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MMA Contender Trained for His Title Shot with Tekken
Tonight, Uriah Hall faces Kelvin Gastelum in the middleweight final of The Ultimate Fighter. Hall is an up-and-comer in top flight mixed martial arts, thought to be a contender in a middleweight division whose title holder is Anderson Silva, one of the best fighters in the world. But how Hall got to this stage is…
By Owen Good -
City of Heroes’ Studio Fought to the Bitter End to Save the MMO, Designer Says
Gamasutra‘s postmortem of City of Heroes and Paragon Studios says the MMO’s development staff did everything it could to keep the game running—including trying to buy it from publisher NCSoft—and that plans for one final update were shot down right before the game was closed on Dec. 1. Matt Miller, the former lead designer of…
By Owen Good -
Making an RPG in a Spreadsheet is Easier Than It Sounds, but Takes Longer Than You’d Think
Last fall, Cary Walkin was enrolled in business school at York University in Ontario, taking a course called “Advanced Spreadsheet Modeling.” He quickly realized the application could be used for more than just accounting. Five months later, he finished Arena.Xlsm, a role-playing game played entirely within Microsoft Excel. Walkin said he sacrificed his evening game-playing…
By Owen Good -
IGDA to Set Standards for ‘Networking Events’ in Response to Flap Over GDC Party
“Parties” are out and “networking events” are in, under new guidance from the International Game Developers Association’s executive director, responding to the blowup over a party at Game Developers Conference 2013 that featured scantily-dressed dancers. “The IGDA will offer ‘networking events’ as its primary focus, not ‘parties,'” Kate Edwards wrote in a bullet-point memo published…
By Owen Good -
Here’s How You Eat All the Pellets in Snake and ‘Win’ the Game
In real time, this playthrough takes 13 minutes, 17 seconds. Sped up in the .gif above, it’s 2:06. It’s the amazing solution to a version of Snake, a genre of casual game going back almost 40 years, so old its original form is all but lost to memory. This .gif hit a Russian message board…
By Owen Good -
French Court Says Prisoner Can’t Have a PS3, but Could Use Xbox 360
The latest Xbox 360 exclusive? French prisons. An inmate recently lost his appeal to have his PlayStation 3, and the privilege of playing it, restored to him, and it seems the PS3’s on-board WiFi connection is the problem. Good ol’ Xbox 360, remember, didn’t have that feature on the Elite or the Arcade models. According…
By Owen Good -
Hold on to Your Butts, Here’s the Jurassic Park Island Re-Created in Minecraft
If you’re wondering where the download is for this, you’re out of luck. This re-creation of Jurassic Park, just in time for the film’s 20th anniversary and 3D re-release, was made in Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition Even if there are no dinosaurs (some enormous cutouts will have to do for now) I find that impressive.…
By Owen Good -
Those Addicted to Video Games Should Visit a Slaughterhouse on Kill Day, Says Unhinged Caller
I enjoy public broadcasting and I value public affairs programming, but I reach for the knob as soon as a political show brings in callers. Rarely are they interested in continuing a discussion or offering a point that starts a new one. They’re more likely to disguise an opinion as a question, show off in…
By Owen Good -
Survey Hints EA Sports’ Canada Studio is Back to Working on NBA Games
Well, this is strange. Chris Sanner of Operation Sports spotted a survey looking for people in the Vancouver area to serve in a focus group on a “New NBA Concept.” EA Canada, in nearby Burnaby, for years was the studio responsible for the label’s NBA products, right up to the ignominious cancellation of NBA Elite…
By Owen Good -
Microsoft Sells Off Its IPTV Business, Turns TV Focus to Xbox
Microsoft will sell its IPTV platform, Mediaroom, to Ericsson, and focus all of its consumer TV strategy on its Xbox division, the companysaid this morning in a statement. “With the sale of Mediaroom, Microsoft is dedicating all TV resources to Xbox,” the company said. Originally announced as far back as 2007, Mediaroom brought cable television…
By Owen Good -
The makers of Defiance, the MMO based on the Syfy show of the same name, say they’re aware of crashes and server problems marring the game’s launch week. A patch is planned for April 15, and another is coming two weeks later. “There are so many things we can’t fix, add or improve right away…
By Owen Good -
Super Mario’s Creator Says Wii U Skepticism Mirrors the Nintendo DS Debut
Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Super Mario and the Legend of Zelda, gave an interview to CNN this weekend about the Wii U that basically amounts to “Please give us a chance.” He thinks the skepticism shown to the Wii U is akin to the early doubts about the first Nintendo DS, and that public…
By Owen Good -
In 30 Tender Portraits, LucasArts Remembers LucasArts
The closure of LucasArts as a video games developer this week hit many right between the eyes. None staggered harder than those who worked for the studio, all of whom were laid off. Gamers and fans took the news personally thanks to nostalgia, remembering the good times playing great games, or because of a keen…
By Owen Good -
Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: The Bad Guys
“The tallest trees catch the most wind,” said Peter Moore, the EA executive, about being a front-runner for a “Worst Company in America” poll. Well, If EA catches the most wind, we’re here to break it, in Kotaku’s weekly ‘Shop Contest. Your mission: Portray EA in the most comically evil way possible. Snidely, Scut and…
By Owen Good -
Uniform Policy: Why Video Game Golfers All Look the Same at the Sport’s Most Prestigious Club
There’s no formal dress code for Augusta National Golf Club as it appears in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14, but all created golfers must wear the same thing when they play it this year. This is unintentional, but admittedly a goof-up, two of the game’s designers told me on Friday. Granted, I play a lot…
By Owen Good
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