Sunday, May 18, 2008
Fear and Loathing in World 1-1
11:00AM Owen Good | With great apologies to the late Hunter S. Thompson, for the out-of-context riffing. “Luigi had taken his shirt off and was pouring beer on his chest. … We had two bags of fire flowers, 75 mushrooms, five invincibility stars … And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge winged turtles, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car … Update: The picture’s artist is suzyage4. He says he drew the above image back in 2005. It’s still timely — Mario is timeless after all. Super Mario Las Vegas [The Off Topic Forum] More »
20-year-old Memories of a Life Not Lived
10:00AM Owen Good | Gamers of my generation may remember Activision’s Alter Ego, released in 1986. It was a text-and-graphics, choice-based somewhat-precusor to later games like The Sims or Second Life. The game fascinated me, even as a 13-year-old, with the idea of living another life — and helping to create such a rich narrative — or just living that far forward. I feel like I actually have memories of the virtual lives I led in the game: More »Dead Space: Glimpses of Outer Space Carnage
9:00AM Owen Good | Gametrailers put up this, the second teaser of Dead Space which releases October for the PS3 and 360. It’s a backstory trailer, which justifies your reasons for hanging out in outer space with a bunch of rejects from the casting call to “The Mist,” while dressed like Boba Fett stuffed into a radiator. I mock it because I doubt I’d play this more than 30 minutes without getting up to pace the room. Creepy games make me edgy as hell. Dead Space – Exclusive Story Trailer More »
90% of Virtual Worlds Will Fail Within 18 Months
8:30AM Maggie Greene | For those that lament the plethora of crappy MMOs and poorly-planned ‘virtual worlds’ of various stripes — fear not, a new report indicates that 90% are doomed to failure within a year and a half. Gartner, the research and advisory firm that produced the report, notes that the high rate of failure could be due to a number of factors; perhaps most importantly, the low cost of entry means that more experimentation is taking place (and like any experiment, a lot of virtual experiments fail). But it’s not all doom and gloom: More »
News
Girl Gamers: There are More of Them
8:00AM Owen Good | You might need to head to Australia to find them (Brian? Luke?). Or at least, that’s where the sure bet is. A story in the Sydney Morning Herald last weekend cites figures showing 41 percent of gamers in Australia are women, and also 38 percent in the United States, both figures representing growth. The Herald also says that if the trend continues, it will be 1:1 guys/girls gaming by 2014. More »
Saturday Timewaster: Putty Puzzle
7:30AM Maggie Greene | I don’t have time to waste this weekend, sadly, but if you do, there’s a challenging little puzzler called Putty Puzzler, found over on the interestingly named ‘Coke and Code.’ It’s putty. It’s a puzzle. It’s kinda hard. I spent a little bit of time with it and was pleasantly challenged — I’ll come back for more after I’ve got a little time to waste. Putty Puzzler [Coke and Code via Rock, Paper, Shotgun] More »The Conduit: About Damn Time
7:00AM Owen Good |
Virtual Property Disputes Landing in Real Courts
6:30AM Maggie Greene | Ok, so virtual property disputes aren’t exactly new, but there’s a little wrap up on some of the current issues over at a Canadian website. Most of the issues discussed revolve around Second Life, but the questions of virtual property and other virtual issues are getting increasing attention: More »
Kotaku Pitch Meeting: “Noise”
6:00AM Owen Good | Back in 2005 when I was hating my job and casting about for meaning in life, I wrote Crecente and asked him what the process was for writing up and selling a game concept. Was it at all comparable to, say, pitching a book proposal or a screenplay? Not really, because there is plenty enough work generated by in-house creative teams, and outside licensing deals. That said, even though I have zero coding skills and no game development acumen, I thought I had a few good ideas. So, in the first of what I hope will become a semi-regular feature (which means, I’ll do more, but maybe not each week) here is the Kotaku Video Game Pitch for a concept I call “Noise.” Yes, it was inspired somewhat by true-to-life events, from a time when I really thought I was going insane. More »
