Month: March 2018

Enlarge / Mobile Fortnite matches will start just like this, except without the "space bar" control tip.

For years now, gamers have gotten used to popular, big-budget console and PC games coming to mobile phones in the form of cheesy, heavily scaled-down "companion experiences" like match-three games or mindless screen-tappers. So it was a bit surprising late last night when Epic Games announced that the upcoming mobile and tablet versions of Fortnite: Battle Royale would be "the same 100-player game you know from PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Mac. Same gameplay, same map, same content, same weekly updates."

As if to emphasize the identical nature of this mobile port, Sony will enable Cross Play and Cross Progression between the PS4 and mobile/tablet versions, as well as with the existing PC and Mac versions (which used to require some workarounds to play with the PS4). It's an interesting move from a console maker that continues to stand in the way of cross-console play between the PS4 and Xbox One or Switch. Fortnite briefly and accidentally proved such cross-console play was possible back in September, and Epic Games later said players "deserve" such features.

Epic Community Manager Nick Chester clarified in a tweet that players will be able to opt into cross-platform matchmaking queues or stick with players on the same platform. That's probably a good thing, because Chester also confirmed that mobile players will be stuck with touchscreen controls initially, with controller support planned for "later." Though we haven't seen Fortnite's planned mobile control scheme yet, we'd imagine it will end up being a significant handicap compared to players with controllers or a mouse/keyboard setup.

Enlarge / Two posters, one ambitious game. (credit: Valve)

BELLEVUE, Washington—I was about to sit down to play Valve's first new PC game series in five years. But this being Valve, the world's first press demo for Artifact was preceded by something almost equally rare: a speech from company cofounder Gabe Newell. The speech wasn't just a how-to of gameplay mechanics, nor was it focused on the day's major surprise reveal—that Valve had hired Magic: The Gathering (MtG) creator Richard Garfield four years ago to start working on this game.

Instead, Newell gave a high-level overview of the game, with unexpected comments about the company's history, corporate structure, and economics. Valve devotees tend to scrutinize every word uttered by Newell; he's a five-years-ahead type of thinker in the games industry and generally plays his cards very close to the vest. And looking back, his Thursday evening speech feels like a compelling examination, and possibly a criticism, of where Valve has gone over the past few years.

"From a high-level perspective, we want to stay away from pay-to-win," Newell said. Within nearly the same breath, he announced that Artifact will not function as a free-to-play game—you'll have to buy something akin to a "starter" pack of gameplay cards, another staffer later clarified, before you can load into a game. Further cards can be purchased in packs and singles, either directly from Valve or from fellow players. And this, Newell insisted, will do something important for how the psychology of its paid cards plays out. "When you’re in a free-to-play environment, you get into a tendency that rarity equals power," Newell said. He called this an "artificial relationship" and insisted that in Artifact, "that’s not the case at all. Lots of common cards will be super powerful."