Today, May 21st, marks the release of ZA/UM's Zero Parades, the studio's Disco Elysium follow-up arriving following years of drama and turmoil surrounding the original game and the people who made it. So, naturally, one of numerous Disco-like games which have sprung up over the past few years has chosen that day to put out a new trailer, while also shouting about having recruited another former Disco Elysium developer.
Many fantasy games deal in the prospect of sacrificing things to gods, but few dramatise the associated exciting logistical pressures. Say you want to chuck a bunch of virgins into a volcano at regular intervals, to stop the regional Vulcan pulling a Pompei. Well, how are you going to procure an adequate supply of vestals, if you keep incinerating the very means of production?
Perhaps you can obtain some from the nearby villages, in return for some steel wire from your furnaces. Ah, but the nearby villages don't want any wire; they're desperate for fish. Fine: sell the steel wire to the villages on the coast, that they may haul in a big catch and sell it to the inlanders, so they can flog their spare virgins to you. What happens when the other villagers run out of virgins? That's their problem. As Valve like to say, we cannot be held responsible for the business decisions of third parties.
While in the midst of not great financial times at the moment, Ubisoft have revealed plans to have new Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Ghost Recon games out at some point between now and early 2029. Boss Yves Guillemot is touting this to investors as signifying an incoming turnaround following "one of the most ambitious transformations in the company’s history", which is corpospeak for taking a bunch of money from Tencent to rearrange some corporate chairs, delaying or cancelling a bunch of games, and laying off staff.
The biggest videogames are taking longer to make, according to Diablo 4 lead engine engineer Marcin Undak, and one consequence is that there are fewer junior openings at industry dreadnoughts like Blizzard and CD Projekt, because companies prefer to hire juniors right at the start of development. This isn't ideal, Undak suggested, because "the best teams" have a healthy mixture of crabby old wizards and sparky bantlings. OK, he did not call anybody either a wizard or a bantling. Maybe next time.
The day that all of you Civvers have been hoping for is here. Firaxis have been promising Civilization 7's Test of Time update for a while now, and as I write these words into existence, that very update is available for you to download, complete with the most requested feature, the ability to play as one civ for a whole campaign.
Arc Raiders devs Embark have announced that they're going to be rolling out Denuvo anti-cheat software as part of efforts to limit the amount of dodgy behaviour going on the shooter. The studio said they'll be working to minimise any impact this has on performance, as they also deliver a new trader and weapon as part of a small update teased when they revealed the game's switch to bi-annual major expansions.
Valve have revealed a round of changes to the tags which can be applied to games on the Steam store. The ones designed to give you a brief idea of the genres or themes you're in for if you opt to give any specific game a go, as well as grouping together similar works. 17 new tags have been added as a result of this rather substantial revamp, while 28 have been consigned to the scrapheap, and merging or updating several others.
