“As [Xbox] Game Pass continues to grow, it’s been an interesting way to watch our whole dynamic of, ‘What does it mean to engage customers with that game?’”

– Xbox’s Phil Spencer tells Kotaku that Sea of Thieves would be an entirely different game without Game Pass and that shifting dynamic.

Sea of Thieves is a very different game from when it first launched last year, and Xbox head Phil Spencer counts that gradual evolution as an example of how Xbox Game Pass is changing the way Xbox defines player engagement, and how community feedback plays into its development process.

In one segment of a multi-part interview with Kotaku, Spencer explained how releasing Sea of Thieves when and how they did, and having it be one of the first games to hit Xbox Game Pass on day one, made it a wildly different game than if development had continued another year without community feedback.

“At launch, and I read all the same feedback everybody else did, was: ‘Where’s the other half of the game?’ But I would also say it’s a game where what it is today wouldn’t be what it is if we had just waited another year and kept it to ourselves,” says Spencer. “It is a game that was literally created with the feedback of the community, and how you manage that through the traditional lens of how people think about what a game launch means is interesting for all of us.”

The Gamasutra Job Board is the most diverse, active and established board of its kind for the video game industry!

Here is just one of the many, many positions being advertised right now.

Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Responsibilities:

• Develop and maintain high-volume, highly scalable distributed systems, both player-facing and internal.
• Develop web services supporting PC and game console clients, browser clients and external server clients.
• Enhance and maintain existing backend services.
• Administrate, monitor and debug backend servers.
• Evaluate and recommend potential technologies and partners.
• Analyze and mitigate platform costs.
• Contribute to internal tools for assisting development and for maintaining services.
• Integrate with numerous external APIs, from first parties to infrastructure providers.
• Integrate services into game client and servers.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Minimum 3+ years of experience developing applications with C# and or C++.
• Positive attitude, strong communication and teamwork skills.
• Direct experience coding networking systems and solving networking problems.
• Passion for making games.
• At least one shipped console or PC title.
• Familiarity with networking systems and their components including: DNS, NAT, firewalls, security methods, peer-to-peer and client server models.
• Experience with online game service APIs, particularly Steamworks, Xbox Live and Sony NP.
• Cloud experience such as Amazon Web Services or other cloud solutions.
• Experience working with Perforce source control.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Shipped multiple game titles on PC and console platforms.
• BS Degree in Computer Science or equivalent work experience.

Applications MUST include:

• Resume
• Cover Letter telling us why you are passionate about working at NWI.

Type & Location:

• Employee
• Onsite – Calgary, AB
• Preference given to Canadian citizens

Interested? Apply now.

Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.

Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.

Looking for a new job? Get started here. Are you a recruiter looking for talent? Post jobs here.

Starting at 2:00 p.m. PST today, members of the Xbox One Preview Alpha Ring will begin receiving the latest 1907 Xbox One system update (Build: 19H1_RELEASE_XBOX_DEV_1907\18362.5031.190614-1928)

This first update is meant to lay the groundwork for what’s to come in 1907, so while you’ll find fixes and known issues listed below, please keep an eye out for feature announcements as they’re ready to be previewed. Thanks, as always, for your passion for helping make Xbox One system updates the best they can be prior to release to GA!

DETAILS:

• OS version released: 19H1_RELEASE_XBOX_DEV_1907\18362.5031.190614-1928
• Available: 2:00PM PDT 6/17/19
• Mandatory Date/Time: 3:00 AM PDT 6/18/19

Fixes:

System

• Stability fixes to the system.

Known Issues:

Audio

• Headsets are not being assigned to the users profiles and not working correctly.

Profile Color

• Sometimes users may encounter the incorrect Profile color when powering on the console.

505 Games has confirmed Terraria will be released on the Switch eShop on 27th June. Prior to this, we found out the alpha build of the game had been sent to the original developer Re-Logic at the start of this year.

In the same announcement post, it was also revealed a physical version of the game would be released at a later date. Here’s the announcement from the Terraria forum:

You read that correctly. Terraria Switch will be live to the world for digital download in 2 days! We love our fans, and since the game is ready, we figured we would just get it into your hands as soon as possible. It will take us a bit more time to get out the physical retail version, but until then we hope you will enjoy the full game available for download via Nintendo eShop.

This will be the third time Terraria has been released on a Nintendo platform. The title was first released on the 3DS in 2015 and followed up with a release on the Wii U in 2016. If you haven’t played it before, it’s similar to Minecraft, but has definitely carved its own niche within the survival crafting genre.

Will you be adding this to your Switch digital library on release? Or will you hold out for a physical copy? Tell us below.

