IRVINE, Calif.—August 23, 2017—Blizzard Entertainment today debuted Hearth and Home, a brand-new musical animated short that explores the story of Hearthstone®’s mystical Tavern—the setting for Blizzard’s smash-hit digital strategy card game. Hearth and Home is a whimsical introduction to the Tavern and its patrons and serves as the first in an upcoming series of animated shorts, as well as comics, that draw players into the game’s distinctively charming setting.  

The Tavern is a warm and welcoming place full of laughter, camaraderie, and good-natured competition, and home to a charming cast of characters assembled from every corner of Azeroth. This includes vibrant and (mostly) friendly folks such as Malto, the kindly old mage; and Sarge, the Tavern’s resident mouse. The personalities in this ethereal inn draw inspiration from the many types of Hearthstone players who enjoy Hearthstone in real life. Whether they’re seasoned pros or just getting into the game like the young protagonist Ava, there’s a place in the Tavern for everyone.

“With Hearth and Home, our new animated short, we aimed to capture the wonder and magic of Hearthstone—in the Tavern’s welcoming interior, in its colorful patrons, and of course in their catchy song,” said Lydia Bottegoni, senior vice president of Story & Franchise Development at Blizzard Entertainment. “We’re looking forward to sharing more tales from the Hearthstone Tavern featuring Ava and her friends in the months ahead.”

Pull up a chair and watch Hearth and Home, the new Hearthstone animated short, on YouTube.

Earlier this month, Blizzard Entertainment released Knights of the Frozen Throne, the latest expansion for Hearthstone, which is available now for Windows® and Mac® PCs; Windows, iOS, and Android™ tablets; and iOS and Android phones. In Knights of the Frozen Throne, players storm Icecrown Citadel, the Lich King’s frozen fortress, in pursuit of the icy monarch’s unholy power.

Please visit the Blizzard press center for assets and information.

Bungie Bounty: Gigz

When:  September 27, 2017

8:00–10:00 p.m. (Pacific)

Playlist: Competitive

Console: PS4

We are changing up the format a bit. Instead of Gigz going in solo, this will be a true Bungie Bounty. He will have the following fireteam of Bungie folk backing him up: 

Tocom – Kevin Yanes, Senior Designer

We won’t be revealing anything on stream – our mission will be to play some games with the community and to give out emblems to anyone who can best us at our own game. All you need to do to claim your emblem is match against us and win.

What is this about an emblem?

We have a brand new one to give out for Bungie Bounties in Destiny 2. Feast your eyes on the Sign of Mutual Combat:

All winners will receive their emblem in the Collections section of their vault within a week. I’ll make the announcement on my Twitter. You can see the emblems in your vault at any of the social spaces.

We will have more Bounties for you in the future, so if this time or console doesn’t work for you, stay tuned for the next Bungie Bounty on Xbox One. 

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend.

Some of the highlights include the history of Creative Assembly, a disassembly of the loot box phenomenon, and analysis of the cyberpunk standout Observer.

While not a long-read, I wanted to point out something you might have missed – Amazon’s move into Echo buttons, which will be used specifically for family games.

Though the concept that you might play audio-only games seems a bit weird to start with, we’ve been playing the Jeopardy game on Alexa fairly regularly in our house, and it’s lots of fun. (Particularly because it tells you your ranking against other teams.)

There are others thinking about visual party game solutions using cellphones, too, from Jackbox Games to Sony’s relatively slept-on PlayLink series. It’s all an interesting crossover that brings to mind the late and sadly lamented 1 vs. 100 Xbox Avatars game. There’s some fertile ground here, folks!

Until next time…
– Simon, curator.]

——————

What Other Games Can Learn From the Bullet Hell Genre (Amr Al-Aaser / Paste Magazine)
“When you hear “bullet hell” what do you think of? It’s not a new term, but it’s gained increasing prominence in the mainstream games discussion over the last decade, and is often associated with any game with overwhelming numbers of enemy projectiles.”

World Record Progression: Half Life 2 (Summoning Salt / YouTube)
“[SIMON’S NOTE: this mini-documentary explains how the speed run for Half-Life 2 was gradually improved, and is, naturally, mindbending in several different places – all his videos on speedrun progression are super-interesting btw.]

