Now you can blast an arm off with steel-encased fireballs The next game from the makers of Chivalry: Medieval Warfare is a surprisingly colorful, almost painterly game. And it’s not just spouts of blood that provide the color this time around. Mirage: Arcane Warfare is a medieval and magic game with an Arabian and Persian inspiration stylized with bold contrasting colors.
The opposing teams wear orange or purple, the landscape is also awash in tinges of those colors, and the cities are vibrant too. Characters, setting, everything also has a touch of an outline, giving the entire game a bit of a drawn look.
And, yes, there is also plenty of blood.
“We wanted to create a peaceful, calm setting, so we have these pristine areas that are then overshadowed with violence," said Steve Piggott, founder of Torn Banner Studios and game director of Mirage.
"We want you to paint these beautiful landscapes with blood and gore," added Alex Hayter, senior brand manager for the studio.
The inspiration for this spiritual successor to Chivalry was the idea of extending the precise, back-and-forth hand-to-hand combat of that original game to ranged combat.
"Magic seemed to be the best way to approach that," Piggott said.
In the original Chivalry, which started out as a Half-Life 2 mod before being recreated and improved using Unreal Engine 3, players warred against one another in a medieval setting using swords, polearms, battleaxes and other weapons of the era. What helped to set the game apart was the precise controls needed to succeed in the game … and the ultra-violence that often ended a clash with lopped off limbs and geysers of blood.

Mirage, created with Unreal Engine 4 for Windows PC, will feature the same level of violence, but this time it won’t just be the result of melee combat. All six classes in the game use both magic and weapons in battles.
Each of the classes has its own style, spells and weapons. The team didn’t show off everything available to each class, but this is what we learned so far:

Alchemancer: Has no melee and can’t block, but has more powerful spells like the ability to throw a shield spell or cast a big blast.
Vypress: An assassin that can deliver devastating backstabs and can phase through attacks or turn invisible.
Taurant: A melee-centric class that can dominate in close combat with a grand mace. He can also create a controllable bounder that can flatten enemies.
Tinker: Defensive trap class that can lay magic mines.
Vigilist: A support class that can summon a bird attack and launch a ground slam. Also the only class with a shield.
Entropist: A balanced class with a magic carpet and a mix of offensive and defensive spells.

Magic is designed to have weight to it in the game. Fireballs, for instance, come wrapped in straps of steel.
"That kind of shows they are harnessing the magic," Piggott said. "It doesn’t feel like pixie dust magic, it has real weight and force. So we added a cage around the fire, for instance."
All of the spells seem to take have some sort of wind-up. This gives opposing players a chance to block or stop those spells, it also adds to the back-and-forth nature of the game.
For instance, the heal spell creates a fixed area for healing, but takes three to five seconds to activate. If friendly players aren’t within the area when the spell activates, they’re not healed.
This, Piggott said, turns every heal spell into a skirmish between the teams as they fight to retain control of the spot or force the other team away from it.
The gameplay currently relies on six-versus-six matches with teams trying to achieve different objectives or prevent them from being achieved.

In one map, players had to capture an area which then unlocked a door, expanding the map. Once in the new area, players had to escort an object to the other team’s tower.
While the game is multiplayer only, that doesn’t mean it’s completely devoid of plot.
There is a light story being told between matches and a backstory exists as well.
The orange team are known as the Azar Cabal and the purple team is the Bashrani Emirate.
The Cabal are outcast rebels who have scarred themselves with runes used to capture magic, while the Emirate is the standing empire made up of people with runes tattooed on their skin.
The six classes can all be customized with clothing, tattoos and scarring, Hayter said.
The game’s maps will each have its own mode, though no word yet on the total map count when the game launches later this year.
While I didn’t have a chance to play the game at GDC, the team said that it will be playable at PAX East.
Until then, they continue their work building in hooks to keep players playing.
"That’s what we’re doing with the game design, playing with their egos," Hayter said. "Giving them big kills and then taking it away from them. Everyone feels powerful and vulnerable at the same time."

