We’ve rebranded our leading Beam.pro stream to Microsoft, Gaming and Libations!
Microsoft, Gaming and Libations (formerly Microsoft, Minecraft and Libations) is a live show hosted on Microsoft’s newly acquired streaming network, Beam.pro. We have recently rebranded the channel to coincide with our desire (and your requests!) to play games beyond Minecraft!
Moving forward, our live streams will take place on Wednesdays, at 6 PM ET (3 PM PT, 10 PM GMT). You can find the start time based on your location and time zone in our event announcer.
We’ll be kicking off our eighth episode of Microsoft, Gaming, and Libations very shortly, where we’ll talk about Microsoft while playing Minecraft, and, well, having a few drinks! Join us in the chat for some big announcements and giveaways.
If you missed our earlier announcement for the full context of what the show is, you can find that here to learn more about the format and plans.
For now, all you need to do is watch the live stream above or head to our Beam channel at Beam.pro/windowscentral when the stream begins where you can jump in on the live chat.
We’ll occasionally field some questions from the audience, so it’s best to sign up for Beam. Plus, doing so will help enter you in our contest to win a Hitman Collector’s Edition, detailed below! We’ll also be giving away spooky Minecraft Halloween skins in the chat during the stream. If you entered last week’s controller giveaway, we’ll post the winners here soon!
For those curious, we’re aiming for a 90-minute air time, but honestly, we have no idea how long it will go. So grab a drink and join in on the fun to find out!
It’s been two years since Microsoft bought Minecraft, and the new owners are faced with a conundrum: what do you do with a game that is already a phenomenon?
Complicating things further, Minecraft is now a seven-year old game. While lot of work has been put into keeping the game current, Minecraft is also beginning to show its age. Mojang developer Nathan Adams compared it to rebuild the engines of a jet in the middle of a flight, because taking the game down to patch it just isn’t an option. The tension at the heart of Minecraft heightens when you consider that the developers say difficulties associated with coding the blocky builder sometimes prevents them from adding features that the community wants, like a working API or a server browser.
I got a chance to suss out the future of Minecraft at last month’s Minecon, where the community rubs elbows with the people who make Minecraft great. Obviously, that description includes the developers, but it also expands farther into the YouTubers who make hilarious videos, the modders who create new ways to play, and the builders, who create wonderful worlds for others to enjoy as well.
This was at the forefront of my mind when I attended Minecon. Minecraft has always been a community-driven game, and I was curious how Mojang would handle that aspect of Minecraft’s identity while also pushing the game into new frontiers.
I met with Saxs Persson, developer for the Pocket and Windows 10 editions of Minecraft, and Matt Booty, head of Minecraft, in nearby Marriott hotel. Persson was dressed casually, in a black shirt and jeans. He came off as enthusiastic, prone to geeking out about new tech or features. Booty on the other hand was dressed in a button-down, slacks and came off as more reserved. They couldn’t have chosen a better pair to represent Minecraft.
“We want everybody to play with everybody,” Persson told me. “Minecraft is better when you can connect to your world wherever you with whatever device.” Windows 10 and Pocket Edition players already enjoy cross-platform play, but Persson paints a picture of complete compatibility – console and Java and Win 10 players all connecting and enjoying Minecraft together. In his ideal world, you’d be able to log on to the same persistent server from your iPad, your computer, and your console—a technical and legal hurdle that has been branched in part by games like Rocket League, but full connectivity across all platforms still seems like a lofty goal for Minecraft.
What’s more, this idea seems to ignore that the various Minecraft editions floating around all have varying features, something that even the biggest Minecraft fan finds annoying. For example, MCPE is still missing The End, but at the same time it will get additions that Java won’t see till later (or ever.) Persson didn’t specifically address version mismatches when I asked if feature parity was still a priority, but he also didn’t seem concerned about potential version conflicts. “There’s not a lot holding us back from connecting these versions, and parity is not the main goal,” he said. There is no doubt that this kind of cross-platform play would be popular and welcomed, but I’m skeptical as to how it would actually work. I’m also not sure it’s a feature that the community truly cares about.
Persson also enthused about “new input methodologies,” specifically the Oculus touch. Actually, VR played a big role in Minecon: the line to try it out was hours long throughout the entire event, and Mojang highlighted it often enough that VR seems to form a centerpiece for Minecraft’s future plans.
