Sunday, April 13, 2008
More Crimes to Blame on GTA IV
11:00AM Owen Good | If GTA IV is going to be truly groundbreaking, then it will have to break ground in another realm: Real-life crimes to blame on it. Happily, GamesRadar is on the leading edge of this, spotting eight new crimes that imbecilic mainstream media will be thrilled to pin on “gamers”, Rockstar, and this particular title. More »
Atari Product Catalogue, ca. 1981
10:00AM Owen Good | As an 8-year-old in 1981, I would read this Atari game catalogue and think about all the amazing $US 40 games they offered that my paperboy earnings could not cover. And then I’d turn to the back page and read about the Atari Game Club, in Sunnyvale, California. Sunnyvale. It had a videogame Wonkaland sound to it. Sunnyvale. Where, maybe, Pac-Man was the mayor. And Ms. Pac-Man was the wife of the mayor. And Jr. Pac-Man was the butane-huffing embarrassment son of the mayor. And Mario ran the public works. And Donkey Kong drove a bus. And Frogger was the crossing guard. And Pengo was an exhibit at the zoo. And Zeke the Zookeeper … More »
Five More Ways to Pimp a Controller
9:00AM Owen Good | Sometimes I pick up my controller, even if I’m not playing any games, and fly it around imagining it’s a space fighter. That’s about as far as I get with modding these things. But HacknMod has a few fun projects cooler than that, if you don’t mind putting your controller, or two, out of service while you get it right. Even if you aren’t mechanically inclined, they’re cool to look at. The how-tos include: More »
Compelled to Play “Compulse”
8:00AM Owen Good | Told you we’d have another Hot Flash. And here’s a sweet one right in your hot little hands: Compulse, which excels as only a flash game can: stupid-simple premise, a thought-provoking challenge, addictive replay and best of all, entrancing Asian-theme music. Best of all, it will save your progress (specific to your IP address). And when you start, it tells you “A game has been created in your honour.” It’s like being pampered at a gamer’s day spa. Compulse [jmtb02 Studios] More »
Understanding Free to Play
7:30AM Maggie Greene | Min Kim, Nexon America’s director of game operations, sat down with Gamasutra to talk about the free to play model, Nexon’s expansion to the 360 and the DS. On the issue of people dismissing the business model: I don’t want to discount people, but I don’t think they’re doing all the right research, because I see all the misconceptions that people have about what our business is. If they’re going to ask the right questions, we could probably tell them. Or if they would just go in and experience our games. A lot of people talk about it like, “Hey, this can’t work,” or “It doesn’t have the right balance,” and then when I ask them questions like, “Have you played it or seen it?” they’re like, “No, but it’s like this!” and I’m like… (laughs) More »
Do Gaming Skills Develop Like Other Childhood Skills?
7:00AM Owen Good | Brandon Erickson at Gamecritics puts forth an interesting question. Is there a “critical period” in children for learning video game skills, the same as there is for language? It doesn’t preclude the learning of languages, or the innate hand-eye coordination specific to video games, later in life, but it may explain why younger kids who grow up using controllers second nature will, depending on the game, always whip the arse of an adult who learned on that stupid Colecovision phone-looking thing. More »
Top 10 Video Game Emotions
6:30AM Maggie Greene | Only a Game has a fun post on the ‘top 10 video game emotions’ – emotions that people recognise as both present while they’re playing, and enhancements of gameplay: Based on the 1,040 responses to the DGD2 survey, I have ranked the top 10 emotions with their average score out of 5 to get a rough-and-ready estimate of the popularity of various emotions. This isn’t a strict scientific measure, as such, but the highest scoring emotions are those for which the majority of people not only recognised having that emotion while playing games, but recognised it enhanced their enjoyment. More »
Super Smashing Proposal
6:00AM Owen Good | When it came time to pop the question, reader Brian Klima did it right. No scoreboard message at a baseball game, no skywriting, no jewelry buried in the dessert. He proposed marriage to his one true love with all the charm and romance that is Super Smash Bros. Brawl Grab your hankies and hit the jump. More »
A Half-Life 2 Mod and a History of Video Game Physics
5:30AM Maggie Greene | My undergraduate thesis was long, kinda boring, and involved dead imperialists; two students at McMaster University have created a Half-Life 2 mod called Half-Life Havoc for theirs, and attached a little paper on the history of video game physics. More »
