The PC Gaming Alliance, a non-profit initiative established to preserve and promote the PC Gaming industry, recently added a bevy of heavy hitters to its ranks. Eight more companies have signed on to lend their support to the cause, including GameStop, GameTap, Gas Powered Games, BFG Technologies, Bigfoot Networks, Flextronics, Howie's Game Shack and InstantAction.

We support the notion of this group enrolling new members -- but we're curious why GameStop has agreed to lend its massive, wealthy hand. Has the unrivaled gaming retailer finally figured out how to purchase and resell used PC titles?

[Via Edge Online]

Demigod has finally seen fit to grant a demo to the masses. Gas Powered Games' RTS now comes in a bite-sized offering, in which players have access to one map and four playable demigods (Regulus, Rook [pictured], Sedna and Lord Erebus). All gameplay modes are available in the demo.

The Stardock-published title did have a shaky launch -- thanks to pirates -- but the company has since apologized for the overburdened server loads, and things seem to be in working order. Definitely worth checking out for RTS fans who only have time for short games.

Note: This interview was published earlier today, but featured a broken link to the second half. It has now been corrected. We're sorry for the goof-up -- enjoy the conclusion to our interview!

Showcasing his team's upcoming RTS, Gas Powered Games CEO Chris Taylor sat down with us at E3 2009 to discuss Supreme Commander 2, console RTS releases and the concepts that didn't work in the original title. Prior to our lengthy chat, Taylor demoed the planned 2010 RTS on hardware we were told was a two year old PC with a new video card.

In our short demo we had the opportunity to see advancements made to the game's engine, including new shader and texture technology that Gas Powered Games created in-house. According to Taylor, a major goal for the team at Gas Powered was to create a high performance game, that will "run on 2, 3, 4 maybe 5 year old hardware." While Taylor admits the original title asked for a lot of processing power -- especially in later areas of the game -- the sequel will look better while actually using less polygons than units in the first Supreme Commander.

Even in its Alpha build state, Supreme Commander 2 was an impressive title to watch. But how has the series evolved and how will Gas Powered Games improve the franchise? Check after the break for our complete interview Gas Powered CEO, Chris Taylor.

Although we weren't surprised when Gas Powered Games revealed it had been working on a sequel to Supreme Commander, we did scratch our heads at the partnership that would see Japanese publisher Square Enix distribute the title. In a one-on-one interview with Gas Powered CEO Chris Taylor at E3 2009, we wondered if changes to the core design philosophies of Supreme Commander 2 were made due to the new partnership.

According to Taylor, Gas Powered Games had similar questions for Square Enix, but were told to maintain the same core philosophies -- philosophies that attracted Square Enix to the Western developer to begin with. "If we changed... we would be missing the point," Taylor told us. Taylor also mentioned a cue they took from Square Enix was they way they "embrace character and story," which is a focus for Gas Powered in Supreme Commander 2. Stay tuned for the complete interview with Chris Taylor, tomorrow.

In a one-on-one interview with Gas Powered Games CEO Chris Taylor during E3 2009, we questioned why the developer was attempting to bring the series back to the console -- considering the first Supreme Commander port ended with less than stellar results. "I felt bad, the developer who did the Xbox 360 version just did not have the time or the resources," Taylor told us, referring to the team at Hellbent Games -- the developer tapped to bring the THQ published RTS to console in 2008. "It was a hair on fire mission."

Hoping to correct errors encountered by bringing the first title to the Xbox 360, Taylor says development of the console version for the Square Enix published sequel is being done by the team at Gas Powered Games. "We're doing it in-house and giving it a lot more time and a lot more resources," Taylor said, admittedly "bullish" the sequel will fare better for console players. "I would be very surprised if it didn't do as well as the PC version." Stay tuned for our full interview with Chris Taylor, tomorrow.

Demigod, the latest from Gas Powered Games, has had quite a rocky start since it launched in April. Its servers were first overrun with pirates and the network problems continued to persist into May. Stardock, the game's publisher, promised to dole out coupons to players as an apology for the poor network performance, and Big Download reports that customers are starting to receive them.

The coupons will allow anyone to purchase the game for 50 percent off the standard $39.99 price. We're not quite sure how offering a discount to new customers amounts to an apology to current customers, but it's definitely better than nothing. We're sure it might also serve to help new customers take the plunge despite the reported issues.

So, how about it, Demigod players, have you received your coupon yet? Did you manage to convince a friend to pick up the game? For that matter, have you stuck with the game despite its problems?

[Via BD]

Demigod appears to have been a pirates' cove at launch, as Stardock CEO Brad Wardell explained on his blog a couple days ago: Out of the 120,000 connections on launch day, only 18,000 were legitimate customers (that's not sales, merely "concurrent users"). Obviously, this situation put quite a strain on the servers. He explained that Stardock stress tested for 50,000 players at peak times and wasn't expecting to hit those numbers for weeks.

A letter from Stardock this morning notes that "most" launch day issues were resolved yesterday afternoon. A "doppleganger" of the network was created, along with an update for legitimate players, which now directs them to the clean servers. It's a pretty nasty situation for Stardock, which has actually put faith in gamers by not placing copy protection on its games.

[Via Edge]

The latest video of Demigod is actually a four-minute walkthrough of the game with Executive Producer (and Stardock CEO) Brad Wardell. It's been hard to describe Gas Powered Games' Demigod because it's not a conventional RTS. Players mainly focus on leveling up and keeping alive their main deity character, so there are a lot of RPG elements in the game as well.

