Category: Game

Somewhere, probably as you read this, people are sitting in a room attempting to compile every piece of video game-related information that exists. They then turn that minutiae into data, cataloging the news, media, trivia and more, and save it on a gigantic server.
This data defines how players describe games, with modifiers for high-end analytics. World of Warcraft shows up as an “action RPG" with a "massively multiplayer" modifier. Metroid Prime is a "first-person shooter" with elements of "action" and sub elements of "platforming." If ever there is any debate about a game’s classification, a team meeting occurs to assure all tags are as close to accurate as possible.
This is market research.
Yet it’s only step one of the process. Market research also studies you, the player.
Who is it that might identify as both a first-person shooter fan, and, for example, an iPad user? What interests would this hypothetical person have in common with other game players?
Market research figures out, say, what percentage of players is likely to have disposable income, how many are male and female, how old they might be and how often they play video games. And most importantly for marketers and developers, research can uncover which combinations of variables are the most lucrative.
For years, the science of mining video games and their demographics has been the invisible hand that guides your favorite video games.
And statistically, you like it that way.

The birth of EEDAR
Market research has a long history, existing for as long as there have been advertisements. You can trace it as far back as the 1920s when companies began analyzing newspaper copy and radio dialogue for effectiveness. And it has continued to adapt to new technologies, from the Bell company popularizing telemarketing in the 1970s, to research companies like the NPD Group including video game sales in their retail tracking in the late 1990s. At that time, however, only the broadest of information was available to companies that did not make data for themselves.
In 2006, two former Sony Online Entertainment employees hatched an idea — not only would they pull data centered around new games in development, they would classify the DNA of all video games. Who were these two? Greg Short, former director and product manager at Sony Online Entertainment and Geoffrey Zatkin, creator of the Everquest series and then lead game designer at Monolith Productions.
"Are those five Metacritic points coming from people not floating in the air? That’s a pretty bad problem. Are they coming from having eight more trees in the jungle? Nobody cares."
The ideas at their table: Game producers continue to exist in a precarious business that is steep in failed ventures, while furthermore, statistical tools like focus groups, surveys and more had long been commonplace and independently available to game makers, yet Short and Zatkin felt they were rarely used to their fullest potential. Short and Zatkin knew they could connect those dots to gather more useful data, so they opened Electronic Entertainment Design and Research that same year.
Having founded MMO cataloging site Guildz.com, Short knew the advantages of maintaining detailed database management. And as a creator of massive virtual communities, Zatkin viewed gamer feedback as critical to a game’s success.
Their combined insights helped create one of the earliest gaming-exclusive research companies. EEDAR is hidden away in a discreet office space in Carlsbad, Calif., and it’s a Pentagon of video game knowledge. Lacking the stiffness of a corporate office, its insides are similar in flair to the average development studio. Framed posters of video games line every inch of its wall space, employees drown their workspaces in video game swag, and meetings take place in rooms labeled "Black Mesa" and "The Mushroom Kingdom."
Head upstairs, and you will find employees mining video games for their data. Go downstairs, and you will be in the company of life-sized statues of zombies and Lara Croft hovering over the break room. A massive piece of Street Fighter art presides as the focal point of the copy room. Even the bathrooms guide patrons with Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man symbols.
As its Guinness World Record plaque attests, it is the world’s largest market research firm that specializes in video games. The company boasts over 100 million internally researched data points — and it’s still counting. EEDAR’s business model: sell its digital "genome" of interactive entertainment to interested parties, including developers looking to create, publishers looking to invest and retailers looking to catalogue.

EEDAR thrives on a client base of who’s who in the gaming industry. Clients include Sony, Nintendo, EA, Walmart, GameStop and Mattel. Yet despite collaborating frequently with major companies, market research tends to cast a smaller cultural shadow in relation to the influence it exerts. Since the company sometimes works with nondisclosure agreements and unannounced projects, the general public’s knowledge of gaming research can often be muted.
Nevertheless, things such as subgenre elements, popular memes, advertising methodology and Metacritic scores are not trivial factoids, but the blueprints for what EEDAR creates.
" you want to understand your players and your consumers, you need to have a plan in place to implement the right research at the right time, and at the right milestone," says Robert Liguori, CEO of EEDAR.
Should you spring to develop a massively multiplayer RPG? How is the market for first-person shooters versus third-person shooters? Should your company hop into the toys-to-life market? These are the "what if" scenarios EEDAR thrives on.
Developers often want answers the same questions, says Short: "What if I don’t do multiplayer? What if I don’t do a CGI trailer? What if we don’t do TV ads but we just advertise in the store? What if we push the release date out and it gets us five more Metacritic points? How much will those points help?
"The answer will depend. Are those five Metacritic points coming from people not floating in the air? That’s a pretty bad problem. Are they coming from having eight more trees in the jungle? Nobody cares. We help give information so that clients feel comfortable about the investments they make."