Virtual reality is still an incredibly niche technology, and Minecraft’s hallmark has always been its accessibility—you can run the game on pretty much any device. It’s hard to understand how adding a style of play that requires a powerful computer or console and a pricey headset fits with the existing appeal of Minecraft. Community response to VR offerings is and always has been tepid at best, especially among veteran Minecraft players, who remember Notch’s quarrel with Oculus in the past.
For now, most of the YouTubers and map makers and modders attached to Minecraft seem pretty happy with their current arrangement—Mojang is still very relaxed about letting people profit off of their game—but some are starting to see the writing on the wall. Long-time Minecraft YouTubers, such as skitscape and setosorcerer, have been moving on to other games or other careers. Map creators like Hypixel have had to adapt and often abandon single-player maps in favor of multiplayer ones, and the often-ignored mod community is starting to feel the strain of an aging game. Each recent patch has created a new set of problems — a recent one, for example, made many large texture packs unuseable, and while a different patch made PvP unplayable for many. With add-ons and an API still a long way off, frustrations continue to mount for some fans.
Mojang’s vision for the future of the game and the communities’ vision have not always been in line, and you could see the effects of that fissure on the showfloor itself. When I asked how they chose the people that ended up on stage at Minecon—essentially receiving the Mojang stamp of approval—or heading up the panels, Persson and Booty were a little evasive. “There is an active curation [of exhibitors],” Booty said about the people that were invited to attend the event and present, “ranging from trying to stay true to Minecraft’s indie roots to working with corporate partners and everything in between.” This was an obvious nod to the big name partners like Mattel that were taking up large amounts of real estate on the expo floor. There were plenty of indie names and creators features, but their competition was fiercer. The Minecon docket was stacked with young, high energy personalities who curated an atmosphere of fun and excitement—the old guard, like Hypixel and
other creators, were less well represented.
Persson and Booty still recognized, at least in part, the debt that they owed to the the community. “We ask that they come and meet their fans with open arms,” Persson said, “as a true fan event, not just a primarily corporate one.” Persson and the Mojang team seem eager to signal to their fans that they were still the focus of the event and of their efforts, and that the Microsoft buyout still doesn’t indicate a change in direction or an abandonment of their core users. It was a necessary reminder, given that Minecraft’s indie origins made some people deeply skeptical of Microsoft’s purchase, and these same fans have remained guarded even as the company seeks to reassure them.
Regardless, the Mojang team has actually shown that they are listening to the community in some respects. Minecon saw the first full presentation of the add-on system, which allows players to tweak the behavior and statistics of mobs at first, and will eventually allow wide modification of all entities. Players have been asking for something like this as far back as 2011.
“Add-ons are just the first step,” Persson said, confirming that an application program interface, or API, was being co-developed – a feature that would make modding significantly easier. Persson admitted that two previous attempts at creating an API had failed, and that they had brought on the creators of Bukkit–a popular mod utility–to help them make this attempt stick. This may represent a serious commitment to developing an API, but those promises go back as far as 2009. The community remains skeptical after being burned so many times before.
It’s also obvious that Microsoft has invested heavily in making Minecraft more than just a video game. Minecraft’s developers preferred to use words like “platform”, “tool”, and “environment” instead of “game,” and they were effusive about applications for research, education, and machine learning. “At a high level, we want to maintain Minecraft as an innovation brand,” Booty said when asked about his vision for the future of the game. It was a little hard to pin down exactly what they meant by this — it sounds like they want Minecraft to be all things to all people, which, while ambitious, sounds like a recipe for failure.
Despite the abundance of buzzwords, Mojang’s description is a telling indication of Microsoft’s concerns over their $2.5 billion investment. Minecraft is a completely unprecedented phenomenon, and so too is a massive buyout of an indie game by a major corporation. Minecraft has already conquered video games, so it seems natural that Microsoft and Mojang now want to create something that supersedes gaming.
Everyone I talked to at Minecon was excited about exactly one thing—meeting their heroes, whether that was one of the developers, a popular YouTuber, or a modder. As far as the fans are concerned, the future of Minecraft will always be with the people who make the game great, not fancy technology. Mojang has loftier goals, though it’s hard to say if VR and added connectivity truly hold the key to where Minecraft goes next. Then again, predicting the future is no easy task.
Out in Europe and Japan, and coming later today in North America, Minecraft update 1.37 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Vita adds support for all of the newly released DLC and fixes some issues.
