Blizzard’s Tracer butt drama, community, and censorship

Earlier this week, Blizzard Entertainment made a lot of news for what might typically seem like a normal thing in video game development — if it weren’t for the circumstances surrounding it. The company’s Overwatch team announced the removal of one of several victory poses available for the one of the game’s most well known characters.

Tracer butt pose

Normally, this kind of removal wouldn’t be a big deal. Developers do it all the time. They decide they don’t like something for one reason or another, they come up with something that they just like better. The item in question is removed or swapped out. However, this removal ended up catching a lot of attention, not because of the removal itself, but because it was announced in response to a thread calling the art into question. The game’s director Jeff Kaplan, revealed that the pose would be replaced, noting that it is not Blizzard’s intention to make people feel uncomfortable.

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Is multiplayer destroying single player games?

Over the past decade or so multiplayer has become a rather ubiquitous feature in video games so that when it doesn’t show up in some form it’s almost shocking. Even most games designed for a single player format have at least some sort of co-op mode, allowing players to either take on special missions designed for more than one player, or to play the already existing single player component with a buddy.

For some fans of single player oriented games, this may sometimes seem like a bane. Many have accused game developers of favoring the additional multiplayer mode and losing focus on the single player aspect of the game. But is it really as big of an issue as some fans are making it out to be?

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2 lessons the eSports industry can learn from Valve’s Shanghai flop

A few weeks ago, Valve completely bombed their Dota 2 Shanghai Majors. You’ve probably heard about all of it by now — but in case you haven’t, here’s a quick rundown:

Fired a beloved community caster in the middle of the event
Let their CEO openly call aforementioned caster an “ass” on Reddit
Multiple sound failures in-game and during player interviews
Repeated game delays, some as long as an hour and a half
Game freezes and a plethora of other technical issues
Poor camera work
Covering team fights and critical moments via replays

The list could go on.

But the question is….what exactly went wrong? How does a multi-million dollar tournament get screwed up that badly? And how can Valve (and other companies) avoid this kind of spectacle in the future?

(Source)

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Gamer Launch updates, a chance to work in the video game industry, AND a SMITE PS4 alpha giveaway?!

Gamer Launch Updates

Found it!

Search improvements
Searches on Gamer Launch now return more results, and more accurate results. You may now refer to the “search bar” as the “found bar”.

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The rotating image widget now functions in all areas of Version 5 sites. Show us how you’re using it!

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