MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
Here are the key upcoming events and releases to mark in your calendar for July 2022.
F1 22
July 1, 2022
It’s a busy season for Formula One games, with Frontier’s first management effort revving up for next month, ahead of which Codemasters’ licensed F1 title has just crossed the finishing line. The game, the fourteenth consecutive Formula One racing title, boasts a number of improvements, including the inevitable tweaks to come about from the annually revised technical regulations. New to this year’s game include a customisation hub called F1 Life, drivable supercars and an ability to play all game modes in VR, even against those without a headset.
www.ea.com/games/f1
First Playable
July 5, 2022 – July 7, 2022
First Playable is Italy’s premier games industry event and, like many gettogethers being held this year, was the first to be delivered in person since the start of the Covid pandemic. Understandably, businesses, attendees and speakers rolled into Florence from home and abroad, enjoying three days of networking, business pitches and coaching sessions. One of the highlights of the conference was the tenth annual Italian Video Game Awards (IVGA), with Hot Wheels Unleashed, Martha is Dead and RiMS Racing all up for nomination. Curiously, on the judging panel sat our very own Richie Shoemaker – as well as one-time MCV contributor Vikki Blake.
www.firstplayable.it
Pocket Gamer Connects Toronto
July 6, 2022 – July 7, 2022
For the first time since 2016, Pocket Gamer Connects was held in Canada, pitching up for the first time in the great city of Toronto on what was the third leg of 2022’s Pocket Gamer Connects world tour. Followers and attendees will of course recall the first leg in London back in February and the the second in Seattle in May. PG Connects returns to Europe in September (27-28th) for two days in Helsinki, before the final headliner in Jordan in mid-November.
www.pgconnects.com
Matchpoint Tennis Championships
July 7, 2022
Wimbledon is over, but the tennis doesn’t have to stop thanks to the timely release of Matchpoint Tennis Championships from veteran Australian studio Torus Games.
Matchpoint aims to channel the spirit of Virtua Tennis and 2K’s Top Spin series by straddling the contested chalk between realism and fun. While the game lacks many of the sport’s famous faces and almost all of its iconic tournaments, that’s not necessarily a hindrance to acceptance if the gameplay serves an ace. We’ll find out if it does if a top seed-packed sequel arrives next year with an official representation of Murray Mount – or whatever it’s called these days.
matchpoint-game.com
BIG Festival
July 6, 2022 – July 10, 2022
… Meanwhile, over in São Paulo, there was Brazil’s Independent Games Festival, which combined business hub, speakers, eSports, as well as an expo with more than 200 games on show. Last year the event was digital only and managed to attract the attention of 70 million viewers. The number of in-person attendees were slightly below that this year, for obvious reasons, but the hybrid format ensured no one with an interest in the LATAM games industry missed out.
www.bigfestival.com.br
Develop:Brighton
July 12, 2022 – July 14, 2022
With last year’s conference given an autumn billing and the ones previous to it being somewhat compromised by Covid, this year’s Develop:Brighton – one of the most important networking events in the UK games industry’s calendar – makes a welcome return to the summer months. If you’re a subscriber who’s reading this issue prior to making the annual pilgrimage to the south coast, make sure you check out what we think will be the highlights on p39. If you’re flicking through the magazine for the first time after having a copy thrust at you on the show floor, welcome to MCV/DEVELOP! Please enjoy the magazine and remember to go to mcvuk.com and subscribe for free when you get back home.
www.developconference.com
Games For Change Festival
July 12, 2022 – July 15, 2022
Working to make games more of a force for good in the world, the Games For Change (G4C) Festival is back to offer diverse interdisciplinary programming tracks that explore games for learning, health, and to address civic & social Issues through a series of panels, workshops and networking events. Among those speaking are the Atari founder Nolan Bushnell and Jeffrey Burrell, Riot Games’ head of corporate social responsibility. The first two days of the event are hosted at New York City’s Times Center, with the second half of the programme set to be streamed entirely online.
www.gamesforchange.org
TennoCon 2022
July 16, 2022
It’s been almost a year since Digital Extremes announced that crossplay was coming to Warframe, and that a mobile version of the game would be joining it. Alas, neither has yet materialised. The next release for the space ninja shooter, The Duviri Paradox, will coincide with the developer’s live streamed TennoCon event, which is when fans will be hoping for a surprise release, or, at the very least, some clarity as to when crossplay and the mobile client might appear, especially given that the game’s tenth anniversary will have been and gone when TennoCon 2023 comes around.
www.warframe.com/tennocon
Stray
July 19, 2022
When you think about it, it’s quite a staggering dereliction of duty towards our feline overlords that the human race has managed to create so few games where the protagonist is a cat. A proper cat, that is, not some pixelated approximation that could as easily be a plumber or a hedgehog. Releasing on PC and PlayStation, Stray looks to redress things somewhat, via a stunning-looking third-person stealth game where, with the aid of a drone, B-12, the titular vagrant, must playfully work to escape the dangers of the city’s streets, by outwitting droids using their unique feline wiles.
https://stray.game
Moss: Book 2
July 21, 2022
Controlling a mouse in VR is rarely to be recommended, but after after the delights of the original Moss, which had you guiding warrior rodent Quill around some of the finest puzzle-platform levels ever beamed to a headset, having the sequel arrive for rather more capable hardware than the ageing and obsolete PSVR is something we’d not hesitate to miss.
Moss: Book 2 is a rare case of being more of the same, where more of the same is perfectly acceptable and warranted. Quill is as cute as ever, the puzzles breezy, and the world even more charming and magical than before, which is quite an achievement.
www.polyarcgames.com
Live A Live
July 22, 2022
Square Enix’s Final Fantasy VII remake may be getting all the plaudits and headlines, but for Switch players unlikely to see the game running on Nintendo hardware any time soon, it’s Live A Live that’s the more exciting prospect – which also happens to be a remake of another Square RPG classic from the 1990s, albeit one that never saw release outside of Japan.
Employing the same HD-2D graphical look of Octopath Traveller, the all-new Live A Live has been developed by Takashi Tokita, the game’s original creator, who would go on to make Crono Trigger, Parasite Eve, and oversee many of the recent ports and remakes of Final Fantasy classics. With Xenoblade Chronicles 3 also coming this month, it’s a good month for Switch players.
www.nintendo.co.uk
Immortality
July 26, 2022
Immortality is the latest game from Sam Barlow, the writer and director of Her Story and Telling Lies. Launching for PC and Xbox, the latest mystery concerns the disappearance of fictional actress Marissa Marcel, who starred in three movies – none of which were released – and was never seen or thought of much again.
As with Barlow’s previous games, Immortality has you rummaging through old footage, specifically cuttings and scenes from Marcel’s three unreleased films, in what Barlow is calling an interactive movie trilogy. This time however, it is pitched as more of a horror story than either Her Story or Telling Lies, which makes Immortality a compelling prospect seeing as Barlow once took the lead on two Silent Hill games.
halfmermaid.co
