Sid Meier Turns 60 Today

Happy 60th birthday to Sid Meier, the legendary game designer best known for Civilization, Pirates!, and many other strategy games. Celebrate by checking out our profile of Meier’s life, career, and history. “While you were playing, I memorized the algorithms.”

Why Does Sriracha Taste So Good? Science Explains.

While snack traditionalists cling desperately to their ketchup and mustard, those possessing progressive taste buds have succumbed to the spicy siren song of Sriracha. What sorcery is this? It’s not magic — it’s chemistry. In the latest video from Bytesize Science’s wonderfully informative Reactions YouTube channel, we’re digging much deeper than spices, heat and garlic,…

No samurai in the next Assassin’s Creed. Jade Raymond, producer at Ubisoft Montréal says so in this profile byAdweek, though the game will be set in “her favorite historical era.” A feudal Japan setting for Assassin’s Creed has long been a request of fans, even referred to in ACIV‘s meta-game.

Tomorrow’s Releases, Xbox One Titanfall Bundle, eShop Credit [Deals]

There’s a bunch of stuff coming out tomorrow, and we’ve got deals on pretty much all of it. Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare | One/360 | $10 gift card in-store at Toys R Us Thief | PS4/PS3/One/360/PC | Get the PC version for $34 with code O61269-BIMBGU-JRDM3J | $10 gift card in-store at Toys R…

Lego Grand Theft Auto V Needs To Happen

Lego City Undercover was great and all, but there’s just something about the contrast between GTA’s gritty world and adorable Lego figures that makes me wish a game like this were really happening. One day. One day. (via Dorkly)

A First-Person Zombie Shooter… On Facebook?

In case anyone is under the impression that Facebook gaming is all farms and candy crushing, zombie-killing epic Dead Trigger 2 has arrived to challenge that notion with extreme prejudice. Let’s play! Madfinger Games has spent the past couple of years impressing the hell out of iOS and Android gamers with its series of first-person…

Watch Grounded: The Making of The Last of Us Right Here

This is Grounded: Making The Last of Us, an 85-minute documentary that gives us a backstage look at Naughty Dog’s critically-acclaimed PS3 game. (And Kotaku‘s 2013 Game of the Year!) Via Sony, and the film-makers at Area-5, you can watch the whole thing above.

Fans Transport GTA V‘s Snowy North Yankton To PC

Modders don’t wait. They take action. So while everyone else is waiting, waiting, waiting for Rockstar Games to make/announce Grand Theft Auto V for PC, enterprising modders are trying to transform the last official GTA released on PC into GTA V. First they brought the entire GTA V version of Los-Angeles-styled San Andreas to GTA…

Be kind, rewind: The woman who was looking at jail time—a month behind bars—for failing to return an overdue movie rental has seen charges against her dropped. Good thing, too; the law she broke, like VHS, disappeared years ago.

Hey music/JRPG geeks: Hiroki Kikuta, the composer for Secret of Mana, is doing an AMA over on Reddit right now. “I wanted the song of whales to be almost like a crying voice for the undying mana tree.”

Today’s selection of articles from Kotaku‘s reader-run community: Gaming in Russia: From the 90s to This Day. Part 1 • Longread: Introduction to Gaming, Life, and Philosophy • Bravely Default: So Close Yet So Far TAY Classic—TAY Open Forum—Beginner’s Guide To TAY Follow them here.

If The People Of Azeroth Had YouTube

What would Thrall, Jaina and the average NPCs of World of Warcraft do on their imaginary YouTube channels? SlightlyImpressive shows us—with some amazing voice acting—that they would handle it pretty well. Also, Twitch plays WoW YouTube in Azeroth 2 WoW Machinima [SlightlyImpressive, YouTube] To contact the author of this post, write to: [email protected]

Microsoft Confirms Titanfall-Xbox One Bundle

Microsoft confirmed this morning that a Titanfall/Xbox One bundle will be offered. It arrives the day the game launches for that console and PC. It’s $499 and will include a digital copy of the game and one month of Xbox Live Gold. Realize this is not a Titanfall console—the Xbox One itself is the same…

The Twitch Plays Pokémon phenomana inspired a lot of artists, including TsaoShin on DeviantART, who assembled a movie poster to mark the first week of the online playthrough. Here’s the full poster, with The Helix Fossil, Bird Jesus, Abby, and so on: Twitch Plays Pokemon by TsaoShin [DeviantART, via The Cyber Wolf] To contact the…

“Panda Dogs” Born in China

Not one panda dog, but three were recently born in China’s Jiangsu Province. They’re not actual pandas, but have markings that make them look like them. They’re panda dogs! D’aww, so cute. According to iFeng, the three pups were born in a litter of six, with the other three dogs looking like dogs. All pups…

DayZ Lead Developer Will Step Down, Start His Own Studio [UPDATE]

Dean Hall, the lead developer behind hit multiplayer game DayZ, is leaving studio Bohemia Interactive. Hall plans to create his own studio in his native New Zealand. Hall told Eurogamer that he never intended to be at Bohemia Interactive’s Prague office and originally wanted to stay in his home country. “And it’s kind of like…