code. Amazon Lumberyard also comes integrated with AWS’s C++ SDK to provide developers access to dozens of AWS services through native C++ code, the most common language used to make games.
Reach and Engage Fans on Twitch — Amazon Lumberyard is integrated with Twitch so that developers can build gameplay features that engage the more than 1.7 million monthly broadcasters, and more than 100 million monthly viewers on Twitch. With Amazon Lumberyard’s Twitch ChatPlay, developers can use a drag-and-drop visual scripting interface to create gameplay features that let Twitch viewers use chat to directly impact the game they are watching in real-time. For example, with Twitch ChatPlay within Amazon Lumberyard, a developer could build a game that lets viewers on Twitch control a character or vote on game outcomes using chat commands like “up,” “down,” “live,” or “die.” And, the Twitch JoinIn feature within Amazon Lumberyard helps developers build games that allow Twitch broadcasters to instantly invite their live audiences to join them side-by-side in the game, with a single click, while others continue to watch.
More information about Lumberyard and GameLift can be found at Amazon.com.
Blizzard celebrates their 25th anniversary with a message from co-founders Mike Morhaime and Frank Pearce
In 1991, Mike Morhaime and Frank Pearce launched Silicon & Synapse, a game development studio that would go on to obtain global recognition under its current name, Blizzard Entertainment. Morhaime and Pearce (along with Allen Adham, who is no longer with the company) started small, developing puzzle platformer The Lost Vikings and racing game Rock N Roll Racing before moving on to the first game in the Warcraft series, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.
Blizzard’s take on the real-time strategy genre helped shape the future of the company (and the video game industry as a whole) in ways that no one could have imagined. You can draw a direct line between that game and all of Blizzard’s subsequent projects including Diablo, StarCraft, World of Warcraft, Heroes of the Storm, and Hearthstone.
So to celebrate all of the monumental things the company has done in the last 25 years, Morhaime and Pearce recently sat down to narrate a thank you to their fans. They reminisce about the past, they’re proud of the present, and they look to the future and the next 25 years.
Blizzard’s next game, the hero shooter Overwatch, will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One this Spring. The developer will also release World of Warcraft’s sixth expansion, World of Warcraft: Legion, sometime this Summer.
Dark Souls III’s Opening Cinematic is appropriately dark and somber
From Software’s Dark Souls franchise has a deep and engrossing backstory that I am woefully unequipped to discuss in any depth. However, that didn’t stop the developer from releasing the Opening Cinematic for the upcoming Dark Souls III. And even without any knowledge of the nuts and bolts of the series, I can still see the beauty in the dark and somber short film.
Dark Souls III will be released for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One on April 12.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Dark Souls III
N++ is in development for Steam and Metanet is “looking at other platforms” as well
Metanet Software’s Raigan Burns recently put in an appearance at NeoGAF to confirm that N++ will be available for the PC (through Steam) very soon. According to the developer, there’s still “a few more months of work” to be done before the devilish clever platformer can be released for the PC, but the team is also “looking at other platforms” (presumably the Xbox One) too:
The good news: we’ve found a new programmer, and they’ve been working on porting N++ to Steam for the past month or so. There are still a few more months of work — we want to add all of the planned post-launch-update stuff that got put on hold when our team imploded — but we will definitely be bringing N++ to Steam. We’re still looking at other platforms too.
Anyway, thanks for your continued support…
N++ originally launched for the PS4 last Summer, and it was honored in our 2015 Golden Pixel Awards with a place on “The Apocalypse List” as “[one of] the games we’d keep playing if we had all the time in the world…”
Insert Quarter: A Brief History of Platinum Games
Insert Quarter is our showcase for some of the best and most interesting writing about video games on the Internet.
Platinum Games plans to release Star Fox Zero, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan, and Nier: Automata in 2016. That’s a lot of games for one studio to handle, but after celebrating their tenth anniversary this year, they’ve clearly earned our trust.
