All too often, the word “gamer” seems to describe a personality in its entirety. One’s gaming identity is somehow divorced from all the other aspects of one’s personality. Adam Ruch at Kotaku AU fights against this assumption. By being a gamer, I do not stop being a man, a university lecturer, a med
The new indie spaceship management game FTL involves a lot of, well, managing, and not a lot of space exploration. Rampant Coyote of Rampant Games found the game full of emergent narrative, with some surprising solutions to the problem of putting out fires. The focus of the game is not on space – it
Retro gamers will be familiar with the following cycle: you order a game online, you wistfully remember how awesome it was, the package arrives, and you have no desire to play it. This happened to me last time I stopped at GoG and bought Dungeon Keeper. Damien McFerran describes the problem at Eurog
The webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal retells Pac-Man in the mode of surrealist existential horror.
Everyone knows that there aren’t enough games set in a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by fish people. That all changes with Sealark, a kind of varation on Harvest Moon, with daily fishing taking the place of farming. Expect it in July 2013.
Confession: I am a huge fan of simulation games. There’s something about building up my stats over time and then being able to win the harvest cooking contest that I love. It’s kind of a niche genre, so I was a little surprised to see Enchant U, a stat-building wizard boarding school simulation for
As Nintendo rolls out its newest console, the Wii U, I’m left wondering why I need another console. There are plenty of games I haven’t yet played for my current consoles, and if fancy processing power is really necessary for fun I have a PS3 and a PC. Tom Auxier feels the same. Why do we need more
You know that frustrating moment, when you’ve tried everything that makes sense in a game, and then you keep trying it? According to some research on insight, that is probably the best time to take a break. Here’s an example of the sorts of problems the study examined: Move any single line from the
Is your living room feeling a bit empty? You might need to make some kind of Pokemon plushie, like this DeviantART user did. It’s life size!
The LEGO games are really cute, fun, and you can play them with your nephews without worrying about blood going everywhere. But it can be tiresome to get tracked onto the rails of each linear level. The upcoming LEGO Lord of the Rings promises an open world and a crafting system. True to the LEGO ga
The laws of thermodynamics are at work when you play a videogame. Raymond Neilson explains his idea of entropy as a metaphor for game-playing in an analysis of Max Payne 3. The process of playing, then, can be seen as equivalent to extracting work from a system for the purposes of “fun”. The non-tr
The indie puzzler Gateway combines a plethora of game device tropes, portals, gravity manipulation, self-shadows, and does so unapologetically. David Johnston, the game’s creator, acknowledges the influence of other games: It helps me to see what other ideas people have tried and what works as a gam
What if you could play Snake in 3D? The new qrth-phyl, by Hermit Games, is basically a 3D version of the arcade and cell phone classic, but the levels are random. Jeffrey Matulef on Eurogamer explains: Qrth-phyl features self-generating code, so the challenges won’t play out the same way twice, and
Mircrosoft recently filed a patent for an “Immersive Display Experience” to make a virtual game room. The detailed description states that images outside of the HD display could engage a player’s peripheral vision. It definitely sounds like a Kinect 2.0 that would be more group-friendly than a VR he
Moscow stray dogs have learned to ride the subway and startle folks into dropping their food by barking. If that doesn’t work, they’ll beg for food from sympathetic girls. The strange strategy of Russian street dogs inspired a Pirate Kart game called Russian Subway Dogs. In this game, you play a do
Some bullets that you may have been moving too fast to notice. -Sony is developing its own version of the Oculus Rift. -The free Vita game Ecolibrium releases today and allows you to “create and nurture your own ecosystems.” –Terraria getting a console port; some fans would rather have more free up
Want to carry around a bit of outer space with you? These RJ-Romain Jerome watches might be the closest you’ll get, aside from meteorite jewelry. Having inherited the highly distinctive case of the Moon Invader collection, a circle in a cambered 46 mm square, the […] watches also feature steel fused
Instead of directly confronting users about suspected Internet piracy, a new program from the Center for Copyright Information will give them a series of educational alerts. Ars Technica reports: Last year, the newly-formed Center for Copyright Information (CCI), along with major ISPs across the US
Most alternate-reality games (ARGs) are focused on producing hype for a new game or movie. They take ages to play, and often only the smartest, most dedicated, or best-networked players get to the end. A recent ARG set in Japantown, San Fransisco, showed that ARGs can be hour-long events that people
Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi has lots of ideas for creative play. He’s tried his hand at playground design, and helped make the Flash-based MMO Glitch. Most recently, several of his game concept designs have been put into action at the Babycastles Summit, an arty games festival in New Yor
Mass Effect was the subject of a lot of “videogames have arrived as a storytelling medium” claptrap over the past five years, and with good reason. The game had nuance and great characterization, fully-realized plotlines, and despite the protestations of thousands of ungrateful and petulant jerks wh
Online gaming is a cesspool of racism, homophobia and misogyny. But at least gamers know it! A survey of 874 people on the Internet by the Emily Matthew at Pricecharting blog found that 80% of respondents believed sexism is prominent in the gaming community, and 35% had been targets of sex-based har
Anindie developer has found an interesting approach to the marketing and price problem in videogames. The collection of irreverent minigames, McPixel, by SOS is promoting itself through the Pirate Bay, inviting those who can’t afford the game to pirate it this weekend. The idea is that more people w
Here’s the news that you probably should know about but were too afraid to ask: –Madden NFL 13 has sold 1.65 million copies, a significant increase from last year. –VVVVVV creator’s Super Hexagon is an abstract maze where lasting 30 seconds is a feat of skill. -GameStop wants to sell the Ouya in it
A new exhibition at Brigham Young University’s Museum of Art, 8-Bit Modern, plays with the simple iconography of early videogames. The artist, Michael Whiting, sees his 8-bit art in the context of the early minimalists: Video gaming and minimalism arrived at the same visual conclusion through differ
