Fates Forever Reimagines Hardcore Gaming as Tablet-Only

[Steven Bogos]

Fates Forever Reimagines Hardcore Gaming as Tablet-Only

The ambitious new MOBA is an tablet-only interpretation of the world's most popular hardcore game: League of Legends.

When you think of "hardcore gaming," images of sweaty nerds gathered together in darkened basements doing sixteen-hour non-stop World of Warcraft raids come to mind. In other words, a glorious experience. You don't think of some hip twenty-something sitting in a Starbucks on his iPad. Jason Citron, founder of OpenFeint, aims to change these preconceptions, revealing his tablet-only company Hammer & Chisel, and its flagship game: Fates Forever, a League of Legends-style MOBA designed solely to be experienced on tablets.

Citron and Hammer & Chisel explain that we are now in "the post-PC era," and that tablets, not consoles, smartphones, or PCs will be the major players in the upcoming generation. Fates Forever employs unique mechanics never before used in the genre, and the developer boasts that "For the first time, players will be able to literally touch their heroes and execute fun and visceral special moves not possible with a keyboard and mouse."

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Citron believes that touchscreen devices, especially tablets, are replacing consoles as the primary medium for strategic and competitive gaming. His goal is for Hammer & Chisel to become "the Blizzard of the post-PC era." He believes it can do this by jumping the gun on his predicted tablet renaissance in gaming.

"I've been watching the next-gen consoles floundering while most people are buying and spending time on tablets," said Criton, adding "58 percent of gaming professionals said they plan to release their next game on a tablet or smartphone. About 11 percent said they'd develop on the Xbox One and around the same amount intend to develop on the PlayStation 4."

Fates Forever will launch this summer, and utilize "modern monetization techniques," so we can probably assume a free-to-play structure similar to League of Legends.

Furthermore, Hammer & Chisel have offered to answer any questions you may have about the game. Just leave your question in the comments and i'll include it in an e-mail to the dev team.

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[Smooth Operator]

Well I'm sure that a game slow enough would work just fine on tablets, however the quotes reek of delusion so I highly doubt these are the guys to make it happen.

But surely they can still learn that MOBA is not about fingering your heroes or shinny shit, sit down with the game and pay attention don't just pretend you know how it's done.

 

[Candidus]

I think this is the sort of question that'll get an ambiguous response. I know it's a dicey question...

Are you going to put heroes and game-changing stat amplifiers (rune page, assuming you have an equivalent) behind a pay wall the way that Riot have? Or are you going to do as Valve has done, and put *only* cosmetics behind the counter?

I don't own a tablet, but I'll go where the great games are. A moba like Fates could be a step in the right direction. That being said, I dislike Riot's business practices and wouldn't be interested in a game that imitated their monetizing scheme.

 

[1337mokro]

I think this deserves only one thing.

THE NICK CAGE LAUGH!


That was my original reaction when reading the line "Touch your heroes" I NEED AN ADULT!!!

Your game will be slower, less complex and less precise. It will never actually be possible to be used for any kind of competition because it is on a bloody tablet. Your game might survive on PC but on a tablet?

***** Please!

Your core market is a hardcore competitive niche who are not going to fumble around with tablets.

 

[Lunar Templar]

uh huh .... I don't think this guy has any idea of just what he's saying. not saying a MOBA can't work, but all this guy seems to be saying is 'I wanna rip off LoL to make WoW bank' and, well 'you can't beat WoW by being WoW'

 

[Lazy Kitty]

Game on a tablet?

Well, I hope those tablets have proper cooling.
And a way to make everything around me dark.

 

[Jandau]

I'm sorry, but this is just not going to work.

I just don't see how they can port some of the key features of the MOBA genre to a tablet. We're talking about things that are integral to the MOBA experience and the genre's entire paradigm. The limitations of the tablet platform are just too great.

Seriously, without either a keyboard or voice chat it is impossible to call someone a "gay noob feeder" in even a remotely efficient manner, followed by various sexual insults involving the other person's ancestors and an assortment of exotic animals. How can I play a MOBA if I'm not able to plumb the depraved depths of human language in search for the most vile linguistic excrement to fling at my enemies?

Playing without those features would just be uncivilized and I refuse to be a part of it. Good day to you!

 

[1337mokro]

I'm sorry, but this is just not going to work.

I just don't see how they can port some of the key features of the MOBA genre to a tablet. We're talking about things that are integral to the MOBA experience and the genre's entire paradigm. The limitations of the tablet platform are just too great.

Seriously, without either a keyboard or voice chat it is impossible to call someone a "gay noob feeder" in even a remotely efficient manner, followed by various sexual insults involving the other person's ancestors and an assortment of exotic animals. How can I play a MOBA if I'm not able to plumb the depraved depths of human language in search for the most vile linguistic excrement to fling at my enemies?

