PC Gamer

“inexperienced developers changed online gaming”

This month we’re celebrating two fantasy institutions. There’s the grimdark excess of Warhammer, courtesy of our exclusive reveal of Vermintide II’s first expansion, Winds of Magic. Vermintide II earned Best Co-op in our Game of the Year awards, and for good reason. Now developer Fatshark has some exciting ideas for its continued life. Elsewhere, Steven Messner visited Daybreak Studios to celebrate the 20th anniversary of a PC gaming legend. In our massive EverQuest feature, we discover how a group of inexperienced developers changed online gaming forever – mostly by hiding away and hoping Sony management wouldn’t find them! phil.savage@futurenet.com PHIL SAVAGE Specialist in Lore of Deadlines Twitter @Octaeder This month Managed to get in and out of a Scandinavian…

the pc gamer team

STEVEN MESSNER Specialist in Lore of Features Twitter @stevenmessner This month Wrote our EverQuest feature and is working on next issue’s Anthem review. #Pray4Steven ANDY KELLY Specialist in Lore of Twitter Twitter @ultrabrilliant This month Took a brief break from the internet in order to talk to the creator of a fake internet. PHILIPPA WARR Specialist in Lore of Confusion This month Drew on thousands of hours of Dota 2 experience to play a mod in which a multidimensional donkey moves the chesses. JAMES DAVENPORT Specialist in Lore of Guns Twitter @my_beards This month Our former Fortnite correspondent was lost to Apex Legends. Was last seen in Skull Town. …

no vision

On February 12, Activision hosted an earnings call in which CEO Bobby Kotick announced “record results”. On the same call, president Coddy Johnson announced that approximately 8% of the company’s staff, around 800 people, were being laid off. That’s because despite the record, Activision had failed to meet Wall Street’s expectations. “While we had record performance in 2018, it didn’t quite live up to our expectations,” said Kotick – a sentence that might make you wonder if capitalism is broken.“Our current outlook for 2019 falls below what is possible in an industry filled with growth opportunities,” Kotick continued. IN 2018, ACTIVISION RELEASED JUST ONE CALL OF DUTY AND TWO REMASTERS All companies restructure, but the scale of the layoffs, and the callousness of their announcement, felt particularly…

the spy

The Spy hasn’t touched paper money since the late-’90s, when bands of street magicians roamed the street, thrusting decks of cards into the hands of unsuspecting commuters. The Spy went to hand over a £5 note in exchange for a new copy of Rollercoaster by B*Witched – the original having been destroyed during a tobogganing incident, as was the trend at the time – when it was intercepted by a figure wearing a leather jacket and aggressively sharp goatee. THE SPY The Spy trades exclusively in invisible money. Not breaking eye contact, the wiry miscreant waved a hand, and, in a flash of smoke, The Spy’s money vanished. A quick search of his unconscious body revealed no sign of the note, and, with the sound of…

this month in… 2009

1 This was quite the time for Battlefield projects but, looking back, the most interesting is Battlefield Heroes. At that time its free-to-play PvP plus microtransactions model felt like a terrifying risk rather than a standard offering and as we noted in the mag, “This is the first time PC Gamer has ever put a free game on its cover.” ISSUE 199, April 2009 ON THE COVER Battlefield IN THE CHARTS Number 1 – Tinchy Stryder ft. N-Dubz 2 A brilliant fan-made Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device was so spectacular we had to ask creator Harrison Krix to share how it was made! 3 Before he got famous withGunpoint, Tom Francis made Blunt Force Trauma for PCG’s in-house 24 hour gamejam. BFT featuresbreezeblocks falling…

web 1.0

OLD SCHOOL 1 “The old web aesthetic is fascinating to me because all kinds of everyday non-tech people were being drawn into the digital world for the first time. The internet was a blank canvas. There was no visual consistency.” IMAGE CONSCIOUS 2 “For the bad pre-rendered animated gifs I used old 3D software packages such as Wings3D and Bryce 5.5. I then converted them into my own ‘Hypnospace safe’ 64-colour palette using Floyd-Steinberg dithering.” INTERNET EXPLORER 3 “For the browser I drew up a design and sent it to Mike Lasch, our programmer, who made it real and functional. Over time we added new features such as bookmarks, virtual pets, and a functioning media player.” NEW BUILD 4 “All of…