CoD: WWII - What We Know & Live Stream Event *Updated

Ello ello, and happy fucking hump day to you fine readers. I hope you're having a good day. In the news today is Activision's CoD: WW2 livestream event scheduled to start at 1PM EDT today. Before the stream starts, I figured we'd what information is out there right now. 

*Update/ Edit: This post has been updated. The Twitch live stream was replaced with the video of the event, and the official trailer has been added. 

Thanks to a thread from reddit, we have the following screen shots. According to redditor, the screen shots were lifted from the official CoD website.

Cofounder of Sledgehammer Studio, Studio Head; Michael Condrey put out the following video via Twitter, to announce a release in November, and the live stream event.

pic.twitter.com/vS4NiIgRKh

— Sledgehammer Games (@SHGames) April 21, 2017

Lucky for us, there was a bit of a SNAFU regarding marketing material being released before Activision could do their live stream event. The following pic was obtained from reddit:

In case you don't want to zoom into the photo to read the details they're quoted below:

Call of Duty returns to its roots with Call of Duty: 
WWII–a breathtaking experience that redefines World War II for a new gaming generation. Land in Normandy on D-Day and battle across Europe through iconic locations in history’s most monumental war. Experience classic Call of Duty combat, the bonds of camaraderie, and the unforgiving nature of war against a global power throwing the world into tyranny.

The Definitive World War II Campaign Call of Duty: 
WWII tells the story of an unbreakable brotherhood of common men fighting to preserve freedom in a world on the brink of tyranny. Players enlist in a gritty intense journey through the battlegrounds of war. The campaign features bold, lifelike visuals with the kind of blockbuster cinematic authenticity that only Call of Duty can deliver.

Boots on the Ground Multiplayer Call of Duty: 
WWII multiplayer engages players grounded, fast-paced combat across many of World War II’s most iconic locations. Players will also enjoy exciting new ways to interact and socialize with their friends and the Call of Duty community.

High-Octane Co-Operative Call of Duty: 
WWII’s co-operative mode unleashes a new and original story. Play with your friends in this next-level standalone game experience full of unexpected, adrenaline-pumping moments.

Pre-Order and get access to the Private Beta

Down below is the live stream of the event. I hope you all enjoy!





How do you feel about a new CoD? Are you down, or are you done at this point? Please let me know, I'm interested in your thoughts. Thanks for stopping by again. As always I appreciate the support. I know it's a short post, but I hope you had a good time. 

-Chali Baicunn

#EXTRALIFE FTW! Join Us! Be A Hero!

Hello and welcome back. It's a beautiful day, but that's only because it's Friday, and I'm fracking done with this week. Instead of complaining about my week, or going on a rant about what's grinding my gears today; I wanted to a take a little bit time to be serious, and talk to you about Extra Life.

Extra Life is a charity that was established to raise money for the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. The money they raise is used to pay for research, purchase life-saving equipment, and pay for uncompensated care. Their hospitals treat every patient that comes to them, without regard or concern for a child's family's ability to pay. CMN states that their mission, is to save and improve the lives of as many children as possible. All of the donations raised make it possible for them to do that!

The Extra Life movement was founded by Jeromy Adams, in 2008 in memory of Victoria Enmon, with the support of SarcasticGamer.com. Victoria's story, and the story of Extra Life can be found in the video below:



To celebrate the life of Victoria and help raise needed funds to help kids, hold the Extra Life National Game Day. This 24 hour gaming marathon will be held Saturday, November 5th this year. This year, BaicunnPress.com will be teaming up with RUM Gaming for Game Day. If you'd like to get involved, head on over to Extra-Life.org, signup and/ or donate. You can start your own team, or join a team to help. If you'd like, cruize over to RUM Gaming to join in with us. They're a good people, that are always welcoming. Also on their page, you'll find links to their Extra Life campaigns, and the live stream. We'll be playing 7Days, Paladins, Warface, ARK, Arma3, LoL, and more. Just as a warning, the language at times can get a little salty, but it's always in good fun.

If you don't fell like signing up or joining a team, please use the Widgets below or in the sidebar to donate. This is such and important cause, and we can really help so many kids. Thank you again, for your continued  support of BaicunnPress. Hopefully, I'll be talking to some of you very soon via Discord. I look forward to gaming with you.

-Chali Baicunn

*Addendum*
We manged raise $465 during the Extra Life Game Day. We will definitely be returning for this event next year. If you want to get involved, you can raise money and setup your own Game Day any day of the year. Just go check out extra-life.org.

Titanfall 2: Bang Bang... The War Of 2 Titans Has Begun

Ello Ello! Thanks for stopping by today. I hope your Tuesday isn't too shit, and that your Halloween weekend festivities were full of booze, frivolity, with extra dose of slutty halloween costumes. (Slutty pirate hookers are a personal favorite of mine.) With all that was going on, I have to ask, "What in the actual fuck is going on with Titanfall 2's release?"

*FULL DISCLOSURE* I have not tracked the release of Titanfall 2. This is a bit of 2 parter; 1) I only played Titanfall a handful of times. 2) I don't know any Titanfall fanboys. *Correction, I don't know anyone who has such a raging hard on for Titanfall, that they use every opportunity they have to extol the virtues of the title. The only reason I found out about the release date was because the following launch trailer was at the top of my YouTube feed:



After watching the launch trailer, I had to know more... As I have stated in several Star Wars Battlefront posts; I'm a sucker for the alluring ways of cinematic trailers produced by EA's militant propaganda machine (Marketing Department). But I digress.

When we of The Order of The Internet, don't know stuff, we go to our "facts guy". Normal people call it Google (We know it as god like, semi-eternal, mystical figure, that knows and sees all... Even that midget clown porn you were looking at after that whole "scary clown thing" got started). Google showed me the following footage from Vikkstar123:



Naturally at this point, I'm interested. So I seek Google's wise council further. Pearing into the ether, I find that not only is Titanfall2 launching on Xbox One, but it's also launching in parallel with PS4 and PC. In fact, I was a bit taken aback. How could it be that EA would somehow break exclusivity with Microsoft? Seems way too consumer oriented for EA. I watched another gameplay video (see below).





