Angry Birds and FarmVille have become two of the biggest game franchises in the world. And recently their creators, Rovio and Zynga, have hit the news again, but not because of anymore major game announcements.
It's a hell of a lot easier to make money selling an indie game now than it was four years ago. But it's still a rough game.
Whereas yesterday's segment of Making Art on Your iOS Device focused on the technical elements of drawing from life, today we enter the painterly realm of David Hockney and Jorge Colombo.
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...
Games like Minecraft and Braid have proven that there is money to be made in the indie game marketplace, which means more and more designers are following suit, one being Zeboyd Games. The two-man indie design team released two excellent JRPG spoofs on the Xbox Live Indie Games (XBLIG) Marketplace in 2010: Breath of Death VII ($1) and Cthulhu Saves the World ($3). Both have been well-reviewed and spent time near the top of the XBLIG sales charts, but its success couldn't be rivaled by what wa...
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.
Google+ is the most exciting new social network to come around this decade, and the only product with a chance of challenging the monopolies we know as Facebook and Twitter. As an Internet addict, I've joined every major social network there is - from Friendster (who?) to MySpace (so ugly) to LinkedIn (yawn) to Twitter (irritating) and Facebook (annoying to manage). Competition is delicious, especially between well-financed monopolies. Google+ really seems to have identified an Achille's heel...
Anybody who spends most of their day on the internet should know all about lulz. Lulz are most often jokes made at the expense of web users, as popularized on 4Chan. Today, a consortium of hackers called LulzSec is attempting (and in some cases succeeding) in efforts to shut down some of the games that offer web users a giant share of their online fun. World of Warcraft, League of Legends, EVE Online, and Bethesda Softworks have all been targeted by LulzSec's hacking efforts in the last week,...
Last week in New York, I saw the new show Otherworldly: Optical Delusions and Small Realities at the Museum of Arts and Design, at Columbus Circle near the edge of Central Park, between Broadway and Eighth. Below is the museum’s description of the show:
Advancements in technology usually lead to the miniaturization of old technologies, and video games are no exception. Since at least 1990, game hardware manufacturers and enterprising DIY electronics enthusiasts have poured their efforts into making full-size video game consoles smaller, even handheld. And for good reason—who would have ever played a black and white Game Boy if they could have had an actual NES in their pocket?
Back in the Super Nintendo days, playing one RPG after the other, memorizing maps and mazes became second nature if you didn't want to look at the mini map or get lost often. I would make it a point to memorize corners and the overall structure of the dungeon or location, so that graphically I would know where I am at all times. It's not like today, where major games come out with 200+ page guides detailing every last inch or going online where you can download a map or look at Youtubes for h...
To go Open Source or go proprietary? There is a common conception that open-source is unsafe and insecure and therefore companies should rather go for proprietary solutions. They think that because software is termed "open-source", that the world can see the vulnerabilities of the software and might exploit it, and less informed people tend to think that open-source software can be modified while it is running.
Tera Online is a beautiful Korean MMO with real time combat. The game is coming to the states towards the end of the year. Unlike other MMOs were combat is target specific (lock on target) and dependant on skill timers and macros, Tera Online focuses on fast area of effect action. Your blade or spell will hit whatever is in front, or miss if it's not. The closest thing to the game play of Tera is Vindictus, a free to play MMO with the same concept of game play. If you've played Vindictus, the...
Introduction to KVM KVM is a free and open-source Kernel-based Virtual Machine using the Linux kernel for virualization and is very similiar to a hypervisor like Xen or VMware's ESXi. It is based on Qemu, a processor emulator. Any virtual machine created on or working on KVM can work on Qemu also, but with a great reduction in speed.
With over 60 commercials, chances are you've seen one of the Get a Mac spots run by Apple, which brands Mac as intuitive and hip, compared to their boring and clunky PC counterpart. You also probably saw Microsoft's response in their I'm a PC campaign. But who are Mac and PC users really? Do jeans and hoodie-wearing yuppies really use Macs? Are the suit-and-tie types strictly operating PCs?
In my earlier post about long-term strategies I promised I’d ask some of my neighbors who do what I call factory chicken farming (Let 1000 Chickens Bloom) if the coyotes that have shown up will change the way they play the game. The one guy who replied in any detail said that he wasn’t sure what he was going to do yet, but he thought that he was losing 50 chickens each time he harvested them pressing “Collect Bonus” using a coop.
While a lot of internet threats are rather over-hyped, there are some serious things to be cautious of when going online. Probably the biggest risk to the average internet user is malicious software. Commonly knows as "malware," this term refers to any program that exists solely to do harm. This may include damaging your computer or accessing your data without you knowing. Viruses, trojans, and spyware are all forms of malware. Now, malware can seriously mess up your system, and the idea of s...