Postmortem: Greater accessibility through audio in Killer Instinct (Zachary Quarles / Gamasutra)
“One of the main audio goals for our fighting game reboot Killer Instinct (KI) was player feedback.  We wanted to make sure that someone knew exactly what was going on at any given time using audio alone.”

Pilotwings’ Lost Open World Reboot (DidYouKnowGaming? / Unseen64 / YouTube)
“Factor 5’s Pilotwings reboot was an open world game developed exclusively for the Nintendo Wii. The project originated on the Nintendo GameCube, but was eventually pushed onto the Wii. Factor 5 experimented with with a kind of head tracking glasses that affected what was displayed in relation to the player’s position. [SIMON’S NOTE: with lots of unseen footage from the creators!]”

From shareware superstars to the Steam gold rush: How indie conquered the PC (Richard Cobbett / PC Gamer)
“Indeed, the world of indie development is now so important that it’s hard to remember that it’s only really a decade or so old. That’s not to say that there weren’t indie games before then, as we’ll see, but it was only really with the launch of Steam on PC and services like Xbox Live Arcade that the systems were in place to both get games in front of a mainstream audience.”

Video Games: Access To The Computer Age (Jorge Reina Schement / Los Angeles Times via Simon’s Twitter)
“[SIMON’S NOTE: a 1982 editorial about courts banning game arcades, pushing back & suggesting there’s long-term ‘academic value’ in having kids grow up with games. Which there was! Found via a separate article in an arcade trade mag, original discovered by the Video Game History Foundation Discord I hang out on.]

Gaming’s Toxicity Problem Can’t Be Solved With DMCAs or Valve Charts (Katherine Cross / Glixel)
“What is equally clear is that if you’re a developer, despite profiting from your work, Valve will not protect you when their platform is used to organize abuse against you or your colleagues. This abstentionism, of course, only nurtures the worst of gaming culture.”

Applying 3D Level Design Skills to the 2D World of Hyper Light Drifter (Lisa Brown / GDC / YouTube)
“In this 2017 GDC talk, independent level designer Lisa Brown explores how level design skills transfer between different formats, comparing her work on 3D titles Insomniac Games to her work on the 2D game Hyper Light Drifter.”

The Company That Wants To Replace Textbooks With Video Games (Chloe Spencer / Kotaku)
“On any given day, CEO André Thomas arrives at his company Triseum’s office in Bryan, Texas at nine in the morning. While this is when Thomas gets in, his work day usually starts hours before by checking sales on the company’s educational video games.”

The doors close on The Chinese Room – for now (Wesley Yin-Poole / Eurogamer)
“Just under a year after the launch of Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, a “walking simulator” about dealing with loss in Shropshire in 1984, it won three BAFTAs. For its developer The Chinese Room, it seemed things couldn’t get any better. Fans anxiously awaited the studio’s next big project. They’re still waiting. [SIMON’S NOTE: one of the most honest dev interviews I’ve ever seen.]”

Retronauts Micro 70, plus the inside story of Oregon Trail (David L Craddock & Jeremy Parish / Retronauts)
“The following excerpt comes from Break Out: How the Apple II Launched the PC Gaming Revolution by David L. Craddock… In this chapter, roommates and student-teachers Don Rawitsch, Bill Heinemann, and Paul Dillenberger work around their teaching schedules and brainstorm game design for the first version of The Oregon Trail. [SIMON’S NOTE: there’s also a podcast about the book in here.]”

Games Industry Lobbyists Praised Trump, and No One Should Be Surprised (Patrick Klepek / Waypoint)
“More than a few people winced yesterday when the Entertainment Software Association, the Washington, D.C.-based trade organization representing the video games industry, issued a press release in which they praised President Trump for “bold leadership in computer science education.””

The New Flesh | Observer (Zach Budgor / Heterotopias)
“Observer is the rare cyberpunk story that refuses to fetishize its milieu, even today, 30 years after the genre’s inception. William Gibson’s early work, despite its incalculable influence, still throbs with the low-level hum of awestruck Japanophilia subsumed into equally stylish noir tropes.”

