Yearly Archives: 2014

Vainglory Hits the App Store in the Southeast Seas

Vainglory SEA

Super Evil Megacorp has announced the start of Vainglory’s global release, starting with the Apple App Store in Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.

Vainglory runs on all iPads from generation 2 and up as long you have iOS 6.1 or above. More devices and regions will be planned for release soon.

The announcement added:

We want to take this opportunity to thank all our early players in select Southeast Asian countries where we’ve been testing the game for the past few months. The feedback and support has been amazingly helpful, and there’s already a vibrant community in the forums with nearly 20,000 pre-launch posts. We would not be here today without our founding players. Thank you.

This is a big moment for us as a company. But most importantly, it’s a big moment for our players on our journey this far. This is the true beginning: Vainglory is live and the battle has begun!

Dragons & Titans Business Model Transition Interview

By Blair Nishkian (Tagspeech)

Answers by Scott Brown, President of Wyrmbyte

 

Dragons and Titans Model Interview

I recently had an interview with Scott Brown, the man in charge of the team for Dragons and Titans, a popular MOBA game.  With the explosion of various MOBA titles all over the internet, competition has never been more fierce.  In this brief interview, Scott talks to me about an alternative payment method for the usual “cash shop” approach to supporting these games financially.  Where it would have once taken a player hundreds of dollars to unlock all of the game’s premium content, Scott describes the new system, in which players pay a flat rate and receive all of the game’s content now and forever.  It sounds vaguely familiar.  Like something from the distant and mysterious past.

 

Could it be that we’re seeing a return to form for pricing and marketing when it comes to online games?  Perhaps one day we’ll live in an age where we can just pay admission and enjoy the theme park, instead of having to drop tokens whenever we want to use the bathroom, look at a duck, ride a rollercoaster, or ride a rollercoaster with up-to-date safety inspections?  Being stopped to get charged for things you want every ten steps is a bit tedious.  Scott and his team believe they’ve found the solution.

 

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B. Olivia: Alright.  So, I understand Dragons and Titans has a new pricing model that was made in response to ‘pay-to-win’ allegations.  Can you tell me a little more about that?

 

Scott Brown: Sure, I would not say it was made in response to pay to win but that certainly was something we wanted to address.  We came up with the idea of the Titan Pass after talking amongst ourselves about how would we want to pay. It was really more about if we were players of the game what would be the most appealing approach to payments. We really liked the idea of being able to play the game for free, but when we decided to pay it would be more appealing to unlock everything instead of the more common micro transaction approach of buying smaller things one at a time.

 

B. Olivia: And do you believe that’s a better way of doing business in general, for these types of games?  A flat rate for all of the content?

 

Scott Brown: I’m not sure I would go as far as its better for all games like this, we just thought it was the right fit for our game and that it reflected what we think is a really great value to players. Now when we announce a new dragon, weapon or skin we announce it from the stand point of “check out this new awesome item in game” instead of “look at this new thing we want you to buy” It just feels better for the kind of game we want to be.

 

B. Olivia: I’m sure most players can get behind that.  Do you think that overall sense of “buy our stuff” in online games has gotten a little out of control in recent years?

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Scott Brown: It is certainly an odd change in how players perceive value in a game. When you think about someone spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a game compared to spending a flat amount for a very high production value game like Diablo III or Call of Duty, it got us thinking about how we want to spend money on a game. It was time to try something different.

 

B. Olivia: It sounds like we’re coming full circle a bit.  So, do you think more indie or obscure games necessarily need microtransactions to survive?

 

Scott Brown:  I’m not sure if its related to being indie or not. I think there is a great market for the twenty dollar game, for example on Steam right now. Lots of those games do really well. And you look at big companies like King who only do micro transactions so its certainly not just for the little guy.

 

B. Olivia: Indeed.  Maybe a balanced approach is best.

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Scott Brown: The business of micro transactions is one of percentages. You need to feed a huge number of players into your game, a small percentage play and a small percentage of that percentage pay.

 

B. Olivia: If there’s anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up, feel free!

 

Scott Brown: I think really for us this is an experiment with a game we really love and and have put a ton of time into as a very small team. We don’t have the reach of a bigger title, but we hope that when people hear what we are trying it maybe stands out as a different way of approaching free to play that might be interesting to them. We are just starting to see the results of this change, some players love it, others wish the old model was still there so they could just buy specifically what they want. We will continue to release content and show value to this approach and hopefully it proves out in the end.