Besides Killing Floor, I played a bit of The Witcher over the weekend. If you're curious about the game now is the perfect time. It's on sale on Steam, and the sequel is being released early next year. Though the game is three years old, it's still one of the best western rpgs on the PC. Here are some quick impressions on the game:
West LA Seido Karate-do embeds its personal protection program into its on-going classes. Private instruction in this aspect of Seido can also be arranged with Kyoshi on an individual basis.
A Way Out of the Overload How do we simplify? There's a welter of information, advice, techniques, schools and every imaginable video tape available on the market to answer that question for you. In making a selection from this movable feast you'd want to take into account the background and credentials of the person offering you a way out of the overload. That's assuming you didn't just throw up your hands in exasperation and walk away from the task entirely.
What Am I Doing???? Last night, I was reminded on the negative impacts of striving for perfection. It's not possible to be perfect. We describe many things as being perfect. IE, an afghan, a hat, a tablecloth and more over, there is always something better... a different colour, a slightly different pattern, and so on. As time progesses, the colours we choose this fall might be the OUT colours of next fall.
QI and ZA. QI n pl. -S the vital force that in Chinese thought is inherent in all things
If you've checked out my SCRABBLE World, you may have read "How Controversy Changed SCRABBLE". In that case, you know that the word JEW is not allowed in regular play, because it was deemed an offensive and obscene word.
If you've read my blog "How Controversy Changed SCRABBLE", then you know that the word JEW is not allowed in regular play, because it was deemed an offensive and obscene word.
From A Hamburger Today: your guide to regional hamburger and cheeseburger styles. What red-blooded American doesn't love hamburgers? Think you're an enthusiast? Think again. There's more to the burger than the Big Mac (though the Big Mac is included in this guide, of course).
What you need: 1. Innocent looking person (possibly an old man)
Parental involvement is a crucial ingredient in the success of many children. Teachers know the saying all too well that it takes more than a village to raise a child, for one - it takes parental involvement. Thus, it is important for teachers to reach out to parents in that first week of school. Teachers should write a formal letter that is welcoming and easily comprehensible to the parent and the student. This letter should be able to communicate that the teacher values the child’s educatio...
According to Amazon.com, Kindle was their best-selling item this year, which means many, if not all of you are playing with a brand new Kindle on Christmas Day. Of all of Amazon's Kindle models, the Kindle 3 (6") will be the most common eReader in everyone's hands, either the Wi-Fi version or the 3G model.
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.
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.
The immune system is not as simple as you might think. Simply, it's formed of two main groups of cells:
Put simply, SEO = more organic traffic. And more traffic is always good for a web page / website (unless of course, you are an underground drug-dealer selling drugs worldwide via a spooky website whose URLs are as search engine unfriendly as possible, so that no one accidentally discovers your page and informs the police, sending to heaven both an exciting career opportunity and the likely Al Capone's successor).
On June 23, 2003, Linden labs created a free client program known as Second Life. This program allows users, or residents, to interact with each other in a virtual world by using avatars. Thanks to this program, residents are able to explore, socialize, and create and trade virtual property, and services with each other. Second Life has become one of the most popular programs used by various age ranges from 16 to 60, but how do you enter this world and get your own avatar?
The trend of online video sharing came to the mainstream with popularization of YouTube, which let users view, submit and share video clips. YouTube started off in the year 2005, and quickly became one of the most visited websites on the internet. Sensing the emerging trend, large companies like Google joined the trail and launched their own video sharing sites (Google later bought YouTube).
I recommend you take a look into this issue and suggest that your friends delete their association with Gamers Unite and any other cheat providing site. This post is meant only as my advice for how to remove Gamers Unite or any other spammy app. This is all based on my personal feelings about the snag bar and websites that would hand out such cheats. I've provided this as INFORMATION ONLY. Please decide on your own what you think of the whole situation.
Outside the realm of politics, where opposing sides are quite passionate and quite disagreeable, there are few areas in our society quite as divisive as Twitter. People who like Twitter love Twitter and are relentless in trying to co-opt the people they know into joining (this is both altruistic and an unsubtle attempt to boost followers).
I remember a time when I had to rent a VHS from the local video rental store. It wasn't all that bad, with the only real annoyances being the trip to and fro, having to rewind the movie and the possible malfunction of my VHS player, which liked to eat tape from time to time.
After years of false rumors and abandoned hopes, the day has finally come. Verizon Wireless is finally getting the Apple iPhone!
What happened to please and thank you? When did asking someone to come look at your build degenerate into COME NOW or FOLLOW or sending out teleport requests to any and all currently on the server without asking?
This article is going to cover the basics of link building. Why do we want to build links? First of all, what is a link? A link is a hyperlink, actually. You click on it and it brings you to another webpage. I'm sure you've all clicked on links before. Well, what we want to do is we want to build links from other sites back to our own site. Why do we want to do this? Google’s problem, as I see it, and this is based on thousands of hours of research, reading articles and watching videos and li...
