Dead Island Riptide developer Deep Silver asked fans to vote on the contents of a special edition of the game. Now the firm has opted to reveal what the general public selected.

When Dead Island Riptide hits store shelves, prospective zombie killers will be faced with a decision: Spend $60 on the regular version of Dead Island Riptide, or shell out $80 for the game’s special, limited Rigor Mortis Edition. Big-name game releases like this one receiving multiple retail packages is nothing new, but the Rigor Mortis Edition is a bit different than your typical Collector’s Edition release. Instead of simply slapping together a bunch of miscellaneous crap tangentially related to a game’s extended lore and tossing the whole pile in an oversized box, developer Deep Silver polled the Dead Island fan community in the Fall of 2012 to see what those most likely to buy the Rigor Mortis Edition would like to see inside the box.

It’s been months since Deep Silver’s poll ended, and now the firm is finally ready to divulge what it’s fans claim to want. Have a look at the contents of Dead Island Riptide’s upcoming Rigor Mortis Edition:

In the haunting, superb-quality Rigor Mortis Edition, Dead Island fans receive their very own zombie hula girl bobble figurine, a bloody zombie arm bottle opener magnet and a bungalow key with a branded wood keychain.  In addition, the Rigor Mortis Edition will include a copy of the Dead Island Riptide Special Edition for console, packed with a treasure trove of extra DLC content and a helpful digital strategy map.  All of this is embalmed in the ultimate Dead Island replica suitcase — the most iconic item from the original Dead Island.

That’s at least partially underwhelming, but we’ll explain that in a few moments. First, as we said before, the Rigor Mortis Edition is scheduled to feature an $80 price tag. It’s being touted as a “limited edition” release and being sold on a first come, first served basis, so if you want to ensure that you’ll be able to snag a copy when Dead Island Riptide hits shelves on April 23 you may want to pre-order the thing sooner, rather than later. Then again, if you’d rather just skip the pre-order ordeal, odds are pretty solid that you’ll be able to walk into a Gamestop or Target a couple days after the game’s launch and just pull one off of the shelf; Gaming publishers have a baffling concept of the word “limited” and such things always end up being overproduced to meet a demand that never materializes.

With our crucial details established, let’s get back to the contents of the Rigor Mortis Edition. We won’t judge the DLC contents as we have no idea what they might be — extra weapons and new missions would be great; varying colors of paint for Dead Island Riptide’s in-game boats would be less great — but the physical components of this package don’t seem all that different from what you’d find in a standard Collector’s Edition game release. I’m sure there are fans who are keenly excited about the above revelation, but how many of you are actually going to get any use out of it? Even as display pieces, how would someone work a zombie hula girl bobble head figurine and faux bungalow key into the decor of any room? 

Actually, forget it. We just remembered that the only thing we really care about in Dead Island Riptide is that it lives up the immense pre-release promise of the first Dead Island. Y’know, back before anyone had a chance to enjoy its entertaining, yet obviously flawed nature. If Deep Silver gets that right, we don’t much care what else the company wants to jam inside the game’s packaging.

There was once a time when a 3.5-inch screen was considered more than big enough, believe it or not. Then came the 4-inch screen. Then the 5-inch. Now the Huawei Ascend Mate is going crazy by taking us to even bigger heights with a 6.1-inch phablet.

Not wanting to be upstaged, rumors claim ZTE is raising the bar even further with its rumored ZTE flagship, the ZTE Nubia Z7. The Z7 ups to the game by .2-inches, bringing in a 6.3-inch phone that supposedly will pack a resolution that blows the competition out of the water.

While it might only be slightly bigger in size, the big difference is that Huawei’s monster is just a 720p device, while the ZTE Nubia Z7 is allegedly packs a resolution of 2560×1440. While that sounds really awesome, you have to wonder what a 6.3-inch 2560×1440 display will do to battery life here.

Other specs beyond the massive display suggest the ZTE Nubia Z7 will have an 8-core processor, a Mali-T658 GPU, a 16MP camera, 4000mAh battery, 128GB of internal memory and— Android 5.0.

With such impossibly crazy specs, is there any way that this can be true? Six months ago I would have called this as total crap, but now it seems technology is moving quick with 1080p displays, increasingly larger display sizes and more.

For now, I’d take these rumored specs with an entire saltmine, but stranger things can and have happened before. If this is really coming down the pipeline, I have a feeling it will cost quite a pretty penny when it ships. What do you think, anyway these are real specs for the so-called ZTE Nubia Z7?

