Gamer's Outpost Press (archived)

by Eddie Makuch

Following the announcement of a $15 million settlement last year, Sony on Friday began reaching out to United States users with details about how they can claim compensation over the 2011 PlayStation Network attack that compromised more than 70 million accounts.

Anyone who had a PlayStation Network, Qriocity, or Sony Online Entertainment account before May 15, 2011 can request documents to file a settlement claim via PSNSOESettlement.com.

Individual compensation will vary depending in part on what type of account(s) you had at the time. Some of the options, per Sony’s official descriptions, include:

• Payment equal to paid wallet balances (if $2 or more) in PSN or SOE accounts that have been inactive since the intrusions.
• One or more of the following: a free PS3 or PSP game, three free PS3 themes, or a free three-month subscription to PlayStation Plus (once valid claims exceed $10 million, class members will still be eligible for one free month of PlayStation Plus).
• A free month of Music Unlimited for Qriocity account holders who did not have a PSN account.
• $4.50 in SOE Station Cash (amounts will be reduced proportionally if valid claims exceed $4 million).

In addition, Sony said it will reimburse users with out-of-pocket charges who suffered legitimate identity theft related to the network intrusion. Users can receive up to $2,500, though they’ll need to provide documentation that the theft was caused by the network hack.

People who don’t want to file claim forms over the internet can request the forms from Sony’s Claims Administrator by writing to “PSN-SOE Settlement, PO Box 1947, Faribault, MN 55021” or by calling 1-877-552-1284.

A court assigned to the case will hold a Fairness Hearing on May 1, 2015 to confirm the settlement, and all claim submissions must be filed either online or in the mail by August 31, 2015.

About the settlement terms in general, Sony writes: “The Sony Entities deny any claims of wrongdoing in this case, and the settlement does not mean that the Sony Entities violated any laws or did anything wrong.”

by Scott Grill

The PlayStation Network security breach that occurred in 2011 may seem like it happened forever ago in gaming terms, but a class action lawsuit against Sony for the hack was concluded. The company settled that lawsuit recently, and is now offering a free PlayStation 3 game, PS Vita game, PSP game, PS Plus membership, or free themes as compensation to any of the more than 70 million accounts affected.

by John ‘Spartan’ Nguyen

Marvel has made a big announcement today about the Marvel Universe by teasing that it will end. With everything “ending” and the Marvel and Ultimate Universe colliding, what does the godfather of Marvel think about a possible new beginning? Stan Lee, the man who co-created the X-Men, Spider-Man, Hulk, Fantastic Four, and more, is fine with it.

“It’s probably good,” Lee said. “Anything they do that’s unexpected and different usually captures the attention of the fans. People will want to follow it to see what happens and where it will lead. Marvel cannot keep doing the same stories over and over again. You always have to come up with new angles and new approaches to things. I think it’s probably a good idea. It sounds intriguing to me.”

Even though he thinks it’s intriguing, he still has a spot for the original.

“Of course I have an emotional attachment to the original Marvel Universe, because I was so involved in it,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I expect it to be that way forever. It might be better under this new approach. I’m eager to see what might happen.”

If Lee had the chance to do it all over, would he do it?

“At the time, what I did, I thought was the right way to go, and maybe sometimes, even the perfect way to go,” Lee said. “I liked making the Fantastic Four superheroes without a secret identity. I liked the tragedy of Spider-Man’s origin, the ‘with great power, there must also come great responsibility.’ I thought it was the right way of doing things at the time. And I still like what I’ve done. I can’t think, off the top of my head, of anything I’d really want to change.”

Lee understands that it’s important to surprise fans.

“I was once the creative head of the company, but the company was smaller,” he said. “I don’t know what I would do if I was the creative head of the company today. I’d have to ponder that for a bit. I know that you always have to have surprises. You always have to make the reader say, ‘Wow, I never expected this!’ You have to keep doing that. It’s kind of become the Marvel tradition. If this continues that tradition, I’m happy for them all, and I’m happy for the fans.”

by Chris Morris

A 32-year-old gamer in Taiwan is dead after suffering an apparent cardiac arrest during a 72-hour gaming binge.

The man, who has only been identified by his surname “Hsieh,” was found sprawled on a table in an Internet café. Authorities say it’s unclear how long he had lain there before being discovered, but they suspect several hours.

“He has been unemployed for a long time, and Internet cafes were the only place he could go to,” said Jennifer Wu, a police spokesperson from the Hunei district precinct. “His family said he would disappear for two to three days on end.”