For £1.69, the Halloween Battle Map offers a new Battle Mini Game map built with the Halloween texture set. Also £1.69, the Campfire Tales Skin Pack packs in 16 spooky skins, from mythical monsters to other strange sightings. Then, for £2.49, there’s Battle Map Pack 4, which includes three new maps: “Creep through the deserted, snowbound Dig, slog it out amid the over-sized furniture of Shrunk and hoedown before you showdown in the dusty Frontier.”
If you prefer DLC bundles, you can now pick up the Spooky Bundle for £5.79 to get the Halloween Mash-up, Halloween Battle Map, and Campfire Tales Skin Pack. If you want to spend £13.99 on the Builder’s Pack, you’ll receive these six packs: Biome Settlers Skin Pack 1, Candy Texture Pack, Cartoon Texture Pack, Pattern Texture Pack, Plastic Texture Pack, and Greek Mythology Mash-up.
Here’s the full list of patch notes for Minecraft update 1.37 on PlayStation:
Added Halloween Battle Map.
Added Campfire Tales Skin Pack.
Added Battle Map Pack 4.
Fixes for missing/incorrect tooltips when looking at various blocks and entities.
Fix for Endermen not becoming hostile when a player makes eye contact with them.
Fix for only one of eight Fossil variants generating per world.
Fix for igniting TNT blocks while one is already lit causing them to disappear.
Fix for crash that may occur if the Ender Dragon attacks a group of Zombies.
Stop faster healing due to food saturation in Battle mini game
Updated Battle maps to remove some areas where players could get stuck.
Fix for MCCE 2521 – Shears don’t break web blocks into Web block drop.
Fix for MCCE 2505 – Knocking a Guardian off a height great enough to kill it on falling would cause a crash.
Fix for MCCE-2478 – Oak and Iron Doors Items have the wrong texture in the Inventory.
Fix for MCCE-2420: Sub Account Content Restriction. (PS4 only)
The new update is also available on Xbox One, Xbox 360, and Wii U.
Expect all of the DLC to be available in North America following the update. Read more at http://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2016/10/25/minecraft-update-1-37-today-ps4-ps3-ps-vita-adds-dlc-support/#bBO0xj69OoIGqqtp.99
Most Marvel movies open like Robert Downey Jr.’s stand-up routine in “Iron Man” before it goes south. They deliver quips and silky come-hither nonsense, only to end up like a big green monster stuck on rewind: “Hulk smash!” again and again, ad infinitum. In between start and finish, there are moments of levity and discovery in the machined product, but too often you can’t see the movie for Marvel’s action plan. Its latest, the giddily enjoyable “Doctor Strange,” is part of Marvel’s strategy for world domination, yet it’s also so visually transfixing, so beautiful and nimble that you may even briefly forget the brand.
You don’t need to know Dr. Strange to know his story. A tale of hubris — with foolish pride and an inevitable fall — it opens in contemporary New York, where Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), is flying high as a supersurgeon. After a crippling accident, he abandons his old life (partly embodied by Rachel McAdams, dewy and funny) for a grand exploit, traveling simultaneously into his soul and to the misterioso Far East. He meets leaders and fellow travelers, studies books and unlocks secrets, in time becoming a superhero with magical powers, a dubious goatee and a flirty cape that dries his tears.
Dr. Strange first popped out of the glorious head of Steve Ditko, the comic-book visionary who brought him to life with Stan Lee (a pairing best known for Spider-Man). Dr. Strange’s travels east evoke the inner and outer magical mystery tours of the 1960s, summoning visions of head-tripping and “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.” In a, well, yes, strange bit of timing, Dr. Strange appeared in 1963, around the time Harvard fired Timothy Leary and a colleague for conducting experiments with hallucinogens. Five years later, in Tom Wolfe’s “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” the Merry Prankster Ken Kesey was downing acid and absorbed in “the plunging purple Steve Ditko shadows of Dr. Strange.”
“Doctor Strange” tethers its plunging purples, acid greens and altered states to a hero’s journey with its call to adventure, its mentor, its allies and its enemies. After his crisis, Dr. Strange lands in Nepal, where he meets a guide (Chiwetel Ejiofor, as brooding and sincere as Hamlet). There, he studies the way of the hero with the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton), a Celtic sorcerer, who in the comics emerged from the Himalayas and the West’s long fascination with, and appropriation of, Eastern mysticism. (The screenwriter C. Robert Cargill has said that some of the changes involving the sorcerer, originally from Tibet, stemmed from concerns that depictions of Tibetans might anger China, a movie market powerhouse.)
