Virtual Worlds as Teaching Tools
As gamers, we know games are incredible learning tools. Just look at everything you’ve memorized to pwn noobs in AV, right? Hell, you knew what I meant when I said “AV.” That’s learning. On and off, the educational community has been considering the potential of games to teach real lessons in science, math, and reading, but the efforts have always been local and half-hearted. With the rise of social gaming (like, say, the World of Warcraft that Alterac Valley comes from), the scale of gaming has changed. This change allows more gamers to experience the lessons a game might teach.
The educational video games Food Force, a U.N.-produced game on the mechanics of food aid distribution, and Whyville, another game that takes place in a virtual world, each has about 4 million players, a number that far exceeds the number of students graduating each year …
World of Warcraft, Lich King, Claim 11.5 Million Subscribers
To put that into perspective, the US presidential election was decided by about three-million votes, and some European countries couldn’t even aspire to that sort of population. In a recent press release, Blizzard confirmed Lich King sales of over four-million copies in the first month, which makes me wonder when those other many millions of players plan on getting with the program. That number also tags Lich King as the fastest, and best-selling, release of all time, a record formerly held by Burning Crusade. Gee.
You can read the whole press release to discover just how tightly Blizzard has taken the game industry’s balls in their iron claw. If you’re one of those millions who have yet to upgrade, do it! Lich King is great, Death Knights are more metal than the black shores of Hades, and the quest lines are a vast …
Crystal Chronicles on the Wii. God Help Us All
The official name is Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time, but down here on the streets, we’re calling it goddamn gamer crack. I’ve lost friends to the original game, always coming around, asking if I wanted to try some Crystal, telling me everyone’s doing it. Join the party, they said. Now, on the Wii, sometime in 2009? Hell, I tell you.
Video Games Stomp on Recession, Kick its Shell Across Screen, Grab Mushroom
A mushroom made of pure, uncut, 100% raw cash. Gamers this year gave the falling economy, likened by experts to a “black pit where no hope or light can reach,” only a passing glance as they marched merrily out to stock up on sequels and some truly unique games. So long as the electricity stays on, the gaming community has remained quite content to do without other luxuries, such as heat, light, and food that wasn’t extruded from a noodle machine in China.
While sales of other products sunk into the clinging tar of the recession’s bubbling caldera, video games remained stable, even rising. This strange insulation from economic woe has been linked to several factors, chief among them that games offer very cheap entertainment for the price, a great incentive for those who are staring down the barrel of a jobless rent day. Also, …
The Craft of War: BLIND
Sometimes, animators get bored. And sometimes, they realize that hulking MMORPG filling up some six gigs of their hard drive is really nothing more than a model pack with pretensions.
And sometimes, they also play a Rogue.
The result in this case is BLIND, a nice little machinma about an assassination attempt on Lady Prestor, or, as we in the Horde know her, Onyxia, brood mother of the Black Dragonflight.
Video Game Music Attracts Major Composers, Musicians
Video games these days are big productions, and with good reason. The gaming industry is looking to clean up about 50-billion dollars in revenues this year, and this growing power to suck cash from the wallets of all peoples of the world shows no signs of relenting. The hunger of gamers and gaming has no end, and cannot be satisfied, only sated for a brief moment, by the next latest and greatest experience. To craft these experiences, game designers build their worlds using the latest technologies, the finest graphics their budgets can conjure up, and the best music from the most skilled professionals in the world.
That means calling out to the minions of the music industry, labouring in their pits and studio hovels. Not only that, but the clarion horn of video gaming cash has echoed through the valley of Hollywood, drawing out those …
Dreaming Tentacles and the Majesty of Colors
It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to write about tentacled abyssal horrors from the pelagian depths, which is why the flash game I Fell In Love With The Majesty Of Colors comes as such a welcome surprise. In this little 8-bit styled adventure, you take on the role of a nameless elder horror from the ocean fathoms who has just recently risen up. Lured to the surface by colourful balloons, you experience your first encounter with humanity and so the game begins.
The controls for Majesty of Colors are simple enough, just move your mouse about the screen and the creature will stretch forth a tentacle to follow your motions. Click to pick up and hold things like fish and screaming humans. You interact with the game world by picking things up, moving them …
8-Bit Jesus: Retro Gaming Christmas Music
One of the many joys of running wild on a popular blog site is that I get to introduce thousand of people to my own personal favourite things. You might have noticed I’ve a bit of a fetish for retro gaming from the old NES era, and I’m not alone in this strange desire. The good Doctor Octoroc has thrown together a collection of Christmas carols, mixed in the 8-bit style like all good video game music should be. The result is 8-Bit Jesus: Classic Christmas Songs in the Style of Classic NES Games, and why are you still here reading this? Go! Go now!
Okay, maybe you need more convincing.
Here’s why this collection of video game Christmas music kicks ass; the songs aren’t just some remix of carols with bleeps and blurps in for the notes. Oh no. …
This is the Christmas Spoils Thread
Between sucking down chocolate squares and getting lit up on eggnog, somehow I found time to open presents this Christmas morning. Turns out I got Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and a card to GameStop for even more used gaming goodness. I gave one of my cousins Sam & Max Season One (buy it!) and the other got Civilization 3 (buy it!) because seriously, have you seen some of the games the kids are playing these days? They need some right proper quality in their digital diets, I say.
So how did you guys make out? Post your Christmas loots and let us all know just why we should be jealous. What did Santa stuff elbow-deep down your stocking this year?
How not to make a teaser trailer: Audere Semper
We are gigantic fans of adventure games in general. We play them a lot. See The Experiment, The Longest Journey series, Syberia, Bad Mojo, and more—but this one totally takes the cake on the worst teaser ever.
Words do not describe how terrible and not compelling this video is. If I were going to purchase this game at the store because I liked what it said on the box, this would probably turn me off. What did they make this in? Windows Media Maker?
It starts off too slow, pulsing between text and short-shot flip animation graphics. Then it leaps into these inexplicable falling letters that don’t actually create the title words, they rather fall into darkness, and that’s that. Finally we get the title.
And …
