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Are You A Senior Game UX Designer? We’re Hiring
Gawker Media, the company behind Kotaku.com, is developing Kinja, our collaborative blogging platform. We need a UX expert to make our software as elegant and pleasant to use as possible. And I suspect a game developer might be who we need. We’re currently hiring a UX Director in our New York office to spearhead improvements…
By Joel Johnson -
Cut Paul “@OceanMarketting @OceanStratagy” Christoforo a Break—He Might Just Have Roid Rage [Updated]
It’s been a heck of a day for Paul Christoforo, whose flippant email to a customer asking about his Avenger controller order has made Christoforo a walking memetic punchline. But maybe we should cut Christoforo a break for his overly aggressive emails: he could just be feeling the effects of roid rage. We asked for…
By Joel Johnson -
Azealia Banks: “212”
My ears have been bubbling today with selections from “Best Music of the Year” lists like I’m taking a long bath in hydrogen peroxide. But more than one list curator has selected Harlem-based Azealia Banks the best artist of 2012, purely on the basis on this one track, released in September, called “212”. Before you…
By Joel Johnson -
Naughty Dog Calls Out Video Games for Weak Stories, Promises to Blow Brains with The Last of Us
Sure, Naughty Dog’s Uncharted series is a benchmark for narrative, cinematic gaming. But from the way Naughty Dog is talking up their new franchise to Eurogamer, the upcoming PlayStation-exclusive The Last of Us is going to have a lot to live up to—especially in a setting as well-trodden as the zombie apocalypse. Naughty Dog wants…
By Joel Johnson -
Gifts For Everybody
Everybody games. (Finally!) With a million different types of gamers, there are a million types of gifts to be bought. This year, rather than going very broad, we’ve tried to offer up a few specific different archetypes, the better to actually help you find something for the person you love. We’re not suggesting just video…
By Joel Johnson -
Join Kotaku in New York City for Drinks and 3D Gaming Tonight!
We’re having a Meet Up here in New York City at the Gizmodo Gallery and we’d like for you to come! Unless you are terrible. Don’t come if you are terrible. Or at least bring a gift for me. I like whisky. We’ve had a few slots open up for access tonight, so if you…
By Joel Johnson -
An Annotated Map of Skyrim Big Enough to Put on Your Wall
To celebrate the launch of a new Skyrim-themed section—and to get you to come check it out—Game Banshee has built a nice-looking annotated map of the northern kingdom. There’s even a version at resolution high enough to be suitable for printing on your wall. There are light spoilers if names and locations are something about…
By Joel Johnson -
Come on! Heroes Is Nintendo’s Sauciest Game Name Yet
Today’s Nintendo DSi Ware features this innocuous little RPG-influenced shooter with a name that might ring a little less innocuously to American ears. Come on! Heroes is a game of tiny men lobbing projectiles at an onslaught of knights and priests, who explode in a puff of milky smoke. It’s a bold political statement from…
By Joel Johnson -
Modern Warfare 3 Looks Even Better In LEGO
This is as close to an official LEGO interpretation of Activision’s tentpole franchise as we’re gonna get, I reckon. Honestly, it looked pretty believable until they blew up the LEGO Eiffel Tower. There’s no way that would happen in real LEGO life. (I love how well these guys mix minifig-scale work with microscale forced perspective,…
By Joel Johnson -
Take a Gander at the Augmented Reality Effects Possible on Sony PlayStation Vita
I’ve only gotten to play with the PlayStation Vita’s augmented reality functions for a few minutes, but the portable system’s relatively powerful processor and high-resolution screen does a good job of selling the “magic” overlay effect. Does it look as good as this demonstration reel from Sony? Not quite—in real life, you’ll be peering through…
By Joel Johnson -
The Equal Opportunity Perversion of Kotaku
Last week, some folks paid Kotaku the kindness of noticing how…let’s call it “progressive”…we’ve begun to lean over the last few months since I came aboard as Editorial Director. (Dan Bruno, in particular; I had other discussions on Twitter.) Often there was a criticism behind the compliments: Why does an organization that unabashedly wants to…
By Joel Johnson -
Stoya’s Big Japan Sex Adventure a “Highly Entertaining Failure” [NSFW]
Stoya, a winsome, altogether charming young lady who makes pornography for a living, guest edited our sister site Fleshbot this week, including a intriguing set of diaries from a recent jaunt to Japan. She takes in the usual sex tourism sight: the porn shops, maid cafés, and the love hotels. While I expected her sexual…
By Joel Johnson -
William Gibson on Cyberpunk’s “Dirt in the Corners”
In an interview with author William Gibson, the creator of the notion of “cyberpunk”—a milieu that remains heavily influential to the world building of video games—comments on what inspired him to deviate from the then-too-polished world of mainstream science fiction. It’s relevant to today’s Neuromancer-inspired video games: Make sure you put the dirt in corners.…
By Joel Johnson -
Which of the Console Companies will an Apple “Smart Television” Kill?
There’s going to be another round of consoles. There’s another Xbox coming, another PlayStation. Anything could happen in the next couple of years before they’re released. For instance, Apple could start selling “smart televisions”. There have been “Apple TV” rumors for years, even before there was the current bolt-on AppleTV. (Here’s one of today’s.) But…
By Joel Johnson -
Should You Buy Forza Motorsport 4? Yes.
Brian Crecente: The Forza franchise continues to dance the fine line between a racing game too authentic to interest me and one designed to be intuitive enough for someone who likes going fast, but doesn’t necessarily have the abilities to do so well. The new racing wheel and those amazing graphics are drawing me in,…
By Joel Johnson -
Steve Jobs’ Voicemail
During the iPhone 4 leak, I somehow, through no real grift of my own, found myself in possession of Steve Job’s phone number. It went directly to his desk phone. My first thought was, “Steve Jobs has a desk phone?” It seemed like the kind of phone number you hang on to, so I wrote…
By Joel Johnson -
In Case You are Wondering, I Am Playing RAGE at 5760 x 1080 Pixel Resolution
When Nvidia was in the Kotaku offices the other day showing off, well, something we can’t quite talk about yet, they noticed we didn’t have a dedicated gaming PC. (All of Kotaku‘s gaming rigs are in the homes of our writers, including mine.) So they had Falcon Northwest cook up a nice little rig—Intel i7…
By Joel Johnson -
Unreal Engine 3 Now Works in Flash. Yes, the Same Flash That’s In Your Browser, Facebook
What if one of the world’s most popular 3D engines, the same one used to power many of the most popular console games in the world, also ran in your web browser? That would be pretty interesting, right? Things just got interesting: Epic Games has announced that their incredibly popular Unreal Engine 3 now works…
By Joel Johnson
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