QuakeCon, the annual celebration of LAN gaming, will be held August 1-4 at the The Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas, Texas. Special rates for the hotel and overnight parking are available now, so don't dawdle.

The four day festival, now in its 18th year, is North America's largest Bring-Your-Own-Computer LAN party. There's also presentations and panels from Bethesda Softworks and id Software about what the companies are up to. The event is open and free to the public but, again, don't take too much time on grabbing a hotel room if you're planning to attend.

Continue Reading

The Forza Horizon monthly rollout of shiny new DLC drives continues with Meguiar's Car Pack', which is revving up for a March 5 release. The DLC comes without cost to those with the game's season pass, while other can gain access via a 400 MSP pit stop.

The six cars included are the 2013 Audi RS4 Avant, the 2012 Mercedes-Benz G65 AMG, the 2013 BMW M135i, the 2003 Ferrari Challenge Stradale, the 2004 Peugeot 206 RC, and the 1998 Nissan R390. If you're looking to take the DLC out for a test drive, the Nissan R390 is a free sample this month. Meanwhile, season pass owners get the 2010 Joss JT1 as a bonus.

Continue Reading

Strategy game The Banner Saga:Factions is available now on Steam for PC and Mac. The game is free and is currently a player-versus-player experience. This appears to be the first step in the full game's release.

Created by a group of ex-Bioware employees under the banner of Stoic Studio, the game was one of the earlier Kickstarter success stories, amassing $723K, shortly into the post-Double Fine Adventure era.

Valve tends to keep as hush-hush as possible on a number of things, not least of which are matters of personnel. So EconTalk's chat with the company's economist, Yanis Varoufakis, in which he explains in elucidating detail how the company hires, fires, and pays its employees, is particularly enlightening. It's Valve's "flat hierarchy" approach which makes these processes interesting, and more than a little unconventional, as Varoufakis demonstrates when discussing the studio's hiring policy.

"The way it works is very simple," Varoufakis told EconTalk. "Let's say you and I have a chat in the corridor, or in some conference room, or wherever, and the result of this chat is that we converge to the view that we need an additional software engineer, or animator, or artist, or hardware person, or several of them. What we can do is we can send an email to the rest of our colleagues at Valve, invite them to join us in forming a search committee that actually looks for these people without seeking anyone's permission in the hierarchy, simply because there is no hierarchy."

This results in a free-for-all interview process, first by Skype, then "if they pass that test" in person, with anyone who wants to participate able to. After that, a consensus is eventually reached, and the hire is made.

Firings at Valve came under scrutiny recently after the company laid off an undisclosed number of employees, including hardware engineer Jeri Ellsworth. Varoufakis noted "in many occasions" it's a failure to adjust to the company's lack of hierarchy that leads to an employee's dismissal, with a similar consensus reaching the final decision. This Online MBA video and article from earlier this year neatly summarizes Valve's consensus-driven but case-by-case approach to firing.

The rewards for remaining employed by Valve, however, can be lucrative, as company bonuses don't have an upper limit. "Bonuses can end up being five, six, ten times the level of the basic wage," Varoufakis said.

Varoufakis goes to into greater detail on these processes and a lot of what's in between in the EconTalk podcast.

A trio of new DLC packs have pulled in to Need for Speed: Most Wanted's Fairhaven city, bringing a cadre of new cars and an entirely new game area with them. Terminal Velocity is the first offering and most substantial, bringing speeders to Fairhaven International Airport. The airport itself is under construction in-game, and features lots of launchers for high-flying antics, along with a new "nitrous jump" mod for extra pop off those construction ramps.

Need for Speed Movie Legends is a DLC pack centered around iconic movie rides. Bond's Aston Martin DBS 2008 and Aston Martin DB5 are here – Smokey's Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am Special Edition 1977 is represented, as is Vin Diesel's chunky ride from the Fastion & Furious, the Dodge Charger R/T 1970. Rounding out the pack is the Shelby GT500 1967 from Gone in 60 Seconds.

Continue Reading

The Canada-exclusive holiday season is officially over, because the Wii Mini is making a little big trip to the UK next month on March 22. There's no word on a price; when launched in Canada late last year, the wee console cost $99.99 (around £63.50).

The Wii Mini offers a reduced price and size, as well as top-loading disc tray, but doesn't have Internet connectivity and isn't compatible with GameCube discs. As per Canada's bundle, UK buyers get a red Nunchuk and red WiiMote Plus controller with the console.

Nintendo previously said the console would remain exclusive to Canada throughout the holiday season, with no information available about its arrival in other territories. We've reached out to Nintendo to find out if we can expect the console to reach the US.

Continue Reading

Microsoft's week-long Ultimate Game Sale for Games on Demand content makes its opening pitch today, and first up to the plate is Master Chief of the Halo Space Marines. We'll let you be the judge of whether or not the green giant knocks it out of the park with today's offers.

Three games slide down from $29.99 to $9.99 in the form of Halo 3, Halo: Reach, and real-time strategy black sheep Halo Wars. It's not quite as big a discount for the Chief's most recent adventure; Halo 4 shifts its price to $39.99 for a 33 percent discount.

Update: A number of other games are also on sale, including Grid, Call of Juarez, BioShock, and Tomb Raider: Legend. It's not wholly clear, but the wording suggests these particular games are staying discounted through to the end of the Ultimate Game Sale on March 5.

• Dirt 2 - $4.99
• Grid - $4.99
• Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements - $2.99
• Rayman Raving Rabbids - $2.99
• Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X - $4.99
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas - $4.99
• Kane and Lynch: Dead Men - $4.99
• Call of Juarez - $4.99
• Tomb Raider: Legend - $4.99
• Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter - $4.99
• Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 - $4.99
• Virtua Fighter 5 - $4.99
• BioShock - $4.99
• El Shaddai - $2.99
• The Darkness - $4.99

The launch trailer for Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien shows more of the sequel than anything we've seen, with tantalizing looks at all the various worlds in which you'll be restarting, restarting, and restarting.

