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News: Richard Stallman's Rider

Best quotes: "A supply of tea with milk and sugar would be nice. If it is tea I really like, I like it without milk and sugar. With milk and sugar, any kind of tea is fine. I always bring tea bags with me, so if we use my tea bags, I will certainly like that tea without milk or sugar.

Little Indie: A New Distribution Service and Support Firm for Indie Games Goes Live

Indie developers and their games have enjoyed massive success distributing through Steam, notably Zeboyd Games and Carpe Fulgar. While that bodes well for the future of indies on the platform, Steam has to devote a lot of front-page real estate to AAA games and thus can't promote small indies as well as a dedicated indie game distribution service could. IndieCity out of the UK seems like it could be that, but today a consortium of three German game companies launched their attempt at beating ...

News: PopCap Bought by EA, Earns $750 Million Bonus Points

Electronic Arts is the biggest game publisher in the world, and have been for years. And yet, their only successful internally developed games nowadays are the EA Sports mega-franchises like Madden. Most of their success has stemmed from their ability to buy other companies on their way up, squeeze the creativity out of them, and then sell them to someone else or just let them go. This week they made their largest acquisition ever when they purchased PopCap Games for $750 million upfront—as m...

World Siege: Orc Defender for iOS Turns Your Real Life Home Into a Video Game

Tower defense games have covered a lot of creative ground over the last five years. They've gone from simple desktop amusements to a staple of the indie game scene, having been integreated into nearly every other type of game and released on every platform. They have taken place in ancient times, the far future, and on alien planets. But one place they (and most other types of video games) have never taken place is the real world. Not a virtual recreation of the world, but on the very terra f...

News: ChaCha

Have you ever gone on a long internet binge, researching and surfing mindless things, and thought to yourself: I wish I could make some money surfing the internet and sharing the (sometimes useless) information I had just acquired? Well, now you can!

News: A Quick Homage to Our Benefactor

Without Richard Channing Garfield the world would be a much grayer and less interesting place today, at least for all of us. He created Magic in college, playtested it throughout, accidentally found a publisher for it, and wound up the the most well-known and successful paper game designer in the world (sorry Guygax, make something new why don't ya?). He does not seek the limelight, has not had a snappy biography written about him (or his game, amazingly enough) and I thought we should pay a ...

How To: Choose The Right Paper for Your Origami

A lot of people that are new to Origami struggle with the choice of paper. Some even give up folding all together because they use the wrong material! But this guide will help you find the paper you need for that cool design you always wanted to try.

How To: Write a Writer's Resume

The resume is an essential tool for getting freelance work assignments. A well written article is not enough when trying to secure a freelance or staff position as a writer. Publishers want to see a resume. It gives the writer an outstanding opportunity to introduce themselves and it gives the editor a general idea of who you are, where you've been, and the work you've completed.

News: The Avengers (2012) Poster and Fan Art

After his fall from Asgard into space, the Asgardian Loki meets the Other, the leader of a warmongering alien race known as the Chitauri. In exchange for retrieving the Tesseract,2 a powerful energy source of unknown potential, the Other promises Loki a Chitauri army with which he can subjugate the Earth. Nick Fury, director of the espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D., arrives at a remote research facility during an evacuation. Physicist Dr. Erik Selvig is leading a research team experimenting on th...

How To: How Anyone Can Retire Early & Wealthy, Part 1: CDs

I'm pretty sure that it's a universal dream for everyone in the world to retire early. Who wants to to be stuck with the rest of the country and retire when you're almost 70 years old? You heard me right, 70! Most people can't go out and do the things they love to do by the time they're 70, unless they've been practicing good health and exercise their entire life.

News: Iconic Indie Game Publisher Interplay Struggles to Make a Comeback

For more than a decade, Interplay was arguably the best video game publisher in America. Their list of games is a who's-who of the most creative and forward thinking games of the '90s, including everything fromOut of This World to Alone in the Dark to Earthworm Jim to Descent. They've been around since 1983, but have fallen on hard times since 1997, when they became a public company. They were acquired by a French publisher who then went bankrupt. They were forced to close their internal deve...

News: Is Your Dream Gaming PC Worth It?

The last week has been a trying one for me. On Sunday, there were four computers in my office, three of which were broken. The fourth was not really a computer, but more of a collection of parts that were cobbled together for the purpose of constructing a PC that would sneer derisively at the mere mention of turning down any game's ambient occlusion settings.

News: Dota 2 Gamers Compete in Unprecedented $1,000,000 Tournament

Most indie game developers will never see a million dollars in their bank accounts, and I certainly doubt that Eul, the anonymous developer responsible for the original version of Defense of the Ancients (DotA), expected to. But now even the fans can earn a little green. Some lucky and talented DotA players are about to win $1,000,000 for playing the unreleased sequel to the free unsupported Warcraft III mod from 2003.

News: Will Games Ruin Google+ Like They Ruined Facebook?

Last week, Google+ took a crucial step towards becoming exactly like Facebook. As of now, there are games available for download within the service, most notably Angry Birds, which is already available on at least one of the devices owned by everyone in America today. Some of the other popular games include Bejeweled Blitz and Zynga Poker, and out of all of the available titles, all come from four companies that have come to form the four-headed dragon of U.S. casual gaming: EA, Zynga, PopCap...

How To: How Much Advertising Can a Free Game Site Have and Still Be Considered Indie?

Mediocre free Flash game websites are all too common. Many of them thrive off peddling the same few popular games to fans who have slim cause to pick one over the other. They thrive off the indifference of casual gamers and an environment that does not have to stand out to survive, only appeal to the lowest common gaming denominator with tower defense clones and brightly colored Peggle knockoffs. In that context, what Nitrome is doing seems downright commendable.

News: "Frankie Goes to Hollywood" Says: Welcome to the Pleasuredome!

The debate over whether video games can be considered art or not has intensified in recent years as games like Braid and Flow have taken the digital aesthetic experience to new heights. These new games are great examples, but there are much older ones that present compelling arguments as well. The best is a 1986 ZX Spectrum/Commodore 64/Amstrad CPC game called Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

Emerald Knights: A Palace of Nerdery

Before last Sunday I hadn't been to a proper game store since I was in middle school. Over ten years ago. If you decide to stop reading right now because I obviously don't care enough about MTG to be writing this thing, I don't blame you. But I tell you, friends, as someone who has denied the utter awesomeness of their hobby for too long, that going to Emerald Knights in Burbank made me feel at home. I want to tell you about it and explain why I will be back many times in the future.

How To: Reverse Check a Phone Number

Prank Calls, Masked NumbersWho is calling your phone or your child's? Pranksters use a lot of tricks to make sure they can get on your nerves. Being able to trace prank calls is important because you're not going to learn much from your Caller ID, since most prank callers use an unlisted number - such as, a cell phone number. Many also use special code *67 to mask the number so your Caller ID will show "Blocked Number" or "Private Number". There are a lot of mild cases of so-called phone bull...