Cpvr

Former Bethesda, BioWare, and Naughty Dog developers have joined forces and unveiled new US-based company Near Studios. The studio is led by CEO and creative director Heather Cerlan, formerly lead 3D artist at Amy Hennig and Juliam Beak's Skydance New Media studio. She previously held senior art roles at the likes of Wizards of the Coast's Archetype Entertainment, Bethesda Game Studios, Naughty Dog, and EA. Joining her as co-founder and game director is Jason Richardson, previously lead designer at Funcom, having also worked as systems and gameplay designer at the likes of Bethesda and BioWare. Among others, the pair has hired Skyrim's lead designer Bruce Nesmith to "lend his extensive sandbox systems expertise" to the studio's debut project, Hawthorn, that has apparently been described by early players as "an intimate Skyrim sandbox meets a Stardew Valley village simulation." Richardson commented: "In Hawthorn, everything – from crafting to adventuring – is centred around a living village of NPCs and your co-op friends. We want to evoke the nostalgic joy and wonder of shared adventures, much like the timeless stories and simple pleasures that connect us across generations." source. Gamesindustry

NCSoft and Amazon Games' Throne of Liberty earned over 3 million players within its first week, the companies revealed. The MMORPG released on Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S on October 1. Collectively, that player count translated to 24 million hours of playtime. Amazon's MMO launches For some comparison, Amazon's 2022 MMO Lost Ark opened to 1.32 millionplayers in its launch weekend, and New World had over 700,000 players on launch day. Both first launched solely on PC. "We’re so pleased to see the results as players join the game," wrote Amazon Games VP Christoph Hartmann. "We’re only getting started, and we have a series of updates planned, including our first castle siege coming soon." Amazon acquired Throne & Liberty's publishing rightslast year, which covers North and South America, Japan, and Europe. The game is Amazon's third major MMO behind Lost Ark and New World. In August, the publisher lost an MMO when Bandai Namco announced its plans to scrap Blue Protocol early next year and killed Amazon's previously established deal to publish the game outside of Japan. Despite Blue Protocol's loss, Amazon plans to publish several games in the future. Along with the next Tomb Raider from Crystal Dynamics, an open-world driving game from its in-house team Maverick Games, and a Lord of the Rings MMO with Embracer. source: Gamedeveloper

I’m currently listening to Aye by Mr Swaggg

It’s pretty good! I’ve been watching it since season 1 came out. It’s currently one of my favorite shows.

I’m currently listening to Same day by Belly gang Kushington.

I have 4 tattoos and they all mean something to me. I have my daughter’s name tatted on me, my dad’s nickname and “east coast” tatted on me. I also have the word Karma tatted on my neck.

Once you cheat, the relationship is over and there’s isn’t a way to fix the relationship.

Honestly, Whiz khalifa’s “till I see you again” always makes me cry and P’diddy’s song “i need a girl.” I need a girl makes me cry since it was one of my dad’s favorite songs and he passed a few years ago. It gets me everytime. Will dempsey’s “beat you there” also gets me emotional.

N’sync and Backstreet boys had a lot of good songs. I also like Boyz ll men.

I’m currently listening to I try by OMB peezy.

True, but he still has that power punch. Just because he’s old now doesn’t mean anything.

Yes, I could survive working under a time frame especially crunch time. I actually have experience working on games. I’ve worked on three different browser based games in the past, so it wouldn’t be too tough for me in a role in like this.

That’s how I usually get my hair cut. I get a 0 on the side and a 1 on the top. You can only see my balding when my hair is long lol.

Future Trash has raised $5m in its seed round of funding. As reported by GamesBeat, the firm says the funding will support development of its "flagship IP", FOAD, on UEFN. FOAD began in 2022 as "an ambitious indie game built in Unreal Engine 5" before, in March 2023, the team began building in UEFN. Today, it boasts around 20m unique players and 1bn minutes of playtime across games like Bomb Tycoon, Respawn Zone Wars, and Boom: Boss Battle. The funding - led by TIRTA and General Catalyst - will support the development of a further 15 games over the next year. It will also use these funds to boost its social media presence. "Creating a standalone game is really a blank canvas, whereas there are some limitations in UGC, but we believe limitations foster creativity," said Kevin Marciano, Future Trash CEO. “UGC platforms provide the infrastructure and tools that typically makes game development long and expensive… As a developer, it allows you to focus on what matters most, the content. The biggest challenge of building original IP in Fortnite is educating the audience that this is a unique world within Fortnite. "The majority of the current player base is still there for traditional Fortnite, but we are excited to be a leading part of the evolution of the platform and its players to enjoy diverse experiences," Marciano added source.Gamesindustry

It’s been quite the year for gaming industry exec Pany Haritatos. Last month, he quietly closed an oversubscribed $28 million Series A for his new game studio startup Series Entertainment, according to an SEC document and confirmation from the company. Investors include Netflix, Dell Technologies Capital, with follow-on investments from seed investors Andreessen Horowitz, BITKRAFT, and F4 Fund. This comes after launching the company only a year ago with a healthy $7.9 million seed led by a16z. In between, he’s already made an acquisition. Series bought mobile game studio Pixelberry in July, best known for its interactive fiction game Choices: Stories You Play. Series, also known in the industry as Series AI, is on a mission to create video games using LLMs and GenAI. But more than that, it’s gunning to be the new Unity, powering legions of game developers. Haritatos and team have created the Rho Engine, which uses GenAI to help game developers build games speedily. One can be skeptical that LLMs will really be the panacea to humanity that its loudest proponents claim. But gaming is definitely one of the areas that AI is glowing up. Instead of designing everything from characters to elixir bottles, game developers can have AI step in to do that work and to make games more interactive than ever. NPCs can turn into rich, fully developed characters that, for instance, haggle with the gamer. Players can be given vast, perhaps unlimited, capacities for customization. And so on. But to do all that, developers need AI-enhanced game engines. Series bills Rho as the first AI-native, multimodal full-stack game creation platform – meaning it handles visuals and audio. To be fair, there are other AI gaming engine competitors out there including, for instance, Modl.ai Engine, and Unity’s Muse Chat. But Rho says it sits in a different spot. Modl.ai performs tasks like bug catching, or identifying reasons why the games are crashing. Series views Muse Chat as more of an AI assistant. Rho, the company says, is intended for full-stack game development. Source; Techcrunch

I’m currently listening to NHC Murda - November

Iron Meat is a run-and-gun arcade shooter that immerses players in an apocalyptic future overrun by "The Meat," an iron-ravenous mass mutating everything in its path. Blast your way through retro-inspired stages and bosses to uncover the shocking horrors behind secret experiments on the Moon.

No, I have two personal gmail accounts that I use. I also have two business email accounts that are tied to my website and it has a pretty good spam filter.

I didn’t like fried gizzards when I was younger, but now I like them for some odd reason.

That’s too expensive for me and I wouldn’t get a bank loan for it. I’ll eventually just shave it all off instead of doing my normal fade haircuts.

I would love to get one too!

It would be absolutely boring. Music is awesome and I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t listen to it.

Jake Paul doesn’t stand a chance in the ring with Mike tyson though. Tyson has way too much power and he can easily knock out Paul.

Nope. I haven’t ever taken a lie detector test. I’d refuse if I had to take one.

I love eating out at restaurants, but I do prefer homemade food more. Especially chicken alfredo and Baked mac n cheese!