16th November 2018 Golden Joystick Awards 2018 Ceremony [Results!]

Update: We knew going in that it was going to be tough competition for Control in the "Most Wanted" category as there were SO MANY incredible games nomination, and in the end the amazing team behind Cyberpunk 2077. As for the other category, streaming team, Amelia Rose Blaire and Bryan Dechart (who also won Best Performance) took home a Golden Joystick Award for "Best Streamer" in a well-deserved win! [16/11/2018 at 17:48]

Congratulations to @AmeliaRBlaire and @BryanDechart for winning the award for Best New Streamer/Broadcaster #GoldenJoysticks pic.twitter.com/eaMIHeHiAb

— Golden Joysticks (@GoldenJoysticks) November 16, 2018

Original Story:

Set your alarms for 4PM GMT, the Golden Joysticks Awards are taking place this evening!

The winners will be announced during a ceremony held in London's Bloomsbury Big Top and broadcast worldwide via a livestream on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/goldenjoystickawards. This year we have two categories in which Remedy fans will be interested in; "Most Wanted" and "Best Streamer". 

Control is facing tough competition in the "Most Wanted" category, competing alongside titles such as Anthem, Battlefield 5, Cyberpunk 2077, Death Stranding, Doom Eternal, Dreams, Fallout 76, Ghost of Tsushima, Kingdom Hearts 3, Metro Exodus, Ooblets, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and The Last of Us Part 2. It's a strong competitor, so it's going to be a close race!

Remedy's mindbending new shooter is set in an impossible, ever changing brutalist skyscraper. As the Director of the Federal Bureau of Control, you take on an otherworldy force called the Hiss.

Also nominated is Amelia Rose Blaire (who plays the wonderful Amy Ferrero in Quantum Break) with fellow actor and husband, Bryan Dechart. Both have been shortlisted in the "Best Streamer" category. 

Stars of Detroit: Become Human turned Twitch stars, Bryan Dechart and Amelia Rose Blaire have quickly won an army of fans for their positive and entertaining gaming streams. Almost everybody who wrote in to nominate Bryan and Amelia - and there were a lot - made a point of saying how friendly and inclusive this community is.

If you miss the broadcast, you can catch up on the livestream up to fourteen days after the ceremony.  

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15th November 2018 XBOX Announces #GiveWithXBOX Charity Program

With the holidays fast approaching, XBOX have announced a new program to celebrate the best of gaming and support a number of fantastic causes.

Working with four gaming charities, they've asked gamers on Twitter to photograph what gaming together means to them and share those photos with the hashtag #GiveWithXBOX. With each tweet, Microsoft will donate $5 to Child's Play, Gamers Outreach, SpecialEffect, and Operation Supply Drop up to a total of $1 million.

The charities all do amazing work. Child's Play is a charity based in the US which donates toys and games to hospitalised children to make their stay more bearable. Gamers Outreach is similar as it uses video games to help entertain children forced in stay long-term in hospital and focuses on the therapeutic abilities the hobby has. SpecialEffects is a UK organisation which makes the industry more inclusive by creating custom setups for gamers with disabilities. And finally, Operation Supply Drop who help service-members and veterans connect through gaming.

You can find out more information about the program, HERE.

Remedy and XBOX had a close relationship for over ten years, with the publisher owning console-exclusivity rights to Alan Wake, and is also the IP owner of Quantum Break. 

Sharing gaming 💚 and help us donate $1,000,000 this holiday season via #GiveWithXbox 🎁 Rules: https://t.co/ar4XIBo6Ns pic.twitter.com/iIPDYZGKcv

— Xbox UK (@xboxuk) November 14, 2018

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14th November 2018 Strategy Guide Publisher, Prima Games Due To Close

Prima Games, the publishing company behind the Alan Wake Strategy Guide, Alan Wake Illuminated, and Quantum Break's The Secret History of Time Travel has announced that it will be closing down after twenty eight years.

During it's twenty eight year run, it has produced over 1,400 titles with 90 million strategy guides in print.

Unfortunately with the increase in online walkthroughs and lets plays, the need for published strategy guides have diminished in the industry, with the books becoming a collector's item or merchandise rather than a tool to complete the game. In recent years, Prima changed their approach to their publications, moving away solely from complete walkthroughs to include behind the scenes write ups. The move can be seen in the Alan Wake guide bundle which included a separate strategy guide and the Alan Wake Illuminated book which delved into the development history. Later for the release of Quantum Break, The Secret History of Time Travel was published with both the behind the scenes chapters and walkthrough in one hardback book.

More recently, the publishers have been turning their attention to books which examine the industry such as Women in Gaming: 100 Professionals of Play which focused on female developers, Twenty Years of Tomb Raider which celebrated the brand's milestone, and Atari Flashback: The Essential Companion which looked back at the past forty years.

It's always sad news when a gaming company closes down, especially a place with so many talented employees, naturally we hope they will move onto exciting new adventures soon.

Prima Games is closing after 28 years in the strategy guide biz: https://t.co/5D20ctMnwP pic.twitter.com/tVsGYdcDkY

— Polygon (@Polygon) November 9, 2018

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13th November 2018 Control "Wrinkle Training Map" Test

Over the past few months, Remedy and 505Games have been posting little behind the scenes snippets of the progress they've made on Control. Today they uploaded their latest test; making sure Jesse's facial animations smoothly flow from one expression to the next.

Official Write-Up

The first part of the video is a what we call a "wrinkle training map". We are "training" Jesse's head mesh to go from one facial expression to another. The following part of the video is Jesse's full in-game model rendered in real-time.

The test video concludes with a closer look at the protagonist character model including detail on the jacket and hair style. Check out the demo below!

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