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How To Get Banned Playing Modern Warfare 3 (and What a Ban Actually Looks Like)
Let’s say you’re curious as to how, exactly, developer Infinity Ward determines whether an online offence is grave enough to warrant banning from their blockbuster shooter Modern Warfare 3. Or you’re an asshole who just wants to see how far he/she can push it before copping a ban. To satisfy your potentially self-harming curiosity, here…
By Luke Plunkett Published January 6, 2012 -
Video Gaming’s List of Who’s Who and Where They Stand on SOPA
Much credit to Rock, Paper, Shotgun, for maintaining this registry of members of the Entertainment Software Association and their on-the-record positions regarding the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill almost universally despised by rank-and-file gamers. Why is this important? The ESA, the industry’s principal lobbying arm in the United States, backs SOPA, meaning it…
By Owen Good Published January 5, 2012 -
Nintendo Doesn’t Let WiiWare Self-Publishers Reveal Sales Figures
The independent publisher Icon Games Entertainment, a week ago, looked back on 2011 and counted up how many copies it had sold of games such as Bashi Blocks (pictured above) and Arcade Air Hockey. Icon’s Richard Hill-Whittall found that he’d sold 255,763 copies of games in all, a pleasant surprise given he figured they’d only…
By Owen Good Published January 5, 2012 -
5 Reasons I’m Totally Not Nervous About Mass Effect 3
Man, what the heck is this guy on about? He is clearly just trolling for pageviews. I mean come on Kotaku, no one should be nervous about Mass Effect 3. There are so many reasons to believe that the game will, in fact, be the best Mass Effect yet. Hmm actually, let’s slow down for…
By Kirk Hamilton Published January 5, 2012 -
Bastion, Skyrim, Portal 2 Lead Nominations for the 2012 Game Developers Choice Awards
The nominees for the 2012 Game Developers Choice awards have been announced. The awards, which will be held at March’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, are one (if not the) most prestigious awards ceremonies in gaming. They occur the same night and location as the Independent Games Festival (IGF) awards. Both Bethesda’s Skyrim and…
By Kirk Hamilton Published January 5, 2012 -
Electronic Arts Loses Fight for SSX Domain Name
Electronic Arts has lost its bid to win the domain “ssx.com” from a holdings firm that bought it up in October. While the holdings firm parked the domain and briefly served ads leading to the game—an action that EA used as the basis for its complaint-an arbitration panel didn’t see that as enough evidence of…
By Owen Good Published January 5, 2012 -
5 Reasons I’m Nervous About Mass Effect 3
I, like so many other video game enthusiasts, am something of a Mass Effect fan. I love the stories, I love the characters. I love the music, I love the constantly improving gameplay, I love my many Shepards. I even love the lore, convoluted and prone to satire though it may be. But if there’s…
By Kirk Hamilton Published January 5, 2012 -
That Jawa Looks Stoned
That Jawa Looks Stoned | Guinness’ latest record it just made up is “Largest Entertainment Voice-Over Project Ever” and, guess what, Star Wars: The Old Republic is its holder. Beats “Most Banthas Stuffed into a Phone Booth.” Gotham City Impostors‘ January Release Date Was Some Kind of Joke With the console beta test for Monolith’s…
By Owen Good Published January 5, 2012 -
The Upcoming Ulillillia Documentary Has an Ulillillierrffic Trailer
Gaming has its share of enigmatic stars, and Nick Smith, better known as Ulillillia, is certainly among them. In this trailer for the upcoming documentary The Platform Master, we get a flash-tour through Jeffrey Eugene Hoch’s film about the man himself. The trailer describes Ulillillia as “Gamer, author, game designer, math savant, artist, filmmaker, neighbor,…
By Kirk Hamilton Published January 5, 2012 -
Indie Says Atari’s on Warpath Against iPhone Apps with ‘Even a Passing Resemblance’ to Their Old Games
Vector Tanks was around for at least three years on the iTunes App Store and looked a lot like Battlezone the whole time. It isn’t there anymore. Atari recently sent legal papers over to the game’s developer, Black Powder Media, which now warns other indie developers that “anything that has even a passing resemblance to…
By Owen Good Published January 5, 2012 -
Gotham City Impostors‘ January Release Date Was Some Kind of Joke
With the console beta test for Monolith’s downloadable dose of bat on clown violence still ramping up, Warner Bros. has gently pushed the release date for Gotham City Impostors from January into February. Someone notify Julian Day! Releasing simultaneously on Xbox Live Arcade, the PlayStation Network, and PC can’t be easy, so we’ll cut the…
By Mike Fahey Published January 5, 2012 -
Retired Captains Can Now Play Star Trek Online for Free
Players with a lapsed subscription to Cryptic’s Star Trek Online can come back an play the game at no cost today as part of the free-to-play early start program. Everyone else can play for free come January 17.
By Mike Fahey Published January 5, 2012 -
Rob Duncan – Gunfight Epiphany
You probably don’t recognize the name Robert Duncan, just as you might not be aware of the cancelled FX show Terriers for which his song “Gunfight Epiphany” acted as both the opening and closing theme. These are two things I’d really like to rectify. The art of composing music for film and television is often…
By Mike Fahey Published January 5, 2012 -
Phantom Breaker Brings a New Flavor of 3D Fighting to North America
A new contender steps into the 2D fighting ring when 7sixty brings Japanese developer 5pb. Games’ brawler Phantom Breaker to the North American Xbox 360 this spring. A mysterious organization in Japan led by someone named Phantom has organized a fighting tournament the grand prize of which is a single wish. That’s as much of…
By Mike Fahey Published January 5, 2012 -
Behold the Awesome Power of Final Fantasy XIII-2‘s Moogle
They’re not just about floating about saying “Kupo” anymore. In Final Fantasy XIII-2, many of the game’s most important mechanics are Moogle-powered. I’m not a picky Final Fantasy fan. All I want is a lengthy adventure of some sort and an adorable little floating critter by my side at all times. So I think I’m…
By Mike Fahey Published January 5, 2012 -
2K Wants to Have their XCom and Eat it Too
Maybe you’re a fan of the original X-Com and met today’s news of the upcoming XCom: Enemy Unknown strategy title with great joy. Maybe you don’t know anything about the X-Com legacy and don’t know what the hubbub about either game is about. Which XCom is for you, then? 2K Games says both of them.…
By Evan Narcisse Published January 5, 2012 -
Did You Notice When Noby Noby Boy Touched Uranus Last Week?
Noby Noby Boy‘s Latest Achievement Comes From Reaching Uranus Keita Takahashi’s Noby Noby Boy was weird. The 2009 PS3 release from the creator of Katamari Damacy involved an elastic quadroped quadruped character that players could floppily stretch along the game’s environment. All the elongation of the game’s players gets aggregated to help Girl, Boy’s counterpart…
By Evan Narcisse Published January 5, 2012 -
9/11 Changed Grand Theft Auto III, But Only a Tiny Bit
It’s long been a subject of fan speculation as to how much Rockstar Games changed Grand Theft Auto III in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. In the decade-plus since GTA III came out, rumors have abounded: cut sequences where planes hit buildings, a supposedly removed pair of Twin Towers-style skyscrapers and the erasure of…
By Evan Narcisse Published January 5, 2012 -
Sony Finds Twelve More Freaky People That Want to Compete for a Crap PlayStation Job
Season 3 of the show so outrageously specific it only airs on a video game console kicks off next month. Let’s see what sort of quality folks Sony’s dredged together for the third season of The Tester As you may recall, we’ve gotten into the horrible habit of live blogging watching episodes of Sony’s reality…
By Mike Fahey Published January 5, 2012