Valve’s Source game engine may be nearly four years old, but the price is right — anybody who buys a single Source-powered game can download the Source SDK for free, via Steam. (Didn’t know you had it? Check your “Tools” tab in Steam.) Valve has also used their online delivery system to keep their game [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Though we suppose nothing is ever truly set in stone, when Valve VP Doug Lombardi has a hunch about a company decision — and president Gabe Newell speaks as if that decision had already been made — chances are good that their forecast will prove accurate. What am I referring to? Merely the news that [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, September 23, 2008
During a particularly insightful interview regarding the company’s future plans, Valve Software’s Gabe Newell told 1UP that while the company plans to support the PlayStation 3 more and more over time, they “don’t have the bandwidth” to work on bringing either Left 4 Dead or Team Fortress 2’s much-lauded downloadable content and achievements to Sony’s [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, September 17, 2008
With a rumor swirling around our fair internet this morning that Google was preparing to buy Valve “any second now,” the speculators at The Inquirer certainly had the games industry in a tizzy. The games media, in turn, did their homework, and Valve’s Doug Lombardi denied such rumors to several sources in no uncertain terms. [...]
Continue reading...Monday, September 15, 2008
EA may have their own digital distribution mechanism, but that won’t stop Steam users from spectacularly splattering alien guts all over North Korea’s top-secret island military installations. Through a partnership between Crytek and Valve, Crysis and its expansion pack-cum-sequel Crysis Warhead are now available for preorder on Steam at $40 and $30 respectively. The full [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Game achievements have come to affect our favorite pastime on many levels. Achievements are being added to a growing list of game genres, and their rise is leading to raging debates on both industry and enthusiast fronts: What in-game objectives ought to merit achievements? How can games best be designed with achievements in mind? What further rewards can be tied to achievements to enhance their effective use in games? How much worth do game achievements truly have? In order to better approach these and other questions, GameCyte consulted a professor of psychology and a game designer, whose research into defining player types and motivations in modern gaming may help us all understand why achievements have become such a massive phenomenon.
Continue reading...Monday, August 25, 2008
Valve, delaying a game? Say it ain’t so. Unfortunately, it is so, as Valve has announced today that Left 4 Dead, their co-op zombie-blasting survival shooter, will be releasing a few weeks later than anticipated. The new release date is set for November 20th, 2008, landing on the 10th anniversary of Half-Life, the game that [...]
Continue reading...Friday, August 22, 2008
It’s not that we don’t appreciate your readership, but what the hell are you doing here?! Don’t you know that you could be playing Team Fortress 2, for free, right now? Valve is allowing everyone to download and play TF2 for the entire weekend, to let folks drop in and sample the all-new Heavy Update. [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Honestly, when Valve announced yesterday that the all-new gameplay mode for Team Fortress 2 was nothing more than a team deathmatch mode, I was a little disappointed. Especially given that the new mode is one-death-and-you’re-out, which is really kind of a detriment to those of us who aren’t that great at staying alive for more [...]
Continue reading...Monday, August 18, 2008
On Friday, Valve updated the post on their Heavy Update page which listed the new achievements for everyone’s favorite minigun-wielding Team Fortress 2 class. This new update replaced all of the “Coming Soon” placeholders with actual descriptions of what the achievements would entail, thus drawing our speculation contest to a close. All told, roughly 50 [...]
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Monday, September 29, 2008
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