The first time I ever played Thumper, upstairs in a restaurant a few blocks from last year’s Game Developers Conference, I was struck by a few things about it: primarily, the powerful sense of isolation, adrenaline and existential dread the game was able to instill in me, even while playing it in a sandwich shop on a stranger’s laptop with a huge pair of headphones on. After finishing my first session with the game and taking off my headphones, one of the first questions I asked Thumper’s creators was: “Have you considered virtual reality for this?"
It’s Thumper, but played at 90 FPS on a bright OLED screen inches from your face
At the time, the answer was no, but in the year since that meeting, Thumper was announced as PlayStation VR-compatible. The announcement had me thrilled — ever since I first played it, I’ve never been been able to shake the idea of how great Thumper in virtual reality could be, and hearing that it was coming true was genuinely super exciting.
Now, having played the PlayStation VR version of Thumper at this year’s GDC, I’m super relieved to report that it’s exactly what I hoped it would be: Thumper, but played at 90 frames per second on a bright OLED screen a few inches from your face.
At first blush, Thumper could seem like an odd fit for VR — after all, it’s not the type of game that requires you to crane your neck and look around at all while playing, and indeed, the 2D version of Thumper has no camera controls to speak of. But while most VR games we’ve seen so far use the technology to let you look around and explore a world from every angle, Thumper uses it for something much simpler: immersion.
Thumper uses VR as headphones for your eyes
Before now, the most important thing about playing Thumper was having a big pair of loud headphones to immerse you in its bassy, kaleidoscopic world. Thumper works as a VR game because it removes one more layer between you and its world, allowing you to easily immerse yourself in the intense, brutal audiovisual experience that is playing Thumper. No, you won’t spend much of your time in Thumper’s VR mode looking above, below, or behind you (although you’re free to), because that’s not why the feature exists — instead, Thumper uses the PlayStation VR as headphones for your eyes, and that’s exactly what a game like Thumper needs.

Another thing Thumper’s PlayStation VR mode exposes is how little the general public knows about predicting what will and won’t be nauseating in virtual reality. Thumper’s PlayStation VR announcement was met online with comments — some joking, some not — suggesting that the game would be nauseating or even seizure-inducing in virtual reality. While it’s easy to understand why folks who haven’t played Thumper could make that assumption, the experience of actually playing Thumper in VR is entirely non-sickening — perhaps because most VR-induced nausea is created by acceleration and deceleration, and Thumper’s movement speed, while breakneck, is also highly consistent. Whatever the reason, after my first VR session with Thumper was over, not only did I feel totally fine, I was ready to hop back in and play it again — which is exactly what I did.
Thumper in VR is fascinating because it’s one of the first examples of a non-VR game retrofitted into virtual reality in a way that actually makes perfect sense. It’s funny: while the benefits of playing Thumper in VR are relatively subtle compared to most VR games, they’re also completely undeniable. From the ultra-smooth framerate to the subtle head tracking, it’s hands-down the most immersive way to play Thumper, and the experience almost single-handedly converted me from a PlayStation VR skeptic to a possible day-one adopter.
For more from the 2016 Game Developers Conference, check out Polygon’s StoryStream of all the big news from this year’s show.

Replay this spooky JRPG tomorrow PlayStation 2 role-playing game Okage: Shadow King is launching on PlayStation 4 tomorrow, March 22. The PlayStation Blogcast revealed the date for the PS4’s latest PS2 classic in an episode released last week.
No price was given for the game, although it’s likely to cost between $9.99 and $14.99 like previous PS2 ports. So far, these include games like Dark Cloud and Dark Cloud 2, Rogue Galaxy, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Sony first rolled out these upscaled re-releases in December 2015.
The surreal Japanese RPG first hit PS2 in 2001, just ahead of Halloween. Okage: Shadow King is the most notable title in developer Zener Works’ catalog; the company collaborated with Sony Computer Entertainment on the game.

Warzone Firefight is due this summer Halo 5: Guardians’ newest multiplayer is Warzone Firefight, and 343 Industries showed it off in this trailer released yesterday during the Halo World Championship Finals.
As the name suggests, this mode is a combination of Warzone from Halo 5 and Firefight, a very popular mode from 2009’s Halo 3: ODST. In it, teams of up to eight human players work cooperatively against enemy AI in over five rounds of increasingly difficult objectives, according to this post on Xbox Wire.
Halo 5 multiplayer’s REQ system is available in Warzone Firefight (as it is in Warzone) to help the ream repel the oncoming threat, which 343 says will feature “the most on-screen enemies in the history of the franchise." In addition to the standard class of enemies, Warzone Firefight will also introduce "Mythic" class bosses to toughen the challenge even more.
Warzone Firefight comes to Halo 5: Guardians sometime this summer.

Doom launches May 13; multiplayer beta begins March 31 Doom will feature six multiplayer modes when it launches May 13, and a trailer published today details all of them.
The modes are called Soul Harvest, Freeze Tag, Warpath, Clan Arena, Domination and Team Deathmatch.
Soul Harvest is a Team Deathmatch variant but, after a kill, players need to collect the soul (represented by a skull icon) of the player shot down. Players of either team may reap the souls, but only opposing players’ souls count toward the score.
In Freeze Tag, combatants are not killed but rather frozen solid (though their frozen forms may be destroyed in an environmental hazard to trigger a respawn). Players are unfrozen by teammates who stand nearby them for a certain period of time. A team that is frozen entirely loses on the spot. Otherwise “most frozen" wins the round.
Warpath is a type of king-of-the-hill mode, except the control point is a moving area. This area will traverse pits and deadly hazards, forcing teams to respond once it returns to safer ground. The winning team is one reaching a preset score or having the highest score when time expires.
The three other types are more traditional: Domination, which involves three capture points spread across the map; Team Deathmatch; and Clan Arena, a type of deathmatch except there are no pickups, no means of restoring health or armor, and no respawning.
Last week, Bethesda Softworks revealed the nine multiplayer maps shipping with Doom. The game launches May 13 on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One, and a closed multiplayer beta on all of those platforms will be held March 31 through April 3.

