Ubisoft and Riot Games are teaming up on a new research project that's intended to reduce toxic in-game chats. From a report: The new project, called "Zero Harm in Comms," will be broken up into two main phases. For the first phase, Ubisoft and Riot will try to create a framework that lets them share, collect, and tag data in a privacy-protecting way. It's a critical first step to ensure that the companies aren't keeping data that contains personally identifiable information, and if Ubisoft and Riot find they can't do it, "the project stops," Yves Jacquier, executive director at Ubisoft La Forge, said in an interview with The Verge.

Once that privacy-protecting framework is established, Ubisoft and Riot plan to build tools that use AI trained by the datasets to try and detect and mitigate "disruptive behaviors," according to a press release. Traditionally, detecting harmful intent has relied on "dictionary-based technologies," where you have a list of words spelled in different ways that can be used to determine if a message might be bad, according to Jacquier. With this partnership, Ubisoft and Riot are trying to use natural language processing to extract the general meaning of a sentence but take the context of the discussion into account, he said.

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has revealed why the company delayed its plans to introduce an Xbox streaming console, speaking to Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel on The Verge's Decoder podcast this week. The Verge reports: "It was more expensive than we wanted it to be when we actually built it out with the hardware that we had inside," said Spencer, discussing the Keystone prototype device that recently appeared on his office shelves. "We decided to focus that team's effort on delivering the smart TV streaming app." Microsoft delivered an Xbox TV app in partnership with Samsung instead, but it doesn't mean the idea for a streaming-only Xbox console is fully over. "With Keystone, we're still focused on it and watching when we can get the right cost," reveals Spencer.

Microsoft wanted to aim for around $129 or $99 for this Xbox streaming device, says Spencer, and hints that bundling a controller with the streaming console, as well as Microsoft's silicon component choices, had pushed the price up closer to the $299 Xbox Series S. The choice to bundle a controller matches what Microsoft traditionally does with its Xbox consoles and was also Google's original approach to putting its discontinued Stadia cloud gaming service on TVs. But a cloud gaming TV stick or puck could support any controller you have if the hardware supports Bluetooth, so it's interesting Microsoft specifically wanted to bundle an Xbox controller, likely to make the user experience feel more seamless.

Microsoft has released its first Digital Transparency Report for the Xbox gaming platform, revealing that the company took proactive action against throwaway accounts that violated its community guidelines 4.78 million times within a six-month period, usually in the form of temporary suspension. The Verge reports: The report, which provides information regarding content moderation and player safety, covers the period between January 1st and June 30th this year. It includes a range of information, including the number of reports submitted by players and breakdowns of various "proactive enforcements" (i.e., temporary account suspensions) taken by the Xbox team. Microsoft says the report forms part of its commitment to online safety. The data reveals that "proactive enforcements" by Microsoft increased almost tenfold since the last reporting period and that 4.33 million of the 4.78 million total enforcements concerned accounts that had been tampered with or used suspiciously outside of the Xbox platform guidelines. These unauthorized accounts can impact players in a variety of ways, from enabling cheating to spreading spam and artificially inflating friend / follower numbers.

A further breakdown of the data reveals 199,000 proactive enforcements taken by Xbox involving adult sexual content, 87,000 for fraud, and 54,000 for harassment or bullying. The report also claims that 100 percent of all actions in the last six-month period relating to account tampering, piracy, and phishing were taken proactively by Xbox rather than via reports made by its player base, which suggests that either fewer issues are being reported by players or the issues themselves are being addressed before players are aware of them. As proactive action has increased, the report also reveals that reports made by players have decreased significantly despite a growing player base, noting a 36 percent decline in player reports compared to the same period in 2021. A total of 33.07 million reports were made by players during the last period, with the vast majority relating to either in-game conduct (such as cheating, teamkilling, or intentionally throwing a match) or communications.

Players can take days or even weeks to take a turn, and they have embraced the use of software to find the best moves. The New York Times: [...] The International Correspondence Chess Federation allows players to consult engines during their games, making the matches a hybrid competition that involves the strategy and planning of humans guided by the accuracy of machines. In correspondence chess, players may spend days or even weeks on a single move. A typical game can last for more than a year.

