Pinboard (guardiantech)

Why #Gamergaters piss me the f*** off >> Medium

guardiantech — 2014-10-22T12:12:15+00:00

Ex-NFL player and longtime videogame player Chris Kluwe:

So many people are playing games now that they are popular culture. They are not going away. All sorts of cool things, that I like, are now things that a whole bunch of other people like! There’s enough space now for people to make games that are strange and disturbing and maybe highlight a different perspective of the world, because gaming is no longer a niche activity, it’s something that everybody does. There is room for art in video games. That’s awesome!

That's about the longest passage without the sort of swearing that would have Malcolm Tucker raising his eyebrows in appreciation. (If you imagine it spoken in Peter Capaldi's angry voice it's even better.) Make the time to read it.

Zoe Quinn’s Depression Quest >> The New Yorker

guardiantech — 2014-10-01T15:41:23+00:00

Simon Parkin:

Depression Quest eschews the usual characteristics of most video games: there is no victorious ending and, as the developers warn in the preamble text, the game “is not meant to be a fun or light-hearted experience.” It is, instead, one of a growing number of video games that hopes to broaden the medium’s subject matter with depictions of life’s darker aspects. That Dragon, Cancer, which will be released later this year, is an autobiographical game about living with a terminally ill child (David Osit and Malika Zouhali-Worrall, the director of “Call Me Kuchu,” are filming a documentary about the Green family’s journey while the game is in development). In Hush, you play a displaced Darfuri child trying to retrieve water while avoiding janjaweed militia patrols. This group of games shares few similarities with Super Mario’s spatial-reasoning puzzles and Call of Duty’s shooting-gallery tests of reaction speed, typical attributes of video games that dominate the medium. Some of the hatred directed at Quinn has come from video-game enthusiasts who think that the darker themes are not suitable for video games, which they believe should be playful and primarily focussed on entertaining.

Rolls the whole topic (including #g_m_rg_t_) into one neat piece. Quinn has, you realise, been going through a quest of her own too.

The End of Gamers >> Dan Golding

guardiantech — 2014-08-28T10:42:37+00:00

When, over the last decade, the playing of videogames moved beyond the niche, the gamer identity remained fairly uniformly stagnant and immobile. Gamer identity was simply not fluid enough to apply to a broad spectrum of people. It could not meaningfully contain, for example, Candy Crush players, Proteus players, and Call of Duty players simultaneously. When videogames changed, the gamer identity did not stretch, and so it has been broken. And lest you think that I’m exaggerating about the irrelevance of the traditionally male dominated gamer identity, recent news confirms this, with adult women outnumbering teenage boys in game-playing demographics in the USA. Similar numbers also often come out of Australian surveys. The predictable ‘what kind of games do they really play, though—are they really gamers?’ response says all you need to know about this ongoing demographic shift.

Golding's starting point is the ongoing misogyny around women who play, write or analyse games. See also Andrew Todd's article below. Something is going very wrong. (Via Mary Hamilton.)

Video games, misogyny, and terrorism: a guide to assholes >> Badass Digest

guardiantech — 2014-08-28T07:54:58+00:00

Andrew Todd on video gaming's problem with women:

I have a friend who plays a lot of Call of Duty. He’s a brilliant comedian whose name you’ll probably know in the future, though I won’t mention it here. One of his favourite aspects of the game is verbally abusing other players - he LOVES it. It’s another game within a game. But it doesn’t matter if you’re the funniest or cleverest abusive dick on a server - you’re still being an abusive dick, and you’re still perpetuating a problem that has visibly grown way past that comparatively innocent context and into actual terrorism. There’s no reputable research that states violent video games create violent video gamers, but I’d be curious to see whether they create abusive ones. At this point, abuse and harassment are as ingrained into gamer culture as headshots and killstreaks - but the difference between the two is that while the violence is fake, the abuse is real.

This is an intriguing suggestion that seems worth pursuing. The focus though of Todd's piece is rampant misogyny:

The ultimate, hilarious irony to these douchebags’ worldview is that they claim to want gaming to be taken seriously. In their blinkered eyes, women are ruining gaming, because in their blinkered eyes, change that benefits anyone other than them is inherently bad. But feminist criticism can only be a boon to the games industry.

Reading Electronic Gaming Monthly >> Tumblr

guardiantech — 2014-06-25T21:20:34+00:00

Scans of Electronic Gaming Monthly from the 1990s. HDTV will never happen, apart from anything else. It's there in black and white.

Ink-spewing squids won't save Nintendo's Wii U >> Businessweek

guardiantech — 2014-06-12T21:33:03+00:00

Nintendo’s announcement at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles didn’t really tackle the basic problem the gaming-console pioneer faces: Nintendo’s customers are giving up on the Wii. Unlike the PlayStation and the Xbox, Nintendo’s Wii has long catered to younger users who like the company’s cartoon characters, most notably Mario. As the cost of smartphones and tablets continues to fall, however, parents are less willing to fork over several hundred dollars for a Nintendo Wii U when they can instead let Junior play a few online games, often for free, on a cheap Android device. Nintendo executives “seem to think that the issue is the lack of games,” Amir Anvarzadeh, a BGC Partners analyst in Singapore, told Bloomberg Television today. However, “the real issue here is that Nintendo is focusing on the casual gamers, [while] the gamers are migrating to smartphones and tablet platforms where games are free.”

Nintendo, you have a problem.

