A short think piece on Binary Revolver today calls for the end to morality systems in games: The morality system in Dishonored diminishes the game. It breaks the core mechanics into two separate pieces, choosing to boost replay value over creating one fluid experience. This made the game’s entire co
Hero to some, unbelievable weirdo to more, a man named Okan Kaya, from Sydney, Australia, set the world record for the longest video game sesh by pumping out 136 consecutive hours on Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. After failing to attract the sponsorship of retailers – who were fearful of being associat
As we all know, Movember is the do-gooding excuse most men need to obey the darkest impulse in their greasy heart, the impulse to grow a mustache. Of course, charity is often about leveraging people’s bad instincts for good purposes, so no harm no foul etc. Amazon has compiled a wonderful list of M
Earlier this month at the PRACTICE conference, Christine Norman started her presentation on narrative in League of Legends with an aside about audience engagement. Norman, the lead creative developer on LoL, showed footage of the game’s World Championship, which was live streamed globally and featur
Science Daily reports: Both high school sophomores who played video games on average two hours per day and college students who played four hours of video games daily matched, and in some cases exceeded, the skills of the residents on parameters that included how much tension the subjects put on the
The new game from the indie developer Edward Curtis-Sivess is best described as a 2-D Dyad. Like that game, In Space features brainstem-tickling waves of hypnotic electronica. Like that game, you play as a little amorphous ship shooting shapes in the distance, and like that game, you get rewarded fo
Dikembe Mutombo‘s 4 1/2 Weeks to Save the World is the timeless story of the retired Congolese NBA center’s quest to prevent the Mayan prophecy of a Dec 21 apocalypse from happening, at the behest of a hyper-intelligent English bear in a Fair Isle sweater. Along the way you take off in a rocketship
There is a thoughtful piece on Game|Life today about the returning trend of permadeath, found in various permutations in games like DayZ, Dark Souls, and XCOM: Enemy Unknown. The real nugget comes from XCOM lead designer Jake Solomon: The downside of strong narratives, Solomon said, is that they’re
Bioshock auteur Ken Levine announced today on Twitter that the frantically anticipated Bioshock: Infinite will not include multiplayer. This will rankle some, to be sure, as multiplayer is essentially de rigeur in every major console release these days, even in series in which no one asked for it, l
As you know, we here at Kill Screen are big, big FIFA fans. We’re also now big Hot Chip fans, thanks to their new video for “Don’t Deny Your Heart”, in which the band plays a malfunctioning pseudo-FIFA, in which the players put aside their differences and get a little sexy: The spectacle of City and
Here are the things you can do in Bientôt l’été (Soon, the Summer), the new art game from Belgian developer Tale of Tales: -Walk on a beach -Close your eyes -Run with your eyes closed -Find objects on the beach -Watch your house change sizes and shapes -Read and listen to cryptic conversations in Fr
Well, this is just flippin cool: a new iPhone app allows you to upload Minecraft-created objects onto the real world, and view them using an augmented reality interface. Check it out: For me, this is a very significant development. Among my plans: turn my basement apartment into the Playboy Mansion,
To all of our readers, friends, family, enemies, frenemies and pets, HAPPY THANKSGIVING, or as it’s affectionately known, Jewish Christmas. Please eat more food than is comfortable, drink more beer than is advisable, and play more games than is acceptable. We’ll see you on Monday, when, coincidental
Last year, the Game Creation Society at Carnegie Mellon University played an icebreaker to welcome new members. Officers in the club, including then-senior Duncan Boehle, had come up with seed guidelines for teams to develop into little games. “One of the ideas was smell-based stealth,” Boehle said,
It was the half-day Wednesday before Thanksgiving break, 1998, and I had Zelda on my mind. From the moment I woke up until the last seconds of Mr. Sotella’s 8th grade English class announced four and a half days of unencumbrance, I had fixed in my brain the golden cartridge. I had planned, preordere
Remember the Halo movie? The one written by Alex Garland, produced by Peter Jackson, and directed by Neill “District 9” Blomkamp? Marty Sliva definitely does. Over at 1up, Silva closes his eyes and imagines what the movie – the script of which is widely available – would have looked like: Despite st
Opinions in America about marijuana are changing. Voters in Colorado and Washington decriminalized possession of small amounts of the drug, and mainstream bloggers like Andrew Sullivan have adopted the end of “prohibition” a pet topic. Into the mix comes Dave Homan, a 35-year-old Omaha IT specialist
The obvious answer is: no, you stupid child. Decades of absolute horseshit constitutes a preponderence of evidence against the idea of a competent, let alone compelling, film based on a video game. But, in the past few weeks, we’ve gotten news that two of the world’s most compelling and intense youn
Lawmen gave Justin Success-Brooks more than two years in jail for selling counterfeit Nintendo games. Success-Brooks, of Foxley Lane, Purley, sold thousands of games cartridges for Nintendo’s DS and DSi handheld consoles including a “very substantial” trade with buyers in China, Croydon Crown Court
Last night, after I beat the single-player campaign in Halo 4, a curious message appeared on the screen. It read: Every great journey begins with a single step. This is our beginning. Thanks for trusting us with the universe you love and joining us on this epic adventure. –343 Industries Yesterday,
