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...
Many of the indie games featured at PAX Prime have been in development for years. That's how long it takes to make a great game. But the two-man development studio in eastern Europe called Stabyourself has existed for less than a year and has already created two games—three more are on the way. They may be spitting out games left and right, but they've got a few to be excited about.
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 ...
Today we pay homage to a phenomenon. One as diffuse and amusing as the internet itself, and as pointless as dog Halloween costumes. I'm speaking, of course, of giant games.
Any time a feature is introduced in an MTG set and not replicated in subsequent sets, balancing issues are surely forthcoming. You wind up with one set that can do things the others can't, forcing players to counter that set with other cards from it, and generally limiting the creativity with which one can effectively play the game. Playing these types of cards is like playing trap defense in hockey or boxing like Floyd Mayweather: you might win, but neither you, your opponents, nor the peopl...
Hobby rockets are tons of fun. Vicarious astronaut adventures abound with every launch. What if you want to be closer to the action though? What if you want to feel what it's like to be in a rocket at takeoff? With the discovery of tiny keychain cameras, we have technology small and cheap enough to fit inside a model rocket!
Hey now! Brazil, Paraguay, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay are doing very well in their respective groups. The are all expected to qualify to the final 16. In fact, they are doing better than any other continent. Europe's top flight teams are disappointing, as are the host African nations.
Many FarmVille farmers want money fast, or experience fast, or want to level up, or want to speed things up— make and earn things faster. No matter how long they play, they're not getting what they want, and that is to outshine everybody else. But you can't reach the top by simply playing the game.
Nicholas Entertainment Group (NEG) is a Polish independent game publisher that recently got their hands dirty with development. Their first game (with Intoxicate Studios) is the forthcoming horror first-person shooter Afterfall: InSanity, which comes out next month—dangerously close to the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3 and Assassin's Creed Revelations release dates. That's some stiff competition for small company, especially since it's a $35 debut game.
Hideo Kojima is one of the biggest names in Japanese game design. He's the man behind every Metal Gear game, each of which has been beautiful but divisive. He's an auteur, a rarity in AAA game design, managing business, design, and programming for Kojima Productions. Last week he made a rare public appearance at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, which contains the school's video game programs, and gave a 90-minute talk about his career, influences, and the specifics of his new Fox game design...
The Netherlands are a hotbed of indie game development, which seems appropriate for such a brilliant and eccentric little nation. Two man Dutch indie developer Vlambeer have found themselves in the news more often than most companies of their size, thanks to two great games and a third on the way.
Every year at the big video game trade shows around the world, like E3 and gamescon, the big three console makers each do a hot-ticket exclusive press conference to let the media know what's coming for their system. Computer games have no such press conference. Who would give it if they did?
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.
Stewart Butterfileld is one of the last great old-fashioned tech billionaires. He founded Flickr, and then sold the company to Yahoo! for a stupendous amount of money in 2005. Like Mark Cuban and others before him, he was left wondering what to do with the rest of his long and fabulously wealthy life. Cuban bought the Dallas Mavericks and turned them from unabashed losers into beloved champions. Butterfield decided to try his hand at game design (something he had attempted with the ambitious ...
Even with Apple's forthcoming iOS 5 updates to its default camera application, those upcoming features can't match what already exists in Global Delight's Camera Plus Pro. For $1.99, Camera Plus Pro provides users with over 100 tools for every part of the picture taking process, including video recording. It works with all versions of the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad 2 with iOS 4.1 or the later update. Let's examine what it can do, and why you will want to replace Apple's default camera with ...
Posted with permission via HereComeTheYanks.com I will get this out of the way early and then not mention it again...the referee for the USA vs. Slovenia game was awful. He missed key plays and called back the goal that would have sent the USA to victory. Nothing he did was good...as evidenced by FIFA's (supposed) forthcoming grade of a "poor performance" and relief of all further World Cup center refereeing duties. He was horrible, and cost us the win...for the most part.
Like a great acting performance, making a really good game is all about choices. While creating or playing a game, those involved have to constantly make small choices that will affect the outcome, either positively or negatively. And the only thing worse than choosing wrongly is not choosing at all. Too many games, especially today, stick to what they're supposed to do from the get-go and avoid making difficult, small, meaningful choices to differentiate themselves and make their performance...
Two new and radically different ARGs (Alternate Reality Games) have burst into the news in the last week, and illustrate the very best of an innovative phenomenon: the commercial tie-in ARG, and the public service ARG.
Dungeon Defenders is the most exciting craft game on the Fall 2011 release schedule. I got a chance to play it at PAX in August and interviewed developers Trendy Entertainment last month. After more than a year of publishing difficulty and delay, the game finally came out on PSN, XBLA and Steam. I put about 20 hours into the XBLA version over the past weekend, beating all the campaign maps and racking up a huge pile of in-game money. It is not a perfect game. But it is a huge, challenging, an...
Choose the Right Path Making a choice
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Thanks to the advent of smartphones and mobile apps, Scrabble has spread like wildfire across the globe, whether it be Scrabble or one of its many popular word game spinoffs, such as Words with Friends, WordWise and Kalimat.
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.