What are you buying? What are you sellin’?
So let’s say you’re sitting on a great idea for a video game. Or perhaps, you’re thinking of green-lighting the latest entry in your long-running, blockbuster franchise.
At EEDAR, the process begins with GamePulse, an "intelligence tool" that the company claims 90% of "top video game companies" regularly access. For a fee, you can search an enormous number of titles and sort through their classifications, view their development and marketing budgets and sales numbers and more. Access to this robust reference tool is typically the first stop in market research and often guides developers’ business decisions.

The next level of service involves honed in, analytical consultation from panels of experts. If a developer wants to understand the marketplace in relation to a given proposal, experts will analyze their game concept to figure out how to best begin or continue development. In other cases, they can analyze a title post-release and find out what went wrong, or conversely, find out exactly why a title succeeded.
"Confidentiality makes it difficult to share the specifics of clients and projects," says Patrick Walker, vice president of Insights and Analytics at EEDAR, though some details are made public for this story.
"In the beginning of 2012, THQ had a very difficult decision to make regarding their planned MMO, Warhammer 40,000: Dark Millennium Online," he says. "Over years of development, THQ had already invested a significant amount of money in the title, but the shift to free to play in the MMO landscape was in full effect."
In 2012, the market drifted away from THQ. Hit games like League of Legends, DC Universe Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online marked a change in consumer expectations and how much players were willing to pay. Being a long-term project, Warhammer 40,000 originated as a subscription model years ahead of free-to-play trends. It became vulnerable as a result.
"The research question was, ‘What is the game’s likely revenue, based on subscription MMORPGs?’ , it was very much an exercise on analytics … Our reports suggested that it was going to be very difficult to successfully launch a subscription model at that time."
"Our reports suggested that it was going to be very difficult to successfully launch a subscription model at that time."
THQ’s options were to lose the money and time invested on development or to forge ahead knowing the economic outlook for the game was at a high risk to miss its mark.
"THQ announced the title would not be an MMO in March 2012," says Walker. "Although the cancellation of a title is always unfortunate, the decision helped THQ save some much needed cash that supported other releases, such as the excellent Darksiders 2 later that year."
If your company is looking for a way to market already developed titles, there are specialists for this as well. Frank N. Magid Associates is a media market research company that focuses on creating frameworks for businesses. Mike Vorhaus, president of Magid Associates, tells Polygon how their analytics helped guide one particular gaming project that allowed EA to monetize its series of public domain and licensed genre titles.
"We conducted advanced research for … and provided our consultative advice for how to build Club Pogo and how to launch it."
Vorhaus suggests that other types of entertainment, like board and card games can be difficult to monetize because they’re everywhere, but analytics can help companies overcome those types of hurdles.

"The nature of the games in Club Pogo being similar to many readily available games did not create a problem for us. We found consumers very excited about no ads, enhanced points, special servers and chat rooms and special badges."
Their research suggested that they bring new features to old games and make the titles accessible all at once, creating a new brand name in the process.
"It was, and still is, a huge success with well over one million paying members after launch."
In addition to analytical reports and consultations, another tool in the market research playbook is the mock review.
Like consumer reviews, these outlined critiques suggest which sections of a game work well and which do not. Mock reviews can also show what can realistically be done to improve potential review scores based on consummate advice.
Market research firms like EEDAR and others often sell in-progress reviews to companies, many times even before the respective title is announced to the public. In EEDAR’s case, veteran game journalists who are kept on staff author each review.
EEDAR touts its mock reviews as having 90% accuracy to a game’s eventual, cumulative review score.

Market research as homogeneity
In a 2012 interview with Wired, game maker Ken Levine reacted to fan sentiment that the box art and marketing for his latest AAA blockbuster BioShock Infinite were notable departures from the macabre, psychologically tinged gameplay the series is known for. For the game’s marketing, the protagonist stands brooding, rugged and visibly bearing arms. This was a slap in the face to series devotees, and Levine acknowledged the disconnect.
"It’s disconcerting to know it’s someone’s job to learn how best to extract money from frustrated players."
"We went and did a tour … around to a bunch of, like, frat houses and places like that," he said. "People who were gamers, not people who read IGN. And said, so, have you guys heard of BioShock? Not a single one of them had heard of it."
To the uninformed, BioShock Infinite’s marketing appeared indistinguishable from a traditional run-and-gun shooter. This was exactly what the game’s publisher, 2K Games, was aiming for.
"I looked at the cover art for BioShock 1, which I was heavily involved with and love, I adored. And I tried to step back and say, if I’m just some guy … what would I think? And I would think: This is a game about a robot and a little girl," said Levine.
There is a lingering sentiment among critics that games are overwrought with recurring tropes; Machismo, guns, zombies, and male characters are the lifeblood of the industry, and this is indisputable. If, then, market research is what leads developers by the hand to more tired themes, an argument could be made that their doorstep is where creativity wilts.
"I understand the concern over micromanaging a game’s experience based on cold data," says Paste Magazine and Killscreen contributor Jon Irwin. "The result can be impersonal or exploitative. I have no idea how King figures out the best way to craft their free-to-play puzzle sagas, but it’s disconcerting to know it’s someone’s job to learn how best to extract money from frustrated players.
"I’m not necessarily opposed to a more direct approach, either, casting a wide net and asking players what they’ve liked or disliked about games they played … I think the larger problem is when such a reliance on data infringes on a creator’s original vision."

