For as much money as they've made from North American video game audiences over the years, Japanese game developers don't seem to have very much faith in them. Dozens of great titles from their 40 years in the industry have appeared in Japan and across Europe, oftentimes even in English. But they never make it over to America, like Mother 3, Last Window: Midnight Promise, Dragon Force 2, and Tobal No. 2 (that one didn't even hit Europe).
The Australian government has a dysfunctional history with video games. Any regular Yahtzee Croshaw follower can attest to that. The Parliament has established a series of unfortuante regulations that make games both highly taxed and overregulated in price. Bringing any goods all the way to an island in the bottom of the world is expensive to begin with, and new games in Australia can tip the scales at $80 or more.
Public Radio Exchange (PRX) has teamed up with music intelligence company The Echo Nest to bring us music lovers Bandito, an easy way to find out what's going on with our favorite artists. Their new mobile app uses the existing iTunes library on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch to find your most-played bands and singers, serving up the latest news from around the web on them.
Many gamers see the film industry as the premier model that video games should follow, and it's no surprise. Movies are seen as the most legitimate and profitable of all artistic visual mediums, which is certainly qualities practitioners of any new medium would desire. Big budget games like Heavy Rain and L.A. Noire strive for the same level as film by aping its techniques, focusing on storytelling in a cinematic fashion, rather than creating compelling gameplay experiences.
Fatherhood is difficult, especially when you're an octopus. That is the moral of the 2011 IGF Student Showcase winner Octodad, available for free from its website. This hilarious little title was created by a team of interactive media students at DePaul University in Chicago, and is the latest in a stream of successful indie games to come out of collegiate video game design programs. In fact, it's so successful that a sequel is in the works.
Ball Pythons have become big business in the pet trade industry over the years, due to them being one of the most docile snakes in the constrictor family usually preferring to roll into a tight ball hiding it's head than to striking out with the intent to bite. These snakes come in a vast assortment of colors and patterns many of which are highly sought after and can get to be rather pricey. If you are considering adding a ball python to your home please put serious consideration into the nee...
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.
Video games and art have somewhat of a sticky relationship. Many video games have large teams of talented artists doing amazingly creative work, and yet the art community is only just beginning to utilize video games as art (sometimes). Perhaps if video games were shown not just as a medium of expression, but as a means of creating great art as well, the art community would be forced to consider it differently. The third part in the Hacked Kinect series will focus on the artistic possibilitie...
Immigration is a serious political issue in the United States, and those who oppose or support stricter immigration laws are often outspoken and candid about their beliefs, imposing their will on future legislation to not only politicians, but the general public—the voters. And what's the best way to reach the public? Entertainment.
Whenever my husband or I have to explain that our middle daughter Edith absolutely cannot handle white flour or sugar the first reaction is usually one of disbelief.
The Fake Adult Website Prank is an incredible trick if you happen to have the necessary access and work in the internet industry. Luckily, I had both.
Make My Mondays Meatless! One day a week join in on cutting out the meat! This Presidential initiative revived by The Monday Campaigns in association with Johns Hopkins, rolled out this program to the Baltimore public schools, then San Francisco went meatless and now celebrity chef extraordinaire Mario Batali and his fleet of fabulous restaurants said I'll play too! Now you too can help fuel this fire!
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.
Want a face lift? Scared to go under the knife? Then, your solution is dimethylaminoethanol. Um... what is dimethylaminoethanol?
The importance of the brow has not been forgotten as much as it has been overlooked. A natural tool of communication, the brows can convey surprise, disdain, and sorrow with a lift, a furrow, or an expressive softness. The masters of makeup, like Max Factor and Ben Nye, knew the importance of perfectly styled brows, and how that would affect the work of the actors with whom they worked.
This article is all about creating content and using it to build links to your website. Content, meaning articles, videos, and even podcasts is now really the new advertising. That’s because people go to the internet to look for information, not look at advertising. So you need to create compelling content about your business, your industry in general and any topics connected to your entire field that people will want to read, listen to or watch.
Accounting and Finance Degree
Kaplan University master’s degree graduate Onica Browne obtained her Master of Business Administration (MBA) with a focus on international business. In her case, this Kaplan University online program offered a unique learning experience to collaborate with students in other countries, enriching the learning process.
This week's review roundup is a diverse lot. They really only have two things in common—their indie origins and puzzle elements. Otherwise, they come from France, Spain and the U.S., a few from unknown designers and one by the guy who inspired Minecraft.
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...