What does it mean to be the best in the world at a game in which a player's strength is enhanced -- or neutralized -- by computers? When asked about his own approach, Mr. Edwards said that his style was similar to that of Tigran Petrosian, the Armenian grandmaster known for his fortresslike defensive play. In most of Mr. Edwards's games, he tries to create and press a small advantage with the goal of gently nudging his opponents over the edge where, even with the help of the strongest engine, they are unable to escape an inevitable defeat.

Even with such a plan, a majority of correspondence games end in a draw because it is nearly impossible to beat an opponent who has access to the defensive resources of a chess engine. Out of the 136 games played in the 32nd World Correspondence Chess Championship, 119 were draws. What's more, when games are decisive, this is sometimes because of human error. Given the high number of draws and the difficulty of winning even a single game, could Mr. Edwards be the last world champion correspondence player? He didn't seem to think so. "Most outsiders and many players believe that correspondence chess is dying," he said, "but the best correspondence players don't believe that."

Microsoft is releasing DirectStorage 1.1 this week, and the biggest new addition is GPU decompression for Windows PC games. The Verge reports: GPU decompression works by offloading the work needed to decompress assets in games to the graphics card instead of the CPU. Right now, game assets are typically compressed when they are packaged up for distribution and then decompressed once a game is played. The problem is most compression techniques are designed for CPUs, which aren't great for modern games that want to push for faster decompression rates with the latest PC hardware.

We've seen the industry move to PCIe Gen3 or Gen4 NVMe storage devices in recent years, offering 7GB/s of data bandwidth. This fast storage is great news for game developers wanting to speed up load times, and the advances in I/O technology can dramatically speed up load times and games using DirectStorage 1.1. Developers will now need to tweak their games to make use of DirectStorage 1.1, and the improvements could even see big changes inside games where you move from one world to another or teleport between different parts of a map or world. Microsoft claims this can be as much as three times faster, freeing up the CPU to handle other game processes. [...] All we need now is game support.

Wordle will now have its own dedicated editor to help make the hit guessing game word puzzles, The New York Times announced on Monday. The Verge reports: Tracy Bennett will be the editor, and the game will have a word list curated by the NYT and "be programmed and tested" like its crosswords and the Spelling Bee game. The changes appear to mean that the NYT will be lining up some of its own solutions instead of relying on the long list of answers you could find if you knew where to look. However, it sounds like the game itself won't be changing.

"Wordle's gameplay will stay the same, and answers will be drawn from the same basic dictionary of answer words, with some editorial adjustments to ensure that the game stays focused on vocabulary that's fun, accessible, lively and varied," Everdeen Mason, the NYT's editorial director of games, wrote in an article about Bennett's appointment. You might already be seeing a different answer than someone else as a result of the change. If that's the case, Mason suggests refreshing your browser or playing the game on the Crossword app.

Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey, writing on his personal blog: Today is November 6th, 2022, the day of the SAO Incident. Thousands of VRMMORPG gamers were trapped by a mad scientist inside a death game that could only be escaped through completion. If their hit points dropped to zero, their brain would be bombarded by extraordinarily powerful microwaves, supposedly killing the user. The same would happen if anyone in the real world tampered with their NerveGear, the virtual reality head-mounted-display that transported their minds and souls to Aincrad, the primary setting of Sword Art Online.

[...] In SAO, the NerveGear contained a microwave emitter that could be overdriven to lethal levels, something the creator of SAO and the NerveGear itself (Akihiko Kayaba) was able to hide from his employees, regulators, and contract manufacturing partners. I am a pretty smart guy, but I couldn't come up with any way to make anything like this work, not without attaching the headset to gigantic pieces of equipment.

In lieu of this, I used three of the explosive charge modules I usually use for a different project, tying them to a narrow-band photosensor that can detect when the screen flashes red at a specific frequency, making game-over integration on the part of the developer very easy. When an appropriate game-over screen is displayed, the charges fire, instantly destroying the brain of the user. This isn't a perfect system, of course. I have plans for an anti-tamper mechanism that, like the NerveGear, will make it impossible to remove or destroy the headset.

Even so, there are a huge variety of failures that could occur and kill the user at the wrong time. This is why I have not worked up the balls to actually use it myself, and also why I am convinced that, like in SAO, the final triggering should really be tied to a high-intelligence agent that can readily determine if conditions for termination are actually correct. At this point, it is just a piece of office art, a thought-provoking reminder of unexplored avenues in game design. It is also, as far as I know, the first non-fiction example of a VR device that can actually kill the user. It won't be the last.

