Christmas Giveaway – Battlerite Deathstalker Scorpion Mount
It’s Christmas day, which means it is only benefitting for us to post a new giveaway. We’ve partnered once again with Stunlock Studios, the makers of Battlerite, for the occasion. The free-to-play game is a great success with almost three million players registered by SteamSpy and by grabbing a code in the giveaway below you’ll be able to earn a free Deathstalker Scorpion mount in the game.
Do keep in mind the following instructions for the giveaway before entering.
VALID REGIONS:
- US-East
- US-West
- Europe
- Russia
- Japan
- India
- South Africa
- Hong Kong
- Australia
- South East Asia (Singapore)
- South America (Brazil, Chile, Peru)
HOW TO ACTIVATE YOUR FREE CHAMPION KEY ON STEAM
Download Battlerite for free at this address.
Please follow these instructions to activate a new retail purchase on Steam:
Launch the Steam client software and log into your Steam account.
Click the Games Menu.
Choose Activate a Product on Steam…
Follow the onscreen instructions to complete the process.
Open the game and go to the mount collection to find your Free Deathstalker Mount.
Battlerite is a PvP arena brawler and the spiritual successor to the critically acclaimed Bloodline Champions. Experience the unique combination of a top -down shooter meeting a fast -paced fighting game and take part in highly competitive, adrenaline-fueled 2v2 and 3v3 battles.
Engage in quick and intense action as you take control over one of many Champions, each with unique abilities to master. Welcome to a world where Champions dedicate their lives to the Arena.
QUICK ARENA ACTION
Master the Arena in explosive battles of reaction. Choose your Champion, team up with friends, and dive into combat – for glory awaits only those who seek it.
Aim skill-shots and dodge projectiles with the use of WASD movement & cursor – based aiming. Wield total control over your champion and execute massive attacks against opponents.
Gain strength and upgrade your abilities using rites. Select your rites to strategically customize your play style.
Show off your skills in style. From weapons and outfits to victory stances, there’s a huge variety of cosmetic customizations to make you stand out from the crowd.
Paid Nintendo Switch Online Service Delayed To Fall 2018
Nintendo Switch Online, the paid online service for Nintendo’s hybrid console, was originally meant to launch in Fall 2017 after the trial became available with Splatoon 2. However, we haven’t heard about it in a long time and for good reason.
As you can read below, on the Italian website it is now explained that the paid subscription service will be available in Fall (Autumn) 2018. That’s a pretty huge delay and one has to wonder whether Nintendo is simply having infrastructure issues or perhaps there will be new features to entice players to subscribe to Nintendo Switch Online. As a reminder, we’ve included below the official feature list confirmed by Nintendo at the time.
Of course, availability could vary between territories though it would be quite weird in this day and age where services and even games launch day and date globally.
Online Play on Nintendo Switch
You’ll be able to play compatible co-op and competitive games online by signing in with your Nintendo Account. Online play is free for Nintendo Account holders until our paid online service launches in 2018.
After the free-trial period, most games will require a paid online service subscription from Nintendo in order to play online. Currently the free-trial, the paid service, and online play (for applicable modes in compatible games) will be available for customers in the US, Canada, and Mexico. For the latest list of countries, please visit Customer Support.
This service is only for Nintendo Switch. It does not affect Wii U or Nintendo 3DS systems or online play.
Nintendo Switch Online app
The Nintendo Switch Online smart device app is designed to enhance your online experience for compatible games on the Nintendo Switch console.
Link to compatible games
This app will initially be compatible with the Splatoon 2 game. It will give you access to SplatNet 2, where you can see your online battle stats, your gear, and much more. See details here.
Invite friends and voice chat during games
With the app, you can send online play invitations to players on your Nintendo Switch system’s friend list. The app also lets you quickly send invites via social networks and messaging services. When you’re invited to a game, you’ll get notified right away via a push notification on your smart device.
Once players are connected, you can use voice chat openly with friends while in the online lobby and during online play (depending on the game).
Classic Game Selection
Subscribers will get to download a compilation of classic titles with added online play, such as Super Mario Bros. 3, Balloon Fight and Dr. Mario.
Nintendo eShop deals
Special offers for subscribers may include discounts on select digital games and content.
Pricing
Prices listed are in U.S. dollars and do not include tax. Pricing for additional countries will be announced closer to the launch of the service.
Portal Knights Review – Minecraft + RPG – Fun
There’s a tendency among Minecraft-alikes to forget what made Minecraft so popular. Aside from the novel pricing during alpha, LEGO comparisons, and a vague crafting system that really forced the community to come together, it was the freedom of it. You drop into the world, and you go anywhere, do anything, build the world you want to build. Yes, I know that you’re fully aware of what Minecraft is, but the building blocks (hehe) of its success cannot be understated.
Imagination is required in Minecraft, with the limited selection of blocks you must take yourself back a few hundred feet and squint a wee bit in order to have your majestic replica of a castle look like your reference point – but this imagination requirement also makes absolutely anything that much more feasible. Adding details, more block types, and most damagingly, linearity; well, it just doesn’t gel with the way the game should be played. It’s something games inspired by Minecraft have yet to learn, and Portal Knights is yet another title where I’m sure it seemed like a great idea at the time.
It’s a shame though, because the foundations of Portal Knights are all here, and they’re solid, with some great ideas. Take the basic crafting formula of Minecraft, which is tried and tested, and introduce more customisability, more interesting, detailed environments, heck just a few RPG elements to make things unique. All great ideas, all implemented well, but together, it all feels like a bit of a mess.
In Portal Knights you start as a basic Warrior, Ranger or Mage class in a tutorial area, where some quests will run you through combat, collecting materials, crafting and progressing through the game. You do set your own pace, for the most part, and the game never rushes you, but there’s also no agency. Or reason to do anything, I suppose. Exploring the world and making progress is its own reward, but what is defined as progress is a bit weird. Is it completing quests? Achieving your own goals and building your own structures? Crafting new gear? I suppose its all of these things, but none of them made me feel like I was, well, progressing. Or enjoying the experience.
Instead, it felt more like a checkbox exercise. Upgrading the Workbench to Workbench II happened because the quest told me to. Sure, it was a tutorial quest, teaching me how to upgrade things – but I also don’t know what new avenues that opened up for me. The game never told me why it was necessary, it just was. Having tutorial quests for things like this are nice, but then the game left me alone to figure out how to repair my tools – which degrade really fast. Luckily it’s simple enough to repair them, once you figure out how.