Other gamers in the café reportedly continued playing – even when police and paramedics arrived on scene. That might sound harsh, but officials say Hsieh was a regular at the café and would often sleep face down or slumped in his chair, so it’s possible few realized the severity of the situation.

The cold temperatures maintained in the café and the stress of playing and sitting in the same position for an extended period of time are the likely contributors to the death. Deep vein thrombosis, a condition marked by blood clots in the legs, has been linked to several gaming-related deaths over the years.

Hsieh’s death is the second Internet café catastrohphe in Taiwan this year. Five days before Hsieh was discovered, another man was found dead in Taipei after playing an online game for five consecutive days. Taiwan has an unfortunate history when it comes to gamer deaths. 2012 saw a pair of deaths from players who didn’t know when to call it quits and take a break.

Deaths in Internet cafes are rare, but happen from time to time when players concentrate so intensely on their games that they ignore factors like the body’s need for sleep and food.

The deaths underscore the risk of game addiction, which more and more people are becoming worried about as the industry grows.

by Daniel Terdiman

Anybody can make Mario, Nintendo’s world-famous little plumber, race through the Mushroom Kingdom, chasing coins. But what if Mario could do it on his own?

That’s the goal of the Mario AI Project: to develop an artificially intelligent Mario agent that becomes aware of himself and his environment, and which can make decisions about what to do based on spoken instructions.
Built by members of the Cognitive Modeling Group at Germany’s University of Tubingen, the Mario AI Project has released a video demonstrating and explaining the initiative. And while the team’s progress seems to be slow, it’s pretty cool to think of this most-famous of game characters having a will of his own.

Using Carnegie-Mellon’s Sphinx speech-recognition toolkit, the video’s narrator explains, Mario can understand a large number of English sentences and commands. Based on a huge logic and grammar tree the team built, he can answer things about what he knows based on what he’s been told, and can take actions based on what he’s learned.

He can even make decisions based on his emotions, or his needs. For example, if Mario’s hungry, he’ll chase coins. If he’s just feeling curious, he’ll explore the Mushroom Kingdom, autonomously gathering knowledge about items he doesn’t know much about yet.

Researchers clearly think that there’s gold, as it were, in applying AI to Mario. The Tubingen team’s project is not the first to work towards that goal. For several years, in fact, there even was a Mario AI Championship. The competition, which was conducted in association with several international conferences on computational intelligence and games, featured tracks on gameplay, learning, and level generation, and a Turing Test.

by Emanuel Maiberg

Halo: The Master Chief Collection’s next update will be available within the next few days, potentially a little later than initially planned, 343 Industries has announced.

343 Industries said that the content update is undergoing further testing, but for now it has released detailed notes on what the update will include. As it previously said, the update will focus on UI, matchmaking, game-specific multiplayer and campaign, controls, and stability.

“We continue to work on additional content updates that will include added improvements for matchmaking, parties, and other top community items,” 343 Industries said.

Below are the content update notes as written by 343 Industries.

MATCHMAKING:
Improved matchmaking search success rates.
Made an update to reduce instances of “Awaiting Privileges” matchmaking errors.
Made an update to ensure player counts more reliably match the expected numbers for each playlist.
Fixed an issue where player would sometimes appear to be searching in an incorrect “FIND GAME” screen.
Added countdown sound effect to the voting timer.

GENERAL MULTIPLAYER:
Made several improvements to party joining through the in-game Roster.
Made an update to ensure that the mute icon is visible while in Matchmaking.
Fixed an issue in Halo 4 where players could equip the same weapon as their primary and secondary weapons.

GENERAL CAMPAIGNS:
Made several improvements to stat tracking for Halo: CE, Halo 2, Halo 3, and Halo 4.
Made changes to Halo 3 and Halo 4 scoring to ensure that players are not penalized for destroying empty vehicles.

GENERAL MENU:
Lowered the music volume level in multiplayer menus.
Fixed an issue where friend emblems in roster would show up as default when exiting a game session.
Made updates to UI and menus to improve multiplayer status messaging, such as when a player joins your lobby.

CONTROL LAYOUTS:
Made an update to the Halo 2 Anniversary “Legacy” Stick Layout.

STABILITY:
Made stability improvements across multiple titles for campaign and multiplayer.

