Play XCOM: The Beginning, Win Amazon Gift Cards!

[s0osleepie]

Play XCOM: The Beginning, Win Amazon Gift Cards!

[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/xcomwars]

Witness the beginning of humanity's last stand in this seven-day PvP community event where the start of the future is in your hands.


War is upon us.

Eager to prove yourself as qualified for promotion to Commander, YOU have been put in charge as Lieutenant Commander of a task force amongst the army to join the battle.

It's time to buckle up and choose your faction! Will you command a human defense force and rally mankind to triumph over the invading alien hordes, or will you lead an extraterrestrial force to victory by crushing the puny human natives and pave the way for their annihilation? The future of the Earth hangs in the balance ... how will you tip the scales?

The Escapist and 2K Games is proud to present XCOM: The Beginning. Do not miss this opportunity to participate in this seven-day PvP community event, the likes of which The Escapist has never seen! Strategize with friends in team-only forums and defeat your foes while you climb the leaderboard to victory. Only one team can win. Only one player can reign supreme.

Find out how to participate in the event and collect 14 exclusive new badges by heading over to the event site by clicking here [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/xcomwars]!

Please Note: While participation in this seven-day competition is open to everyone, only residents of US, CA, and the UK are eligible to win prizes.

Edit: We are happy to announce that we have received approval to expand prize eligibility to include residents of Canada and the UK, in addition to residents of the US. To implement this change in a fair and legal manner, we will be executing a full event restart at approximately 6:00PM EDT. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause any of you and we hope these changes only enhance the experience for everyone

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[Zepren]

No prizes for brits? not cool

 

[Somethingfake]

No prizes for brits? not cool

Didn't you know? America is the world!

 

[Mahorfeus]

Sounds legit, but can't say I'll be getting in this one. Even the pretty badges aren't enough to tempt me.

 

[BloodRed Pixel]

How desparate an attempt to raise interest in the game. 1st preorders get Civilization 5 for free and now this. This cannot end good...

 

[s0osleepie]

No prizes for brits? not cool

Didn't you know? America is the world!

Snip.

Snip.

Rest assured that we are ALWAYS looking for ways to include our entire community in all events that we host. This is why we try to make events a fun and unique experience that is open for participation to residents of ALL countries and design the contest portion for prizing as an additional layer only.

We are very aware of the fact that we have an international audience. I promise. Our goal here was to create and offer a unique social event for everyone. And while we would love to include everyone in the prize drawing as well, it is unfortunately not our choice to make when it comes to sponsored events.

I know I am biased, but our intent was to create and offer a PvP community event that is fun for everyone to take part in. Prizes, badges and branding aside, I hope you at least check it out and give it a chance

 

[JediMB]

No prizes for brits? not cool

Well, that's how it always is. Including the promise that they're always looking for ways to include their international audience.

(Not trying to blame anyone here, but it's a shame.)

 

[tmande2nd]

Way to pull an EA there escapist.

"AMERICA THE ONLY LAND IN THE WORLD!"
Meh.

 

[Delmar Wynn]

Way to pull an EA there escapist.

"AMERICA THE ONLY LAND IN THE WORLD!"
Meh.

I think this best answers your comment:

Rest assured that we are ALWAYS looking for ways to include our entire community in all events that we host. This is why we try to make events a fun and unique experience that is open for participation to residents of ALL countries and design the contest portion for prizing as an additional layer only.

We are very aware of the fact that we have an international audience. I promise. Our goal here was to create and offer a unique social event for everyone. And while we would love to include everyone in the prize drawing as well, it is unfortunately not our choice to make when it comes to sponsored events.

I know I am biased, but our intent was to create and offer a PvP community event that is fun for everyone to take part in. Prizes, badges and branding aside, I hope you at least check it out and give it a chance

 

[s0osleepie]

Way to pull an EA there escapist.

"AMERICA THE ONLY LAND IN THE WORLD!"
Meh.

These kinds of restrictions aren't really in our hands. It's legal stuff. Our ideal would be to include everyone in every capacity.

 

[NeonWraith]

Being 'aware' of an international audience is kinda half-assed when you keep pulling things like this. But yes, I understand it's a legal thing.

 

[s0osleepie]

Being 'aware' of an international audience is kinda half-assed when you keep pulling things like this. But yes, I understand it's a legal thing.