How Apple TV might disrupt Microsoft and Sony >> stratechery by Ben Thompson

guardiantech — 2014-06-12T21:12:42+00:00

Beyond the fact most of us had nothing better to do in the 1980s, a big reason to own a gaming console was that they were a phenomenally good deal. In 1985 Nintendo introduced the Famicom to North America as the Nintendo Entertainment System for a mere $199, an remarkably low price considering the average PC cost around $2,400.1 While PC prices soon began to fall, the Playstation/Nintendo 64 generation was still nearly $1,500 cheaper than the average PC. Over the last two generations of consoles, however, prices have actually risen, and today a Playstation 4 or Xbox One is nearly the same price as an average PC. In some respects, this makes no sense: why hasn’t Moore’s law had the same impact on consoles as it has had on PCs? Moreover, when you consider that consoles now compete with a whole host of new time-wasters like phones, tablets, social networks, dramatically expanded TV offerings, the Internet, etc., it’s downright bizarre. I think the answer lies in a specific part of disruption theory. Specifically, incumbents are driven by their best customers to add more and more features that drive up the price, causing the incumbents’ product to move further and further away from the average customer’s needs (needs which have actually been decreasing as more entertainment options become available):

Once that happens, all sorts of strange things become possible. And why not an Android TV that could serve gamers? Though of course Sony already seems to have thought of this.

Why Nintendo's president doesn't play games on smartphones >> Bloomberg

guardiantech — 2014-05-10T17:40:13+00:00

So we asked Iwata, who's struggling to distract gamers from their iPhones long enough to win them over to Nintendo's machines, what kind of games he likes to play on his phone. It turns out he doesn't indulge in smartphone games. Maybe just the occasional Puzzle & Dragons or Candy Crush? Nope. Iwata, who has been at Nintendo's helm since 2002, is a company man. And he's on message. “I haven't played smartphone games that much,” the boyish looking 54 year-old said during a recent interview. “If I have time to play games, I spend as much time as possible playing Nintendo's games.”

'Towerfall,' OUYA's most popular game, only sold 7,000 copies >> Engadget

guardiantech — 2014-04-29T20:58:05+00:00

If you're looking for a metric for the OUYA's (lack of) success, then the developer behind one of the platform's best selling games can help you out. Towerfall creator Matt Thorson has revealed that despite being the number-one title on the Android platform, the game has sold a measly 7,000 copies.

300M downloads and $600M in revenue say Google is the 'loser's choice' in mobile games monetization >> VentureBeat

guardiantech — 2014-04-16T21:26:21+00:00

Venturebeat surveyed a number of big-hitting games developers about how they make money:

The results show not only which monetization methods are most effective at making developers money; they also show the least effective. The most-used monetization method, for instance, is the interstitial ad. But the way developers make more money is clear: freemium in-app purchases.
Developers also told us which companies make them the most money — and which make them the least.
The data clearly shows that game developers abandon Google once they hit 11 published games. While Google wins in the fat long tail of solo and small-team developers who have built fewer than 11 games, with 77% developer share there, game-makers who have made more than 20 games, have more than 20 developers, and bring in more than $50,000 every month are much more likely to not use Google.

The report is here.

Clones, clones everywhere – “1024,” “2048″ and other copies of popular paid game “Threes” fill the App Stores >> TechCrunch

guardiantech — 2014-03-24T17:41:46+00:00

Saarah Perez:

This latest clone battle, preparing to best the “Flappy Bird” saga, began with a well-designed, addictive puzzle app called “Threes” from development shop Sirvo (Greg Wohlwend and Asher Vollmer). The game launched in early 2014, and began to gain steam in February. Using Sudoku-like mechanics and Candy Crush-style matching, “Threes” involves matching up multiples of threes for higher scores.
However, “Threes” was a paid game at $1.99, which meant there was room for another, perhaps less scrupulous developer, to come in and fill a gap by addressing a free-to-play audience. And so one did. “1024” quickly emerged, effectively ripping off “Threes,” even directly referencing the hit game it copied in its App Store description, saying: “No need to pay for ThreesGames. This is a simple and fun gift for you, and it’s free.”
Soon, the battle of the “Threes” clones was on. Next came a game called “2048,” which launched online, also a copy of “Threes” and “1024.”

The more subtle point is: what happens when the "time to clone" falls closer to zero? Who earns, and how?

Throne of Games: Apple or Google? Depends where you live >> Bloomberg

guardiantech — 2014-03-20T16:46:06+00:00

Apple is the winner in Japan, but that's not the same as a victory in China. There are 251m iOS and Android devices used for playing games in China, according to Flurry. In Japan, there are 33m. The US. is closer, at 238m, but it's not growing as fast as China.
"It's pretty clear that the age of Android global dominance is here," [Torrey] Lincoln [senior director of Flurry games business development] said. "Worldwide, the future for Android looks bright."
More volume doesn't always mean more profits, and that extends to game developers. The average price of an Android app is 6 cents, Flurry said. For Apple products, it's 19 cents on the iPhone and 50 cents on the iPad.

Three secrets of the only five-year-old iPhone hit app >> Forbes

guardiantech — 2014-03-15T22:22:55+00:00

Tero Kuittinen:

One early app hit held on for half a decade of app industry turmoil. Five years later, Lima Sky’s platform jumper is still a Top 30 mainstay. It is the only iPhone app with this kind of longevity. Igor Pusenjak, the quirky and intense cocreator of the game, has a very clear and idiosyncratic vision of how to run the one-game empire he built with his brother. These are Igor’s Rules.

You probably know the game (and have played it) but not its publisher.

