It should come as no surprise that the game industry is under the microscope again, and as usual it's not a good thing. What is unusual is where the pressure is coming from this time around. The industry has often been criticized in the past, normally with much fanfare. I personally remember Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison at a hearing waiving a copy of Doom in the air and promising a first amendment fight to restrict game sales. This was in the days following the shootings at Columbine High School after it was learned that the kids who did the … Continue reading SEC’s Jack Booted Thugs→
Games PR is a tricky business and with evermore games vying for attention it's not set to get any easier. As the competition heats up and publishers have more to lose with each passing year, games PR reps are feeling the pressure. I suppose we could argue that the industry has become a victim of its own success. As we creep closer and closer towards the mainstream, the less sway originality holds against a key license. Publishers are chasing the mighty buck and that means sequels, crappy licenses and cheap movie tie-ins. Why pour money into the PR for Rez … Continue reading Can I Get An Amen!→
This is the part of the year I hate the most. Once E3 is over the flow of new releases slow down to a crawl. From what I've seen so far there has only been one post E3 title that I have been interested in (Star Wars Galaxies) but aside from that it has been nothing but ports of titles played on other systems and a certain box office to DVD-ROM flop called Enter the Matrix. Outside of the gaming world, as a sports fan it is twice as slow for me. Every summer I go through this, and with … Continue reading The Dead Time→
This is our Independence Day! And not the kind where aliens come down to Earth and blow up the White House and other national landmarks. At least I hope. The first weekend in July is the time when those of us in the United States celebrate the fact that we broke away from formerly-evil-now-best-friend England to form our own country. We wanted to drink coffee instead of tea, play football instead of soccer, watch NASCAR instead of road rallies, and I don't think anyone ever really understood cricket. And it just so happens that this means we get a three … Continue reading It’s A Three Day Banger!→
When I returned from E3 last month, the first title I picked up to test out was the heavily hyped Enter the Matrix. After all, I just finished seeing the movie (which I thought was just average, compared to the original, yet paled in comparison to other summer films so far such as X2), and wanted to give the game a shot. The fact that is was one of the few XBox titles to run in 1080i HDTV also caught my eye. It is a shame though that the movie tie in and the 1080i would only be a front … Continue reading I know Atari. You Sir, Are No Atari.→
Now Nintendo is not usually a name that conjures up thoughts of rage, frustration and disappointment. No, Nintendo (or Ninty if you're feeling all sentimental) is a name that is synonymous with cute, colourful, back to the halcyon days of childhood, type thoughts – fun for all the family and all that sort of thing. Plus they have a blindly loyal fanbase, which is something to be proud of, I guess, slavering and fawning aside. Fed up of playing catch-up with Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo are having a change of tack lately by trying to give themselves a more adult … Continue reading Ninty Growing Up?→
Over the past few years I have never been shy of my preference to playing games on a console in comparison to a PC. Originally my beef about PC gaming was the extensive cost of maintaining equipment. After all, look at both nVidia and ATI forcing gamers to pay upwards of $400 for their top-of-the-line video cards designed mostly for games that won’t be released until two years from now. And that is not to mention the fact that these upgrades result in many gamers thinking that budget cards are total crap. But still this notion does not compare to … Continue reading Consoles Beat PCs→
(But it did arrive!) In the United States we often get justice in the end, but sometimes it just takes a little while. A good example of this is the St. Louis law that prevented violent video games from being sold to minors. It provided fines for any vendor who sold computer games deemed violent to minors, much the same way cigarettes and alcohol are regulated. It was enacted in 2000 and caused our then-extreme columnist Ken Urben to call the politicians involved Nazis. I'll stop short of calling anyone names, but surely the politicians who thought this genius of … Continue reading Justice Comes Slowly→
It's something that haunts us all, preying on the mind like a disease. On the outside, the world sees a happy, accomplished gamer, whilst inside fear, doubt and bitterness takes hold. Like a modern day Dorian Gray, only the portrait in the attic reveals the true torment we gamers feel over the unfinished game. We've all got them lurking under the telly, silently taunting us. Unfinished games are not necessarily a poor reflection of your gaming prowess, just a fact of life. There are many reasons why a game slips from the "currently being played" list to the "unfinished games" … Continue reading The Unfinished Game Curse→
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