The developers of Prison Architect have read our guest writer Paolo Pedercini's tough critique of their game. They... liked it! And they've recorded a video addressing Pedercini's concerns about how their game does or doesn't bleed the reality of the real prison system into the game.
Is it possible to create a prison management game without trivializing or misrepresenting the issue of mass incarceration? As video games mature and tackle more serious topics, players and developers should be aware of the values embedded in their systems.
The somewhat-wonderful, somewhat-demented interactive incarceration simulator Prison Architect always gets the best updates.
I'm already on-record about how fascinating Prison Architect is. Seriously, it's SimPrison—or ThemePrison, if you will—made by people who seem to be damn near fearless about making video games about uncomfortable topics.
The most interesting decision a video game has given me the opportunity to make this year involved the interior decoration of a prison. The choice, which I was presented just yesterday: Did I want to put a window in the cell of a man on death row? Or save the money? Either way, he was going to die the next day.
Proven countless times over the past several years alone, video games are a form of entertainment uniquely suited to communicating serious subjects in an interactive fashion — far more effectively than reading a book or watching a documentary. Unfortunately Apple wants nothing to do with that sort of communication, so…
There's retiring old video game characters by not using them any more, and then there's retiring old video game characters by building little models of them and destroying them.
Spooky. We were only lamenting the other day around the office water cooler about how there weren't enough good heist games these days, and what do we get? A new heist game — and an interesting one to boot.
If ever proof was needed of how important Valve's Steam platform has become to many PC developers, look no further than the tale of Introversion, the developers of Defcon and Darwinia, whose company was saved by a Steam sale.
In 2008, independent developer Introversion announced an Xbox Live Arcade version of its innovative PC strategy action puzzler, Darwinia. Now Darwinia+ is only a few short weeks away.
Introversion's Chris Delay has - in a continuation of the company's earlier decision to "tell all" about their recent operational dealings - posted an account of the company's recent woes.
Talented British developers Introversion have announced that, after a previous deal with a publisher fell through, they're looking for somebody else to publish nuclear war "simulator" Defcon on the Nintendo DS.
Introversion - developers of Defcon and Darwinia - have a treat in store for us. Following "unprecedented approval" from Microsoft, they've uploaded a paper trail documenting the journey a game takes from pitch to release.
Introversion, developers behind nuclear war party game Defcon, are no strangers to monkeying around with game code. This, we know. So don't be surprised to see them working on Defcon for your desktop.
Over at Introversion Software's blog, the developer of Defcon and Darwinia has revealed it's at work on its sixth game, Chronometer, with funding from the UK's Channel 4.
Though it's been public knowledge for a while now, nobody has really seen or heard much about Multiwinia, the upcoming multiplayer edition of Introversion's brilliant strategy title Darwinia. Have now! RPS' Kieron Gillen has had a sit-down with the game, which can be best summed up with "It's an RTS cut back to its core …
