GTA 5 screenshots show lovely lifestyle activities, anyone for a spot of tennis?

The GTA 5 screenshots we’ve seen so far look like they’ve sprung out of an adventure holiday pamphlet. There are three empty picture frames left on the Grand Theft Auto 5 front page. Perhaps the screenshot releases will mirror the arc of the announcement trailer. We’re in the idyllic phase right now, it’s all tennis and hang gliders and lovely views, but beneath this serene suburban lifestyle robbers are plotting heists, weapon dealers are stocking up on RPGs and someone, somewhere, is planning to steal a fighter jet. Get a sense for the peaceful flip side of all that with these three new GTA 5 screens.

Far Cry 3 hands-on: battling bandits with friendly bears and Komodo dragons

Last week I had the chance to dive into the refreshing waters of Far Cry 3 at Gamescom. I was given free rein of a portion of the world map. I fought Komodo dragons, drowned, fled a shark, trashed bandit bases, crashed a multitude of vehicles and annoyed half of the jungle’s wildlife. This is the story of my Far Cry 3 safari.
I start in a small village, five or six buildings and a few idle, wandering locals. There’s a man in a dirty shirt waving at me. I guess he’s the obvious demo clue, so ignore him and start chasing a monkey. The monkey gets stuck into some foliage (probably a bug) so I go shopping. Wandering into the local corner shop, an old lady sells me a scope and super-large magazine for my AK-47. She appears to be out of kit-kats. Looking at the menu, I can carry my knife, grenades and two weapons – at the moment. My secondary weapon appears to be an SMG. I test this on nearby bushes.

I win $50 off the man with the dirty shirt in a knife throwing contest and look around for something else to do. My in-game map appears to all be messed up and the developer tells me that the local bandits have scrambled the local radio frequency. I don’t really understand what that has to do with my map, but I really don’t want to miss The Archers so I hop in a jeep and start barreling up the hill. Straight up the hill. The developer looks a little perturbed as I rev between the trees. I burst out of the bushes in front of a bandit jeep. The bandits doubletake and hop in their jeep to chase me. I handbrake turn past them, which sends them off the wrong way down the hill.
At the radio tower, I hop out of the jeep. In the distance, I can hear the confused shouting of bandits. Each tower, the developer tells me, is a puzzle. This starting one is easy, but climbing them gets progressively more difficult throughout the game. I run quickly to the top and tear out the jamming device from the control box. Like Assassin’s Creed’s high points, when you’ve uncovered one of these points, you can see the world around you, revealing optional quests in the surrounding area in a short montage. From here, I can see an intruiging ruined tower, the local bandit base and a hang glider.

Ooh, and lots of animal icons have appeared on the map. The developer is telling me how if I defeat the local bandits I’ll free the native tribe who’ll be eternally grateful and give me glorious gifts. Whatever. I’ve just spotted a komodo dragon icon on the map. I love komodo dragons. For the non-herpetologists, they’re 11 foot long man-eating lizards with a fatally toxic bite, a throwback to a time when were little rats being eaten by dinosaurs. I must see it. I hop back in the jeep while the developer’s still talking and head off in the opposite direction to the bandit camp, straight over a sharp drop. The vehicle falls through the trees, bouncing off the hillside all the way down, and lands surprisingly undamaged on a road. I quickly skid the jeep across rickety bridges and dirt roads to the approximate location of the komodo dragons.
I skid to a halt and walk into the jungle. I stop. Over the headphones, I hear birdsong. And yet more bandits, who must have found my jeep. And, yes, over that way, a faint hissing noise. I walk closer towards it, through the undergrowth, slowly closing it down, step by step. At which point two four-foot long komodos burst out of the undergrowth, hissing like split pipes. They’re only babies at that size, but the speed of their charge is terrifyingly realistic, and I unload my AK at them. They swarm me, and nearly kill me. I run through the foliage, bandaging my arm frantically, past a surprised looking bandit. He’s about to fire on me when the Komodos close on him. I turn and empty the clip at all of them. Five seconds later one bitten bandit and two komodos lie dead. I actually feel guilty for a moment about biodiversity. Then the developer tells me I can turn their skins into ammo bags.

