Gamers Sky

20/03/2022

Amazon Games says it 'made a mistake' with Lost Ark's March update.

Fewer players than expected were ready for the new endgame activity, and some thought it made Lost Ark feel pay-to-win.

Not everyone was pleased that the first big update for Lost Ark included as one of its main draws an activity only available to players who had reached the summit of its endgame crawl—a boss fight called an Abyss Raid designed for groups of eight players, against a guardian named Argos. To reach it, you need to be in tier 3 and have an item level of 1,370. Increasing your item level in Lost Ark is done by honing gear, which requires luck as well as regular injections of crafting material. Each step has a slightly higher chance of failing, requiring another dose of crafting material before you can try again. It's a slog.

In a new announcement, Amazon Games explained that, "We made a mistake releasing the March game update too quickly after launch. Data we analyzed alongside Smilegate RPG from their previous launches projected that a larger portion of players would have reached the level required to challenge Argos. However, we overlooked certain variables, such as players spending more time on horizontal content and the price of honing materials increasing due to bots and real-money transactions."

With the crafting materials needed to hit item level 1,370 being scarcer than expected, fewer players were making it through tier 3 without spending cash money. "We've seen player concerns that releasing Argos before a significant portion of the player base had progressed through Tier 3 made Lost Ark feel pay-to-win", Amazon Games wrote. "We never wanted players to feel rushed in their quest to hit item level 1370. We considered having Argos available at launch, but viewed the Abyss Raid as an important stepping stone, helping bridge the gap to end-game activities that have yet to be released in the Western version of Lost Ark (we're looking at you, Legion Raids)."

20/03/2022

One more day for the championship!

Can we get the job done?

16/03/2022

Intel's Project Endgame could be a PC streaming service beyond just gaming

Back in February, Intel held its online investor briefing to lay out future plans for the business. Intel talked a lot about the future of CPUs and GPUs, and briefly mentioned something called Project Endgame. At the time, I speculated it was something a lot like Nvidia's GeForce now, and thanks to the upcoming Arc GPU launch, we have a little more clarity.

Intel's Lisa Pearce wrote a blog post answering some pressing questions coming up to the launch, and one of them addressed the mysterious Project Endgame, though it's still a bit vague. It does sound like we weren't far off with the game streaming comparisons, though it may go a bit further than that.

"Intel is determined to lower the barriers that can sometimes make PC gaming difficult today. Game compatibility issues, long download times, high performance variability and frequent patches and updates are just a few. Solving these requires investments and innovations in software technologies like cloud computing and global services," Pearce says in the post.

"Project Endgame is a unified services layer that harnesses computing resources everywhere – cloud, edge, and your home, to improve your gaming, and non-gaming, PC experiences. With Project Endgame, we can untether our users from their local hardware specs. Project Endgame is paving the roads for the next decade of real-time GPU experiences for Intel, with the goal of petaflops of compute accessible at a few millisecond latency, and starting in Q2 of this year we will take our first public steps."

The current iteration of GeForce Now, as an example, allows you to remotely rent an Nvidia PC to stream games to your supported screen. Project Endgame sounds similar, but it could have a larger scope, beyond games. This means we could see applications for complex computations without having to own a computer that can handle them. Artists could rent something to run their preferred programs.

If the price is friendly enough, this is exactly what I was hoping to see based on the initial presentation that seemed to be hinting at this kind of use. Computing power made accessible, especially for people who may be hobbyists or not using it all the time.

This is still just more speculation based on the drips of information Intel is giving out. Given it was answered leading up to the Arc presentation on the 30th, perhaps we'll find out more concrete information about the new service then.

15/03/2022

Nvidia to give away 8 RTX 3090s during GTC.

While we're all hoping to see the end to the GPU shortage, we aren't quite there yet. GPUs are hard to come by, especially good ones and though prices have started to come back down to Earth, they're still hanging around in the atmosphere rather than back down to MSRP. Many are still struggling to get their hands on a capable card like an RTX 3090, but if you get to Nvidia's Graphics Technology Conference for 2022, you could win one for free.

According to VideoCardz, at least eight of RTX 3090's will be given away to GTC participants this month. They'll be signed by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and the only requirement for entry is to participate in the conference. The conference looks to be mostly online this year, and you can register here, so hopefully that's about it to be in the running for the card.

