Artist Paul Johnson has been working on a Star Wars animated short for several years now. But he finally finished it, and we gotta say, It was well worth the wait! Done in a very cool 80’s style Anime theme, it is the Star Wars Anime we wish we would get. Take a look at this awesome video below.
Twitch CEO, Emmett Shear has confirmed that Twitch will in fact be bought by Amazon. Rumors earlier this year had Google, or Youtube actually, buying the huge video-game streaming service. But today we have confirmation that Amazon will be purchasing them.
In a an open letter, the CEO states that Twitch will remain seperate, but that now with Amazon’s resources, they aim to give us a better Twitch experience. A Copy of the letter is below
Dear Twitch Community,
It’s almost unbelievable that slightly more than 3 years ago, Twitch didn’t exist. The moment we launched, we knew we had stumbled across something special. But what followed surprised us as much as anyone else, and the impact it’s had on both the community and us has been truly profound.
Your talent, your passion, your dedication to gaming, your memes, your brilliance – these have made Twitch what it is today. Every day, we strive to live up to the standard set by you, the community. We want to create the very best place to share your gaming and life online, and that mission continues to guide us.
Together with you, we’ve found new ways of connecting developers and publishers with their fans. We’ve created a whole new kind of career that lets people make a living sharing their love of games. We’ve brought billions of hours of entertainment, laughter, joy and the occasional ragequit. I think we can all call that a pretty good start.
Today, I’m pleased to announce we’ve been acquired by Amazon. We chose Amazon because they believe in our community, they share our values and long-term vision, and they want to help us get there faster. We’re keeping most everything the same: our office, our employees, our brand, and most importantly our independence. But with Amazon’s support we’ll have the resources to bring you an even better Twitch.
I personally want to thank you, each and every member of the Twitch community, for what you’ve created. Thank you for putting your faith in us. Thank you for sticking with us through growing pains and stumbles. Thank you for bringing your very best to us and sharing it with the world. Thank you, from a group of gamers who never dreamed they’d get to help shape the face of the industry that we love so much.
It’s dangerous to go alone. On behalf of myself and everyone else at Twitch, thank you for coming with us.
Emmett Shear, CEO
I haven’t really had a chance to process this newest development, but as of right now I suppose if they leave Twitch to be twitch still and only help the service become better, then that is a great thing. Of course whenever there is a deal like this, the concern is that they will in fact mess it all up. So here is hoping that in this case, things only get better.
By Dayne “Anjel” Cody
@DayneCody
Previously available to the Public, but as an open beta, Smite has officially been released. Developed by High-Rez Studio’s, Smite is a new take on the existing MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) style game. Instead of the classic view (overhead birds-eye view) that you normally get in these kinds of games, Smite changes this to a 3rd person view. Now as small of a change as this seems, it makes a HUGE difference in the way the game plays, and I think this change makes the game much more friendly to new users. Because you are using WASD to move and your mouse to look around, the game has a much more action oriented feel to it.
There are a variety of game modes, but the classic 5 VS 5, three lane Conquest Mode is the meat and potatoes here. They have also taken deity’s from mythology around the globe and created champions out of them, from Greek, Egyptian and Norse Mythology, all the way up to Hindu and Chinese Mythology, there are at current count, 51 gods playable in the game. They are also slowly adding more gods as time goes on, they have not stated yet how many they plan to add to the game, but so far they have a great assortment that can fit to a variety of play styles.
Smite is Free to Play, there is a weekly God rotation that cycles through the free gods available that week, as well as you can use in game currency or “Favour” as they call it, which you get by completing matches, or spend real money on Gems, which you can then use to buy gods, as well as skins for those gods. All in all not to uncommon for this kind of game, and it is a system that works well.
There are ranked games and Ladders in the game, and they are definitely aiming to get the game into e-sports with the built in Twitch Streaming as well as the fact that this weekend they are kicking things off with a rather large tournament in Atlanta, with more then $200k in prize money up for grabs. for more information on the tournament, you can go here.
For the launch of Smite they also sent along this very cool Cinematic trailer showing off a few of the gods in Smite, you can take a look at that below.
All throughout the Beta I have been playing my fair share of Smite as well and you can see some matches and how the game plays at the links below.
So what else can I say really, this game is worth the download, and I have been playing the crap out of it recently, and this in spite of the fact that Titanfall has come out. It really is kind of like the MOBA for people who can’t/don’t like MOBA’s. At the very least it is free, and if you can’t get into it, well that is fine, no harm no foul, but I def urge you to take a look at it.
To download the game and get playing, head here to SMITE.
By Dayne “Anjel” Cody
@DayneCody
GEEKOHOLICS 
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