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Kickstarter Backers Pledged $83,144,565 To Games In 2012

Ready for some math? 1,378,143 Kickstarter users pledged $83,144,565 to game projects in 2012. There were 2,796 game Kickstarters launched. Of those, 911 were successful. (Note that “games” in this context refers to both video and tabletop games. Kickstarter doesn’t separate them.) That dose of insanity comes via Kickstarter’s cool “The Best of 2012” feature.…

The New Black Ops II DLC Lets You Play As The Zombies

Mark your calendars: on January 29th, the ‘Revolution’ map pack for Black Ops II drops. And it packs a ton of content according to this trailer: not only does it have a number of new maps, but it also features a new game mode that lets you play as the zombies in a mode appropriately…

NVIDIA Project Shield Hands On: A Little Less Weird Than It Looks

Nvidia’s Project Shield is a curious little device, attempting to toss its hat into a bunch of rings at once. It’s taking shots at handheld gaming, console gaming, tablets, and phones. For the most part, it’s holding under the strain, but it’s hard to imagine going out of your way to use it versus any…

You’ll Finally Be Able to Get Those Super-Fancy Final Fantasy Art Books

Maybe you were lucky and got a copy of the boxed set for The Sky: The Art of Final Fantasy by renowned artist and living legend Yoshitaka Amano. Or maybe you were out of luck like thousands of other poor sods and couldn’t grab one before they sold out. Well, buck up, poor sods. You’re…

The Best Comics You Read in 2012

2012 was a weird but mostly good year to be a comics fan. If you didn’t buy into the big superhero crossover events, there were still lots of different flavors of illustrated fiction to enjoy. I read a lot of comics last year but these few were the ones that stayed with me. Please share…

Corpse Party‘s Sequel Hits PSN Next Week

The sequel to horrifying-slash-hilarious visual novel Corpse Party will be out on PSP—yes, PSP!—next week, publisher Xseed says. January 15, $19.99, PlayStation Network. You can read more about Corpse of Party: Book of Shadows over at the PlayStation Blog. Or check out the trailer above.

How A Well-Meaning Death Notification Freaked Out The XCOM Designer’s Wife

I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re reading that headline and thinking, “Um, ‘well-meaning death notification?'” But believe it or not, that’s exactly what we’re talking about here. See, Kotaku Game of the Year 2012 XCOM: Enemy Unknown inspires stories. As our own Owen Good recounted in his argument for why it should be our game…

ChefVille ‘The Best of Sushi’ Quests: Everything You Need to Know

Zynga‘s new motto seems to be “bigger is better,” as every new feature in ChefVille seems to be bigger than the one before. While you’re likely still working on the Healthy Eating event (which expires in less than two days, mind you), there’s already a new sushi-themed event that will unlock the final set of…

Valve Says ‘Piston’ Is Just One Of Multiple Steam Hardware Prototypes

Project Piston isn’t the only one: Valve is showing off a number of hardware prototypes behind closed doors at the Consumer Electronics Show this week, according to a new report. Yesterday, a company called Xi3 announced that it will release a Valve-backed computer built to play Steam games in your living room. Details are still…

Is Trolling Ever Okay?

Ah, the notorious troll. Perhaps you’ve come across one—those people who deliberately try to get under your skin. Sometimes, that means trying to piss you off. In a game, that could mean verbally harassing or annoying you, if not playing specifically to get in the way. That’s the most standard conception of a troll, anyway.…

Razer Prepares to Unleash the World’s First PC Gaming Tablet

At last year’s Consumer Electronics Show, gaming peripheral maker Razer debuted Project Fiona, a PC gaming tablet concept with a pair of control sticks affixed to the side. It looked ridiculous, but there was promise there. That promise is realized this year in the Razer Edge, a full-featured, crowd-sourced gaming PC with the form factor…

Have you guys checked out our Twitter and Facebook pages? We sometimes like to feature wallpapers on there, too.

I Didn’t Know How Many Games Needed Googly Eyes Until I Photoshopped A Bunch Of Them

Fact: googly eyes make everything better. Heck, even Christopher Walken can tell you that. So why aren’t there googly eyes in every game? Yes, I understand that they may be narratively inappropriate (some might say silly!), but given the option, I would gladly buy a googly eyes DLC pack for every single game I have…

Tim Rogers Bio

tim rogers occasionally contributes articles to Kotaku, usually by accident and sometimes by request. He is not a “journalist”, and he is not a “writer”. He is just some jerk on the internet who works 80-hour weeks and occasionally tabs over to Google Docs, types a sentence or two, and then tabs away. Every once…

Women’s Pro Golf Gets Its Career Mode in This Year’s Tiger Woods Game

Player-created female athletes aren’t anything new to EA Sports’ Tiger Woods PGA Tour games. But, while those avatars have been able to compete in the sport’s most storied tournaments, there hasn’t been any virtual representation of the LPGA Tour in the golf games. That all changes this year, with the inclusion of a new LPGA…

My New Favorite Endless Runner is Also an Endless Gunner

You know what Temple Run is missing? Kids with guns. The endless runner continues to run amok through the various mobile gaming platforms, with fresh new variations popping up every time you swipe the screen to turn. It’s a genre that flourishes on mobile because of its flourishes—just a series of simple finger swipes gets…

Meet One Of The Bosses In Capcom’s Futuristic Action Game Remember Me

Here’s the official video description, via Capcom: Journey with Nilin in a brand new Remember Me gameplay video through Neo-Paris’ St Michel district before she comes face to face with one of the game’s unique bosses, Kid Xmas. He isn’t interested if Nilin has been naughty or nice as Kid Xmas is only here to…

It’s Time We Put The Bald Space Marine Away. It’s Time To Make Games For More People.

Not everyone knows the joy of playing as a protagonist that is like them—someone with the same skin color, with the same hair style, with the same sexual orientation, or the same gender. Sometimes, ‘who you are’ is not an in-game option simply because you are not the target audience. What choice are you left,…

The Coolest Thing About This Valve-Backed Gaming PC Is That You Can Probably Drive A Truck Over It

The Wii U can’t survive a microwave. The PlayStation Vita can survive a four-foot drop. And I guess, technically, the Xbox 360 can run Crysis But forget all those old stress tests. The new “development stage system optimized for computer gameplay on large high-definition television monitors”—which we just learned last night will be backed by…

Excelsior! LEGO Marvel Super Heroes Assembles the Avengers to Save the Earth This Fall.

Warner Bros. and TT Games announced today that there will be a new LEGO title launching in the fall of this year: LEGO Marvel Super Heroes Based on what we know so far, Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, Spider-Man and Wolverine will be setting out to save the Earth from none other than Loki. It’ll…