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The video games about nothing Seinfeld is famously a show about nothing, but indie developers continue to find plenty of something to work with.
Seinfeld is a sitcom about the mundane and tragicomic aspects of everyday life, a subject matter that led to George Costanza’s infamous fourth-walling description of it: “the show is about nothing!” True as that may be, it seems like indie developers continue to find and awful lot of nothing to work with. The almost-three-decades-old comedy-cum-mainstream hit’s history in video games wasn’t contemporary with the show, as far as I can tell anyway, which started in 1989 then finished airing in 1998. One of the first substantial sightings seems to be Kramer popping up at Newgrounds in 2004, with a starring role in an NSFW browser-based visual novel. In 2008, a scene from episode “The Contest” got a ragdoll…
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The people obsessed with uncovering gaming’s deepest, darkest secrets For some, playing a video game to completion isn’t enough. They want to reveal the secrets behind its creation.
Rise of the oversensitive gamer Easily offensive? Or easily offended?
How Fable Legends took down Lionhead An in-depth look at the development of a legendary British studio's final, unreleased game.
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Hysterical mob targets Pewds after Ben Shapiro guests Meme Review The more ambitious crossover event than Avengers: Infinity War earns wide acclaim — and deranged diatribes.
Okay, this is epic. PewDiePie – the world’s most popular YouTube personality and generally wholesome Swedish funnyman – enlisted prominent conservative Ben Shapiro to help respond to memes on the November 2nd edition of his meme reviewing show. And the boo-hoo now being cultivated in the chronically too online petri dish would give Morton Salt a run for its money. Here’s a sample: Having Shapiro on Meme Review makes perfect sense. Together Ben and Pewds make the two biggest figures among those who attempt to walk the fine line between irreverence and reasonableness in the culture war, and you’ve gotta admit Shapiro himself is a(n accidental) meme machine. Shapiro didn’t…
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The magic of video game cartography Video game maps shift and redraw the borders between real and imaginary.
The real reason LEGO Universe shut down: it didn’t anticipate the ‘penis cost’ The challenge of keeping a family-friendly MMO penis-free was too much for Warner Brothers.
From EA QA to Pokémon Go and beyond: the incredible career of E. Daniel Arey He's helped design some of gaming's greatest successes, and is just getting started.
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In Ice Poseidon’s wake — The Ballad of Bjorn In the hunt for internet fame, some forego ethics and law.
“I Ice Poseidons kølvand” was originally published November 2, 2018 in the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen. Translation by Ganker. Cloudining from Reddit helped with the cover pic. For six years Bjørn Lisdorf tried to augment his Danish postal service salary by streaming video games on YouTube and Twitch, platforms where viewers can send money if they’re entertained or just want to grab the streamer’s attention. But the 49-year-old gamer did not receive a single donation. His dream of a better financial situation suffered another giant blow when – just a year ago – he lost his job. In a desperate attempt to turn his fortunes around, he borrowed 70,000 DKK [approx.…
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The 11 hardest survival simulators Casuals, stay away. These are the survival games that make staying alive difficult.
Are your kids experimenting with Minecraft sex? YouTube is brimming with videos of Minecraft sex targeted to kids.
The 10 most hilarious Destiny exploits From fantastically cheesy ways to kill bosses to painless ways to level up, these are some of the most hilarious exploits Destiny players have discovered.
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Cyberpunk 2077 devs doxed, harassed after use of “trans” hashtag #WontBeErased Lack of reverence for sacred hashtags will not be tolerated. Game journalists now join the doxing and harassment campaign against Polish game studio CD Projekt Red.
It’s no secret – social justice activists in the gaming community form brigades to pressure gaming studios into firing employees that they deem guilty of wrongthink. All it takes is one bad tweet, one errant comment, a dismissive gesture, or a harmless joke to trigger a crusade to ruin the lives of everyone involved. And they are now bringing their harassment to the next level by doxing and harassing the families of their victims. The latest company to fall afoul of the grievance cops are the developers at CD Projekt Red — the guys who made The Witcher 3, Gwent, and the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077. They were initially targeted by…
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They really did that?! Little known games from big developers Before Naughty Dog made Uncharted, it made the wacky comedy game Keef the Thief.
How No Man’s Sky generates life The game generates its universe and the many possibilities therein from a relatively small set of assets.
The rise and fall of video gaming’s most vocal enemy Over the course of 10 years, lawyer Jack Thompson aggressively pursued video games in the courtroom. This is a history of his career.
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10 fighting game characters that are definitely furries There are some hardcore furries out there in fighting game rosters, and I've put them on a list.
First, a few ground rules. Furry in this context is defined as a human who desires and makes the choice to assume animal traits to some extent. So no catgirls like Felicia from Darkstalkers or the Kaka clan from BlazBlue; if you were born with animal parts, you aren’t a furry. You’re a… fur-person. And on the other side you aren’t a furry if you just like animal iconography. That wolf on your belt buckle doesn’t make you a furry; you need to actually be sporting some animal parts in some way. With those limitations in mind, here we go; 10 fighting game characters that are definitely furries. King (Tekken) Watch this…
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The story of Second Life’s long-abandoned Duran Duran universe No ordinary world.
Top 10 licensed songs in gaming There are times when the use of a licensed piece of music is so perfect that it elevates the gaming experience to a new level.
Repetition as a feature: gaming’s best groundhog days When repetition is used as a narrative technique, it can be super effective.
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Pitching Starfox ideas to Mr Miyamoto sounds pretty scary Arwing and a prayer.