Dr. Strange’s voyage of self-discovery is as old as the ancients and as familiar as Christopher Nolan’s 2005 “Batman Begins,” where men become near-gods while training amid hazy, low-key lighting. And just as Mr. Nolan borrows from the original Dr. Strange, this “Doctor Strange” borrows from Mr. Nolan. It owes a conspicuous debt to his delirious 2010 fantasy, “Inception,” and that movie’s vision of a city folding in on itself. In “Doctor Strange,” the director Scott Derrickson and his crew push the medium’s plasticity further, creating spaces that bend, splinter and multiply. A wall folds open like a spreading hand fan while cityscapes fragment into whirring, shifting fractal forms.
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Tilda Swinton and Chiwetel Ejiofor in “Doctor Strange.”Credit Jay Maidment/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
These impossible visions at times evoke the work of M. C. Escher, who used perspective to destabilize otherwise realistic images. Elsewhere, the movie’s pinging-ponging characters seem caught in one of Rube Goldberg’s mischievous machines, like the witty chase in which Dr. Strange runs atop a platform while an enemy runs below him upside down, transformed into a gravity-defying doppelgänger. And, as with the dreamscapes in “Inception,” the special effects in “Doctor Strange” serve beauty and meaning rather than the grimly tedious destruction that drains energy out of most contemporary superhero movies. Here, you remember the wit, not the rubble.
The space-and-time warping and mirrored realities in “Doctor Strange” are a blast. They’re inventive enough that they awaken wonder, provoking that delicious question: How did they do that? At the same time, Mr. Derrickson resists the temptation to loiter. Drawn-out set pieces have become endemic in effects-driven vehicles and can stop a movie dead as filmmakers show off their cool toys (and budget) and ignore everything else, the story and restive audience included. In the modern-era superhero movie, this kind of grandstanding has nearly assumed the level of a genre prerequisite, especially in finales that never seem to end, but end and end and end (then die).
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Everyone wants to rule the world: Mads Mikkelsen, center, and some villainous pals in “Doctor Strange.”Credit Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Mr. Cumberbatch’s affable screen presence works up a strong, steady counterbeat to his character’s narcissism. As is the case when he plays characters like Sherlock Holmes, Mr. Cumberbatch comes across in this movie as at once supremely capable (it’s easy to accept him as a neurosurgeon) and more than a little goofy, with the kind of lopsided beauty and spring-loaded physicality that seem ready-made for silly faces and walks. Dr. Strange’s arrogance ruins his career, but Mr. Derrickson makes sure that it doesn’t weigh down the story. The character’s conceit is a mask that’s always in danger of slipping, which complicates his heroism with moments of bluffing, comedy and doubt.
Mr. Derrickson does a lot right, including with his lineup of strong actors (the cast also includes Benedict Wong and Mads Mikkelsen) who hold your attention even as the ground shifts below their feet. They help elevate the more generic beats in “Doctor Strange” because, for all the phantasmagoria and time-skipping, there is also much by the book, including the vaguely Christ-like, fallen and risen savior. The movie’s more lysergic sections are followed with carefully aligned narrative bricks and mortar and sometimes sealed with a quip, as if to reassure you that there’s nothing too far out about any of this. That’s hardly unexpected, and it also scarcely matters because when a good fantasy fiction like this opens that door of perception called imagination it’s a total trip.
“Doctor Strange” is rated PG-13 (parents strongly cautioned) for supernatural violence. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes.
Meet Count Olaf in the New ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’ Teaser
The first teaser trailer for Netflix’s upcoming adaptation of “A Series of Unfortunate Events” was all build-up, promising “cruel whimsy and whimsical cruelty ” to come. Now, another teaser, featuring footage from the actual series, in finally here, and it certainly delivers on that promise.
The short clip gives viewers a brief synopsis of the story, which focuses on the three orphaned Baudelaire siblings, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, who are sent to live with their mysterious uncle, Count Olaf (Neil Patrick Harris). Unfortunately for the kids — and the word “unfortunate” will almost certainly pop up again and again in this series — Olaf is a cruel, greedy man, whose only aim is to swindle the children out of their parents’ inheritance.
Olaf proves to be a formidable foe for the Baudelaires, described by others as “a vile, terrible person” and “a thief and a murderer.” Thankfully, the kids can more than hold their own against their uncle, and band together to outsmart him at every turn, while also working to solve their the mystery behind their parents’ death.
The eight-episode series is set to debut on Netflix on January 13.
