Video Gamers Get Better – In Their Dreams
Dreaming and learning may be part of the same process, a new study from the Harvard Medical School suggests. In the study, volunteers played the rightly hallowed FPS, DOOM, and then answered questions about their dreams. Often, elements from DOOM would turn up in their dreams, like shotguns, blood, and demons.
“It really looks like if you’re not dreaming about it, you’re not getting better,” says Robert Stickgold, one of the researchers in the study.
Crash To Desktop – 8/18/2009
Welcome to Crash To Desktop, the daily series where I explore my feminine side. Thank you for visiting. While you’re here, best sign up to our Twitter feed. Otherwise, something unfortunate might happen.
In my days, I’ve played an awful lot of games, and built a dozen times as many characters. Character creation is a vital part of gaming, especially in this era of MMORPGs and 100-hour storyfests like those that keep Square-Enix and Bethesda in business.
What many games still don’t realize is that character creation can and should be a game in itself.
Some games caught on to this early. The NES game 1943, a standard shooter, opened up with a grid where you could allocate points between firepower, protection, speed, special weapon time, and such. Primitive, but effective, as the choices you made on that grid would …
Video Game Sales Drop, Used Games See a Rise
With the jobless rate merrily leaving the Land of Hard Times for the Valley of Revolution, even gamers have seen an effect. The slumping economy had to drag down the gaming industry eventually, and now hard data is showing the effects of that sucking tide.
According to Bloomberg.com, video games sales have fallen nearly 30% across hardware and software, with most of the drop being placed squarely on the shoulders of the money-printing beast, Nintendo. Demand for their Wii console has slowed, slackening the market. Not to mention the yawning void that separates our present time-space from the last assault of hit titles.
Coming in to feed off the cash-starved remains of the economy’s victims, used game sales have grown fat and powerful. Better than a third of game sales in May have fallen under the blighted banner of the resale legion, a trend which is …
Quebec Forbids English-Only Video Games in Favour of French Language
Which only makes sense, because game developers are clamoring to translate their virtual worlds to French. The Toronto Star reports that a recent law passed in Quebec forbids the sale of English-only games if a French translation exists. This has caused a certain amount of excitement among retailers, similar to that felt by the dinosaurs right before the meteorite hit.
“I’m afraid it’s going to cost me my business,” said game store owner Ronnie Rondeau, as quoted by the Star. In a surprising turn of events, gamers just don’t want to wait the months, or years, it might take for a translation of the latest games to appear, if one ever does. Given that retailers already have to compete with online merchants who can carry a bigger selection and offer deep discounts, this law represents a butcher knife to the tender belly of traditional game …
Action Gaming Improves Eyesight, Destroys Faith in Humanity
Recent studies from the University of Rochester and Tel Aviv University have shown that playing action games like Unreal Tournament and Call of Duty improves the eyesight of players. The upgrades come in the form of something called “contrast perception,” or the ability to distinguish between similar colours and shades of colour. Casual games that didn’t grab their players by the eyeballs and suck them into a whirling maelstrom of fast action, say, The Sims, had no effect on vision.
The improvements remain for up to two years after training. The damage done by contact with Xbox Live users may well be permanent.
You can check out the detailed report in the March 29th issue of Nature, right over here.
Challenge Draws Gamers, Not Gore
A study drawn out of the University of Rochester and Immersyve Inc., shows that gamers enjoy, not the gore of violence of games, but, well, the game part. The fun factor in games, especially those that layer on the carnage, doesn’t magically appear from a well-crafted arterial spray, but the challenge of mastering the game mechanics, overcoming obstacles, and discovering new tactics and strategies. Violence is, at best, window dressing and may actually turn gamers away from a particular title.
However, the study also mentioned a certain percentage of gamers do play for the violence, although this segment tends to be more aggressive overall than the typical player. Even for these aggressive gamers (you know who they are, they killed your poor level 35 character in Stranglethorn 20 times one day with their own level 80 draped in 2000 gold worth of player-killing weapons and enchants), violence and …
1UP.com Acquired, Gutted by UGO Entertainment
Sure, it’s splashed all across the remaining game sites out there, but we at Vox would be remiss in our duties as the starving vultures of game journalism if we didn’t spend a moment to pick the bones of our own dead. And 1UP is dead.
For the longest time now, 1UP, along with its magazine arm EGM and associated websites GameVideos.com, MyCheats.com, and GameTab.com, have been bleeding money like a gunshot victim with a pressure pump shoved down his throat. Ziff-Davis, their ownership company, had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and that was even before the economy tanked.
While UGO’s injection of zombie juice into 1UP might bring the company back to a shambling mockery of life, the simple fact remains that certain vital functions are going to missing once the corpse rises up from its slab. The largest of those is EGM, the gaming magazine …
Used Games Drop in Price
While video games as a whole are doing well, the prices of used games at the retail level dropped by a considerable amount, although you wouldn’t know it browsing the local Gamestop. In part, this can be be pinned directly on the sucktastic economy since used games don’t have the same marketing and appeal as brand new titles. Also, those new titles of late have been really good, and there’s only so much cash in the cookie jar to blow on digital heroin.
Check out the details in this Gamasutra article here.
Necessary Complexity in Virtual Gaming and Games Within Games
The good folks over at Massively.com are running a great article about necessary complexity in games, using the failure of Google’s Lively MMO as an example. Short order, games that are too complex might offer players a wealth of options and free cookies, but no one’s going to run that kind of rat maze when they could be playing World of Warcraft. A game that’s too simple, like Lively, risks boring players out of their skulls with a lack of options and sending them back to playing World of Warcraft. Or, to use the jargon of the day, boring games suck. You can read the article here.
Now, I’ve been a part of the pen-and-paper gaming world for aeons long past remembering, and our shrouded guild of fiends and ghouls has been wrestling with the same problem. Why is the most popular role-playing game in …
Left 4 Dead — How to Zombie
As a malign parasite entity driving around a stolen corpse body like a little car, I have a natural affinity for the undead. Left 4 Dead is a great game that helps feed my hunger for zombie action, but it has become painfully obvious that no matter how many of the ravening dead we throw at the survivors, well, sometimes those bastard breathers get out alive. This must end.
To assist my fellow brain-eaters in their tireless efforts to devour the internal organs of the living, I have collected a set of fine instructional videos on how best to use your unhallowed and repulsive talents. With a little study, and alot of practice, soon you too will feel the flesh of humanity slithering down your clenching throat.
The Smoker: It’s all about the tongue, baby
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