An example Irwin cites is Ubisoft’s User Research Lab, where biological responses to game playing areanalyzed, including vital signs and visual perceptions.
Irwin continues, "The fear is that relying on such math to figure out an ‘ideal’ experience ultimately funnels games down a single path, leading to homogenization and a more generic experience that may run counter to the design team’s ideas."
This is not how Patrick Walker sees it.
"Here is what we’ve seen in the industry … things are way more diverse now."
From Walker’s standpoint, genre hybridization and socially connected games are logical evolutions for major titles.
"Creativity is built on things that have been done before," says Walker. "Yes, AAA games are starting to look more homogenous with RPG elements, etc. But that’s because game design is getting better. It turns out, progression and exploration are a good thing."
"AAA games are starting to look more homogenous with RPG elements, etc. But that’s because game design is getting better."
A world where market research didn’t exist, Walker suggests, would cultivate fewer risks, not more. "Market research helps companies figure out ‘the line.’ Without it, you’d think there’d be more risks. But really, companies would just play it safe."
SuperData Research is a market research firm that focuses on digital platforms and qualitative data. CEO Joost van Dreunen agrees that market research is net positive for game creativity. "Like all art forms, game design exists within a larger context," he says. "In my experience, the nature of game design is working within a framework of limitations, whether those are set by a financially conservative publisher looking to meet market demand or by the fact that you’re a cash-poor indie studio.
"There is as much glory in designing a new, cool game that no one has ever seen as there is in perfecting an existing mechanic or genre."
Those working within market research will remind you that the market could not have predicted the Nintendo Wii or Minecraft. But to those spending the greatest amount of money while trying to keep their doors open, what matters most is whether the market can consistently predict the successes of more likely ventures like another Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto 5.
In the Wired story, Levine agreed. "Games are big, and they’re expensive … they have to be financially successful to keep getting made."

Giving you what you want
As a reliable, profitable science, present day market research is now a permanent cog in the game making machine. With the game industry’s net worth rapidly approaching twelve digits, market research is a crucial navigation system where a lot of money is at stake.
Expert, outside opinions are worth money. From inside developer’s doors, gamers themselves are commonly recruited for their data, often in exchange for downloads, posters, or T-shirts, among other things. And the information the researchers gather helps them unearth our desires for things — things like massively multiplayer online titles, fantasy card games, and human simulations. When researchers identify a genre as in vogue, developers can more easily find their funding and their titles are more likely to be gobbled up by fans.

Databases are being stockpiled, markets are being identified, and more specific experiences are being created as a result.
For those fresh ideas that gamers don’t realize they want yet — and that market research may seem to stand in the way of — their fates lie squarely in the hands of the producers and developers, according to Short.
"We can never really directly point to a lot of instances and say, ‘We made this happen. This would never happen in this game if it wasn’t for us.’ Even though we come back to the developer or publisher with information, they ultimately have to make that decision. Our job is only to assess risk."
In addition, says Liguori, "… When you look at the earlier days of EA and Atari and Sega and even Microsoft … these guys were definitely making decisions based on their knowledge and passion of what they believed in and what they wanted, and it happened to resonate very well with consumers at the time. Technology has very much changed things … consumer expectations has changed things where they were many years ago."
Creators are passionate, and they’re often hungry to take their great ideas and run with them, but they are also often aware of the need for outside opinions — especially those informed by hard numbers.
"You can build a game that you love, or 10 or 20 people love, but at the end of the day, you want to make the game people want to play."
Continues Liguori, "… You can’t just build the game that you want to build. You can build a game that you love, or 10 or 20 people love, but at the end of the day, you want to make the game people want to play … what do they want?"
All this adds up to a reality where the more people there are interested in video games, the less varied larger games can realistically become — but at the same time, a larger variety of games can exist.
Because of this, over the course of market research’s evolution, many shocking risks have been taken in the field, and plenty of games have unabashedly copied one another. Both AAA titles and indie games alike have shown great promise and failed. Gamers have had the year of the bow, and the year of Luigi. Trends caught fire then fell into obscurity.
History suggests that future research results will reflect a mix of marketplace trends and gamemaker imagination, however timid or wild they both may be. Consumers will continue to reinforce what gets created, even if they don’t realize when researchers are paying attention.
Market research is ultimately the study of us. And the games that we play are, in many ways, a reflection of what we suggest we want to see.