My impromptu safari done, I decide to investigate the bandit camp. The hanglider disappeared from the map when I got down from the radio tower’s vantage point, but I remember it was near an old fort tower, so I razz the jeep back up the hill. I do a complicated parking manoeuvre on two bandits at the tower and spot the hang glider on a ridge just below it. I run down, shooting men as I go. Shooting men, whilst fun, is the least interesting part of the game. The open world exploration is just joyous.
The hang glider, in particular is such a nostalgic throwback to the first game. I remember using Far Cry’s level editor to create the highest possible map with a single hang glider on top of a mountain peak, so you could just spiral down past the foliage. This hang glider is positioned to overlook the bandit camp. I push off and pull up immediately so I’m drifting slowly way above the camp. The camp’s on a promontory and there’s a sniper on the roof, with a clear line of sight down both approach roads. Hmm.
Ooh. Over in the water, there’s a patrol boat. If I can take that over, I can sail it close to the camp and unload its turret gun. I wait for it to pass me and swoop down. Delusions of grandeur overtake me. I am Batman. I am the terror in the…
…deep. Crap. I missed the back of the boat by a foot and instead landed on a bull shark just behind it. Right. I’m now under a boat with a giant angry fish and I’m running out of air. Fleeing as fast I can with Jaws hanging onto my leg, stabbing my arm with morphine, I pop out of the water on the front of the boat. In front of the turret gunner. Sadface.

The game respawns me back at the hanglider. This time I ignore the boat. I just swoop down immediately, picking up huge amounts of speed, and aim for the roof of the base. Because I started so high up I’m going scarily fast when I jump off, but I miraculously survive. Irecover more quickly than the sniper standing next to me, so shoot him, then crouch down and unload my submachine gun, then the AK at the enemies trying to storm the roof. After thirty hectic seconds, they’re all dead, and the natives drive up to take control of the base. The developer has been looking shocked all this time. “I didn’t think you could land on that roof,” he says.
Right. I’m getting a taste for this now. I can see that my minimap is telling me that there’s a relic out at sea. The developer tells me it’s really hard to get to without the breath upgrade. I shrug and try anyway, swimming out (still terrified that Jaws is out here somewhere), and then diving off a reef, down, down, deep into the rusted hull of a container ship. I spot the relic and grab it, then get lost trying to get back out. I black out, hands waving at the blue sky so near. Except that my inventory says I still have the relic. Hmm.
I’ve forgotten where I parked my jeep so I take a handy Trabant. It’s surprisingly fast and I almost lose control going over the wooden bridges on the way to the next roadside camp. This has two entrances, one vehicle and a sneaky pedestrian one around the back. I crash the Trabant into the back door, then while the bandits are running that way, sneak around to the front gates. The noise of my crash has panicked a pack of bison which are running around madly inside the base. Strangely, the bandits have got a black bear in a cage in their base. I still feel guilty about murdering those Komodos, so I decide to shoot the door of the cage open. Welcome to the party, Yogi.
The bandits are just walking back, when Yogi runs out. Together me and Yogi clear out the base. Then Yogi runs off and chases bison in a kind of mad bear frenzy as arriving natives open fire. Inside the base, It’s carnage. Yogi gets a couple of the bandits, a couple fall to my SMG, and one manages to escape both of us but turns up later dead with a jeep parked on top of him. Nothing to do with me. He’s dropped a nice sniper rifle, though. I toss the SMG aside.

