It's been a long time since Fortnite was unveiled by Cliffy B at PAX. Since then Cliffy has left Epic and started his own game company, Epic released Unreal 4 engine for free and Unreal Tournament is getting a reboot. Fortnite has remained in pretty active development but I haven't heard very much about it from others or the press. As I was reading about Fortnite I watched the video above showing off game play, construction and basic game mechanics. In Fortnite (or one mode of it) your team builds up a base to survive the oncoming hordes of invaders. Some of your team members gather resources while others build the base to hold up to the invasion. After watching the video I have a better idea of what the game is but certain aspects of it are still shrouded in the mystery of it being in alpha. If it's anything like the early beta of Unreal Tournament, Fortnite should be really fun. It's nice to get a co-op team based shooter that's focused on building mechanics as well as shooting things in the face.

Double Fine is releasing the second and final act of Broken Age on April 28th. Most of us have followed this game from it's record breaking Kickstarter to it's act one launch to it's eventual final chapter in April. I picked up Broken Age as a Slacker Backer during one of the Amnesia Fortnight events. I wanted to wait until the game was fully released to start playing it so hopefully i'll have the time to start it up when April 28th comes round.

Curious if anyone has played this and what they think of act one so far(please no spoilers).

http://steamcommunity.com/app/232790/discussions/0/618457398956845716/

After the gamemaster was finished explaining the rules for March of the Ants I was ready to build my colony. As a young kid I couldn’t get enough of SimAnt so it seemed like March of the Ants was something i’d enjoy. Created by Portland locals Ryan Swisher and Tim Eisner, March of the Ants was successfully Kickstarted to it’s currently released state of strategic game goodness. The joy of playing a locally crafted board game run by the people that had a hand in developing it is one of the reasons why attending GameStorm is a unique experience. Plus it doesn’t hurt if you can take down a rogue centipede or uncouth spider. If you are looking to play new games in early stages or buy something new to take home and play GameStorm is for you. I was asked to attend this year and had some time so I stopped by to hang out and play.

For the weekend it runs GameStorm offers around the clock access to LARPs, RPGs, board games, CCGs, panels, tournaments and more. I was able to sit down with GameStorm Chair Debra Stansbury to talk about this years convention and our mutual love for games.

jdodson: What are one of your favorite parts of GameStorm?

Debra Stansbury: For me what I like the best about GameStorm is that we contacted Kamarion and they now run our gaming with LAN and console games. Upstairs we have the CCG’s and have 5 different kinds of RPGs, which I love. I play RPGs at home but not at the convention. Every year people have an idea for things to try and we just try something new and it becomes part of the convention. Like the giant Jenga board and the kids and their little hard hats. This year we had the garage level G which were not expecting.

jdodson: Right so I had a question about the garage. Due to space issues and some scheduling you had to use a garage level and I am curious how that is going?

Debra Stansbury: It’s been amazing actually. Alot of people thought it would be dark and not fun so we put in carpeting and drapes. We bought lights and put in spotlights. We got the hotel to put in air blowers to help circulate the air a bit as we discovered that was an issue. We originally thought it would be a bit chilly but as it turns out it’s not. The sound baffling there is amazing compared to other rooms. In other places we have games the noise level ramps up and there isn’t that noise ramp in the basement. That said the Call of Cthulhu guys were like, “it’s pretty bright down here can it be a little more moody” so you can’t make everyone happy.

jdodson: How long have you been involved with Gamestorm?

Debra Stansbury: My first Gamestorm was Gamestorm 6 and that was in I think 2004 or 2005. I was the person in charge of hospitality and we didn’t have a hospitality suite before then. The chair wanted hospitality and asked me and I was insufficiently reluctant and said yes. Since then I have been hotel liaison, event co-ordinator and ran hospitality for several years. I am also involved in OryCon and chaired one year and also helped out with Kamarion. OryCon is a totally different animal i’ll tell ya it is completely different than Gamestorm.

jdodson: With that OryCon is the sister convention of Gamestorm and I am wondering how that relationship works?

Debra Stansbury: I am on the board for OSFCI and have helium hand-itus and have a really hard time saying no. Oregon Science Fiction Conventions Incorporated is a non-profit organization that does business as OryCon, Gamestorm and several funds such as the the Susan Petrey scholarship, the Clayton medical fund for authors and the Endeavor award awarded at OryCon. There is also a WorldCon scholarship for people that volunteer and learn things to bring back to us. This years scholarship winner was the person running swag this year Heather McLaughlin.

jdodson: What do you want people to know about Gamestorm that might consider attending next year?

Debra Stansbury: Since you can sit down and play games at home in your basement some people might wonder why they should sit in some other basement to play games. When you come to GameStorm you can try new games and meet new people. You can play the same game with the same people and you may think you know how it works but when you go to a convention and play a game you might discover you interpreted the rules wrong. You can also teach your favorite game to new people and realize how much fun that is. There is an Assassins game running this weekend and they are given tasks in the game and one of the tasks is to challenge the Chair to a game of her choice and if you beat me you get extra points. So I taught three young ladies earlier today how to play Escalation which is a quick card game where you try and screw your neighbor. So what I really want people to know is that they can come to GameStorm to see and play something new and different. We like to have a little bit for everyone.

jdodson: What’s one game that you really enjoy playing?