What's this... Single Player Campaign? And it's suppose to be "compelling"?... Nope I don't believe it. It can't be. The publisher of Battlefront and Battlefield: Hardline is going to release a completed game with a proper single player story.... I don't trust it. Read a bit more.... No season pass?.... What? No day one DLC?... I verified that it's an published EA game.  Alright so I'm seriously interested at this point, but I know better than to trust an EA game. If this title is so above the standards usually set by EA, what's multiplayer experience going to be. (BTW, thank you StoneMountain64 for the beta montage.)



Alright. Fuck it, I think I'm sold. Little more Googling, and found out Titanfall 2 was releasing on 10/28... screeching breaks... da fuck!... (I started writing this mid-day on 10/28,) Where the hell is all of the fan fair? Where's the hype I'm accustomed to from EA? Hype is like their thing. It's their lifeblood. And now they're launching a AAA FPS between their blockbuster Franchise and Activision/ Infinity Ward's blockbuster without a whole lot of normal EA PR. What the hell are they thinking? Are they trying to kill this young franchise? 

Then I see it, and why I hadn't before is beyond me. There is an explanation for all of these shockingly non-EA things. And even for this really bizarre release date. It really is simple; SPITE. One of the most basic human emotions, that empowers and emboldens the most hardened of FPS gamers. It's the emotion that makes killing the guy who killed your friends, better than actually having friends.It's that spice in life that seems to make everything task, feel, and appear better.

Are you still confused?...

Titanfall and Titanfall 2 were created by Respawn Entertainment. If that name sounds familiar, and you don't know why, here's some screen grabs from Wikipedia to refresh your memory:

From where I'm sitting it appears that Respawn has decided, and EA agrees; Titanfall 2 will be a direct competitor to Infinite Warfare. With the bad blood in the water between the Activision/Infinity Ward and Respawn, and so many COD fans becoming more and more unhappy with the franchise. This new war of titans is likely to get interesting.

Thanks again for stopping by today. Still working to get the lost content over the last couple of months back up. I appreciate all of your support. What do you think? Is this a just bad timing? Or is this something more deliberate? Make sure to let me know. Also don't forget BaicunnPress.com and RUM Gaming are teaming up for Extra Life this Saturday. Be sure to show your support and donate, or start/ join a team and participate. 

-Chali Baicunn

Pokemon GO: Bout Damn Time For A Community Event

Hello and welcome back you beautiful bastards. Sorry if it looks like we're missing content, but I've somehow cocked it up, and I'm currently working to resolve the issue. As for today's post, you guys know that when Pokemon GO dropped, I went hard to the paint for the first month. After the hype died and the trespass notices were handed out, I was just tired. And not because of the walking. After crossing level 20, it just became a grind fest. The Baicunn Clan hasn't become completely neglectful of our progress. A few weeks back we took a late night venture through downtown. My son still likes to get out and play a bit, and I oblige him. In reality though, I have just been riding it out and biding my time for trading, dueling, and/ or an event to fall in place. So it looks like I'm getting at least one of the things I wanted this week.

On Monday Niantic released the following video announcement:




Luckily our friends over on the SilphRoad subreddit, have compiled some interesting info (I've screen cap'd their post, but I recommend that you check them out):

I personally believe that this first event is over due. I'd really appreciate a monthly event to help keep my attention. I'm hoping that toward the end of this event we'll finally get a chance at a legendary Pokemon. Mew... Mewtwo? I think it's bout damn time! 

While on the topic of unsolicited expectations. I'd certainly appreciate an update that'd populate more pokemon in more remote locations, but that's not really the point of this post is it? Also as an aside, I'm still just a little bit bitter that the isn't Pokemon IRL. But here's to hoping for an easter egg in today's update. 

Thanks for stopping by today. I hope you enjoyed! Please like and share if you appreciate the content. Before I go, I'd like to encourage you to get involved with #EXTRALIFE by either donating myself or my team for The Children's Miracle Network. This charity event is a 24 hour gaming marathon to raise money to help sick kids out. The event starts on Saturday; 11/5 at midnight and runs until midnight on 11/6. I'll have a stream up during most if not all of the time. I've teamed up with my friends and fellow nerds over at RUM Gaming for this event. They will also have several streams up. If you don't want to give money, please signup and raise money. Thanks again for stopping by, and I will see you later.

-Chali Baicunn

Pokemon GO: Get Playing Sooner?

Hello again. This is a special bonus post for today. Do you kids want some Pokemon GO. Looks like it's launching today, but if you live in the US and Japan you have to wait for a few hours, I presume. However, due to the magic of the internet, the links to the app has been released.

I was orginally alerted to a possible leak this morning, when my friend sent me following link to a site claiming to have a playable version of Pokemon GO for Android: http://www.apkmirror.com/apk/niantic-inc/pokemon-go/pokemon-go-0-29-0-release/pokemon-go-0-29-0-android-apk-download/

I'm running iOS so I was a bit disappointed. I was especially disappointed when he sent me the following pics:

Nintendo and Niantic are asking fans to wait for the app to be unlocked in their region specifically, but if you don't want to wait, here's the links for iTunes App Store and for the Google Play Store. As an aside, you will need iTunes and a PC for iOS installation.

Have fun. Happy hunting. See you IRL maybe. Till the next post, I send you off with some motivational music.

-Chali Baicunn

 

Japanese Video Game Jesus Returns To Save Us From Mediocrity

Happy fan-fucking-tastic Friday, you beautiful bastards! Thank you for stopping by the blog. I'd like to take a few minutes of your time to talk to you about our lord and savior; Japanese Video Game Jesus...

