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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 state of health Nobody wants to die. But were games more fun when we still could?
The increasing irrelevancy of video game journalists Being good at games is now political. Is this a sign of the end times?
The making of Firewatch The story behind one of 2016's most unusual, human and thought-provoking games.
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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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The magic of video game cartography Video game maps shift and redraw the borders between real and imaginary.
‘Cobra Club’: an amazingly weird celebration of dick pics (NSFW) In Cobra Club you play a man stood in his bathroom taking pictures of his penis. It's deeper than you think.
Why Super Mario Bros. 3 is still a masterpiece Before Mario had a World, he had the biggest stage on Earth – and played the part to perfection.
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What survival games 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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Rise of the oversensitive gamer Easily offensive? Or easily offended?
Why video game movies fail as adaptations What are movie makers doing wrong?
How 007: Everything or Nothing left other third-person games shaken and stirred "Everybody knows who he is and — like him or not — everyone has an idea of what he should be. Your Bond and my Bond — not the same Bond."
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Playing with the human side of history Games traditionally present history as monolithic spectacle, but this new breed focuses on the individual experience of simply existing alongside great events.
Vienna on the eve of World War I. The French 1848 Revolution. The Taiwanese White Terror lasting from 1949 to 1987. Like many games, The Lion’s Song, Aviary Attorney and Detention are set against historical backdrops of war, conflict and struggle, but this is where the similarities cease. None of these games puts us on the front lines with a rifle. The Lion’s Song ends as the war begins, we’re not really invited to the revolution in Aviary Attorney, and the upheavals spawned by the oppressive regime in Detention are psychological rather than political. There’s a time-honored tradition of games perpetuating the notion that history is all about spectacle and scale. The…
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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?
RIP Konami console games, 1983-2015 With Konami moving away from mainstream gaming and onto pachinko and mobile, it's time for a nostalgic look back over its best games.
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.
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How 007: Everything or Nothing left other third-person games shaken and stirred "Everybody knows who he is and — like him or not — everyone has an idea of what he should be. Your Bond and my Bond — not the same Bond."
“It was a summer blockbuster,” says Jason VandenBerghe, Everything or Nothing’s lead designer. That is this 2004 title in a nutshell. Like the movies it emulated, this was a game full of explosions, car chases, exotic locales, virtual women and trademark Bond quips. It was a showcase of EA’s deep pockets at the height of the craze surrounding movie-licensed games. But to say it was just a summer blockbuster almost obscures both its creators and the impact it had on the third person shooter genre. Around 20 years ago, VandenBerghe had the opportunity to join an old friend at EA, the current studio head of Sledgehammer Games, Aaron Halon. “I was like ‘sure,…
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These are the most controversial games of all time, according to science We’re sitting here with a beautiful big dataset from Metacritic. It's time.
How ‘Untitled Goose Game’ went from meme sensation to real game House House partner Stuart Gillespie-Cook went into the company’s Slack channel in August of 2016, posted a picture of a goose and wrote “Let’s make a game about this.”
Discord has a furry pedophile problem 'Furry' pedophile groups survived the Discord purges despite hundreds of reports. Then activists uncovered a nest of furry admins within Discord, Inc itself.
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The wonderful wobbly world of experimental gaming hardware "Your first communication you have with the game is the hardware, so we think that it’s important to have the right touch."
London Games Festival is an opportunity to see some wacky stuff, and in particular alternate possibilities for controls and hardware that just don’t suit your typical living room. I’ve previously written about the evolution of buttons and how, over many years, controller layouts from dualshock to joy-cons have become standardized under a common ‘language’. This is of course good for most gamers, as well as multi-platform developers, but standardization also comes at the expense of hardware diversity which, in itself, places limits on player expression. Kicking off this year’s London Games Festival was Now Play This, a festival of experimental game design that attracts a general audience who, by and large,…
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WATCH: mom rages on livestreaming son having a smelly gamer moment Gamers sometimes need to poop where they sit instead of wasting time going to the bathroom, but this mom won't tolerate gamer moments.
The best (worst) Watch Dogs multiplayer trolls Watch Dogs online has been designed to drive you nuts and here's a compilation of some amazing moments.
