News

The 21st annual Independent Games Festival (IGF) Awards were held Wednesday night at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Top honors went to Lucas Pope, who received the Seumas McNally Grand Prize for his work on Return of the Obra Dinn. This is Pope’s second time winning the award, which he also received in 2013 for Papers, Please. Obra Dinn is a supernatural murder mystery set on board a 19th-century merchant ship. Players must piece together the events of a journey that took place five years earlier, all with the help of an unusual time-bending artifact. In addition to its narrative, the game is notable for its art style, which recalls the monochrome era of early PC gaming. Polygon included the game in our Polygon Recommends program, and ranked it second on our Game of the Year 2018 list behind God of War. Obra Dinn also took home the award for Best Narrative at the Game Developers Choice Awards, also held Wednesday in San Francisco. The full slate of nominees, … [Read more...] about Return of the Obra Dinn wins the Grand Prize at the Independent Games Festival Awards

The 19th annual Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony was held Wednesday night at the 2019 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Sony Santa Monica’s God of War took home the coveted Game of the Year prize. It beat out Red Dead Redemption 2, which received the most nominations this year, as well as Marvel’s Spider Man, Return of the Obra Dinn, and Celeste. This year’s nominees were announced in January. The slate is chosen each year by video game developers from around the world. The full list of winners is included below. Each year during GDC, the Game Developers Choice Awards also takes time to honor notable figures in the industry with two very special honors. The Lifetime Achievement Award was given this year to Amy Hennig, whose career in the industry began in the Atari era. She has since become famous for her work as creative director and writer of the Uncharted series. On hand to receive the Pioneer Award was veteran game developer Rieko Kodama, whose … [Read more...] about God of War wins Game of the Year at Game Developers Choice Awards

Oculus’ newest virtual reality headset is called the Rift S. The $399.99 device, which includes a pair of newly redesigned Touch controllers, will offer higher resolutions for PC gaming and not require external sensors. The headset launches this spring. The announcement was made today in a blog post and coincides with the Game Developers Conference, taking place this week in San Francisco. The Rift S will feature a display for each eye that’s 1280 pixels wide and 1440 pixels tall. The original Rift only offered displays that were 1080 pixels wide and 1200 pixels tall. That alone should improve the user experience. It should also help to eliminate the so-called “screen door” effect, where the empty space between individual pixels can be perceived by the user. In addition, the Rift S will not require external tracking sensors. Instead, its new Insight system will use computer vision algorithms fed by five sensors embedded in the device to track movements in real … [Read more...] about Oculus Rift S promises higher resolutions for PC gaming without external sensors

Google Stadia, a streaming service that lets players enjoy modern games on low-end devices, is a play for the future of video game entertainment. Imagine a world where your gaming experiences aren’t restricted by your hardware; a world where you can hop straight into a game just by clicking a link. It sounds almost too good to be true, no? Naturally, we’ve got questions. What will Google Stadia cost? Everything about Stadia upends the way games are traditionally bought and sold. If you stream what you play, do you own the games or rent them? If you’re not buying any hardware, do pay for a service? Will it be more of a subscription or a one-time fee sort of deal? What’s the price-point for the controller? What happens to Stadia games after developers stop supporting it? We don’t know anything about the economics of Stadia right now. We just know that the streaming service will release later this year. For comparison sake: Game Pass, a Microsoft subscription … [Read more...] about 4 big questions we still have about Google’s Stadia

Google is building its own in-house studio to make original games for its new streaming platform, Stadia. Named Stadia Games and Entertainment, the new studio will be led by Jade Raymond, the former Ubisoft and Electronic Arts executive. Raymond said that Google’s first party will “reimagine the new generation of games” and “will also be working with external developers to make all of the bleeding-edge Google technology you’ve seen today available to partner studios big and small.” Stadia Games and Entertainment will be comprised of multiple studios, Raymond said. The team will also work with external developers to bring their games to Stadia. Google’s currently announced game development partners include Ubisoft, id Software, and Q-Games. Raymond did not announce any specific titles for Stadia, which is slated to be released in certain territories in 2019. Prior to Google, Raymond previously worked at Ubisoft, where she served as executive … [Read more...] about Google announces new first-party game studio, led by Jade Raymond