iGame Radio

PopCap Games has launched an auction of cool and unique PopCap art pieces on eBay whose proceeds will support two nonprofit organizations. Launched last week, the auction will continue through July 12 in a series of weekly auctions.

The collection includes a 6 foot-by-6 foot DJing Plants vs. Zombie painting and other sketches, a Zuma-themed ceramic tea set, a Peggle-themed ceramic sake set, original hand-drawn concept art from several PopCap franchises, and more. There will be nearly 40 one-of-a-kind items up for bid, each representing a piece of PopCap history. All of it is for sale with 100% of the proceeds benefiting the Starlight Children’s Foundation (U.S.) and SpecialEffect (U.K.) to help children with serious illnesses and their families cope with their challenges.

The items will be auctioned in four waves of nine items each available for just 7 days. The first week’s worth of items will finish bidding in just under an hour, and the amounts show how much fans are interested. The personalized sketch that will be done with input from the buyer post auction opened bidding at $1 and was well over $400 yesterday. The second week’s bidding has already begun, so bid early and often!

South Korean games publisher Playbean has released the iOS game Second World War. An arcade style strategy game, you play a top-down campaign against the axis powers on each screen, tapping your soldiers and bombs onto their tanks and bases. There are three difficulty modes that you must unlock in succession. Capturing all of their bases will win each campaign. The game is available for iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad for $1.99. The YouTube video below shows detailed gameplay action.

Avadon: The Black Fortress has also been released for iPad. Spiderweb Software’s first foray into the iOS platform with it’s new old-school RPG was released last Friday. We will be very interested in finding out how this game translates into the all-touch screen of the iPad. Travel into the lands of Lyneaus as you seek to maintain the unstable Pact while discovering why warriors of Avadon, the Black Fortress, are being killed. The game is available for $9.99 from the App Store.

Finally, Breitling has announced the availability of a free flight-oriented game for the iPad and iPhone called Breitling Reno Air Races. Based on the National Championship Air Races in Reno, the game let’s you take the helm of an airplane of your choice, flying with gyroscopic controls and tactical elements. There are three modes including multiplayer, customization, and planes from the WWII era up to modern T6 class. Though the game promises various courses, there seems to be only one oval course at the moment, but the biggest praise so far is for the 3D graphics.

Editor’s Note: Our intern Ben Heindel is ending his time with us. But before he goes, we thought we’d post one of the articles that he wrote as a guest column. This is in response to the interview given by Gabe Newell of Valve Software, in which he stated that he was interested in employing a game system where payment was based more on how good players are to each other, rather than the value of the games themselves.

Would you want to pay more for not being fun to play with? Valve Software founder Gabe Newell, in an interview with Develop Online, talked about a concept for how to set up a new purchase system to reward kinder players with discounts and even free games, and hamper annoying players or griefers by forcing them to pay more or even make them pay to use other features of the game that are normally free. Really this sounds great but the chances for problems to crop up are quite numerous.

Would the execution of this system be worth it for Valve to implement it at this time? There are a few ways that this could be executed. It could be an automated process based on how quickly people leave after you showed up in the game or on your profile views or something along those lines. But any automated system can and will be abused after people do the number crunching and find out the conditions. Maybe Valve could go the route of a ranking or point system, allowing the players to decide who is good and who is bad with votes and such. But once again there is the same issue of abuse, but this time it is cranked up to 11 with an overall inability to save customers from being raided by the same trolls that they are trying to avoid.

Will Valve or other companies connected to Steam expect this plan to create a steady form of income compared to the current model? With the possibility of free games on a larger scale, smaller developers will see a falling out in income to support their projects. In the case of larger publishers, they probably won’t be very happy about having their games prices lowered for various people who just happen to be good in their little community. Also, if Valve starts increasing the charge for certain games then gamers will turn their money elsewhere instead of paying through Steam. There will also be the people who do get the benefits being the litmus test for who are Steam’s “best community members” which may make a wider slash in the community then the Marianas Trench. With the added power, some players may get very arrogant, turning them into less likable individuals…all the while, others will keep these players up there regardless of if they are still as likable as they were before for personal reasons. This may cause the general gamer population to look at these players as the kind of person the Steam community likes, making them avoid steam and move to another platform of distribution.