What’s next for the makers of Candy Crush Saga? >> The New Yorker

guardiantech — 2014-03-14T14:06:50+00:00

James Surowiecki:

In the gaming industry, success has always been highly unpredictable. Parker Brothers, according to a history of the company, found that there was no secret formula: products that tested well often flopped in the marketplace, while “an in-house flop could become the hit of the industry.” It says something that King, which has been making games for a decade, had profits of just $7.8m in 2012. The company didn’t make eighty times more in 2013 because it had cracked a code; it just caught lightning in a bottle.
It’s true that a few companies—Disney, say—have been able to consistently ride the Zeitgeist. But King has the misfortune to be in an industry where this is especially difficult, simply because it faces so much competition.

The illustration is especially wonderful.

Not a lot of people know that >> Crying All The Way To The Chip Shop

guardiantech — 2014-02-14T22:44:26+00:00

Lee Caulfield:

I was watching Get Carter the other night and got to wondering what happened to the actress Geraldine Moffat (her in the knickers above) who played the gangster’s floozy Glenda.

There's a connection with a game you've heard of. You'll have to read the article.

This data explains Nintendo’s mobile strategy >> CONSULGAMER

guardiantech — 2014-02-06T18:31:51+00:00

The biggest challenge for Nintendo to port games to mobile is that consumers aren’t buying games on mobile devices. In 2013, only 7% of revenue for mobile games came from non-free games. The obvious, but still staggering, size of this story is that free to play monetization tools bring in 93% of all spending on mobile games.
Only 7% of all of the revenue made in mobile games is earned by games that do not support in-app purchases. (Source: AppAnnie)
There are currently no titles in Nintendo’s back-catalog of games that are designed from the ground up for free to play. The company has never designed games with a range of free to play monetization methods involved. Without planning from the start when to insert time gates, probability gates, grind gates, or other monetization methods, Nintendo’s games would lag other game makers in a free to play environment.

Breaking Madden: The Super Bowl, in which the machine bleeds to death >> SBNation.com

guardiantech — 2014-02-03T10:27:17+00:00

You may have heard that the Americans had a big game of sort-of rugby league last weekend. Jon Bois set out to make the videogame version so one-sided that he set a new record by scoring 1,000 points for the winning side:

Over the course of the season, I've discovered lots of different ways to hack Madden NFL 25 into a thing that no longer resembles football as we know it. I've played around with rules, injury settings, all manner of player ratings, player dimensions, and anything else the game's developers have made available to us.
This time is special, though, because I'm pulling out every single one of the stops at the same time. No other scenario I've built in Madden has been so abjectly cruel or unfair; no other scenario has even been close.

You will never, ever, guess how it turns out. You just have to read it.

Five ways to fix Wii U sales >>GameInformer.com

guardiantech — 2013-08-02T05:17:29+00:00

Matt Bertz:

We've reached that point in the platform cycle where a Nintendo device is selling poorly and everyone is making hasty funeral arrangements for the Japanese behemoth. We went through similar prognostications with the DS and 3DS. Both platforms got off to a slow start. Each eventually righted the ship and raked in huge sales. Now it's the Wii U's chance to spit in the face of death. To get the console back on track, we have a few suggestions for Nintendo.

It certainly needs some fixing.

Midcore gamers are future of mobile, says PlayStation mobile exec >> AllThingsD

guardiantech — 2013-08-01T07:09:04+00:00

After acknowledging that the term sometimes makes developers cringe, Thomson argued that mid-core is an inevitable “next step” for mobile gamers who may have enjoyed casual games in the past, but now want a little bit more. That means better stories, and possibly better graphics, while still catering to mobile devices’ strengths like touchscreen controls and the ability to pick up and play a game anywhere, with a shallow learning curve.

Asda removes Nintendo's Wii U from stores >> BBC News

guardiantech — 2013-07-30T22:06:02+00:00

Asda says it will no longer sell Nintendo's Wii U games console in its stores. Customers wanting to buy the machine from the supermarket can still order it online and have it delivered to their homes or to a local store for pickup.
Asda said rival consoles, Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3, would still be sold in-store.
This is despite the fact that the Wii U is the newest of the devices having only been launched in November.
"We continue to support Nintendo as a partner," Asda said in a statement.

This is a new meaning of the word "support".

ROLL IT: A Chrome Experiment >> Google

guardiantech — 2013-07-24T06:57:03+00:00

If you have a desktop and a smartphone to hand, here's where the rest of your day went. Works on "modern browsers": does this include Internet Explorer on Windows Phone?

Xbox One records the last five minutes of your gameplay >> Eurogamer.net

guardiantech — 2013-07-23T21:43:10+00:00

As reported below, Xbox One will record the last five minutes of your gameplay. But there's been confusion around exactly how long PlayStation 4 will do the same.
SCEE's Neil Brown was heard to say "seven minutes" at a Develop 2013 talk in Brighton last week - much less than the 15 minutes previously reported. Sony has now told Eurogamer that Brown corrected himself when queried by an attendee after the session concluded, and that his script had read "several".

So you can store and edit it later, say from an online game.

Foreign game console ban to be lifted >> China Daily

guardiantech — 2013-07-21T21:48:11+00:00

Sources from China's Ministry of Culture confirmed on Thursday that the country is about to allow foreign game console companies to sell products in China if they register in Shanghai's new free trade zone, but denied lifting a decade-long ban on the video game hardware market in the country anytime soon.
Two officials from the ministry confirmed the accuracy of a South China Morning Post report. The story, which was published on Wednesday, quoted sources that if foreign companies agreed to register in the new free trade zone in Shanghai, they would be allowed to promote and sell their products on the Chinese mainland.
But before they start selling, foreign gaming companies have to seek approval for specific products from related regulators because the Chinese government wants to make sure the content is not too violent or politically sensitive, the SCMP report said.
…Because of fears of the potential harm to the physical and mental development of the young, seven Chinese ministries collectively banned the manufacture, sale and import of game consoles in China in 2000.

