Author: Trafficblast

Dragon Ball FighterZ has been a huge success for developer Arc System Works, and it’s just been announced on the game’s official site (in Japanese) that the game has achieved 5 million lifetime sales between shipped copies and digital purchases. To celebrate, everyone who logs into the game within the next week will score some free stuff.

From now until May 28, players who jump into the game will be awarded a massive 5 million Zeni, along with three lobby characters: Android 21 SPECIAL 01, Goku (SSGSS) SPECIAL 01, and Vegeta (SSGSS) SPECIAL 01. You’ll be able to walk around the menus with any of these avatars.

Incidentally, two of the game’s unlockable characters–the Super Saiyan Blue variants of Goku and Vegeta–can be unlocked by earning zeni, and 5 million is comfortably enough to unlock both of them. I can verify that I loaded up the game without these characters unlocked, and once I connected to an online lobby, I was immediately granted both fighters, alongside two trophies.

Dragon Ball FighterZ has continued to release new characters since launch via DLC, and although an awful lot of them are Goku variants, the latest one–Ultra Instinct Goku–is still pretty special. The game will also feature in the upcoming online version of EVO 2020.

Interestingly, Dragon Ball FighterZ is not the best-selling Dragon Ball fighter this generation–Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 has sold a million more, with 6 million units sold.

After being valued at $8.13 billion, Polish company CD Projekt have overtaken France’s Ubisoft to become the most valuable game company in Europe, Video Games Chronicle reports. While the company’s gaming branch, CD Projeckt Red, has only three titles under its belt (not including a handful of spin-off Witcher titles), CD Projekt also runs the GOG distribution platform. This year, a resurgence of interest in The Witcher spurred by the Netflix show, as well as hype for the studio’s upcoming game Cyberpunk 2077, have helped push the company’s value even higher.

While the numbers are still relatively small compared to gaming behemoths in North America and Japan, with Nintendo valued at $53.73 billion and Activision Blizzard at $56.27 billion, it’s still an impressive result for the Witcher developers.

After a number of delays, CD Projekt Red has confirmed that Cyberpunk 2077 is on track for its planned September release date, despite the studio’s switch to remote working due to the COVID-19 crisis. CDPR has also confirmed it will be returning to the Witcher universe in the future, though its current focus is entirely on Cyberpunk 2077.

CD Projekt Red’s most recent game, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, recently celebrated its 5 year anniversary, and still holds an enduring appeal for many gamers.

On May 19, 2015, Polish studio CD Projekt Red released The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, the final entry in its trilogy continuing author Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher saga. With a huge open world, the game was a big departure from the style of the previous two games, but the risky move resulted in a game that still holds up five years later.

In an interview with Polygon, the CDPR developers have talked about how The Witcher 3 was such a big departure from other games in the series, and what went into making that change.

“Our quest director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, said that the main goal [of The Witcher 3] was to combine the design philosophy of previous Witcher games, which was to create a complex and mature story that has choices and consequences, with an open world,” senior quest designer Philipp Weber told Polygon. “There used to be this preconceived notion you would hear a lot that open world games can’t tell interesting or deep stories. So that was something we took up as a challenge.”

As quest designers, the challenge for the team at CDPR was to design quests that would still work if a player chose to take a different path through the open world.

“At first, changing our design [to fit an open world] seemed difficult, but in the end it actually improved quests a lot,” Weber said. “With the open world, our quest structure also became much more open, and we could give players many more opportunities to experience our stories in the way they wanted. If I can solve different parts of a quest out of order, then maybe this will have different consequences later on. Since we were always big fans of nonlinear choice and consequence, this was a huge bonus.”

Weber also mentions some of the systems the Witcher 3 team used to make the world feel more alive, such as a feature where wolves will be able to smell when a monster or animal is killed, causing them to head towards the new food source. For many players, the level of depth and life in the world was what kept them coming back again and again.

