Harley Quinn's Revenge Is Batman: Arkham City's Bad New Ending 
High Scores And Egos: There's Always A Bigger Doodle 
The Last Moments Of GAME 
How Bad User Interfaces Are Ruining Video Games And Other Wonderful Things 
She Tried To Make Good Video Games For Girls, Whatever That Meant 
The Story Of Doodle Jump: Brotherly Love And Digital Snacks Oh dear. It’s not just Spaniards who won’t be able to control Kinect with their voices when the peripheral launches. It’s everyone who doesn’t live in the US, Mexico or United Kingdom.
Language recognition is not a new concept to video games – the first text adventures had to understand commands somehow. But researchers are trying to integrate it in more open-ended ways – allowing for dynamic conversations between players and characters.
Noob. That’s right, noob. The Global Language Monitor has stated the one millionth word will hit June 10th, 2009 at 10:22 am, British Summer Time.
L.B. Jeffries has a nice essay up on the idea of ‘games as languages’ — a combination of coercing players to take certain actions and encouraging certain responses, creating a dialogue of sorts. As Jeffries says, “It’s not exactly talking to another person…but it’s not just rolling dice or pressing shoot either.” As games get more complex, so does the ‘language’ aspect — choices are expressive elements, and the more choices one has, the more opportunities for unique combinations. Even the simplest of games involves communication — ‘go here, do that.’ With the influx of more diverse and user-created building blocks, it seems reasonable that the ‘languages’ would begin to emerge more clearly:
The issue of created languages is hardy new (cf Esperanto), but I’ve not seen a lengthy discussion of created languages in games — the challenges and pitfalls of designing a working, intuitive, and integrated linguistic system that’s really a part of a game is an interesting issue. James Portnow spoke with Richard Garriott, lead designer of Ultima, about the keys to creating an intuitive in-game language that isn’t too intrusive. Portnow further muses on the ‘language’ of games, and how created languages can inform our design of other aspects of the user interface:
Do You Enjoy Reading Your Video Game Dialog?
In today’s episode of Speak Up on Kotaku, commenter Korio8 wonders if anyone else prefers subtitles in their video games, even if they can hear every spoken word perfectly.