Playing without those features would just be uncivilized and I refuse to be a part of it. Good day to you!

You could insta message them

 

[Jandau]

I'm sorry, but this is just not going to work.

I just don't see how they can port some of the key features of the MOBA genre to a tablet. We're talking about things that are integral to the MOBA experience and the genre's entire paradigm. The limitations of the tablet platform are just too great.

Seriously, without either a keyboard or voice chat it is impossible to call someone a "gay noob feeder" in even a remotely efficient manner, followed by various sexual insults involving the other person's ancestors and an assortment of exotic animals. How can I play a MOBA if I'm not able to plumb the depraved depths of human language in search for the most vile linguistic excrement to fling at my enemies?

Playing without those features would just be uncivilized and I refuse to be a part of it. Good day to you!

You could insta message them

Ah, an uncouth barbarian, I see. You fail to realize that the impact is lost if the rest of my team can't appreciate my verbal vitriol. Yes, I could message everybody and forward replies and such, but it would be dreadfully inefficient to do that mid-game and there's not much point doing it after the game.

Nay, the spirit of the genre would be savagely butchered by the exclusion of proper communication options to the point that it can hardly be considered a MOBA game, and much less one inspired by LoL.

 

[1337mokro]

I'm sorry, but this is just not going to work.

I just don't see how they can port some of the key features of the MOBA genre to a tablet. We're talking about things that are integral to the MOBA experience and the genre's entire paradigm. The limitations of the tablet platform are just too great.

Seriously, without either a keyboard or voice chat it is impossible to call someone a "gay noob feeder" in even a remotely efficient manner, followed by various sexual insults involving the other person's ancestors and an assortment of exotic animals. How can I play a MOBA if I'm not able to plumb the depraved depths of human language in search for the most vile linguistic excrement to fling at my enemies?

Playing without those features would just be uncivilized and I refuse to be a part of it. Good day to you!

You could insta message them

Ah, an uncouth barbarian, I see. You fail to realize that the impact is lost if the rest of my team can't appreciate my verbal vitriol. Yes, I could message everybody and forward replies and such, but it would be dreadfully inefficient to do that mid-game and there's not much point doing it after the game.

Nay, the spirit of the genre would be savagely butchered by the exclusion of proper communication options to the point that it can hardly be considered a MOBA game, and much less one inspired by LoL.

You make to many assumptions my good man, however you could just use your skype headset or whatever the tablet hipsters are into and shout into it at other people.

The game would either way be slow enough to type a small essay between moves

 

[lacktheknack]

"The Post PC Era"?

Well, THAT doesn't sound familiar in the slightest.

Not at all.

 

[funksobeefy]

well I guess when you lose to a cheap ass hero its easier to throw your tablet than your desktop.

"For the first time, players will be able to literally touch their heroes and execute fun and visceral special moves not possible with a keyboard and mouse."

oh yeah? ha, itll be good seeing him try and back this up

 

[klaynexas3]

I'm a little curious, where are all these flaws people see in PCs that make people think the platform is about to die in terms of gaming? I can understand why the consoles are being looked down upon at the moment, but I don't see tablets becoming the major "hardcore" platform for gaming needs. Dedicated gaming requires input on a massive time scale that a tablet could not see. It's too inconvenient to game on for a long period of time so the casual market won't play for longer than an hour at most, and with only ten fingers and such a small screen, you can't possibly have the ability to customize your game settings that the more dedicated crowd would need to be able to play efficiently. It might have some interesting features that we wouldn't see on a PC, but it would lack far too many features that the PC does boast that wouldn't pull that crowd towards the tablet market.

All in all, this is a short sighted presumption to make, and he will clearly be eating those words later, but that doesn't mean that the game might not be an interesting one.

 

[jasoncitron]

Hey Everyone - Jason Citron here from Hammer & Chisel. Just reading through all the comments and I can understand everyone's perspective. I think the way the article is written makes me sound like I'm some kind of prophet. I'm not I'm just a gamer who got lucky and managed to start a gaming company.

The gist of the idea behind Fates Forever is that a lot of people are buying tablets (30+ million, every 3 months, all over the world) and there aren't many great core games on there. I don't expect PCs to "die" or consoles to go away completely. And frankly I hope they don't. I love playing games there for the specific types of experiences they offer (Hotline Miami anyone?!). I just think that lots more people will have access to tablets than PCs eventually. It would be a shame if the best game those people ever got to play was Clash of Clans. So hopefully with Fates Forever we can do our part to help make the tablet a legit gaming platform for people who want to play core games.



- jason

 

[MrHide-Patten]

It looks like somebody is down with a serious case of Molyneux syndrome. Speaking as somebody who's inside the biz I can say that the "58%" is nothing to get excited about, just like how 90% of school is a boring slog.

Quantity does not equal quality, the mobile market is a perfect example of this.