Have you heard of the Great Konami Tribulation, and the wise sage that was forced to bare the cross of Metal Gear alone? The Konami council issued their decrees struggling to stifle and control his genius. When the board failed, they engage him in a destructive battle. Their hope was to destroy The Kojima's reputation by sabotaging his project. When the dust settled, he told the world that he would return to our realm soon. Since then many claimed they had heard whispers of a new project, but still others had said it was too soon for his return. I'd like to let you know that The Kojima has risen! Returning to E3 with the simple words of, "I'm back.". After his proclamation, he delivered unto us the following visual koan:



Are you now gripped by confusion and question? What in the holy fuckery did you just watch? Ah... you see that's the method of the teacher. Much like the great zen masters, Hideo Kojima knows that the pupil must ponder the questions raised. And at the moment that great doubt has been provoked, the master delivers just enough knowledge that the student can unravel the twisted strands of the knot.

Alright, I'll stop fucking around now, before someone thinks I'm legitimately about to start a personality cult like Scientology... Sorry I meant North Korea.

So it's been established that the Death Stranding trailer was a little mind fucking. Thankfully Wired Magazine did an interview with Hideo Kojima, that both clears a few things up and muddles the water more. 

I'm posting about 3/4 from the interview below as it applies directly to this post. However, I recommend you read the whole thing, here:


WIRED: I’ve watched the trailer for Death Stranding and I’m still confused. What the heck is this?
KOJIMA: It’s a teaser, so the only thing I can say is, watch it. You can see the crabs, the whales, all things, they all have these umbilical cables. Norman, as he stands up. It’s a very important part, this connection. That’s the keyword. What people are playing today in open-world action games, or linear action games, it will compare naturally to them. It will feel familiar. But after an hour or two of playing, you will start to feel something different, something new that you haven’t played. The story is about connections, what you call “strands” in psychology—how people are connected.

WIRED: How does that affect gameplay?
KOJIMA: There’s an author that I’m a huge fan of named Kōbō Abe. Among his work is a novel called The Rope. He mentions that the first tool that humanity invented was the stick, to keep away bad things. Right now, looking at today’s online games, you see a lot of sticks—pistols, weapons, things that are the equivalent of the first tool. Abe, in his novel, mentions that after the stick, mankind invented something that keeps things that are important close to you—the rope. In Death Stranding, there will be the equivalent of sticks. But also, I want to tie people together with the equivalent of ropes.

WIRED: So it’s a multiplayer game?
KOJIMA: It’s not so simple. It’s a new system. It’s not as if today you have online gameplay where you fight with guns, and I’m swapping them for ropes.

WIRED: When I hear “stranding” I think of being alone on an island. But you mean it in the sense of strands connecting people.
KOJIMA: I’m using both meanings. Connecting people through gameplay is the basis of the game. Trying to connect one character to another, or to connect life and death.

WIRED: You’ve selected very specific words for this title. Why “death”? Action games all have death in them. Why is it so important here?
KOJIMA: In arcade games, you have this notion of dying, putting another quarter in, and coming back. That hasn’t changed in the 35 years that I’ve been making games. In this game, life and death will be part of that, but I want to give a different twist to that notion.

From the above interview and trailer, it appears that me just might be given a something that is actually new. Not just a plot twist, and not just new art, but something substantially different in the way a game is played. This could be that spark that the games industry has needed since open worlds and first person became common place. 

I'm imagining a game in which your death leads you to some kind of "purgatory". While in purgatory your game play will effect another player's experience. And by helping or hurting the player you either take over their experience, and bring yourself back. Idk though. This is all just speculations at this point, but I'm pretty excited about our community being saved from mediocre games by Japanese Video Game Jesus.

Thank you for stopping by, I appreciate your support. Let me know what you think. Just a few points to add, if you're looking for the novel, "The Rope", it doesn't appear to exist in an english translation, as noted on Reddit, but in this thread a redditor found a copy that had been translated into spanish. If you find an english translation please let me know. If you're interested in following the progress of the game, and those trying to piece it all together go checkout /r/DeathStranding. As always, I hope you have a good day, and I will see you soon.  

-Chali Baicunn 

Pokemon Go Is About To Drop And 12 Year Old Me Couldn't Be Happier

Hello, and good day to you, the fine readers of the blog. Thank you for stopping. Today is a good day for Pokemon fandom. During Nintendo's Pokemon GO Treehouse event brought representatives from Niantic, The Pokemon Company, Nintendo, and Pokemon GO field tester community together to reveal some of the final details we can expect from Pokemon Go. It's been a while since I have been this genuinely excited for a game release, and I've never cared this much about a mobile platform game. It could be that I'm wholly too nostalgia though.

Firstly, it has been confirmed by Mr Ishihara-san from the Pokemon Company, that the initial release of GO will only feature Kanto Region pokemon. He mentioned that this is a nod to the 20th anniversary of the franchise. The two field testers present, had brought up the subject while asking about the diversity of pokemon available. They had recognized that they had overlap in their core pokemon lists even though they live in San Fran and New York City respectively.

In case you're unaware the traditional/ classic wild pokemon battle, leveling, and evolution systems are not in Pokemon GO. As it was explained, the new way of catching wild pokemon was created to encourage people to stay moving, instead of stopping for the battle. As it is understood now, battling at gyms will level your pokemon, but leveling is not tied to evolution. When asked about new evolution system in Pokemon Go. It was explained that every pokemon caught comes with a certain number of  "Pokemon Candies" and each different pokemon requires a certain number of "Pokemon Candies" to evolve.

Future features that were confirmed are that a trading function will be add in the future, along with group activities and special events. It was also revealed that there are plans for future connectivity between the Pokemon core games and Pokemon Go.

