Hey, Hollywood, Listen to What This Mass Effect Writer Thinks You Should Do for That Movie You’re Making

Studio heads, directors and agents haven’t been knocking down Drew Karpyshyn’s door. The man who was one of the Mass Effect universe’s chief architects knows that Hollywood will be looking elsewhere for the talent that will power the upcoming film adaptation. But Karpyshyn headed up the writing for the first Mass Effect game and part…

There is a dating sim called Jurrassic Heart where you go on a date with a T-Rex. He plays the ukelele, but he’s shy about it because he once dropped it and couldn’t pick it back up again. Because he’s a friggin’ tyrannosaurus rex with tiny arms. Unfortunately it’s only about one scene long. (via…

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…

The Dark Souls II Gameplay Reveal in a Single GIF

IGN had their 12 minute long Dark Souls II gameplay reveal today. It contained a lot of dying. It also had torches and boars in it (I thought they were bears at first). The above GIF sums up the trailer pretty nicely. Footage via IGN

The New Novel by One of the Guys Behind Dishonored Is Dark, But Not How You Expect

Harvey Smith—who you probably know as a chief architect of Deus Ex and of last year’s hit stealth/action hybrid Dishonored—has made games about secret alien UFO labs and supernatural steampunk assassins. So you might expect a novel from the co-founder of Arkane Studios to be heavy with genre trappings and filled with fantastical imaginings. But,…

If Game of Thrones Was Made By Disney

Then it would feature a heck of a lot more singing, for one. Check out this Disneyfied Daenarys by AVbyte, a take on the character I’m not sure I like nearly as much as the badass Dany we see in the show. Still, it’s amusing to think about how different Game of Thrones would have…

Hungry for more of From Software’s brutally abusive fantasy RPG world? Watch IGN‘s reveal of Dark Souls II right here. Dark Souls 2 Gameplay Reveal – 12 Minute Demo [IGN]

“I Only Play As Femshep”, And Other Hipster Musings On Mass Effect

This article was originally published on March 16, 2011. We’re bumping it up for Mass Effect week! Hipsters. The scourge of modern times. And also scourge of the distant future, if this wonderful Mass Effect page is anything to go by. fuckyeahhipstereffect is a collection of, well, Mass Effect characters being ironic. And self-righteous. And…

The Moneysaver: SimCity for $32 with Mac version, The Last of Us and Splinter Cell for $50

Your cheetah speed has returned, so use it to go annex a PC and Mac copy of SimCity for $32- the lowest price so far. Prefer trying to survive the apocalypse over trying to prevent one? We’ve got $10 off the most anticipated not-Bioshock game this year, The Last of Us, along with the same…

Apple Cleared of Blame, ‘Censored’ Comic Will Be Sold on iOS Devices After All

Yesterday, all of the internet was ablaze with the news that Saga #12—Image Comics’ sci-fi adventure drama by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples—was being blocked from iPads and iPhones by Apple. A new announcement from digital comics purveyor Comixology indicates that they, not Apple, were to blame. It also says that the comic will…

The Last Months Of LucasArts (And A Glimpse Of Battlefront III)

In November, just after purchasing LucasFilm, Disney CEO Bob Iger held a company-wide meeting. During the meeting, according to a source in attendance, a few people asked what was going on. What was going to happen to them? What was the future of LucasArts, the LucasFilm subsidiary and 30-year-old video game studio responsible for a…

I Came Precariously Close to Hating This Magnificent Mobile Adventure

With a slew of positive iTunes reviews and a couple of pre-release awards under its belt, I was expecting Frogmind’s Badland to be a transcendent mobile gaming experience. I was greatly disappointed, at least for the first 20 minutes. If you had asked me for an honest assessment of Badland during those early moments, I…

What Else Would You Like Us To Cover?

We cover video games here at Kotaku, but, in case you hadn’t noticed, we cover some other stuff, too—and we certainly don’t cover every video game. We’d like to hear from you. What games and non-games stuff would you like to see more coverage of on this site? Currently, we aim to cover gaming from…

Hints of a Next-Gen Xbox TV Strategy, A Multiplayer Quantic Dream, And More Gaming Secrets

Editor’s note: The mysterious figure known as Superannuation likes to go digging on the Internet. What Superannuation finds is all available to the public. Every two weeks, Superannuation shares his findings. Are these true gaming secrets? Or are they gaming red herrings planted to throw Superannuation off? Read on… On LinkedIn, a Microsoft engineer says…

A fourth hacker behind attacks on Sony and Nintendo in 2011 (but not the one that brought down PSN for more than a month) pleaded guilty in London yesterday. All four of them will be sentenced on May 14.

Hey, you want to talk about stuff, right? Go join the voices talking about video games and life in Talk Amongst Yourselves, our reader-written blog.

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…

“I think it had the first deaths by diarrhea or farts ever in video games.” Go to The Gameological Society and read this piece by Ryan Smith on Tattoo Assassins, the incredibly tasteless, Mortal Kombat rip-off that never got released.

Oh Great, Skylanders Happy Meals. Just What I Needed.

You know you’ve made it as a children’s entertainment property when Mike Fahey’s car is filled with empty McDonald’s Happy Meal boxes. Peek inside my 96 Nissan Pathfinder between April 12 and May 2 and that’s exactly what you’ll find, as I spend a month trying to gather all nine of the Skylanders Happy Meal…

It Was The Sidekicks, Not The Hero, That Made Me Love Mass Effect

Tali was the one who made me realize that my world had changed. Tali—never even my favorite—who had become suddenly beloved and made me stop and think hard about what mattered to me most. And it all began when I got her killed. [Spoilers for all three Mass Effect games follow.] Two days before Mass…