New consoles coming, but forecasts fall short of previous highs >> ABI Research

guardiantech — 2013-07-18T15:55:01+00:00

ABI Research expects cumulative shipments of 8th generation consoles from the big three to pass 133m during the first five years on market, compared to nearly 140m 7th generation consoles over the same length of time.
Senior analyst Michael Inouye comments: “With many of the casual gaming segment embracing mobile devices for gaming, without a shift in strategy and pricing the Wii U will likely fail to match the success of the Wii which will impact future console shipments. If China decides to lift its ban on consoles, however, in the short term this could boost future shipments of 7th generation game consoles while minimally altering the 8th generation.”

Everyone pins hopes on China, yet China never quite does what they expect.

Your digital game library will be accessible from any PlayStation 4, says Sony

guardiantech — 2013-07-11T07:23:49+00:00

"You can visit your friend's house you can log into your account and play any game from your digital library," he said. Paired with the console's "Play As You Download" functionality, [Sony R&D leader Dan] Brown promised that users will be able to instantly jump into their full library of digital games from any PS4 after signing in with their PSN ID. "This makes a digital library a practical option in the real world," he added.

Apple Gaming Strategy Analysis: Apple’s plan to Crush Microsoft, Sony >> Boy Genius Report

guardiantech — 2013-06-21T04:51:04+00:00

Jonathan S. Geller:

Let’s just be honest… we are at the absolute end of the road for gaming consoles. There is no reason that you are going to need a dedicated gaming machine in the next year or two — you probably don’t even need one now. What makes this more troubling for Microsoft’s upcoming Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4 is that this big, heavy, bulky, hot and loud gaming consoles have to last for an extremely long time in order for them to be profitable for each company. We have been on a 7 to 8-year life cycle for game consoles for the last couple decades, and that model isn’t going to be sustainable going into the future.

You can predict the tone of many of the comments on this piece before reading them. RAGE. But there's an important point in this piece about Apple setting out standards for physical game controllers for iOS devices, and thus positioning Apple TV as a console-in-waiting. "Soon, you are going to be able to play a console-quality game on your iPhone or iPad with a game controller, and you’re going to be able to see it on your big screen television without any effort..."

The Humble Bundle with Android 6

guardiantech — 2013-06-19T04:43:59+00:00

The latest games bundle for Android devices:

Pay what you want for the underwater fantasy action-adventure game Aquaria; the chromatic minimalist puzzler Fractal: Make Blooms Not War; the retro zombie survival game Organ Trail: Director’s Cut; and the nail-biting stealth strategy platformer Stealth Bastard Deluxe. You’ll also receive a bonus game: the rhythmic audio-visual game Pulse: Volume One. If you pay more than the average, you’ll also get the intense tactical combat sim Frozen Synapse and the classic mystery point-and-click adventure Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - Director’s Cut!

Many games developers criticise Android for its users' perceived unwillingness to pay for content. Yet with 13 days to go, more than 68k people have stumped up just under $320k for the latest Humble Bundle. There's life beyond the Google Play store...

Puzzle & Dragons Reaches 15 Million Users >> Dr. Serkan Toto

guardiantech — 2013-06-18T04:34:03+00:00

On the latest mobile gaming craze:

It is not ending: Japan’s top smartphone game Puzzle & Dragons has topped 15 million users across iOS, Android and Kindle devices on June 8, maker GungHo (3765) said today. What’s interesting is that the company is still able to rack up 1 million users in three weeks or less – for the 13th time in a row (the 14 million user mark was passed on May 18). These are all Japanese users: Puzzle & Dragons is still only available over here, in the US, and in South Korea.

The game isn't just popular: it's hugely lucrative, having made $113m for GungHo in April 2013 alone, helping the developer overtake Nintendo for market cap. And now GungHo is palling up with Supercell, its nearest Western equivalent in terms of mobile gaming success, for cross-promotions and gameplay features in that company's Clash of Clans.

iOS 7 support for game controllers gets detailed >> NDTV Gadgets

guardiantech — 2013-06-13T04:48:31+00:00

Looks like Apple's betting big time on mobile gaming with iOS 7, the next iteration of the company's mobile OS.
While it's already known that iOS devices including the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad have made a dent into portable gaming device makers' market, the upcoming iOS version aims to take it to the next level by offering support for hardware game controllers.

Speculation at WWDC is that hardware controller + iPhone + Airplay screen mirroring to AppleTV plugged into a TV = enormous "games console" market. The AppleTV costs $99 (or - uh? - £99). How much do other games consoles cost? (Thanks @EasilyLead for the link.)

I was one of the 520 people laid off by Zynga yesterday. What do you wanna know about Zynga? AMA >> Reddit

guardiantech — 2013-06-05T22:38:50+00:00

The anonymous writer:

I was just laid off yesterday, along with 520 other employees. I'm willing to talk about the company that all gamers love to hate if anyone wants to know more about it. I need to keep my identity on the down-low because I'm job hunting now and not trying to burn bridges. So I can't give specifics on the the projects I worked on, but can talk to a lot of the games, processes, culture, infamous game copying, etc.

Fill your boots.