Once you’re done mucking around in the tutorial area it’s time to move on, by crafting a portal from blue stone shards. You collect these from almost everything, so you should have plenty after killing monsters and mining for resources. Each portal you complete opens up the next area, which has a different theme, vibe and monsters. They feel like unique areas, something Minecraft wishes it had. Sadly though, the randomly generated nature of the world lets it down. In one world I had generated, a house was on top of a hill overlooking the rest of the area. Beautiful. In another, that same building was in a pit that I had to dig my way out of. Not so beautiful.
When you jump into Portal Knights and generate your own world you can select from a Small or Large world size, and the largest world size isn’t exactly that big. Not a problem though, since there are loads of different “stages” to visit, not confining you to a single, limited open world. Each stage is unique, taking on different appearances, such as desert, forest, snowfield, and changing to a different season, Autumn, Spring, etc. The change of scenery is a welcome addition and makes traveling between them feel like there’s some genuine progress between each one.
Simple acts like mining, however, feel so frustrating. It sounds minor, but it’s awkward to aim at a single block to mine in third person (there is, of course, a first person mode) and the mining just takes too long. Perhaps this is an isolated complaint, but staring at blocks to slowly chip away at them is a tedious process, especially on top of all of the regular combat you’ll be doing. It takes too long to collect a single block, even with the proper tools, and it makes digging a staircase out of a hole super frustrating – more frustrating still, is that sometimes the game will essentially tell you to get into the holes before making you burrow your way out, unless you warp to a past area.
On top of a myriad of small frustrations, we even have an apparently Switch-specific bug, where the Warrior – the only melee class – can’t hit flying monsters. They fly right over the weapon’s hitboxes, and it’s utter nonsense. The development team made it clear that they’re aware of the issue and are fixing, but when an RPG-like game has only three classes, having one of them being entirely broken is unforgivable.
But, it’s not all doom and gloom. Portal Knights is a very pretty game, and although the framerate can chug at times, it never became a serious problem in my time playing the game. The abundance of flora covering the world gives everything a bit of extra depth, but it also makes the blocks underneath more difficult to see. Typical. It’s a shame, but it feels like for every positive addition this game has over its basic block-placing buddies, there’s also a negative point to counter anything I can praise. A real shame, because I think Portal Knights had great promise, but I wouldn’t recommend it over either Minecraft or Dragon Quest Builders.
Reviewed on Nintendo Switch (code provided by the publisher). You can purchase the game on Amazon.
Portal Knights is a Minecraft-alike with a lot of personality and a lot of promise, but in its current state, I just couldn’t enjoy it. It feels bloated in places, empty in others, and just can’t compare to other games in the block-placing, creation “genre”. Fun for a while, but outstays its welcome too quickly.
Minecraft edition made in East Linton goes double platinum in Japan
THE head of a computer games studio based in an East Lothian village has collected a prestigious award in Japan after a game he helped develop sold more than two million copies in Asia.
Paddy Burns, CEO of East Linton-based 4J Studios, was at the PlayStation Awards at the Grand Prince Hotel to collect a double platinum award for Minecraft.
That award acknowledges that the game has sold more than two million copies in Asia across the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita consoles.
Mr Burns explained how the county-based business had helped develop the worldwide hit game.
He told the Courier: “Microsoft bought the creators of the Minecraft game [Mojang] for $2.5 billion in 2014 but 4J Studios are independent and develop the console editions of Minecraft for Microsoft on Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Wii U.”
At the ceremony in Tokyo, Mr Burns said it was a “great honour” to accept the award.
He said: “I was delighted to receive the award and to visit Japan for the first time.
“I had quite a few Sony people coming up to me at the after show party to thank me for developing the game for Sony consoles and to say how much they enjoy playing the game with their kids.”
And while Mr Burns, who set up 4J Studios with Chris van der Kuyl and Frank Arnot, knew in advance that he would be on stage, he was not aware they were the only recipients of the double platinum award.
He added: “I was told in advance that we were receiving the award but didn’t know we were the only game to have achieved a double platinum award, so that was a nice surprise!
“It caused some surprise that it was a Western game and that there was a Microsoft representative getting an award at a Sony show.”
The 4J Studios console edition versions of Minecraft – which allows players to build with a variety of different cubes in a 3D world – have now sold more than 50 million copies worldwide.
The East Linton office is based in the bottom floor of Mr Burns’ house in the village.
A seven-strong software and internal test team are based in East Linton, while the art and world-building teams are at the company’s Dundee office.
Minecraft edition made in East Linton goes double platinum in Japan
Review: Minecraft: Story Mode Season Two – Episode 5: Above and Beyond
The Season Two story on the whole is a mishmash of various elements without an overall key focus. Yes, there is a main villain, the Admin, however the way in which he is used fluctuates wildly between episodes. One minute he has taken the form of a giant sea temple guardian to destroy Beacon Town (oh how we wish he had, we’re sick of that place), the next minute he is a snowman who has challenged you to navigate a labyrinth of puzzles, then suddenly he is bedrocking over the whole world trying to start a fresh one. Throughout the entire season his motives are left a mystery to the player and as for his masterplans, they are utter nonsense.
Season Two also suffers from pacing issues and using the same environments too many times, Beacon Town being the main culprit. It was a pretty uninteresting location in the first season and then to be forced to explore it again in the opening of Season Two only for it to be brought back again for the majority of the finale is disappointing to say the least. The pacing is rather slow throughout the season and the finale is especially slow to get going as Jesse and gang take their time planning their approach to stop the Admin in a flash-forward scene that you then play through a few minutes later almost entirely as planned. As if to rub salt in your wounds, the most interesting bit where you get to fight the Admin is rushed over like it’s irrelevant and feels like a really anticlimactic ending to the season.
About half way through Above and Beyond is a puzzle that has no explanation on how it can be solved; it’s also required to be solved to progress. It involves removing blocks from a grid with numbers at one side; all you have to help you out is the code #Potato451. As for what that means or refers to we have no idea, as far as we’re aware it’s utter nonsense. Although it’s just a simple enter the code puzzle the way in which it is designed is confusing as you have to remove blocks from a wall and if you can’t figure that out you won’t be able to progress and just be left staring blankly at a wall.
The finale spends a lot of time undoing the decisions you made in the previous episodes as characters that you thought had met their demise magically reappear to save you or just because they can. It’s a real shame as it makes all the decisions feel redundant even though at the time of deciding it seems critical to make the right choice. The outcomes generally end up the same no matter what you choose.