Another issue that could occur might come from personal attacks. There are many kinds of communities that may use this as an excuse to attack people that they don’t like. There is the side of communities that believe in very specific rules, whether its immature communities that think everybody are jerks to uptight communities that don’t believe in that whole “playing the game for fun” business. Then there are the individuals who take many games too seriously; attacking players en-masse would cause a massive chance of collateral damage of people who just want to have fun playing the game.

Overall this seems in the same vein as trying to keep everybody equal; in theory it sounds like a great idea but there will always be someone to make it a pipe dream, only looked upon with positive light by the top leaders and bright eyed teenagers who don’t look at the plan hard enough. At its worst Valve would be playing Teacher to everybody in its community; rewarding good kids and tattle tales with treats and gold stars and giving the bad kids and misunderstood kids time outs and making them stay in from recess. There are times when the conventions of industry need to be challenged, there are places where it requires major overhauls to get it into order. This is neither the time, nor the place, to try.

 

What’s inside this episode:

• Omaha Sternberg interviews Chris Wright, CEO of GamesAnalytics, a data mining and monetization company serving online videogames. We talk about what GamesAnalytics offers, what kind of data game developers gather and review, and how data and gamer privacy can intersect.

G5 Entertainment has released Jack of all Tribes for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. In this time management game, you take Jack back to prehistoric times to help a tribe set up their village, keeping them happy with food, drinks, and entertainment, and protecting them from natural disasters and enemies. At the same time you get to introduce new technology to the and locate artifacts to help you get Jack back to his own time. Strategy is involved in making it through all 40 levels. The game is available for $2.99 for iPhone/iPod Touch, and $6.99 for iPad.

But G5 isn’t finished there. They’ve also released the time management game Dress Up Rush HD, developed by Realore Studios. Play as Jane who has tired of average clothing stores and decides to open her own boutique. Players upgrade Jane’s store with original decorations, helpful tools, and unique clothing options. There are 60 levels in 5 different settings and three different types of stores. The game is available for iPad for $4.99.

And 9 Magnets has released Hero Defense Pro, which they see as a “tower style defense game, with a lot more action”. You only get two playable characters to work with to defend your castle, along with four unlockable locations to do battle in and multiple difficulty levels. The game includes Game Center support and achievements, as well as a free version called Hero Defense Redux. The game is available for $1.99 for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Valve has announced immediate support for Free to Play (F2P) games on Steam, launching five F2P games: Spiral Knights, Forsaken Worlds, Champions Online: Free for All, Global Agenda: Free Agent, and Alliance of Valiant Arms (AVA).

Starting last Wednesday and concluding Sunday, each of the five launch titles will offer exclusive in-game content to those who try the “F2P game of the day” on Steam. In game transactions in all of the titles will be supported by Steam’s micro-transaction backend system that is available to Steamworks partners and currently used in Valve’s Team Fortress 2.

“Free to Play games offer new game genres and game experiences for customers,” said Jason Holtman, director of business development at Valve, “while offering developers and publishers new revenue opportunities and the ability to reach customers in areas of the world where the traditional packaged goods model is less popular than F2P.”

Valve views this introduction as part of the constant evolution of Steam. Specific details on the F2P games of the day and their exclusive in-game content will be made available in the coming days.

Want to win an autographed guitar and Portal 2 swag? Like creating videos? Here’s your chance to satisfy both.

Valve Software and recording artist The National are sponsoring a contest. Starting today and running until midnight July 15th, the contest asks the community to make a music video for the song “Exile Vilify”, the Portal 2 piece that The National composed, using whatever visuals they choose.