I hop back in the Trabant and head for the next Radio Tower. Climbing that (much more shakey and tumbledown), I quickly unlock it and spot the next bandit camp. This time, I find a zipline at the top of the tower, and take it down. At the bottom is a strangely glowing ATV. I climb aboard and it turns out its carrying medical supplies. I’ve got to rush it to the nearest native village via a series of handy waypoints within a few minutes or someone will die! Or at least, he’ll die and respawn and I’ll have to replay the mission. The ATV handles terribly, but I manage to plough into the native village sideways before crashing it into the sea. Mission complete! I am winning at safari.
I now have no vehicle, but the bandit camp is only in the next cove so I decide to swim for it. I stick close to the coast to avoid meeting Jaws again, and emerge on a sandy beach covered in debris. Climbing the steep shoreline, I pull my sniper rifle out and sneak up to the ridge. This base is much better defended. It’s got clear lines of fire in all directions and seems relatively well-manned. I line up a shot but am attacked from behind as I pull the trigger. There’s a grunting, but I can’t see what it is. the developer tells me it’s probably an angry Warthog. I run, but not before my alarmed gunshot alerts the scout I was trying to kill. Scattered shots pepper the foliage around me.

Clever girl!

I lose the pig and start sneaking around to the opposite side of the base at a low crouch. The bandits lose sight of me, and one wanders into the shaking bushes I came from. There’s a commotion. He’s found the warthog. As his friends look on in confusion, I throw all my grenades into the base. All of them. Half the enemy dots on the minimap disappear. I snipe another two, switch to the AK and sneak up on the nearest barricade. I stab one guy from behind (gruesomely, the knife goes right through him), machine gun another, and jump into the base. There’s one man left and he starts muttering to himself in terror. I climb higher and higher and jump down onto his head. Thanks to a random head-stomping perk I picked up earlier, he goes down.
The area of the map I played was about 1/20th of the full game. On this showing, it’s big and emergent enough to give Just Cause a good run for its money. And you get to run away from animals of many and varied sorts. Safari, so good.
N.B. The game didn’t look as good when I was playing it as these screenshots do. I’m not calling them bullshots, but they must have been taken on amazingly high-end PCs. With Photoshop installed.

Max Payne 3 DLC to add new multiplayer modes, map and black and white mode for free

Rockstar Games have announced that the next DLC pack for Max Payne 3 will see the grizzled, alcoholic gunman rendered in noir-ish black and white. The new Disorganized Crime Pack will give an even moodier look to the game, which is hardly sunshine and rainbows as it is.
Visuals aside, the free DLC will leave the single player campaign unchanged while adding the Hoboken Rooftops map, new multipliers for Score Attack mode, Lone Wolf AI (more aggressive enemies) and Headshots Only mode to the game’s multiplayer.
The Disorganized Crime Pack will be available on August 28, and will look like this:

World of Tanks 8.0 screenshots show updated graphics and Soviet tank destroyers

No less than 23 screenshots of the upcoming 8.0 update for World of Tanks have popped up on the Overlord blog showing Russian Tank destroyers “SU-100М1, Uralmash, SU-122-54, and Object 263 on various maps.” The screens also show off the extra layer of visual polish promised by the World of Tanks 8.0 trailer a few weeks back. Sadly, the one thing they can’t show is the new physics system which will allow tanks to conquer steep slopes, and finally let us ram artillery of their clifftop perches. Revenge will be sweet.

The Secret World developer Funcom confirms “temporary layoffs”

More harsh news in game development today: The Verge reports an unknown number of employee cutbacks occurring at The Secret World developer Funcom.
“Funcom is in the process of reducing operational costs, and this process includes temporary layoffs as well as other initiatives,” a company statement said. “As we are currently in the middle of this process, we can’t provide any further comment at the present time. Rest assured, we have long-term plans for the company, and we remain fully committed to all our games.”
The Secret World’s mixture of monsters, mythology, and conspiracy in modern times formed an appealing setting for MMO players seeking an alternative to playing as elves with long ears and stabbing dragons repeatedly in the kneecap. Yet, middling Metacritic scores cropped up after the game’s July 3 launch. Our own review highlighted TSO’s “innovation, atmosphere, and charm” but lopped points off for weak combat and a shackling structure.
An investor update released earlier this month revealed Funcom’s dissatisfaction with The Secret World’s reception among critics and subsequent share price slump, saying, “Funcom is of course disappointed with achieving such a Metascore. A game like The Secret World, which isn’t based on a well-known brand, is normally dependent on positive press reviews to achieve successful initial sales, in addition — but not limited to — other factors such as word-of-mouth.”
What do you think? Did poor review scores keep you away from The Secret World?