The story behind the design of Dishonored: Death of the Outsider (Gamasutra staff / Gamasutra)
“Gamasutra staffers recently had the pleasure of talking to Harvey Smith of Arkane Studios while livestreaming Dishonored: Death of the Outsider, the well-received standalone followup to Dishonored 2. Smith’s comments about the design of various features in the new game, and in the franchise more generally, were fascinating. So fascinating that we decided to transcribe portions of the stream.”

Games on the Mersey, Part 4: The All-Importance of Graphics (Jimmy Maher / Digital Antiquarian)
“Psygnosis’s first games had been created entirely in-house, with much of the design and coding done by Lawson and Hetherington themselves. In the wake of Barbarian‘s success, however, that approach was changed to prioritize what was really important in them.”

The untold origin story of Creative Assembly (Robert Purchese / Eurogamer)
“”The aim was earning a living,” says Tim Ansell. There were no dreams of strategy epics and no dreams of blockbusters. In those days people wanted PC ports of Spectrum and Mega Drive games, and they wanted 23-year-old Ansell, apparently the only person in the country capable, to make them.”

Loot boxes have reached a new low with Forza 7’s “pay to earn” option (Sam Machkovech / Ars Technica)
“At this point, it would take something monumentally stupid to reverse the “loot box” trend in video games. The practice, which combines real money, virtual items, and random chance, has been found in various free-to-play games for years (and has been showing up more in fully priced retail games recently). [SIMON’S NOTE: detailed & vital rant against something which may be important for devs to fund games, but can go wrong pretty quickly.]”

One Man’s Journey From Welfare to World’s Hottest Video Game (Yuji Nakamura & Sam Kim / Bloomberg)
“Three years ago, Brendan Greene was on welfare in his hometown of Kildare, Ireland, getting an earful from social workers about how he should stop wasting time developing free computer games. “They were telling me to look for jobs or I’ll be cut off,’’ says Greene. “I kind of ignored them.””

The Dungeons & Dragons-loving geeks who became the godfathers of gaming (Sam Leith / The Spectator)
“‘I have a slight bone to pick with you,’ I tell Ian Livingstone as he makes me a cup of coffee in his airy open-plan kitchen. ‘This is a bone I have been waiting to pick for, oh, 35 years. That bloody maze!’”

Flash games and the importance of disposable media (Phil Salvador / The Obscuritory)
“When Adobe announced plans to discontinue Flash earlier this year, people rightly mourned that we’d soon lose the ability to easily play over two decades of amateur games and animation. Gigantic collections, like nearly the entire library of the game platform Kongregate, will rapidly become obsolete.”

Jaedong fights the end of his career with reckless abandon (Young Jae Jeon / ESPN)
“”I’ve been playing for 15 years now. My body is wearing out.” His eyes are bloodshot, his face pained. His tone is subdued, his voice a half-whisper. It feels nothing like a victorious postmatch interview. He almost looks ready to cry. [SIMON’S NOTE: potentially aging out of eSports at… 27?! It’s a young person’s game out there.]”

——————

[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at tinyletter.com/vgdeepcuts – we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to vgdeepcuts@simoncarless.com. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra & an advisor to indie publisher No More Robots, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

20XX is a fast-paced sidescrolling roguelike that’s found an appreciative audience on Steam since it launched last month. It mixes a decidedly Mega Man X-esque play style with generated levels to constantly test players’ twitchy jumping and shooting reactions. That’s meant that the art and animation has been a very, very important part of the game.

20XX has always worn its inspirations on its sleeve, but there’s plenty beyond that that’s informed the game’s aesthetic. says Chris King, programmer and designer at Batterystaple Games, developers of 20XX.

While a Mega Man X aesthetic appeared due to its inspirations, 20XX looks like it does not just because of where the game came from, but because its ever-shifting level structure and enemy layouts require players be able to react quickly and decisively, reading information on-screen without having to focus on it.

More than just for visual appeal, 20XX looks like it does to help players succeed at its challenging roguelike play.

“The skills gained by implementing a given asset made us much more capable of fixing up older assets, which is a good bit of why we’ve iterated on the visuals so much.”

