Posts with tag: stargate-worlds

The iris is about to open on the closed beta test of Stargate Worlds. The upcoming sci-fi MMO based on the long running movie and TV franchise will start inviting its first beta testers to try out the game on Oct. 15. You can still sign up to be a part of the beta at the game's official web site.

Developer Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment and publisher Firesky also sent over some new acreenshots from the game showing off the Unreal Engine 3 powered graphics of the title. The game is scheduled to officially launch sometime in 2009. In the meantime more beta testers will be invited into the game in the months before the launch.

Last week we had a feature article that took a look at many PC games that are currently being developed in near secrecy with little to no info on what those games are actually like. However, there also also a number of games that have been fully announced, with screenshots, trailers and more and yet even after years of waiting (and in case of one game over a decade) we are still awaiting those titles to finally be released. These are the games that we have decided to put in our Vaporware Vault.

Sometimes a game is officially announced and can ship to stores inside of a year (in a very quick turnaround, Electronic Arts officially announced Need For Speed Undercover in August and it's set for release in November). Sometime it can be two years between the game's reveal and its appearance in stores. However we have seen games take much, much longer. For example the original Max Payne game was announced in 1997 but wasn't released until 2001. The just released Spore was first revealed in March 2005. Valve's Team Fortress 2 was first announced in 1998 but the final, and much changed, version didn't get released until 2007.

So what PC games are we still waiting on? Quite a few and they come from developers both big and small. Our criteria for inclusion in our list of tardy games is that they must have been officially revealed in 2006 or later and that they are not scheduled for release until at least 2009. Many of these games have had little to no info on their status since their initial announcement. The reasons for their delays are sometimes unknown. Yet they all have one thing in common besides having their release dates pushed back. They all could be terrific games. We begin our feature with the grand champion of delayed PC games, Duke Nukem Forever

Click on the image above to continue reading "The PC Games We Are Still Waiting On"

Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment has been keeping the actual gameplay experience of their long-in-development MMO Stargate Worlds under lock and key for the most part, showing only in-game trailers to the public. That changed this weekend at the San Diego Comic Con as the developer finally let outsiders folks play the game at the massive pop culture show.

IGN has a hands-on report on playing the build, going into detail on the combat, the game's cover system, the beginning of one of the game's playable races (OP-CORE), mini-games like puzzles and sliders and more. In fact you can even complete mini-games for other players (in exchange for experience points and an in-game montary value) so they can move on. (you of course can also ask other players to complete mini-games for you). At the moment Stargate Worlds is being schedule for an early 2008 launch.

Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment debuted its first trailer for the upcoming MMO Stargate Worlds several months ago on an episode of the TV series Stargate Atlantis. That first trailer, however, didn't actually show gameplay from the MMO. Tonight, the first actual publicly seen gameplay trailer from Stargate Worlds will be shown at 8 pm ET on G4TV's X-Play series.

In related news, the developer has teamed up with PC maker Alienware for a contest where the winner will get an Alienware Area-51 PC with a Dell 30 inch monitor and an advanced copy of Stargate Worlds.

E3 may get more attention from the gaming press in mid-July but only a week after E3 ends, the pop culture world's attention will go to the annual San Diego Comic Con. Over 125,000 people are expected to attend the event and game developers and publishers are a growing part of the convention's activities.

Indeed at least one major game that isn't scheduled to be at E3 will be at Comic Con. That would be Stargate Worlds, the upcoming MMO based on the sci-fi movie and TV series franchise. Publisher Firesky will showcase the game at the Stargate booth during the convention. NCsoft, who is also skipping E3, will also be at Comic Con (most likely to promote their City of Heroes MMO). A quick look at the exhibitors on the con's official web site has Sony, Sony Online, Activision, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, THQ, Namco Bandai,and Vivendi Games attending the show as well.

Funcom may have announced it had 1 million people sign up to beta test Age of Conan but the development team for Stargate Worlds seems to be very happy with a tenth of that amount. The team quietly launched their beta sign ups back in April and now they have announced that they have reached the 100,000 mark.

The game, based of course on the long running movie and TV series franchise, hopes to launch sometime before the end of the year (although we think that's a little optimistic). We hope to get more info on the title before the beta test begins.

City of Heroes and City of Villains scribe Shane Lacy Hensley has been tapped by publisher FireSky to head Superstition Studios. Hensley, who is famously known for creating such pen and paper RPGs as Deadlands, will lead development of a new MMORPG that has yet to be detailed.

Prior to the promotion, Hensley was the creative director of Superstition where his vision and key hiring decisions made him the "perfect" candidate for the promotion, according to FireSky senior vice president of product development Rod Nakamoto. "With Shane's leadership, success is a given for Superstition Studios."

Without giving specifics on Superstition's mysterious upcoming release Hensley explained his work with the studio is helping to fulfill a career-long dream. "FireSky and Superstition Studios have given me the creative freedom to build the game I've been dreaming of since I entered the video game industry back in 1992."

Currently FireSky is developing Stargate Worlds, based on the long running science fiction series Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, which is now accepting beta sign-ups.

Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment has been working for some time on Stargate Worlds, their sci-fi MMO based on the massive movie-TV series franchise from MGM. They have already used the current TV show Stargate Atlantis to promote the game via a contest that allowed one of the TV show's viewers to come to the developer and put his face in the game itself.

Now comes word that if you happen to sign up on the game's web site to get a free email newsletter, you can also put in a checkmark to sign up to play the upcoming beta test for Stargate Worlds (Make sure you check the right box at the bottom of the page or you will get spammed with third party emails). There's no word yet on when the beta test will begin so just consider this an pre-pre-announcement (whatever that might mean). At the moment the game is scheduled to launch this fall.

Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment has been known for some time as the independently funded developer of the TV and movie based sci-fi MMO Stargate Worlds. However, the company has announced today that it has also decided to launch its own publishing brand, Firesky, to handle the publishing duties of the game as well as other unannounced titles it has been working on.

The games that Firesky will publish are described as being part of "SNAPs", which stands for Social Networks at Play. According to the press release issued this morning, SNAP games are meant to combine " . . . social interaction, economies and game play." The founders of Firesky hope to combine gaming with a true social community which they claim has not yet been done in most games of this genre. They even have their own term to describe it: "Project: Ascension". They are not yet ready to reveal exactly what "Project: Ascension" really is all about.

So is Firesky just a game publisher with a interesting press release or is the company going to evolve and release games that have something different? Only time will tell. Stargate Worlds is currently set for release by the end of 2008. Firesky currently has four studios working on a number of unnamed games which should be revealed in the coming months.