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Stardew Valley is my most pleasant surprise of 2016 so far, which is another way of saying I should have been paying much, much closer attention to it while it was in development. It is, essentially, an indie developer’s take on the Harvest Moon series, with all the elements of rural life simulation you’d expect — farming, animal raising, fishing, townsfolk romancing, and so on. Spliced into that formula is a gathering-crafting loop that will be instantly familiar to anyone who’s played Terraria, Don’t Starve or, well, most modern video games.
It’s a humongous game with loads of stuff to do, which Allegra and I try to break down in the Overview video posted above. If the rural life is calling to you, Stardew Valley is available on Steam, GOG and Humble for $14.99.

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Here’s what we’re covering in your daily audio tour through the world of video games, related technologies and pop culture like comics, movies and TV.
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Catch them late 2016 and 2017 Made-for-TV films based on classic Nickelodeon series Hey Arnold! and Legends of the Hidden Temple will debut in 2017, according to Variety. Both projects will be unveiled tomorrow during an upfronts presentation held by the kids channel’s parent company Viacom.
The reboot of ’90s game show Legends of the Hidden Temple will transplant the competition’s survival elements to reality. The film will depict a trio of siblings conquering a series of obstacles and will include references that Hidden Temple fans will remember, including the Steps of Knowledge and Olmec the talking head.
Legends of the Hidden Temple’s TV movie revival will premiere sometime during Q4 2016, according to Variety. It will be followed in 2017 by a two-part film based on the Hey Arnold! cartoon. Nickelodeon announced it would bring back Hey Arnold! for a film project last November.
Nickelodeon is also reuniting several other of its ’90s Nicktoons for a crossover film á la Who Framed Roger Rabbit? That movie is currently in development at Paramount Pictures and will be directed by Jared Hess (Napoleon Dynamite). There’s no release date yet for the theatrical release, which will reunite characters from shows like Ren and Stimpy and Rugrats.

Another publisher scales back on 2016’s big gaming expo Publisher Activision will be at E3 2016, but the company won’t have dedicated floorspace at the show. Instead, the company behind Call of Duty, Skylanders and Guitar Hero will rely on its partners — namely Sony Computer Entertainment — to showcase some of its wares.
The new Call of Duty game from Infinity Ward will be at this year’s E3, the company confirmed today, but attendees will have to visit the PlayStation booth to see it.
“In June, we’re going to be at E3 showcasing gameplay from Infinity Ward’s ambitious new game," Activision said on its official blog. "We’re looking forward to sharing exciting new details about the next great Call of Duty game in partnership with our friends at PlayStation. We’re proud to be participating in this premier video game event, but won’t have an Activision booth on the show floor."
Activision isn’t the only major publisher forgoing a formal booth presence at E3 2016; Electronic Arts announced earlier this year that it will break from tradition and hold a dedicated off-site event called EA Play instead of showing games on the E3 show floor.
This isn’t the first time Activision has officially broken from E3. The company bowed out of E3 2008.
In recent years, Activision’s floor presence at E3 has consisted primarily of meeting rooms, where behind-closed-doors presentations were held, and large displays showing trailers for the company’s upcoming games.
Polygon has reached out to the Entertainment Software Association, which runs E3, for comment on Activision’s move.

PlayStation 4 Remote Play is coming to Windows PC and Mac in the console’s next update, version 3.50.
There’s no date yet for that next console update, but the beta goes live tomorrow. Unfortunately, it won’t include the ability to test Remote Play.
Here’s what you can test from 3.50 if you’re in the beta program:

Friend Online Notification – Want to know the moment your friends come online? With this update, you can, as we’ve added an option to be notified when members of your friends list sign on the network.

Appear Offline – Sometimes you want to play a game or watch a movie without being bothered by friends. Now it’s easier to go incognito as we’ve added the option to appear offline. You can designate if you would like to appear offline when you log-in or at any time from your Profile or the Quick Menu.

User Scheduled Event – Time for a play date! We’ve added the ability to schedule a future gameplay session with your friends on the system. When your event starts, users who registered for the event will automatically be added to a party so you can start playing right away.

Play Together – This features allows all members of a Party to see what each person is playing so that you can easily join a friend’s game, or start a new game together.

Dailymotion – With this update, you’ll be able to live stream directly to Dailymotion on PS4. We’ll also support archiving live broadcasts, like we do for other streaming services.

