Fans of SyFy’s series and Trion’s game Defiance rejoice. The MMORPG version of the science fiction epic is going free to play on PC and PS3. Thats right, no more subscription fees to stop you from loading up your guns and stims as you dive back into the Arkfalls. Not so coincidentally, the move to free to play (June 4th for PC and July 15th for PS3), coincides with the launch of Season 2 of the show (puns intended).

F2P is great you might say. But what about players who purchased the game? Bought add-ons from the store? Shelled out cash for DLC and season passes? Well, worry not dear reader. If you bought the game, DLC or items from the store it all stays with you. In addition, you’ll be getting the new Patron Pass “subscriber” level free for a month. If you choose to buy  Patron access after that, it will be on an opt-in basis for 15,30,60 and 90 day times via one time codes/items bought in the store and applied to your account.

The team at Trion has also added a new tier of boosts to the store, including bigger XP boosts and weapon skill boosts, as well as higher score boosts for world events. However, the developers are being smart with the revamps to the system. Defiance has always been a game where gear and skill matter the most. To that end, Paradise Patrons will get a grab bag of stuff every week as well as additional personal boosts for their daily login rewards. BUT, the won’t get any free gear. So, while there are perks to being a Paradise Patron, it isn’t a pay for power type of thing. If anything, Trion Worlds seems determined to keep Defiance a fun and balanced experience as they move to the F2P model.

Disney Interactive loves Disney Infinity, and apparently the Avengers. During an even in Los Angeles, Disney Interactive President Jimmy Pitaro announced that characters from Marvel’s vast stable of heroes and villains will be joining the Disney Infinity universe this fall as Disney releases the 2.0 Edition of the game.

Characters revealed so far include Hawkeye, Black Widow, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor and the Hulk. For those keeping score, thats pretty much all of the Avengers. MODOK and Loki were also shown as well as Groot and Rocket Raccoon from the upcoming film Guardians of the Galaxy.  The Marvel characters also come with a new environment, Marvel Manhattan for players to explore. Each character will have their own unique abilities to give them that signature feel folks have come to expect from the famed Marvel characters. Iron Man can hover, Hulk can climb walls and Black Widow can….punch things. The figurines and in game characters will feature a stylized look that has been “homogenized” across the Marvel spectrum. That isn’t to say the designs have been dumbed down. They just fit into the Disney Infinity universe while remaining instantly recognizable.

For those worried that 2.0 will force you to start over, fear not! All content from the original version will carry over, including toys, play sets, power discs and Toy Box levels. marvel Manhattan is promised to be four times larger than the size of the Incredibles play set in the current game. Players will be able to engage in airborne combat, scale buildings and perform super jumps. In addition, Disney is adding in a degree of customization as they raise the level cap from 10 to 20 for characters and add a skill tree interface.

Disney Infinity 2.0 Edition will launch with a new starter pack that will include and Avengers-themed play set, two power discs and three characters: Black Widow, Thor and Iron Man later this fall. The game will be available for iOS, PC, PlayStation 3, WiiU, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Touchscreen phones are all the rage these days; and while they may do the job of giving you greater interaction with the phone; and haptic feedback is helping to bring back the feeling you get of actually "pressing" buttons etc. – sometimes there's just no substitute for real, physical buttons. As well as always knowing where they are – because they can't be moved or replaced by something else like on a screen – physical buttons often provide short-cuts to the parts of a phone you want to use, letting you get to them in one press even when trying to do the same through the phone itself would take multiple touches, gestures or flicking through different screens.

Dimple on the bank of a Nexus phone;
and a simulation of the app.
Image Credit: Dimple.io

Most Android phones lack any kind of physical button – even a Home button like on the iPhone – choosing to utilise virtual ones instead. If you found yourself nodding in the last paragraph and wishing you could add some physical buttons to your Android phone, let me introduce you to Dimple. As described on their website dimple.io, Dimple is "a small NFC™ sticker with four buttons for Android™ devices. You are the one who chooses the button functionality. It makes doing everyday tasks quicker and saves your precious time."

