Games have been getting shorter in length over the last decade. RPGs like The Elder Scrolls series are still tremendously long, but most single-player game experiences have gotten shorter as production values, costs, and manpower requirements to create them have gone up. It seems that elite Japanese developers Level-5 and Brownie Brown have decided to completely disregard that trend for their forthcoming collaborative effort Professor Layton and the Last Specter, which will feature what might...
Video games are the newest major expressive media. As such, their role in society is still being defined continuously. A monumentally important example of this took place yesterday at the US Supreme Court. After a long deliberation, the highest court in the land handed down a decision invalidating a California law banning the sale of violent video games to minors on the grounds that video games are protected speech under the First Amendment, like movies and books.
Tips China is called Zhong Guo to chinese people which means "Middle Country" or literally "Middle Kingdom" but nobody calls countries kingdoms anymore, not even the chinese.
BPA: Why Plastic Ain't Good For You BPA or Bisphenol A is in many of the products we use. Everything from Ziploc bags to shower curtains, we are exposed to BPA all the time.
Learn how to make a string figure jacobs ladder with this string figure animation. The eskimos do it, pygmies in Africa do it, South Sea islanders do it, Native Americans do it, Europeans do it. In some cultures performing string figures are play for both children and adults, in others they are connected with religion, story telling or magic. String figures are made around the world; hundreds of patterns have been recorded.
I came across a really cool article about armor that the Americans wanted to use in World War I. Since it was before kevlar and modern body armor but still needed to stop bullets, they designed it to be similar to medieval armor. It looks terribly uncomfortable and ineffective. Just look at this helmet design: The flaps could be opened when not in combat.
Politics(the Government) is built to accomplish a few things: maintaining order, providing necessities, operating businesses (stimulating the economy, trade), maintaining public relations and the most important of all, protecting the rights of the individuals it governs. It has a broad role, and as such, an array of bills, laws and rules to regulate itself and the country.
The very people this humanitarian mission seeks to help are outraged at the portrayal of their problems and lands. In my previous post, I talked about how this new internet sensation is most probably a hoax designed to force us into a new war. Guess what? It was.
Our class had been assigned interviews with political representatives from different branches. In these interviews we asked questions that we had generated about their career position, advice to young activists, our government system, getting involved, and their opinion on certain laws. Here are the results from the two interviews that were done.
Bingo! No, this isn't the game where balls fly around in machines and players dab their cards with daubers. In a game of Scrabble, bingo refers to the bonus a player receives when emptying their rack in one turn, which gets them an extra 50 points on top of whatever their play was. Even if you had two blanks on your rack and didn't utilize any premium squares on the board, you'd still have an impressive 56-point turn (at least) by using all 7 of your letters.
Most stateside gamers have probably never heard of Level-5. If they have, it's more than likely due to the charming and maddening line of Nintendo DS puzzle games, Professor Layton. Some might even remember Dark Cloud and its sequel from the early days of the PlayStation 2, and all eight of you PSP owners in the U.S. might recognize the epic Jeanne d'Arc. These games alone make Level-5 a noteworthy company, but they've quietly surpassed "noteworthy" status to become one of the largest and gre...
Carpe Fulgur translates to something along the lines of "Seize the Lightning" in Latin. Sometimes that is enacted with golf clubs by idiots. But the three intrepid indie video game localizers who work under that name are trying to do it the right way: metaphorically. They are translating and publishing Japanese games for the Americans market—games that have seldom been seen before because every other company thinks it's mad to release them here.
Video game makers have never had great name recognition amongst the American public. Shigeru Miyamoto, Cliff Bleszinski, and Will Wright are names most Americans can't be bothered to remember, whatever their contribution to games have been. Most people are familiar with their work, but fail to recognize them by name or appearance.
So the Big Surprise News of today is that The King's Speech is Kicking Major Nomination Ass with twelve count-em 12 nominations, just brutalizing stuff like The Social Network (eight - nice try), The Fighter (seven - really? seven? that's the best you can do idiot movie?) and True Grit (ten - double figures is respectable... I guess...). How come that happened? I'll tell you. It's because North Americans freaking love rich British people.
This German video is amazing. A joyously analog interpretation and deconstruction of the digital gaming experience. Malte Jehmlich is as primitive and inspiring as the the Vanuatu natives who devoted themselves to cargo worship after World War II!
