The uncanny valley is a persistent problem looming ever larger on game developers minds as games become more eerily life-like and titles like Heavy Rain, LA Noire, and Uncharted reach for bold cinematic visuals. A new research them led by Ayse Saygin, a cognitive scientist at the University of Calif
For anyone who’s ever been grounded for staying up too late playing videogames (or really anything videogame related), just be glad you can say that games have never brought you this fate: A Cambodian dad is in trouble with the law after he chained his son to a power pole for skipping school to play
Before Zynga was everybody’s favorite company to hate, there was EA. Paul Tassi reminds us today in Forbes that this company is still the most evil of the evil empires for the game industry: I believe EA is a destructive force in the industry as their goal isn’t the make gaming more accessible and
Ever since consoles beat out the personal computer as the dominant gaming platform by dint of sheer numbers, people have wondered what the fate of the PC will be. Now with the revolution in casual gaming and mobile platforms, are home consoles in the same commercial and cultural quandary? Wired take
Dismal news continues to pour in about the sad state of gaming retail stores across Europe and Australia. The Australian Financial Review reports today that many shops are now simply cleaning house: Game Group isn’t the only retailer to feel the slow death of brick and mortar video games in Austral
Hats off to BuzzFeed for curating the finest-quality cat material on the internet. But this one is especially relevant. I mean, this kid doesn’t even need an iPad to play with his cat. [BuzzFeed]
As the recent resolution of the case following Tyler Clementi’s harassment and suicide illustrates, regulating online spaces is a difficult (if not impossible) task with potentially fatal consequences. Harder still is drawing the line between legitimate hate crimes and “cyber bullying,” which has st
Just when I thought Zynga’s place in the game industry couldn’t get any weirder or more contentious, Mashable gave me this little gem: Martha Stewart is setting up house on Facebook. From now until mid-April, players of Facebook gameCastleVille will be able to interact with a virtual (and much young
Video Sna-fu Grand Désordre Orchestre‘s new music video for their song “Dreamorama” first seems like it’s just making a kitschy reference to 8-bit nostalgia. But as the video (made by French filmmaker Pierre Manry) progresses, the arcade history it pulls out is impressively comprehensive—making refe
A few years back, Ian Bogost began writing a 3-part series asking if one could ever build a “metaphysics videogame.” Part 2 was published shortly thereafter, leading with the promising question: “what kind of videogame” would such a philosophical inquiry make? Unfortunately we never saw the final po
Designing for a franchise that has spanned much of PC-gaming’s history must be a daunting task, especially given the controversial reaction Blizzard was met with when they first unveiled Diablo III’s heavily World of Warcraft-inspired look. Just look at the shift from Diablo II’s final horned monste
Once famously justified by Freud, pop culture’s fixation on human excrement is a strange phenomenon. Yannick LeJacq looks at Postal III and wonders why this has never transferred successfully to videogames.
During an appearance on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” for the 20th anniversary of his play Angels in America, Tony Kushner let slip a detail of the “very specific sense” he had about what happened to Joe Pitt—one of the play’s central characters that disappears very ambiguously from the story’s end. Ne
If the latest Call of Duty taught us anything besides the fact that big explosions are still almost as ridiculous as they are awesome, it’s that videogames can make you a ton of money. The United Kingdom recently followed a trend set by other game development-friendly nations like France, Canada, an
Besides a ridiculous live-action movie spin-off (starring, of all people, Dennis Hopper), Mario’s transition from videogames to other areas of popular culture can sometimes seem few and far between. BuzzFeed has a list of 100 incredible pieces of fan art dedicated to the spunky Italian plumber, incl
Videogames have gotten a lot of flack during their short life atop the pop culture totem pole for being terrible for the mental and physical well-being of their players. But amidst all these accusations, the question naturally arises of what you would do if you were attacked by an angry moose. The n
The definition of gambling reaches far beyond gaudy slot machine. Here’s why the infamous claw game of carnivals and childhood birthday parties is a symbol of our times, grasping at gifts behind an invisible wall.
Despite the recent successful defense of unmarred videogame distribution in Brown v. EMA, Congress is at it again: A new bill has been submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives that will require most video games to include a warning label that states: “WARNING: Exposure to violent video games h
The use of videogames by the military has long be a subject of criticism and curiosity by journalists and those who view games solely as purveyors of entertainment. Now a new trend seems to be starting for application of games to soldiers’ lives: as a form of therapy for recovering veterans. The Chr
A few months ago, William Bennet reminded victims of the great recession that chronic unemployment was entirely their fault with the standard charm conservatives like him tend to bring to the issue: “‘Get off the video games five hours a day, get yourself together, get a challenging job and get marr
Now that Commander Shepard is gay, what’s next for Bioware? A transgender Darth Vader, clearly. The Florida Family Association, known for its protests of all things queer and friendly to Muslims, has issued a new warning against the “LGBT activists” embedded within Bioware and their new MMO The Old
Understanding the mathematical complexity of a game like chess is a very daunting task (listen to the excellent Radiolab podcast on the subject). Even more challenging, however, is understanding a profoundly human behavior that occurs within the game of chess itself: cheating. Computer scientists Ke
In his review of the new indie sensation Journey, Jamin Warren lamented the fact that many game developers now mistake “artistic value with realism,” thrust as they are with new technologies into an “artistic arms race to see who can stuff the most polygons on the screen, the most feathers on a bird
The countless unexpected variables—the unprecedented furor, surprising governmental responsiveness, and overpowering community solidarity—of the SOPA/PIPA protests led many political analysts to conclude that the internet had now official become a force to be reckoned with. Though it’s hard to draw