War of the Roses beta impressions

War of the Roses does not look much like the paintings of the real War of the Roses. In the paintings, everyone has lined up neatly to take turns sticking lances and arrows into each other’s faces. Maybe that’s how it actually went down — I don’t know what happened on those soggy English fields — but I imagine parts may have looked a little like the game: herds of lopsided footmen crashing into each other, recklessly heaving blades to and fro while archers struggle to hit the right-colored roses.
Fatshark and Paradox’s multiplayer medieval warfare game is not easy. The closed beta began last week, and like many other new players, I do a lot of spinning, swinging at nothing, and getting stabbed in the face. But I’m getting better, and I’ve familiarized myself with the four class presets: footman, crossbowman, longbowman, and footknight. See how I fared with each in the video above.

Footman

The footman is the first available class, and for a few rounds I fight like I’m swatting at a bee in a dark room. I swing erratically and stumble in circles hoping someone will accidentally run throat-first into my sword. I’m a berserk sword monster.
Eventually I learn how to time my strikes with the rhythm of my opponent. I still miss a lot, but at least my attacks aren’t random. I also learn how to charge forward for a bash attack, but wind up smacking into friendlies as often as enemies. I hit my teammates a lot, actually…they should duck more.
When I unlock the crossbowman class, I decide it might be safer for everyone if I back away from the sword-swinging game.

Crossbowman

The crossbow is easier to wield, but requires just as much patience and precision. Reloading is very slow. It’s faster if I hit the spinning notches with my left mouse button, but still slow. Each shot must be careful, and one shot doesn’t influence the next. Even if anyone actually stood still long enough to shoot at twice, I can’t tell where my arrows are going unless I hit someone.
When I do hit someone, my arrows usually go “tink” off of their armor, and I see a blue number. It’s nice when a yellow number lets me know I struck flesh.
When a swordsman lumbers toward me, the scene completely diverges from those medieval paintings. I don’t stand to face him, crossbow raised. I turn and run. I might slice him up with my secondary sword, but it’s more likely that he’ll trample me, and trying to hit him with a crossbow bolt is a terrible idea when I only have one shot before a long vulnerable reload.

Longbowman

With the longbow, there’s no more slow cranking reload, but my arrows follow a much more dramatic parabola. I can see where they’re going a little better, at least, and when I’m brave enough to approach the battle, I can admire my hard work: the feathered tips sticking out of my enemies’ arms, legs, and heads.
I’ve found that the best tactic is to wait for the enemy to bunch up before rapidly dealing out a barrage arrows. Bunching is especially common in Conquest mode, where players gather around a flag to capture it, and that’s when I get most of my arrow kills. It’s not how I like to get kills, though.
Shooting into packs is effective, but I much prefer the satisfaction of a good shot. Sticking a mounted knight as he gallops across a field is the best scene in the archetypal medieval war movie I’m playing out in my head. I wish I could see my arrow’s trajectory just a little more clearly, but other than that, it’s the class for me. I especially love the sound effects: the creak of the tensing bow and the thwack of a freed arrow.