Just a couple Saturday's ago, we were blessed with the Supermoon, where the moon was at perigee with our planet, creating a larger than usual Moon for us here on Earth. Now, we've got another spectacular show in the skies coming up, only this one isn't at night. There will be an annular solar eclipse on Sunday, May 20th!
One of the primary goals of a social network is for you to share what you find interesting with your followers and friends, but on Google+, sharing has so many layers that it can be confusing for most people to really take advantage of it properly. Some of the tools in place that enable you do deal with spam and manage your privacy aren't very clear, so this week's round up is all about how you can share what you want with who you want on Google+.
Deep in their heart of hearts, most Americans dream of having their car festooned with missile launchers and machine guns. Anyone who cuts them off or looks at them funny in traffic could be dispensed with quick and extreme justice, leaving a real-life James Bond and his passengers free to pursue their American dreams faster than everyone else. Racing games and shooting games are among the two most popular types of video games. So why aren't there more games where one can race cars and shoot ...
For most Americans, the bane of the hangover is typically remedied by lots of water, painkillers, greasy food, and a day wasted on the couch. But if you're tired of potato chips and fried eggs, perhaps it's time you enter unfamiliar territory. Below, a combination of unorthodox methods for taming the beast, derived from science, sparkly Whole Foods new ageism, and the far East.
Most employed in the game industry have two-word job titles that start with “game”—game designer, game producer, game critic, game tester, etc. Usually, they’re one or the other, even though some can be both a game designer and a game tester or game critic and game tester. And rarely does one person get to call themselves a “game everything”. Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw is the exception.
Remember the firestorm SCRABBLE Trickster caused nine months ago? SCRABBLE enthusiasts across the world were outraged when Mattel created a game that would allow proper nouns to be acceptable words of play. Essentially, it was a dumbed down, youth-friendly version of the classic game they've all come to love. Luckily, it was just a spinoff game—not a replacement. The same can't be said of the new edition of Collins Official SCRABBLE Words.
We all remember the controversy of SCRABBLE Trickster back in April. SCRABBLE + Mattel + Proper Nouns = BLASPHEMY!
If you've been reading, watching or listening to the news, you sure know about the Trayvon Martin case. If you visit this site often, you may also have noticed that I've not put up any news on this case. I have my reasons. And this post will describe why.
Mark Burnett is, financially speaking, perhaps the most successful television producer today. While I had launched America's Most Wanted and COPS a decade earlier, Mark exploded onto network television with Survivor, the glossy and fantastical innovation to reality television. With Survivor now entering its 11th year, I recently interviewed Mark at the Los Angeles public radio station KCRW, where the podcast will be made available. Below, Mark's 10 steps from soldier-to-nanny-to-premiere-Holl...
It's officially the last day of the year and there's no better way to end 2010 at WonderHowTo than with our own Top 10 list.
The rush to secure face masks and hand sanitizers in March left many Americans concerned for their safety. With an expected second wave this fall, consider stocking up on PPE now.
Over 56 million Americans decided to skip breakfast this morning. That's 18 percent of the population. You're probably sick of hearing that the first meal of the day is the most important, but it's true—studies have shown that those who skip it consume more calories and fewer essential nutrients than regular breakfast eaters. Regardless of nutrition, who can pass up devouring a batch of warm, fluffy buttermilk pancakes drizzled in sweet maple syrup? And why, you ask, is there a giant hole in ...
In our media-enriched world, past and present, SCRABBLE has made a name for itself, whether deliberately, subconsciously, or influentially. You may have a read a book that had the popular word game within a chapter, watched a movie that showed your favorite characters bringing out the SCRABBLE board, or even listened to a rap about this word or that word. SCRABBLE is everywhere, even if you don't realize it.
How much do the producers of Lonely Girl make? How much do the producers of American Idol make? How much does COPS cost to make? I decided to share what I have learned for the CES audience in Vegas.
40 million Americans suffer from sciatica pains,but the condition is often not diagnosed correctly. A new imaging technique uses a specially tuned MRI scan to image nerves and highlight them deep inside tissues. Called Magnetic Resonance Neurography,the new technique promises to diagnose conditions such as sciatica-in which a compressed nerve in the buttock causes persistent lower-back and leg pai Diagnose sciatica.