Conclusion
Above and Beyond is a rather disappointing end to a rather lacklustre second season for Minecraft: Story Mode. The season’s plot is forgettable, the pacing is slow throughout, and the same environments are used repeatedly. Although the final boss fight is enjoyable, the ending is surprisingly anticlimactic. Unless you were a huge fan of Jesse’s first outing, you won’t be missing much by skipping this season.
Review: Minecraft: Story Mode Season Two – Episode 5: Above and Beyond
MPAVILION Redesign MPavilion with Minecraft
What would MPavilion look like if it was co-designed by kids using Minecraft? Find out in this interactive workshop hosted by our friends at Matters Journal, as they bring to life a feature story from ‘Mini Matters’—the first ‘mini’ print publication of Matters Journal.
Based on the ‘Block by Block’ program developed by UN-Habitat in partnership with Mojang, this workshop gives kids aged eight to fifteen a chance to bring their creative visions to life, using the video game Minecraft to build a virtual model—all the while exploring new ways of using technology and design to engage communities in the public realm.
If you or your friends have children who love Minecraft, building things or all of the above, bring them along to MPavilion for this workshop facilitated by some highly experienced and tech-savvy big kids. Channel your love of Minecraft, architecture, engineering or design as an online facilitator for this IRL multiplayer activity—redesigning MPavilion Minecraft-style! Following the event, Monash University’s Department of Materials and Science Engineering will 3D print the designs created during the workshop.
This is a free workshop. Drop-ins welcome but registration is encouraged! This workshop is limited to 24 kids (aged 8–15) and 16 big kids (aged 15+).
Realms Clubs come to Minecraft — sharing that giant pixel block Cthulhu is now easier than ever
Minecraft Realms are servers run by Microsoft where players can invite their friends for private games.
It’s a great place to play together if you want to work on a particular project or collaborate to a higher degree. Today, the Minecraft team revealed Realms Clubs, online meeting places created specifically for members of your Realms to share creations and socialize. In your Realms Club, you can share posts with each other and like videos, photos and comments.
Realms Clubs will begin rolling out today for Minecraft on Xbox One, mobile, and Windows 10. They’re are automatically created for your Realm, and anyone you invite to your Realm is also added to the Club. You can access your Realms Clubs from the Xbox App on PC, mobile, or console, or directly from your Realms menu in Minecraft.
To take a screenshot, just pause the game and hit the button with the Camera icon next to the “Feed” button. Pressing this button will take a screenshot of the current view — excluding the menu — and add it to your list of saved screenshots or directly to your Realms Clubs feed. This is a great way to share your structures with everyone in the Club.
For those worried about what people post, players can report comments and posts in your Club to the club administrator, who can then delete posts and comments and remove players from the Club if necessary. It’s a curated experience which should make parents feel comfortable about their children playing on them. For example, children need a parent to adjust their permissions in order to use Realms and Realms Clubs. They can’t see any content posted in Clubs without additional parental permissions.
Realms Clubs sounds like great ways to collaborate with one another so it’s important gamers only invite people they know. It’s the administrator’s responsibility to make sure their Club operates smoothly and is a positive experience for everyone.
Realms Clubs come to Minecraft — sharing that giant pixel block Cthulhu is now easier than ever
‘Minecraft: Story Mode – Season Two’ Season Finale Now Available for Download on All Platforms
SAN RAFAEL, Calif., and STOCKHOLM, Sweden, December 19th, 2017 — Award-winning developer and publisher of digital entertainment Telltale Games and world-renowned game developer Mojang today launched the fifth and final episode of Minecraft: Story Mode – Season Two. The episode, entitled ‘Above and Beyond,’ is now available for download on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, Mac, iOS, and Android-based devices, as well as through Telltale’s own online store.
The home Jesse left so long ago — Beacontown — has succumbed to the iron rule of the Admin. Menacing guards patrol the streets, anxious citizens tremble in fear, and worst of all, everyone believes Jesse is responsible thanks to the Admin’s devious disguise. In order to save the city, the real Jesse must find a way to zap the Admin’s powers and take him down once and for all…
Minecraft: Story Mode – Season Two continues Jesse’s saga in a five-part, narrative-driven, episodic game series developed by Telltale in collaboration with Minecraft developer Mojang and members of the Minecraft community. Though players’ choices from the first season will optionally carry over into season two, this new season is intended to be accessible to both returning fans and newcomers alike.
This second season includes Telltale’s unique multiplayer ‘Crowd Play’ feature, which allows friends and family to engage with the adventure together by helping to decide the direction of the story from any mobile device with an online connection. This season also features voice work from Patton Oswalt, Catherine Taber, Ashley Johnson, and Scott Porter, as well as cameos from Stampy Cat, stacyplays, and other personalities from the Minecraft community on YouTube.
Minecraft: Story Mode – Season Two is a standalone product separate from both the core Minecraft game and season one of Minecraft: Story Mode. Season two is available for download on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, Mac, iOS, and Android-based devices. A retail version on disc is also available. Episode five has been rated ‘Everyone 10+’ by the ESRB.
For more information on Telltale Games, visit the official website, follow @TelltaleGames on Twitter, and like Telltale on Facebook.
For more information on Mojang, visit the official website, follow @Mojang and @Minecraft on Twitter, and like Minecraft on Facebook.
About Mojang
Mojang AB is a Microsoft-owned games studio based in Stockholm, Sweden. We’re responsible for the relatively popular video game Minecraft. We also created the card-collecting tactical battler Scrolls, and have dabbled in publishing with Oxeye Game Studio’s awesome side-scrolling robo-blaster Cobalt. We’re developing more games, too, but we’re not ready to talk about those quite yet.
About Telltale, Inc.
Telltale is a leading independent developer and publisher of games for every major interactive platform, including PC, home consoles, and mobile devices. It also pioneered the episodic delivery of digital gaming content.
Founded in 2004 by games industry veterans with decades of experience, Telltale quickly became an industry leader, with numerous honors and awards from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, BAFTA, IMGA, and more. In 2012, Telltale was named Studio of the Year after establishing a model for successful episodic game creation and digital publishing.
Telltale’s reputation for quality has been established across more than three dozen different product releases over the years, earning acclaim from publications like IGN, The New York Times, and Variety, as well as over 100 “Game of the Year” awards. Telltale is a fully licensed third party publisher on consoles from Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, and also publishes games on the PC, Mac, and Apple iOS platforms.
Press Release © 2017 Telltale, Inc.