The Master Chief Collection launched in November, and immediately faced a number of networking issues that made the game near-unplayable for some. 343 has worked consistently since then to fix the game’s online woes, which have now been largely eradicated. In a bid to make it up to fans, Microsoft is giving Master Chief Collection owners a free copy of Halo 3: ODST and more.

by Eddie Makuch

Scalebound, the upcoming Xbox One-exclusive from Bayonetta 2 and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance developer Platinum Games will “shock” you, according to a development manager at Microsoft. Creative director Ken Lobb appeared on the latest Inner Circle podcast, and, though he wouldn’t go into specifics about the game, he did say it’s a AAA title that has major ambitions.

“It’s you, and there’s dragons,” Lobb said about Scalebound. “Monster Hunter-esque, no. Monster Hunter is kind of weird and grindy. I like it, but no. You have to think, what does Platinum do well? That’s what they’re building. What do we do well? That’s what we’re adding. And yes, these are dragon companions. God, they are awesome [gasps].”

Lobb explained that players will be able to see more of Scalebound and play it later this year, though he wouldn’t say when the game will launch. Microsoft typically brings its big games to shows like E3 and PAX, which might be what Lobb meant when he said it will be playable this year.

“Scalebound is very real and very awesome,” he said. “And I think when people really understand what it is we are building, they’re gonna be shocked. It is definitely big, AAA.”

Lobb went on to praise Platinum Games and its director, Hideki Kamiya. He even went as far to boast that Platinum has “an opportunity to make a ‘Game of the All-Time,’ as lots of people like to call it. Yeah, it’s special.”

The interviewer speculated that Scalebound might be an open-world RPG, to which Lobb replied: “Really good guess.”

Also in the interview, Lobb recalls Platinum’s original pitch for Scalebound, saying the developer was hoping Microsoft could help the studio make a game that succeeds on a global scale.

“One of the things that they had asked was .. they make these games that are 90-rated; they’re awesome games. But they’ve struggled to sell huge quantities worldwide,” Lobb said. “And they’re very self-aware. They understand that this is a mixture of good marketing, good PR, but also their understanding of the western audience.”

Lobb goes on to say that Platinum has been fairly insistent about tapping into Microsoft’s user research labs to ensure the game appeals to global tastes.

Scalebound was announced during Microsoft’s E3 briefing back in June 2014. Kamiya previously called it unlike anything he’s made before. One video for the game (above) has been released to date, and it shows a sword-wielding character fighting dragons

by Eddie Makuch

Video game retailer GameStop on Monday announced that its GameStop Technology Institute business unit has added a new partner: Microsoft. As part of the collaboration, GameStop will use Microsoft’s Azure cloud-powered network to take “retail innovation to the next level.”

The retailer adds that it will tap into Microsoft’s Azure, which is also behind some of the Xbox One’s cloud-powered services like those used to run Titanfall’s multiplayer, to “enhance the in-store engagement of its customers in interactive, informative, and entertaining ways.”

Specifically, GameStop said it will use the cloud platform to stream video game and promotional content directly to mobile devices. Thanks to the Microsoft Azure technology, GameStop shoppers will be able to view content such as trailers and promotional materials for games on their smartphones and tablets while in a store.

In addition, GameStop will use Microsoft Azure to stream game trailers to TVs within its stores, and to offer faster checkouts through a new in-store mobile shopping cart.

What’s more, GameStop says the new partnership with Microsoft will allow GameStop’s employees provide a more personalized shopping experience to customers who have opted in to receive and share information–such as previous buying history–through the Game Stop Technology Institute app.

Before today, GameStop had shown some reluctance to invest in streaming technology. The company had its own game streaming service, but shut it down last year, opting to instead support Sony’s Playstation Now. Today’s announcement with Microsoft, however, is of a different variety, as GameStop doesn’t plan to stream full games through Azure.

Announced in March 2014, the GameStop Technology Institute is a wide-ranging initiative that aims to remove the complexity of shopping and improving customer service overall.

by Paul Tassi

Lately pre-order bonuses and console-exclusive content have frustrated many gaming fans who feel like they’re getting the short end of the stick when it comes to new releases, unless they pledge their loyalty to an unreleased game months ahead of time. But today with 2K’s upcoming shooter Evolve, we have a console exclusive, pre-purchase bonus that’s causing something of a stir.

Evolve’s production has gone gold, and with that proclamation comes the now-mandatory open beta for the multiplayer game starting later this month. Ahead of that event, 2K and Turtle Rock have announced that Xbox One players who pre-order a digital copy of the game from the Xbox Live store will unlock instant access to the third tier of hunters in both the beta and the final release of the game, along with a new monster, the Wraith.