For those that are interested in the conference, there are a lot of interesting topics to be covered. To go over just a few, Nvidia will be talking about its digital twin model for climate change, looking into the idea of a metaverse, and there's a bunch on AI and machine learning.

The schedule page lets you sort by session type, audience type, and level. Checking out the 101/getting started category the first thing in my list was looking at creating a photorealistic ramen shop in Omniverse, which sounds worth watching to win an RTX 3090

t's a bit of an odd giveaway, considering the RTX 3090 Ti is set to be out by the end of this month, after a few delays. The 3090 is one of the best cards you can't really buy, so it's by no means a bad prize but it just feels like a strange choice from Nvidia. It's also a staple RTX 3090 Founders edition card, meaning no bells or whistles. Aside from that sweet autograph from the CEO, this is the most basic version of this beast of a card.

Nvidia's GTC conference will run from March 21 to 24, with the keynote held on March 22, so if you're keen to win a sweet GPU, or check out some cool tech, make sure to register soon.

12/03/2022

Today is the second day of Weekly Finals!

Watch on huya.com/660006

12/03/2022

E3 Will Reportedly Be Online Again This Year, Despite Cancellation Fears.

According to industry insider Tom Henderson, E3 is still happening this year, albeit only online. E3 originally canceled its 2022 in-person event last year but didn't confirm whether a virtual event was still in the works or not. This led to speculation that E3 had been canceled outright - perhaps permanently - but this apparently isn't the case. According to Henderson, the ESRB sent out emails to developers today confirming E3 2022 online. There was not yet been an official

10/03/2022

India’s Loco has raised $42 million led by South Korea’s early-stage venture fund, Hashed, as a gaming frenzy takes hold in the country of nearly 1.4 billion people.

New investors including Makers Fund, outsourcing billionaire Narayana Murthy’s Catamaran Ventures, and Korea Investment Partners participated in the Series A round, along with existing investors such as Krafton Inc., Lumikai Ltd. and Hiro Capital, the live-streamed games company said in an announcement on Thursday.

The capital infusion will take the two-year-old startup’s valuation to about $200 million, said two people familiar with the deal who didn’t want to be named. A spokeswoman for Loco Interactive Pte, as the company is officially named, declined to comment on the valuation.

Live-streamed games are still relatively new in India unlike in countries like the U.S., South Korea and Japan where it is a mainstream form of entertainment. Indian users play and access live-streams mainly via their mobile devices, whereas console-based and PC-based gaming are popular in mature gaming markets.

“India has 400 million gamers currently," said Anirudh Pandita, co-founder of Loco, in a Zoom interview. “Younger Indians are spending a significant amount of time in the virtual world, and gaming is breaking urban and rural boundaries." Loco’s daily user numbers have grown over 15 times since January of last year and “live watch hours," the amount of time users spend on live-streamed games, has grown nearly 80 times, Pandita said.

Pandita and Ashwin Suresh, Loco’s other co-founder, met as engineering undergraduates at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and went on to work on Wall Street before starting Pocket Aces Pvt., a digital studio creating streaming content to provide an alternative to traditional television entertainment, along with a third founder Aditi Shrivastava. The gaming startup spun away from Pocket Aces last year and Shrivastava, married to Suresh, continues to lead Pocket Aces.

The funds will support acceleration in streaming technologies, content creation and developing the gamer and creator ecosystem, Loco said in its release.

09/03/2022

08/03/2022

World of Warcraft's next expansion will be revealed in April.

Blizzard hasn't revealed the next World of Warcraft expansion yet, but it has revealed when it will be revealed, as well as the reveal timing for the next Hearthstone expansion and, with somewhat less specificity, the upcoming Warcraft mobile game.

It's going to be a busy spring for Blizzard, beginning with Hearthstone. The first of three expansions planned for Hearthstone this year will be unveiled on March 15, shortly after which developers will "provide a deeper look into the plans for Hearthstone for 2022—including the annual core set changes."

The reveal of the next World of Warcraft expansion will follow a month later, on April 19. WoW's latest expansion, Shadowlands, pretty much wrapped things up with its last major patch, which rolled out in February.