Eurogamer’s Rich Stanton goes a step further and makes the case that Platinum Games might be the best Japanese developer working today. He believes the company’s unbroken string of classics (including MadWorld, Vanquish, Bayonetta, and The Wonderful 101) is nearly unmatched and that their fierce independent streak will always produce interesting results. You gotta admit, it’s kind of hard to argue with him:
[I]n recent years, Platinum Games has positioned itself as a standard-bearer for the Japanese industry, adopting the slogan: “Taking on the World as the Representative of Japan.” President and CEO Tatsuya Minami unpacked this, in a post to celebrate 10 years of Platinum Games. “Japan used to lead the worldwide video game industry, but we can’t help but feel that it has lost some of its vitality in recent years. Yet we are using this state of affairs to motivate and inspire ourselves […] We will keep up our fighting stance.”
The full article is available for your perusal at Eurogamer.
Return of The Dragon… Bruce Lee has been added to EA Sports UFC 2
EA Sports has announced that Bruce Lee will return to the Octagon this March as a competitor in EA Sports UFC 2. According to the sequel’s official website, players can use their fists of fury to unlock “The Dragon,” or they can skip all that work so long as they own a copy of the original EA Sports UFC:
Three Ways To Unlock Bruce Lee
1. Get EA Sports UFC
Fans who own EA Sports UFC and purchase EA Sports UFC 2 will get Day One access to Bruce Lee for FREE. Play as the martial arts legend in the Welterweight, Bantamweight, Featherweight, and Lightweight divisions.2. Beat Career Mode
Fire up your copy of EA Sports UFC 2 and start fighting! Complete Career Mode and get inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame to unlock the martial arts legend for play in the Flyweight, Bantamweight, Featherweight and Lightweight divisions. Beating Career Mode also unlocks legends Mike Tyson, Bas Rutten, and Kazushi Sakuraba.3. Subscribe to EA Access
Don’t own EA Sports UFC but want access to Bruce Lee when you pick up EA Sports UFC 2 starting on March 15? Subscribe to EA Access, download EA Sports UFC from The Vault and you’ll qualify to get Bruce Lee in EA Sports UFC 2.
EA Sports UFC 2 will be released for the PS4 and Xbox One on March 15.
Posted in News, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged EA Sports UFC 2
Broncos defy Madden NFL 16’s prediction with a win over Panthers in Super Bowl 50
The number 13 is definitely unlucky for EA Sports as the publisher’s annual Super Bowl prediction (their 13th) came up short once again.
A Madden NFL 16 simulation held a week ago predicted that the Carolina Panthers would beat the Denver Broncos in the final seconds of Super Bowl 50. However, Denver’s Von Miller had other plans. The linebacker, and Doom enthusiast, tallied 2.5 sacks and forced Cam Newton to fumble twice. His defensive prowess earned him Super Bowl MVP honors.
Even though his team won in real life, Peyton Manning’s digital doppelganger put up considerably better numbers than the actual quarterback. It seems likely that the insurance pitchman (I’ll probably never be able to eat Chicken Parm without humming that stupid song) will announce his retirement in the next few months.
Better luck next year EA, and congratulations to the Denver Broncos on their 24-10 win over the Carolina Panthers. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to spend the morning watching the new Captain America: Civil War commercial over and over again.
TitanFall 2 is very likely getting “a dedicated single-player campaign”
TitanFall 2 still hasn’t received its official unveiling yet, but Lead Writer Jesse Stern shared some more details about the game with Forbes this past weekend.
First, Stern (or someone connected to Respawn) told Forbes that TitanFall 2 will have “a dedicated single-player campaign” (the original TitanFall was multiplayer-only) and then he delved a bit deeper into the story of “global colonial warfare” that Respawn wants to tell:
“So we are doing our best to deliver a vision of grand global colonial warfare retelling the story of the American Revolution and the American Civil War in space. We imagined the next generation of immigrants moving out to the new frontier of an inhabitable planet. Rather than taking a traditional sci-fi approach to that we wanted to look at how that would happen practically, what the ships would look like and with machines that were designed for excavation and construction, demolition and working the land, and what happens when they are turned into instruments of war.”
In addition to his work on the game, Stern also admitted he’s working with Lionsgate to turn the TitanFall franchise into a television series. “We are trying to find a way to tell a story in the worlds we want to be in and produce in the TV model,” Respawn’s CEO, Vince Zampella, added. Any show with skyscraper-sized mechs duking it out on the battlefield will be very expensive to produce, so it might be a while before we see it.
But if all goes well, EA expects to release TitanFall 2 for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One later this year or sometime in early 2017.