The Evening Report, January 15th, 2013: Guild Sales and Bailed-out Bohemians

The Evening Report, January 15th, 2013: Guild Sales and Bailed-out Bohemians

Disney Infinity announced, potential to end worlds and economies still being calculated

disneyinfinity

2012 might not have ended in a fiery Mayan apocalypse, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t dark forces actively trying to ruin our lives and financial standing. Up to bat this time around is Disney Interactive: they’ve announced a massive, incredibly ambitious hybrid multi-game…thing called Disney Infinity, a Skylanders-esque binding of video games and toy collection that threatens to unseat the very fabric of reality as we know it. Polygon’s got just about all the details you could want or need, but the basic gist of it is that Infinity will have distinct games for each Disney universe, while also including a “toy box” mode (much in the same vein as Toy Story 3) that will bring all these universes together.

I’m kind of excited about this. Okay, scratch that: I’m really excited about this. I never hopped on the Skylanders bandwagon, but the prospect of having all sorts of Disney characters in the same game running around together fills my inner child with a glee that I can’t quite shake away. If this manages half the success of Activision’s toy-based franchise – and I see absolutely no reason it won’t – our wallets are all going to be in for a hurtin’ when Infinity launches in June.

[Source: Polygon]

Imprisoned Bohemia Interactive developers finally set free, able to return home

Bohemia-Interactive-Ivan-Buchta-Martin-Pezlar

A bit of good news for you all today, to combat a news story so appalling I’m not even going to mention it by name or continue talking about it in this report. Four months ago, two developers from Bohemia Interactive were accused of photographing military installations in Greece and were thrown in prison. Rock Paper Shotgun was happy to report today that the two devs in question – Ivan Buchta and Martin Pezlar – were both released today on individual €5,000 bails. They’re also able to return to the Czech Republic, which leads one to hope that this will be the end of their sordid and doubtlessly harrowing predicament.

While I can’t say I’m familiar with Bohemia’s games beyond the occasional ridiculous ArmA II video, the whole situation revolving around these two being in prison seemed not only unfortunate, but badly planned out. It’s been very uplifting to see Buchta and Pezlar’s story reach such a wide audience, to the point where both the Greek and Czech Prime Ministers were in talks with each other to get these two home. Here’s to hoping that they’ll never have to worry about this nonsense again. Best wishes to Buchta and Pezlar, and here’s hoping they can get back to making games again soon.

[Source: Rock Paper Shotgun]

Guild Wars 2 rakes in 3 million sales, ArenaNet not backing down

48cf5G2-590x324

Guild Wars 2 sits at the top of my “Games I Wish I’d Played More Of in 2012” list. The subscription-less, boundless MMO took just about everything I loved about the genre and made it more action-packed, but I haven’t had a chance to sit down with it in some time. Luckily for me, as well as the greater player base, it seems like ArenaNet isn’t planning on stopping new content from coming to Tyria. Eurogamer reported today that over 3 million copies of the fantasy romp-fest have been sold, and with that came a list of announcements about what to expect for the game in 2013. Such a list includes things like “guild missions and rewards,” the elimination of “culling” from World vs. World gameplay, and a PvP overhaul.

As I mentioned, I haven’t had a chance to dig into the real meat of Guild Wars yet; my character is hovering right around 40, if memory serves. Regardless, I’m glad to see that people are flocking to the subscription-less model  and giving the game its due. ArenaNet has always struck me as a developer with eyes just a hair bigger than their stomachs, but if they’re able to maintain the pace they’ve started with, 2013 might be the best time to discover what all the fuss is about.

[Source: Eurogamer]

[divider]

Dyl-Questing – Wake Up Club’s Actually Coming to the US!

242113-a 1

They said it would never happen. They said it was impossible. They all told me, “No, really, why do you want this? It’s a dumb alarm clock app for the Vita. That doesn’t seem that cool.”

THAT IS WHERE YOU ARE WRONG. 

Okay, in all honesty, I don’t even own a Vita and this does seem kind of silly to me. If you don’t know what Wake Up Club is, Sony posted a nice little primer on it on their official blog last week. But for the eight of you out there (along with Wario64) who are legitimately pumped for the impending release of Wake Up Club, the social alarm clock app, all I have to say is…congratulations? I guess?