Mothers have it tough in video games – they get killed off, turned evil, or their children leave the nest to save the world. And their kids probably don’t call home often enough. More »
You should be keeping tabs on The Sims 3, if only because it’ll be cluttering up the PC sales charts for the next five years once it’s released this June. More »
Will Wright may be leaving Maxis and Electronic Arts, but that doesn’t mean he’s leaving gaming. In fact some of his biggest ideas are for future games, he told us today.
Happy Darwin Day! Two hundred years ago evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin was born. Today Maxis points out that his theories are being put to good use in Spore.
With Ubisoft’s flight sim with an arcade-twist nearing release, the publiser is starting to roll out videos showing off a bit more of the game’s details. Like the experience system, seen in the vid above, and the cockpit view, seen below.
Two people filed suit in federal court against Electronic Arts back in October, alleging the SecuROM digital rights management installed on their machines by a trial version of Spore Creature Creator, and a full version of the Sims, constitutes unlawful and deceptive business practices.
The latest issue of the Escapist deals with god games, most of which are quite grand in scale. John Carr, however, looks at the micro god game — in this case, SimAnt, Will Wright’s first foray into games decidedly small in scale — and declares its inspiration (childhood games of playing god with hapless insect) the ‘original god game.’ SimAnt is certainly one of the weirder little titles in Wright’s repertoire, but certainly an important title when looking at later games:
This hits close to home, because home is a shithole (that’s what $AU 1562.4 rents you in Silicon Valley) and I’ll soon be paying IKEA plenty to make it look less so, because it’s right around the corner in the East P.A. and I can’t afford Ethan Allen. And if you want to trick out your Sims pad with BJARNUM or HENSVIK or DIKTAD or whatever fake words the Swedes come up with next, that expansion pack has now dropped (as of Thursday). This is the trailer showing all the shit you’ll be throwing in your Sim dumpster in three years.
EA’s web-based game creation destination SimsCarnival.com has officially entered open beta, and not a moment too soon! The website allows players to use existing game templates to create new flash games or upload their own creations, and right now if you go there and click on Up and Coming you’ll see a clear indicator of the quality we’re dealing with right now with a version of the Kiss The Girl game using poorly upscaled pictures of Kingdom Hearts characters. Clearly we can do better.
To celebrate the beta launch, EA is launching the SimCarnival.com Galactic Game Challenge, with cash prizes on the line. Judging from the quality generated so far I’d say there’s a good chance of anyone who reads Kotaku winning. Hell, there’s a good chance my mother could win this.
