Toys Are Dying, And It’s All Video Games’ Fault

That’s the gist of a great piece in The New Yorker, which looks at falling profits at both Mattel and Hasbro and knows exactly where to point the finger. Rather than angling this as some kind of terrible omen, however, writer Ted Trautman takes the sensible approach, outlining just why kids are leaving dolls and…

Official Game Of Thrones Action Figures…Could Have Been Worse

It’s taken years, but we’ve finally got a range of bonafide Game of Thrones action figures. And while they’re not the world’s greatest figures, given the size of the license they also could have been much worse. They’re $20, have decent detail, and the likeness on some of the faces – the Hound and Tyrion…

Descent Is Now On Steam. Go, Go, Go.

In 1995, a video game was released that was unlike anything else that had ever come before it. And really, anything released since. That game was Descent, which took the vehicle and controls of a space shooter/flight sim and dropped them into the level design of a first-person shooter. But where most first-person shooters only…

Underground Farm Is Ready For Apocalyptic Salads

There’s a company in London that, deep underground in old abandoned tunnels, is growing fresh food. Imagine Metro 2033, then, only with fresh lettuce. Fast Company saythat the company, Zero Carbon Food, has 2.5 acres of space 100 feet underneath the Underground’s Northern Line, where they grow pea shoots, rocket, broccoli, mustard leaf and basil.…

Ever wonder why the people wearing those awesome cosplay outfits do it in the first place? Or how they put their get-ups together? A new documentary series called Cosplay Boom wants to tell the stories of the people who dress up as beloved characters and make fan gatherings so much fun. If the filmmakers hit…

Now Here’s A Titanfall-Themed Xbox One That I’d Buy

Sleek, classy, and minimalist: it’s hard for me not to like this Titanfall-themed Xbox One. If nothing else, it’s definitely better than the mock-up that was floating around in a rumor dump recently. Here are a few more shots—you can expand the picture, if you’d like: Nice, right? The Xbox above belongs to Reddit user…

Tests Are Even Worse When Dolphins Won’t Let You Cheat Off Of Them

In school I hated exams, tests, pop quizzes, they were all horrible and will forever haunt my dreams. But I’ve never had a dream quite like this Classroom Aquatic is a stealth trivia game…with dolphins. Knowing the answers may be handy but why bother when you could just peak over your dolphin friend’s shoulder and…

Playstation Vita Borderlands 2 Bundle Pre-Orders Are Live

The new Playstation Vita is lighter, slimmer, and has a better battery, and this bundle includes the excellent Borderlands 2, complete with cross-save functionality with the PS3 version. $200 gets you the console, the game, and an 8GB memory card, and you can pre-order now with price-match guarantee. No charge until it ships. [Amazon] This…

NBA Live 14‘s Latest Patch is Talkin’ About Practice

As promised, NBA Live 14 pumped out a very large patch today to address the many shortcomings, omissions or problems the title showed at launch. Straight away it includes something that should make the game a lot more understandable: A simple practice mode. “Shootaround” is the first thing you’ll see when you download the patch,…

​Former Jeopardy! Champ Says Arthur Chu Is Playing the Right Way

With 74 straight wins and millions of dollars in winnings, Ken Jennings has dominated Jeopardy! like nobody else. And he says that the current champ Arthur Chu—who’s been the subject of a lot of scorn lately—has been using a time-tested strategy that’s worked for people in the past. Jennings’s record-breaking run made him probably the…

Nas could be making his way to your Xbox soon—Deadline reports that the rapper is working on a 30-minute TV series with Xbox Entertainment Studios. It’ll be called Street Dreams, and set in New York during the 1990s.

EA: Battlefield 4 Is ‘An Exceedingly Successful Product’

Two of EA’s biggest games had rough launches last year, and although SimCity seems to be in a stable place right now, the Battlefield 4 issues (and patches) continue—to the point where EA won’t work on downloadable content for their shooter until everything is fixed Question is, how are they going to handle these sort…

Start looking for those Half-Life 3 clues that aren’t there, folks. Valve has put up videos for all the presentations that happened at their no-press-allowed Steam Dev Days conference. Be sure to check out Michael Abrash and Palmer Luckey‘s talks about VR and the various Steam Machine talks, too.