GotGame

There are a slew of reasons we’re excited about going to the LA Games Conference next week, but one I hadn’t even considered was the possibility of playing games with celebrities. Ned Sherman, CEO and publisher of Digital Media Wire, which organizes and runs the conference, planted this dreamy seed in my mind on Monday when he told the story of Vin Diesel wandering into the 2006 event: “That was pretty wild, totally unplanned and unanticipated. We were hosting a gamers’ tournament and this event was being done at the Pacific Design center…so it was our first LA Games Conference event, and all of a sudden he just walks into the room and says, ‘I hear you guys are playing games out here, can I play?’ and he sat down and played games for an hour or two.”

Read More »

Have you bought the latest installment in the Grand Theft Auto franchise yet? If not, you’re probably in the minority – according to the game’s record-smashing sales, everyone and his mother went out to buy the game in its first week. The game made $310 million in its initial twenty-four hours, easily trumping the previous entertainment sales record set by Master Chief himself (a measly $170 million). It went on to gross $500 million that first week.

Read More »

Fans of some of this year’s most uncommonly popular titles—Professor Layton, Zack & Wiki, and the continued Phoenix Wright series (of course)—may have forgotten where these and many other games originally derive from: the classic Adventure genre, whether text-based, graphical, or point ‘n’ click. This September will bring a very welcome reminder to gamers nationwide, with the Adventure Gaming Expo in Atlantic City.
Read More »

It seems the end of an era is at hand – last month 1up.com announced that Games for Windows will be switching to an online-only format. The April/May edition marks the final print issue.

Read More »

I’ve often heard the argument that people pirate games not for the game itself, but as a demo, to help determine if they want to shell out their hard-earned cash or hard-begged allowance on a new title. PC developer Crytek doesn’t care why people do it, they’re just not going to put up with it anymore. Though in Crysis’ case, this pirate reasoning makes perfect sense: who would want to purchase a game that they will likely not be able to run on their system, even if it has mostly top-of-the-line components?
Read More »

Whatever happened to Internet relay chat? Well, if you use a modern instant messaging client like AIM, you probably already have an answer. But before all that, people who wanted to communicate online had one option: IRC.
Read More »

Read More »

Montreal-based startup Akoha publicly announced today they have received $1.9 million in funding from angel investors. That big wad of generosity will help Akoha complete development on their online / offline community game.
Read More »

Oh video game movies, how we hate you. It seems for every one decent movie based on a video game we get ten direct-to-DVD bargain bin stinkers. Sure, some of them are good for a few laughs (with Bob Hoskins as Mario, how could you not?), but it’s a rare occasion indeed when one even manages to turn a profit, let alone end up any good.

Radar Group, a venture capital-funded start-up, hopes to change all that. Co-founded last year by CEO Jim Perkins, the company seeks to manage original content intended for your favorite consoles and theaters alike.

Read More »

If you’re still hiding your bulky PS3 BD remote under the couch, or sticking all sorts of PSX/PS2 USB adaptors into your system with duct tape and optimism, you will now have a much sleeker Blu-ray control option. Sleeker, sexier, and…phonier. Netblender has created a software development kit for the iPhone (by meta-using the newly released Apple SDK) which will allow the already much-more-than-a-cell to communicate with Blu-ray players. The SDK, called BD Touch, is available in two flavors: “Connect” for standard app creation, and “Premium Blend/In” for more enterprising developers.

Read More »

Despite a distinct lack of chiaroscuro shading and consummate Vs, Strongbad has managed to win the respect and demand the hearts of a legion of followers, both attractive and not. Unfortunately, only fans that fall into the first of these categories will be treated to his new WiiWare title, Strongbad’s Cool Game for Attractive People. Just writing about the game, I have to wear a bag over my head. Which is a shame, because looking at all of its nifty videos was just starting to rinse out the bad taste left in my mouth by our last featured WiiWare title.

Read More »

Video game guns have come a long way since the days of Doom’s double-barreled shotgun or even Goldeneye’s iconic Walther PPK. With greater processing power available to spend on physics engines, designers are now able to take factors like recoil and bullet drop into account when crafting their guns. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re plugging every real-world factor into their ballistic models. A recent article featured in Popular Mechanics explains why.
Read More »

As gamers, we often take for granted the fact that we can make out a particular team’s flag or the difference between two shaded blocks in our favorite puzzler. But what about those that can’t? Color vision deficiency – commonly known as color blindness – can make these distinctions almost impossible, and it’s a problem that affects more gamers than you may think.
Read More »

New screens of the successor to the hit Fallout series have just been released from Bethesda Softworks. Though several Fallout spin-offs have been produced, this third installment promises to be a true successor to the original two, the initial attempt codenamed Van Buren (by the all-but-defunct Black Isle Studios) having been scrapped in 2003.

Read More »