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Wii Fit Doesn’t Actually Make Kids Fit
It’s been close to thirty years since video games began their great leap from arcades to living rooms, and for all of those years parents and pediatricians have been counseling that kids spend too much time sitting on the sofa, controllers glued to their hands. For a time, it seemed that fitness games and motion…
By Kate Cox -
Growth of Gaming on Facebook Stalled Out in 2011
For a while now, Facebook has appeared to be an unstoppable juggernaut on the gaming scene. Every year, the number of Facebook users keeps climbing, and the percentage of those users who play games on the social site has increased along with. Until last year, that is. A new report from a major business analyst…
By Kate Cox -
World of Warcraft is Good for Grandparents’ Brains
For many years, researchers have conducted various studies on the effects games and play can have on the aging brain. Games specifically designed to enhance certain kinds of thinking, like Brain Age, may or may not always have the intended effect. However, a team of researchers have found that perhaps mainstream games, not expressly designed…
By Kate Cox -
Is Mass Effect 3‘s Controversial DLC Your Fault?
Games are a passion and a hobby for millions of players worldwide. As is clear from even the most cursory glance at the comments on any post here at Kotaku, gamers feel very strongly about their content and its makers. They are also a business. An exceptionally large, very valuable business. The most recent ESA…
By Kate Cox -
Killzone 3 Multiplayer Coming Free to a PlayStation Near You
This week, Sony announced a new experiment in free-to-play gaming coming to the Playstation Network, in their most recent Blogcast podcast Killzone 3 Multiplayer will be available on PSN next week. This edition of the shooter spins off the multiplayer part of the game as a separate entity from the single-player campaign, bringing all of…
By Kate Cox -
Google Glasses To Augment Gamers’ Reality
Google is in the news this week not so much for their software and search offerings, but for their hardware, and whispers of an item yet to come. According to the New York Times, Google is developing a type of Android-based glasses that will, in some way, project content immediately into the wearer’s field of…
By Kate Cox -
If Only Historians Had Auto-Load
Preservation of any art or technology is always a tricky business, and it’s no secret that video game preservation is particularly thorny. Because games are so intertwined with the platforms on which we play them, we lose a number of them just as our platforms evolve. (For example, I recently found two old favorites on…
By Kate Cox -
Journey Down to a New Adventure Game in March
Despite my oft-professed love for classic adventure games and new iterations on the genre, The Journey Down slipped completely under my radar until this week. The original game, which has always been described as chapter one in an episodic adventure, is a small, free PC download. However, indie developer SkyGoblin has recently announced an HD…
By Kate Cox -
Bending the Rules as an Art Form
A man who applies a particular mental skill to play Blackjack, counting cards, will eventually find security standing behind him, strongly suggesting he vacate the premises, when someone working for the casino figures out what he is doing. That man has not brought any external items to the table. He has not smuggled certain cards…
By Kate Cox -
American Game Developer on Death Row in Iran Receives Family Visit
The fate of American game developer Amir Hekmati, currently on death row in Iran, remains in question weeks after the original deadline for appeal has passed. As we’ve previously reported, Hekmati was arrested in Iran late last summer under allegations of being a CIA spy. In December he issued a public “confession,” the validity and…
By Kate Cox -
A Spectrum of Games for a Spectrum of Gamers
One of the many eternal battles the gaming community consistently fights among itself is the seemingly irreconcilable “gameplay” vs. “story” debate. The increasingly-heated argument has come back around again in full force over the past week or two, with public figures like Jennifer Hepler and David Jaffe being variously held up or dumped on for…
By Kate Cox -
The Call of Duty Game That Never Was
I love behind-the-scenes insights into the making of my favorite games. Although I usually watch or read them after I’m finished with a title, instead of before one is released, I enjoy reading and watching the stories of the production itself. Any successful game, large or small, takes a remarkable amount of coordination and dedication.…
By Kate Cox -
Swedish School goes 8-Bit
My high school had murals in the cafeteria, all painted by senior art students. And although my senior year, members of my class did get to repaint one (they went with a Calvin & Hobbes panel), the next newest one was a portrait of John Lennon painted the year before most of my graduating class…
By Kate Cox -
Metal Man, Air Man, Flash Man… Lego Man?
I love creative fan works. I never cease to be amazed at the brilliant drawings, sculptures, songs, videos, and more that devoted fans with artistic talent create and share. Today, reader Gavin sent us a tip about this Mega Man mural. Measuring an impressive five feet on every side, this wall art depicting Mega Man…
By Kate Cox -
Uncharted 3 Runs Away With Writing Award
The Writers Guild of America is a slight misnomer. In fact, there are two separate unions, WGA West and WGA East. But they work in tandem, and once a year they come together to celebrate the past year’s achievements in writing. The 2011 awards were presented on Sunday, February 19, in a simultaneous, shared event…
By Kate Cox -
Mysterious Trailer Teases Unknown Game
I fall for puzzles and mysteries. Put a code in front of me, or a series of entirely unrelated clues, and I will sit there for hours if I have to, attempting to solve it. Even if I end up completely uninterested in the product a puzzle is promoting, I generally leap at the chance…
By Kate Cox -
Pick Bachelor Number Three, A Pigeon, in Hatoful Boyfriend
Hatoful Boyfriend puts the player in the shoes of a reasonably well-adjusted high-school sophomore girl. She attends class, studies hard, participates in extra-curricular activities, and works part-time in a café during the summer. She just happens to be the only girl, and only human, at St. Pigeonation’s, the country’s premier school for birds. Literal birds,…
By Kate Cox -
Quell Reflect is a Soothing Puzzle Game for Grown-Ups
Most of the games I have on my phone are in some way frenetic. They’re filled with bold, bright colors, quick action, and noisy effects. After watching my friend’s preschool-aged niece school us all at Angry Birds, I have found myself occasionally desiring something a little more calm and adult. Enter Quell Reflect. This puzzler,…
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Fifth Annual SOE Competition to Award $10,000 Scholarship
Sony Online Entertainment has just announced their fifth annual “Gamers In Real Life” (G.I.R.L.) scholarship competition. Although the acronym has always mildly annoyed me, I think the program itself is great. Winners receive $10,000 in scholarship funds and the opportunity for a paid internship at SOE’s San Diego headquarters. While girls and women become an…
By Kate Cox -
Why a Former Nintendo Developer Loves the Vita
One of the most interesting parts of reaching one’s thirties is seeing how impermanent, flexible, and downright unexpected someone’s career path can end up being. Such is the case with Motoi Okamoto Previously having worked on a decade’s worth of Nintendo titles, including Pikmin, Super Mario Sunshine, and Wii Play, Okamoto left Nintendo in 2008…
By Kate Cox
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