Giveaway Tuesdays has officially ended! But don't sweat it, WonderHowTo has another World that's taken its place. Every Tuesday, Phone Snap! invites you to show off your cell phone photography skills.
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 indie game scene is constantly expanding, but in 2008, Minecraft, Braid and Angry Birds had not been released, along with all of the other indie games that established the financial viability of the format. Indie games were the all-but-exclusive purview of free Flash game sites and the proud users of TIGsource.com. The Independent Gaming Source is a massive forum for indie game developers to share their projects with like-minded individuals, while seeking help and approval of their games.
It's only been a few weeks, and already there are a lot of misconceptions and myths floating around Google+. Let's take a deep breath, and tackle some of the more prominent ones.
Making a video game requires an incredible amount of work. It requires people skilled in many disciplines to work together for thousands of hours merging visual art, computer programming, game design, sound design, and music composition into a fun game. The Indie Stone is a Scottish indie development studio started, like so many others, by industry vets who were tired of corporate restrictions and wanted to make the crazy games they had always imagined.
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 ...
+Tom Anderson of MySpace has been very active on Google+ over the first week, and he's not shy with his thoughts on the evolution of the industry he once owned. Here's his take on this morning's Facebook announcement and Mark Zuckerberg's response when asked about Google+.
It's no secret. Professional video editors everywhere are irate at the newest edition to Apple's popular non-linear video editing software, Final Cut Pro X. As of right now, Final Cut Pro X has 503 five-star ratings in the Mac App Store. Not bad. But it also has 671 one-star ratings and 414 users who aren't sure what they think. It's such a bad update that it even earned itself a skit on Conan.
Steam has been a game-changer in the PC indie game market over the last eight years, making smaller games available to millions of users at lower prices than ever before. And few times in those eight years have there been as much indie awesomeness on sale for as little money as this weekend.
The aging and maturity of video games as a medium has lead to some unfortunate consequences. One of these, perhaps drawn from the film industry, is the spate of remakes that has overtaken the game market over the last few years. It hasn't been as bad as the remakeorama trend in cinema, but developers have recognized the value in releasing the same thing they already made and making more money off it. Below, a roundup of some remakes of classic games released for XBLA recently, some fantastic,...
Pressing the button on a video game controller quickly is like running the 100 meter dash. Both require dedication and a precise exercise regime. There is also an odd quality about both in which the range between the very best and complete neophyte is tiny. Sprinter Usain Bolt holds the record in the 100 meter run at 9.58 seconds, only three seconds faster than I ran in freshmen high school track. And yet there are thousands of sprinters from a hundred years of Olympic competition in between ...
Living Life- everyone knows how to do that right? Right everyone does know how to live life, but not everyone knows how to live life to it's fullest. Living Life to its fullest can be hard, when there is all these other obstacles in your life. But with a little guidance, motivation, and self confidence anything you set your mind to can almost magically happen. Ok now that that has been said; your wondering how can I get more guidance, motivation and self confidence. Well to do that you must g...
ATTENTION COLLISION REPAIR INDUSTRYHave you ever put your stud in your stud gun to repair a dent and the stud falls out before it reaches the panel? Sure it has, it has happened to all of us. However, the new Magna-Spot eliminates this problem with their exclusive (MPS), which secures the pins in the electrode. You can read the press release below to learn more of the benefits.ENTER AND WIN THE NEW MAGNA-SPOT STUD GUNDetails to this contest are going to be revealed in layers as follows:
Darrin Judkins - BMG Models NYC, Women's Board Booking Agent
Think you have what it takes to amputate your own arm? What about somebody else's foot? Now, thanks to the wide array of mobile apps available from the iTunes App Store, you might not need to attend medical school to perform a tracheostomy.
Demented newborn baby? No—creepy "reborn" baby modeled after what Lord Voldemort would look like straight from womb of his pure-blood witch of a mother. As if reborn babies weren't disturbing enough, artist Tracy Ann Lister has gone and created a slew of ultra-realistic baby dolls fashioned after the characters from the Harry Potter series. It was bound to happen someday.
These measurments should be taken and recorded before drawing up you clothing design pattern. Wear the bra and panties you will be wearing with the final garment. Another option, especially if you are going to be selling a series of the garments, is to follow a size chart. While sizing is not very standardized in the clothing industry, I like the charts on the Burdastyle website which are in both inches and centimeters. When measuring, the tape measure should be neither too tight nor too loos...
The job market has bounced back slightly in recent months, yet it appears that working remotely will be a way of life for many of us moving forward. With many industries disappearing, app development looks like it's here to stay.
