Astroneer Brings Space & Minecraft Gameplay Together

Be The First to Develop The Frontier of Space

 Imagine Minecraft going interplanetary. This is exactly what everyone at E3 2016 was thinking when they saw the gameplay in Astroneer. The game is being developed by a small Seattle development group ' System Era Softworks ' & has a release date on Steam in October2016.

 

To give you an idea of the extent of your characters ability to manipulate the playing environment, Astroneers worlds have been compared to PlayDoh. You can craft tools with resources you gather & build complex, energy dependent bases. The game has massive subterranean chambers which are reminiscent of the massive caverns in Minecraft. But that is only a part of this amazing blend of exploration adventure & RTS aspects, you can also travel via spacecraft to other planets.

 

Astroneer has the ability to generate its multitude of planets & building options by cutting down on processing power with their low polygon resolutions.

With a relatively small indie developer like Systema Era Softworks generating more buzz at E3 than some of the larger developers, we are continuing to see a shift toward indie games & user generated content. If the game gains enough traction we might even find ourselves exploring Astroneer in a VR format in 2017.

 

Justin Asaya is a lead writer at The Gaming Room © & an avid gamer.

Check out live gaming content during the week on Twitch @TheAsaya

 

 

Highlights from E3 2016

E3 2016 Showcased 5 Big Changes Coming To Gaming Throughout 2016-17

1.) The Xbox Scorpio

Delivering 6 teraflops of processing power, an 8 core CPU, 320gigs of memory bandwidth, VR Gaming accessibility & 4K gaming straight out of the box, the Scorpio looks to be a more powerful platform than the PS4 Neo, giving Microsoft a new weapon in the console wars.

2.) Sony Playstation VR

Hitting store shelves October 13th for $399 or $499 for the launch bundle edition, this VR is going to be far more accessible than the $599 HTC Vive VR system.

  3.) Fallout 4 Coming to VR

Fallout 4's lead designer Todd Howard appeared in the Xbox Scorpio announcement trailer promising Fallout 4 in VR when the Scorpio hits store shelves in December of 2017.

4.) No Mans Sky Competitor Astroneer

Astroneer is Minecraft meets No Mans Sky. The interplanetary building & exploration game is set for Early Access on Steam in late 2016.

5.)   A Packed 2017 Game Release Lineup
Beyond all of the amazing E3 announcements listed above, the Sony & Microsoft presentations gave everyone an amazing group of games to look forward to this Fall & throughout 2017.

Justin Asaya is a lead writer at the Gaming Room.
Catch live gaming content on his Twitch @TheAsaya

Gaming Goes Indie

Established Developers Ditching Successful Franchises For Entirely New Development Strategies.

 Since 2003 Treyarch & Infinity Ward have released 22 games under the Call of Duty IP, with a 23rd title 'COD: Infinity War' expected in the Fall of 2016. While the franchise has made over $10bn in sales since 2003, the trailer for the upcoming 'Infinity War' has, at the time of this articles publishing, 2,945,849 dislikes and growing. We have also seen Ubisoft take a break from its Assassin's Creed franchise.  With new title in the massive COD franchise hitting the top 10 most disliked videos on youtube & Ubisoft taking a break from Assassin's Creed, what does this say about what gamers want from developers? 

 Luckily we have an answer in the changing focus at a well established developer, EPIC Games. In an interview with Polygon, EPIC Games CEO Todd Sweeney discussed EPIC's new direction as "EPIC 4.0". The main focus the developers shift, says Sweeney, is putting an end to developing games to be "finished out of the box". EPIC is leading the charge in established developers ditching successful franchises for entirely new development strategies. With new titles like Paragon & a sequel like Unreal Tournament being Free To Play & developed in tandem with the community.

Unlike other developers, EPIC communicates regularly with the player community on the Paragon sub-reddit & on both  the major ranking website forums for the game, Fury.gg & Agora.gg. This strategy is keeping the companies new titles constantly up to date with the patches & improvements that their millions strong community discuss & share with them.

This shifting focus is happening at a time when indie developers like Hello Games are being backed by Publishers like Sony to secure NoMansSky as a PS4 exclusive.

We are seeing this trend of community generated content given the same respect as developer created content in another area as well. Fallout 4 developer Bethesda has brokered a deal with both Sony & Microsoft to allow user created Mods to be downloaded to the PS4 & the XboxOne. This development is going to increase the lifespan of console games as new content can be generated more quickly while the developers focus on new franchises & sequels. This shift is showcasing the changing mindset of Publishers & Developers as they begin to release titles in development & outsource much of their games improvement to the community. The future of gaming is not decade long franchises & sequels, we are seeing a paradigm shift as developers blur the lines between company & community. In the future pro gamers might be pro developers as well.

Justin Asaya is the lead writer at TheGamingRoom ©2016 

When hes not writing hes streaming new content on Twitch @TheAsaya