Sony says it will be releasing more details on the update, including other “key features" and its release date, down the line.

Just a few days ago, Harmonix mused in a blog post about the state of the rhythm gaming market on computers. Now, the studio is looking to bring Rock Band 4 to Windows PC, which would be a first in the history of the franchise. Harmonix aims to release the game this fall on Windows, via Steam, if its 35-day, $1.5 million crowdfunding campaign on Fig is successful.
With that money, Harmonix would hire Sumo Digital to handle the PC version, which would allow Harmonix to “stay focused on building new features and content" for the game, said Alex Rigopulos, Harmonix’s chief creative officer, in the Fig pitch video. Based in Sheffield, U.K., Sumo Digital is the independent studio behind games such as Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed and LittleBigPlanet 3. Harmonix would self-publish the PC version, about a year after the studio and co-publisher Mad Catz released Rock Band 4 on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
A PC version of Rock Band 4 is a proposition with many moving parts, considering the instrument controllers required to play the game; the licensing arrangements involved in acquiring the music; and the fact that longtime Rock Band players have spent a lot of money over the years on controllers and downloadable songs. And its announcement raises plenty of questions about how it’s all going to work.

Behind the music
Since Rock Band 4’s debut in October 2015, Harmonix has delivered updates on a roughly monthly basis with bug fixes, new features and more. Rigopulos told Polygon in a recent email interview that the studio plans to "maintain parity between the PC and console versions of the game." That means that at launch, the PC version of Rock Band 4 will "include all of the then-current features in the console versions," and from that point forward, Harmonix will keep all three versions in sync.
Rock Band 4’s three platforms aren’t the only concern. There’s also the issue of music security on PC, an open platform compared to the closed ecosystems of the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. Asked in June 2015 about the chances of a PC version of Rock Band 4, project manager Daniel Sussman said one of Harmonix’s main concerns would be to ensure that players couldn’t simply rip songs out of the game.
Rigopulos affirmed that thinking. "We’re currently evaluating a number of 3rd-party encryption solutions to ensure that the music in Rock Band 4 on the PC will be as secure as possible," he said.

Alex Rigopulos

The main soundtrack in the PC version of Rock Band 4 will be identical to the 65-song setlist that was featured in Rock Band 4 on consoles. Fig backers will receive an extra 30 tracks, the same as people who pre-ordered the console versions, along with three bonus "best of indie" songs.
Sadly, players will have to build their DLC libraries from scratch: Downloadable tracks remain tied to the console family on which they were bought (PlayStation, Xbox or Wii), meaning that any songs purchased previously won’t transfer over to PC. That includes the disc exports from previous Rock Band titles — unlike in the console versions of Rock Band 4, there’s no provision for importing music from older games into the PC version.
"Any song that is currently available as DLC for Rock Band 4 on console will also be available as DLC on PC," said Matthew Nordhaus, a designer on the game, in an email interview. To date, Harmonix has re-released into Rock Band 4 the music from Rock Band, Rock Band 3 and Rock Band Blitz; the studio plans to add the tracks from Rock Band 2, Lego Rock Band and Green Day: Rock Band at a later date.
Regardless of the source, anybody who has already purchased Rock Band games and/or DLC will have to re-buy that music if they want to play it on PC. It’s the same situation that befell people who switched platforms for Rock Band 4 — e.g., those who went from Xbox 360 to PlayStation 4.
Note that Harmonix had to negotiate with Sony and Microsoft to make it possible for Rock Band players to transfer PS3 purchases to PS4 and Xbox 360 purchases to Xbox One, respectively, at no additional cost. The idea of "cross-buy" has long been a feature of the PlayStation ecosystem, and Microsoft has started to implement it across Xbox One and Windows 10. But thousands of Rock Band songs amount to a lot of content that Valve would be giving away on Steam — and, of course, a lot of DLC revenue that Valve and Harmonix would be passing up.
Control yourself
Since there has never been a Rock Band game on PC, one might expect that existing Rock Band controllers wouldn’t work with the PC version. Thankfully, that’s not the case.
"We will support most existing Rock Band controllers, with some exceptions," said Nordhaus.