Debra Stansbury: I really enjoy playing a game we call Crayon Rails which are a bunch of games like North America Rails, Nippon Rails, Russia Rails and I have a friend that has the entire set. We keep going through them from Australia to Russia and rotate them every Friday night. I also play D&D and I am in three different games and like to play Clerics a lot because I like healing and battle magics. I really enjoy smiting the enemy to take them down.

jdodson: GameStorm is the premier Portland game convention. Why is it held in Washington?

Debra Stansbury: We were at the Double Tree across the river until it burned down and they closed it. Then we were drifting from hotel to hotel trying to find the right combination of rooms and space. OryCon had the same issue as well and they found a hotel and settled in. When we were looking around the Hilton here in Vancouver liked us and when we had the issue this year they bent over backwards to help us find a solution which is how we ended up with the garage. The Vancouver Hilton is in the Portland metro area even though it is in Washington. One thing we don’t like to do at any OSFCI event is exclude people so the fact that it is in Washington means we are reaching out to our Washington friends. It’s also not too far out of reach from Portland. We have people on my team that come up from Cottage Grove and people coming down from Seattle. What’s really fun is when we see people that come and play with others they see once a year that have games that keep going through the years.

jdodson: Do you know about how many people you have on staff this year?

Debra Stansbury: It’s well over a hundred and nowhere near as many as we need.

jdodson: So you are in need of people to help out with the con?

Debra Stansbury: We are always short staffed. We have three different levels of staff starting with Con Com which are your department heads which are in charge of areas and they have staff to help fill in the gaps. The staff are the people that before the con have agreed to work at least twelve hours. Some of them work that amount in a day and we don’t encourage that but people do. At the convention we also have more casual volunteers that might have an hour before their next game to see if someone needs some help. People can volunteer from washing dishes, washing doors, restocking hospitality, working the games, security and registration.

jdodson: What has been one of your more memorable moments at GameStorm?

Debra Stansbury: One of my early memories was when Richard Garfield came and we ran a live action RoboRally for the first time. That was really fun because he was MCing his game and we laid out the grid on the carpet with blue painters tape and put in the obstacles and we had people standing there as the robots and at the table we had the programmers. You know things are not going well when you have the robot standing there at what is supposed to be a pit and it looks down and the pit, looks at the table at the programmer and the programmer can’t look at them in the eye because the robot is about to die. That was a lot of fun watching them get involved in that.

GameStorm is a game convention held in Vancouver Washington and you can pre-register for next years con right now.

http://www.gamestorm.org/purchase-membership/
http://www.osfci.org/
http://weirdcitygames.com/

I wanted to let everyone know about a slew of new features that I added to the site over the last few weeks that I can finally talk about. I've wanted to add this stuff for quite some time and have been really happy with how it turned out. Let me know how the new features work out for you and if you run into any issues with them.

Steam Login

Most of us use and love Steam. Steam is constructed such that the Desktop and web client are pretty much the same. One cool part of Steam on the web is that you can authenticate to a website like Cheerful Ghost through Steam. Facebook, Google and Steam have provided websites like Cheerful Ghost with the ability to authenticate for quite sometime so you don't have to manage yet another set of login credentials. I've liked this approach to authentication and recently added the ability for people to login to Cheerful Ghost using Steam. If you have an existing Cheerful Ghost account start by linking your Steam account before you authenticate to Cheerful Ghost with Steam. You can link your Facebook, Google and Steam accounts to your Cheerful Ghost account by following the link below.

http://cheerfulghost.com/user/link

After your Steam account is linked to your existing Cheerful Ghost account you can login to the site with Steam.

Enhanced Avatar Integration

Since we launched Cheerful Ghost we have only supported avatars using the Gravatar service. Since we require people to authenticate with Steam, Facebook or Google we now automagically import your avatars from those sites. So starting with the next time you authenticate or when you link your accounts you can select any of your Avatars from the Google, Facebook or Steam accounts you've linked. I recommend people link up their accounts and select an avatar from Steam, Google or Facebook.

We still support Gravatar but it is now officially deprecated. We will be removing it in a few months so I recommend selecting one of your avatars from Steam, Google or Facebook to use on the site.

Recent Activity

I've been hearing from people that when you come to the site people notice there is a lot of discussion happening but don't know where to find it. To allow people the ability to see the latest chatter on the site i've added the recent activity stream on the right column on Desktop and certain tablet orientations.