 

B. Olivia: Well, best of luck with the new approach.

 

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To learn more about Dragons & Titans, check out our profile including a review from earlier this year.

The Witcher: Battle Arena Closed Beta Preview

By Remko Molenaar (Proxzor)

 

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Lately the mobile phone has snagged a larger portion of quality game development than ever before. As technological limitations are pushed further back with each generation, the potential for better graphics and more complicated gameplay elements become a reality on the go. The Witcher: Battle Arena is a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena or MOBA for short that tries it luck at the mobile platform. Since this hybrid between moba genre and mobile platform is still rather untouched, bringing a major franchise name like The Witcher seems like the ideal way to capture a huge potential audience. I couldn’t wait to see if The Witcher: Battle Arena lived up to the hype.

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Many gamers and especially fans of the RPG genre should be familiar with The Witcher. There have been several games about this popular story from the Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski. And the next The Witcher is also highly anticipated by RPG fans, including myself. The Witcher is one of the few RPGs that takes its time to ensure maximum quality. Thankfully the same studio behind the standard franchise, CD Projekt Red, is responsible for the mobile iteration as well. Their passion for quality and attention to detail makes it clear they do what they do for the joy of it, and not just to make a quick buck.

Anyway, let’s not focus this article about the game studio itself. The Witcher: Battle Arena is currently still in limited closed beta testing. I was among the limited group allowed in, and most people I’ve talked to aren’t even aware this game exists. Right off the bat when I went into the practice mode, my eyes were met with solid graphics and responsive gameplay controls that could make any MOBA fan drool. When you think of how fast-paced MOBA games are, it can be difficult to imagine how responsive a mobile edition could be between clustered UI and wifi latency. To my surprise the touch controls of TWBA felt more responsive than the typical keyboard and mouse set-up.

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Most of the characters you have met in the first and second game of The Witcher franchise can be found represented in this MOBA, each with a skill set harkening back to their unique skills and charcter. Characters are equipped with three available skills, and a weapon that alters their gameplay style. I was a bit disappointed to not find the series star, Geralt, on the roster, and settled for his best friend Zoltan to get my fix. The small but mighty dwarf is not afraid of any challenge, and he is known to never disappoint an ally in need. His three skills were a knock-up, a sprint, and a blade spin type of attack. The type of guy that sits on your face all day, absorbing all your skill shots to ensure you die slow and painfully while providing nothing of value to your teammates. Sticking to a target to enact this role was far easier with the mobile controls than expected.

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In MOBA games you usually have a couple of lanes, with towers and minions helping you out. In TWBA, the genre takes a less conventional approach. First of all there aren’t any minions roaming on the map. Due to small screen resolutions, last hitting would likely be quite a challenge, so I can understand this decision. Also having fewer moving components on screen at once will give players packing phones from a few generations ago a chance of not overheating while suffering major graphical lag. The far more radical decision was removing towers from the equation as well. Instead players have three different capture points that are the primary objective of control to gain victory. As you’d expect from similar modes on PC mobas, holding two to three of these control points long enough leads to victory. Killing enemy players in the process can help speed the process up, but likely won’t net points equal to what the control points offer. Each team starts with around 500 points, slowly but surely these points tick away. Controlling more points than your opponents offers your team a damage buff, helping keep the underhand in each exchange. As such team play to out maneuver and overwhelm the advantaged team is key to turning the tides to rake in the extra money and rewards offered for victory.

Currently there are only two maps, and both have the same concept, albeit a different layout. There are also two game modes, free to play and ranked. With ranked you will fight for your own rank, in matches with similar mechanics but typically a more serious atmosphere. Those not getting the hang of things or just unfamiliar with mobas can also opt out of PvP to practice their skills against bots.

Since the game is going to be free to play, there is going to be a cash shop. In the cash shop you will be able to buy different looking skins, and different weapons. These do not give you extra bonuses, and are only visual in nature. But games like League of Legends and DOTA have proven how successful such moba shops can be.

 

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Conclusion

The Witcher: Battle Arena is still early in the closed beta phase, and for now CB Projekt Red isn’t talking about a release date. From what I have seen and the amount of games I have played, I imagine quite a bit of potential for growth as its gameplay is ideal for the average gamer. At this point most everyone that would be into gaming owns a smart phone, and most all of them should be capable of playing Battle Arena without issue. If you are a fan of arena games in general, and looking for something a bit more competitive than the typical trading card game, keep an eye out for news on The Witcher: Battle Arena’s release. It’s extremely fun, and there isn’t much else like it out on mobile devices yet.