Nintendo also took the time to demo how the Pokemon GO Plus works with the game. During the demo is was shown that when a pokemon is nearby the LED flashes green and vibrates. The user can "throw" by pressing the button, which triggers the LED to flash rainbow. If capture fails the LED turns reds, and if successful the LED turns green. It was also explained that users can interact with Poke Stops (special in game points of interest) using the GO Plus.

Probably the most exciting bit of information that was released at E3, is that the Pokemon Go Plus is going on sale soon. The current launch is scheduled for the end of July. With the game launching before the Pokemon GO Plus is available. A button in the app will direct you to the nearest physical or online retailer, where the device can be purchased for $34.99.

If you want to watch the whole event, check out the video below:



Thank you again for stopping by. I'll admit that I'm a Pokemon from way back in the day. I've even managed to pass the torch to my son. It only requires me to sing "I want to be the very best..", for him to bust out in the theme song regardless of where we're at. The only thing I'm really disappointed about Pokemon GO, is the new battle, capture, and evolution system, but who knows maybe enough in the community will say something to get a "classic mode" introduced. Let me know what you think, and make sure to follow on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. Thanks again and I will see you soon.

-Chali Baicunn

The Breakdown: Far Cry Primal Releases And The Reviews Are In, Del Toro And Kojima Share Their Bromance, And More

Hello beautiful people of the Internet!. It's Tuesday. So that means you survived Monday... YAY!, but it's only day 2. To take the sting out of the of the soul crushing suckery of the early business day of the week. The Midweek Breakdown has been coming to you every Wednesday, and due to popular demand, it'll be coming to you every day of the week as The Breakdown. So site back waste clock hour time, and enjoy! 

First up, Far Cry Primal released today, and the reviews are out. Across most outlets, Far Cry Primal is scoring at about 80 out of 100 (or 8 out of 10 for the math challenged). The biggest complaints abut the game is the inability to block and parry. A lack of compelling antagonists. As well as having so many side missions that you could fill out your skill trees and still have extras floating around on your map.



Last week at the DICE Summit, we got to see bromance Hideo Kojima and Gillermo Del Toro in full bloom. These two had a chance to do a sit down keynote and it was magic. Although the two speak different languages, it appears that their homies. During their talk, they highlighted the unifying force of media and story telling. I really suggest that you check it out, and a word to the wise, don't be surprised if we see these two working on a project together in the future.



And speaking of other creative works, The Walking Dead: Michone Episode 1 launches today on PC/MAC, PS4/PS3, and Xbox 360/Xbox One. If you some how don't have any of these or insist on playing on a mobile platform, check your market place apps on Thursday to pick it up on iOS and Android.

In other Walking Dead News, it has been reported that Robert Kirkman (story) and Charlie Adlard (art) are working on a 48 page back story for Nagan. No release date info available yet.

And while we're on the topic of things to spend your hard earned money on. Have you ever loved an eSports so much that you'd donate to the prize money. Well that's what happened when the Halo World Championships were announced. Initially Microsoft had offered a 1 million dollar prize for the winning team. However, the masses thought that it needed to be more. Through crowd sourcing the winning purse has been bumped up to 2.5 million dollars. Making the Halo World Championships the largest cash prize ever for an FPS championship. Check back later for more details. Currently the Championship is scheduled for March 18 through the 19th.

On topic with Microsoft news, Bill gates is not a a douche?... It was reported by the financial times on Monday that when speaking of Apple's battle with the FBI over breaking the encryption on iOS, Bill Gates was quoted as saying:

"It is no different than [the question of] should anybody ever have been able to tell the phone company to get information, should anybody be able to get at bank records,"

"Let's say the bank had tied a ribbon round the disk drive and said, ‘Don't make me cut this ribbon because you'll make me cut it many times.'"

As of yesterday Bill went back on the record to walk back his previous statements, saying that he "disappointed" by the reports that he supports breaking the encryption. He also made the following statement:

"I do believe that with the right safeguards, there are cases where the government, on our behalf — like stopping terrorism, which could get worse in the future — that that is valuable."

So maybe he isn't a complete douche canoe, but personally, I think Bill Gates is talking like a man with paper asshole, but I'll leave the judgement of this to you fine/ borderline anarchist people. 

That's all I have for today, stop back by later for more content. I really appreciate your support. Please share, and make sure to follow BaicunnPress, on Twitter, Google+, and Facebook.

-Chali Baicunn

Midweek Breakdown - New Division Trailer, Amazon Has A Game Engine?, and Farcry Primal Is Coming

Ello ello, you dapper dames and chaps! Thanks for stopping again. You know what time it is, right?.. It's that special time of the week where I bring you a quick run down of awesome nerd news. All to help take the sting out of hump day. It seems that the video game drought is coming to an end, and there is a lot of awesome shit to cover from this past week. So I'll stop wasting your time, and let's jump in. 

Unless you have been living under a rock, then your's probably already aware that there's a new DOOM coming to market. But what you might not know, and as I incorrectly predicted; Bethesda will release DOOM on May 13th 2016. In the mean time though, they left us with the following campaign trailer:

Next up, prepare to be assaulted by cannibals and sacrificed to the sun god!.. At least that's what Ubisoft is promising from the next installment of Farcry. Instead of gunning down dickish pirates, you'll me bashing skulls with clubs. From the promotional material, the game looks stunning, and here's to hoping
Ubisoft is able to deliver. The game is centered around the player experiencing what it might be like to struggle for survival as a prehistoric tribesman. Scheduled to release on PS4 and Xbox One on February 23rd, and PC on March 1st. Check out the gameplay from the newest 5 minute trailer below in the meantime:



To add to the terrible PC support for Batman: Arkam Knight, Warner Brothers officially pulled the plug for the Linux and OSX port. And let's just say the official announcement was done in a way that clearly illustrates that WB's gaming sector is clearly ran by flaming douche canoes... It was released via a Steam Community post. The announcement is great really, you know because fuck progress. Am I right? If you want to read some of the truly funny replies click this link to visit the Steam Community announcement.

