Tag Archives: free-to-play

Louis Castle, co-founder of EA’s Westwood Studios has left the firm for free-to-play games company InstantAction where he will act as CEO.

InstantAction specializes in third-party 3D browser-based games funded through advertising and micro-transactions.

Castle, who founded Westwood with Brett Sperry in 1985, became general manager of EA’s Blueprint Studios after Westwood was acquired by the publisher in 1998. It’s greatest success came from Command & Conquer series.

Via GI.biz, IndustryGamers.

Battlefield Heroes will release this summer, EA’s confirmed. No date. Just “summer”.

The shooter’s closed beta is ongoing, and just yesterday it was announced that EA had already handed out 75,000 keys.

Didn’t get one? You can still sign up.

To give you further incentive, we have a video posted below.

More »

Acclaim will be allowing players into the closed beta for The Chronicles of Spellborn today, individuals “hand-picked” from chats, David Perry’s Twitter and a beta tester list.

Tomorrow, another 1,000 accounts will be let in every 12 hours until servers have reached full capacity. Watch for email notifications or notices on your Acclaim account page.

Loads of people have been wanting to try this out, so now’s your chance.

Thanks, Kotaku.

Acclaim boss Dave Perry said at DICE yesterday that single-player games will not be able to compete with online free-to-play games.

The creator of Earthworm Jim told the crowd that “the days of single-player games are numbered,” and added that his company’s focus is “entirely on multiplayer.”

More over on Gamasutra.

DICE producer Patrick Liu wants to reassure fans that the company is not going casual. The Battlefield and Mirror’s Edge developer plans to “continue to do what we are best at”.

Speaking with Videogamer.com, Liu’s comment stems from the fact free-to-play cartoon shooter Battlefield Heroes is aimed at casual PC gamers.

“We are definitely still making PC games, we’ve not forgotten about that”, he said.

“We are not going casual, just because that is the trend. We’re not good at that. It’s not our core focus for the studio.”

Hopefully the worried few will feel a bit better now.

Hellgate London will continue to be published as a free-to-play title by Korean outfit HanbitSoft, the company’s confirmed.

No territories have been specified. Namco has already confirmed it’s to shut the game’s servers down in the West.

HanbitSoft said yesterdav that future updates for Hellgate: London are in the works, with a focus on “strengthening community features”.

The next “large-scale” patch, according to HanbitSoft, will be released “soon,” and will “combine the two game play modes, unifying the split two communities into one.”

More on Gamasutra.

The Twilight Zone has nothing on this horrifying distortion of reality.

Picture, if you will, a world in which a hugely popular MMORPG becomes a far greater behemoth, capturing the hearts and minds of all human beings until only one man remains, alone. How would the MMO in question go about expanding its already formidable girth? By not costing a dime.

This harrowing picture of what could’ve been has been brought to you by Gamasutra, and we’re sighing in relief that it never happened. Apparently World of Warcraft was supposed to be a free-to-play, ad-supported game, but fate dictated otherwise.

Blizzard’s Rob Pardo made this bit of info known at GDC Paris, saying that in the end, market conditions prevented Blizzard’s plans.

That, friends, is what we call dodging a bullet.

By Nathan Grayson