None of that is to say that the visual style doesn’t have an aesthetic appeal to its developer. 20XX’s art style isn’t just designed for readability, but also for that same reason any developer would choose a certain art style: because it looks good and suits the game they’re striving to create. Having sprung from a Mega Man X inspiration, this meant a futuristic, mechanical sci-fi appearance, but it’s one that has continually evolved over the game’s development.

“We’ve learned a tremendous amount over the past four years while making 20XX, and ‘How to make it look better.’ has been a pretty consistent part of that,” says King. “We were new enough on the scene at first that the skills gained by implementing a given asset made us much more capable of fixing up older assets, which is a good bit of why we’ve iterated on the visuals so much.”

Part of that design process meant shifting art styles here and there, gradually changing the exact appearance of the game over time as they experimented with variations on the look they began with. They also simply learned more as they worked at the game over a four year span, growing in skill over that period.

“Somewhere in the game’s second visual iteration it took on a very colorful, Saturday-morning-cartoon kind of vibe, which ended up working really well with the game’s quick pace and need for instant player reactions.”

This is part of what would lead them to the look 20XX has now – a growing skill and a slow honing of what art style felt right to the developers at Batterystaple Games. 

“Somewhere in the game’s second visual iteration it took on a very colorful, Saturday-morning-cartoon kind of vibe, which ended up working really well with the game’s quick pace and need for instant player reactions,” says King. “Zach Urte’s style leans into the game’s rounded edges and smooth curves, and he definitely took a good bit of inspiration from Chris Sanders’ (Lilo & Stitch) work.”

“I guess what I strive for most is consistency and fidelity,” says Urtes. “I want the game to be the best version of itself, and finding what that means has been an ever-present part of the learning process. Sometimes less is more; learning where to snipe quality and when to pull back’s been a big deal for us. On a personal note, I’ve just always wanted to make a game that feels like a colorful, exciting action cartoon. I think we’ve done that here.”

That ‘action cartoon’ style was not just the result of the developers feeling their way toward the art style that felt right for 20XX, but also a way they could work on the important features of readability and reaction.

“The game’s foes and projectiles have to be clear enough that a player immediately knows what’s come on screen without having to fully shift focus to it, which turned out to be a serious challenge”

That vibrant, rounded Saturday morning cartoon style was the final step in the constant struggle toward clarity the developers had been working at. 20XX would require that same twitchy reaction time that the games that inspired it required, but the randomization aspects meant that players couldn’t just memorize enemy layouts and shot patterns. They would have to react to them with no previous experience (in that exact, repeated situation) to train them.

20XX has undergone more than one facelift since we started making it four years ago. We’ve learned a lot while making and remaking it, and one of the key lessons is that the game’s pace prefers instant readability to painstaking detail when it comes to asset and environment design.” says King. “In order to avoid getting in the way, the game’s foes and projectiles have to be clear enough that a player immediately knows what’s come on screen without having to fully shift focus to it, which turned out to be a serious challenge.”

King and the development team would need to make enemies and their projectiles crisp and visible without requiring the player take their attention away from what they were doing, requiring their visuals be recognizable at a glance. If it required any more attention than a moment’s peek, or drew even slightly more focus to identify them, the game would fall apart.

“Spine (our animation software) lets us layer animations on top of one another, so we don’t have to be too concerned about what movement state a player is in on attack-press – we can always snap to action instantly when required.”

They made that less of a problem by focusing on the animations of the characters and enemies. “Crisp gameplay is key,”  says King. “In a game like 20XX, it’s super important that every button press results in an action instantly, and that dictates how most of the player animations need to play out. If it takes Nina three frames to raise her buster before firing, or if Ace’s base sword slash takes three frames to get in front of him and deal damage, the game’s immediately much worse.”

Players needed to be able to react to surprising situations they hadn’t seen before in 20XX, or to enemy attacks that might not immediately jump out at them. They had worked to make these attack visuals stand out, but if the player couldn’t react to them quickly enough, their work would have been wasted.

“Spine (our animation software) lets us layer animations on top of one another, so we don’t have to be too concerned about what movement state a player is in on attack-press – we can always snap to action instantly when required,” says King. “To make up for that a little, we add more weight to the non-player-action animations – things like landing, stopping, lowering your weapon, etc all get a little more detailed since they’re not instant-player-input sorts of actions, and them taking a little time doesn’t cost us anything.”