AMID EVIL is Now Available on Steam and is 20% off!*

A retro FPS for the ages! Once branded a HERETIC. Now YOU have been chosen as our champion! Reclaim our sacred weapons. Take back our ancient lands. If you can stand… AMID EVIL.

*Offer ends June 27 at 10AM Pacific Time

The battle for Auto Chess supremacy is now firmly underway, and the war has spread to mobile devices quite quickly. You’ll have seen our round-up of Auto Chess-like games available on the various App Stores, which included DOTA Underlords.

At the time of writing it was still in closed beta, but now the game is out in the wild and available to anyone who’s interested in trying the format out, but doesn’t want to deal with potential knock-offs or clones. Now, a point of order: This isn’t DOTA Auto Chess, or the mobile spin off known simply as Auto Chess (Origin), from original creators Drodro Studio.

This is a separate game from Valve, based on the original Dota Auto Chess mod, but built by an entirely separate team inside Valve. It also isn’t part of DOTA 2, like the original mod was, but a standalone free to play game on both PC and mobile. Totally not confusing at all.

When  it comes to Underlords anyone familiar with Auto Chess is going to feel very comfortable, as they share an awful lot of similarities. It’s effectively the same game, just with a ton of UI improvements, systems to make it easier to play and understand, and a few other tweaks here and there. But those tweaks can catch you out, and if this is your first Auto Chess rodeo then you are probably going to be more than a little confused.

Don’t worry, we have the ultimate guide to everything you are going to need to know to master DOTA Underlords:

DOTA Underlords Basics

First and most importantly, don’t feel pressured into trying to learn this on the fly with real players online. Unlike Auto Chess, Underlords not only has a more robust tutorial, but there’s also a Soliatire mode where you can play against AI opponents. You can set the difficulty between Easy, Medium, Challenging and Hardcore, and you can even enable an option to disable the round timers so you can take your time and play at your own pace. Matches can be paused and even left, so you can come back to them later (or switch to PC – see below). Don’t get too used to this though – live multiplayer games are kept to strict timers, so you’ll need to learn how to make decisions quickly.

In DOTA Underlords you face off against seven other players to build a roster of heroes who will battle it out effectively until the death. You buy the heroes you want, position them on the board and then let them fight it out against one of the other players in the game while you sit back and watch the carnage unfold. Lose a fight and you’ll take damage, win and you’ll stay healthy. Once a player has lost all their health they are knocked out of the game, and the last surviving player is the winner.

When building your roster you’re going to have to consider Alliances, buffs to your heroes or debuffs to your opponents, which can be earned by having multiple heroes with same Alliance types on your board. For example, if you have three Mages then your opponent will have reduced magic resistance. So combining Alliances is really the only way to win.

You’ll also get gold that can be used to buy your heroes and upgrade them should you get three of the same hero at the same level, so three level ones become a level two, and three level twos become a level three. And gold is used to level up, allowing you to put more units on the board.

Auto Chess vs. DOTA Underlords

There’s a ton of smaller differences between DOTA Underlords and the mod it was based on, Auto Chess, but there are a few that are very significant. Perhaps the biggest is the new item system. Instead of creep rounds just dropping items you get a choice of three items if you win the creep round, or just one should you lose, although creeps are way easier to beat now. Choose the items that play into your strats, otherwise you’ll be stuck with a buff to Hunters when you have none on the board.

Global items are also a new addition, these items are not equipped by a hero, but instead augment all your heroes of a certain Alliance. Some add new abilities, such as heroes exploding when they die, and others are buffs such as extra magic resistance for your team. Most are very useful if the RNG is kind and you get one that suits your strategy.

Other smaller tweaks such as new hero abilities, or the fact that interest is locked at the start of a round instead of the end of a round are significantly smaller changes that you probably don’t need to worry about until you have the basics mastered.

Underlords Strategies

In what can only be described as the biggest shock the world has seen since High School Musical not being nominated for an Oscar, Valve is listening to the community and shipping near daily patches for Underlords. So if we were to tell you Mages are really strong right now, (which they are), then there’s a good chance they will have been nerfed into the ground within a day or two.

But there are a few things worth keeping in mind. Generally speaking you’re going to want to heavily focus on one Alliance, usually one of the larger ones with many heroes, and then try and finish off a few others when you have spare unit slots on your board. Trying to go all in on Blood-Bound or Shaman units probably isn’t going to work out too well but grab a couple of them alongside another main Alliance, such as Mages, and you have a nice bonus to play with.