Today the Division dropped a factions trailer on us.:

In further gaming news, Amazon has released a license free game engine, called Lumberyard. Yes you heard that right, I said Amazon. Lumberyard has been promised to cost exactly $0 to use, and publish games with. Based on the CryEngine game engine from Crytek. If you've ever wanted to create your own game, now may be just the time for you to do it. I covered it's release in yesterdays post, just click here to read it, or go to over to the official Lumberyard site for more details.

And just in in case you've been itching for some new info on Mirrors Edge 2, a new trailer was released 2 days ago. I know what you're thinking... This is DICE and EA making this and they can't really be trusted right now. That's fair, but don't let that prevent you from enjoying the trailer:



Now, finally in some movie news, a new X-men Age of Apocalypse trailer was dropped on us during the Superbowl 50.



And as a friendly reminder, Deadpool releases Friday!




And that's all I have for you today, hope you enjoyed. If there's anything I missed, please be sure to let me know. If you liked what you read, please be sure to share it with your friends. I'll be back tomorrow with another post. Thanks again for stopping by. And I will see you tomorrow. 

-Chali Baicunn

Freemium Game Engine... SAY WAT?!

 Hey guys! Thanks for stopping by again. Coming to you today with some pretty interesting gaming news.

You know how Amazon licensed the CryEngine from Crytek last year, and no one really knew why? Well it turns out that Amazon is getting into the video game industry with Lumberyard. But that's not the really interesting part.

The most interesting part of this project is that it's a free license to develop from. And not free like the

CryEngine, which was free for students and hobbyists, charged if you wanted to take a product to market. Lumberyard on the other hand is free for anyone to publish their game, whether hobbyist or business. Amazon's only serious requirement is that you register your game with them before release, and that web services, like servers be hosted through them. Long short they're playing the freemium game, but with servers instead of micro-transactions.

So, I know I brought up 2 dirty words to a lot of gamers; freemium and micro-transactions. However, none of the features of the Lumberyard tools will be locked behind a pay-wall, and from what I can tell there are no licensing fees either. To highlight these points, I've directly pulled down a few interesting bits from the FAQ section (I kept the existing links in so that you can click around if you want to. They will open in other tabs):

Q. What is Amazon Lumberyard?
Amazon Lumberyard is a free AAA game engine deeply integrated with AWS and Twitch – with full source code provided. Whether you are a major studio, an indie developer, a student, or a hobbyist, Lumberyard provides a growing set of tools to create the highest-quality games, connect your games to the vast compute and storage of the AWS Cloud, and engage fans on Twitch. Lumberyard helps developers build beautiful worlds, make realistic characters, and create stunning real-time effects. With Lumberyard’s visual scripting tool, even non-technical game developers can add cloud-connected features to a game in minutes (such as a community news feed, daily gifts, or server-side combat resolution) through a drag-and-drop GUI interface. Lumberyard is also integrated with Amazon GameLift, a new AWS service for deploying, operating, and scaling session-based multiplayer games. With Amazon GameLift, Amazon Lumberyard developers can quickly scale high-performance game servers up and down to meet player demand, without any additional engineering effort or upfront costs.
Amazon Lumberyard is free, and available in beta for developers building PC and console games, with mobile and virtual reality (VR) platforms coming soon. With Amazon Lumberyard, developers only pay standard AWS fees for the AWS services they choose to use. With Amazon GameLift, you simply pay for the standard AWS fees for Amazon EC2, Amazon EBS, and data transfer you actually use, plus a small fee per Daily Active User.

Q. How does Amazon make money with Lumberyard?
Lumberyard is free, including source. We make money when you use other

AWS services. We built Lumberyard to make it faster and easier to build fantastic live, multiplayer, community-driven games – which naturally connect to the cloud to provide these features to players. However, there is no requirement to connect your game to the cloud. There are also no seat fees, subscription fees, or requirements to share revenue. You pay only for the infrastructure resources you choose to use. For full licensing details, see Licensing below.

Q. Can I use Lumberyard for non-game purposes, such as architecture, simulations, and animated movies?
Yes, please do.

Q. If I build a single-player game that uses no cloud connectivity, do I have to pay to use the engine?
No, in this case you would pay us nothing.

Q. Do I need an AWS account to use Lumberyard?
No, but by downloading or using Lumberyard, you agree to the AWS Customer Agreement and Lumberyard Service Terms. If you want to use Amazon GameLift or Lumberyard’s Cloud Canvas to build connected gameplay features, you or someone from your game team needs to register for an AWS account and provision services to your account.
Q. Do I have to run my game on AWS?

No. If you own and operate your own private servers, you do not need to use AWS. You also don’t need to use AWS if your game does not use any servers. For example, if you release a free-standing single‐player or local-only multiplayer game, you pay us nothing.

Q. Is there a surcharge or other additional fee over and above AWS service rates for Lumberyard customers?
No.

Q. Can my game use an alternate web service instead of AWS?
No. If your game servers use a non-AWS alternate web service, we obviously don’t make any money, and it’s more difficult for us to support future development of Lumberyard. By “alternate web service” we mean any non-AWS web service that is similar to or can act as a replacement for Amazon EC2, Amazon Lambda, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon RDS, Amazon S3, Amazon EBS, Amazon EC2 Container Service, or Amazon GameLift. You can use hardware you own and operate for your game servers.

Q. Is it okay for me to use my own servers?
Yes. You can use hardware you own and operate for your game.

Q. Can I use the game assets that are included with Lumberyard in my game?
Yes. Lumberyard includes asset packs that you can use in your games and prototypes. We also provide additional high-fidelity assets and samples that you may find useful on our website.

Q. Is Lumberyard “open source”?
No. We make the source code available to enable you to fully customize your game, but your rights are limited by the Lumberyard Service Terms.