The video does a solid job of describing what a typical multiplayer match is like. We've had some time with the beta, and the focus of the game is to keep the action going and avoid the micromanagement in normal RTS titles -- a match can be finished in about a half-hour. Although it's not shown in this video, the camera is completely free to set at whatever angle you'd like to experience the action, which is actually pretty cool once The Rook starts whaling on troops. This PC only title -- which once you play, you won't understand why that is -- will be available this April.

Stardock let us know that Demigod is ready to take control of PCs April 14. The new-fangled RTS, developed by Gas Powered Games, is priced at $39.95 for the standard version and $49.99 for the collector's edition. The additional ten-spot will net deity wannabes a soundtrack CD, poster and a pewter figurine of The Rook.

Demigod is also available to purchase on Stardock's Impulse digital distribution system. The game will utilize Impulse for its multiplayer functionality, too, but full details have yet to be revealed.

Square Enix Europe announced this morning that it has entered into a "strategic partnership" with Gas Powered Games to release Supreme Commander 2. Squeenix states that its affiliation with the House of Chris Taylor is part of the publisher's "goal of increasing western development efforts aimed for the global markets."

The original Supreme Commander was published by THQ, so we're a little confused as to how Square Enix got a hold of the license, unless GPG owned the rights all along. We've contacted THQ, GPG and Squeenix for clarification. No word on when Supreme Commander 2 will mech march to retail.

Update: Doing a bit more research, it appears GPG owns the rights to the Supreme Commander franchise.

Following an interview with Gas Powered Games at PAX 2008, we got some hands on time with their newest creation, Demigod. The first thing we noticed while watching it running on glowing, envy-inducing PCs was how deliberate much of it looked. Everything from the unit/map design to the ease-of-use control scheme oozed hours of careful consideration on developer GPG's part. While the concept of Demigod tends to bewilder many who hear it -- ourselves included -- understanding the idea only took us a few minutes of playing the atypical strategy game.

Players only control their Demigod and its set of abilities. Our time was spent with the RPG-style Torchbearer, a Norse flavored character that can switch between ice and fire modes. We were digging his armored-burn-victim look, which just so happened to feature more armor and less burn. The Torchbearer is all about freezing everything before switching to fire and watching the screen light up as your enemies burn. Our magical offensive certainly got us some kills, but it wasn't moving the battlefront at all. Once we began to work more attentively with our AI-controlled troops of the non-Skynet variety, the battle quickly shifted to our favor.

Our actions in-game where peppered by murmurs of, "Oh, whoa." and "I want this game, now" from various onlookers behind us. We were starting to agree with this sentiment. It surprised us to find out that the game is actually running on a version of the Supreme Commander engine, as we saw more visual variety in 30 minutes with Demigod than we ever did playing hours of SupCom. GPG assured us that the system requirements are designed to include low-end machines, which is very much due to the fact that Demigod doesn't try to do a thousand things at once on-screen while you play it. (our wallets say thanks) Looking at the game, it was fairly hard to imagine that the harpy-like creatures and wiggling death-plant-things were living in the same engine that featured angular robot-spiders and hover tanks that bogged down our computers just a year and half ago. All in all, Demigod looks like it's going to steal away our precious personal time when it eventually ships on Stardock's Impulse service next year.


[MP3] Download this interview in MP3 format

Tired of constantly clicking dwarfs and dragons to death in a cliché-ridden fantasy setting? Rejoice, for Gas Powered Games' Space Siege demo is now available for download! You -- yes, you! -- can now be plunged into a brave, hitherto unexplored world as you click aliens and robots to death in a cliché-ridden sci-fi setting!

Here's the lowdown on the download: This smattering of outer space adventure will lay siege to approximately 935MB of space on your hard drive and offer you a glimpse of the game's environments, combat and cybernetically enhanced space dudes. You can grab it from our pals at Big Download.

Publisher Stardock has released the first trailer for Demigod, its upcoming "team-based action game with RTS and RPG elements" being developed by Gas Powered Games. The title will support one-on-one battles, but the game apparently shines in team play. The idea of a "team-based" RTS is still something we're wrapping our brains around; as multiplayer RTS is nothing new, but Demigod sounds like something different. For those who really want to get some hands-on time with the game, we were able to confirm the title will be at PAX.

Gamespot recently spoke with GPG and Stardock about the development of Demigod and we're definitely looking forward to learning more as the title continues its crusade for an early 2009 launch. We're still keeping our fingers crossed for an announcement that the game will make the leap to consoles. Check out the trailer after the break.

While it isn't the best represented genre on the 360 by a long shot, RTS's have still managed to stake their claim on the platform, and between the coming C&C3 expansion and the newly gone gold Supreme Commander this month looks to see them expanding their territory. Having released over a year ago we're not sure exactly how much territory will be gained by Supreme Commander, but the game was well received when it was released and is likely to still be as good when it comes to console. Besides, the real question will be whether or not the game will hold console RTS fans over until they get what they really seem to want: Halo Wars.

Miraculously, it appears that Gas Powered Games' Dungeon Siege franchise has survived a Boll-ocalypse -- that is to say, it's getting another game even after being "adapted" into a hilariously calamitous Uwe Boll film. Speaking to Eurogamer Germany (English version), Gas Powered Games boss Chris Taylor has divulged some of his plans for a third orc-killing romp.

"There will be some things that are very much like Dungeon Siege 1 and 2, but some things will be simplified," he said. "I am done with multi-character parties; I really think that it's all going to be about a single hero. It's too much to manage." We can certainly get behind the idea of having fewer people to manage, as long as our hero has enough to do by his lonesome. For instance, it would be nice to be granted a choice in whether we'd like to hack or slash any given enemy.

We expect to hear more on the topic once Gas Powered Games completes work on Space Siege. Which is a lot like Dungeon Siege ... but in space.

[Via Big Download]