We Need Better Video Game Publishers

Over the past eight or so years, we’ve all seen a worrying increase in the number of Western game development studios going bankrupt. We’re told this is due to the economic climate and that modern games cost more to make. Much of that is misdirection and plain old-fashioned bullshit. I should know. I’ve been in…

Stunning Minecraft Video Shows All The Castles of Westeros

The creative minds behind the Westeroscraft community —the same guys who made this insane replica of King’s Landing— made their next move to recreate the whole world of Westeros from Game of Thrones in Minecraft After putting up galleries and videos of the main cities, they have released this timelapse video showing every single fort…

Chinese Cosplayer’s Image Stolen To Sell Companion Services

Last week we reported that Chinese gamers could pay female companions to play online games with them. This type of behavior has created an online industry dedicated to selling companion gaming services. However, it seems this industry is a bit shadier than originally reported. Over the weekend, Chinese cosplayer Zhao Mengyue (赵梦玥) came out against…

EA has announced that three of their Facebook games, The Sims Social, SimCity Social and Pet Society, will be going offline on June 14

Take A Look At What Chinese Bureaucrats Play While At Work

Bureaucracy is a funny thing. It’s supposed to make our lives easier by compartmentalizing things and preventing redundancies, but in China (and most places in the world) it just gives bureaucrats more free time at work. Looking to see where Chinese tax payer money is going the city of Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, did a study…

PSY’s Latest Video As a Horror Film Trailer

PSY’s video for “Gentleman” is tearing up the internet, racking up over 20 million views in only its first 24 hours on YouTube. But if you think those numbers are scary, then you haven’t seen anything yet. Gentleman M/V: Horror Movie Trailer Edition [David Elmaleh at YouTube] Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet…

games.on.net has spotted a few-days-old entry for The Elder Scrolls: Arena in the Australian Classification Database. Arena, of course, being the name of the very first game in the series.

Chinese Gamer Sells Drugs To Buy Virtual Gear

A 19 year-old man in China’s Zhejiang province was arrested earlier this month after being caught dealing drugs. The reason he told police was to purchase better in-game gear to compete in player versus player matches. First reported by China Ningbo Online, the 19 year-old suspect surnamed Wang, was an Internet café attendant. Wang dropped…

Guns and Close Combat Explained with Simple Drawings

A few months back, a thread appeared online in Japan with a simple question: How do you get out of a situation like this? The ensuing answers proved one thing: Don’t ask people whose only experience is based on video games, comic books, and movies. The somewhat simple drawing showed a figure with two guns…

Nintendo of Korea Entangled in Twitter Controversy [Update]

Today, Nintendo’s South Korean branch is finding itself embroiled in controversy after a highly unprofessional comment, allegedly made via Twitter. As mentioned on Korean news site Naver (via tipster Sang), someone using Nintendo of Korea’s Twitter account commented on a photo of celebrity Eun Ji Park (above). Once a weather caster, Park is now a…

Looks like Microsoft is planning to break into the touch-enabled watch business

One Piece Characters Look Very, Very Familiar

What do Michael Jackson, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Ghandi all have in common? They apparently look like One Piece characters, that’s what. Created by Twitter user @Sato3rd, the image below has been making its way around cyberspace recently. It shows One Piece characters and the real world individuals they either look like or seem inspired by.…

Game of Thrones Finally Gets Its Lightsaber Battle

It’s funny, last week, watching the swordfight that takes place in the episode, I was thinking of Star Wars, because the slow (yet heavy and deliberate) way the combatants were moving reminded me of the battles between Luke and Vader in Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Guess I wasn’t the only one.…

There is an Elder Scrolls universe mod for Crusader Kings II. Oh my. It’s in its early stages, but you can get it here

Man Arrested, Accused Of Threatening To Shoot Up His School Via…MMO

18 year-old Thomas Frongillo from Oxford, England, has been arrested and charged with “threatening to commit a crime and threatening a bombing or hijacking” after being accused of leaving hostile messages in an online game run by Jagex, the publishers of Runescape. While the game in question is not disclosed in a report on The…

Someone’s Got A NES (Sort Of) Working Inside Counter-Strike

What you’re seeing in the video above is the Sourcemod Entertainment System (SMES), a server plugin for Counter-Strike that lets you start up a video game and play another video game inside that video game. According to creator skwumpy, it works like this: you can pick up a cartridge in the game world, insert it…

Brace Yourselves For More BioShock Infinite Cosplay

There are a select few games (or series) that you see saturate the cosplay community. Final Fantasy is one. Zelda another. And Assassin’s Creed. You can now add BioShock Infinite to the list. Or at least cosplay for Elizabeth, as it seems people’s love for the character – combined with the fact her costume isn’t…

The Sweetest Thing You’ll See Today Is A 90-Year-Old Grandmother Losing It Using The Oculus Rift

Here’s what happens when the 90-year-old grandmother of Imagimind’s Paul Rivot has an Oculus Rift headset strapped to her head. To be fair, that’s about how I’d react using the thing, and I’m up to my eyeballs in video games every day. Lord only knows how many receptors she had left unfried after this. My…

Designing The Dresses For BioShock Infinite’s Elizabeth (And The Lutece Twins)

Claire Hummel worked as an artist on the recently-released BioShock Infinite, where she helped define the outfit of one of the game’s two biggest stars, Elizabeth. With a goal of having something that both looked like it came from 1912 and was also “age-appropriate”, the image above – and the first few below – show…

Amazing Optical Illusion, Using A Single GIF, Takes You On A Journey To BioShock’s Rapture

OK, so given the nature of this trick, you could use it for anything. Pictures of whales. Or Sealab. But the post in question used it for the first BioShock, and that’s about the best use I can think of. Reddit user supergalacticcaptain posted it over the weekend, with simple instructions: you stare at the…