TELLTALE CONTACT: Scott Butterworth // pr@telltalegames.com
MOJANG CONTACT: Marsh Davies // marsh@mojang.com
‘Minecraft: Story Mode – Season Two’ Season Finale Now Available for Download on All Platforms
‘Minecraft’ Studio Releases New Game, ‘Cobalt WASD’
Mojang, the creators and original publisher of Minecraft, today released Cobalt WASD, a new game created by a team that includes one of the a lead developer of Minecraft.
Developer Oxeye Studios describe Cobalt WASD as a multiplayer follow-up to their robo-RPG Cobalt. The game introduces competitive team-play in the style of a side-scrolling Counter-Strike and controls tuned for mouse-aim and keyboard.
In the game, two teams of bots fight across multiple rounds to try and plant and detonate bombs in their opponents’ base. Each round earns money the teams can spend on equipment and weaponry, much like in popular first-person shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. But in the case of Cobalt WASD, the equipment and weapons are a bit more unrealistic, like a stealth suit, reflector shield, radioactive crossbows and a time-slowing bomb.
The game is available starting on November 30th on Steam for Windows machines and will support player-createod maps and modes through Steam Workshop. The developers say they created the game specifically for PC, which means it has mouse-aim, dedicated servers, lots of camera settings, a native resolution of 1920×1080 and can even run at 1000 frames per second. The game will sell for about $8.30 (it will be €6.99). But it will be free to folks who were alpha testers.
You can also pick up the original Cobalt for the reduced price of about $18, once WASD launches, or get both in a bundle for about $23.
Oxeye game Studios is an indie game studio made up of former Minecraft lead developer Jens Bergensten, Daniel Brynolf and Pontus Hammarberg.
Square Enix’s Minecraft-inspired Dragon Quest Builders is coming to Switch next year
The game originally launched on PS4, PS3, and Vita last year, and was very well received. Despite its obvious similarities to Minecraft, both in its blocky aesthetic and in its core crafting and construction loops, it’s an altogether more structured. focussed experience.
Dragon Quest Builders goes beyond mere open-ended survival, featuring a proper story-driven adventure. Here, you’re charged with restoring the world of Alefgard, completing tasks to rebuild towns and attract new citizens. These in turn will help fend off enemies, and offer quests that send you exploring ever-further afield. It was a strong enough twist on the classic Minecraft formula to earn a Recommended badge in Eurogamer’s review.
Dragon Quest Builders on Switch will apparently feature an exclusive “Great Sabrecub” which can “boost your speed and grant you special material by defeating enemies.”
A sequel, simply titled Dragon Quest Builders 2, was announced for Switch and PlayStation 4 earlier this year, and will add co-op play, a feature missing from the original game. However, there’s no word on a release date for that just yet.
Square Enix’s Minecraft-inspired Dragon Quest Builders is coming to Switch next year
Minecraft welcomes new Norse Mythology DLC pack
Minecraft and Norse mythology may seem like two very different things, but the two are coming together with the new Norse Mythology Mash-Up Pack, a new DLC release that brings together some familiar pieces together with the blocky goodness of Minecraft.
The mash-up pack includes locations like Hel, the Great Hall, and Yggdrasil from throughout the annals of Norse mythology. You can even dress up as important figures from the stories themselves, like the very same ones you may remember reading about in one of your history classes (the parts you fell asleep during.)
For instance you can dress up as Thor and Odin, or even Heimdall and Sif. There are a few creatures up for grabs as well to complete the package. Enemies get several interesting skins as well, transforming familiar baddies into antagonists based in Norse mythology.
There are plenty of large, fanciful environments found in the expansion as well that really look as though they could transport you, even temporarily, to a faraway place and time. You can see it all in action in the official trailer, and you can download the DLC pack right now across all Minecraft platforms.
If you like reskinning Minecraft with lots of different looks, be on the lookout for a new Festive Mash-Up DLC pack, which is releasing later this week just in time for the holidays. It will transform your favorite world with candy canes, Santa hats, reindeer, and more!
Portumna company selected by Microsoft and Mojang as official Minecraft events partner
A small family business in the West of Ireland has been selected by global gaming giants Microsoft and Mojang as an official events partner for Minecraft community events.
O’Brien Event Management was established by mum-of-three Lisa O’Brien, who was inspired to run conventions for fans of Minecraft after witnessing her own children’s obsession with the game.
Her company is now one of only three companies worldwide to be certified as an official Minecraft community events partner.
Speaking to the Galway Advertiser, Ms. O’Brien said “being selected by Microsoft and Mojang as an official events partner for Minecraft community events is a huge honour. We are the only partner company in Ireland.
“Having this status will allow us display official Minecraft graphics at our future events, offering fans an even better and more immersive experience. It will also enable us to strengthen our relationships with the global Minecraft community, including those who produce the maps used by Minecraft players when they bring in Microsoft educations to explain the powers of Minecraft to event attendees.
“Becoming an official partner will help hugely in continuing to grow our event, attracting world-class participants and sponsors, and ensuring we’re the No. 1 event for Minecraft fans in Ireland and beyond.”
Ms O’Brien ran her first “MineVention” event in Galway in December 2014. The 1,500 tickets for the event sold out in just nine hours and, since then, she has run an additional 20 MineVention events and workshops in 10 locations nationwide. Over 35,000 people have attended her events.
Tickets for Ireland’s next MineVention event are on sale now. The event will take place in Dublin’s RDS on 14th and 15th April. Tickets start from €15 and are available through Ticketmaster.
“When we started out in 2014, we had no idea of the demand that was out there from Minecraft fans. Parents had their children literally begging them to get tickets to our events.
“The support we’ve received from the Minecraft community and attendees has been overwhelming. We attribute our success to being responsive and keeping it real: we’re a small company and we personally deal with all aspects of the event – from programming, marketing and ticketing to email enquiries and social media.
“We take all feedback on board, and we implement changes and improvements all the time in response to what we’re hearing from Minecraft fans. We’ve also built up excellent relationships with Minecraft content creators: we’ve had some of the most high-profile people in the global Minecraft community attending and participating in our events.”
Minecraft is one of the most popular computer games ever developed, selling over 122 million copies since it launched in 2009.
Its popularity is so great that a community of professional YouTubers has emerged – gamers who make a living from posting videos of themselves online playing Minecraft.
The attendance of these professional gamers at the various events over the years has been one of the most popular elements of MineVention, says Lisa O’Brien.
“The ‘meet and greets’ with YouTubers have been hugely successful,” she says. “However, there’s a lot more than that to our events. We also have Minecraft VR, Education in Minecraft, gaming tournaments, ‘Build Battle’ stages, games, and arts and crafts.