The actual Dimple hardware is a small, rubberised strip with four depressible buttons, which you can stick on an Android smartphone wherever you like – it uses an adhesive that makes it both easy to stick and to remove, though the owners point out repeated removal and reapplication may reduce the device's lifespan. Pairing it with its dedicated Android app turns each of the buttons into physical keys for the phone; and the app also allows you to set exactly what each key does. Using the magic of NFC, it literally just sticks to almost anywhere on your Android smartphone or tablet without the need for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, or even its own battery. Each of the four buttons have their own unique NFC ID so that the Dimple's accompanying app and the Android OS can tell them apart when they're pressed. Dimple claims each button can withstand about 2 million clicks, and you can reassign the functionality of around 100,000 times before the button memory wears out.

Unfortunately, not every Android phone will be able to use Dimple. Dimple's reliance on NFC means you will need an Android phone that supports NFC – or to add it through an NFC-enabled case – to use the device. The app also requires Android 4.0 to run, so older phones or cheaper Android models running outdated Android builds are sadly left out of the lurch. Luckily, most brand-name Android Phones released over the past two years should meet both needs. Dimple may also not work correctly if your phone has a metal exterior or uses a metal case, as this may cause interference from the antenna, which means phones such as the HTC One are sadly also out.

If you're already sold on the idea – and your phone meets all the requirements – you might be dismayed to hear that the Dimple is not available for purchase just yet. To fund the full production launch of the device, the creators will be turning to Indiegogo, launching a crowdfunding campaign on May 6th. Assuming it's successful however, Dimple intends to start shipping the final product within 60 days of the campaign finishing – putting its release around August 2014 for early backers, retail will probably be a little longer away. As for price? The earliest backers will be able to get their hands on the first production run batch of Dimples for just US$15, rising to US$26.99 the later your pledge. The final retail price is currently planned at US$28.99 – which equates in current rates to just a shade over £17 in UK money, or €21 for the rest of Europe.

Space combat is all well and good. I like blasting an enemy to bits just as much as the next person. BUT, I also love in-game economies where I can buy and sell to my greedy heart’s content. It seems Elite:Dnagerous developer Frontier does as well. In a recent newsletter, Frontier has dropped a whole lot of information about the economy in the upcoming open world space game.

“The rules are, of course, simple and universal – buy goods cheaply, where they are made and there is plentiful supply, and then sell them where prices are high, in a location that has a high demand for your cargo.  Of course that may be easier said than done because of people who have honed their combat skills and are not averse to a little piracy as they spot you travelling from A to B – but let’s not worry about that for now…!”

As in the real world, the economy of Elite:Dangerous runs on commodity markets. To make things more interesting, each solar system has it’s own market, niche and government. Some may be service based, some prefer to deal in high-tech goods and others may be heavily industrialized. Add on top of that the extra complication of governments, “ ranging from anarchies where ‘anything goes’, to theocracies who have their own idiosyncratic strict proscriptions.” , and theres a lot of complexity when picking that sweet spot for what to buy and where.

The economy uses a server-based background trading simulation, with supply and demand levels being influenced by trading between local systems. This actually connects the economy across the vastness of the game world, meaning that each individual system is not a self contained market. Increases in the supply of a commodity in one system will have a corresponding impact on the price of that commodity in other local systems. And its not just players that affect this. AI traders exist in the world and their effects can also be felt. This system also encourages players to work together. “All your individual trades are added to the whole, and even mid-sized economies can be influenced by concerted efforts between groups of like-minded individuals.  So you may find your ‘milk run’ dries up for a time, forcing you to look elsewhere for the deal.  Or you could engineer a fat profit for yourself by cooperating with your friends…”

Frontier plans to start rolling out trading in ALpha 4, and I couldn’t be more excited. Of course, I’ll be the one blowing your ship away and taking your cargo for myself, but I just consider that cutting out the middle man….

A 1:1 scale map of Denmark has been created inside of the game Minecraft, for the sake of educational purposes.

The Danish Geodata Agency has undertaken the massive-scale project using their data to recreate the landscape of the country, the map taking up over a terabyte of data due to its size and detail. The two men responsible for the build, Simon Kokkendorf and Thorbjørn Nielsen, hope that the map can be used within schools to teach kids about environmental effects and urban planning among other things.