Ever since cereal maker Kellogg’s announced it was once again teaming up with Nintendo to release a Super Mario-themed breakfast line we’ve all been banging our empty bowls with anticipation. It’s due to exclusively hit US stores on 11th December (you lucky people), but the Big K has dropped a delicious tease for a potential UK release.

When quizzed on Twitter as to whether the product – which includes amiibo functionality for extra coins in Super Mario Odyssey – the official Kellogg’s UK & IRE account responded with, “Patience is a virtue .” Could we really be seeing the much-hyped, Lucky Charms-style product on British shores or Kellogg’s just trying to get us all hyped up over nothing?

We’ve tasted a bowl for ourselves and we were left impressed, but is it enough to get you excited for the release of a cereal? Let us know in the comments section below.

Cobalt WASD is Now Available on Steam!

Cobalt WASD is a multiplayer bomb-defusal action platformer with grenades that stop time. Blast your way to the bomb site or repel the assault! Use teleporter guns, grappling hooks, sticky sentry turrets and quick tactical thinking to lead your team to victory! Play online or against AI!

Debut Event of Season Brings in Record Number of Teams to a CWL Event;
CWL Season Prize Pool Tops $4.2 Million

First Live Open Tournament of new CWL Season Features Over 200 Teams from North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific Region to Compete for $200,000 Prize Pool

SANTA MONICA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– The first open tournament of what could be the most exciting season yet of the Call of Duty® World League (CWL) gets underway today through Sunday (December 8 -10) at the CWL Dallas Open. Call of Duty Esports teams from around the world, including North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region (APAC) will descend on the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas to go head-to-head for the first bragging rights of the new CWL season featuring Call of Duty®: WWII and the initial steps toward the biggest yearly prize pool in CWL history topping $4.2 million.

This weekend’s event will feature more than 200 teams, the most at an open event in CWL history. The top four teams from the open winners’ bracket will join pool play tomorrow for the next round of competition. Those winning teams will then compete on Sunday in the championship bracket, for a $200,000 event prize pool and the title of the CWL Dallas Open Champion.

“The CWL Dallas field is set. This is going to be an amazing competition and a great start to the CWL tournament season,” said executive vice president and general manager of Call of Duty, Rob Kostich. “The team at Sledgehammer Games has delivered an incredible experience with Call of Duty: WWII. Our team passes for the event sold out in minutes. We cannot wait to see who emerges from the pack starting in Dallas this weekend.”

“Call of Duty World League player participation saw tremendous growth last season, with teams vying for a piece of the largest prize pool in Call of Duty Esports history,” said Call of Duty Esports Director, Kevin Flynn. “This season, the prize pool has increased to $4.2 million and a record number of players at a Call of Duty World League open event will compete in Dallas.”

2017 CWL Dallas Open Champion OpTic Gaming will have to defend their title against fierce competition at this year’s event.

CWL Dallas Open tickets are available in multiple varieties. General admission passes for the event are available for $59.99 (plus applicable fees and taxes). A Premium Pass for the event is also available for $89.99 (plus applicable fees and taxes) and includes an event t-shirt and one month of MLG GameBattles Premium. A $299.99 (plus applicable fees and taxes) VIP ticket is also available and includes an event t-shirt, event jacket, one-hour early entrance to the venue, access to the VIP Lounge and more. For tickets, visit MLG.com/CWLDallas.

Visit CallofDuty.com/esports and follow the Call of Duty World League on Twitter and Instagram for the latest CWL updates. For live broadcasts and Video on Demand, visit MLG.com/CallofDuty.

About Activision Publishing, Inc.

Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, Activision Publishing, Inc. is a leading global producer and publisher of interactive entertainment. Activision maintains operations throughout the world and is a division of Activision Blizzard, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATVI), an S&P 500 company. More information about Activision and its products can be found on the company’s website, www.activision.com or by following @Activision.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-looking Statements: Information in this press release that involves Activision Publishing’s expectations, plans, intentions or strategies regarding the future, including statements about the expected dates and features of the CWL Dallas Open and the features of the Call of Duty World League, are forward-looking statements, that are not facts and involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause Activision Publishing’s actual future results to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statements set forth in this release include unanticipated product delays and other factors identified in the risk factors sections of Activision Blizzard’s most recent annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The forward-looking statements in this release are based upon information available to Activision Publishing and Activision Blizzard as of the date of this release, and neither Activision Publishing nor Activision Blizzard assumes any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements believed to be true when made may ultimately prove to be incorrect. These statements are not guarantees of the future performance of Activision Publishing or Activision Blizzard and are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors, some of which are beyond its control and may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations.

© 2017 Major League Gaming Corp. ACTIVISION, CALL OF DUTY and CALL OF DUTY WWII are trademarks of Activision Publishing, Inc. MAJOR LEAGUE GAMING is a trademark of Major League Gaming Corp. All other trademarks and trade names are the properties of their respective owners.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171208005494/en/

Call of Duty World League
Xav de Matos
Public Relations
xav.dematos@activision.com

Source: Activision Publishing, Inc.

News Provided by Acquire Media

This week at Bungie, we explored Mercury – in two timelines.

Curse of Osiris will send you to a new destination, where you’ll learn its fate in the past, present, and future. At the heart of the journey is a forest of endless realities.

If you missed it, here’s the recap.

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Next week, we’re back with a parade of the gear you’ll earn, including some details on new ways to earn it.

Sustaining Operations

This is our report.