“Games like 20XX are all about pattern recognition when it comes to dodging bad guys, so super conspicuous tells before enemies take action are really important.”

The player’s attacks in 20XX are all instantaneous, allowing players to switch it an attack animation the moment they sense they need it. This deliberate decision to animate in this was would be key to allowing players to deal with new threats or changes in the environment quickly, rather than force them through a few frames that may result in their death. Readability was important with the art style, but being able to react to what is read with a quick attack animation was the other half of the equation.

And that’s not to say that there aren’t some elements of memorization at play, either. “For enemies, it’s the exact opposite,” says King. “No enemy should attack without warning – games like 20XX are all about pattern recognition when it comes to dodging bad guys, so super conspicuous tells before enemies take action are really important.”

Enemy animations would have long tells that the player could learn to recognize, as while stages were generated, enemies would still have known actions and behaviors players could pick up over time. Even for a brand new player, these kinds of animated tells would indicate that an attack was imminent, getting the player ready to use their tools to react and dodge or fight back.

These three items – focusing on readability in visuals, quick player attack animations, and enemy attack tells – form a means of keeping the action at a fast pace while still giving the player tools to instantly know what is happening and how to react to it appropriately. Through these animation details, a player is given multiple levels on which to deal with a threat that they see clearly before it’s coming, see clearly when it’s on its way, and be able to drop everything and deal with it.

“First and foremost, the game’s visuals serve to abet its rock-solid gameplay — after that, we hope it’s nice to look at,” says King.

Today is the day! Get ready for the thrill of motorsport at the limit. Gear up for the most comprehensive, beautiful and authentic racing game ever made. Forza Motorsport 7 is here, available worldwide today on Xbox One and Windows 10 PCs, in three different versions.

• Standard Edition – This edition features the full version of the game running at a silky-smooth 60 frames per second. Players can collect over 700 Forzavista™ cars including the largest assortment of Ferraris, Porsches, and Lamborghinis in any racing game. With over 30 world-famous environments and tracks featuring dynamic weather and race conditions that change every time you return to the track, no two races are the same.
• Deluxe Edition – the Deluxe Edition includes the full version of the game, VIP membership ($20 value), and both the Hoonigan and Fate of the Furious car packs.
• Ultimate Edition – This edition is for the Forza fan wanting it all. In addition to the content in the Deluxe Edition, Ultimate Edition owners will have access to the Forza Motorsport 7 Car Pass ($30 value).

And with Xbox One X coming Nov. 7 even more players will get to experience gorgeous graphics in native 4K, at 60fps and HDR.

We’d like to thank everybody who has experienced the game already by downloading the free “Forza Motorsport 7” demo, being a part of the Early Access period, or joining us at our launch and preview events this past weekend. We’re thrilled to hear such positive feedback so far, with IGN calling the game “drop-dead gorgeous” and GamesRadar+ noting that it “blows everything else out of the water.” As the community grows, we look forward to hearing what even more players think.

Forza Motorsport 7 Launch Event at the Petersen Museum

On Saturday, Sept. 30 the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles played host to over five hundred Forza fans who came out to play the Forza Motorsport 7 early, admire the museum’s amazing collection, and meet members of the Forza team including championship-winning drivers Tanner Foust and Josef Newgarden who served as technical advisors on the game.

The event was broadcast on interactive livestream (see the replay on Mixer) and featured head-to-head racing with Tanner and Josef, a drift demonstration of the Forza-exclusive 2003 Hoonigan Holden Commodore Ute by Hertrech “Hert” Eugene Jr, an unboxing of the SCUF Forza Elite Collector’s Edition controller inspired by the Porsche 911 GT2 RS and an interview with “Climbkhana” star Ken Block.

Thank you to our fans, partners, and members of the LA area automotive community for making this a day to remember.

