Here's a small and interesting story: New Scientist have a report from an experiment done by Paul Cairns, a professor of human-computer interaction at the University of York. The idea was to see if the placebo effect which has been tested in other areas works the say way in computer gaming.

To test this, his team had several players play Don't Starve and told them that while the first map would be random, the second map would be using an adaptive AI that changed the difficulty level according to the player's skill. The better the player, the harder the map would become, and vice versa. In the survey the players filled out after finishing the game, players revealed the placebo effect. According to the article:

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Despite what the programmers at Limbic thought on release day, and in spite of the ridiculously huge day-1-patch, Heroes VII was released with quite a lots of bugs, confirming our earlier statements that beta testing is not as thorough as the testing done by actual consumers. Both the Ubisoft and Steam forums, as well as our own, have been inundated with complaints from disappointed customers. For those of you who are waiting for more stable and polished versions, there is light in the tunnel.

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Are you playing Heroes VII?

Got some funny or interesting things happening?

Why not This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. so we can display them on our "Picture of the Day" feature?

Standing by. :)

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Might & Magic: Heroes VII was launched today. The wait is over, now it is time to see what the finished product actually looks like! I just downloaded the game (10GB) through Steam, but I presume downloading is not an option for everyone; thankfully, there are physical copies being sold as well.

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We will publish a review in due course, but only after playing the game properly and also trying to use the editor. In the mean time, you can all discuss the game in our forums.

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Ubisoft have announced that as Heroes VII approaches its official launch date, there will be two new streaming sessions on Twitch with Limbic and Ubisoft, respectively:

This may be your final opportunity to quiz the developers on the game's features. Wanna play your part?

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Today's Twitching session about the H7 map editor also featured an interview with Jon Van Caneghem, who had some interesting things to say about the early days of the franchise and the road it has taken to today.

 

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Our old buddy Marzhin popped by and said here will be another Twitch stream by Ubisoft on September 8th, this time featuring stuff about the H7 map editor, as well as what Marzhin calls "some surprises and announcements".

The official announcement about the video is here.

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We have gotten word that Limbic are going to set up a live stream of the closed beta #2 tomorrow. During the stream, Dan S and a level designer will be playing a skirmish map and answer questions from you fans, chatting and having a good time.

You wanna hang out with the devs?

Join the stream here at 15:00-18:00 GMT+2 (German time)

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The "gold version" of a game traditionally means the version that is printed on CDs/DVDs and shipped to stores for distribution. In later years, though, especially with the breakthrough of digital distribution, the term has become somewhat ambiguous: it usually means the finished product as the players see it on day 1 of sales.

The Heroes VII developers have now announced that the game is "content & feature complete", but that bugfixing and polishing will continue for another month right up until release on Sept. 29th. With Ubisoft, that means a "day-1 patch" to accompany the physical copies if that is what you have bought.

This final development is what the second beta test is for. If you're playing that, please help the devs all you can by reporting any weaknesses you encounter, so that the final version gets as good as possible. The devs would like you to focus in particular on multiplayer bug reports and AI optimization. Go here to read all about the second beta.

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  1. H7 Beta Round #2
  2. We're Making Progress!
  3. Downtime Monday 20.7