Some alliances provide global effects regardless of unit type, like ‘Savage’, which gives a 10% attack damage boost to every piece on your board, or ‘Warlock’ which gives all allies a Lifesteal chance. We’re also a fan of the ‘Elusive’ alliance, because the more of these pieces you have, the higher the evasion boost bonus is. Being able to evade attacks means your pieces have the chance to survive longer, generate more mana, and fire off their abilities more often.

You are also going to have to consider your positioning, a lot. Sticking weaker units in the line of fire is going to see them killed instantly and you probably coming out with a loss. However, put them behind some tanky units who will take the aggro first and you are onto a winner. You’ll also want to use the edges of your board to your advantage in some situations. Assassin units can instantly jump into your backlines at the start of a round, but box in your squishy damage dealers with tanks and the edge of the board and they won’t be able to reach them.

You’ll also want to think about putting units that need mana to hit their abilities somewhere where they can dish out and take some damage so they can get that ability off before they die. There’s no real right or wrong way to position most of the time, so play around with it, but always be thinking about it, and in the later stages position to counter your opponent’s boards (which you can see by tapping on their box on the leaderboard.)

Other top tips:

• Don’t be afraid to change Alliances on the fly. Sure you may have started out with a good run of Scrappy units, but if you suddenly get the chance to switch into Assassins, and that seems like it will be better at winning the game then go for it. You’re rarely locked into a strategy until the late game starts. And don’t stick with an Alliance just because you got an early global item for it, forcing into Demon Hunters and Demons because you got the Strange Bedfellows item early isn’t always a great move, if the units just aren’t there for you.
• Tapping on the right hand side of an entry in the kill feed at the top of the screen will “YO!” that item and send an audible “Yo” to opponents. It serves basically no point, but it’s fun to try and get into opponent’s heads by yo-ing everything they do.
• You get one gold interest at the end of every round for every 10 gold you have when it starts. So if you start the round with 10 gold you’ll get an extra gold at the end of it. Start with 20 and you’ll get 2 gold, and so on. This is however capped at 5 gold, so holding onto more than 50 gold is rarely worth it. Spend that cash, up your level or try and grab some new heroes and you’ll still be making maximum dollar.
• And finally, you can switch mid game between mobile and PC. So if you decide to kick things off on the PC version and then nature calls, you can simply grab your iOS or Android device and continue playing while on the toilet. Then you can even come back to the PC version when you are done. The future really is great, isn’t it?

Let us know if you have any other questions or need further help getting to grips with DOTA Underlords. The AutoChess genre is a fascinating new archetype and we hope it flourishes on mobile, so expect to see more like this in the weeks and months to come!

During an interview with Twinfinite, Chris Fox of Phoenix Labs – the developer behind the upcoming free-to-play Switch release, Dauntless – revealed Iron Galaxy had helped port the game to Nintendo’s hybrid device.

“We’ve been really fortunate to be working with Iron Galaxy to bring it to the Switch and like, they really know what they’re doing when it comes to that hardware.”

Iron Galaxy previously helped bring The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to the Switch in 2017 and followed this up with the release of Diablo III: Eternal Collection in 2018.

Dauntless has been inspired by the likes of Monster Hunter, Dark Souls and World of Warcraft – and essentially requires you to go around hunting monsters known as ‘Behemoths’. View recent footage of the game shown at E3 2019 below:

Will you be trying out this game when it is released on the Switch? Leave a comment below.

As technology advances, it is important not to leave anyone behind. Fast, reliable internet access is now one of life’s necessities, critical to accessing telehealth solutions, pursuing an online education, using precision agriculture, or operating a small business. And while the FCC’s most recent report found that more than 21 million Americans lack broadband access, Microsoft’s data suggest that more than 162 million are not using the internet at broadband speeds.

Wireless technologies, such as TV white spaces — unused broadcasting frequencies — are critical to closing the digital divide. According to Pew Research, wired technologies such as phone landlines, cable or broadband take longer to adopt. In contrast, wireless technologies, such as radio and color broadcast television, achieved near-universal adoption within 25 years. Waiting on the deployment and adoption of wired technologies, like fiber-optic connections, to close the digital divide is not an option when so many people across the county lack access.

The Microsoft Airband Initiative is forging partnerships focused on closing the connectivity gap. It works towards providing broadband internet coverage to unserved rural Americans through work with our partners and with a mixture of innovative technologies. By July 2022, our goal is to extend broadband access to 3 million Americans across unserved rural parts of the country.

The video tells the story of how the need for reliable internet in Essex County, New York, led to a business that services the local community with help from the Microsoft Airband Initiative and solutions like TV white spaces.

Read more on the Microsoft Airband Initiative. And follow @MSFTIssues on Twitter.