Once aspiring video directors have completed their work, they may submit their videos on YouTube using the tag PORTAL2NATIONALEXILE. After the deadline, Valve, The National, and the community will select the winner who will win a prize package including a guitar autographed by The National plus a collection of Portal 2 merchandise.

For more information regarding the Portal 2 Music Video Contest, please visit thinkwithportals.com.

Feral Interactive has announced that Colin McRae: Dirt 2 will be shipping for the Mac on July 21st. This definitive off-road racing experience is the next in the series dedicated to the legendary Colin McRae.

Colin McRae: DiRT 2 promises to take racing on the Mac to a whole new level. Nine locations across the globe include 100 separate racing events in eight different racing disciplines. Players can race in the Malaysian rainforest, the desert roads of Morocco, and the streets of Tokyo to compete in a variety of contemporary sports racing styles including three special ESPN X Games.

Players have access to a multitude of cars that they will be upgrading over time, such as the Mitsubishi EVO X, the Subaru Impreza STI, and the Colin McRae R4. All the vehicles can be set-up to suit the driver’s experience and racing style and with variable difficulty levels the game can be tailored to suit the skills of the individual. A career mode will bring players from rookie to Pro-division to the All-Stars. Additionally, DiRT 2 includes multi-car and solo races in head-to-head competitive online play.

A unique feature of Dirt 2 is the Flashback. This will allow racers to repeat the last few seconds of their drive and get the chance to correct the mistake that may have cost them the race.

Colin McRae: DiRT 2 for the Mac will retail in North America for US $39.99, £24.95 (inc. VAT) in the UK and €29.95 (inc. VAT) throughout Europe. You also be able to download it from Feral’s own store, the Mac App Store, and many other online locations. It’s available to pre-order now through Feral’s online store. You can get more information at the mini-site dedicated to the game.

System requirements include:

• Mac OS X v10.6.7 or later
• 1.4GHz Intel Mac
• 2GB RAM
• 128MB or better graphics card (The following graphics cards are NOT supported: NVIDIA 7xxx series and Intel GMA series)

Released by Alawar Entertainment as a universal app for the iPhone and iPad, Snowy: The Bear’s Adventure is a platform game about a jumping, snowball throwing polar bear. The gameplay looks fairly simple from the trailer, with touchscreen controls used to take out more than one enemy at a time. There are 88 levels to run through with three difficulty modes (including a Kid’s Mode) and Game Center support. The game is $2.99 to download.

UltraDeep is a tilt-action arcade game by Viqua Games, where players avoid obstacles and unlock super powers to collect diamonds, all done in a “doodle” art style, similar to Flight Doodle, only your heading down. The developer has released a big update, which they are calling UltraDeep Plus, and which promises new features and improvements, such as Retina graphics, new powerups and new unlockable characters. They also put together a cute trailer for the release.

Lastly, Hothead Games has released another iOS game, Cell Bound. From the trailer we get the gameplay of a match-three game with the serenity of Osmos. Players must spin a culture dish around as it is contaminated by colored cell structures, matching five or more cells of the same color to make the cells burst. The game includes three different modes and Game Center support. Cell Bound is available as a universal app for $0.99.

UPDATE: The podcast posted was from the last Game Review Cast and has been correct. Our apologies!

 

What’s inside this episode:

• A review of Kitty’s Tattoo, by Pan Vision. Time manage creating tattoos and the customers who want them. This is a unique take on the time management genre that, with just a bit of tweaking in the gameplay region, can be a real winner.
  
• Also, a review of Chromanoids, published by Hothead Games. A unique arcade game using color to make your brain think with a variety of modes for diversity of play for a fun experience, until that window pops up asking for more cash.
  
• Plus, a review of Burn It All, published by Bulkypix. An incredibly addicting platformer with deep strategy and delightful graphics. It will truly spark a desire within you to play again and again.
  

• Burn it All - Journey to the Sun
• Chromanoids™
• Kitty's Tattoo HD