GameSpasm

That mysterious Telltale mashup game teased last week? Telltale laid its cards on the table, revealing ... Poker Night at the Inventory, the second "pilot" game from the adventure publisher, which brings Team Fortress 2's Heavy, Penny Arcade's Tycho, Homestar Runner's Strong Bad, and Sam & Max's Max together for a little good-natured gambling. Now, we know what you're thinking. How can Strong Bad play cards with boxing gloves on?

Poker Night at The Inventory features fully voiced characters utilizing Telltale's dynamic dialog system," according to the announcement. "All the characters will talk trash, give unique tells, and react to the game dynamically as it is being played, providing a unique experience with each round played." It also features Steamworks integration, a first for the publisher. Oh, and pre-orders from Telltale for the fall release ($4.95!) come with coupons for 25% off your order. If we knew the first thing about poker, we'd totally relate that to a hand of cards you'd be confident about holding.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

It's Poker Night at the Inventory for Max, Tycho, Strong Bad, and the Heavy originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments Tags: PC, poker, poker-night-at-the-inventory, steamworks, Telltale Games

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Firaxis has passed along the system requirements for its upcoming game, Civilization 5. Here's the good news: you won't need a Crysis-level PC to assert your dominion over others. Bad news? It's not September 21 yet.

Continue reading Civilization 5 system requirements revealed

Civilization 5 system requirements revealed originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 07 Aug 2010 04:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments Tags: 2k games, civilization 5, civilization-v, Firaxis, firaxis-games, PC, Sid Meier's Civilization V, steam, steamworks, Strategy, take-two, Valve

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Valve has singlehandedly reinvigorated the Mac gaming world by making its Steam content delivery service compatible with the Mac. It has been steadily populating the service with Mac-friendly versions of its mega-popular games; however, apparently that isn't enough. Now Valve is going to help other developers make Mac games, by releasing elements of its graphics code.

Business development director Jason Holtman told GamesIndustry.biz that Valve will release some code to developers signed on with the company's Steamworks infrastructure, in order to expedite the development of Mac games (and thus speed up the population of Steam). "So our Steamworks partners will have access to some of the hard work that we do to get our games up on Mac," Holtman said, "and they'll be able to incorporate that into their games -- and our hope is it gets them there faster."

Holtman also provided clues as to the success of Steam's Mac edition, stating that "we're seeing between a 15 and 20 percent increase in games that have a Mac version on Steam." It turns out that Mac owners will buy games if they're available!

Valve offering parts of its Mac graphics code to Steamworks devs originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments Tags: jason-holtman, PC, steam, Steam-Mac, steamworks, Valve

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In the first half of our video interview with John Koller, we talked about PSP, Sony's expectations for the PSP Go, and a new marketing direction for the portal. In the second half of our video interview with Sony's John Koller, we chat about some of E3's key surprises, including PlayStation Plus and Steamworks. What can we expect from Sony's new partnership with Valve? How did it come together? Furthermore, what kind of services will PlayStation Plus offer? These questions and more in part two, viewable after the break.

Continue reading Video interview: Sony's John Koller, on PlayStation Plus, Steamworks and more

Video interview: Sony's John Koller, on PlayStation Plus, Steamworks and more originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 18 Jun 2010 21:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments Tags: e3-2010, john-koller, Playstation, playstation network, playstation-plus, PS3, psn, PSP, steamworks

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In the first half of our video interview with John Koller, we talked about PSP, Sony's expectations for the PSP Go, and a new marketing direction for the portal. In the second half of our video interview with Sony's John Koller, we chat about some of E3's key surprises, including PlayStation Plus and Steamworks. What can we expect from Sony's new partnership with Valve? How did it come together? Furthermore, what kind of services will PlayStation Plus offer? These questions and more in part two, viewable after the break.

Continue reading Video interview: Sony's John Koller, on PlayStation Plus, Steamworks and more

Video interview: Sony's John Koller, on PlayStation Plus, Steamworks and more originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 18 Jun 2010 21:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments Tags: e3-2010, john-koller, Playstation, playstation network, playstation-plus, PS3, psn, PSP, steamworks

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As the company itself puts it, "Want to offer your customers a scabbard for their sword? New tires? The latest in night vision goggles? Now you can!" It seems that while we were all up in arms about the added Mac client for Steam and Epic Games giving away its SDK to Steam devs, Valve also slipped out software developer support for microtransactions, not to mention a 100 fold increase in cloud storage limits (from 1MB to 100MB per game).

