Whoever had the idea to combine three titans of the modern mass entertainment universe – Lego, Fortnite and Minecraft – into one experience is surely feeling rather smug right now. Launched on Thursday, Lego Fortnite is a new mode available within Fortnite, but it's essentially a whole new game – an open-world crafting survival sim in the unmistakable style of, yes, Minecraft. Players enter a procedurally generated world, unique to them, which somehow combines the aesthetic features of Lego and Fortnite, with its luscious, bright colours and toy-like charm. Like Minecraft, the main draw is the survival mode, where you can explore the wilderness, build houses, grow crops, tend to animals and combat a range of beasties. You start with a very limited set of building instructions and can only make a simple hut, but as you progress, gathering resources such as wood, granite and wool, you get access to more building materials.

If you subscribe to Apple Arcade ($5, £5 or AU$8 a month), you can play this game at no additional charge, and without ads or in-app purchases, which is why this version is called "Stardew Valley Plus." This game was developed by ConcernedApe. It was nominated for a handful of awards in 2016 and won the Golden Joystick Awards's Breakthrough Award that same year. Stardew Valley opens with you leaving your office job and moving back to your grandfather's rundown farm with the hope of living a simpler life. But if you scratch beneath the surface you'll find that this game is anything but simple. Sure, you can stay on your land as you grow crops, raise animals and fix your home, but there's so much to do in Stardew Valley Plus.

Microsoft just showed how artificial intelligence could find its way into many software applications--by writing code on the fly. At the Microsoft Build developer conference today, the company's chief technology officer, Kevin Scott, demonstrated an AI helper for the game Minecraft. The non-player character within the game is powered by the same machine learning technology Microsoft has been testing for auto-generating software code. The feat hints at how recent advances in AI could change personal computing in years to come by replacing interfaces that you tap, type, and click to navigate into interfaces that you simply have a conversation with. The Minecraft agent responds appropriately to typed commands by converting them into working code behind the scenes using the software API for the game.

Though not as venerable as novels based on movies, novelizations of video games have been a sturdy publishing genre for decades. Assassin's Creed, Halo, Donkey Kong Country--all have been rendered in what technically counts as prose. You wouldn't call these novels of ideas, probably, but that's what the Swedish gaming company Mojang got, in 2016, when it approved Max Brooks to write a book based on Minecraft, widely considered the best-selling video game of all time. In most iterations, Minecraft players enter a Lego-like universe where they must learn how to shelter and feed themselves, marshal resources, build stuff, and otherwise survive while coping with nightly mobs of zombies, skeletons, and other bad actors. There is an often ignored way to "win" Minecraft, but for most players the game is more a world to invent.

Bots are terrorizing World of Warcraft Classic servers, stealing precious resources, monopolizing rare monsters, and inflating the virtual economy with truckloads of illicitly earned gold. Today, WoW Classic developer Blizzard Entertainment announced it has suspended or closed over 74,000 WoW Classic accounts over the last month, many of which were automating gameplay with bots. For months, clusters of bot-driven accounts have trawled around high-level zones, attacking monsters with uncanny precision before rotating toward their next target in robotic 90-degree angles. These in-game characters are operated by scripts, programmed to optimally kill monsters and obtain rare, valuable items that drop from them. Lately, they've been targeting the sought-after Black Lotus, a necessary item for some competitive, high-level play.

Minecraft's open-ended play environment could be ideal for AI research, some researchers say.Credit: Microsoft To see the divide between the best artificial intelligence and the mental capabilities of a seven-year-old child, look no further than the popular video game Minecraft. A young human can learn how to find a rare diamond in the game after watching a 10-minute demonstration on YouTube. Artificial intelligence (AI) is nowhere close. But in a unique computing competition ending this month, researchers hope to shrink the gap between machine and child -- and in doing so, help to reduce the computing power needed to train AIs. Competitors may take up to four days and use no more than eight million steps to train their AIs to find a diamond.

Blizzard Entertainment has banned a professional Hearthstone player who expressed support for protestors in Hong Kong during a live broadcast following the recent Asia-Pacific Grandmasters tournament in which the top pro players from the region participate -- and rescinded the money he won in the competition. Blizzard Entertainment, a U.S.-based video game developer that's a part of the entertainment company Activision Blizzard, is the publisher behind the digital collectible card game Hearthstone. During a post-game interview Sunday on the official Hearthstone Taiwan livestream, the player, Ng "Blitzchung" Wai Chung, pulled down a pro-democracy Hong Kong-style mask and shouted, "Liberate Hong Kong. Inven Global, a website that covers esports and gaming news, reports that Blitzchung shouted the phrase in Chinese. Blitzchung is from Hong Kong, according to Inven Global. A clip of the interview can be seen here. In response, Blizzard, a U.S.-based video game developer, banned Blitzchung from competing in Hearthstone tournaments for a year, starting on Oct. 5. The company said Blitzchung has been removed from the Grandmasters roster, and will not receive any prize money he earned during the Grandmasters season 2 tournament. According to a statement from Blizzard, Blitzchung violated a competition rule that bars players from doing anything that "brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image." Blitzchung lost $10,000 in prize earnings, Bloomberg reports. In a statement to Inven Global, Blitzchung said he viewed his comments as a continuation of his participation in the protests. "As you know, there are serious protests in my country now.

Can you work out how to mine a diamond in just 4 days? That is the task artificial intelligence will be set in a new competition. The MineRL competition will kick off on 1 June and will take place inside the video game Minecraft. Entrants will have to build an AI that can successfully navigate and survive in the online game and ultimately learn the complex task of how to mine a diamond.

Microsoft and Mojang have announced a new Minecraft game, 'Minecraft Earth,' for mobile devices, which uses augmented reality to place objects from the game in your real world. Minecraft is expanding its reach – into your real world. A new game, "Minecraft Earth," coming this summer for mobile devices (Android and iOS), uses augmented reality – à la "Pokémon Go" – to let you find objects in real-world locations and place objects from the game there, too. "The game's mechanics are simple: explore your neighborhood to find blocks and unique mobs for your builds. Once you have them, any flat surface is an opportunity to build," said Minecraft creative director Saxs Persson in a post on Xbox.com.

World of Warcraft allows players to dive into a vast fantasy realm populated with players from around the world. Together they battle to survive alongside dragons, trolls and warlocks - even on Christmas Day. Video games have long proved a formidable force in capturing the hearts, imaginations and wallets of people all over the world. The most immersive gaming experience, according to its fans, is World of Warcraft and in Azeroth, where the game is set, even Christmas Day is celebrated with turkey feasts, snowball fights and presents under a tree. In a time where many of us spend more time online, what does it mean to celebrate 25 December in a virtual world?