The GiN exclusive investigation into the plight of booth babes at E3 this year has certainly stirred up a lot of controversy. No fewer than 200 letters from readers arrived the day after the piece was published. Many more continue to pour in, even weeks later. GiN has always strived to be a community newspaper for the game industry and as such, we have randomly chosen several letters from among those submitted to publish here. We made sure the sample had a mixture of both industry and consumer readers. We think this is the best way to get into the … Continue reading We Really Stirred Things Up →

Last year we predicted that the E3 show would be the largest and most exciting show ever. For the most part, we were correct. But this year promises to be even more interesting. The console war this year is in full swing, with Sega having stumbled out of the hardware side of the market. Last year it was Sega vs. Sony vs. Nintendo. But just when Sega has been relegated to also-ran status, here comes Microsoft. Looks like we will have a three-way race once more. GiN has appointments with all the top competitors, so we will be there to … Continue reading E3 Promise →

A lot of trade magazines that cover the entertainment industry are, perhaps unduly, focused on movies. In quite a few of them, the pending actor’s guild strike has been covered with the same gloom and doom that might befall a pending natural disaster. But while some sectors of the entertainment industry might be crippled by the lack of card-carrying guild member actors, computer games should do just fine. The pending strike has a lot of complex issues behind it, but boils down to what every labor dispute these days is really about: people either wanting or deserving more money. Gone … Continue reading Strike Two, But Not Out →

Alas the time is almost upon us all. My fellow game citizens, be prepared. Take shelter while you still can. These are no longer times of peace, and rumors of war are being heard of more and more each day. Here in the closeout months of the year 2000 going on into 2001 my gamers intuition leads me to believe that something big, something great, something like the gaming world has never seen before is about to happen. History is about to be made. A "Clash of the Titans" if you will is upon us. A clash whose rumbles will … Continue reading Clouds Of War →

Vice President Al Gore announced today that he has chosen Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut as his running mate for the upcoming presidential election. Lieberman has long been a proponent of censorship when it comes to computer games, putting them far below other forms of entertainment in terms of constitutional protection. Each year Lieberman leads an attack on the game industry by creating a list of violent computer games, highlighting them as one of the reasons society is rapidly moving away from its "moral compass." This anti-game frenzy seemed to reach a crescendo last year following the Columbine High School shootings, … Continue reading Go Al! →

I was reminded this week of an old mini-series on television back in the 1980s where the then-powerful Soviet Union had taken over the United States. A few people decided to revolt and a professional soldier who was getting ready to fight the Soviet threat was standing in a train station. Suddenly, a sniper’s gun rings out and a couple of Soviet army privates getting off the train are killed. The rookie-traveling companion of the professional soldier is overjoyed at seeing the dead Russians, but the professional soldier just looks disgusted. "Wrong targets," he says, continuing to explain that the … Continue reading Wrong Targets →

We are so proud of Sega, throwing a monkey wrench into the pending console war. Just when all the industry pundits had concluded that Sony was going to be the undisputed winner in this battle, Sega comes up with the proverbial rabbit out of what everyone thought was an empty hat. Last week Sega announced that it would give a $200 rebate on a Dreamcast, plus a Dreamcast keyboard, to anyone who signed up for its soon-to-be-launched Internet Service Provider for a two-year contract. Essentially, if you get the ISP, you can have a Dreamcast with a keyboard for free. … Continue reading Dreamcast’s Last Hope →

Welcome to this brave new world. You are one of the first visitors to the new daily Game Industry News, and I wanted to take a moment to welcome you. One of the major changes is that GiN is now free. Simply click on the Free Subscription or the Free Prizes link to sign up. As a special gift, in addition to getting the e-mail version of GiN each week, we are having a prize blowout. Our friends at Codemasters, SouthPeak Interactive and Westwood Studios are providing very nice prizes in the form of games for both the PlayStation and … Continue reading Welcome To The New GiN! →