Matthew Nordhaus

The PC version will natively support PS4 controllers from Rock Band 4, since those instruments communicate over Bluetooth; any computer with built-in Bluetooth support or a Bluetooth adapter will do. In addition, Bluetooth-based wireless controllers from the first three Rock Band games on PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3 or even Wii will function, as long as they’re used with the corresponding Bluetooth-to-USB adapters. It’s unclear at this point if the game will support Guitar Hero instruments.
Wired USB instruments don’t currently work with Rock Band 4 on Xbox One, to the chagrin of many Rock Band fans — particularly those who spent hundreds of dollars on the Ion Drum Rocker for Xbox 360. But supporting wired controllers on PC "should also be straightforward," according to Nordhaus, although he noted that "we need to test further to see if we need to write new drivers."
Wireless Xbox 360 instruments "will work, but will probably require us to write new drivers […] depending on which dongle/adapter you use," said Nordhaus. Harmonix can’t confirm support for Rock Band 4’s wireless Xbox One instruments yet, but Nordhaus said the studio is "working with Microsoft" on that issue.
As for PC owners who don’t already own Rock Band controllers, backers of the Fig campaign will be able to purchase them as an add-on to their contribution "at a discounted rate," said Nordhaus. Mad Catz currently manufactures all Rock Band 4 instruments, and a Harmonix representative told Polygon that those controllers will work with the game on PC. However, the spokesperson added, "We are going to be making some announcements on Rock Band hardware in the coming weeks as well."

Reviving the Rock Band Network
Bringing Rock Band 4 to PC allows Harmonix to bring back a popular element of Rock Band 3: the Rock Band Network, the system through which musicians could sell their own songs in the game. In the PC version of Rock Band 4, the infrastructure for Rock Band Network comes from Valve’s Steam Workshop, the service that allows players to create mods and other user-generated content for PC games.
The old Rock Band Network was available exclusively on Xbox 360, since it relied on XNA, Microsoft’s now-defunct development toolset. It also required song authors to pay for an XNA Creators Club account ($49 for four months or $99 for a year). That won’t be necessary on Steam Workshop, which is a free service.

Rock Band 3 players uploaded more than 2,000 songs to the Rock Band Network, none of them licensed by Harmonix — the way the system worked, the tracks had to be submitted by their rightsholders, or by people who had obtained the rights to upload them. The PC version of Rock Band 4 is starting with a clean slate, so those people will have to resubmit their songs to the new Rock Band Network, although Nordhaus said "it should be much less work" to upload existing songs than it took to submit them originally.
Rock Band Network songs had to adhere to Rock Band’s T for Teen rating, so they couldn’t contain any profanity. That standard remains in place for Rock Band 4, and Nordhaus told Polygon that Rock Band Network authors "will have the same control over every aspect of song creation that they always did." For new users, Harmonix is "looking at ways that we can reduce the time it takes to create a playable song," said Nordhaus.
Although Harmonix hasn’t finalized this yet, the studio is currently planning to sell Rock Band Network songs in Rock Band 4’s in-game music store alongside the DLC that the studio puts out. Authors will receive the same cut of song sales as before: 30 percent. And Rigopulos told Polygon that Harmonix is "interested in picking the most successful songs from PC and them back over to the consoles," which the studio did with the PS3 version of Rock Band 3.

Fig’s history with Harmonix
Harmonix is looking to raise money not on Kickstarter, like it did for the revival of Amplitude, but on Fig. The Fig platform was unveiled in August of last year. It gives developers the ability to solicit money from traditional rewards-based backers as well as equity investmenters. Those who choose to invest receive shares, which give them the opportunity to earn a portion of a game’s profits over time.
Fig launched with the participation of three independent development studios: Obsidian Entertainment, InXile Entertainment and Double Fine Productions. All three companies promised to fund their next projects through the platform, and placed members on Fig’s board of advisors, where they have a say on which projects are selected to run on Fig.
Double Fine’s Psychonauts 2 was Fig’s third campaign, and the first project to come from one of the three founding partners. It was also the very first video game crowdfunding campaign to accept investment from anyone, not just high-net-worth individuals. In January it succeeded in raising more than $3.8 million in rewards-based money and equity investment reservations. More than $1.8 million is still uncollected, and pending U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approval.
Fig is currently running a campaign for Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch, a cannabis-infused brawler based on characters from Kevin Smith films such as Clerks and Chasing Amy. The Rock Band 4 campaign will represent the first instance of Fig running two funding efforts simultaneously.

In September of last year, Harmonix formally signed on with Fig. To cement that relationship, Harmonix placed chief creative officer Alex Rigopulos on the company’s advisory board. Fig told Polygon that as part of that partnership, both Rigopulos personally and Harmonix itself were granted stock options in Fig. Around the same time, Harmonix took on $15 million in private equity investment from 14 undisclosed investors.
The campaign for the Rock Band 4 PC adaptation is seeking $1.5 million, and Rigopulos told Polygon it is prepared to accept the entire amount in equity investment if offered. This includes both the sale of shares to high-net-worth accredited investors and the reservation of shares by unaccredited investors (to be purchased following SEC approval).
Anyone can invest in the success of Rock Band 4 on PC
Investments, sold under the Fig-branded term "Game Shares," will start at $250. Both accredited and unaccredited investors would receive the same return on those shares.
Harmonix told Polygon that the total budget for the game will be $2 million.
"Harmonix would be self-funding the remaining quarter," Rigopulos said via email. "We want to be in the same boat as the rest of the Fig investors."
For more on the Fig platform, see our StoryStream.

