Warp Zoned Presents
Video Game Canon- Angry Birds, Dragon Quest, FIFA Soccer, and Silent Hill are the World Video Game Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026
- 2025 GOTY Scoreboard: In Progress
- 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”
Warp Zoned Presents
- Video Game Research Library
- How a Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game – The New York Times (2026)
- Spore: An oral history – Design Room (2026)
- 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)
Most Recent: Articles
Shenmue III sets record for most-funded video game on Kickstarter with a few hours to spare
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and its record-shattering $5.545 million crowdfunding campaign was only able to hold on to the record for a month as Shenmue III‘s Kickstarter campaign surpassed it this morning. And fans still have a little more than five hours to add to its tally (currently sitting at $5.9 million), and further cement its status as the most-funded video game in Kickstarter’s history.
Game Director Yu Suzuki recorded a message for Shenmue’s many fans, thanking them for their support and inviting them to a special live broadcast to celebrate the end of the campaign. The livestream, which begins at 7:00 PM (Eastern Time), can be viewed at Twitch.TV/shenmue3official. Suzuki will be joined by Animation Producer Hiroaki Takeuchi, Main Character Designer Kenji Miyawaki, and other special guests.
And after that comes the hard part… waiting for Shenmue III’s December 2017 launch on the PC and PS4.
UPDATE: Shenmue III’s Kickstarter campaign closed with $6,333,295 in pledges, nearly a million dollars more than Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.
Posted in News, PC, PS4
Tagged Shenmue III
Daily Scoop: July 17, 2015 – Just one sad t-shirt today!
It’s not that the t-shirt is sad, dear readers. It’s that there’s just one of them, and it’s so lonely.
There’s a Paradox Interactive weekend sale happening over at Humble. Cities: Skylines is $19.99, Pillars of Eternity is $29.99, and Europa Universalis IV is $7.99, among others.
You still have some time to get the Alien Franchise on sale over at Steam. Their Daily Deal is Out There: Omega Edition. You can pick it up for $6.69 or get the game and soundtrack for $10.04.
There’s just one lonely t-shirt today! (more…)
Posted in Daily Scoop
Xbox Store Today: So Many Me, No Time To Explain, SlashDash
Three brand new side-scrollers for the Xbox One make the Xbox Games Store a very retro-tastic place to be today.
So Many Me, which is available for free to Xbox Live Gold members, is a puzzle platformer that puts players into the fluffy shoes of Filo and his “band of misfit clones.” Using this mass of green puffballs, players will hop from platform to platform in a fight against an “ancient, malevolent evil.”
No Time To Explain is also a puzzle platformer, but it asks players to “blast through time” to rescue their imperiled future self.
Finally this week, SlashDash stars a quartet of “adorable” ninjas in a two-on-two local multiplayer game where players will slash, dash, shoot, and teleport their way to victory.
More information on all three of these games can be found after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, Xbox One
Tagged No Time To Explain, SlashDash
Gearbox’s post-Battleborn game is “extremely different” from everything else they’ve done
Randy Pitchford continued his tear through the Develop Brighton conference by telling IGN that his company’s next game will be “extremely different” from everything else they’ve ever done:
“It depends on how you define soon,” he said when asked if a reveal was imminent. “You’ll see it before the end of the generation! In some ways it’s extremely different to what you’ve seen from us. Astonishingly so. In others, you’ll see how we’re taking advantage of what we’ve learned.”
Gearbox is currently hard at work on Battleborn and plans to release the “hero shooter” later this year. So that means this “extremely different” new project is likely a few years out, though Gearbox has been working on it since at least 2013, when it was first mentioned by Pitchford at PAX Prime 2013.
Develop Brighton has kept Pitchford very busy as the Gearbox CEO also revealed that the company has begun preliminary work on Duke Nukem 5 and Brothers in Arms 4. It’s unknown where these two games fit into Gearbox’s schedule, but they’re looking to partner with at least one outside development house to produce both titles.
Posted in News
Bethesda says Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim paid mods “didn’t pan out”
Yesterday, Bethesda’s Pete Hines sat down with GameSpot to talk about the paid mods feature that came to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim back in April. Whether it was due to the ludicrous money revenue split that resulted in modders only receiving 25% per, the lack of quality control, the fact that modders where stealing assets from one another, or simply the fact that people had to suddenly start paying for things that used to be free, no one seemed to like Steam’s paid mod feature. Needless to say, the monetization model proved controversial and received criticism from nearly every corner of the Steam and Skyrim communities.
As a result, Bethesda suspended the program almost as soon as it started, amidst accusations that the Art of the Catch mod was using stolen assets from another mod. In his conversation with GameSpot, Hines explained that Bethesda came up with the idea for allowing modders to charge for their mods after receiving a request from the modding community:
“We had creators who said, ‘I’ve been asking for donations for years and never saw anything, and I made more in one day.’ So why would I not support that?”