“We’ve partnered with Autism Action to make sure our events are accessible and welcoming for children with autism and, in 2018, we’re introducing lots of new elements, including the chance to play on new maps built by Mojang’s MarketPlace and to visit our streaming zone to see how it all works. The fact that we’re now an official Minecraft partner means our 2018 event will be the best yet.”
O’Brien Event Management is based in Portumna, Co. Galway, and employs four people alongside Ms. O’Brien, with plans to recruit a further three staff-members in the coming year.
Further information about MineVention 2018 is available at www.minevention.com
Portumna company selected by Microsoft and Mojang as official Minecraft events partner
Square Enix CEO: Microtransactions Are Better Suited for Mobile Games Than Console Games
Square Enix can claim a few of the year’s biggest success stories with games like Nier: Automata, Final Fantasy XV, and the continued success of Final Fantasy XIV. And while Square Enix has floated games as services as the future of the industry, bolstered by a successful series of mobile games, it appears the recent controversies around microtransactions have made an impact on the company.
In a recent interview with Square Enix CEO Yosuke Matsuda for MCV, the Square Enix head shared some thoughts about microtransactions in the current game climate and how the practice might not suit console games.
“What people expect and want in a home console game is perhaps quite different from what people want in a mobile game,” said Matsuda. “The way that console games are made, the volume of content and how much effort goes into them, there’s something in that which doesn’t fit in the mind with microtransactions.”
The statement is rather interesting because earlier this year, Matsuda said that the focus in the industry is shifting towards games as services, a style of game where players would be continuously tied to a single game thanks to regular content releases. There appears to be an acknowledgement that microtransactions in full content, $60 games are incompatible.
However in the age of season passes, story expansions, and other forms of DLC, it’s hard to take this as an outright indictment of microtransactions from the Square Enix CEO. What’s clear is that Matsuda seems to argue that the tactics for microtransactions found in mobile games can’t, or won’t, work in console games. What that means in practice is still unclear.
EA kicked up a huge controversy regarding microtransactions with Star Wars Battlefront 2 this holiday season. The game offered players who wanted an “accelerated” experience an option to purchase game-improving upgrades. This generated anger among players who felt it to be unfair for players who have to otherwise play hours and hours of game content to receive the benefits of players who can buy their way to the top.
Now the industry is reeling from the controversy, with lawmakers calling for investigations into loot practices and EA considering abandoning loot boxes altogether.
Square Enix for its part found major success with the single-player Nier: Automata. There’s a good chance that its success and the toxicity around microtransactions could convince Square Enix to stay clear from practices that could potentially anger players like loot boxes.
Square Enix CEO: Microtransactions Are Better Suited for Mobile Games Than Console Games
PUBG Xbox One Patch to Deliver Performance and Visual Improvements
The Xbox One version of PUBG hasn’t had the smoothest of releases, with the game’s performance and visuals coming under fire from players. Thankfully, PUBG on Xbox One is set to be improved today thanks to the game’s first patch.
PUBG on Xbox One currently suffers from some pretty severe frame rate issues and isn’t much of a looker (on either Xbox One or Xbox One X), but the first steps to improve things start today. As well as a series of bug fixes, gameplay, and UI tweaks, the debut patch for PUBG on Xbox One will provide a first pass on visual and performance improvements.
That’s great news for players of PUBG on Xbox One X. While the game is part of the Xbox Game Preview program and as such is a work in progress, such a high profile game performing so badly on the consoles isn’t a good look for Microsoft. As the firm battles to gain some ground on the PlayStation 4, it’s hoping the power of the Xbox One X will win over some players.
The Xbox One PUBG patch will go live today at 1AM PST / 10AM CET / 6PM KST. Detailed patch are below:
Gameplay
- Gas can now be used while on bike or bike with sidecar
UI/UX
- Equipment icons on HUD will now be visible
- Player icon is now more clearly visible on the world map
- UI prompts now appear when reload and enter a vehicle options are present
- Character
- Tweaked hair color options
Animation
- Cleaned up sidecar passenger animations in first person view
- Fixed player camera issues while a passenger on the backseat of a Buggy
- Addressed arm animations specific to holding some weapons
- Character now correctly faces the proper direction when stopping while swimming
Others
- First pass visual and performance improvements
- Slightly improved anti-aliasing on Xbox One and Xbox One S
- Localization updates for Vietnamese, Spanish,(Spain/Mexico)
- Controls on motorcycle no longer inverted
- Keyboard functionality is disabled
Bug Fixes
- Fixed instances of player nametags not properly displaying in the lobby during Squad and Duo play
- Fixed minor animation while crouching and prone
- Fixed issues where curtains on windows block line of sight of players in the TPP mode
- Fixed an issue where when Squad leader left the party, voice chat ceased to function as intended
- Fixed issue where players could lean out of vehicles even when obstructed
- Fixed collision of cardboard boxes in Yasnaya city
- Fixed typo in the controller guide
- Other minor fixes
Read all about how to get better at PUBG on Xbox One in our PUBG Xbox One guides.
PUBG Xbox One Patch to Deliver Performance and Visual Improvements
Minecraft Players Are Choosing The Xbox One Edition Over The Better Together Version
Back in September, Microsoft and Mojang launched the Better Together update for Minecraft on Windows 10, Xbox One, iOS, and Android. This update allowed players on those devices to play together and access the Marketplace on any of those platforms.
The new Better Together versions of Minecraft are known collectively as the Bedrock Edition. The Bedrock games avoid the “___ Edition” naming scheme on their respective platforms, being just “Minecraft” instead of “Minecraft: Pocket Edition” or “Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition”. This is the new foundation and codebase Mojang wants to build upon, hence the name.
In the case of Minecraft on Xbox One, if you purchase the game now on the Xbox Store, it’s the Bedrock Edition, called “Minecraft”. If you had the previous Minecraft: Xbox One Edition, you get the new version for free, but the old one remains installed on your console. This allows players to switch back and forth between both versions and players are finding they prefer the old Xbox One Edition.
If you go to the Microsoft Store page for Minecraft: Xbox One Edition, the game is rated at 4.5 stars out of 5 with 111,000 reviews. In contrast, the new Minecraft entry is rated at 2.5 stars out of 5, with 5,634 reviews as of this writing.
“The Xbox One Edition was designed for Xbox, this version is literally a port from PC. The creative inventory is a disarray and difficult to navigate, placing blocks is much slower as being precise is terribly difficult. The graphics are a disgrace, the game crashes every 30 mins, everything is laggy,” said one review. (Edited for spelling and formatting.)
