one2tribe posts

In March 2010, Nexon America announced its plans for The Nexon Initiative where the free-to-play game publisher would take submissions from indie game developers and then pick a few to help develop and publish into games. Now Gamasutra reports that Nexon America has picked two Western-based game developers as a result of The Nexon Initiative.

One of the two developers is London Ontario-based Antic Entertainment which was formed by Fredrick Liliegren, the co-founder and former CEO of Digital Illusions. That team has already released a browser-based vehicle combat game called Junk Battles. The other team is Poland-based One2Tribe, which previously developed the browser based duel-themed multiplayer game The Witcher Versus.

Nexon plans to reveal the games themselves in the near future with one of them representing the company's entry into the social gaming scene. Nexon also said that while The Nexon Initiative previously had a budget of just $1 million to develop the games it picked the publisher will in fact spend much more than $1 million on the two game projects it decided to develop.

This week CD Projekt shipped out their Enhanced Edition of their action-RPG The Witcher (check out our review for our opinion on how it turned out). However, they have also been improving their free-to-play action-fighting browser based game The Witcher: Versus (with the help of developer one2tribe). Today CD Projekt announced that they would begin to launch premium content to the game (yes, that means stuff you have to pay for).

The press release stated that "one2tribe reassures cash-strapped gamers around the world that they will not be shafted by this new content, as those who indulge in premium content will not gain an advantage within the game. The core gameplay of The Witcher: Versus will remain free of charge, and will continue to evolve in parallel in the coming months." The specific contents of the first content include "a rucksack for items that are not currently equipped, a history of fights against a certain player (for ultimate bragging rights), as well as a private duels archive."