Footknight

The final class preset is better armored than the others, but lacks a shield. His longsword can be nasty, but he often loses to custom classes with polearms, which are annoyingly deadly. As with the footman, I’m circling and side swiping, often missing or clanging off of armor.
It may be telling that my favorite classes, the longbowman and crossbowman, are the most analogous to the first-person shooter experience. The translation of free-form swordplay to a mouse and keyboard is much trickier to master than the ubiquitous shooter convention. It might be simpler if everyone stood in a line like the paintings tell us they’re supposed to, but instead I’m trying to swipe and stab moving targets while circle-strafing. It takes a lot of patience to learn how to reliably land strikes, but it is possible — other beta players are already proving that.
War of the Roses releases October 2, and $30 pre-orders became available today. The beta build is as rough as the learning curve — it sometimes refuses to refresh the server list, for example — and the interface isn’t especially slick, but it’s being updated regularly and may look different at launch.
With the Mount & Blade series and the upcoming standalone Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, the relatively small medieval combat genre is planting firmer roots in PC gaming. As a sufferer of gun fatigue, I support this trend.

Diablo 3 Patch 1.04 interview with Jay Wilson and Andrew Chambers

Diablo 3′s 1.04 patch is rolling out onto live servers today, bringing with it 100 new levels of advancement, big buffs to legendary items, and an angelic host of class buffs. I got a chance to chat up Blizzard about the philosophy behind the changes in this patch and going forward, and why it’s okay for Diablo’s heroes to be overpowered.
PC Gamer: Most of your balance changes, you’re kind of taking the approach of leaving everything that’s overpowered, and making everything else just as overpowered. Which isn’t how it works, usually, in a game like World of Warcraft or StarCraft 2.
Jay Wilson, Game Director: I think Diablo is a very different game than World of Warcraft or StarCraft 2. It’s a lot more of the player against the world, and a lot of the goal of the game is to make sure that the player feels awesome. So, as a game, we’re a lot less concerned that the player be perfectly balanced against the environment. We’re kind of okay if the players run roughshod over the monsters. We don’t want the game to be unchallenging, but, you know, being a little overpowered is kinda what Diablo’s always been about.
And it was our plan, even before the game came out. We said, hey, you know, when the game comes out, we’re probably gonna catch a bunch of stuff that we think is really exploitative and bad. Just some things you can’t see until the game goes live. And we’re probably gonna jump on those really quick and try and fix them. But overall, our philosophy is gonna be: try to bring everything up to a higher level rather than balance through nerfs.

Andrew Chambers, Senior Game Designer: I mean at the end of the day, a fallen grunt doesn’t go home after being beaten up by a player and complain to his wife about it or something. You know, “Oh man, there was this barbarian and he just crushed me with Hammer of the Ancients, and I couldn’t do anything!”
JW: And even if they do, you know, they’re demons. We’re not really sympathetic to their plight.
PCG: Invulnerable minions, you mentioned, is getting the axe. I actually tried to give them my own axe many times and they didn’t ever seem to want to take it. What do you think was the core flaw with that particular affix, and when did you know you were just going to have to pull the plug on it?
AC: So, some of the philosophy behind the monster affix is: when a player first encounters it, to be challenged by it and find it really hard to overcome. And then, as they keep on playing and get better gear, as they understand their class more, that they’ll eventually overcome that affix. Invulnerable minions doesn’t work that way. When you first encounter it, it’s really hard. And then when you encounter it for the 800th time, even though you’ve upgraded your character with a whole bunch of gear, it’s still really hard. It just doesn’t scale well with the rest of the game, so it just doesn’t fit. It’s a frustration point we just don’t need players to experience.
PCG: So, the buffs to Legendary items, I mean, looking at the previews you guys have put out it’s looking like straight 30 or 40 percent DPS increases in some cases. With a change that big, I kind of have to ask: Why weren’t legendaries this powerful, or at least closer to this powerful, when the game came out?
JW: There are a couple factors in there. One of them was, when we were making the original game and it was all internal, the environment that we were tuning the game in–even the environment that the entire company was playing, and the environment that went out with the beta–it didn’t represent, kinda, the live environment. A lot of times, before you can go live and literally have millions of people playing the game, you’re somewhat guessing.
Some of our legendaries felt really good … but there were a couple things that we were worried about being overpowered that we were too conservative on. And it really kind of made the legendaries feel bad. And those were things like our approach to handling weapons. So a lot of the weapons didn’t have the DPS that they really should have. Before we released the game, we were really thinking, ‘A weapon’s a lot more than just its DPS.’ It sounds retarded to say that now. Like, really? No, weapons are only DPS! And we kind of knew that, but we didn’t put the right amount of weight on it.