A month after that, give or take—it's only set for May, with no specific date—the Warcraft mobile game that was revealed in February will be detailed to some greater extent. This is the one that I think is most interesting, at least for now, because Blizzard hasn't revealed anything about what it actually is: As we noted last month, it could be anything from a mobile redo of the original Warcraft RTS to Hearthstone 2, although obviously that's extremely unlikely. Blizzard didn't clarify much with this announcement except to suggest that it will be something entirely new, describing it as "the first game in the Warcraft Universe designed for mobile."

The future of Warcraft is bright," Warcraft general manager John Hight wrote. "On behalf of all of us at Blizzard working to bring even more exciting Warcraft experiences to you, we thank you for being a part of the community. We're excited about the journey in front of us and are grateful that you're joining us for it."

We may have a little more insight into what to look forward to with Hearthstone. Game director Ben Lee outlined some planned changes coming to the game in 2022, including that multiple new card types are on the way. He also announced that he's leaving the Hearthstone team to work on a different, unannounced project within Blizzard.

07/03/2022

Why You Should Take Breaks While Gaming.

It’s essential that you take breaks when gaming for extended periods of time, just like any other physical activity. Let’s take a look at why that is and what the best habits are to make sure you recharge properly.


Give Yourself Time to Relax and Reset
Playing video games can be stressful, especially if you’re playing competitive games that require a lot of thinking and focus. Playing for many hours non-stop can be exhausting and stressful. You start feeling extremely burnt out and tired, which isn’t a good way to play games. It’s supposed to be fun, exciting, and rewarding, not the opposite.

Even if you’re an avid gamer, you need to give yourself breaks–a mental reset. Whenever you feel like you need one, give yourself one! If you don’t, you may overwork your brain, and this is what causes you to feel fatigued after long hours. It only goes downhill from there as you’ll feel worse the more you play. This not only is taxing on your body but decreases your performance overall.

So, if you’re trying to reach certain goals in the game you’re playing, learn to give yourself breaks to help you reach them faster. You’ll be refreshed, attentive, and motivated to keep going!

Get Back Into Focus
Like with most things in life, you don’t perform your best when you’re not taking care of yourself. This is especially true when it comes to gaming. If you’re feeling exhausted, stressed, and unfocused, then your performance in the game will reflect that.

If you’re playing first-person shooters, your aim, reflexes, and movement become sloppy. In strategic games, your smart decision-making diminishes. In role-playing games, your ability to react to situations and think critically decreases. Basically, every aspect of your gameplay is going to be negatively affected. Taking breaks can help you get back into focus which will drastically improve your gameplay.

f you’ve been playing for hours on end and you’re feeling gamer’s fatigue, chances are, you’re not in the best state to be playing. A break will help revive your mind, which allows you to regain your focus. The more focused you are, the better you perform, the faster you achieve your goals.

Eye Strain
Eye strain is a serious problem that many gamers need to be aware of. It’s already a problem for those who stare at digital screens all day. It can be worse for gamers because we tend to focus more intently on the screen in front of us and for longer durations.

When you’re playing a first-person shooter, you need to pay close attention to where you’re aiming. You may subconsciously try not to blink as you’re preparing for a gunfight. After a while, your eyes dry out and feel heavy, and these are signs of eye strain. You’re forcing your eyes to work harder than just seeing things around you.

If you’re playing a game that has a lot of text or details that you need to watch closely, you need to be able to see them without problems. Glare and low contrast can make it difficult to see what’s going on, and this can also cause eye strain. All of this is on top of the negative effects of looking at blue lights digital screens emit.

If at any point your vision starts to get blurry or you start seeing spots, it’s time to take a break immediately. Continuing to play in this condition will only damage your eyesight over time. Give those eyes some time to rest. This means not pulling out another electronic device such as your smartphone.

06/03/2022

Benefits of Video Games For Kids & Adults.

Video games are often dismissed as unsophisticated or the domain of couch potatoes, but did you know that many common elements of these simulated worlds can provide tangible benefits in real life? Benefits of video games for both children and adults include:

Healthy brain stimulation
Development of problem-solving skills
Stress relief
Learn more about the benefits of video games before firing up your favorite computer or console game.