The crafty action star returns to TV Lucas Till will play Angus MacGyver in an upcoming revival of the classic action TV series, Variety reports. The actor, best known as the mutant Havok in the recent X-Men movies, will play a 20-something version of the infallible problem-solver in a pilot produced for CBS.
Joining Till will be actors Joshua Boone and George Eads as MacGyver’s trusted companions; actor Henry Winkler serves as a producer on the reboot. Winkler, who was a producer on the original series as well, joined on back in October; the project was first announced back in February 2015, with Till’s casting marking the end of a long search, according to Variety.
MacGyver premiered in 1985 with Richard Dean Anderson in the starring role. The series lasted seven seasons on ABC where it found cult acclaim, spawning merchandise, two TV movies, featured spots on The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live parodies and more.

It’s a setback for EA, and for anybody hoping for this legal issue to be settled The U.S. Supreme Court won’t consider a lawsuit regarding Electronic Arts’ use of the likenesses of retired NFL players in its Madden NFL series, the court announced today.
EA had asked the Supreme Court to hear the case, Electronic Arts v. Davis, after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the publisher’s request to dismiss the lawsuit on First Amendment grounds in January 2015. The Supreme Court’s denial leaves that 9th Circuit ruling in place, meaning that the retired players’ case will continue in the federal appeals court.
Thousands of retired NFL athletes originally filed suit against EA in 2010, alleging that the publisher violated their state-law right to publicity by using their likenesses on historic teams in Madden titles from 2001-2009. Like the collegiate athletes who received $60 million in the settlement of a similar case, the NFL players in question did not appear in the Madden games under their real names. However, all other identifying traits — height, weight, ethnicity and the like — were true to life, and the virtual athletes were rated to perform like their real-world counterparts.

Must Read

Retired NFL players’ lawsuit against EA’s Madden series can go forward, court says (update)

EA did not compensate these players for the use of their likenesses. Since 1994, the publisher has paid licensing fees to the NFL Players Association for the rights to use active NFL athletes’ names and likenesses. Retired players currently appear in Madden’s Ultimate Team mode, and are paid for it.
In the Davis lawsuit, EA argued that the use of the retired athletes’ likenesses was covered under the First Amendment as “incidental" to the creation of the Madden games in question. The 9th Circuit disagreed, ruling last January that "EA’s use of the former players’ likenesses is not incidental because it is central to EA’s main commercial purpose — to create a realistic virtual simulation of football games involving current and former NFL teams."
By deciding not to hear EA v. Davis, the Supreme Court is leaving unanswered an important legal question about how to weigh the First Amendment against claims like trademark infringement and the right to publicity, said J. Michael Keyes, an intellectual property partner at the law firm Dorsey & Whitney.
"The lower courts still have little guidance as to what the proper standard is on how the First Amendment interacts with state law claims," said Keyes. He added that the Davis case "would have been a perfect vehicle for the Court to provide much needed guidance" in this area, because right now "there are multiple different tests used by lower federal courts."
A representative for EA declined comment to Polygon on the Supreme Court’s decision. We’ve asked the attorneys for Davis for comment, and will update this article with any information we receive.