Grab a free anniversary theme while you’re at it Sony is honoring the Resident Evil franchise this week with a major PlayStation Store sale. To celebrate the series’ 20th anniversary — the first game launched on the original PlayStation in March 1996 — Resident Evil games and downloadable content are discounted until March 8 at 11 a.m. PT.
Capcom recently announced that it will release remastered versions of Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 5 and Resident Evil 6 later this year for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The PlayStation 3 versions of these games are among those on sale, for those not willing to wait for the current-generation updates. The PS4 remaster of Resident Evil 0, which launched earlier this year, is also offered at a discount.
Check out these and other highlights from the sale below. For the full list of offers, including a free 20th anniversary PS4 theme, visit the PlayStation Store page.

Resident Evil 4 (PS3) — $6.99
Resident Evil 0 (PS4) — $15.99
Resident Evil 6 (PS3) — $6.99
Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (PS3/PSP/Vita) — $1.49
Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition (PS3) — $10.49
Resident Evil (PS4) — $12.99
Resident Evil 2 (PS3/PSP/Vita) — $1.49
Resident Evil Code: Veronica X (PS3) — $4.99

The elements that made The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess so exciting when it launched alongside the Wii in 2006 haven’t aged very well, and that’s not entirely a bad thing.
The experience of playing through Twilight Princess with Wiimote in hand —€” assuming you didn’t hold out for the Gamecube version — was a powerful way for Nintendo to introduce its new motion-sensing hardware. Firing an arrow out of the tip of your controller was exhilarating. Its simulated swordplay was rudimentary, but satisfying. Even its darker, more “adult" (for lack of a better term) world assured me that Twilight Princess was the deep, polished Zelda game I’d wanted for so long, and persuaded me to ignore the many reasons that it was not.
More than nine years later, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD doesn’t have the distracting zeitgeist of a hardware launch to accompany it, and absent that, its flaws are a bit more pronounced. Twilight Princess HD lays bare the decade-old original, but in doing so, gives it an identity beyond gimmicks.
Twilight Princess HD isn’t just dark, it’s bizarre Structurally speaking, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess doesn’t stray too far from the franchise’s time-honored path. The usual routine of dungeon diving, Pieces of Heart-collecting and princess rescuing remains intact, but with a twist: Link is able to transform into a wolf when he interacts with the Twilight Realm, a parallel world to Hyrule which plays hosts to cryptic, shadowy beings. One such Twilight inhabitant is Midna, Link’s constant, smart ass companion throughout his journey.
Twilight Princess in unique among other Zelda titles because of its pervasive darkness, a theme that informs the aesthetic, character design and general feel of the entire game. That aesthetic is at its extreme in the Twilight Realm, but even regular old Hyrule looks half-alive and ominous, and the events that transpire there are equally unsettling.
This art direction isn’t always successful. When exploring a village illuminated by glaring sunset light, or a dungeon where abstract neon lines cut through shifting black fog, Twilight Princess can be a lovely game. But while its subdued palette makes it unique among other Zelda games, many of its environments resemble the lifeless, unsaturated worlds that characterized most of the previous console generation.

The visual enhancements of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD are impressive, where present. A lot of textures — particularly those on important character models —€” have been fully replaced, making Link and the cast he comes in contact with as vibrant as they deserve to be. The more essential change is to the screen itself: Twilight Princess HD’s UI is pared down —” the original’s Wiimote-shaped interface, which took up nearly one-quarter of your TV’s real estate, has been removed.

Twilight Princess HD’s graphical improvements drive home what’s truly unique about the game’s aesthetic: it isn’t just dark, it’s bizarre. Across the various Hylian races, character proportions differ wildly from person to person. Faces drift between realistic and cartoonish, from clown-like to monstrous. Inhabitants of the Twilight Realm aren’t just evil versions of franchise mainstays, they’re tentacled mutants sporting ornate, gigantic black masks. Many enemies, and even some friends —” here’s looking at you, Ooccoo —€” are downright uncomfortable to look at, making them all the more striking and memorable.
That distinction really shines through in the Twilight Realm, which despite what its name suggests, doesn’t feel oppressive or scary as much as it feels completely alien. The game’s soundtrack, which is solid throughout, is at its absolute best here, where every combat encounter features eerie atonal horns that shout over frantic synth arpeggios. It all comes together to give the Twilight Realm a strange, cohesive sense of place.
If only Twilight Princess allowed you to spend more time exploring the Twilight Realm. The game limits you to just a few visits to the parallel version of Hyrule, during which you’re usually performing repetitive fetch quests, like collecting Tears of Light. (Mercifully, Twilight Princess HD only requires you to hunt down 12 Tears in each province, down from the original’s 16.)
The Twilight Realm’s scarcity is a waste: Twilight Princess, like most modern Zelda games, doesn’t always know what to do with you when you’re not exploring a dungeon. Just a few interludes introduce new mechanics and characters — snowboarding with the yeti of Snowpeak is a particular high point. But most involve a mind-numbing amount of backtracking, which was time I would have much rather spent exploring the Twilight Realm in greater detail.
Twilight Princess HD’s transitional sequences can occasionally get pretty clumsy, but unfortunately, the main offender comes right at the very top of the game. The introduction to Twilight Princess is the series’ absolute worst. It’s a laborious, repetitive slog that sticks you with some chores —€” like goat herding, a terrible mini-game that you have to perform twice in the first hour —€” and sends you through the same path of the same patch of woods three consecutive times. The HD remake trims a task or two off the original’s checklist, but no amount of scene-setting or tutorial-distributing is worth the two hours effort that Twilight Princess HD makes you crawl through before the fun can begin.