1. Video games can improve manual dexterity.
Controller-based games can be great for your hands. In a study involving a group of surgeons, researchers found that those who played video games were faster at performing advanced procedures and made 37 percent fewer mistakes than those who didn’t. Special video games have also been used as physical therapy to help stroke victims regain control of their hands and wrists.

2. Video games can increase your brain’s gray matter.
Gaming is really a workout for your mind disguised as fun. Studies have shown that playing video games regularly may increase gray matter in the brain and boost brain connectivity. (Gray matter is associated with muscle control, memories, perception, and spatial navigation.)

3. Gamers may have better social skills.
The stereotype of a shy person who uses video games as a way to escape is not what the average gamer looks like. Past research involving children found that those who played more video games were more likely to have good social skills, perform better academically, and to have built better relationships with other students because of the social and collaborative component to some types of games.

4. Games can teach you to be a better problem solver.
Open-world, mission-based, and multi-level games are designed like complex puzzles that take several hours to solve. Occasionally, the solution varies based on your actions in the game. Learning to think on your feet and strategize in a fast-paced fantasy environment is a skill that can translate to the real world. One long-term study published in 2013 showed that children who played strategy-based games showed an improvement in problem-solving skills—and thus, tended to get better grades—the next school year.

5. You can become more physically active as a gamer.
Most major consoles now have the technology to get gamers off of the couch and onto their feet. The future of VR gaming will take things to a whole new level. Mobile game programmers have also started to create games that are played across physical space, building them around real-world location data and inspiring gamers to relocate in order to advance in the virtual world.

6. Video games can improve your vision.
As long as you’re not staring at the screen for 10 hours straight (or sitting two feet away), playing video games can actually make for better vision. In one study, 10 male students who were not gamers were trained for 30 hours in first-person action games and then tested against 10 non-gamers. The students who played were able to see objects more clearly in cluttered spaces because of improved spatial resolution. They were able to train their brains to see smaller details, because in each game, those details turned out to be important.

7. Video games can have mental health benefits.
Studies have shown that some video games can boost mood and make for better heart rhythms—a sign that they may also help relieve stress. The correlation (not causality) between video games and stress has been reflected in numerous unrelated studies, which is why video games have been used in therapy for over a decade.

8. They’re a fun way to get tricked into learning.
There are videos games on just about everything. Early on, developers realized that video games could be used to improve reading and math skills. Today, there are games that incorporate world history, cooking, politics, chemistry, architecture, and other topics you may not have been exposed to in school.

9. Video games can inspire you to be more persistent.
With video games you either win or you keep trying, learning from your mistakes as you progress until you reach the goal. Because of this, some researchers and educators argue that video games can teach people to be more confident and to work towards their goals, treating each misstep as just another learning opportunity.

05/03/2022

Game developers pull games from Russia in response to invasion .

Russia is invading Ukraine, resulting in a war with mounting casualties and the disruption of life for millions. Now, multiple gaming studios and publishers are starting to take action by pulling or limiting their games in Russia.

Bloober Team, known for its work on horror games like The Medium, is working to pull its games from sale in Russia and Belarus, noting on Twitter that "We want to be a part of a world that doesn't turn a blind eye to warmongering. And we won't stay neutral when human lives are at stake."

CD Projekt RED, the developer responsible for The Witcher games and Cyberpunk 2077 — the latter of which recently relaunched with a host of updates — is now suspending digital sales and physical shipments of products to Russia and Belarus. This includes game sales on GOG, the PC storefront owned and operated by the developer's parent company, CD Projekt.

"We know that players in Russia and Belarus, individuals who have nothing to do with the invasion of Ukraine, will be impacted by this decision, but with this action we wish to further galvanize the global community to speak about what is going on in the heart of Europe," CD Projekt Red's statement explains.

Finally, publisher Electronic Arts (EA) is pulling Russian clubs from FIFA 22, FIFA Mobile, and FIFA Online. EA is also "actively evaluating related changes" to other games, per a statement on Twitter.

This comes just a few days after multiple gaming companies shared fundraising efforts for Ukraine, while roundly condemning the invasion. Studios in Ukraine are being affected by the war, with GSC Game World ceasing development on Stalker 2: Heart of Chernobyl until the invasion ends.