A new survey on the Xbox Insider Hub suggests Microsoft is looking to expand on its energy saving features for Xbox consoles and potentially PC games too. Jez Corden writes via Windows Central: A recent questionnaire I came across in the Xbox Insider app on Windows PC detailed a potential list of new features Microsoft is exploring for games across consoles and PC. These new features pertain specifically to opting-in to reduce frame rates, resolution, and so on, with the goal of limiting energy consumption. Of course, surveys don't necessarily mean that these sorts of features will make it into a final product, but Microsoft's commitments to net zero carbon use have seen the firm increase its investments in this space.

The survey asks users about their current feelings with regard to energy consumption, potentially polling users on how the energy crisis is affecting their willingness to spend. The survey asks users if they would be interested in features that reduce power consumption in games, both while the games are running and while they're inactive, specifically to save energy and thus money. Microsoft also asks users how they would prefer these features to be branded, with terms like "eco-saving" and "energy-saving," and even asks if these sorts of features would affect users' purchase decisions per game.

It's been 25 years since a small studio in Dallas recast the ancient world through the prism of a real-time strategy game. From a report: Age of Empires has echoed Monk wololos about our homes ever since: Parents believed that their kids were learning history; kids believed that they were gaming surreptitiously. And veteran players know that both were right. Yet Age of Empires did not always receive the love it does today. The rise of the Xbox saw PC gaming take a back seat for Microsoft: Communities like AoE's were left to fend for themselves.

In a very real way, it was the passion of these obsessives that led to Microsoft's renewed attention and the release of the franchise's latest entry, 2021's Age of Empires IV. All the games continue to receive updates or DLCs. Age of Empires games are headed for Xbox and mobile devices, complete with cross-play so console gamers can get their hands on the RTS classic and play with their PC-loving friends. Also, Age of Mythology is finally getting a definitive edition. Age IV is building momentum, too, with an anniversary edition crowning a year of updates designed to woo players who found it a tad stripped back at launch. AoE is now a point of real-time-strategy pride and a shining jewel in Microsoft's roster.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: 70 new text adventures are now online and available for playing — as a long-standing tradition continues. The 70 new games are the entries in the 28th annual Interactive Fiction Competition (now administered by the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, a charitable non-profit corporation).

With wacky titles like "Lazy Wizard's Guide" and "Elvish for Goodbye," each game offers its own original take on the classic choice-based text adventures, sometimes augumented with ambient background noises and even music. Each of the 70 games has some kind of fanciful "cover art" — one even generated using OpenAI's image-generating tool DALL-E.

And you're invited to help judge the games! Just create an account, and then play and rate at least five of the games by November 15...

Slashdot first covered the competition back in 2004. (And in 2006, Slashdot editor Hemos called interactive fiction games "some of the best I've ever played.") But this year the competition raised over $10,000 (so far!) to be distributed among the top two-thirds of entries, with the first-place finisher receiving $489 and each subsequent finisher receiving a little less, with the lowest-finishing prize recipient awarded $10. (And in addition, top entrants are each allowed to choose one prize from a pool of donations.)

Game on!

PlayStation VR2 will officially be released on February 22, 2023, for $549.99, and pre-orders will begin on November 15. IGN reports: As revealed by the PlayStation.Blog, PlayStation VR2 will include the PS VR2 headset, PS VR2 Sense controllers, and stereo headphones. There will also be a PlayStation VR2 Horizon Call of the Mountain bundle that will retail for $599.99, and it will include everything from the standard edition plus a PlayStation Store voucher code for Horizon Call of the Mountain. Also launching on February 22 will be the PlayStation VR2 Sense controller charging station, which allows players to charge their controllers "through a simple click-in design, without having to connect to a PS5 console -- freeing up the console's USB ports."

Sony also revealed 11 new titles headed to PS VR2 in 2023, and they include The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR, Crossfire: Sierra Squad, The Light Brigade, Cities VR - Enhanced Edition, Cosmonious High, Hello Neighbor: Search and Rescue, Jurassic World Aftermath Collection, Pistol Whip VR, Zenith: The Last City, After the Fall, and Tentacular. While we don't have a full launch line-up quite yet, Sony did confirm that it is "expecting more than 20 titles" on February 22. You can preorder the system on November 15. Those interested can register today to get ready.

Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II has had record sales of $800 million worldwide in sell-through following the first three days from its release. VentureBeat reports: The full title debuted on October 28 after hitting early-access release for the single-player campaign on October 20, breaking all previous three-day sales records since the franchise debuted in 2003. The blockbuster opening tops any of the biggest worldwide box office openings of 2022, surpassing Top Gun: Maverick, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness worldwide box office openings combined, Activision Blizzard announced (based on data from boxofficemojo.com). The company didn't say the exact number of copies sold, but it beat out the titles from the past two years as well as 2019's hit Call of Duty: Modern Warfare's opening.

Modern Warfare II also set a new franchise opening-weekend record as the No. 1 top-selling Call of Duty digital opening through its first three days. Developed by Infinity Ward (and nine other Activision studios), the release of Modern Warfare II represents a revival for the entertainment franchise, which will continue with the upcoming release of Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 on November 16. [...] Modern Warfare II's opening topped the previous five-day franchise record set in 2011 by Modern Warfare 3 in sell-through, to become the biggest opening ever in Call of Duty. That title sold $650 million in its opening five days, with the primary lower price of $60 compared to today's $70. Further reading:
Microsoft Promises Eternal Support for Call of Duty on PlayStation
Physical 'Copies' of the New Call of Duty Are Just Empty Discs

Amir Rahimi, vice president of game studios at Netflix, said in a blog post that, close to the first anniversary of launching games a year ago, Netflix is announcing that Spry Fox is joining as its sixth in-house games studio. VentureBeat reports: Spry Fox is an award-winning independent studio focused on cozy, original games. Their unique approach to game development and success with titles like Triple Town, Alphabear and Cozy Grove will help accelerate Netflix's creative development in another beloved genre and add to the growing variety of Netflix's games catalog that will have something for everyone, Rahimi said.

Rahimi said Netflix looks forward to creating games with a studio whose values -- a relentless focus on employee and player joy -- align closely with its own. "Our games journey has only just begun, but I'm proud of the foundational work we've been doing to build out our in-house creative capacity so that we can deliver the best possible games experience -- including no ads and no in-app purchases -- to our members as part of their membership," Rahimi said.

Microsoft Xbox chief Phil Spencer said he intends to continue to ship Call of Duty games on PlayStation "as long as there's a PlayStation out there to ship to." From a report: The new promise comes weeks after Sony lambasted an "inadequate" offer to extend Call of Duty's cross-platform access for three years past the current agreement and as Microsoft faces continuing scrutiny from international governments over its proposed $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard. "We're not taking Call of Duty from PlayStation," Spencer said directly in an interview with the Same Brain podcast. "That's not our intent."

Instead, Spencer said Microsoft's plan for Call of Duty is "similar to what we've done with Minecraft," which has remained a cross-platform staple since Microsoft's $2.5 billion purchase of developer Mojang in 2014. Since then, Spencer said, "we've expanded the places where people can play Minecraft... and it's been good for the Minecraft community, in my opinion. I want to do the same as we think about where Call of Duty can go over the years."

Pioneering Sega developer Rieko Kodama has passed away at the age of 58. Eurogamer reports: A memorial message for her was spotted in the credits of the Mega Drive Mini 2 and later confirmed by Sega producer Yosuke Oskunari. Sega subsequently confirmed Kodama passed back in May, but was unable to share details in respect to her family, as reported by IGN. "We pray that the deceased will rest in peace, and we offer our gratitude for her enormous contributions to Sega," said Sega of Japan.

Kodama worked on some of Sega's most celebrated games, including Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Skies of Arcadia, and Alex Kidd. She's perhaps best known as one of the creative leads on the Phantasy Star series, directing Phantasy Star 4. In 2019 she won the Pioneer Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards for her 35-year career in an industry dominated by men.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Cartridges and discs used to be how you got the latest games, but that's been changing as downloads have become more convenient and reliable. But some people prefer the sure thing: a physical copy, so they can play offline or with a bad connection. To them, Activision says "qq": the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II disc is basically just a link to a 150-gigabyte download. Now, to be fair, games that size don't fit neatly on even high capacity Blu-ray discs, which for distribution purposes max out at around 50 gigs. Not that we haven't seen multi-disc games before (I never finished Final Fantasy VIII because the final disc was scratched someday, Edea), but clearly Activision decided it wasn't worth the bother in this case. [...] Far from having the full game on it, the disc is almost completely empty. This 72-megabyte app is basically just an authenticator and shell that initiates the enormous download process. I'd be willing to bet that most of those 72 megabytes are 4K video files of logos. There's even a pre-order steelbook bonus (that's a metal case for the disc and anything else it comes with). Players may be disappointed to find that this fancy reinforced packaging protects nothing of value.

