Players help to shape the world of Elite: Dangerous and one community goal saw the building of a new spaceport at New Yembo. Since then Frontier have been quizzing the community on names for it.

Many names were suggested from those used for spacecraft in popular media to even suggestions that it be named in honour of the deceased Leonard Nimoy (who instead had tribute paid by placing a station bearing his name around the game’s planet Vulcan). Finally the competition has closed and Frontier have looked through the entries to decide on a name. The starport will be named “Unity”.

On the forum Community Manager Edward Lewis announced the naming of the station, saying  that the name of Unity was “a very popular choice by the community” and saying that because unity meant that things were united as a whole, it felt like a fitting name for a station built as a result of the community’s efforts in-game.

Frontier Forum “Community Goal Starport named”: [x]

The market for eSports is expanding quite rapidly at the moment, with tournaments of the best players in the world drawing huge crowds to watch their matches. So it makes sense that Y-Combinator-backed Kickback is looking to make their mark on the scene.

They’ve already provided a free server hosting service for the Minecraft community last summer, called Triangle; and now they’re planning to build on top of this existing system which is hosting over 200,000 server already to put in place ways to help the competitive maps work much smoother.

Their method treats the entire experience as a single product; able to run the match-hosting servers, arrange the games, codifies the rules for the game and even keeping track of each player’s wins and losses within the game. They’re already testing out with members of the Minecraft community that has come to be using Triangle; with matches ranging from two to ten players, in game types from team-based combat to free-for-all. Community members are also able to contribute maps to help diversify the content available.

This matchmaking service is provided free to players just as Triangle is, provided they’re just playing for bragging rights. However if they want to actually bet money on it, players can pitch into a prize pot from as little as $1 to bet that they’re the best player and stand a chance of winning money in the process.

One of Kickback’s co-founders, Vlad Nov has said that the paid dynamic of these matches has helped the startup in two ways. Having money on the line obviously helps the experience, giving the game a different atmosphere from a match just for bragging rights – you’ve another reason to want to win over all the other players. But Nov says that those players who win also tended to be the service’s most vocal activists, bringing in more friends to play with them and so growing the potential number of users who would use the system for the offered aspects that they couldn’t get elsewhere.

Right now they’re working on utilising the enormous power Twitch has for bringing an audience to gaming-related content by making it possible for players to jump into a match being streamed from the web app of the service, hoping to make it so that matches can both be watched and joined in with should the fancy take you. The other two big focuses are attempts to further widen the number of map types available and also the types of matches within Minecraft.

Kickback also hope to be able to build similar systems around other games that maybe are not as well known and easy to modify as Minecraft is. The backend code and matching making systems were actually designed to be carried over though to make it as easy as possible for this to be done, so maybe we’ll see this system expand to other games fairly soon.

In their “Utopia in Progress” presentation at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona earlier today, HTC announced that they have entered into partnership with Valve to develop virtual reality technology, showing off a small video presentation to show off their new headset – the HTC Vive.

We’ve already heard from Valve that they’re planning to develop VR hardware called SteamVR that will be properly shown off at GDC in a few days, but the announcement of a partnership means that HTC, developer of smartphones and other related devices, will be one of the first to be making use of the SteamVR system.

Speaking on stage to the crowd HTC CEO Peter Chou talked about Valve as the leader in gaming saying that they were “dedicated to bringing the best” to their customers. He said that HTC were “so excited” to be working with them on this project and that HTC believes that virtual reality will have the ability to “totally transform” the way we interact with the world, and will eventually become a mainstream device for the general consumer, with the possibilities being “limitless”.

The Vive will make use of 70 sensors allowing for full 360-degree exploration and will have a 1200×1920 screen in each eye, powered by a 90Hz refresh rate. HTC have also announced two VR game controllers that will work in tandem with the headset so each hand can be represented accurately within the virtual space.

HTC will be at GDC along with Valve, and we know that Valve plan to demonstrate the SteamVR there so it’ll be interesting to see if the two companies are planning to do presentations and demonstrations in tandem there or not.

Final Fantasy XIV has offered some free time to inactive players of the game as a celebration for the reaching of a new milestone for the game – they’ve bypassed the four million mark on the total of account registrations.

This of course is registrations, not subscriptions. World of Warcraft still far and away holds the subscription record right now having bypassed the ten million mark; but Square Enix aren’t doing too badly in an MMO industry where you need to have a good game to keep people paying a monthly fee to play.

The free play time is aimed at players who have let their subscriptions lapse and will be running until March 9th 1 AM PDT. To qualify you need to have purchased and registered the game and have your account currently be inactive, a status you can check on Square Enix’s website if you’re unsure.

It seems Square Enix have really turned around XIV as a game, given that before its relaunch as A Realm Reborn it was not considered a good game at all and was once described as having “greatly damaged” the brand of Final Fantasy by Square Enix’s CEO. To have reached 4 million registrations is very positive news for the company.

If you haven’t ever played the game before, Square Enix do offer a 14-day free trial for you to try out. It does have some limits though, like having a level cap of 20.

Star Trek is often listed as one of the factors that led a good many game developers to begin dreaming of doing wonderful things, especially for those people who would eventually go on to make wide open-world space games such as Eve Online and Elite: Dangerous. So the passing away of Leonard Nimoy who played the popular and fondly-remembered character Spock has understandably prompted tributes from studios across the industry.

Upon hearing the news, most studios took to their Twitter accounts and other social networks to post the news and their condolences to his family and friends.

o7 Mister Nimoy, you will be missed. pic.twitter.com/Ah0Bn0LNGP

— EVE Online (@EveOnline) February 27, 2015

RIP Leonard Nimoy #LLAP and Thank you! pic.twitter.com/hUbXDg2GiD — Konami (@Konami) February 27, 2015

Peace and long life. #LLAP pic.twitter.com/2YS1DwmKoV

— World of Warcraft (@Warcraft) February 27, 2015

A blast from the past with Leonard Nimoy. LLAP http://t.co/klK4abC6YB — Star Trek Online (@trekonlinegame) February 27, 2015

The last of those above, Star Trek Online by Cryptic Studios obviously did a bit more than tweet though. Nimoy had been involved with the game, helping to announce it back in 2008, and recording lines for the game although Spock doesn’t appear in the game himself. Shortly after the news had been announced they requested that players join them in-game on the planet of Vulcan for a solemn vigil in which to pay respects. Many players flocked to stand around a fountain on the planet, with many instances of the location having to be created so while for players it seemed that they were only one of about 20 people in reality across all created instances there were over a thousand players standing in tribute for Nimoy.

The news was also announced last night on the game’s forums that Cryptic will be adding a memorial to the game this Thursday as part of the game’s weekly updates.

I want to once again express my heartfelt condolences to the friends, family, and fans of Leonard Nimoy. Everyone at Cryptic Studios was saddened to hear of his passing and we want to make sure we never forget the cultural impact of the man or the character he played. To that end, the Star Trek Online team will implement a standing in-game memorial to Spock and Leonard Nimoy this Thursday March 5th with our regular weekly maintenance.

In this way, we hope to keep his memory as alive in our game as he is in all of our hearts.#

LLAP

Steve Ricossa
Executive Producer

Elite: Dangerous has also announced the addition of a tribute in-game for Nimoy, planning to add a new space station to the LHS 3006 system orbiting the game’s version of the planet Vulcan. It will be named ‘Nimoy Station’.