At the summer Consumer Electronics Show in 1991, Sony announced that it was jumping into the video game hardware market for the first time, partnering with Nintendo to release something called a “PlayStation.” The device never made it to market—for reasons I’ll explain shortly—but someone on reddit may have come across a very rare prototype.
"Operation: Game Over"—an initiative undertaken by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman—recently purged over 3,500 registered sex offenders from online gaming sites. Sexual predators are using voice and text chat functions on the interactive games to troll for victims. One 19-year old Monroe county man pled guilty to sexual abuse charges after luring a 12-year old boy to his apartment; they met on XBox Live. The initiative was backed with widespread support from the gaming industry, with Microsoft, Apple, Blizzard Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Disney Interactive Media Group, Warner Brothers and Sony participating in the plan.
Hello there, you, sitting in front of your computer! Are you feeling a little embolism-y? You might want to stand up and walk around for a minute before you read this story. Just saying.
Well, this is pretty amazing: here's Guillaume Reymond's latest stop-motion video for his GAME OVER Project. This time, it's a game of Pac-Man—and it stars 111 real, live people. Get your nostalgia on, and be amazed, inside.
Recently, I was hoodwinked into making two trips across Texas in the space of a month, and over the course of the 14 hours I spent in my car, I soaked up every Ricky Gervais Show podcast I could download.
Most people are familiar with the Bible's story of creation—you know, the "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light" one. Well, what if it was a seven-level 8-bit video game? Find out inside.
JV Games was all set to release Beer Pong for the Nintendo Wii as part of its new Frat Party Games series (forthcoming titles include It's Not Gay, It's Tradition and Honor Council Testimony: Age of Consent Edition). Then the killjoy parents got involved, saying it's not right encouraging underage drinking, even in the virtual world. So now the thing's called Pong Toss, which, according to Time, will feature "pixelated cups of water." Use your Xbox to draft a pixelated transfer application. As it turns out, however, water as an alternative chug resource has also caused problems on university campuses:
VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi did the reporting so I don't have to: "Sources close to the matter said that Google has developed an in-game advertising technology that allows it to insert video ads into games. In demos of the technology, a game character can introduce a video ad, saying something like, 'And now, a word from our sponsor,' before showing a short video at the end of a sequence in a game. Since testing has been going on for some time, Google could launch the technology fairly quickly, if it so chooses." Microsoft bought Massive, a company which inserts ads into games, in 2006, and Google bought AdScape, a similar startup, in February 2007. Sony's also getting into placing ads in videogames, but most past efforts have dealt with still images, not video.
I'm not saying gaming news should become as mature a genre of journalism as politics, business, and world news. It's still a new field and will always be as subjective as covering music or film, with the accompanying celebrity culture. But now that women outnumber men in online gaming, party games like Rock Band appeal to both sexes, and casual games (popular among women and adults) are the fastest-growing segment of the gaming industry, gaming journalism should be an all-inclusive genre. Why does it still pander to a core audience of straight young males with outdated misogynistic material, to the boredom and frustration of all of us who can get laid outside of World of Warcraft?
Publishers, despite the hardbitten skepticism of their journalist underlings, vie with the denizens of Silicon Valley for the crown of gullible neophilia. So they ignore reports of Second Life's impending demise, and instead fix their eyes on the virtual world's elusive 8.7 million registered users. Virtual World Productions has decided to stake a claim in virtual journalism. Its goal is to grow into the News Corp. of virtual worlds — never mind that Reuters and CNET beat it to the punch in establishing Second Life bureaus.
Last week, ZDNet ran a "World of Warcraft is the new golf" trend story (the recycled premise — Valley notables are networking through the MMORPG). In ZDnet's video of Ross Mayfield, the software exec utters some delightful lines worthy of clipping. So here are Ross Mayfield clips (with a bonus clip from open source developer Jonas Luster) to match the recently released Marissa Mayer giggle. This oughta round out the sound set you've been loading on your cubicle neighbor's computer.
Big brother Kotaku's got a whole team at the E3 gaming mega-fest this week, but Valleywag, like any good tech outlet, outsourced its reporting to cheaper, less hygenic laborers. Valleywag friend ConFonz turns in another stellar report, the first of his missives from this love-in of gamers, game makers, and the boring dudes in between.