Its campaign is uneven, but Twilight Princess HD’s high points are exceedingly high. Nearly all of its dungeons are stellar: The aforementioned yeti’s ice-carved mansion is probably the most ingenious location in the whole series. The statue-centric puzzle solving of the Temple of Time forces you to think about the same dungeon in two different, clever ways.
The stars of the show are the tools you’ll find in those dungeons, which pretty wildly divert from the series’ tried and true catalog. Later dungeons introduce the Ball and Chain, the Spinner and the Dual Clawshots, which set the stage for some of the best puzzles and most exciting boss fights this franchise has ever seen. The Spinner, and its corresponding boss fight, is nothing less than a stroke of genius.
The Cave of Shadows, the new "dungeon" that’s unlocked with Twilight Princess HD’s Wolf Link amiibo, cannot (and doesn’t really try to) live up to the standard of the classic game’s dungeons. It’s simply a reimagined version of the Cave of Ordeals, Twilight Princess’ combat-centric, wave-based endurance challenge — but the Cave of Shadows restricts you to Link’s Wolf form for all 40 floors of the cave.

It’s kind of a drag, largely because combat isn’t really satisfying when playing as Wolf Link. Swordplay in Twilight Princess is top-notch —€” sparring against the colossal, armored Darknuts is exciting, and requires reflexes and mastery of your different sword maneuvers. As a wolf, Link’s options are too limited for combat to be remotely satisfying 40 times in a row. Not only that, you have to complete the Cave of Shadows over the course of three dives, and trips two and three will require you to beat the floors you just finished all over again.
Twilight Princess HD’s best new feature is the addition of Hero Mode difficulty, which is nothing new for the series, but is a perfect fit for this particular game. Hero Mode doubles the damage Link takes and prevents recovery hearts from dropping in the wild. With those two simple changes, the systems of Twilight Princess HD click together more tightly.
Hero Mode forces you to thoughtfully utilize Link’s different offensive and defensive sword maneuvers to avoid taking damage carelessly. It makes you take consider your healing potions and inventory before stepping foot into new territories. It gives a good reason to hunt down every Heart Piece you can get your hands on. It fits thematically, too: In Hero Mode, Twilight Princess HD can finally be as dangerous as it looks.

After a delay out of 2015, last year’s Ori and the Blind Forest is finally getting its promised DLC. As discussed in the video above, Ori and the Blind Forest Definitive Edition adds quite a bit to the original game. Most noticeably, the Definitive Edition brings with it an entirely new area, as well as two new character abilities for the titular … moon … cat bird … thing, including a dash move that should be of particular interest to speedrunners.
Ori and the Blind Forest Definitive Edition is making other, more subtle changes as well. The game’s spirit wells, which previously served as static save points, may now be used as fast travel points around the game’s world. Completionists may still wish to take the scenic route, as new secrets and collectibles are scattered about, several of which take advantage of Ori’s new moves.
Most importantly though, Ori and the Blind Forest Definitive Edition is adding more accessibility to a notoriously difficult game. The new easy mode option decreases enemy and environment damage, and it also adds new checkpoints to some of the more difficult platforming sections in the game. For players demanding more challenge, there’s a new harder difficulty setting as well as a new one-life mode. While the limitations here are self-explanatory, the game also adds final statistics from one-life games to a leaderboard for players to measure themselves against one another.
Players will be able to access developer Moon Studio’s new additions to Ori and the Blind Forest Definitive Edition on March 11th, the one year anniversary of the original release. Players who own the current Steam and Xbox One versions of Ori will be able to upgrade, though Moon and Microsoft aren’t talking about pricing yet. Xbox owners will also be able to share their game saves with the Windows 10 Store version of the game.