pax-prime posts

With two versions of the Penny Arcade Expo now in full swing, gamers only have to wait a few months rather than a whole year to get their PAX fix. Today registration has started for PAX Prime 2011, the show that started it all. It will be held once again at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in downtown Seattle, Washington. The dates are August 26-28.

Advanced tickets for the show will be priced at $35 for each day or $60 for all three days. The show has been selling out of tickets a few days before it begins so if you want to make sure you can attend it's best to pony up the money ahead of time.

The two versions of the Penny Arcade Expo gaming event have been very successful with the PAX Prime event in Seattle bringing in over 60,000 attendees and the first PAX East in Boston launching in 2010 with over 50,000 attendees. Now it looks like the Penny Arcade team along with its convention partner Reed Exhibitions are starting to think about taking the PAX show over the Atlantic to Great Britain.

The online survey, intended for UK users, asks people if they would attend a version of PAX were to come to that country, along with choices of specific locations and what kind of events would be important in any UK version of PAX. This survey comes less than a month before the second annual PAX East event occures on March 11-13.

[Via VG247.com]

As we exclusively reported earlier today, the seventh edition of PAX Prime 2010 brought in 67,600 attendees to Seattle last weekend, making the fan-oriented games convention the largest of its type in the US. The first annual PAX East event last March in Boston brought in 52,290 attendees and next year will move to a much larger venue in the same city.

With two successful Penny Arcade Expos, is there room for a third PAX event? Gamasutra reports that the answer is, "Maybe." During a press Q&A with Penny Arcade co-creators Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins during PAX Prime 2010, the report says the team hinted that a third PAX event might happen and that it "would likely take place in a different country; preferably somewhere the duo want to visit." Might we suggest Bermuda?

Well over a year ago, Braid creator Jonathan Blow revealed the title for his next indie game, The Witness. Last March he posted up some pseudo-screenshots from the indie adventure-puzzle title set on an uninhabited island. As it turns out, the game made its first public appearance at PAX Prime 2010 this past weekend with no advanced warning.

An early build of the game was placed around some other indie titles with no signage or goofy promo hype and open to anyone who wanted to play it. Blow states on his blog site, "I wanted people to be able to play the game for as long as they want, not feeling pressured to stop playing because of a huge line of antsy people waiting behind them." The experiment seems to have worked as Blow states, "People tended to play for a long time, and they liked what they played." Kotaku has posted up some impressions of The Witness which is due for release in late 2011.

While we can't be at PAX Prime this year, the folks at 2K Games are there streaming footage of folks playing a small portion of the single player gameplay of Duke Nukem Forever. Think about that for a second. For the first time in the history of man, people that are not 3D Realms or Gearbox Software team members are playing Duke Nukem Forever in public. Anything is truly possible,

Our sister site Joystiq captured some of the streaming video which you can see above and also after the jump. Yes, it's shaky and blurry but at this point we will take it, thank you very much. Gearbox head man Randy Pitchford is also making behind closed doors presentations about the long awaited first person shooter but apparently the footage from that presentation can't be shown to the public yet.

Duke Nuke Forever isn't the only long-in-development game being given a public showing at PAX Prime 2010 today. Developer Red 5 Studios, which launched five years ago, finally announced its game today. It's called FireFall and as we first reported a few weeks ago it is indeed an online team based first person shooter. The sci-fi themed game will be free to play with microtransactions available for purchasing optional in-game items.

FireFall takes place on Earth 200 years in the future where humans are fighting off the Melding, "a hostile energy storm that engulfs most of our home planet." Humans also have to deal with an opposing enemy called The Chosen. Players will be able to customize their characters and even swap and trade items on the fly. Fans of the Tribes game franchise might be interested to know that Scott Youngblood, the lead designer for Tribes 1 and 2 is now the lead designer for FireFall. The game is due for launch in late 2011 but sign ups to beta test the game are now being accepted on the game's official web site.

The game that has been in development for over 13 years may finally be released after all. Via a fan's blog site, publisher 2K Games is displaying at its PAX Prime 2010 booth signs and banners confirming that the development team at Gearbox Software will take over the making of Duke Nukem Forever, the first person shooter that began life at Duke Nukem's owner 3D Realms. We are still waiting for the promised video stream presentation from PAX Prime to go live.

The game began its life in 1997 as a sequel to 3D Realms' hit 1996 shooter Duke Nukem 3D. However the dev team dissapointed gamers year after year with delays, engine changes and then almost total silence on the game's development. In May 2009, 3D Realms laid off its internal development team and engaged in a legal battle with Duke Nukem Forever's publisher Take Two Interactive. Those legal actions were settled quietly a few months ago. We will post updates when we learn more official news on Duke Nukem Forever's re-announcement.

Update: The Wall Street Journal has posted up a story that also confirms Gearbox's involvement in Duke Nukem Forever's revival with Gearbox head man Randy Pitchford saying the team started working on the game in late 2009. The article seems confused about the game's release date; one paragraph says it will ship "next year" while another says it will be released in 2010.

Update 2: Pitchford has now confirmed via 2K Games' streaming video coverage that the game is in fact due out in 2011. Attendees at PAX Prime are getting a chance to play a portion of the game's single player content.

[Via Shacknews]

Wow. Who ordered all the news in the past couple of days? It's like there was some huge game-related event that's happening this weekend that serves as an excuse for developers to announce new games ... oh wait.

• Steam has Cossacks: Back to War on sale for 20 percent off. You can also pre-order F1 2010 via Steam and get 10 percent off.
• Steam also has patch updates for Team Fortress 2, The Settlers 7, and Puzzle Dimension.
• Steam is letting folks pre-load R.U.S.E.
• If you are going to PAX Prime you can get some exclusive Penny Arcade A30 headsets from Astro Gaming.
• The IndieCade games festival has named its finalists for the indie games festival in October.
• Is Valve getting ready to port its games to Linux. It sure seems so.

So are you ready to hear about something BIG? Then you will have to wait until Friday at 1 pm Eastern time. That's when 2K Games is supposedly revealing something BIG at its booth at PAX Prime 2010. It's apparently so BIG that the publisher is streaming live video from the event so everyone can know what it is about.

What could it be? Some people are speculating that it could be the rumored revival of the long awaited first person shooter Duke Nuke Forever via developer Gearbox Software. In related news, George Broussard, the present of Duke Nukem's owner 3D Realms, has "tweeted" a link to an interesting illustration. What does it really mean?

A few months ago we reported on the launch of Supergiant Games, a new game developer founded by former members of EA's Command and Conquer team. This week the company announced its first title, a action-RPG game titled Bastion. The game is one of the 10 indie developed titles that were picked to be displayed at PAX Prime this weekend under the PAX 10 display.

Little has been revealed about the game at this point although you can tell from the screenshots that Bastion has a anime-style art influence. There's also a Flash trailer that you can check out on the Supergiant Games web site that shows some gameplay. Bastion is currently scheduled for a 2011 release.