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LinkedIn, the email spam service associated with a B2B social network, has made its move into gaming. Not with a LinkedIn-branded golf putting kit, which surely would've nailed the target audience: LinkedIn has started with three simple browser games that can be played daily and, here's the kicker, track and share stats across networks. Yes, it's looking to start some friendly rivalries in the executive seats.
Helldivers 2 is setting a new standard for live storytelling, and not a little of that is how the game's fiction has bled-over into the online interactions between Arrowhead Game Studios and the playerbase. This found spectacular expression last week after the game's first real misstep, a Sony-mandated account linking requirement, saw Helldivers collectively organise and (what else) review bomb their own beloved game on Steam in an effort to get the situation reversed.
Shinji Mikami is one of the greatest developers that games have so far seen. He spent his early years at Capcom and, among many other games, created the Resident Evil series, returning to direct the standout Resident Evil 4, before becoming a key member of the legendary Clover Studio. He and others left Capcom to co-found PlatinumGames, with Mikami always of the mind that he would direct one major title at the company and help it get established, before leaving to set up on his own. Mikami directed the outstanding Vanquish, before founding Tango Gameworks later in the same year.
EA has hosted an earnings call for its Q4 2024 financial results which, broadly speaking, were just below where the publisher thought they would be. The company reported $1.66 billion in revenue, handsome but somewhat lower than its expectation of $1.8 billion, and so the mood music in both the prepared remarks and the accompanying shareholder call was all about what wonders EA has ready to hit over the next few years to make a whole lot more money.
In January 2021, Magic: The Gathering had one of those moments that went mainstream. The sale of a single Black Lotus card, an extreme rarity from the game's first-ever set of cards, reached a final amount of $511,100 in an eBay auction. Previous examples of the Alpha Black Lotus (the first series of MTG cards is called the Alpha series) had gone for as much as $250K, but this more than doubled the record and the general reaction was of astonishment. Not that Magic: The Gathering cards can be valuable, that's long-established, but that a single card could ever be worth half-a-million dollars plus change.
Helldivers 2 has announced its next warbond, the game's equivalent of battle passes, will arrive on May 9 and is going to take the temperature of this war all the way down. Polar Patriots leads with the line that «a deep freeze is coming to the galaxy» before introducing a plethora of cold-themed armor, new weapons, and a white phosphorous grenade to balance things out.
The breakout success of Helldivers 2 has brought renewed focus on the game's major inspiration: Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, loosely based on the Robert Heinlein novel. Even though Arrowhead's done a good job of making the Helldivers universe feel like its own thing, it wears its love for this movie on both shoulder pads, and the game is packed with references and tributes.
Manor Lords is one man's unusual take on the joys of managing a medieval city and, after garnering a whole lot of wishlists, sold over a million copies within a few days of launch. The developer did try to set pre-launch expectations appropriately, warning players this was no Total War competitor, but the game's emergent narratives, relative polish, and the historically accurate NPC name Cuntz has charmed players and left it sitting pretty on around 25,000 'very positive' user reviews.