Games Cheats and Reviews

Koku writes: "When the masses demand gruel, give them gruel I say. Alas, Green Day: Rock Band is upon us. This is what happens when the unsavory becomes common and appreciated. If game developers have learned one thing it is that giving consumers something other than the same rubbish will likely result in them turning their noses up at it and firmly fastening their velcro wallets. We often revert to what they know such as the generic and ultimately forgotten FPS which comes out each month. The critically acclaimed more than often bow to the pretty and stupid. While I understand it is natural to be frugal, or even cheap, at some point you would hope that people would wake up."

The wildly popular online game World of Warcraft is riddled with irreconcilable rivalries.

There is, of course, the conflict between the Alliance and the Horde, the cornerstone of the game’s narrative that pits half of the almost 12 million WoW players against the other.

But in a different battlefield, game developers and security researchers work to protect the world’s largest massive multiplayer online gaming community from the growing ranks of hackers determined to plunder every last Troll and Night Elf.

The study polled developers from around the world, asking over 400 developers questions about their salaries and state of employment.

More after the jump.

MCVUK: "There is not one person at Naughty Dog whose only job is to mange other people. We have very little hierarchy."

At the DICE conference in Las Vegas, Naughty Dog co-lead game designer Richard Lemarchand outlined the company’s "loose" culture and structure, which eschews management hierarchies in favor of communal empowerment.

He said, "The only way to get the best out of game developers is to let them work for themselves, to trust them to do a good job. There is no-one at Naughty Dog with the job title of ‘producer’, no-one who is solely a manager."

He said the firm’s culture was very much like a volunteer work ethic, a "do-ocracy". "Individuals choose roles for themselves. The responsibility is on the people who actually do things, rather than people arbitrarily chosen to manage. The strongest networks of leadership are built on trust."

Gamersmint writes: "Downloadable content, these days, is becoming a crutch for game developers to lean on for earning some loose change (a lot of loose change in fact). We all know of Capcom’s infamous Resident Evil 5 multiplayer DLC stunt. While Ubisoft has not fallen to that level, ‘Battle of Forli’ still reeks of heresy."

The best of the best. The 100 games you must play.The greatest. PC Gamer love lists. They love arranging things in order of excellence. Some might say their entire reason for existing is to attach a declarative number of quality to the hard work of thousands of game developers. On with the show!

CC: The news that recently hit us, is that Final Fantasy XIII is in-fact 32.6GB of movies, and just 6.8GB of actual gameplay. And Volatile games, developers of the upcoming Dead to Rights: Retribution have said that some game developers would prefer to create movies instead of games.

Since its launch in 2006, the PS3 has had a rather rocky relationship with third-party game developers. However, after years of disappointing PS3 ports, development studios seem to be making the switch to help ensure an equal experience on both platforms.

Gearbox Software is one of the few game developers that actively promotes itself via its own community site Gearboxity. This week the site has posted up their own interview with the developers behind the upcoming second Borderlands mini-expansion Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot.

This particular release was due in part to player suggestions for things like more storage of items in the first person shooter. Wave-based gameplay was yet another request so designers came up with the idea of a coliseum that players would enter and deal with waves of different enemies. While the console versions are due out soon there’s no word yet on when the PC port will be released.

CN: "That said, with these seven video game companies (both developers and publishers) you can feel shameless about buying their products. Granted, they’re in the business to make money, not save orphaned baby seals or anything like that. Unlike so many other companies, though, these guys have displayed time and time again that producing good video games takes top priority. Many of their games have earned them riches and success, but at the end of the day, you can feel a little more safe that your hard earned money is going towards bigger, better games in the future."