Oculus VR co-founder, 33, killed by speeding car >> CNET News

guardiantech — 2013-06-03T13:50:39+00:00

Andrew Scott Reisse, co-founder of the company that made the Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset, was struck and killed while walking in a crosswalk Thursday, ABC has reported.
The 33-year-old co-founder and lead engineer at Oculus VR in Irvine, Calif., was hit in Santa Ana, where he was a resident, by a speeding car being pursued by police, KABC TV Los Angeles said. "Andrew was a brilliant computer graphics engineer, an avid photographer and hiker who loved nature, a true loyal friend, and a founding member of our close-knit Oculus family," the company said in a statement.
According to police, a Dodge Charger being driven by 21-year-old Victor Sanchez and two other suspects in an unnamed alleged criminal activity slammed into two vehicles during the pursuit before hitting Reisse at Flower Street and MacArthur Boulevard.

Xbox 360’s Kinect causes trouble for users during next-gen livestream reveal >> Polygon

guardiantech — 2013-05-22T22:00:44+00:00

Xbox 360 Kinect owners had some trouble today watching Microsoft's Xbox One reveal due to device's response to "Xbox" commands spoken during the livestream.
Several users took to Twitter to document their problems, which included pausing, opening Xbox Live or quitting the stream entirely. Polygon's own reviews editor Arthur Gies experienced similar problems with his Kinect while watching the stream.

When the presenter said "Xbox Live", spectators' Kinects picked it up and obeyed. Nice demonstration. Let's hope nobody does "Xbox, wipe my files" in a demo. (Thanks @Nazo for the link.)

VIM Adventures

guardiantech — 2013-05-10T14:11:58+00:00

Need to learn vim (the command-line text editor)? Like learning via games? This is the one for you then.

What happens when pirates play a game development simulator and then go bankrupt because of piracy? >> Greenheart GamesGreenheart Games

guardiantech — 2013-05-04T20:50:28+00:00

In-game message: Boss, it seems that while many players play our new game, they steal it by downloading a cracked version rather than buying it legally. If players don’t buy the games they like, we will sooner or later go bankrupt.
Slowly their in-game funds dwindle, and new games they create have a high chance to be pirated until their virtual game development company goes bankrupt.

Neat illustration of life. (Thanks @clarkeviper and @blossiekins who sent this separately.)

Why game developers are flocking to Sony and fleeing from Microsoft >> Wired.com

guardiantech — 2013-04-09T21:39:53+00:00

There’s a war brewing for the hearts and minds of the videogame industry’s independent developers. The weird thing is, Xbox doesn’t seem interested in fighting it.
Indies were once a fringe group of rogue developers who were often happy to get any sort of attention from a console manufacturer like Sony or Microsoft, but today they’re an industry force that will help shape the next generation of games and gaming machines.
A recent survey showed that 53% of developers self-identify as independent, and Sony is angling to get as many of them on PlayStation devices as possible.

Misogyny, sexism, and why Rock,Paper, Shotgun isn’t shutting up >> Rock, Paper, Shotgun

guardiantech — 2013-04-07T19:37:43+00:00

John Walker, editor of the site:

In having written about the subject of women and games over the years, I’ve received a significant amount of abuse. (I’m not going to fret about saying, “But of course not as bad as…”, because of course it’s not as bad as…) Most of the abuse I receive is lazy insults, and until recently I tended to assume them fairly innocuous. Some has been extreme, such as forum threads dedicated to associating my name with acts of child molestation to skew Google results, personal threats, and deeply personal insults. All of it has one purpose: to intimidate. Whether the purpose of the intimidation is because the person wants to read about new screenshots for a game and not gender politics, or because they are violently defending their privilege, it’s always about intimidation.

Powerful must-read.

Ouya review: can an indie console take on Sony and Microsoft? >> The Verge

guardiantech — 2013-04-04T15:57:39+00:00

David Pierce:

With Ouya's hacker ethos tends to come a distaste for paying for things, so Ouya has mandated that every game in its store be free to download. That sounds like a great, let's-all-hold-hands way to make gaming great on the platform, but it leads to something far more frustrating. Every game is free to download, but then dumps on your head a load of nags, pop-ups, and pleas for upgrades or in-app purchases — some games are $4.99, some are $15.99, others just constantly implore you to donate $.99 so the developer can have a beer. Worst of all, it makes buying things impossibly easy — you enter a credit card when first setting up your Ouya, and there are often no confirmation boxes or checks against you spending thousands of dollars. Oh, you hit Upgrade because it's right next to Play and the controller's laggy? Perfect. Thanks for your money.
Reconfiguring payment systems is one part of what's required for a developer to move their app from Android to Ouya. The other is (hopefully) simpler: apps have to work with the controller. This, as best I can tell, is the one compelling argument for Ouya's not including the Play Store or even the Amazon Appstore on the console — a number of existing games simply won't work with the controller, and even those that do don't work well. Configuring a game for a controller is easy, though, so for Ouya's sake and ours I hope developers put in the time.

3.5 out of 10. Hey ho.

Daphne Bavelier: Your brain on video games >> TED.com video

guardiantech — 2013-03-12T18:12:00+00:00

How do fast-paced video games affect the brain? Step into the lab with cognitive researcher Daphne Bavelier to hear surprising news about how video games, even action-packed shooter games, can help us learn, focus and, fascinatingly, multitask.

This may be counterintuitive (and might upset Baroness Susan Greenfield).