Buffalo, Part 2

Last week, Hotfix 1.0.7.1 was released to address Buffalo errors on PC. We have discovered that some players are receiving erroneous Buffalo errors within the game client that are caused by alternate factors. These issues sometimes relate to network stability, or having multiple PCs connected to Destiny on a local network. Please follow steps within the Network Troubleshooting Guide to ensure you’ve applied the correct settings for Destiny 2 gameplay. Additionally, follow steps for configuring UPnP if you have multiple PC’s on the same network.

Continued Investigations

• Faction Rally Tokens: We have identified an issue where Faction Rally tokens are removed when players create new characters within Destiny 2. We are seeking to resolve this issue prior to the first Faction Rallies event of Season 2.
• “Leviathan” Raid: Calus may sometimes become immune to damage during the final phase of the encounter
• Black Screen when Loading into the Tower: Players may sometimes encounter a black screen when loading into the Tower. This may resolve itself after one minute, or players may workaround this issue by visiting an alternate destination and loading into the Tower once more
• Bright Engram Ornaments: Sweet Business and Sturm ornaments within the Bright Engram may display “Already added to Collection” before a player acquires these items. This issue does not prevent players from earning these items.
• Hunter Survivalist Perk: The Survivalist perk on legendary Hunter leg armor does not grant the intended Recovery stats.

Back to the Box Office

Take your seats, turn off your cell phones, and enjoy the show!

Movie of the Week: Arcstrider PC Montage

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Honorable Mention: Fragment 2

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Honorable Mention: Shaxx likes puns

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Winners should get their reward within one week of being featured. If you haven’t found the emblem within your Vault Collection, let us know in the #Help forum.

This week, we’re publishing this article a day early, as Bungie will be dark on Thursday and Friday. We’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving here in the United States, sharing time with friends and family. Some will be engaging in food prep, while others will be jumping into the Iron Banner for some friendly competition.

Cheers,

-dmg04

If you’re in the business of making role playing games, you should probably have an eye on Seven: The Days Long Gone. It’s a fascinating isometric stealth RPG with a gonzo setting and interesting traversal mechanics from studios IMGN.PRO and Fool’s Theory, whose founders have a history at Witcher developer CD Projekt Red. 

Over on the Gamasutra Twitch channel today, we were lucky enough to be joined by lead developer Jakub Rokosz and quest designer Karolina Kuzia-Rokosz (both late of The Witcher 3), who were eager to share stories about the game’s development process, and dive into the technical and design decisions that went into this unique RPG. 

It was an illuminating chat, which you can watch in its entirety up above, but in case you’re creeping around the island of Peh as we speak, here’s a few key takeaways from our conversation. 

Stealth games are about “idiot npcs”

When asked to quickly sum up what they feel makes a good stealth game, Rokosz and Kuzia-Rokosz talked about a need for players to feel smarter than AI characters. Of course, since the computer literally knows where the player is at all times, it then becomes necessary to make your AI really, really stupid, so that the player doesn’t feel discouraged or outmatched. 

When asked for what kind of stealth games inspired the sneaking mechanics of Seven, Rokosz and Kuzia-Rokosz tossed out a few familiar names like Dishonored and Thief, but excitedly pointed to the interactions in Fallout 2 where players could sneak up on NPCs and leave grenades in their pockets (Rokosz said a similar feature almost made it into Seven, but was killed to manage scope).

What makes a good RPG quest

Since Kuzia-Rokosz was the game’s quest designer, we asked her to sum up what makes a good quest in an RPG like Seven. Her first response was that it’s important for quest designers to think about enabling different playstyles, especially in a game like Seven, where there’s a range of options on the speaking—>brawling spectrum. 

Then Rokosz chimed in to remind her of one of the reminders she gave him constantly during development: that every quest needs to be clear about “what to do, where to go, how to do it,” even when it’s trying to be open-ended. This was apparently advice that Kuzia-Rokosz would badger him with constantly while implementing quests in gameplay. 

How to make a good “detective vision”

In Seven: The Days Long Gone, players can use the protagonist’s robotic eye to scout the environment around them and highlight loot and hiding places useful to completing missions. This feature is similar to the “detective vision” features seen in titles like Arkham Asylum and Assassin’s Creed. It turns out that Rokosz and the rest of the team were worried players would leave such a feature on all the time, so they tried to have their mechanic “gamify” the main character pausing to take a look around, help him gather information in a similar way that the player wants. 

Kuzia-Rokosz also pointed out to us that when they let players toggle this vision mode on and off, it quickly led to information overload since too many icons would pop in to the screen at the same time. 

For more developer interviews, editor roundtables and gameplay commentary, be sure to follow the Gamasutra Twitch channel.

“Of those 75 percent of the people, about half of those people actually spend some money and the other half just play without spending. But in a free-to-play world, that’s a fantastic balance of spenders and non-spenders.”

– CFO of Electronic Arts Blake J. Jorgensen speaking at the 37th Nasdaq Investor Conference 

During the 37th Nasdaq Investor Conference which took place on December 5th, CFO of Electronic Arts Blake J. Jorgensen spoke about the percentage of players who spent money on EA Sports’ Ultimate Team mode.

According to Jorgensen, “about 70-75 percent of all the people that buy the sports games join Ultimate Team.” He goes on to say that of those 75 percent, about half of those players end up spending money on Ultimate Team microtransactions.  

While the conversion rate provided is unusually high for a free-to-play game, it’s not EA’s first success with Ultimate Team. Former Bioware dev Jesse Houston cited FIFA Ultimate Team specifically when designing Mass Effect 3‘s loot box system. 

To hear more of his comments, check out the full recording on EA’s website here.