Also, you can still play. There's nothing restricting anyone's ability to play.

 

[NeonWraith]

Yes, but the main reason 99% of people will have clicked on that was the chance at the Amazon vouchers. Sticking a giant US ONLY disclaimer on the title page would be somewhat more honest, if nothing else.

 

[s0osleepie]

Being 'aware' of an international audience is kinda half-assed when you keep pulling things like this. But yes, I understand it's a legal thing.

Snip.

Snip.

Well, that's how it always is. Including the promise that they're always looking for ways to include their international audience.

I completely agree with you! And since this comes up every community event, here is full disclosure of the truth: The community event is our design and creation, that we make for our community to offer a fun social experience / game / event that you can all play and participate in together. As I'm sure you know, these events take months to plan and many weeks of work from a team of many people to create and launch to the public as a final product (that hopefully works more often than not. hehehe). Sponsorship of the event not only helps make it all possible and supports the ability to offer prizes as an added bonus, but allows us to offer the experience to everyone for free. We believe that being able to offer the product of many weeks and months worth of man hours for free is the only way to not exclude anyone and make it truly accessible to all of you, which is very important to us.

Where sponsorship is concerned, unlike small companies like The Escapist who have one office and a single team dedicated to our entire international audience, most large corporations capable of sponsoring such efforts have many offices and teams scattered throughout the globe, tasked to focus on a single area. Their goals and budgets vary drastically around the globe. Sometimes these area specific teams coordinate with each other, and sometimes they compete with each other.

At the end of the day, we just want to offer our entire audience an enjoyable and unique social experience that adds to one of the single most important elements of The Escapist - Our community. If we can do that, we consider it a win. If we can award prizes, it is only an added bonus. To be completely honest, if we thought it was only about prizes and branding, we would host a plain raffle or giveaway that takes a day of work to create, and target it only to residents of the countries eligible to win the prize, call it a day, and no one would be the wiser. But we don't. You might not agree with this and that is completely fair. You might also still be annoyed that you can compete for status and badges, but not for prizes, and that is okay and completely understandable. Our hope is simply that enough of you participate to experience and enjoy what we built to have made all the work worth it. See you on the battlefield!!

 

[Skeleon]

Brits? Don't complain. At least you guys were included in various events a couple of times in the past. The non-"Anglo-Saxon" countries in particular seem to get screwed over the most. :-(

 

[Shakura Jolithion]

Having played a bit of this now, I think the game is really imbalanced in aliens favor, and the 4 players I keep attacking are very dumb bots that pretty much let me win... Send in same 3 units over and over, get the exact same battle plan and the exact same responses with the exact same wins. I'm playing as human, and just looking through unit strengths/weaknesses, aliens *definitely* have some more powerful stuff. Unless there's a way to get better units that I'm not reading...

 

[cathou]

Brits? Don't complain. At least you guys were included in various events a couple of times in the past. The non-"Anglo-Saxon" countries in particular seem to get screwed over the most. :-(

Yeah, that. Seriously in Quebec our regulations are so strong that usually when you see a contest on the web it's almost alway : valid in the whole world except Quebec...

Anyway it's nice that we can at least participate in this even if we cannot win prices.

 

[Shakura Jolithion]

Having played some more, I know everyone else is discussing prizes... But... The fact that there's 4 alien bots for the humans to keep attacking (and I assume 4 human bots for the aliens to attack), and the terrible, terrible AI of those bots (buy 3 sets of 50 of one unit, attack with it over & over, alien will not counter which would guarantee its win... and instead guarantees yours. Every. single. time.), I have to wonder where the "competitive" aspect of this game comes in... or the strategy, for that matter. It's like a 5-way rock-paper-scissors each time, plus I've yet to fight another human player... I think whoever wins will be whoever spends the most time going through the same 5~6 clicks over and over, sadly.


Edit: I guess more on topic, you're not really missing out on competing that much for prizes since, at least right now, the game is nothing but who is willing to repeat the same 6~7 mouse clicks the most times.

 

[Lawyer105]

This looks just like a reskin of the robots/pirates/ninja's (whatever they were) game. I didn't find that particularly engaging, but I appreciate the effort the team went to to put a new community event out.

It's not my cup of tea, but thanks for trying, Escapist dudes!