Joystiq's PC-centric sister site Big Download noticed the additions in a PDF that Valve recently released on an overview site, detailing the changes coming to the Steam digital distribution client in 2010. As for the microtransaction update, Valve promises users the ability to "buy and instantly use the items they want -- all without leaving the game," perhaps opening up the gate to free-to-play/microtransaction-based games on the service. And, maybe more interestingly, leaving open the possibility of free-to-play games based in the Source and Unreal game engines.

[Via Big Download]

Steamworks adding microtransactions, upped cloud storage limit originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 21 Mar 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Tags: Cloud, cloud-computing, digital-distribution, free-to-play, Microtransactions, steam, steamworks, steamworks-sdk, update, Valve

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Carrying on in the longstanding Epic Games tradition of offering up free upgrades to existing products, the developer, publisher and game engine creator announced this morning that it will be adding Steamworks support to Unreal Engine 3. "With Valve offering these services free of charge, the idea of providing the Steamworks SDK [software development kit] to all Unreal Engine licensees was a no-brainer," Epic VP Mark Rein notes in the announcement.

As it turns out, Valve offered up the development tools to UE3 developers (via Epic) without charging a single penny. That said, this isn't just a philanthropic gesture on Epic's part, but rather a strategy aimed at targeting the large stable of games powered by Unreal Engine. "Epic's technology is one of the most widely used engines in the industry and has powered many of the best games created in the past 10 years, on multiple platforms," Valve prez Gabe Newell proclaims.

That's really the crux of it -- bring in the Unreal Engine 3 users and they might stick around to purchase some other games on Steam. It's a bit of a sneaky trap (and a smart business move to boot), but it's one we wouldn't exactly be upset about falling for.

Epic giving Unreal Engine 3 devs free Steam SDK update originally appeared on Joystiq on Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Tags: Development, epic, Epic Games, gabe-newell, mark-rein, partnership, steam, steamworks, steamworks-sdk, unreal-engine-3, valve-software

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We've love to outright confirm that "OMG, yes, Steam is finally coming to Mac!" but that'd be a lie. Truth is, of the five images that Valve sent out to a handful of outlets (as seen in our gallery below) - each one depicting characters from separate Valve games in some form of faux Mac advertisement (from Half-Life to Left 4 Dead and everything in between) - none is ironclad confirmation of our suspicion that the developer is likely porting Steam over to OS X.

That said, given the presence of six dots at the bottom of each of the five images we've seen so far, suggesting an iTunes-like image gallery with six images, we're hoping for an actual news release in the not-too-distant future ... possibly via that sixth image. For now, we've put in a call to Valve and will be speculating wildly in the meantime. Check out the five screens so far in the gallery below and get to the speculating with us, won't you?

Update: Valve kindly sent over the last image, which unfortunately doesn't "OMG confirmed!" our guesses. It is, however, the coolest (fake) ad yet.
[Thanks, Joe K]

Valve teases Apple announcement of ... something [update] originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments Tags: half-life, half-life-2, Left 4 Dead, portal, steam, steamworks, Team Fortress 2, Valve

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Valve has announced that THQ's Metro 2033 will join the growing list of titles that support Steamworks. The PC version of the game will offer a number of Steamworks features, including Achievements, updates and DLC. So, you can look forward to earning some sweet, sweet cheevos while exploring the creepy environs of the Russian metro system. And trust us, it is creepy.

It's worth noting that with Steamworks support now official, it's likely that Metro 2033 will also be joining the ranks of downloadable titles that won't be offered by competing services like Impulse and Direct2Drive. If you're particularly loyal to another online distribution service, maybe a free copy of Red Faction: Guerrilla will help grease the hinges on the old wallet.

Valve announces Metro 2033 will use Steamworks originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments Tags: 4a-games, metro-2033, steam, steamworks, THQ, Valve

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Valve knows you, conservative Steam user. You've been holding out for a discount on the already low-priced Torchlight from Runic Games, using the game's lack of Achievements and Steam Cloud support as an excuse to do so, haven't you? Haven't you?!

It's alright (and we're sorry for yelling)! But we had to get your attention to tell you that Steam's benevolent overlords are already thinking a few steps ahead, adding the aforementioned Cheevos and Cloud support in an update last night as well as dropping the game's price by 50% for the duration of the weekend. For $9.99, you can venture into the land of Torchlight and click to your heart's content -- there's even a demo if you're so inclined. The deal last's until Monday, so let's hope you're an expedient Steam user as well as a conservative one.

Torchlight gets big Steam update, half-price weekend originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 19 Dec 2009 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Tags: Achievements, action-rpg, Patch, runic-games, sale, steam, steam-achievements, steam-cloud, steamworks, torchlight, update, Valve

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