iGame Radio

After shunning Mac gamers lo these many years, Elder Scrolls publisher Bethesda has taken a 180 degree turn and announced that the Elder Scrolls Online will be coming for both Windows and Mac. Revealed in the June issue of GameInformer, the Elder Scrolls MMOG is set a millennium before the events of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim as the daedric prince Molag Bal tries to pull all of Tamriel into his demonic realm.
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Going to PAX East? Then you might want to drop by the Red 5 Studios booth and check out Firefall. Red 5 will be showing off live demos of their exclusive beta of Firefall during its first public unveiling, including a new immersive open world experience and PvP content. Though Firefall will only be released for Windows PC upon launch, the developers have been clear that they want to bring the game to Mac. So, if you drop by the booth, let them know that you’ll buy the game if it comes to Mac. The more they hear, the more they are likely to bring this game to the Mac…and the faster.

Firefall is an upcoming free-to-play, open world PC shooter set in a fascinating science fiction universe. Firefall is best described as a mashup of PvP combat at eSports level with an open world experience consisting of a deep storyline, dynamic events, and social gameplay.

Red 5 Studios is coming to South by Southwest (SXSW), and they’re bringing Firefall with them. Those attending the famed event of music, film, and interactivity will get a chance for some hands-on fun with the upcoming open world PC shooter slated for release in 2012. A PC shooter that, we might add, has a very good chance of coming to the Mac as rumor has it.
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CCP has announced that voting for the EVE is Real contest has begun.

EVE is Real site is a collection of videos, images, and text created by players archiving the eight years of EVE Online’s persistent universe. Over 4000 player-made images, videos and posts are located on the site. The site is divided into the categories of War, Exploration, Corp Recruitment, Freestyle, and EVE is Real, the last of which seems to be a collection of player views on how realistic and lifelike various aspects of EVE gameplay feels to them. The posts range from poignant and precious to terrifying or hilarious.

Every person can vote for one image and one video per day. Prizes include 20 GEFORCE GTX 460 SE video cards for image winners and a grand prize of an ALIENWARE AREA-51 PC for the video contest winner. Voting ends September 1st.

If you are a fan of the DOFUS MMO, then you’ll be happy to know about the opening of the Island of Vulkania. A summertime place for hot fun, it will only be available the months of July and August.

Vulkania is an archipelago of volcanoes where one can find white, sandy beaches, tropical jungles, smoking craters and sparkling caverns. Characters of all levels can access it, and players will find new monsters, quests, and items to discover, as well as a new challenge.

The new zone is supposed to be back every summer, but we wonder if the logo will come back with it, with that distinctly Jurassic Park feel.

• Host Omaha Sternberg goes it alone to talk about the week’s news in Mac and iOS gaming. First up, Omaha talks about the rumored PopCap Games purchase, and whether it makes sense for EA Games to be the buyer.
• Paragon Studios announced that City of Heroes is going to a hybrid payment model called City of Heroes Freedom that includes a free to play membership. She’ll talk about the different memberships and what this means for City of Heroes.
• Tim Langdell, the trademark troll, got soundly sued in the UK court. Omaha talks about the depth of his fraud and why corporations have a responsibility to not enable this behavior.
• LEGO Universe also announced a hybrid membership model with a F2P membership, but this one’s a bit different from CoH. Omaha talks about what this means for LEBO Universe.
• Omaha briefly details EVE Online’s Incarna release.
• Phil Harrison thinks Apple will BE the game industry in the future. Omaha gives a brief view of what that might look like.
• Omaha mentions her sponsorship of this year’s uDevGames Contest and reveals the poll results from last week.

Music Notes:

• Digital Droo produced our theme music here at iGame Radio.
• Matt Jarvis for featuring music from Osmos.
• Bobby “Glorian” Slavov and Victor Stoyanov for featuring music from Eschalon: Book 1.

CCP has announced the launch of Incarna 1.0, providing pilots of EVE Online their first opportunity to step outside of their spaceships with the introduction of the Captain’s Quarters.

The Captain’s Quarters brings with it a ton of features, including Strategic Data and News Feeds, a walkway balcony that allows you to view in its entirety your ship, and panels for managing your planetary structures and selecting agents for missions. You’ll also be able to do a ton of more customization with a mirror specially developed for creating new wardrobes and changing your appearance.

In addition, Incarna 1.0 has added updates to ships and turrets, improved performance and balanced gameplay more, and added the Noble Exchange, where luxury items, rarities and articles of distinction can be purchased.

Looking at the patch notes, we were interested to note that on Macs, depth effects had been disabled but only if you have an ATI card. We have a question regarding this into CCP, and will report back when we get a response.

Check out more details at the Incarna section of the EVE Online site, or view the video introduction.

Every other week until E3, Runic Games is giving folks a glimpse of what to expect in Torchlight II. This week, Runic Games is exploring a few environments within the game. Included is an intro by Patrick Blank, Lead Level Designer.

The developers will also be explaining a bit about what to expect from the different types of areas, how they are technically different from each other, and how the environments compare to the first Torchlight game. In addition, they have a Level Design Q & A with Patrick Blank and Jason Beck with questions asked by Runic Forums members.

From Making the World of Torchlight II:

Torchlight II introduces randomized outdoor areas throughout the game, in many sizes. We have broken down our outdoor areas into two different types: Passes and Overworld areas. There are multiple Passes and Overworld areas in each Act of the game. All offer random dungeons, random events, and lots of exploration for players.

From Level Design Q&A:

How much of the world will we visit in TL2? – asked by Seer

Jason: In Torchlight II you’ll be traveling across 3 distinct regions of the continent of Vilderan, one of two major continents in our game world. Those 3 regions make up about 1/5th of the continent. Within each of those 3 regions there are various zones, passes, dungeons, and cities. So, it’s a big step up from the single little mining town of Torchlight, but it allows us a great deal of real estate to play with later on in the MMO.

To read the entire set of articles, hop onto the Runic Games website for more information.

• Host Omaha Sternberg goes it alone this week, talking about the week’s news in Mac and iOS gaming. First up, she talks about the game pricing model that Gabe Newell of Valve Software has proposed. What do you think about games priced based on how much fun you are to play with?
• NCsoft has announced the shut down of the North American servers for Lineage. But the Asian servers are still live and well.
• Lodsys has begun sending licensing letters to iOS developers based on a patent filed years ago describing the Apple in-app purchasing procedure. Omaha describes what the problem with the patent is, and why Apple should step up to the plate to kill it.
• Blizzcon tickets go on sale this weekend. And Blizzard has announced a new service called Cross-Realm Dungeon Grouping. No date, but play with real friends across realms.
• Omaha talks about games that she’s played in the past week.

Music Notes:

• Digital Droo produced our theme music here at iGame Radio.
• Digital Droo for featuring music from Burning Monkey Solitaire.
• Rich Carlson for featuring music from Dr. Blob.

• Omaha Sternberg interviews Gary Gattis of Spacetime Studios about Pocket Legends, Blackstar, and beyond. Pocket Legends recently celebrated their one year anniversary by opening up most of their game locations for free. We talk about the anniversary celebration, the Mac/PC version soon to come, the mobile MMOG Blackstar soon to arrive, and more.

UPDATE: Fans of Spacetime Studios have created a transcript of the show, which you can read here. Thanks very much, guys!