For example, you may not publicly release the Lumberyard engine source code, or use it to release your own game engine.

Q. Can I take Lumberyard and make my own game engine and distribute it?
No. While you may maintain an internal version of Lumberyard that you have modified, you may not distribute that modified version in source code form, or as a freestanding game engine to third parties. You also may not use Lumberyard to distribute your own game engine, to make improvements to another game engine, or otherwise compete with Lumberyard or Amazon GameLift.

It appears that Amazon is really going in a new direction as far as game development goes. I went ahead and browsed over the documentation, and sample assets and their both pretty on point. Amazon is reporting that they are planning releasing more sample asset packs in the future. If your still not convinced here's a few more entries from their FAQs that might convince you that Amazon is really thinking forward:

 Q. Can my Lumberyard game connect to services like Steamworks, Apple Game Center, Google Play Games, or console social services?
Yes. Your game may read and write data to platform services and public third-party game services for player save state, identity, social graph, matchmaking, chat, notifications, achievements, leaderboards, advertising, player acquisition, in-game purchasing, analytics, and crash reporting.
 
Q. Can I include Lumberyard’s tools so my players can build mods for my game?
Yes. Your right to redistribute Lumberyard in your game includes the right to redistribute pieces of the development environment in your game too. A list of redistributable components is included in the documentation. These rights also apply to companion products that you make available to end users to modify and create derivative works of your game. If you want to distribute Lumberyard components in source code form, please contact us.

Q. Does Lumberyard support integrations with third-party middleware?
Yes. If you’re a middleware provider interested in integrating with Lumberyard, please contact us

After looking over everything that Amazon is giving away, you might be curious as to why would they do this. I think the real question is why wouldn't they. By requiring developers to register their games before release, Amazon gets a sneak peak at new games, and can decide to if they want to invest before any other publishers can get the drop on them. Plus this gives them the ability to make some serious cash for server fees. I recommend that you check out the project in full for yourself. Cruise on over to Lumberyard's site and check it out.


What do you think? You going to give it a go? If you heard about it here and do make something, let me know, I'd love to have a look. Thanks again for stopping by. Your support means so much to me. Don't forget to share, and comment. Please make sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. Also if you want to game with me sometime, make sure you add me to your friends list on pretty much every platform, just search for Chali Baicunn. And as always, I'll see you next time. 

-Chali Baicunn

Diving Into Pokemon GO - Part 1: The Data

Hey! What's ongoing on out there?! Thanks for stopping by. I don't know about you, but I'm a bit of a Pokemon game fanboy. I started off on Pokemon Blue, and it was really the first game that ever made feel like I was on my journey. And because of that the Pokemon games have always held a special place in my heart. Needless to say, after the debut Pokemon GO announcement, I've been anxiously awaiting it's release. With many sources speculating on a February release, I figured now is a good time to see what conclusions can be drawn from the whole of publicly available information. This will be a 2 part project. This post will be a collection and summary of available information, and Part 2 will be the analysis, speculation, and conclusions.

Background Information:
All of the significant background information regarding the concept and history can be found in the following press conference. It's long, but there is TLDR under the video:



TLDR: Pokemon GO is the brainchild of Satoru Iwata of Nintendo and Tsunekazu Ishihara of The Pokemon Company. Originally conceptualized in 2013, the idea was to bring Pokemon the game into the real world via augmented reality on a mobile platform. At some point Niantic was tapped to provide the real world mapping and mobile platform development, as they have experience doing this in their game Ingress. Nintendo was tapped for the development of the Pokemon GO Plus; a bluetooth enabled device to be worn around the neck or wrist. It is equipped with an LED and motor. It will be used to send players notifications, when they are not in app. The game will be free to play, and is expected to have an early 2016 release. Also there was a mention of possibly marrying, future generations of the DS games with Pokemon GO.

During the above video the following trailer was shown. Go ahead and watch it, and I'll post some observations under the video:

• From the first scene we can tell that players will receive alerts regarding the location of wild Pokemon with directions. 
• If you pause the video at 26 seconds, you'll see that the alert states "Wild Pokemon" and shows a distance and direction of travel, but you can also see that there appears to be a silhouette of a Pikachu. 
• When the video continues to 30 seconds, we can see that this player is being directed to a location named Minato-ku in Tokyo, Japan (here's the Wiki page). 
• At 33 seconds it appears that a player is alerted to the existence of a nearby Pokemon via the Pokemon GO Plus device. If you listen closely, you'll hear a chiming.
• Before the 1 minute mark we see three first gen Pokemon, all with what appears to be HP bars and level listed. 
• We also see that there are items available (assumed to be gathered through microtransactions). Multiple Pokeballs are shown and a Honey. 
• Interesting point though, it does not appear that any of the players have to battle any of the wild Pokemon before successfully catching them.
• At 1:06 into the video, a trade is shown. It is assumed to be via bluetooth or NFC due to proximity of the players and the animation showing a direct swap.
• At 1:16 it appears that one player launches an unprovoked attack (not a challenge)
• By 1:35 it appears that a group of trainers have challenged another group to a battle.
• Around the 2 minute mark we are introduced to a timed "event/ boss battle". It appears that multiple trainers are facing off against Mewtwo.
• At the end of the battle, there is a congratulatory message is displayed on a large screen stating that Mewtwo was captured. 

Niantic Interview With Gamesbeat:
I've pulled down several relevant details unveiled in a Gamesbeat sit down interview with Niantec's John Hanke; CEO and Mike Quigley; Chief Marketing Officer, and will be posting them directly below. The full interview and article is here.

"GamesBeat: I’m curious about what you think of mapping Pokémon onto this engine where location is such a big advantage. Location can also be a challenge or disadvantage in some other ways, though. In some past location-based games, if there’s not enough players in an area, they’re not really socially connected. If you have to travel very far to find something, is it really worth doing?