Spright Gets A New Look

I spent some time integrating the new Cheerful Ghost look into the site and I am really happy with how it turned out. Over the years Spright the Cheerful Ghost has evolved and i've taken some time to catalog that. If you are interested in look at how the Cheerful Ghost came to look the way it does over the years you should check out the link below.

http://cheerfulghost.com/spright

I want to thank everyone for making Cheerful Ghost a great community to be part of. Let me know what you think of the new features and if you run into any issues let me know.

I enjoy reading every bit of interesting information I can about people doing interesting stuff in gaming. Recently Geoff Keighley sat down with Gabe Newell and Erik Johnson of Valve to talk about some behind the scenes stuff with Valves recent reveals. Gabe addresses people that look to creators to create sequels, massively hinting at peoples desire to see a Half-life 3. He doesn't say much other than he understands where people are coming from and as fans they want more of the things they love too.

"Geoff Keighley sits down with Gabe Newell and Erik Johnson from Valve to discuss the state of one of the most respected video game companies in the world. Hear Gabe and Erik discuss Steam VR, Steam Machines, Source 2, and the future direction of Valve."

I just recently found out that Blizzard is giving away the Hearthstone soundtrack for free. If you are interested in owning the music of the game, check out the link below.

http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/games/music/hearthstone.html

Diablo III has had a pretty interesting journey from it's early design days to it's eventual reveal, launch, loot 2.0 and most recently with the Reaper of Souls expansion. As a fan of the original games I pre-ordered the Diablo III Collectors Edition and had high hopes for the game. I enjoyed the final released game but felt it didn't have quite a long tail that the original games seemed to have. When they released loot 2.0, a patch that fundamentally changed how the reward system worked, I was pleased as were many other people. If you wanted to know more about this process and the reasoning and history behind Blizzards early version of Diablo III to Reaper of Souls Josh Mosqueira had a great GDC talk about I suggest you check out.

BioShock Infinite finally released on Linux/SteamOS in time for for a massive 2K 10 Anniversary sale on Steam. 2K is offering up a 10th Anniversary Bundle for $49.99 that contains: Borderlands 2, Civ V, XCom, Bioshock Infinite, The Bureau, The Darkness II, Spec Ops: The Line, Mafia II, Duke Nukem Forever, Borderlands GOTY, BioShock 2, BioShock, Ace Patrol, Pacific Skies, Civilization IV, Civilization III, Sid Meier's Pirates & Sid Meier's Railroads. If you were looking to play any number of those games this might be worth checking out.

I downloaded BioShock Infinite on Linux and after updating my video card drivers I was able to play the game. BioShock Infinite plays similarly to Borderlands 2 in that it works well but doesn't quite perform as well as on Windows on the same rig with similar settings. The game is very playable and I imagine will work well on any Steam Machine you get. Nice to see more games getting ported and I wonder how long it takes until companies like Blizzard and... EA get on board?

http://store.steampowered.com/sale/2k_publisher_weekend/

Blizzard will be opening up the closed beta for Legacy of the Void starting on March 31st. They are adding some really bad-ass looking units starting with the Protoss Disruptor which looks totally over powered in the video. Blizzard is great at balancing so I imagine it won't be quite as destructive but if used properly? Blizzard also added the Cyclone a new unit to the Terrans which is a tank that locks on to an enemy unit and can fire while it moves. I can see the Cyclone being a very important part of Terran harassment in Legacy. Zerg multiplayer finally gets the Lurker back and Blizz added a new Ravager unit that can drop Protoss shields and attacks with a damage over time corrosive bile.

The video focuses primarily on the multiplayer updates but you can image how the new Protoss units may effect the single player campaign. Blizzard still hasn't talked about a release date so hopefully they talk about that at this years Blizzcon in November or sooner.

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/18291111/legacy-of-the-void-beta-preview-3-18-2015

As I am a big Star Wars fan I am happy to report on some interesting news out of the new Star Wars-verse. Since the old Star Wars Universe was rebooted in favor of the new Star Wars Universe, Disney is pretty hip to release all manner of new stories that take us from the events of Return of the Jedi to the upcoming The Force Awakens. Today they dropped some news about an upcoming series I found pretty interesting.

"The second Death Star has been destroyed. Rumors are flying that the Emperor and his enforcer, Darth Vader, are dead. A new government is forming to replace the Empire. But the galaxy is a big place, and the fallout of this cataclysm will affect different worlds in different ways. Does everyone accept the fall of Imperial rule? Has everyone even heard the life-altering news? What rushes in to fill the vacuum the Empire has left? And who will try to stop them? Those are some of the themes we’ll be exploring in Aftermath, and as a lifelong Star Wars fan, just writing those words gives me chills. I can’t wait for our first canon glimpse into the state of the galaxy after the Battle of Endor."

Star Wars Aftermath drops September 9th and I am fairly certain I will pick it up on release. I've really enjoyed many Star Wars books including Timothy Zahns Thrawn trilogy as well as Star Wars Bounty Hunters and hope this is just as good.

Are you interested in filling in the backstory for the new Star Wars Universe up to the new film?

http://www.starwars.com/news/what-happened-after-endor-find-out-in-star-wars-aftermath