Obviously there is great waste entailed in the production of perhaps millions of discs (though the numbers are likely much lower than they used to) for no reason. But waste is endemic in consumerism. The bait and switch of it is the galling thing -- that Activision is taking the worst of both worlds. There's literally no point in even providing a physical version of the software if none of the reasons for doing so are fulfilled by it. It's the equivalent of the next season of Stranger Things coming on a disc that just loads up Netflix and starts streaming. Why bother? It's worth asking whether Activision could have built a version of the game that fit on a disc at all. Considering how proudly they've been advertising the realism of the graphics, probably not. A single 4K texture unit, say for a building front or character model, may be scores of megabytes, and any AAA game will have countless such textures. Meanwhile the audio and video assets also have to fit on there, and they can only be compressed so far before they degrade.

Over two decades after its initial release, Age of Empires 2 is finally headed to consoles, alongside the significantly more recent Age of Empires 4. IGN reports: Announced today during the Age of Empires 25th Anniversary Broadcast, we learned that Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition will launch on Xbox consoles on January 31, 2023, while Age of Empires 4 will follow later in the same year. We're also getting Age of Mythology Retold, a definitive edition of the original 2002 Age of Mythology. The game is currently in development with "updated graphics, features and more" but we have no further details on when we might finally see it. Other announcements during the presentation included a teaser for Age of Empires on mobile, and the launch of Age of Empires 4: Anniversary Edition out today alongside an anniversary update with new civilizations, challenges, achievements, and features.

Apple snuck a nice little surprise in its round of Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV updates yesterday with the addition of support for Nintendo's updated classic game controllers. From a report: As spotted by developer Steve Troughton-Smith and confirmed by MacStories, Nintendo's modern SNES and N64 controllers now work with updated Apple devices with macOS 13, iOS 16, and tvOS 16 and up, whether using a wired or Bluetooth connection. While neither MacStories nor Troughton-Smith was able to test whether the Sega Genesis and NES controllers work with Apple's devices, we're assuming Apple added the same functionality.

Kids who play video games have better memory and better control over their motor skills than kids who don't, according to a new study looking at adolescent brain function. From a report: Video games might not be responsible for those differences -- the study can't say what the causes are -- but the findings add to a bigger body of work showing gamers have better performance on some tests of brain function. That lends support to efforts to develop games that can treat cognitive problems. "This study adds to our growing understanding of the associations between playing video games and brain development," said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, in a statement.

The study used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, which launched in 2018 and is tracking brain development in thousands of children in the United States as they grow into adulthood. Participants periodically go through a battery of assessments, including brain imaging, cognitive tasks, mental health screenings, physical health exams, and other tests. To study video games and cognition, the research team on this new study pulled from the first set of assessments in the ABCD study. It included data on 2,217 children who were nine and 10 years old. The ABCD study asked participants how many hours of video games they played on a typical weekday or weekend day. The research team divided the group into video gamers (kids who played at least 21 hours per week) and non-video gamers (kids who played no video games per week). Kids who only played occasionally weren't included in the study. Then, the research team looked at the kids' performance on tests that measure attention, impulse control, and memory.

Steam launched in 2003 — and as recently as 2015, its record for concurrent users logged into the service was 10 million people, reports Kotaku (growing to 14 million in 2017, and by March of 2020, rising up to 20 million).

But now it's jumped another 50% — just two and a half years: We got to 28 million users earlier this year — more than the entire populations of countries like Australia and Taiwan — and now, in late October, we've hit the nice round number of 30 million, with the peak number of users logged on earlier today standing at 30,032,005.

Note that this isn't the number of people playing at any one time, just the number of people logged into the platform, a feat that's often achieved simply by turning your PC on. If you want to know the number of users actually in a game at that time, SteamDB figures put the peak at around 8.5 million, which is still an enormous figure, and a big jump (proportionally) even from earlier in 2022, when the highest number of active players stood at "between seven and eight million".