January sales show continued rough tides for the Wii U >> Gamasutra

guardiantech — 2013-02-17T21:25:06+00:00

While the NPD no longer provides specific sales numbers for hardware, a representative does tell us that sales of the Wii U hardware for its first three months on the market are down 38% from what the Wii's numbers were at that same point.
We're told by someone with access to the NPD's data that sales for January were "well under" 100,000 units. By our estimates, sales were somewhere between 45,000 and 59,000 units for the month, which is lower than any of the three previous-generation home consoles sold in their worst months, with the possible exception of a recent performance by the original Wii.

THis is all estimation, but Nintendo's own numbers don't suggest the Wii U is doing anything special either.

Did you know how hilarious the patch notes to The Sims are? >> a place for posts to go

guardiantech — 2013-01-26T23:28:18+00:00

"Sims who are on fire will no longer be forced to attend graduation before they can put themselves out", and other treasures of the imaginary world. (Not a hoax; sources confirmed by this posting.)

Gatecrashing Nintendo's girly gamer event, By a guy >> Gizmodo UK

guardiantech — 2013-01-21T15:29:40+00:00

Grant Howitt:

There is a couple on the balcony kissing. At a games event.
I can’t quite work out why making out with someone at a games event is so massively strange. Maybe it’s a perceived violation of the heavily implied and painstakingly cultivated male homosocial space. Maybe it’s because, as a breed, most games journos tend to look like they’re at least two cups of coffee behind everyone else in the room. Maybe it’s both.

Howitt wrote about Panasonic's Toughbook thingamajig. Nice nails.

Why Will Self's outsider's view of gaming is thought-provoking, despite the common misconceptions >> Edge Online

guardiantech — 2013-01-17T14:30:01+00:00

Steven Poole:

Every so often, a celebrated littérateur opines on the subject of videogames, having just discovered or rediscovered them. A few years ago, novelist John Lanchester asked of the medium: “Is it art?” (His answer: maybe, one day.) Now Will Self has written an essay for the London Review Of Books about how his sons are obsessed with games, and – in a lovely flight of metacritical fancy – wondering what the literary theorist Northrop Frye would have made of it all.

Worth it for the picture of Self alone at the top, but also demonstrates that games writers can throw around mythico-narrative scenarios with phantasmagorical allegories with the best of them.

Big Data in creepy hook-up with big-game whales >> The Register

guardiantech — 2012-12-11T21:26:55+00:00

Big Data, that promise of an online world tailored to our every whim, may instead tailor our purchasing habits to the whims of vendors.
This is particularly important to online gaming companies, which depend upon so-called "whales" for revenue. As one former Zynga employee revealed, 1% of Zynga's players account for 25 to 50% of its revenue. Get one of these whales on the hook and you can literally sell them a never-ending supply of virtual goods.
Small wonder, then, that mining Big Data has become such a big deal. But what happens when the "whale" is a 13-year-old boy? At what point should these social media companies take some responsibility?

Portal’s physics engine rebuilt in 25KB — on a graphing calculator >> Ars Technica

guardiantech — 2012-12-06T20:57:00+00:00

A 20-year-old college student has rebuilt Portal, Valve's 2007 space-bending game, from the ground up, on — wait for it — a graphing calculator. In a display that puts the old calculator versions of Mario and Tetris to shame, Alex Marcolina posted to a gaming forum and reddit on Sunday about his re-engineered version of Portal. It took three years to build and cannot, due to resource constraints on TI-83/84 calculators, execute more than 16 kilobytes of code.

WOW.

Games by platform and genre >> Imgur

guardiantech — 2012-11-23T23:08:37+00:00

Awesome collection by a Redditor of games by topic and by platform since 1975. Gaze upon it in wonder.

Sony's PS Vita portable console dying ugly in Japan >> Forbes

guardiantech — 2012-11-23T22:58:18+00:00

Tero Kuittinen:

The inability [to deliver] a strong sales rebound during a major launch is a death knell for a video game console – and this is what Vita has demonstrated all through the autumn. For example, in October, Vita was the launch pad for a relatively big launch of “The Legend of Heroes”. The game sold 21,000 units during its debut week – Vita sales bounced to 15,000 units and then dropped back to 6,000 weekly pace in just two weeks later. It looks identical to the impact that Assassin’s Creed III is now having on Vita – negligible.
PS Vita is going to struggle to hit 700,000 units in Japan during the calendar year 2012. This is far below viability. At the same time, Nintendo 3DS is riding a massive wave of blockbuster games week after week – Animal Crossing will hit 1m units next week, New Super Mario Bros stands at 1.3m, the latest Pokemon at 2.8m.

Really not looking good for the Vita.

Nintendo Wii U goes on sale in US with apps, games and no TV >> Bloomberg

guardiantech — 2012-11-18T18:52:42+00:00

Nintendo, working to prove it can still succeed by marrying its hardware to exclusive software, began selling the Wii U console amid tight supplies and delays in implementing a new TV-viewing service.
The first new video-game console for US homes since [the PlayStation 3 in] 2006, the Wii U initially won’t offer the Nintendo TVii service that the Kyoto, Japan-based company has touted as a centerpiece of its capabilities. The feature will be available sometime in December, the company said on 16 November, without being specific.

Hundreds of Obamas and Romneys go to war in this ridiculous-looking mod >> Kotaku

guardiantech — 2012-11-07T22:24:15+00:00

The mod, created by Reddit user matbitesdog, is used in Medieval II: Total War, and you can download it for laughs here.

Enjoy the pics. Perhaps future elections could be fought like this too?