Former Sony executive Phil Harrison introduced the world to Life London, Microsoft’s new UK-based game development studio on Thursday. Lift London will further push Microsoft’s games away from discs and on into the cloud.

Microsoft Game Studios’ grand expansion in the lead up to the next Xbox continues apace in 2013. Microsoft announced the opened of Lift London, a new UK studio created by former Sony and Atari executive Phil Harrison and run by ex-Rare Ltd. developer Lee Schuneman. Lift London will play a unique role in Microsoft’s studio network, though, as Harrison says that it is a “21^st century studio, not a studio that will make retail products.”

Speaking at a press conference on Thursday morning, Harrison said that Lift London’s primary output will be connected games served over the cloud. They may make games that initially purchased on a disc but the bulk of the game will be found on the Internet. Lift’s games will be services expanded and played over the Internet, not unlike the myriad social games that have made Facebook so potent a force in the gaming market over the past four years.

“The shift is from packaged goods to connected products,” said Harrison, “We will continue to support retail with our products for sure. But we are going to keep creating features that are enhanced and improved by the network.”

“What I would encourage you to think is that the disc is the start of a five-year relationship with the gamer, we will try to refine and extend the product over many years. We don’t have to stop doing disc products to be cloud-centric.”

Lift will also be an umbrella for other start-up studios Microsoft grows. Already the London-based studio Dlala, developer of Windows 8 game Janksy, has been acquired by Microsoft and incorporated into Lift London.

Windows 8 and Xbox will be just two platforms served by Lift London. “We are now really a multiplatform studio,” said Harrison, “We’re no longer just competing with traditional console companies, but out competitive landscape includes the likes of Google, the likes of Amazon, it includes obviously the likes of Apple.”

Harrison has a history of transforming massive companies’ fates in the video game industry. While engineer Ken Kutaragi was responsible for designing Sony’s original PlayStation, it was Harrison that evangelized the platform to publishers in Japan, America and Europe prior to its release in 1994. He was instrumental in furthering the adoption of CD-ROM as the format of choice for console games in the ‘90s, and later DVDs with the PlayStation 2 in the ‘00s. Lift London’s output could potentially redefine Microsoft’s gaming business.

Source: VG247

Dragon Age 3 writer David Gaider posted an essay lamenting the relationship between BioWare and it’s increasingly hostile Internet audience. The studio has dramatically changed some of its games due to fan feedback in recent years. Will that change?

BioWare is a studio worryingly beholden to its audience and their expectations. It’s getting worse according to Dragon Age writer David Gaider.

Gaider took to his blog this week to discuss BioWare’s “increasingly toxic” forums at the BioWare Social Network. The writer used to willingly engage with the studio’s players posting in the forums, but has come to avoid it more and more due to the entitled and hostile attitude of posters.

“Spending too much there starts to make me feel negative—not just about the games we make, but about myself and life in general,” explains Gaider, “You can, in fact, meet and talk to some very keen and intelligent posters… Yet the signal-to-noise ratio does seem to be worsening, and eventually you get the feeling like you’re at one of those parties where all anyone is doing is bitching.”

“The only other option is to simply avoid all online interaction with fans at all of make any such completely benign and PR-oriented, which would be unfortunate—and not, I suspect, when even the angry fan would want.”

It’s true that once an artist releases their work into the world, it’s no longer theirs. The audience, crueler than it’s ever been thanks to the anonymity of the Internet, can and will savage anything they consume. It’s natural. What’s problematic with BioWare’s relationship with its audience is that it’s changing the studio’s creative process. Worse still, BioWare’s controlling publisher is encouraging the change.

Under the stewardship of Electronic Arts, BioWare has become as very different network of studios. What began as a company devoted to creating deeply authorial role-playing games that also reflected the player’s personality through dynamic choices has become a blockbuster machine with a contentious open relationship with its audience. The future of BioWare under its current management is dependent almost entirely on the often-contradictory input of its fans. Mass Effect 3’s new ending content was finished in a hurry and released for free. Star Wars: The Old Republic was completely remodeled as a free-to-play game, and then immediately changed again due to fan grousing. Dragon Age 3: Inquisition, a game still in production, is built almost entirely around fan input.

The dialogue between audience and creator offered by the Internet is not guaranteed to be a positive factor. If BioWare can’t ignore the vocal, immature minority of its audience in the creation of its games, maybe it would be best for creators like Gaider to stop engaging the audience at all.