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Politicians have long used videogames to help themselves look better. In 2005 Hilary Clinton introduced legislation to make the sale of violent videogames to minors a federal crime. Before her, Joseph Lieberman never seemed to tire of making hyperbolic claims about the morally degenerative effects o
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If you think about it, it’s strange that we should individually own games. No one can own a game of tag or soccer. But a game of Mario or Pokémon can be yours through the generations. The strange sense of privately owning of a thing that was once shared as a function of community togetherness has be
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Videogame news broke today. We fixed it: -Mortal Kombat team announces new fighter featuring Superman, Batman, and more. –New Indie Bundle includes Bastion, Amnesia, Limbo, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, and others. -Nintendo patents vibrating stylus for the 3DS. –Fez sales pass 100,000 on Xbox
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The open source movement is all about changing technology from “how do they do that?” to “why didn’t I think of that?” Media artists (game designers, web designers, etc) are embracing open source by contributing to software like Processing and openFrameworks. The creative media software make things
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video Ignorance is precious in Dark Souls. It is the sugary juice that makes the tedious process of peeling away the game’s rough and clingy skin bearable–for a time, anyway. The game is at its torturous best when the player is abandoned in their own ignorance and must repeatedly fumble for the corr
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Even with an ideal therapist, therapy doesn’t work for everyone. Figuring out beforehand could save therapy-goers money and disappointment. One trend in medical research is to look at a person’s genetic profile to see if it affects how they will respond to a certain medication. Psychology researcher
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Someone’s going to jail again. In advance of a full reveal at Microsoft’s E3 press conference on Monday, Game Informer just announced a new installment in the Gears of War series. The magazine’s cover shows an unidentified character in blue-glowing handcuffs being led away from a city on fire. It se
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Babies and toddlers don’t learn much from television programs, much though Baby Einstein would have you believe otherwise. TV watching can actually be harmful for infants and toddlers, as its viewing is linked to delayed speech and sleep disturbances. There hasn’t been as much research on how young
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video Yesterday IO Interactive and Square Enix released a trailer for Hitman: Absolution that CVG, The New Statesman, and The Mirror, among many others, have flagged as sexist. The trailer shows Agent 47 getting dressed in a motel room as a group of women assassin’s, dressed as nuns, walking throug
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video Level 1-1 from Super Mario Bros. is one of the most instantly recognizable places in the history of imaginary worlds. It’s opening layout, with the one mushroom-laden question mark and that first angry-faced Goomba is an instinctual memory for millions of people around the world. One fan loved
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Starting with Valve releasing Steam as a necessary tie-in product to activate Half-Life 2, videogame companies have developed a habit of using titanic releases to push forward new and controversial forms of digital rights management (DRM). Proponents and PR folks both claim that these will ultimatel
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The Witcher developer CD Projekt released a lone screenshot of their next project, based on Cyberpunk, a pen and paper role-playing game designed Mike Pondsmith. The studio claims the game is being made “for mature and demanding players who expect to be treated seriously.” In the language of videoga