Letterpress: one week later >> atebits

guardiantech — 2012-10-31T22:51:02+00:00

In less than a week, we've blasted past 15 million words played! It has inspired a new form of poetry. And even those folks who lost power have found a way to make do.

Loren Brichter wrote Tweetie, which was one of the best third-party Twitter apps. Then Twitter bought it, and it was OK. Then Brichter left, and things got worse. Now he's coding again.

Despite piracy, there WILL be another Android Football Manager game >> The Appside

guardiantech — 2012-10-24T20:34:45+00:00

Sports Interactive has confirmed that it will be releasing Football Manager Handheld 2013 for Android, despite heavy piracy of the 2012 version – its first for Android devices.
Studio director Miles Jacobsen tells Red Bull’s website that the ratio of pirated downloads to legitimately bought copies of Football Manager Handheld 2012 for Android is now “ranging between nine to one and 11 to one”.

We've heard the same figures from Jacobsen. It's quite a problem for app developers: it has to represent lost revenue.

Night and the City >> Eurogamer.net

guardiantech — 2012-10-23T05:12:10+00:00

"One of the nicer tech stories I've read over the weekend," says @ponk2k (who provided the link). The story of someone playing LA Noire with his dad; it is.

StarCraft: Orcs in space go down in flames >> Code Of Honor

guardiantech — 2012-09-28T20:38:35+00:00

From the games frontiers of the 1990s:

As Ion Storm started to disintegrate due to financial and political problems, members of its development teams left to pursue other opportunities. From this crew Blizzard managed to hire Mark Skelton and Patrick Thomas for the burgeoning cinematics team, where they worked to produce some of Blizzard’s epic cut-scenes. I spent a lot of time with the cinematics team members (who sat not far from me) and hung out with Mark and Patrick, including during numerous surfing outings to Laguna Beach and Huntington Beach.
At some point I talked with Mark and Patrick about how Dominion Storm knocked us on our heels, and they let us in on Ion Storm’s dirty little secret: the entire demo was a pre-rendered movie, and the people who showed the “demo” were just pretending to play the game.

And it gets better.

I am worried about the future of Python >> Iron Froggy

guardiantech — 2012-09-27T16:32:55+00:00

Three salient points where the world is changing and Python isn't - or not fast enough.

The incredibly detailed, beautifully illustrated, insanely intricate birth of a video game Mech >> Penny Arcade

guardiantech — 2012-08-23T21:05:54+00:00

It is indeed all those things.

Crikey: EU rules you can resell downloaded games >> Rock, Paper, Shotgun

guardiantech — 2012-07-03T21:29:38+00:00

Well here’s some pretty huge news. The Court Of Justice of the European Union has just ruled that people should be able to resell downloaded games. In an environment where publishers are trying to destroy basic consumer rights like the ability to resell physical products you’ve paid for, this could be one heck of a turnaround for customers. And that’s no matter what it might say in the EULAs. This could have absolutely enormous implications on how services like Steam, Origin, GamersGate and the like work, and finally restore some rights back to the gamer.

Only if you can find the original packaging, though.

Player 'completes' Diablo III video game >> BBC News

guardiantech — 2012-06-21T16:10:34+00:00

Just over a month after the release of Diablo III, a pro player has managed to complete the game on its hardest setting.

We're trying to ascertain whether the small earthquake in Chile caused any disturbance in the boss level. You also have to love the quote marks - the literary equivalent of tongs - put around "finished". Meaning "might not have finished, we haven't visited to check."

The angry fundamentalists of the church of gaming >> New Statesman blogs

guardiantech — 2012-06-17T14:09:28+00:00

Gamers are an incredibly diverse bunch as I’m sure we all know, but like with any broad church there are going to be some people in there who are, for want of a better word, fundamentalists.

Skylanders is bigger than Angry Birds, says Activision Blizzard >> VentureBeat

guardiantech — 2012-05-15T20:42:00+00:00

From 9 May:

In a conference call, Eric Hirshberg, CEO of the Activision Publishing division, made a surprisingly direct statement on the success of Skylanders, the new toy/video game hybrid for consoles and iOS devices. With 30m toys sold and $100m in revenue across toys and games in the quarter, said Hirshberg, Skylanders made more money than the entire business of Rovio’s Angry Birds franchise. Rovio announced today that Angry Birds has been downloaded more than 1 billion times, across both free and paid versions.

Skylanders is huge with kids with games consoles, who swap accomplishments in school playgrounds. They haven't gone away just because games consoles have arrived.

Magnificent application of game theory, by a contestant on a game show >> bengoldacre

guardiantech — 2012-05-01T14:40:17+00:00

It's a Prisoner's Dilemma game. But:

An interesting twist is permitted on this particular TV show, because the contestants get a chance to discuss strategy. Normally the play here seems simple: you try to persuade the other person that splitting is a good idea, and that you can be trusted. This time, one of the contestants plays a different and very clever approach, signalling a clear warning to his opponent. The fact that he works in charitable sector funding only makes it better.

And do watch to the very, very end of the clip. It is worth it.

HTML5: A blessing or a curse? >> Develop

guardiantech — 2012-04-18T05:44:43+00:00

Focussed on game developers:

Initially heralded as the future of browser gaming and the next step beyond the monopolised world of Flash, HTML5 has since faced criticism for being tough to code with and possessing a string of broken features.
The coding platform, the fifth iteration of the HTML standard, was supposed to be a one stop shop for developers looking to create and distribute their game to a multitude of platforms and browsers, but things haven’t been plain sailing.