There were just some things like that, that once you get it into the live environment, they catch you off-guard. And that was one of them. But it’s really worth mentioning that, primarily because a lot of the legendary weapons weren’t good, or there were a lot of legendaries that weren’t pushed out to max item level, it really became [in the community], ‘All legendaries are terrible.’ When, really, in actuality, there were a lot of really good legendaries. But there were still some missing. And I think that last piece was kind of putting in things that made legendaries, not better than other items, but different from other items. And that was just a misstep on our part. We really should have that in to begin with, but we didn’t, and we’re fixing it now.
PCG: Are there any plans to make changes to the rare tier to kind of fill in the power gap that was left from buffing legendaries?
AC: These [legendaries] pull from the same sort of stats as a standard rare most of the time, but they just tend to be exemplary of what the best could possibly be. So there actually are, maybe, even rares out there with the same or similar DPS numbers. But the key here is that, like Maximus has the same or similar DPS as another two-handed sword… but that other two-handed sword doesn’t summon a freaking demon.
PCG: You guys are obviously tracking a lot of metrics, and a big one you’ve been talking about is the popularity of a skill. Like, in the Demon Hunter update you talked about concerns with Hungering Arrow and Elemental Arrow being overused. But how do you guys go about distinguishing whether a skill is overused just because people like it. Like, hey, I want to be an archer, so obviously those are the two skills I’m gonna use… and being popular because it’s mechanically the best choice.
JW: Really, you do that by playing the game. There are certainly skills that we looked at and said, ‘Well, this skill is under-utilized.’ But then we also thought, ‘Yeah, but that skill is for a very specific build.’ Like, if you’re gonna be a battlemage wizard, there are definitely certain skills that you’re gonna use. And if you’re not gonna be a battlemage wizard, you know, you’re not gonna use those skills. So those skills are going to be a minority of skills used, but they don’t necessarily need buffs.
So what you look at is: are there viable builds out there? Are people actually playing builds that are viable and fun with these skills? And then you look at a skill that gets a lot of use, like the two you mentioned … and that makes a lot of sense to me. On my demon hunter, I do use both of those skills, not because they’re overpowered, but because I like the direct fire nature of them. They make me feel like what the class is all about. And so we try to take that into account.

PCG: The Paragon system, that’s obviously a pretty big deal. What would you guys say is the power difference, in terms of just character stats and assuming identical gear, between a fresh level 60 player and a Paragon 100 level 60 player?
JW: What was it, about an item slot and a half?
AC: Yeah, it’s about one item slot to two, depending on which slot you [compare it to.] It’s a fairly significant bump for players to get up to Paragon 100. You’ll definitely see an increase to your overall DPS, your block value, your armor…
PCG: And does it affect normal and hardcore characters exactly the same way?
AC: Yes.
PCG: Have there been concerns at all about how the Paragon system might interact with future regular level cap increases, like with expansion-type stuff?
JW: A little bit. I mean, it was definitely one of the things we discussed when we discussed the system. We had to decide whether we wanted to add attribute points to it or not. And at the end of the day, we kind of feel like we already have a difficulty problem. We have a difference in our community about… there are some people who think Inferno is too hard. There are some people who think it’s not hard enough, or it’s just fine. And those groups of people are never going to see eye-to-eye. It’s not like the “real” players are all saying it’s fine and the “noobs” are saying it should be easier. We have a lot of hardcore players who are saying this is too hard, and it’s not fun.
So I feel like we have a difficulty issue that we need to address, and I think we can address. I’m not gonna say how because we’re still thinking and talking about it. I think if we can address that, it kind of solves a lot of issues we have with other areas and how we tune the game. So, long story short, yes. But I think we can compensate for it. I’m not too worried about, like, in the future if we raise the level cap or we release an expansion. I think we can account for it.
AC: We were probably actually going to have that problem anyway. We have players who just hit level 60, right, and they’re just stepping into Act I Inferno. And their gear is equivalent to that. And then we have other players who are farming Act IV, and there is a pretty distinct disparity between the item levels of those players. So, you know, we would have that issue anyway. It wasn’t really worth saying, ‘No, we won’t add any attribute points.’ It’s also, like, next year’s Andrew’s problem.
[Both laugh.]
JW: Yeah, it’s easier when you’re like, ‘We’ll totally fix that later!’