The major catch here is that a “pre-order” of a digital game in the Xbox store is really a straight-up pre-purchase, as you’re charged the full $60 for the game up front. It can be canceled any time ahead of launch, but it’s significantly more than the usual $5 GameStop down payment to be sure. Not to mention the very idea of pre-ordering a digital copy of the game now means we’re abandoning any pretense of logic regarding pre-ordering as a means to secure a launch copy of a game that might otherwise be sold out.

Past the concept of a pre-purchase, players are a bit perplexed about what’s actually being unlocked, and what it may say about the game itself. The core roles of the four hunters in Evolve never change (Medic, Assault, Trapper, Support), but as you go, different characters can be unlocked through enough gameplay. To get all the way to the third tier of characters requires a hefty amount of grinding, probably at least a ten hours per character class (plus the monster), if the alpha was any indication.

In other words, paying $60 up front is a free pass to skip a significant portion of what’s supposed to be the core progression system in the game. And compounding the strangeness of that, it’s an Xbox exclusive offer. The implication is that the grind is so bland and terrible, it’s an incentive to skip it directly with a pre-purchase.

There are a few schools of thought about this. One is that all games should come with everything accessible and not restrict content for those unwilling to invest dozens or hundreds of hours to unlock it. The other is that progression systems create a tangible sense of progress and something to work toward, which is why Call of Duty’s prestige and unlock system is so popular. But in this case, it would be like if you pre-purchased Advanced Warfare on Xbox and you got to start at the third prestige level. It might not unbalance gameplay necessarily, but what’s the point in skipping that progression at all? It’s like admitting your grind is so boring that you’re willing to allow people to play less of your game, when the ones who are pre-purchasing are probably the most devoted to it.

Evolve has more than a few other kinks to work out besides this. An actual pre-order bonus that’s been announced, a fourth monster, seems like a pretty significant piece of content to lock away. Past that, the progression system itself appears as if it will be heavily skewed against new players, with advanced level bonuses including rarely seen perks like flat damage and defense increases, things other games have forgone for the sake of balance. This means matchmaking will have to be incredibly spot-on, or newer players will find themselves getting dunked on by veterans. I already saw a bit of this in the Alpha, and it seems like it could snowball badly if left unchanged. But I suppose that’s what an open beta should sort out.

Evolve just seems to be in a weird place ahead of its upcoming launch. One of my concerns with the game in the alpha was its relatively sparse amount of content. A bare-bones multiplayer focus can work, like with Turtle Rock’s last game, Left 4 Dead, or it can fall flat like we saw with Titanfall. Given its somewhat limited scope, it seems dangerous to allow players to A) skip progression, B) hold too much additional content as pre-order bonuses or DLC or C) have too many alphas/betas. That last item isn’t really a consumer issue, but more of a judgement call. I’d just worry about players burning out on the game before it’s even released, as that’s verbatim what happened to me after a marathon week with the Titanfall beta. But I suppose it does give players a solid look as to whether or not they want to purchase the full box copy at launch, and I can’t fault the transparency of that.

I am willing to give Evolve a pass on a lot of issues, because I would like to see an original IP with a unique core concept succeed. But they’re losing the narrative with all this pre-order, pre-purchase nonsense. If they’re confident enough in their game to offer lengthy alphas and betas, they shouldn’t feel the need to bribe Xbox players to skip playing the game itself as a pre-purchase bonus. No part of that sentence projects confidence, and it just seems like the latest annoyance in companies pushing pre-orders, and now even pre-purchases, too damn hard.

Job listings for company’s new studio confirms development of undisclosed RTS sequel.

by Chris Mawson

Microsoft Game Studios are currently developing the ‘next installment in a beloved strategy game franchise’, according to a number of listings on their careers site.

According to the posts, the company’s Decisive Games team, which ‘is focused on world class strategy game development’, is hiring three senior software engineers to work on its latest project.

The job listings go on to request applicants with ‘familiarity of Direct X11 or Xbox 360/Xbox One rendering APIs’, effectively confirming a release on both PC and Xbox consoles.

The studio is hiring a generalist game development engineer and a senior tools engineer, but perhaps the most significant listing is a post for a senior client-server network engineer. This listing confirms a significant multiplayer component to the game, with successful applicants being responsible for ‘leading the networking and multiplayer aspects of gameplay, including both the real-time gameplay networking solution as well as supporting out-of-band systems such as matchmaking and grouping.’

The identity of the RTS game in question has yet to be confirmed. Some fans are speculating that it could potentially be a follow-up to 2008’s Halo Wars. Which strategy series sequel would you like to see Microsoft release? Let us know in the comments.