For those who feel that video games are, in fact, art, the last two months have been important ones. In February, no less an institution than the Smithsonian declared they’d be mounting a crowd-sourced curation experiment for their upcoming “The Art of Video Games.” A dedicated website let people from all over the world choose from 240 …
Video Games
IGN, UGO Merge to Create Video Game Media Colossus
The long, drawn-out and brutal war of high-profile videogame-centric websites – a battle so severe that you may not even have known it was happening – has finally ended with the news that News Corp., owners of IGN Entertainment, will purchase UGO Entertainment from Hearst Corp. for an undisclosed sum.
The deal will create what the …
New SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs Trailer. Timely and Patriotic!
Though Sony’s been under lots of heat for continually flubbing their still-not-working PlayStation Network, I have to say: this new trailer for SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy SEALs — especially in light of all the SEALS-related newsmaking this week — is pretty compelling.
Watch it down below and note some of the (I’m sure) carefully selected …
Top Game Designers Say What They’d Put Into the Smithsonian
Nothing entertains more than a good “BEST EVAR!!!!11!!!!1!” argument. Video games have been around more than three decades, making it the latest medium to incite impassioned debate about what example of the form reins supreme over everything else.
More than a month ago, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art announced that the public …
L.A. Noire Gets L.A. Literary with Official Crime Anthology
Joyce Carole Oates, Francine Prose, Megan Abbott–names of note to literary wonks, but in a video game? As scripts go, the best the industry’s mustered to date–BioShock, Red Dead Redemption, possibly Grim Fandango and the original Gabriel Knight–pale in comparison to books like Black Water, Blue Angel, and Bury Me Deep. You’d never …
GameStop Appears to Be Building a Streaming Gaming Platform for Android
It’s been a busy week in the world of on-demand entertainment. YouTube’s reported plan to unveil a video on-demand service was stunted by a few fussy movie studios who refused to license their material, and even Netflix looks like they’re moving away from maintaining physical inventories. Earlier this month, GameStop made a few key …
Watch These 9 Crazy People Obliterate Their PlayStations
Look, we know you’re mad at Sony. But we also know you’re not made of money, so smashing your PlayStation to protest is probably out of the question. We’ve already covered everything you need to know about the fiasco, but to help ease your withdrawals, we’ve rounded up a few videos of angry/crazy/insane people going all “Office Space” on …
Rockstar Games’ ‘L.A. Noire’ Goes Full Frontal at Tribeca Film Festival
I didn’t think video games could shock me anymore. I also thought I had a good sense of just how lurid Rockstar Games’ upcoming detective thriller was going to be. Watching the game get played in a movie theater last night proved me wrong on both counts.
Last night, the makers of Red Dead Redemption and the GTA games broke new ground …
This Pokémon-Inspired Device May Help You Lose Weight
If you’re looking to shed a few unflattering pounds before beach season officially starts, or simply looking to get your child to be more active, this Pokémon-inspired pedometer could be a safe bet.
A new study conducted by Iowa State University tested the accuracy of several pedometers — including a standard DigiWalker and a …
Rest in Peace: The Father of the Video Game Cartridge Has Passed
Jerry Lawson, the man widely-credited with inventing the video game cartridge and its complimentary console, died of a heart attack this past Saturday at his home in Mt. View, California. He was 70-years old.
A native of Queens, Jerry moved to Silicon Valley in the ’70s to become a pioneer of its early tech scene. Digital Trends …
Download Site Says DRM Causes Piracy
Retro gaming download site Good Old Games specializes in titles from the bygone days of computer gaming, including classics like Planescape: Torment. The games they offer harken back to a time before onerous and even malicious DRM (digital rights management) measures were implemented on PC games to try and prevent piracy.
But GOG PR …
Blind Gamer Uses Sound Design to Beat Video Games
You’d be hard-pressed to find a gamer who couldn’t hum a few bars of the theme music for Nintendo classic The Legend of Zelda. (It’s in your head right now, isn’t it?) But, one uniquely talented man uses the game’s sounds–and nothing else–to navigate through fan-favorite Zelda title The Ocarina of Time. But, since he’s blind, Terry …