Hanke: We’ve learned a lot on those fronts with Ingress. Even if you’re in a small town — I grew up in a town of 1,000 people in Texas. We had that as a design goal. If we’re going to build a game that works with location, it has to be fun for people anywhere to play, in small towns as well as San Francisco. If we designed something that only worked in San Francisco, it wouldn’t be a real success. We wanted it to work globally..."

"GamesBeat: How do you plan to handle the distribution of different items and things in the game?

Hanke: Our goal is to make it so you can walk out of the house and within five minutes, you can find Pokémon. It may not be the most rare Pokémon in the world, but there’ll be a population of Pokémon living near all our players. Gyms will be a bit more rare. You want to find gyms so you can level up your Pokémon and battle there, so it will take a little more effort to get there.
Pokémon will live in different parts of the world depending on what type of Pokémon they are. Water Pokémon will live near the water. It may be that certain Pokémon will only exist in certain parts of the world. Very rare Pokémon may exist in very few places. But you can trade. If you live in a place with lots of water Pokémon and you come to an event — we have these Ingress events that are getting bigger and bigger. We’ll have our biggest weekend ever on Saturday.
We’ll have events for Pokémon as well. Those are competitive, but they can also be places to trade stuff with other players. Pokémon trading is going to be huge. You can’t get all of them by yourself. If you want all of them you’ll have to trade with other players. Or you have to be someone who takes time off work and travels the world for a year. There may be people who do that."

"GamesBeat: Nintendo also wants to do their own unique device, right?

Hanke: The Pokémon Go Plus, yeah.

GamesBeat: At the same time they’re racing into mobile, they have their own dedicated hardware.

Hanke: It’s a nice way to take a step in the mobile ecosystem for them. That came out of two influences. One was a learning from Ingress. We wanted to give people a way to play the game where you didn’t necessarily have to take your phone out and interact with the UX. Part of the idea of the game is, you’re outside and you can see beautiful things. If you’re always staring at your phone, you’re not seeing the world around you.
We had brainstormed this idea. Why not have a little device that buzzes when you’re near something important? You can interact with it in some subtle way, and then later on you can open up your app or your tablet and you see, “Oh, I got this or did that.” That was one of the influences.
The other was, imagine that a parent is playing with a kid and they want to give the kid a device to interact with rather than handing over the phone. I’m often handing my phone to my kid, because he’s bored or whatever. But the idea is you can give them the Pokémon Go Plus device. It vibrates and flashes when you’re near Pokémon. When they press a button in a certain sequence they capture it. Then, later on, you can look at it together on your phone or tablet.

GamesBeat: The functionality is pretty much the same as you’d do with your phone?

Hanke: It’s more limited, but it’s heads-up gameplay. I can show you the design prototype. It’s very slightly bigger, a bit heavier, but this is pretty much the size of it. It comes with a bracelet so you can wear it like a wrist device. It’s Fitbit-ish in terms of size. Battery lasts a long time. You don’t have to worry about charging all the time. This is a multicolor LED and button. You’ll notice that it’s the Google Map pen with the Pokeball shape and color fused together. You can imagine kids going to school with this on their backpack."


Pokemon Superbowl Commercial:



I reviewed the commercial several times, trying to tease out any extra info. However, it appears to be dedicated marketing info, with lots of hidden references to Pokemon, but no obvious easter eggs to give us anymore details about GO.

 The Number of Catchable Pokemon:
*!Warning Unable To Verify Source!*
Sever outlets are reporting that all 721 Pokemon will be available. I have been unable to verify the original source of this data. It is being notated as an anomalous data point until verified.



Niantic Will Demo Pokemon GO at GDC (Game Developer Conference):
According to an announcement on GDC's site John Hanke of Niantic, will be demoing Pokemon GO during a session titled, "Catch 'Em All: Pokemon GO and Real World Gaming". No Date or time details have been released yet, but we know that the session will take place during the Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit. The following has been directly pulled from the announcement:

"Over the last three years, Niantic, Inc. has been defining the genre of Real World gaming, using smartphones and tablets to connect the digital world to the physical world. Niantic's newest game, Pokemon GO, ups the challenge of real world gaming design, taking a beloved franchise and setting its hundreds of brightly-colored monsters loose across the globe, adding a new Bluetooth wearable device created by Nintendo to the mix. Join Niantic founder and CEO John Hanke as he discusses how the company has developed a unique vision for delivering a mobile Pokemon experience that gets would-be trainers into the outdoors.

Takeaway
Attendees will get a first-hand, in-depth look at how players are interacting and exploring the world with one another through Pokemon GO, the collaborative approach to design and development for the game and the next evolution of augmented reality and real-world mobile gameplay experiences."

If I missed anything, let me know so I can get it added. Part 2 will be releasing later. Please make sure to follow on social media. Especially Twitter as all new posts are pushed there as soon as they are published. Be sure to check out Part 1 and Part 2 of my "2016 Make It Or Break It For Nintendo?" series Part 3 scheduled for later this year. Thanks for stopping by again. And as always, I will see you later.

-Chali Baicunn  

2016 Make It Or Break It For Nintendo? Part 2: Intervention

Hello again, and welcome back to BaicunnPress. I hope you all had a fantastic weekend. This is a continuance to my ongoing "2016 Make It Or Break It For Nintendo?" series of posts. Part 1 is here. Today we'll be dealing with a difficult subject... The intervention to save the life of Nintendo. I get a little misty in the eyeball regions when I think about this once proud giant dying.


The Intervention Letter
Dear Nintendo,

I hope you remember me... I was once one of your biggest fans. I played your greatest titles throughout my childhood; Mario, Megaman, Metal Gear, Battle Toads, Zelda, etc, etc. You had it all. You were once the brand I looked up to. You fought valiantly through the Great Console Wars of the 1990's. I knew when I grew up, I wanted to be just like you; smart, strong, inventive. But then it all changed... You changed. It's like you forgot who you were. You began to push me out of your life. I was broken at first, but I recovered and made new friends. They paid attention to me. They listened, and were there for me, and in return I supported them. 

