MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
After its golden age in the 90s, the point-and-click genre could have easily gone the way of the dodo in the modern games industry. With increasing demand for fast-paced action titles, it seemed like the genre was no longer aligned with players’ expectations. That is, until former LucasArts staff Dan …
Read More »‘London Games Festival is about promoting the city as a place to do business, work, make games and play games’
Michael French, head of games at Games London, discusses the return of the London Games Festival last year, what we should expect from this year’s edition, kicking off today, and tells us more about next week’s Games Finance Market. Why bring the festival back in 2016? This isn’t a return of …
Read More »Nioh a ‘triumphant return’ for Koei Tecmo as it eyes the western market
Nioh’s success was never set in stone. The title’s chaotic development started back in 2004, but it only hit shelves this February. An even bigger surprise was director Fumihiko Yasuda’s assertion that the concept of the game had “remained the same throughout development.” So how could a game whose life …
Read More »How EA wants to extend its Mass Effect fanbase with Andromeda
Space has always been a big theme in games, but in 2016 publishers seemed to have a renewed interest in the genre. In 2016, we had Stellaris, EVE: Valkyrie, Kerbal Space Program, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Adrift, The Solus Project, as well as …
Read More »Analysis: the driving forces behind the UK’s 4.33bn games industry
Read the headlines at the end of 2016, MCV’s included, and you might think the games industry was having a tough time of it. A number of high-profile releases struggled at retail and then Black Friday swept in and prices tumbled just weeks after release. It didn’t look pretty, but …
Read More »How Fandom’s expanding into games journalism
What do you get when cross a games review site, a hive-mind of self-publishing bloggers, and a depository of the most detailed game information ever assembled? Fandom, that’s what. The pan-entertainment consumer site has recently launched an in-house content team, but its heritage is in networks of online communities and …
Read More »BAME in Games: ‘Diversity makes creative and business sense’
Ahead of the formal launch of BAME in Games later this year, MCV talks to its first chair Kish Hirani about ethnic diversity in the games industry and what we can expect from the new advocacy group. You were appointed the first chair of BAME in Games last year – …
Read More »Bandai Namco goes west
It’s easy to chalk up Bandai Namco’s big wins of late: 2015 was The Witcher 3’s year, while 2016 was Dark Souls III’s. For 2017, though, the Japanese publisher has a more diverse, strength-in-depth slate, with a particular emphasis on European-developed titles, both indie and triple-A, which could forecast a …
Read More »How Playground accelerated Forza over the $1bn line
Playground Games’ Forza Horizon 3 was the best-selling Britsoft game of 2016 – putting to one side GTA V’s incredible staying power – and the biggest Xbox One exclusive. To date, it’s already sold 2.5m copies worldwide, helping blast the Forza franchise to lifetime sales of $1bn. With this milestone …
Read More »Strategy First, Kylotonn and PQube on bringing the fun back with Flatout 4
Total failure; waste of time and money; plain bad; disgusting to play: these are some of the kinder words used to describe Flatout 3 when it came out back in 2011, and its subtitle – Chaos & Destruction – was an apt reflection of both its review scores and its …
Read More »