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You damn kids! You need to put down your Nintendo PlayStations and get down to one of our nation's fine national or state parks, put some outdoor learnin' into you. In what's just one more advertorial away from becoming a trend, the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune is calling for kids, parents and grandparents to get back to nature, shut down the Xboxs and get some eagle watching done, Minnesota style. More »
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Every time I hear, see, read about World of Warcraft one thing pops into my head. It's not my nearly forgotten druid character who has a name I can no longer remember, goals I don't care about and sits languishing in some Inn. It's not the hours of fun I had playing the massively multiplayer game when it first came out. It's my check book. More »
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Your Video Games Suck is the ultimate hater wiki for gamers. The game review site is dedicated to looking at the negative side of games and making fun of them. The site only offers up nine user written articles so far, but man are they filled with hate. All entries are user submitted using the Wikipedia source, so hop on over and vent that spleen. More »
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My brother just sent me a link to a great screed on War simulations that he found posted on Craigslist. The article was actually swiped from PointlessWasteofTime.com and was written by the same guy who wrote the now kinda famous Gamer's Manifesto. More »
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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a nice write up on the Dear Friends: Music of Final Fantasy that played in Georgia over the weekend. The piece was actually written before the concert, but does a job of explaining both the cultural importance of the concert and why concert halls around the country are suddenly falling all over themselves to do video game performances. More »
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If the premier article is indicative of things to come Joshuah More »
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The (Elkin-Jonesville, N.C.) Tribune has an excellent editorial up about the significance of Pac-Man s silver anniversary. The paper says the game has ushered in a video game age that is a legitimately transforming force in the most robust and diverse entertainment culture the world has ever known. More »
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Although I'm not a regular reader of the IGN mailbag (typo-ridden and grammar-lacking fanboy letters are hardly my cup of tea), I felt obligated to take a peek after reading Hatsumi's recent column. More »
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MTV News sat down with the editor of The Gamer s Quarter to talk to him about the impetus for creating a free online zine dedicated to (gasp) New Games Journalism. It s MTV-short, but worth the read with a nice run down of the first issue and tease to the second, which just hit the website. Check out the article and The Gamer s Quarter, both deserve your time. More »
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I love secret shoppers, it empowers us all. 1Up/EGM had a woman go in to several game and electronic stores and play up the old I m a girl and don t know jack about games stereotype. The results run from heartening to horrifying. To summerize, though you really should go read the entire item it s a gem, GameStop rocks, EB Games are elitists, Best Buy is moronic and Toys R Us should have their games taken away from them. More »
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The UK's Daily Mail ran a story Sunday that says a new study has proven that video games can lead to more violent behavior. You have to read through nearly the entire article before you get to this great line from one of the leaders of the research. More »
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While we will find out later today whether the Screen Actors Guild will strike it appears no one will care. I've heard it from execs and flaks, but now the Los Angles Daily News is asking just how important is vocal talent to the commercial success of a title? In other words, do you really care who does the voice for Marlon Brandon in The Godfather The Game? I'm guessing you don't which sort of means if 1,000 SAG voters decide to strike they're screwed. More »
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FeedGarden has a sexy new look. The PSP news aggregator has expanded to include eight different gardens including PSP, Videogame and Xbox 360. Think of it as a sort of a concentrated aggregator, a place that provides a snapshop about a particular subject in an easy to read system. Or as the site s creator calls it, a lazy person s Bloglines. The site will eventually update every 15 minutes or so, but right now is running at about once an hour. More »
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Are you a Pop Culturist, Uninspired, Shock Artist or Loyalist? Druidblue says that the names typically chosen in a massively multiplayer online role playing game falls into those four categories. More »
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A few years ago I was talking to Chip Lange, then vice president of EA Sports, about the pervasiveness of video games and how newspapers were covering them. He was bemoaning the fact that at the time most newspaper reporters who covered gaming did so as a side job. (While I write a monthly game column for the Rocky Mountain News, my full-time job is as a police reporter.) He pointed out that you would never see that in a paper s coverage of the music or movie industry. And then he said something that really brought it all home: He said it wouldn t be long before we had the first president in the White House who grew up playing video games. More »
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Well that didn't last too long. The Carnival of Gamers, a collection of interesting and unusual game links, was an attempt at cutting through all of the back-biting and self-promotion of blogging and instead concentrate on good writing. Cathode Tan points out that not everyone liked the idea. Someone needs a hug I think. More »
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Gametab's grand social experiment seems to have floundered a bit. Those of you who use the gaming news tabulator, and everyone who likes gaming should, probably noticed the addition of a news nexus a few weeks back. More »
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Are the E3 awards handed out each year by an increasing number of publications and sites each year worth anything? The problem is two-fold. First, the awards are based on games that have not been completed, so may look better or worse than they will when they are finally released. Second, there are so many awards given out each year that it's hard to really pay attention. More »
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I ran into CBS' William Vitka in some hallway at E3 last week, he looked as dazed and confused as I felt. And, it turns out, he was. In his latest column he bemoans the excesses of the show, slams Msoft and Sony for their love of the HD revolution that no one can afford and points out that for an industry that claims it's all grown up it sure as hell still acts like a teenager on crank. More »
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Sony Entertainment s Ken Kutaragi was talking smack about the Xbox 360 to Gamespot today. Besides running with the whole Xbox 1.5 name-calling, Kutaragi is talking up the PS3 s multimedia capabilities, specificially its abilitiy to store non-game content in online storage. More »