In addition to probing Hines about the fairness of the revenue split, GameSpot also asked if there was any way the program could come back. Hines diplomatically said it was possible, but that the company was focused on “bigger fish” (like Fallout 4) at the moment:
“I honestly, genuinely, don’t know what it means for the future. It was an idea we worked on with those guys for Skyrim; it didn’t pan out. It came back down.”
[…]
“I think our stance on it is we’re going to re-evaluate it going forward. I think that we feel like there is a case to be made that people who spend a lot of time working on mods ought to be able to have a way of monetizing what they’re doing.
[…]
“Honestly, [we have] bigger fish to fry right now than sorting that out.”
Even if the program returns in some form, Todd Howard, the Game Director of Fallout 4, previously said (to Kotaku) that there are “no plans” to add paid mods to Fallout 4.
Posted in News, PC
Tagged Fallout 4, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Batman: Arkham Knight stands watch atop the best-selling games list for June 2015
Rocksteady’s Arkham trilogy went out with a bang last month, and it looks like a lot of fans went along for the ride, as The NPD Group has confirmed Batman: Arkham Knight was the best-selling game for June 2015.
Aside from the problems with the PC version, WB Games had a pretty good month as four of the publisher’s titles placed in the top ten. Newcomer Lego Jurassic World joined Arkham Knight near the top of the list in the #3 spot, while The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (#4) and Mortal Kombat X (#8) held over from May. NPD’s Liam Callahan told GamesIndustry.biz, “Warner Bros. Interactive is the top corporate publisher so far in 2015, with dollar sales growing 217% versus the first half of 2014.”
But WB Games wasn’t the only company having a nice Summer as Bethesda has a hit on their hands with The Elder Scrolls Online. It was also a good month to be a squid as Nintendo’s Splatoon held strong at #5, and became the only platform exclusive to crack the top ten.
The industry as a whole should be very happy about last month’s sales as consumers spent a lot more than they did last year. Overall sales were up 18%, $869 million versus $734 million, over June 2014. And that includes increases in hardware (+8%), software (+21%), and accessories (+34%).
The complete top ten list of best-selling games for June 2015 can be found after the break. (more…)
The Flock will live as long as its players do this Summer
The Flock is a “first-person asymmetrical multiplayer horror game” from Dutch developer Vogelsap (it literally means “Bird Juice) scheduled for release this Summer. Players will be divided into two groups, The Flock and The Carrier, as they battle for control of the Light Artifact…
The Flock is a first person asymmetrical multiplayer thriller game for three-to-five players. All player start out as monsters, called the Flock. When the coveted Light Artifact is grabbed by one of the players that player transforms into the Carrier, and the hunt begins.
The Carrier is slower, smaller and more vulnerable. It has to protect itself from the Flock that try to gain the Artifact for themselves, using the intense light that is emitted from the Artifact. The Flock are vulnerable to the light, and will burn to death if they don’t stand still when shined upon. If a Flock stands still, it will turn into stone and be safe from the light.
If one of the Flock succeeds in attacking the Carrier, that player will turn into the new Carrier, and the attacked player returns as one of the Flock. The player that can stay being the Carrier long enough wins the game. The gameplay in combination with the dark and ghastly atmosphere makes for a thrilling psychological experience.
However, Vogelsap has an interesting plan to turn The Flock’s PC launch (via Steam) into a limited-time event this Summer. Each time a player dies, their lost life from be subtracted from The Flock’s total population. When the game’s population reaches zero, the game will permanently go offline and, though players who have already purchased it will get to participate in a “climactic finale.” This could take years… or it could take days.
“A multiplayer game can take players to incredible heights, but at some point gamers will start to play less, get disinterested and stop playing altogether,” said Jeroen Van Hasselt, the Creative Director of Vogelsap. “In opposition to other multiplayer games, we want The Flock’s experience to inspire a sense of awe, to keep players eagerly anticipating what is coming next and to end with a memorable climax.”
The Flock will be playable at this Summer’s Gamescom expo as part of the Indie Arena Booth.
Posted in News, PC
Tagged Gamescom 2015
Daily Scoop: July 16, 2015 – New Kickstarter bundle at Humble
Humble has a brand new weekly bundle, and this one’s the Kickstarter Edition. Pay what you want for Guns of Icarus Online Collectors Edition, AR-K, and Full Bore. Pay more than the average to unlock Among the Sleep and Retro Games Crunch. Pay $13 or more to unlock Lords of Xulima and Warmachine: Tactics.
Steam’s Weekend Deal is on the Alien franchise. You can get Alien: Isolation for $12.49, Alien: Colonial Marines for $3.74, Alien vs. Predator for $3.74, and more. The Daily Deal is Gear Up, which is free-to-play. You can get the basic version for $7.49 or the premium version for $14.99.
There aren’t too many shirts today… (more…)
Posted in Daily Scoop