Given their particular ability to suck away your life with endless loops of gameplay and gear-hunting, many people tend to think of the decision to play a particularly MMO as a lifestyle choice hardcore gamers make not unlike marriage—an allegedly permanent commitment you find yourself increasingly
One more time, say it with me: Mainstream gaming news. – Blizzard and Valve have finally come to legal blows over the DotA trademark. – Adam Adamowicz, hugely influential artist of Fallout 3 and Skyrim, passed away two days ago. -Frictional Games, makers of Amnesia: The Dark Descent teased their nex
SSX is coming back to consoles in a big way later this month, leaving many of us to wonder just how crazy the sport really is IRL. Wired has this great set of photos up that makes the game’s Skyrim-like terrains and promised boss battles with the mountains themselves seem more founded in reality tha
Brandon Williamson, the creator of the modern retro arcade game (Whoa, that’s a lot of descriptors!) Forget-Me-Not, has posted some pictures of a hypothetical sequel to his critical hit. Forget-Me-Not came in on our best of year poll tied for 22nd place, and it had me hypnotized for a couple of week
While they aren’t quite as handy as Batman vision in Arkham City, these stainless-steel cuffs, which contain maps of subway systems, are more fashionable than a cape and rubber suit. I say even more accessories need the in-game treatment. For instance, I’d love to see a pair of retro Puma’s made of
Developer Dice Hate Me Games has created game about the coffee industry. In VivaJava, players send their researchers to hot spots around the globe to gather the perfect bean. The game seems destined to entertain strategy geeks, and has a wry sense of humor (“Twin Perks”, anyone?). The project has al
In a story that seems to be from the fictional world of Resident Evil, a man claiming to be the dead Khulekani Kwakhe “Mgqumeni” Mseleku, a famous African Zulu musician, has emerged at the artist’s home near Dundee. His explanation: Zombies. According to Times Live: Mgqumeni… apparently died in Dece
Official Nintendo Magazine UK reports that the record for shortest play-through of Super Mario Bros has been broken a gamer named Andrew Gardakis. At four minutes and fifty-eight seconds, his game of Mario took less time than it did for me to create this entire post. Watch the mezmerizing video belo
Fishing games are weird. They’re not exactly fun, because there’s only so many ways to catch a virtual fish, and most of them involve sitting in a virtual boat or standing on a virtual pier. Outdoors Unlimited, an upcoming “outdoors RPG,” hopes to change all that, mainly by taking that idea to its m
Ok, so who played Gears of War and thought to themselves “wow I really had trouble identifying with that Marcus Fenix dude UNTIL I realized he has neck acne”? Apparently the minds behind this new stunning facial modeling technology known as Separable Subsurface Scattering (SSS) did, given how they
Here’s this morning’s gaming news. –NPD reports that US game retail sales have fallen a dismal 34 percent. -You can now name your price for the second Indie Game Music Bundle. -Double Fine broke records by raising 1 MILLION dollars within 24 hours on Kickstarter. -The Playstation Blog has posted a
And here’s this afternoon’s wrap-up of the day’s gaming news. – Double Fine’s Tim Schafer used Kickstarter to pitch the world on a new adventure game. In an extremely cool showing of fan support and loyalty, they exceeded the $400,000 goal overnight. – Skyrim has hit patch 1.4. But in some even cool
A new study conducted by the Archives of Neurology suggests that playing games (the “brain stimulating” kind, mind you) might “improve your memory and delay or prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s disease,” lending casual game lovers an impassioned defense: …scientist are finding that many games requiri
Alongside recent fears over the legal ownership of digital goods (like games purchased on Steam), games lawyer Jas Purewal asks another potentially alarming question: forget about whether or not we “own” the games we purchase with stringent DRM, do we even own the things we buy within the game itsel
Yesterday, Tim Schafer’s Double Fine Productions unveiled a Kickstarter page to fund its upcoming project, dubbed “Double Fine Adventure.” The goal was to raise $400,000 over a month to fund development for its new point-and-click adventure game. Less than 18 hours later, the project has raised well
Foxconn, a tech manufacturer in Taiwan, is hoping so at least. In the face of very grave labor conditions that have caused strikes and on-the-job-suicides, the company plans to replace many of its assembly-line workers with robots, while transitioning many of its 1.2 million employees into departmen
What does a claw game have in common with last year’s acclaimed JRPG Dark Souls? Well ok, maybe not all that much, but one thing the two games undeniably share is their legendary difficulty. But when does difficulty transition from a design flaw (as many detractors of arcade-style games call their a
Here’s some mainstream gaming news you might have missed while you were asleep. -The Playstation Vita store is now online. -Despite recent hacks of various users’ accounts, Microsoft says that Xbox Live has not been hacked. -The folks at Bethesda have been working on Skyrim mods, including dragon mo
There’s still a lot of cultural baggage that comes with pro gaming. Despite being a multi-million dollar enterprise with tons of sponsership and viewers, there’s still an association with gamers living in their parents basement and playing videogames all day. ESPN recently interviewed a few pro game
When it was recently revealed that same sex marriages were allowed in the game Skyrim, the head designer Pete Hines was asked why it was kept under wraps. “Not hush hush, just not making a huge deal out of it. You can marry anyone.” Translation: Why should it matter? In a recent article for IGN, Kez
Here it is, today’s mainstreaming gaming news in one convenient box. – The 3DS is getting a twenty dollar price drop to compete with the Vita. – BioWare are taking the Mass Effect universe in a different direction with an iOS title. – Paradox Interactive, makers of Magicka, will be announcing a mult
You read that right. nothing is a board game with a few days left on Kickstarter. Aside from having a hilarious trailer and a seemingly endless list of potentially awful puns, nothing has the makings of a simple, fun family game. Lance Aston’s project has precious few days left to raise the necessar
Yesterday in a blog post on the official PlayStation Blog, it was revealed that the Simpsons arcade game would be available today on PSN. It’s a mostly-faithful adaptation of the original arcade game, which is pretty sweet. As both big gamers and die-hard Simpsons fans, we’re psyched. -Drew Millard
Get the directions here. -Jamin Warren [via CMYBacon]
In an interview yours truly did for Gamasutra, I spoke with experimental game maker Jake Elliott about Chopin’s Preludes, which were the source of inspiration for his short game Ruins. Jake explained to me how games might be entering a Romantic period. The Preludes are really expressive. That’s ano