At Gamescom 2018 we caught up with Laurent Malville, the creative director of Ubisoft’s upcoming space-em-up Starlink. The most eye-catching element of this title, outside of the toys it can integrate with, is the inclusion of the OG Starfox, Nintendo’s Fox McCloud. This is another product of Ubisoft and Nintendo’s increasingly buddy-buddy relationship. The two companies have always had good relations but in recent times this has resulted in more concrete partnerships, such as Mario Rabbids Kingdom Battle. If you’re wondering how the Starfox-Starlink idea got off the ground, the story has a few surprises. “So last September 2017 we had the incredible privilege to be invited to Kyoto to…
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You can now play XCOM in an Excel spreadsheet It’s called EXLCOM, and all you need to run it is a copy of Excel. What a time to be alive.
Woo-Hoo! The making of Stranglehold "There were definitely moments that made you feel like you're in a John Woo movie."
5 most garbage Ghostbusters tie-in products (of garbage) And yes, you’re a misogynist if you don’t like the tie ins.
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Before Old Kratos, there was PSP Kratos How Ready at Dawn humanized Kratos a decade before the recent God of War did.
Prior to attending E3 in 2004, and much like everyone else, no-one from developer Ready at Dawn had heard of God of War. The studio already had an ongoing relationship with Sony, however, and was there to showcase the portable wizardry it was doing with PSP spin-off Daxter. What members of the team saw would set Ready at Dawn’s development trajectory for years to come, and all it took was a visit to the Sony Santa Monica booth. “Whoever played it first on the team came back and told everyone ‘you’ve got to go play this!’ And we did,” says Ru Weerasuriya, Ready at Dawn’s CEO and creative director. “All of us…
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The 24-year feud that has dogged Star Citizen The story of two men, several ambitious space games, and an ongoing feud that has rocked a community of over a million fans.
The sex is the saddest thing about GTA V (NSFW) Grand Theft Auto V is an incredible, incredible video game. So why is its sex so terrible?
The many, bizarre emotions of FIFA 15’s emotion engine Thanks to FIFA 15’s new Emotional Intelligence, all 22 players on the pitch can now employ 600 new emotional reactions. It's... not always the most natural-looking thing.
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11 franchises that need to rip off Pokemon Go Already popular video games, movies, and other stuff that could—should—jump into the alternate reality world and make bucketloads of money.
The alternate reality game Pokemon Go has captured a massive user base who are traipsing the streets catching monsters, hatching eggs, and taking over gyms. If you’ve missed our past coverage, check it out. But what if you don’t like Pokemon? What do you do then? The thing that some people don’t know is that Niantic, the developer of Pokemon Go, took most of that game from their earlier (and less popular) Ingress. Nintendo’s success just shows that a high-powered cultural franchise can make all the difference. And if there’s one thing we’ve got plenty of, it’s high-powered cultural franchises. Let’s do corporations’ work for them and identify 11 already…
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The making of Grand Theft Auto 1-3’s music An interview with Colin Anderson, Grant Middleton, Stuart Ross, Raymond Usher, and Pal Mackie—the original composers of GTA 1-3.
Gaming’s most persistent myths and urban legends, debunked From blowing in cartridges to Lara Croft nude cheats and the secret Windows95 devil program. I’m sure you believe in at least one of these falsehoods.
The 10 most hilarious Destiny exploits From fantastically cheesy ways to kill bosses to painless ways to level up, these are some of the most hilarious exploits Destiny players have discovered.
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Does ‘role-playing game’ mean what it did a decade ago? We interview veteran RPG designers Chris Avellone and George Ziets about where the RPG is and where it's going.
It seems like any discussion of the economics of game-development runs headlong into clichés that all mean pretty much the same thing. This is a ‘hit-driven’ industry, where long-cherished notions of ‘capitalizing on trends’ and ‘building an audience’ dominate the monied end of things; a world where, for good or ill, even a mediocre entry in a mega-franchise will likely bring in ten-times the sales of a breakout indie hit like the recent Celeste. Some trends almost trumpet their arrival from the mountaintops — perhaps you’ve heard of a little concept known as battle royale — while others seep into the popular landscape over years, with the weight of so much rain. Over time,…
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Repetition as a feature: gaming’s best groundhog days When repetition is used as a narrative technique, it can be super effective.
What Frostpunk could learn from real-life survival stories If you’ve idly wondered about the everyday lives of your little survivors, Ernest Shackleton’s failed Trans-Antarctic Expedition may prove a treasure chest of enrichment.
The making of WipEout Forget Lara. There was only one true herald of the Playstation generation. Real 3D, real music, real gaming. The future, after years of waiting, was finally now.
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What Frostpunk could learn from real-life survival stories If you’ve idly wondered about the everyday lives of your little survivors, Ernest Shackleton’s failed Trans-Antarctic Expedition may prove a treasure chest of enrichment.
Everything you do in Frostpunk, you do for the survival of your citizens. And yet you may ask yourself, who are these people? Sometimes an individual will make an appearance in one of the game’s little narratives or voice their opinion after the passing of a new law, only to fade back into obscurity. How do they live, what do they do to distract themselves, to break the monotony, what do they talk about? Zooming in doesn’t reveal a whole lot, while clicking on one of these tiny figures tells you about their biggest concerns and their family relations, but not much else. Hope and discontent are central concepts, but…
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It’s time to admit that Ocarina of Time sucks Ocarina of Time is responsible for many awful trends that, like a bad cold, games have been unable to shake. Here's the case against Ocarina of Time.
Kotaku is killing video game journalism When Kotaku introduced ‘social justice’ to gaming coverage, it all went to hell. Why can't we just play?
The heartbreaking story of how one man spent $16k on Final Fantasy and nearly lost his family Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius' combining of characters that people love with gacha-esque monetization can end up going very badly.