“One of the things that people mention a lot when it comes to The Witcher 3 is how long they actually played the game and enjoyed it, which was at first very surprising and funny for us, because during development we always thought it would be too short and were trying to add more into the game,” Weber said. “So seeing that kind of feedback was actually a great relief, made even better knowing that people still play the game now.”

The full Polygon interview has more, including diving into the details of some of the specific quests that handled this so well.

CD Projekt Red is currently working towards the September release of Cyberpunk 2077, but reports say that at least one more Witcher game is in the works for the studio.

Tony Hawk’s life changed after he started working with Activision on the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series. Already a big name in the world of skateboarding, partnering with Activision on the skateboarding video game franchise bearing his name elevated him to a household name. Along with this success, Hawk faced scrutiny from those in skating circles–he was labeled a “sellout.”

Hawk recalled these early days in an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast recently. With the success of the game series, Hawk also got a suite of endorsement deals from gigantic companies such as McDonald’s and Jeep. This only fueled his critics.

“In those days, skating was very much a novelty. In the ’90s, X-Games came into play, and then all of a sudden my name was well-known, not mainstream, but getting there. Then our video game came out, and it was just like, ‘Oh, you’re just a sellout,'” Hawk said. “Because of the video game and the endorsements that followed from that. I was doing stuff for Jeep, for McDonald’s, for Doritos, and they were like, ‘Oh, you’re just a sellout.'”

But Hawk maintains he’s never changed his value systems–he was eating McDonald’s before he made it big, and he’s still eating there today.

“When I turned pro at age 14, if McDonald’s had asked me to be in a commercial, I would have jumped on it, are you kidding me?” Hawk said. “I was eating McDonald’s my whole life–I still do. It was more that they somehow thought I changed my values. But I haven’t changed my value system–it’s just that I’m getting these opportunities, finally.”

According to CNBC, Activision offered Hawk a flat rate of $500,000 for the first Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, which at the time was the most lucrative offer the skater had ever seen. Hawk rejected this offer and instead opted for a deal that paid him royalties tied to the success of the series. That ended up being a very smart move, as the game spawned numerous sequels and is estimated to have driven $1.4 billion in revenue to date.

In a 2018 interview with The Nine Club (below), Hawk recalled having a meeting with Activision where he was handed a $4 million royalty check for one year’s worth of royalties. “The video game changed my life,” Hawk said.

Activision is bringing back the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series this year with the release of a remaster package featuring Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2.

We’re happy to welcome @scottfeed to the team as studio director in North America. He’s worked on some amazing games including Planescape: Torment, Halo and Battlefield. pic.twitter.com/DIMZvxMDcu

— TiMi Studios (@timistudios) May 20, 2020

French studio Quantic Dream is giving fans a new way to experience its latest release, Detroit: Become Human, with a Twitch extension aimed at streamers. The Detroit: Community Play extension will let streamers easily send out polls to their viewers related to the decisions posed by the game’s branching narrative–something Detroit streamers have done in a more informal way since the game’s release.

Like other Quantic Dream games, Detroit: Become Human is a narrative-heavy game where the outcome of different situations is influenced by the decisions the player chooses, or the relationships they build with characters. The new extension is designed to simulate a multiplayer experience, letting viewers have a say in the direction the playthrough will go.

The feature will be demoed by Bryan Dechart and his partner Amelia Rose Blair. Both actors appeared in Detroit: Become Human, and later gathered a large following on Twitch when they streamed their first playthrough of the game they worked on. The duo are now Twitch Partners under their channel Dechart Games.

While Dechart and Blair are now Twitch veterans, their demo will come as part of Quantic Dream’s first ever livestream on its own channel. The stream is set to be a big one, celebrating both the Heavy Rain 10-year anniversary and the Detroit: Become Human 2-year anniversary with Q&As from actors involved in both games.

Keep an eye out for the anniversary stream on Twitch on May 25 at 2 PM ET, including the demo and launch of Detroit: Community Play.