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Have Wii Will Travel Insurance

6:50AM Kotaku US Edition | At last, the full potential of the Nintendo Wii has been realised! When the system was first announced the great minds of the world began to fill with interesting, innovative and truly breakthrough uses for the unique gaming console, but this one trumps them all. Now you can use the Wii to buy travel insurance! I’ll just let that sink in a moment. Go ahead, soak in it. Online travel insurance comparison site Squaremouth has announced that Wii users can now use their console to compare and purchase travel insurance. “The Wii also contains a downloadable web browser which allows users access to Squaremouth’s comparative travel insurance engine. “All of Squaremouth’s site functionality works perfectly on the Wii,” Harvey explains. “It’s quick and easy to compare products then make the purchase without the need to go to a computer.” More »

Ian Bogost Doesn’t (Really) Care About Industry Criticism

4:30AM Kotaku US Edition | Ian Bogost is the guy behind a lot of newsgames and training games – and has managed to attract enough attention thanks to some high profile partnerships that he’ll be appearing on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report this coming Tuesday. He’s also come under some hefty criticism from people both inside and outside the gaming industry – most recently, in a Slate article titled (in part) World of Borecraft. Bogost has already responded to the Slate article, but he digs a little deeper in a new Gamasutra piece that explains his reasoning for just not really caring what the more traditional forces in industry think. Namely, games aren’t some monolithic construct that are either/or: either fun or educational, either fun or a total snoozefest, and dammit, there’s room for all of them. I love video games and I love the games industry, so I used to worry about this a lot. I wanted my games to find a home in the traditional commercial sector. I wanted to delight or impress my big league colleagues. I even thought that maybe one day my style of game would justify a place on the shelf next to their games. And maybe some day it will. More »