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The creator of a cool new gaming blog called The Game Chair just pointed me to his interesting review system. Instead of writing a single review at the end of his experience, Seth Giammanco writes up a series of reviews at pivotal moments in the game. More »
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Chris Morris took a stab at picking six games to keep an eye on for More »
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CNN s Chris Morris is guessing that it will cost you a tad more than $1,700 to join the high-def, next-gen gaming revolution. That price tag includes the cost of an average HDTV, a home theater in a box, an Xbox 360 and a $60 game. Of course, if you went to Microsoft s Game Developers Conference you probably already have the TV and if you didn t you survived this generation of Xbox without one. And who needs surround sound anyway? So the real cost of a next-gen console is it s price tag. More »
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I was wandering the net tonight and happened upon Tina Wood's blog. In it she wrote up a short defense of her Nintendo gig. More »
]]> http://kotaku.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=104497&view=rss&microfeed=true I got my hands on a cool set of pictures showing all three next-gen consoles being held up in the air by someone. The reason this is so cool is because it lets you compare the size of the three consoles. Looks like it goes, from smallest to largest, Revolution, PS3 and then Xbox 360, but it's very close. More »
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A reviewer for GameSpy posted an item on his blog saying that the site had reworked his review of Donkey Konga 2, pumping up the puny 1.5 stars to a fairly moderate 3 stars. Site editors also apparently added several positive phrases to the review. More »
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After reading IGN's pan of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (They gave it a 45 percent), I got into an argument/discussion with the Video Game Ombudsman about whether a review can be wrong. While I don't really think reviews can be right or wrong, the question makes you ponder what exactly a review is for. Do you read reviews to decide whether to buy the game, or to read something that confirms what you already knew? Should reviews be written as consumer buying guides, or to entertain? More »
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Perhaps a bit dated, but Hatsumi on RedAssedbaboon (Yes, that s my site.) has a short diatribe up about how totally suck 1Up s Top Ten Girlfriend-Friendly Games list was. Her column first picks apart 1Up s frankly crappy list of games and then goes through her own list. Hatsumi s list runs the gambit, including everything from the Atari version of Pitfall to Silent Hill 1 and 2. More »
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Apparently girlfriends like mamby-pamby lovey-dovey feel good games, and certainly nothing that involves a gun. 1Up came up with an idiotic list of girlfriend-friendly games that is populated by such bland classics as Centipede, Bejeweled and Ms. Pac-Man. More »
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I pointed out an interesting screw-up I noticed this morning to The Video Game Ombudsman and he's written it up. Many game sites and major newspapers incorrectly said that Al Pacino was doing the voice work for Scarface when in fact his likeness is appearing in the game without his surly voice. (I got it right.) More »
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Just how good is the United Nations $150,000 Food Force computer game at delivering the message it was intended to deliver? Quite crappy actually, according to Gelf Magazine which says that the game adds up to a slick veneer with little substance behind it. The story is an interesting game review that looks beyond the mechanics, audio and graphics of the game and delves into its social impact. More »
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What s the difference between a fan and a fanboy? I mean besides the fact one of them has the word boy tacked on. There s an excellent article over on GameSpot Journals that explores the whole issue. The author points out that only in gaming are exhuberient fans ridiculed. More »
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Nintendo's gotten their tiny little green Yoshi claws into Aleks Krotoski. I'm sure it won't be long until the Gamesblogger is mainlining Yoshi Touch & Go in the alley behind The Guardian. For now she's just singing the praises of the DS game in a piece about superficiality versus immersive interactive storylines. More »
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In many ways, the Internet is doing as much to harm good writing as it is to help it. With the advent of blogs and even many "professional" game sites, the concept of editing for content and worrying about length seems to have gone out the window. More »
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As we bid a fond farewell to another April Fools Day filled with pranks and bad gaming news, The Game Blog raises the question of whether it's really professional to fill a gaming site with joke stories. More »
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There's nothing like a good rant to kick off the day, here's one from an email sent me by Playboy senior editor Scott Alexander expressing his own opinions on the very rant-worthy New Games Journalism. More »
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I'm still slightly annoyed by New Games Journalism. I can't figure out if it's because on some deep level I'm ticked that I didn't think of the idea first or because sometimes I think comparing the NGJ stuff that's come out to date to anything that Hunter Thompson ever wrote is beyond the height of ridiculous. More »
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Love it or hate it, New Game Journalism is more than likely here to stay in one form or another. The Video Game Ombudsman points out that it's been almost exactly a year since Kieron Gillen coined the phrase. To commemorate his drunken orations on the state of gaming about a year ago, Gillen has decided to analyze the effects of the phrase. Be warned, his piece his filled with self-aggrandizing wankage to the extreme, includes words like exemplar and just won't get to the fucking point. More »
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So, now that The New York Times Circuits is being replaced with a gardening section what the hell are the people at CircuitsWatch.com going to do with themselves? In a press release sent out a little earlier today, CW seems to be trying to claim credit for death of the section. Something that is so absurd it's almost a little sad. Ummmm, the rest of the world has known about Circuits demise for weeks, how does a site with the words Circuits and Watch in it not get clued in until the day the last edition runs? More »
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Why hasn't the game industry reached its Citizen Kane moment? The question came up during a panel discussion at the Game Developers Conference. Grand Text Auto explains that the CKM is the point when someone finally creates a game that "uses the medium in such radically new ways that it uncovers a new grammar of expression, and in the process reaches new heights." More »
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