Runner2 will deliver a newly polygonal Commander Video to you on Wii U, PC, Mac, and Linux today, with XBLA following on Wednesday and PSN for PS3 early next month. Vita (!) and iOS (!) will be in the summer.

Resident Evil 6 drops on PC on March 22, and if anyone is still interested in playing the game and attempting to have a good time, there's a free benchmark test available now.

Capcom announced the benchmark test in January, alongside news of a new mode called "The Mercenaries: No Mercy." It's based on the existing Mercenaries mode for consoles, but with "more enemies on screen than ever before." Ada Wong's campaign also comes standard with the PC version of Resident Evil 6.

If that all sounds wonderful, see if your rig is up to snuff with Nvidia's free PC test.

Gaijin Games' Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien sequel was submitted to its various platforms earlier this month, but we now have official dates and prices for the title, courtesy of Gaijin's co-founder Alex Neuse himself. CommanderVideo will start his run on the Wii U and Steam (for PC, Mac, and Linux) tomorrow, February 26, and then be available on Xbox Live on Wednesday of this week, February 27.

The PSN, iOS, and Vita releases are coming later: Neuse says "hopefully March 5" for the PSN release, "but Early March for sure!" iOS and Vita versions are due out sometime this summer. The game will be $14.99 no matter what platform you buy it on, and Neuse notes that there's still a few hours for a Steam preorder if you want the various bonuses and discounts. If you've been waiting a long time to hear the voice of Charles Martinet narrate the long-awaited BIT.TRIP sequel, your wait is almost over.

Update: March 5 on PSN is confirmed, according to Gaijin's other co-founder, Mike Roush.

Sony is preparing to localize a pair of PS Vita apps in North America this spring, Friend Network and Imaginstruments. Friend Network has been available in Japan as a free download for some time now – it's a social networking app starring PlayStation mascot Toro where players aim to recruit friends into their friend army.

Imaginstruments – a free app from Europe – turns PS Vita users into amateur musicians. Through the app, you can compose original numbers and save them to the PS Vita memory card. It looks similar to the Korg DS-10.

Pricing isn't mentioned in the announcement post over on the PlayStation Blog, but we can't imagine Sony wouldn't offer both of these for free, just as in their native territories. Still, the company is financing a new console right now and could use the cash.

Head past the break for some footage of each app.

Continue Reading

Studies have shown that violent behavior is both linked and not linked to violent video games, but the majority of Americans have decided for themselves: A new poll says that 58 percent of adult Americans do believe that playing violent video games can contribute to violent behavior in teenagers. The independent survey studied 2,278 US adults, and found that nearly three out of five of them believed the link was there.

However, those same adults aren't too bothered with keeping violent video games out of the hands of children. 38 percent of survey takers said they know nothing about the Entertainment Software Ratings Board's system for rating game content, and 33 percent of those surveyed say their kids can play whatever they want anyway. Only 32 percent of respondents say the ESRB can keep violent games out of the hands of children, which is less credit than those surveyed give the movies or music ratings systems.

In reality, the FTC actually says the gaming ratings system is the best at keeping illicit content out of the hands of minors, though the media doesn't always report it that way. The full results of the report, from Harris Poll, are set to be released on Wednesday this week.

Respawn Entertainment (which came from the disunion between Activision and the former heads of Infinity Ward) promised us last year that the company would not debut its first game at E3. Though we may see a glimpse before the show, Respawn's co-founder Vince Zampella has tweeted that, "Yes, we will finally be at E3," presumably not just to enjoy the sometimes smelly confines of the Los Angeles Convention Center again.

So far, all we've seen of Respawn's secret title is a company logo and the blurry screenshot above, but if Respawn is headed to LA in June for the show, they'll likely be bringing some game info along. As Zampella added, "I have no intention of showing up empty handed!"

When Sony revealed the PlayStation 4, it didn't reveal the PlayStation 4 – at least not physically. Sony didn't show off the actual PS4 hardware, aside from the DualShock 4 controller and a revamped PSEye, and a few viewers considered this a cop-out. There was "a bit of cynism" from fans following the conference, even though Sony presented more important things for a next-gen system, PlayStation UK managing director Fergal Gara told Video Gamer.

"It's much more important to see what the damn thing does," Gara said. "The shiniest piece of black, green or purple plastic ever, you know, whatever, so what? It's not the most important thing."

After all, "a box is a box," as Gara puts it. However, if the PlayStation 4 is striped in shades of metallic black, green and purple, it could very well matter. Good luck making that color scheme work in any living room.

The PlayStation 4 could employ a multiple-tier subscription service, offering different levels of access in a style similar to a cable television company, Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida tells The Guardian.

"We could have gold, silver or platinum levels of membership, something like that," Yoshida says. "We can do subscription services when we have more content – especially now that we have the Gaikai technology available. With one subscription you have access to thousands of games – that's our dream."

Yoshida says the PS4 will have more digital content than its predecessors, at least: Every game will be available as a download, while some will still be sold at retail. This makes it easier to host smaller games such as Jonathan Blow's The Witness, and it supports a broader range of payment models, such as free-to-play or subscription-based games.

"We're shifting our platform more and more to the digital side," he says. "PS4 will be similar to PS Vita in that every game will be available as a digital download, and some will also be available as a disc."

Yoshida previously confirmed that current-gen PSN games won't run natively on PS4, though emulation or cloud service plans aren't out of the question.

Continue Reading