“The new crafting and inventory menus are quite cumbersome and seem rushed. It now takes easily twice as long to perform trivial tasks like swapping items in these menus in creative mode. The previous setup was much more streamlined and easier to use,” added another review.
“I played this version in beta and it was not ready for a public release. There are numerous problems that went unaddressed or were flat out ignored. To list a few: Frame rate is extremely unstable and drops considerable. This version is not optimized for redstone and more complicated devices produce massive amounts of lag,” said one review from last month.
The previous Minecraft editions were customized for their specific platforms by 4J Studios, who no longer seem to be involved in the new versions. They took into account the technology behind each console or device, and tailored the releases to those platforms.
Players are saying that the Bedrock Edition represents a step back. There are lost features like large biomes, some players dislike the new UI and Creative mode controls, there are reported frame rate issues, lag, and crashes that didn’t occur in previous editions, and some players can’t even convert their worlds over to the new version. One of the top requests on the Minecraft support site is for a console UI for the Bedrock Editions on Xbox One.
Players on Xbox One have gone around the problem by simply playing the old Xbox One Edition, but Mojang isn’t updating that version anymore. If players want new features, they’ll need to upgrade eventually. Currently, the Nintendo Switch version is supposed to join the Better Together party at a later date, but some Switch players are hoping that update can be pushed down the line until the Bedrock codebase has seen some fixes. Hopefully, Mojang and Microsoft keep plugging away at the new unified Minecraft, because players aren’t happy.
Minecraft Players Are Choosing The Xbox One Edition Over The Better Together Version
How a Rutgers student went from Minecraft to internet warfare
There are no rules or goals in Minecraft.
“The game is brilliant in a lot of ways,” observed Brian Krebs, a former Washington Post reporter and well-known cybersecurity blogger at KrebsonSecurity.com, talking about the incredibly popular Lego-like video game where players make things out of virtual blocks. “You can build anything and destroy anything. You just make up things as you go along.”
Paras Jha, a Rutgers University computer science major, was apparently a Minecraft devotee, playing the game with others in an on-line world where everyone knows each other by their screen names.
That was before the 21-year-old from Fanwood wrote the computer code that was later used by others in one of the biggest internet attacks of the decade.
The unsealing of federal charges Wednesday against Jha and two other young men in connection with a series of earlier cyber attacks was described by prosecutors in terms most familiar to a computer security expert. The trio, according to the feds, created and operated two “botnets” which targeted “Internet of Things” (IoT) devices, launching a powerful distributed denial-of-service or DDoS attack that crippled web hosting companies across the country.
But essentially what they were doing, according to authorities, was running a sophisticated high-tech protection racket.
Federal prosecutors have not provided much detail into what motivated them. However, investigators and computer security experts say it all may have begun with Minecraft, the game with no rules.
And the muscle they employed was a malicious computer software program they had written. That code was used by others–their identities still unknown–to infect hundreds of thousands of devices connected to the internet in a massive online attack in October 2016 that blocked access to Twitter, Spotify, Netflix, Amazon, Tumblr, Reddit, PayPal and many other popular websites.
No one has been charged in that incident, which came after Jha and others posted their malware on the Dark Web.
New variants of the code, meanwhile, have been picked up recently by cyber security researchers.
Playing the game
Jha, together with Josiah White, 20, of Washington, Pa., and Dalton Norman, 21, of Metairie, La., earlier this month pleaded guilty to creating and operating a network of compromised computers known as “botnets” that were used in a number of attacks on several host servers.
Jha also last week pleaded guilty to a series of separate attacks that took out the Rutgers computer network.
Appearing in court before U.S. District Court Judge Michael Shipp in Trenton, Jha acknowledged his involvement, but offered little more. His attorney, Robert Stahl of Westfield, said “Paras Jha is a brilliant young man whose intellect and technical skills far exceeded his emotional maturity.”
Investigators say Jha was immersed in online gaming culture, and was adept at writing code–the software that controls a computer.
But there is a dark side to cyber gaming. Popular game servers are often targeted for sport. And sometimes, for money.
Krebs, who was the first to link Jha to the cyber attacks and the software that caused them, said there is a lot of money to be made off hosting Minecraft servers. Some in the industry have told him it’s not hard to make $200,000 or more a month.
That did not go unnoticed.
“What started happening in 2013 and 2014 was the biggest Minecraft servers began to come under DDoS attacks,” said Krebs, noting that some of these operations were willing to “pay handsomely to protect them from these type of attacks, which are fairly complicated.”
Distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS attacks involve the hijacking of hundreds of computers, which are used to flood the internet connection of a targeted server or computers. Such an attack generates a barrage of so many fake requests for information that the server typically crashes under the assault.
“It only takes a while for some of these servers to be off line before someone says ‘screw it, I’ll find someplace else that doesn’t have problems,'” Krebs noted.
Jha was one of those who created a business offering his services to companies hosting Minecraft servers, to protect against DDoS attacks, said Krebs.
According to court filings, however, Jha had also created a botnet–a collection of hijacked computers that were infected with malware software used to launch the kind of distributed denial-of-service attacks that were plaguing many of the Minecraft game servers.
However, the targets of the worm Jha and others used to create the botnet was something that had not been seen before, according to the Justice Department. It burrowed into non-traditional computing devices connected to the internet, such as wireless cameras, home routers, and digital video recorders, the so-called “Internet of Things.”
“Some of these devices have no way to change default passwords,” noted Adam Alexander, an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Alaska, where the hidden controlling software corrupting the internet-connected things was first discovered.
The authors of the botnet called it Mirai, named after a popular character in Japanese anime, according to FBI case agents who said the three were fans. The Justice Department said the Mirai botnet, at its peak, was made up of hundreds of thousands of compromised devices.
“Once they built the botnet, they sought to make money by renting it or extorting companies for money,” said William Fitzpatrick, the acting U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, where the botnet repeatedly hit the computer network at Rutgers University.
According to the government, Jha ran Mirai on computers from his family home in Fanwood.
Beginning in the summer of 2016, Mirai was deployed to conduct attacks against a number of game servers and hosting companies. Prosecutors said Jha contacted one company and demanded payment in exchange for halting the attack. They said he also bragged about his exploits using monikers such as “ormemes” and “Anna Senpai” on discussion boards, soliciting clients.
That bravado also served to unmask him.
Krebs began a deep dive into the Mirai botnet after his own site was forced offline by a DDoS attack for nearly four days.
Krebs tied to the malware to Jha earlier this year, publicly naming him after linking him to Anna-Senpai. But he believes the FBI already knew much of what he posted.
