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Facebook Games More Likely to Please a Woman than Sex
Hold your manhoods cheap, guys. Doritos, of all fuckin’ things, surveyed girl gamers and found that they’re more likely to get off on video games—worse yet, Facebook video games—than doing it with you. A survey of 2,052 lady gamers, commissioned to promote something called (adjusts glasses) “the Doritos Dip Desperado Facebook game,” found that women…
By Owen Good -
Sony Exec Calls PSN Hack ‘A Great Experience,’ Quickly Clarifies Himself
Losing the entire PlayStation Network service for 23 days and its online marketplace for more than a month is not many people’s idea of a good time. Nor is it Tim Schaff’s, though the Sony Network Entertainment boss called it “a great experience,” at a forum before, as the politicians say, he revised and extended…
By Owen Good -
Miyamoto’s, Where You Know Everybody’s Name
For its cover of this week’s edition (on newsstands today) the Portland Mercury commissioned this painting, an homage to Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks with Donkey Kong creator Shigeru Miyamoto and three characters he introduced to America 30 years ago this week. The cover highlights a story about GameOn 2.0, a playable history of video games showing…
By Owen Good -
Call of Duty Elite Trailer is Like a Simile Wrapped in a Metaphor
Call of Duty Elite beta began a “staged launch” today and to kick it off, Activision unloaded this two minute trailer that spends one minute cracking jokes and another minute answering questions except for the biggie: How much is this damn thing going to cost? For now, it’s free; for now, it’s in beta. You…
By Owen Good -
Survey Says You’ll Spend About Two Years Playing Video Games
A promotional survey taken by a video game price comparison site turns up an interesting stat: The average gamer will spend just under two years of his or her life, in combined time, playing video games. That’s based on a couple of assumptions, largely that the survey population of 1,452 begins gaming around age 9…
By Owen Good -
Christian Game Developers Want to Leave Bad Games Behind
Heading north on Interstate 5 toward Newberg, Ore. last week, I wasn’t sure what exactly I’d encounter at Christian Game Developers Conference 2011. Would it have a show floor? Would they be showcasing new games? Would there be a Kinect-enabled Bible study game with 1:1 praying-hands control? Is a third sequel to the Left Behind…
By Owen Good -
Microsoft has Rights to Make Another South Park XBLA Game
Microsoft has a two-game deal with Comedy Central for its South Park license, which implies that another Xbox Live Arcade game could be on the way, following 2009’s South Park: Let’s Go Tower Defense Play! Joystiq uncovered that nugget in a discussion with Prithvi Virasinghe of 345 Games, which is the games production arm of…
By Owen Good -
NBA Jam Creator Leaves EA Sports for Zynga
Mark Turmell, the creator of the NBA Jam series that saw a revival last year on modern consoles, has left EA Sports for the social games developer Zynga, Kotaku has learned. Turmell’s is the latest in a string of notable departures from EA Tiburon, one of two EA Sports studios and the production site of…
By Owen Good -
All Mass Effect Comics are Free Until Tomorrow Afternoon
Dark Horse is offering all of its Mass Effect comics for free, over the web, for the next 24 hours, a promotional move for both an upcoming Dark Horse Mass Effect series and surely tied to a panel at next week’s San Diego Comic-Con. The promotion ends tomorrow at 3 p.m. EDT. The problem is,…
By Owen Good -
Computer Learns to Play Civilization by Reading the Instruction Manual
Starting from nothing, a computer taught itself to read the instruction manual for Civilization and saw its rate of victory jump from 46 percent to 79 percent. That is according to researchers at University College London, who developed “meaning-inferring algorithms” that, when applied to the computer, took it from zero understanding of its task to…
By Owen Good -
Angry Birds Maker Says It’s Worth More than PopCap
Whatever Electronic Arts is spending to acquire PopCap, its casual gaming rival Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds, would cost more. That’s according to … well, Rovio. “The valuation from our point of view is somewhere, I dunno, maybe north of PopCap,” Ville Heijari, the vice president of franchise development, told Eurogamer. Let’s remember that…
By Owen Good -
Named Rosters Already Available for NCAA Football 12
At more than 6,000 names, all of which must be manually entered, custom rosters for NCAA Football is annually one of the biggest community projects in sports gaming. Accurately named files were available yesterday—the day of release—for both the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions. The files are accessible by going to the Team Management menu…
By Owen Good -
PipClock Has You Duck-and-Covered in Case of Apocalypse
With the exception, maybe, of VATS calling out your headshots, our modern mobile devices are shades more useful than the Pip Boy. Nonetheless, the Fallout universe’s wrist-borne computer seems so much more essential and dramatic, probably because its analog hum, scanlines and fluttering screen make it all seem so close to a breakdown. In steps…
By Owen Good -
Take This … Shot of Booze?
It’s Dangerous to Go Alone | The Seattle bar Atlantic Crossing makes a familiar appeal to thirsty patrons. (Photo: So Seattle h/t Holly) Namco Sues Over European Distribution, DRM Removal from Witcher 2 Namco Bandai is suing the parent company of the maker of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, the acclaimed PC role-playing game…
By Owen Good -
Glitchers Brought in to Test Modern Warfare 3 Multiplayer
A group of Call of Duty glitchers has been called back to Infinity Ward to help the studio test and shore up the game’s multiplayer, according to the gang’s leader. This isn’t the first time mapMonkeys have assisted on a Call of Duty project, according to founder Rezzzo. He says members had been flown to…
By Owen Good -
Culture
A New College Try
It seems like we just had graduation, but EA Sports returns to campus this week with NCAA Football 12. A new L.A. Noire case and Ms. ‘Splosion Man round out the highlights. Tuesday NCAA Football 12 (Xbox 360, PS3) — A raft of new features in the game’s Dynasty and singleplayer Road to Glory modes…
By Owen Good -
Donkey Kong Turned 30 Yesterday—or Did He?
Researching the exact birthday for a tribute to the 30th birthday of Donkey Kong, Patrick Scott Patterson of the Arcade Examiner came up with conflicting information. Absent official word from Nintendo, he thinks the big ape—and therefore Mario (né Jumpan)—turned 30 yesterday, July 9. “Some sources specifically state the date as July 9, 1981,” Patterson…
By Owen Good -
The Vapors
Each week throws off several new video game lists ranging from the humorous to the trivial. What’s better? A list of those. Here’s a roundup of the rundowns out there. •Vaporware: 5 Video Games That Should Be Released By Now (But May Never Be) [OC Weekly] With the release of Duke Nukem Forever and L.A.…
By Owen Good
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