PCG: Before we wrap things up, what would you guys say is the most ridiculous Inferno Act IV build you’ve seen around the office that maybe wasn’t viable before 1.04, but will be very effective after 1.04?
AC: A pet witch doctor. It doesn’t seem like it should be that ridiculous, but the way the game was kind of tuned before, it was actually really hard. You know, now a player can play a pet witch doctor in Act IV Inferno and it’s actually really viable.
JW: A barbarian that doesn’t have five defensive skills.
AC: [Laughs.]
PCG: That’s the one I’m looking forward to trying, yeah.
JW: Although, you know, I will say that I think 1.04… we’ve made some efforts to address difficulty, which mostly will make the game a bit easier, but overall I don’t think it addresses the difficulty problem. Which is what I got at before: we have two groups of players, and they’re both right. The players that want a game that’s more challenging, or they want the game to stay challenging… they’re not wrong. That’s what they want, and they’re OK to want that. And then there are players who don’t see Diablo as that style of game.
So that’s a problem we need to address, and I don’t think 1.04 is quite going to address it at this point. But I think we can, in the future.
PCG: Thanks for talking to us!
Both: Thanks!

PopCap co-founder: Company leadership are “only ones culpable” for layoffs

Today’s “say it ain’t so” news involves PopCap releasing about 50 employees at its Seattle offices and investigating the shaky future of its Dublin, Ireland branch. Now, PopCap co-founder John Vechey took to the keyboard with an official blog post explaining the decision with unusual clarity.
“In the past year, we’ve seen a dramatic change in the way people play and pay for games,” Vechey wrote. “Free-to-play, social and mobile games have exploded in popularity. That happened fast. Surprisingly so. The change in consumer tastes requires us to reorganize our business and invest in new types of games on new platforms. It’s a completely different world from when we started.”
“There’s also an economic component to the reorganization. To stay in business, we need to manage costs, improve efficiency, and maintain a profit. We’ve been able to invest in creative new games like Peggle and Plants vs. Zombies because we had a high profit business. That business is challenged, and if we don’t adapt, we won’t be able to invest in new IP. That sounds harsh — but if we don’t stay in business, no more plants, zombies, jewels, frogs, or worms.”
Vechey later tweeted a followup thought to the employee departures, saying, “PopCap’s leadership, especially and including myself, are the only ones culpable for this sad news.”
We’re saddened by the layoffs at PopCap. It’s refreshing, however, to see a developer breaking bad news with such candor, rather than burying it in an obfuscating haze of corporate jargon.

Spec Ops: The Line gets free co-op DLC

Publisher 2K Games announced today the addition of a two-player cooperative mode in its sandy third-person shooter Spec Ops: The Line, a handy opportunity to grab a friend and wade into the roiling sandstorms of post-catastrophe Dubai. Bonus: It’s free!
Spec Ops’ free co-op update entails “four fast-paced missions, each with its own unique objectives, environments, and playable characters,” according to 2K’s announcement. It accompanies both the single-player and competitive multiplayer modes with even more heads to plug bullets into, randomly exploding objects, and occasions for over-the-headset fist-bumps.
Spec Ops: The Line released on June 26 and follows the dirt-streaked Captain Martin Walker as he grapples with a critical Delta Force mission among Dubai’s wrecked streets — more than enough reason for adopting the tried-and-true human shie…er, buddy system.