Indeed, when NJ Advance Media knocked on Jha’s door back in January after the Krebs post, his father said the FBI had interviewed his son, but denied he had any knowledge of the attacks.
Counting clicks
In addition to those attacks, prosecutors said Jha and Norman made money with software that duped on-line advertisers.
“They build a botnet to commit click fraud,” said Fitzpatrick.
Click fraud is a scheme to artificially pump up the number of “clicks” on a particular website, to increase advertising revenue generally based on how many times someone clicks on a page. In Jha’s plea agreement, prosecutors said the student leased access to his click fraud botnet in exchange for payment.
“Because the victim activity resembled legitimate view of these websites, the activity generated fraudulent profits through the sites hosting the advertising content, at the expense of the on-line advertising companies,” noted the court filing.
That scam netted Jha and others 100 bitcoin, valued at the time at more than $180,000, said prosecutors.
Closer to home, even before those attacks, Jha admitted he had initiated DDoS attacks on the computer network at Rutgers University, where he was then studying.
In 2014, the university first began to get hit with a series of denial-of-service attacks that crashed Rutgers’ websites and cut off Internet and Wi-Fi access to tens of thousands of students, faculty and employees. The university, which had announced it planned to spend $3 million to upgrade its computer security system, was taunted by someone on Twitter using the screen name “exfocus.”
“where internet go?? 3m dollar gone?” asked one tweet.
In a courtroom in Trenton on Wednesday, Jha, who is no longer at Rutgers, admitted that he was “exfocus.” And he said he timed the attack during midterms when it would cause the most disruption.
He did not say why.
Prosecutors said toward the end of the scheme, Jha took steps to conceal his role in the Mirai botnet.
In September 2016, the government said he erased the files on his home computer and then posted the Mirai code online, “in order to create plausible deniability if law enforcement found the code on computers controlled by Jha or his co-conspirators.”
The following month, other hackers took the Mirai code and launched a massive cyber attack that crippled much of the internet, crashing Twitter, Netflix and other websites.
Who they are remains a mystery.
All three men have pleaded guilty in the District of Alaska to charges of conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act in operating the Mirai Botnet.
Jha pleaded separately in New Jersey to launching the cyber attack on the Rutgers University computer network.
He is to be sentenced in March.
How a Rutgers student went from Minecraft to internet warfare
PC game Minecraft can be a teaching tool
Minecraft is a game that most people certainly have heard of. If you do not know about the game, ask a child who will likely to give a very enthusiastic response that can last up to several minutes (or hours depending on the child). As of the time I wrote this article, Minecraft was the No. 1 best-selling PC game in history. Minecraft has been so successful that it caught the attention of Microsoft, which purchased the game as well as the founding company, Mojang, in 2014.
I first heard about Minecraft about three years ago when numerous students in my class constantly talked about it. Hearing about this game so annoyed me that I wanted nothing to do with it. The concept of Minecraft sounded confusing to me, and I could not figure out why it was such a popular game with children. About a year after I first heard about it, I caved in and bought the game to check it out. As the saying goes: “curiosity killed the cat.” It definitely killed my skepticism about the game, and I became hooked within just a couple days. One night I played Minecraft so intensely that it was 1 a.m. before I realized it.
For those who don’t know about Minecraft, it is an open-world concept game where players can build, mine, fly, explore and do just about anything their heart desires. Players can be in creative mode, which allows them to build with unlimited blocks and fly around the world they are in. They also can be in survival mode, where they create weapons using materials they find; obtain food by hunting animals and planting gardens; and build an appropriate shelter to protect themselves from monsters that are ready to attack or blow up the players. Minecraft is available in multiplayer mode so numerous people can build in the same world at the same time.
Parents and teachers need to be in tune with what children are engaged in and find ways to use it as an educational tool. Minecraft is one of the rare games that can be used in every classroom subject and beyond. Children are still fascinated with the game, so this is our chance to capitalize on it and use it to our advantage.
Here are some ideas for you to use Minecraft with your children or students:
–Math and Minecraft go hand in hand in several ways.
One, it is very easy to integrate area and perimeter in the game. Have the child build something with a square shape in Minecraft, and after they are done they can count the blocks on each side and calculate the area and perimeter. For older elementary and junior high children, integrate volume as well and have them find the answer. Each block in Minecraft is one meter long, wide, and high. Older students can calculate the exact area and perimeter using that information.
Another topic that usually is introduced in fifth grade is finding the area of composite shapes. A teacher approached me and told me that her students were not doing well in this topic, so I taught it using Minecraft to see how the students would respond. As I broke the composite shape down into two different shapes using different blocks, it clicked for the class. Students’ scores in this topic went up dramatically, and it was all because of the game.
–You can use Minecraft in science by allowing students to be creative.
If younger students are having a difficult time understanding ecosystems, there is a world that can be downloaded that introduces different habitats. For older students who are learning about the respiratory system, download a world where students can explore how air travels down the trachea to the lungs and ultimately to the blood.
If you google the subject you are looking, for followed by “Minecraft world,” there’s a good chance that a world already has been made.
–Reading and Minecraft work very well together, believe it or not.
You can have the child recreate a scene from a book they are reading and have them act out what they have read so far. You can also have them place signs in order and have them type the sequence of events in the story. Signs have many uses, such as creating a story and having the child read it out loud. They also can be very helpful with comprehension, phonics or any other topic the child is not doing well in.
–Minecraft can also be used in social studies, foreign languages or art.
You can show the child a building from the 1700s and have them recreate it by using the features being studied. Signs can also be used to label different parts in a house in the language they are learning. In art, students can recreate a painting to the best of their ability to identify shading, tint and more.
Minecraft can even be used as an assessment tool. You can get real creative and make rooms with four doors as the answer choices. Place the question on a sign on the side of the room, then place chests behind each door. The right answer choice can have food of some sort, while the wrong answer choice can have rotten flesh.
These are just a few ideas on how Minecraft can be tailored to the needs of the child to increase learning in whatever subject is being taught. This game has the amazing power of immediately engaging students, so I challenge you today to help your children or students by implementing ideas such as this to bring learning to their level. A big thing holding us back is fear, so for the sake of the children, let’s get out of our comfort bubble and do what’s best for them.
D.J. Rambo teaches technology at Pease Communications and Technology Academy.
School begins using Minecraft in order to teach history
A primary school in Cambridgeshire is using Minecraft in the classroom to teach pupils all about history.
According to the BBC, the children at Haslingfield School have been playing the popular computer game to design a Bronze Age city which has helped them to learn more about yesteryear.