GDC talk looks at the math that goes into PvP challenges. Each and every time you are matched in an online game, there’s a lot of mathematics going on under the hood. Game companies are investing more time and effort into effective match-making, because it keeps players from straying to rival attractions.
That was the view of Josh Menke, speaking at Game Developers Confrence last week on “Skill, Matchmaking, and Ranking Systems Design." Menke has been working on skill systems for more than a decade, including work on World of Warcraft, Starcraft II, Diablo III, Hearthstone, Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Halo 5. He is currently a senior systems designer at Activision.
He pointed out that balanced matchmaking helps new players, who are often wary of being trashed by superior players when they venture into competitive arenas. But veteran players must also be given satisfying challenges, especially as they are often vocal boosters — and critics — of a game.
"A good skill system finds players’ skills really fast and predicts outcomes correctly."
Most games have some sort of skill system that tells players and game-makers the level at which the player is ranked. These might include a kill/death ratio or a numbered ranking based on hours played or on achievements unlocked.
But sometimes these are not enough to predict various skill levels. Bad players can have a decent kill/death ratio if they only ever play against other bad players.
So games companies find other means to match players appropriately, balancing various data points to create a bigger picture. Performance ratings based on the strength of opponents is always best, he said, adding that every system requires constant testing. The outcome should be a classic bell curve that portrays the skill levels of the entire community.
"A good skill system finds players’ skills really fast and predicts outcomes correctly," he said. "It should give the right probabilities."
Menke added that the ideal outcome is for "planned experiences of varying intensity" so that all players get a good mix of games that are easy, evenly matched and hard to win. "That keeps the most amount of players in your game having fun," he explained.
He spoke about how new weapons are sometimes introduced to games, and are then taken up and dominated by a small number of players. The developers sometimes react by seeking balance and by nerfing powerful weapons. But Menke said that could be a mistake. Those players ought to be matched together, though he warned that fragmenting the audience between too many modes and specialities risks increasing wait times to games.
One area he worked on was the problem of mixing groups of friends with groups of random people. The friends generally had an advantage over the strangers. He said that every team should create its own skill level so they can be matched correctly. A mediocre team of pals might get a better game against a bunch of strangers with individually high skill levels.
The most important thing is finding the right balance between getting people up and playing, and making sure they get a satisfying challenge. "People don’t like to wait," he said.

Third-person camera makes this Vive game a giddy experience Last week, following a GDC demo for The Gallery, I wrote about the weirdness of vertigo in Virtual Reality. A few days later, I experienced an even more intense sensation of height-fright while playing Marble Mountain.
Like most early VR experiences, The Gallery is a first-person game, Marble Mountain makes use of a third-person camera. It’s a Marble Madness-style platform game in which the player rolls a ball across landscapes and through obstacles, taking care not to lose control and plunge over cliff faces.
I played it on Vive with a regular controller. Against the advice of the developers, I played standing up. The giddy sensation I had felt with The Gallery was even more pronounced during Marble Mountain. The camera swings through space in arcs that are predetermined, and which follow the Marble’s moves from a variety of directions. It’s these arcs of movement that really unsettle the player’s sense of balance.
I was swaying like a drunk, especially during sequences when the camera is behind the Marble, careening down a steep slope. It was clear from my conversations with the developers that this is a perfectly normal reaction. You can avoid it by sitting. And yet, I didn’t want to sit. The physical sense of place is a big part of what makes VR so fun.
You can get some small sense of how this works from the trailer (above) which features a few shots which take the player high above the action. If anything, the lack of detail on some of the lower parts of the crevice structures diminish the effect of vertigo. Developer Shannon Pickles said that he had cut out some details for that exact reason, smoothing the lower reaches of the world to a fog.
Marble Mountain is a launch title for Vive on April 5, and will also be available Oculus Rift as well as non-VR platforms Linux, Mac and Windows PC via Steam.

Newsworthy is an interview show that aims to talk about the intersection of news and games with newsmakers and thought leaders both inside and outside the game industry.
Today with sit down with Tracy Fullerton, game designer, educator, author and head of one of the top game design program in North America: USC Games.
For the past 16 years, the Game Developers Conference has been host to the Game Developers Choice Awards. The award show names the best games of the year, but it also hands out the Pioneer and Ambassador awards, created to honor game makers and thinkers who have created new technology or help make the game industry a better place.
This year’s Ambassador Award Winner is Tracey Fullerton, for her work not only with the rising stars of the game industry, but her own innovative and unusual game design ideas.
From nurturing the early work of Jenova Chen, Kellee Santiago and others, to her ongoing efforts to transform Walden into a game, Fullerton’s impact on the game industry is undeniable.
I chatted with her the day after she received the award to discuss how she got into teaching and what drives her as a game maker.

Links to subscribe to Newsworthy in iTunes, your podcast player of choice or to download an MP3 are all a click away, tucked inside the buttons below today’s episode.

Polygon Newsworthy is produced by Dave Tach. Please take a moment today to subscribe to the show using the links above and if you’re up for it, review it.
There are several ways to follow Polygon Newsworthy. You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes with one click, or add it to your podcast player of choice using its RSS feed. It also lives online at Polygon Newsworthy’s SoundCloud page — and in the SoundCloud app. For those of you who’d rather control your files, you can always download each story as an MP3.
And if you’re a fan of talk radio, news or podcasts in general please look into Polygon’s other podcasts. Newsworthy joins our growing list of programs, including our game reviews show Quality Control, our award winning daily news show, Minimap, our entertainment show, Cutscene, and our video game-themed comedy podcast, CoolGames, Inc. Check out our podcast hub to see them all.