Key criticism is over audio implementation; there's a certain amount of wishful sighing for the good old days when you just wrote for Flash. Unfortunately, Windows 8 and tablets mean those aren't coming back.

The 1,825 night success >> Dustin Curtis

guardiantech — 2012-03-21T21:54:14+00:00

Draw Something was first launched on OMGPOP's website five years ago. It remained there, as a relatively obscure game, without much usage. Six weeks ago, it was ported to iOS. Today, the company is worth $180m.

Microsoft said to plan debut of new Xbox in 2013 at earliest >> Bloomberg

guardiantech — 2012-03-18T21:34:44+00:00

Microsoft will release the next version of its Xbox console in 2013 at the earliest, as the company squeezes at least one more year of sales out of its current model, said two people with knowledge of the matter. The company may show the successor to its Xbox 360 in June 2013 at the E3 conference and put it on sale that same year, said the people, who declined to be named because the plans are confidential. David Dennis, a company spokesman, said earlier today that Microsoft won’t discuss new Xbox hardware at this year’s E3, quelling speculation that the device would be unveiled at the 2012 show.

IAmA Former FullTime Zynga Engineer quit 6 months ago. Not a contractor, (Z treats em like shit). >> Reddit

guardiantech — 2012-02-06T21:26:48+00:00

This apparently former Zynga employee is letting loose on the games firm. (He posted a picture of a Zynga termination letter as proof of ID). He says:

No, this isn't payback, or about a grudge. This is just word from someone who's seen what this industry is capable of doing. Good, and Bad. No, I was not under contract, I was full time, offered stock (common shares, not that options bullcrap). I sympathized with contractors on how they were treated, most of the time. No, I was not some IT mangler. I worked for one of their "game studios", basically the front lines where content made it to the masses.

An Ex-Zynga Engineer Is Ripping The Company Apart In Plain Sight >> Business Insider

guardiantech — 2012-02-06T21:22:54+00:00

We can't be sure (at the time of bookmarking - Mon 06/02/12 2122GMT) that this 'engineer' is who he says he is, but his comments are worth a read.

Why Guru3D probably never will review Ubisoft titles anymore >> Anno 2070

guardiantech — 2012-01-20T10:44:53+00:00

Here's what Ubisofts DRM is doing these days, they don't just verify the number of PCs you work on, nope .. they monitor hardware changes. So once we inserted that GeForce GTX 590 the hardware id # hash changed rendering our activation invalid.

What a bunch of rubbish ....This means that if we'd like to make a VGA performance review on Anno 2070 we'd need to purchase the game seven times. Ubisoft claims that you can send an email towards their support so that the activations are reset, we did so .. yet are still awaiting reaction.

When contacting Ubisoft marketing here in the Netherlands, their reply goes like this: 'Sorry to disappoint you - the game is indeed restricted to 3 hardware changes and there simply is no way to bypass that. We also do not have 7 copies of the game for you'.

I'm sorry, but I am not about to purchase the title seven times to make a review that by default benefits Ubisoft sales.

Looks like the reviewing torch has passed to sites that don't specialise in that way. How many VGA users do we have out there?

All the world’s a game >> The Economist

guardiantech — 2011-12-09T06:28:18+00:00

Be impressed: "Over the past two decades the video-games business has gone from a cottage industry selling to a few niche customers to a fully grown branch of the entertainment industry. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a consulting firm, the global video-game market was worth around $56 billion last year. That is more than twice the size of the recorded-music industry, nearly a quarter more than the magazine business and about three-fifths the size of the film industry, counting DVD sales as well as box-office receipts (see chart below). PwC predicts that video games will be the fastest-growing form of media over the next few years, with sales rising to $82 billion by 2015."

Clever game pricing, not just games, is key to Vita's success >> Eurogamer.net

guardiantech — 2011-12-05T22:40:23+00:00

"The world is a very different place now than it was when DS and PSP launched, when there was no such thing as an iPhone, let alone any real notion of games that could be easily downloaded in seconds for pennies. "Apple's rampant, rapid growth in handheld gaming has been astonishing and has caught traditional console makers completely off-guard. And what must really stick in Nintendo and Sony's craw is not Apple's boast of making the most popular portable gaming device in the world (a crafty spin, since most don't buy iPod Touch primarily as a games system), but that it's achieved it without even trying."

Free iPhone games making plenty of money on Apple's UK App Store >> guardian.co.uk

guardiantech — 2011-10-17T21:28:51+00:00

"Half of the 100 top-grossing iPhone games in the UK are free-to-play titles, indicating that while freemium games are proving lucrative for their developers and publishers, paid titles continue to have a strong role in the App Store ecosystem." Would not have guessed that.

Gamers solve molecular puzzle that baffled scientists >> Cosmic Log

guardiantech — 2011-09-18T21:16:27+00:00

"Video game players have solved a molecular puzzle that stumped scientists for years, and those scientists say the accomplishment could point the way to crowdsourced cures for AIDS and other diseases.

"'This is one small piece of the puzzle in being able to help with AIDS,' Firas Khatib, a biochemist at the University of Washington, said. Khatib is the lead author of a research paper on the project, published today by Nature Structural & Molecular Biology."

Steam Hardware & Software Survey

guardiantech — 2011-07-29T05:54:42+00:00

"Steam conducts a monthly survey to collect data about what kinds of computer hardware and software our customers are using. Participation in the survey is optional, and anonymous. The information gathered is incredibly helpful to us as we make decisions about what kinds of technology investments to make and products to offer."

It's also really interesting to see the cross-section of Steam users.