Hanging out at @Petersen_Museum playing #Forza7. Stop by or watch the #XboxLiveSessions LIVE on my Facebook page! @ForzaMotorsport @Xbox pic.twitter.com/QH9PVkWssZ

— Tanner Foust (@TannerFoust) September 30, 2017

You know, just chilling at the @ForzaMotorsport 7 game launch, and posting P1 times on the leaderboard. pic.twitter.com/4pHm0N8bc1

— Josef Newgarden (@josefnewgarden) September 30, 2017

My face when my good friends tell me to smile n a pic ? @JoshLBarnett missed the big guy ?? pic.twitter.com/qV07GJFTdW

— Rampage Jackson (@Rampage4real) October 1, 2017

Reach Out Worldwide and Game4Paul

We were honored to design a custom Xbox One S console modeled after Paul Walker’s first car from The Fast and the Furious which was signed by members of the cast and raffled off this weekend during the third-annual Game4Paul.com event hosted at the Microsoft Lounge in Venice, CA.

The livestream event (see replay on Mixer) helped raise over $150,000 for Reach Out WorldWide, a disaster relief nonprofit founded by Paul Walker with the purpose of providing quick and efficient relief to those who need it most in the chaos after a natural disaster.

The stream featured a look at The Fate of the Furious Car Pack for Forza Motorsport 7 and a surprise appearance by the only surviving 1995 Mitsubishi Eclipse created for the original 2001 movie. In an amazing coincidence, the car belongs to a LA-area Forza Motorsport fan who bought the car as a cast-off movie prop while still in high school. Once he learned about the event he jumped at the chance to reunite the car with Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez and others from the Fast family for the first time in sixteen years.

#Game4Paul is TODAY! We’ve got my brother @Ludacris to sign the Xbox…are you donating for it?

??https://t.co/8135SL7iJM pic.twitter.com/JSy3qnx0Wp

— Cody Walker (@codywalkerroww) October 1, 2017

Ready to race? Purchase the Forza Motorsport 7 Ultimate, Deluxe or Standard Editions online now. See you on the track!

One of the things that many fans noticed immediately when shown in-game footage of Super Mario Odyssey was that the life counter, a staple in every Mario game till now, was missing. Should the plumber meet his demise, the game merely subtracts some coins from your total and then restarts you at a checkpoint. It’s divided opinion somewhat, but this is something that’s become more and more of a trend in modern platformers, as lives are really just a holdover from the glory days of arcades.

Speaking more on this issue in this month’s Game Informer, Kenta Motokura—the director of Super Mario Odyssey—explained that the concept was canned because it wouldn’t gel well with the general design of the game. Here’s what he said:

We thought about how a lives system would work in this kind of broad, exploration-focused game. In this sort of game, there would be a lot of different restart points. We decided not to use the lives system because it was not an element that was absolutely necessary. We also thought that it would affect some users’ desire to play because, while users who are good at the game would rarely see the (game over) screen that comes up when Mario runs out of lives, inexperienced users would probably end up seeing it frequently.

It makes a lot of sense, but the question is whether this will become a standard for all Mario games, or if it’s just for Odyssey.

What do you think? Does a life counter still have a place in modern game design? Do you think they’re going to drop it from Mario games for good? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Halloween is on the way and our chums over at Wales Interactive are ready to embrace the scary season with their upcoming supernatural horror game Don’t Knock Twice, which is coming to Switch eShop on 17th October priced at £9.99 / €12.49 / $12.49.

Here’s some blurb from the PR to get you up to speed on the game:

Don’t Knock Twice is a first-person horror game based on a psychologically terrifying urban legend. To save her estranged daughter, a guilt-ridden mother must uncover the frightening truth behind the urban tale of a vengeful, demonic witch. One knock to wake her from her bed, twice to raise her from the dead.
 
To find and save your daughter, you will explore all depths of a grand manor house, searching for hidden clues and wield items to escape the terror that surrounds you.
 
The game was developed alongside the 2017 horror film, Don’t Knock Twice, starring Katee Sackhoff (Battlestar Galactica) and directed by Caradog James (The Machine).

It all sounds like a ruddy good time to us. Do you plan to check this one out later in the month, or are you too scared?

Battle Chasers: Nightwar is Now Available on Steam!

Battle Chasers: Nightwar is an RPG inspired by the classic console greats, featuring deep dungeon diving, turn-based combat presented in a classic JRPG format, and a rich story driven by exploration of the world.