A new study by Brigham Young University professor Sarah Coyne shows that teen novels are dramatically more vulgar than videogames intended for teens. Coyne surveyed 40 of the best-selling teen novels and found 88% of them (35 books) included profanity. Only 34% of teen videogames included objectiona
As part of the 15 year anniversary of the Resident Evil series, Capcom is partnering with Zepp Live Entertainment to put on a live haunted house in an abandoned Japanese hospital. Zepp specializes in creating real experiences were audience members must find their way out of a real world location wh
Ray Kurzweil is fond of comparing DNA to human source code. A group of researchers at Stanford’s Department of Bioengineering have devised a way to use that source code to store write and erase new data into DNA based on some of the simplest principles of binary coding. The process uses an enzyme ad
Today’s forecast calls for torrential downpours of videgame news. -38 Studios and Big Huge Games rumored to have laid off entire staff. –J.S. Joust “clone” removed from App Store. -Blizzard delays real money auction house for Diablo III another week. -UK Prime Minister David Cameron spends “a crazy,
Who should set the price of a game? It seems intuitive that the group creating a work should have the right to sell it for whatever price they feel is fair. Yet in many cases the price of a game depends on the platform its sold through more than the desires of its creators. A group of developers ha
video In preparation for E3, Ubisoft released a video showing how much work has gone into the demo of Assassin’s Creed 3 that will debut at the show. “We’re right at the apex of excitement and terror,” Creative Director Alex Hutchinson said. Philippe Bergeron, AC3‘s Mission Director, added, “We’re s
Among the many wonders of the internet, one of the most characteristic is the contrast between story and reader. With anonymous comments seemingly straight-forward and inoffensive stories can turn into lightning rods for misogyny, antagonism, and ad hominem slurs. The internet has provided a tool fo
Before you can do something great, you must first do something. Dr. Phillip Zimbardo seems to have reverse this aphorism, having done something great very early in 1971 when he led the Stanford prison experiment, a monumental example of how powerfully affected by environmental context human morality
video “It’s better than Plato’s Allegory of the Cave,” Double Fine’s Tim Schafer said of his company’s newest game, The Cave. “Actually it’s better than Plato.” Would that it were so. The Cave, which is designed by Monkey Isalnd creator Ron Gilbert and was just announced by SEGA for release in earl
Josh Trank has just been hired to direct the upcoming film adaptation of Fumito Ueda’s Shadow of the Colossus. Trank’s made his directorial debut earlier this year with Chronicle, a brooding look at what would happen if a group of alienated teenagers actually got super powers. Hint: they didn’t try
The idea of measurable IQs is taken-for-granted these days, but an emerging body of research is shedding new light on different kinds of intelligence a person can have. Dylan Evans studies “risk quotient” intelligence, a way of thinking about probabilities that, it turns out, most people are exceedi
Nobody loves XCOM anymore. The game was once talked about with reverent nostalgia, either one of the best games ever made, or literally, the best. As is often the case with videogame claim-making, the impassioned words meant very little. The conclusion is clear enough but the logic behind it seems a
Today, Egyptians voted in their first presidential election since the resignation of Hosni Mubarak. The videogame world celebrated with these breaking stories: -U.S. judge recommends ban on Xbox 360 sales in North America. -Final Wii U development kits out in the world, “at least as good” as the PS3
video It shouldn’t be an insult to call something stupid. We’re all stupid when put in contexts we don’t connect with. What gives away a person’s true character is not their relative intelligence but the manner in which they deal with their implicit stupidity. To wit, the recently released trailer
Baseball is about suffering. For every proud Yankee fan there is a legion of defeated Brewers loyalists waiting in the dimly-lit sports bars masochistically hoping the next pitch won’t lead to failure. When it does, the heartbroken fan generates an instant nostalgia for those hopeful few seconds bef
video If one game’s sequel rut is another’s sequel groove, Lost Planet 3 offers evidence that Capcom is trying to get back in rhythm with the derailed bug shooter. In a wave of new demos of the game in the run-up to E3, the publisher is trying to throw out the parts that didn’t work in the first two
A month ago a group of three friends decided to turn their passion for the Fallout series into a live action web show. The result was Fallout: Nuka, a series of YouTube shorts that invented a whole new storyline in the Fallout universe when a new Vault Dweller stumbles out into the wasteland in sear
video In honor of yesterday’s release of Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, the good folks of Machinima have released a video showing the techno-war simulator reborn with LEGO toys. The addition of LEGOs does for gunplay what Mario Kart did for racing, and the switch to cartoonish cuteness actually seems
It’s all fun and games until someone falls into a liquidity trap. As the American presidential election intensifies around the debate over how to lower unemployment and save the economy, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco is offering players a chance to experience firsthand just how difficult
While the trial between Too Human developer Silicon Knights and Unreal Engine house Epic Games is just getting underway, a North Carolina judge ruled that the value of the damages at issue will be limited to $1 per claim. The case was originally filed in 2007. Silicon Knights had licensed Unreal En
Another day without a Dreamcast 2 announcement. Console yourself with the day’s other news stories instead: -EA laid off some BioWare Austin employees after Star Wars: The Old Republic subscribers dropped from 1.7 million to 1.3 million. -Google turns its Japanese site into a giant Moog simulator. -
video As part of a plan to simultaneously modernize its services and cut costs, Britain’s National Health Service has announced a test program to use videogames to guide the recovery of stroke patients. Since it’s time-consuming and expensive to have patients come into the doctor’s office for physi
video In an effort to keep its churning Call of Duty community sated, Activision has tossed a new scrap of meat into the lion’s den. “Face Off” mode is the central part of Modern Warfare 3‘s new DLC collection, out today, which allows joystick gladiators to grapple with one another in intimately de
Creating mods was once a central part of game culture, growing a vibrantly experimental subculture around jokes, experiments, and whole new types of play. In the last decade there has been a huge migration of PC developers coming into the safe but limiting arms of console manufacturers. Still, a nu
It’s been almost two years since Bungie’s last game, Halo: Reach, was released and details about their new games have been scant. But the studio’s plans were inadvertently made public this week by documents released as part of the on-going legal battle with Call of Duty co-creators Jason West and V