We lost touch at one point, but you reached out to me during a hard time in my life. You brought me on the adventure of a lifetime. I traveled Kanto with you, and sought out the path of a Pokemon trainer. We spent so many hours together over the next few years traveling and looking for adventure. Then almost as quick as you came back into my life, you were gone again. Occasionally we'd chill over a few rounds of Golden Eye and Perfect Dark, but then you were gone again after GameCube was released. It's almost as if you fell back in with the crowd of amateurs, rookies, and noobies you had previously distinguished yourself from.

And again I had to find new friends. Microsoft was more than happy to embrace me, and Sony hung out all of the time. I'd see you around every once and a while, but you kept ignoring me. I felt used and abused. You had nothing to offer me. No FPSs except Metroid, no RTSs, no engrossing RPGs... All it seemed you had in you were party games, and god damn it I don't always want to party. The only time you seemed to care at all was when you brought Resident Evil 4 to the Cube, but then there was nothing after that. And you only responded because you were getting crushed by Halo.

Years went by, and by chance we bumped into each other again. Literally by chance, I won a Wii. For a moment, it seemed like you might have gotten your shit together. You're approach was new, and I had access to the classics again. Your new controls were classic in form and novel in design, but it seemed like you still just wanted to party. It was difficult to find any substance and depth in your catalog... It was just a party all of the time, and don't get me wrong; I like to party, but you just kept going harder and harder to the paint until I couldn't take it anymore. I finally left you. It broke me, but I had become hardened toward you. 

I was tempted so many times to come back to you. I wanted to through down on the classics and share it with the world, but everytime I turned around, I kept reading "Nintendo DMCAs channel into the ground", "Nintendo, takes profit from YouTuber", "Nintendo hates streamers!" One headline after another. I missed you, but I'd be god damned to deal with your shit. What's the point of us hanging out and being friends, if we can't hangout with everyone else. And when we do hang out, we just talk about the good ol' days, back before you made it clear that you pretty much hated anyone outside of Nintendo.

So I end this letter with a few simple statements... Nintendo, I love you man. I wants us to be tight again. I want my son to really get to know you. But we can't until you end your addiction. Your attachment to control and your business model are killing you man. It'd be great if we could hangout again, and if I could share my gaming time with the internet without fear that you'd ruin my life, and shut down my social media and ruining my life. Your behavior is that of a sophisticated drunk. You just keep wondering around in circles hoping that you'll stumble back to your home before you pass out in a puddle of your own making. If you don't change soon, you'll die! You're better than this man. You can be relevant... I believe in you.

Love,
  Chali


Thanks for stopping by again guys. What do you think? Let me know. I'm going to give Nintendo a bit to find itself, but be sure to keep check back for more content and part 3 of  this series. I'm thinking a title of  "Part 3: Redemption or Bust" seems fitting. Again, I want to thank you all for your support and your readership. As always, I'll see you later.

-Chali Baicunn

Midweek Breakdown - Pokemon Will Own February, Ubisoft Drops The Ball, And Deadpool

Hello and welcome back my fine nerdy brethren. Thank you for stopping by! It's time for the Midweek Breakdown, where I serve you up with some tidbits of wonderfulness to help you make the final stretch of your work week toward the weekend.

First up on the list is a new Superbowl Commercial, from our friends at the Pokemon Company:



If you didn't know Pokemon has several major events coming up this month. On February 27th Pokemon will turn 20 years old. That's right, if you an OG trainer from back in the day, you're officially old... To celebrate their anniversary a special edition 3DS in the States with Pokemon Red and Blue pre-loaded on the device. In Japan, fans of the franchise will be able to pickup a 2DS bundles with choice of Red, Green, Blue, or Yellow theme, and matching game pre-installed. The American bundle price is listed at $199.99. As a side note, if someone sends me one of these they'll get free adspace on here for a year. (Can't blame me for trying. Haha!.. But no seriously.) The Pokemon TCG will also be receiving the next edition this month with XY-BREAKpoint. Honestly though, all of this doesn't hold a candle in the wind to the expected release of Pokemon GO. Widely believed, to be releasing on February 27th. If you're a Pokemon TSG fan checkout the video below, and if you're interested in some more info about Pokemon GO, please stay tuned for future posts coming out this week.

Also out this week, Bethesda has announced that it will be making a return to E3 this year. With the success of Bethesda's showcase last year, I'm expecting another great showing in 2016. If you're interested in speculations about the showcase, make sure to check out my post from last week; Pure Hyperbole: Bethesda's E3 2016 Showcase Speculation .


Over last weekend, The Division beta released and almost immediately got pwn'd. Specifically the PC version of the beta was compromised, by users that discovered that the game clients were running in a trusted status. Long short, this means that the servers didn't give a fuck about what speed, amount of ammo, or well any other player stats as long as the info was handed to it by the client. This was possible due to the fact that the servers were not checking the data to verify that it had not been tampered with. The beta was open to everyone who pre-ordered and a lucky few who made it onto the beta waiting list. No word from Ubisoft, if anti-cheating systems were left off on purpose or not. I recommend that you go check out the reddit devoted to the game here , as has a lot of great information posted on it.

I'd also like to remind you, that the Deadpool movie releases next week. So make sure you treat you're significant other to a romantic classic about a guy who'd do anything to stay alive for the woman he loves. And significant others, if you love your significant other, you'll recognize that it is a proper Valentine's Day movie. I now leave you with the following PSA:




Thanks again for stopping by. I really appreciate your support. If you feel that I missed anything, let me know. Please make sure you follow the site on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, And as always, I'll see you later.

-Chali Baicunn