The school has also been assisted by a group of experts from the University of Cambridge in order to design the city accurately.
The game, which ultimately allows players to build with a variety of different cubes in a 3D procedurally-generated world, has gained much success since it was first developed back in 2009.
Although the demo is free, it actually costs to pay and many more editions have been released since.
Earlier this year, the Nintendo Switch partnered up with the game to create Minecraft: Nintendo Switch Edition.
Climb a Mountain for Christmas: TOYA Releases “My Snowy Journey” on Minecraft Marketplace
TEL AVIV, Israel, Dec. 22, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — Just in time for Christmas, there’s a new Minecraft game from the Israeli start-up company TOYA, which develops games for girl-empowerment. “My Snowy Journey” is an awe-inspiring trip up Mt. Everest where players follow in the footsteps of and are assisted by the first woman ever to reach the summit, Japanese climber Junko Tabei.
“Junko Tabei was an amazing woman,” said TOYA CEO Anat Shperling. “Although at the start of her career she had no help from her government or male mountaineers, she climbed not only Mt. Everest but the Seven Summit peaks – the highest mountains on seven continents.”
“As a role model for the millions of gamers playing Minecraft, especially girls, Junko is very special. She did things her own way, resisting and overcoming all obstacles. We were inspired by her personal passion for climbing, and created a game that enables you to climb Mt. Everest while experiencing fun and challenging gameplay.”
“My Snowy Journey” takes players up the mountain through a series of challenges, including three giant ice walls that increase in difficulty. With tools and the help of Whysa, a rather unpredictable old lady who appears in every TOYA game, gamers interact with Junko and each other as they climb to the top – where, like real mountaineers, they can leave their own permanent messages. The game is available for purchase at http://bit.ly/2Bv1PNW
“Making Everest look like its gigantic self, while not intimidating young gamers, was a design challenge we had to overcome,” said Yifat Anzelevich, TOYA’s COO. “We wanted girls to experience the immense, icy world of Everest while understanding how Junko’s personal approach of not being intimidated by the mountain was what enabled her to master it!”
TOYA was founded by Shperling and Anzelevich, women entrepreneurs, to create a brand of digital games and media designed to inspire and motivate young girls to realize their full potential, and expose boys to the accomplishments of women who changed our world. The small start-up is developing new Minecraft games designed to be an alternative to the typical “pink” games about fashion, pets and homecare targeted to grade-school-age girls.
The games are important for boys, too: research indicates that there is only one female for every five male characters in video games, and 76% of solo video game heroes are male, despite the fact that half of online gamers are female. The Minecraft games’ playful learning experience enables gamers to become explorers, adventurers and all sorts of heroes through experiencing the accomplishments of exceptional women from around the world. The company’s first Minecraft game, inspired by the work of renowned gorilla researcher Dian Fossey, was released in November.
“My Snowy Journey” will be featured on Microsoft’s “12 Days of Minecraft” and its skin pack will be available to play for free on December 29th. The game will be available for purchase starting December 19th. Toya is one of Microsoft’s few Minecraft content-creator partners and is the only one developing games that focus on phenomenal women achievers around the world. Most of the games include subtle encouragement for players to develop and use STEM skills, from understanding animal biology to figuring out the geology of mountain-climbing.
Minecraft itself is a gaming phenomenon, with a user base of more than 130 million gamers around the world, 40% of whom are female. The game’s popularity is rooted in its creative, non-violent approach, and in its graphics, both the users and their surroundings are made out of blocks, allowing unlimited choices in representation and creating new worlds.
“From the textures and colors of this game to the ability to join an online “community” of gamers who have completed the game successfully, ‘My Snowy Journey’ is a unique addition to the Minecraft universe,” Shperling said. “It’s another landmark for the TOYA approach: fun and interesting but with the serious purpose of empowering girls around the world.”
In 2018, TOYA will release a series of adventure games inspired by extraordinary women from Brazil, Egypt, the UK and Japan, and is expected to expand its content to linear media as well.
Media Contact:
Anat Shperling
972537728870
187910@email4pr.com
SOURCE TOYA
Climb a Mountain for Christmas: TOYA Releases “My Snowy Journey” on Minecraft Marketplace
The Last Jedi Petition Ignores Luke’s Amazing Character Arc
Star Wars: The Last Jedi has lit the internet up with both praise and critique, an overflow of love and hate. It’s actually pretty poetic, considering a theme of the movie is about finding a balance between light and dark. As the debate continues a large petition circulating online right now focuses on Luke’s actions and argues the portrayal of the Jedi is so horrid, Disney should scrap the record-breaking box office hit from the official canon and completely redo the story. These people are wrong.
WARNING: Full The Last Jedi spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk.
The crux of the argument for the petition is that The Last Jedi depicted Luke Skywalker, and therefore the entire Jedi order, as less than pure good. “ It completely destroyed the legacy of Luke Skywalker and the Jedi. It destroyed the very reasons most of us, as fans, liked Star Wars,” the petition argues. “[R]e-make Episode VIII properly to redeem Luke Skywalker’s legacy, integrity, and character.”
The problem, if you haven’t seen the movie and are still reading this article, is Luke attempted to kill Ben Solo back when he was training his young nephew. Luke’s justification for this move is because he saw the evil lurking in Solo, and wanted to eradicate it before it could spread. Ironically, Skywalker’s actions further fueled Solo’s quest for power and was the driving reason for Solo to turn into his alter ego Kylo Ren.
If that moment felt off to you, like Luke was abandoning the ways of the Jedi and becoming evil, then congratulations. That’s how you’re supposed to feel. Luke even feels this, which is why he decided to run away to a small corner of the galaxy and hide for the rest of his life. He knew he did something wrong, and couldn’t face the repercussions of his actions, especially from Han and Leia.
This point is driven home even further when Rey shows up, asking what happened to the legendary Luke Skywalker. The rebellion is failing and the Ultimate Hero is needed once again to come save the day. However, Luke knows he isn’t what people want him to be. He can’t be the force of pure good people think he is, because of his actions in the past. He’s flawed, he’s human.
If this makes you stop and look critically at who your heroes are, that’s a good thing. Allegations against many notable people like Louis C.K., Al Franken and Matt Lauer have made us rethink if those we look up to should be put on pedestals and trumpeted as our favorites.
The petition ends with the line “let us keep our heroes.” Maybe our heroes know they have reason to not be seen as such. Maybe it’s time to make some new heroes.
So what do you think? Are you still upset with what The Last Jedi did to Luke Skywalker? Do you like the flawed portrayal of a man who is capable of error? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below, but please keep it civil.
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