Jason Schreier

Why I Sympathize With Shenmue III’s Most Hardcore Fans

One day in late 2013, I woke up to dozens of e-mails and Twitter messages from people with accounts like “@Shenmue5K” and “@SaveShenmue.” They wanted me to help them save Shenmue, a video game series I’d barely heard of. I’d just interviewed Sony VP of publisher/developer relations Adam Boyes at the PS4 launch event, see,…

Kotaku Asks: Someone Who Makes Video Game Trailers [Q&A Over]

Meet Matthew Hunt, one of the people behind the slick video game trailers we see at E3 and on YouTube every time a publisher is ready to show off their game. Hunt, who has been working in the industry for 13 years, is here to talk to us about the world of video game trailers.…

Guy Sneaks Into Game Studio, Finds Unannounced Game [UPDATE]

Sometimes, game studios have strict security. Other times, they let random people sneak into their buildings, steal lunch, and find out about unannounced games. Take, for example, Digital Extremes, the Canada-based company behind Warframe (pictured above). Yesterday on Reddit, a poster named UndercoverLegend wrote that he snuck into Digital Extremes’ office, took lunch, and started…

I Can’t Stop Watching The Wet Hot American Summer Netflix Trailer

Those of us who went to Jewish summer camp are pretty much unanimously obsessed with Wet Hot American Summer, an absurd cult classic starring an all-star cast of celebrities and comedians including Paul Rudd, Michael Ian Black, Bradley Cooper, and Elizabeth Banks. Now Netflix has released the first trailer for their eight-episode prequel, and it…

Tomorrow at 3pm ET we’ll have someone who makes video game trailers here to answer your questions in an early Thursday edition of Kotaku Asks. So start brainstorming now!

Watch Uncharted 4‘s Incredible Extended E3 Demo

The most impressive thing I saw at E3 was the behind-closed-doors extended demo of Uncharted 4, a video game about the power of stubble. Now, you can see it too. Keeping in mind that E3 demos are kinda nonsense—and that they’re about selling hyperbole, not reflecting reality—let’s sit back and enjoy a video full of…

Oculus Fights Fan Group Over OculusRift.Com

Oculus Rift is attempting to seize the oculusrift.com domain from the group of developers currently using it, according to documentation obtained by Kotaku. It’s a battle that the VR company is almost guaranteed to win, given their ownership of the “Oculus Rift” trademark. According to the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), the internationally-recognized…

Blizzard Wants You To Know You Can Play StarCraft II For Free

Quick poll: did you know that there’s a free version of StarCraft II? And that it lets you play as any of the game’s three races in any non-ranked multiplayer match you want? Blizzard doesn’t do a very good job of advertising that fact—and the poorly-titled SCII Starter Edition can be very confusing—but right now,…

17 Years Later, StarCraft‘s Story Is Finally Coming To An End

It’s been 17 years since the original launch of StarCraft, the seminal real-time strategy game that both revolutionized competitive gaming and went on to spawn some of the world’s most popular games, like Dota and League of Legends. In the next few months, or maybe years—this is Blizzard, after all—that long journey will finally be…

Scrolls—not to be confused with The Elder Scrolls—is going bye-bye. Mojang says they won’t be maintaining “continuous development” of the game, although they promise the servers will stay up until at least July 1, 2016.

The visual novel Steins;Gate will be out on PS3/Vita in North America on August 25, publisher PQube just announced. Between that and the Danganronpa spinoff, Vita owners will be pretty damn busy this fall.

Bungie Answers (And Avoids) Our Questions On The Future Of Destiny

This past week, there was a lot of controversy surrounding Destiny, a video game in which players travel through space collecting unique resources such as Spinmetal, Helium Filaments, and Red Bull. But before the firestorm started, most Destiny fans were pretty damn stoked about how the game has been evolving. House of Wolves, the latest…

Kotaku Asks: Monkey Island Designer Ron Gilbert [Q&A Over]

Look behind you, a three-headed monkey! No, wait, that’s just Ron Gilbert, here to answer your questions on Kotaku today. Gilbert, a veteran game designer who helped create some of the greatest adventure games ever—Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, etc.—has been working in video games for over 30 years now, bouncing around…

U.S. Copies Fire Emblem

Apple Yanks Games With Confederate Flags From App Store

Pop quiz: you’re in charge of a giant digital game store, and suddenly there’s a controversy revolving around how and when people display the U.S. Confederate flag. Do you A) do nothing; B) assess all of your games on a case-by-case basis; or C) remove games that show the flag in any way? If you…

Bungie Apologizes For Destiny Screw-Ups, Offers Solutions

Following a week full of controversy surrounding the video game Destiny, the developers at Bungie have posted an early “weekly update” apologizing for recent screw-ups and promising to address players’ complaints. The controversy, which was triggered by some tone-deaf comments from Destiny creative director Luke Smith in an interview earlier this week, revolved around the…

A Bunch Of Zelda: Triforce Heroes Questions, Answered

The next Zelda game isn’t quite what people expected. Announced last week during Nintendo’s E3 presentation, Zelda: Triforce Heroes is a co-op dungeon crawler designed to be played by a party of three—not your average setup for a Zelda game. Last week in Los Angeles, I got to spend a few minutes with Zelda: Triforce…

Suikoden III Is On PSN Right Now (So Play It)

Konami, a Japanese company that operates slot machines and fitness clubs, released a video game yesterday on the PlayStation Network. It’s called Suikoden III. You should play it. Suikoden III is, as you might have guessed, the third entry in the very-excellent Suikoden series, which you really must play, even if you only have time…

New Destiny Quest Is Exclusive To… Red Bull

Today, publisher Activision announced plans for a brand new exclusive quest in Destiny, a video game in which players travel space learning the true definition of corporate greed. The good news: it’s a “never-before-seen, multi-stage mission in [upcoming expansion] The Taken King that will test the speed and strategic abilities of Destiny players in new…

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