‘Adventure Mario’: the making of The Legend of Zelda We’re going back to the mid-80s to look at the creation of one of gaming's longest-running and most-loved series.
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The final days of Grainger Games—as told by those who worked there The closure of Grainger Games was a shock for customers — but absolutely devastating for employees.
The closure of Grainger Games is likely to have come as a shock to many customers — but it’s been absolutely devastating for its employees. I spoke to three staff members about what it’s been like working for the company, how they reacted to the news of the closure and what they plan to do next. Steph has managed to find a new job, but it’s a demotion with an accompanying pay cut. Stuart has only been able to find part-time work — and his wife has been forced to cut short her maternity leave to help support their four kids. Jane, meanwhile, has no idea what to do next.…
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Man builds functional glowing IRL life bar A vertical tube filled with water that lights up different colors and changes its water level based on your in-game health and mana.
How a group of Polish devs turned war into a deeply personal and groundbreaking game A look at what went into the making of This War Of Mine.
Video game romance: a lost cause? You can't force love, especially not when it comes to western games.
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Does the C64 Mini’s games library do the Commodore 64 justice? The real reason it trumped the Speccy and Amstrad was breadth and quality of software.
It is not the Commodore 64’s longevity, an incredible 13-year run from the first unit sold to the last one produced, that should have finally settled the oddly enduring playground arguments of the ’80s on which was the superior 8-bit machine. Nor is it the model’s popularity, recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the highest-selling home computer of all time (though the exact numbers vary wildly depending on who’s counting). These are mere side discussions, ignoring the real reason why this age-old debate should have been put to rest a long time ago: namely, the breathtaking range of the Commie’s software library. Enormously expansive (spanning across several thousand…
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Funeral crashing and elf orgies: the definitive guide to two decades of WoW drama A chronological journey through the controversies, feuds, trolling, and epic drama connected to the popular MMORPG.
15 completely awesome old school video game commercials Blast to the past.
The state of health Nobody wants to die. But were games more fun when we still could?
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The bittersweet (and sour) search for Chinese representation in games Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan may be symbols of pride for Chinese people, but you don't quite feel that when passing idiots shout their name at you.
Asia is an enormous continent consisting of numerous cultures but, depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re on, it can have very different and narrow connotations. Whereas in North America ‘Asian’ often refers to people with East Asian origins, Brits more often use the term to refer to South Asians. There are many notable examples of British Asian representation in the arts: Salman Rushdie, Goodness Gracious Me, East Is East and many more spring to mind. But when it comes to British Chinese representation, and apologies for the headline pun by the way, I find myself drawing a blank. British Chinese people are generally considered a ‘silent’ or ‘hidden’ minority: discreet or invisible in public…
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Finish Him! The innovative violence that fueled Mortal Kombat’s success A journey from its start as a failed experiment to re-birth as a predestined success built by the vision and innovation of its Midway Games developers.
10 times gamers IRL died on cam F in the chat.
Playing with the human side of history Games traditionally present history as monolithic spectacle, but this new breed focuses on the individual experience of simply existing alongside great events.
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When a Minecraft feud turns into an IRL bomb scare The hoax emails claim a link to VeltPvP, a company which runs Minecraft servers - but the company says it is being framed.
As first reported by Sky News, a rivalry between Minecraft players lies behind 24,000 threatening emails sent to schools and colleges across the UK. The emails claimed that a student with a bomb had been sent into the recipient’s school and that, if a payment is not made, the device will be blown up. The email repeats the English text in Arabic afterwards. The message led to many schools being on alert and some evacuating, with parents having to collect their children and local police assisting. In Hertfordshire, seven schools received threats with one evacuating. The Hull Daily Mail says over 20 schools acrioss Hull and North Lincolnshire were affected. The…
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It’s true: 4 scientific ways video games make you better at sex 1.2 billion people regularly play video games. The earth is also rapidly becoming overpopulated. Coincidence? Maybe not.
How great puzzle games deconstruct our world The Witness, Gorogoa and Baba Is You reflect the societies they come from.
15 completely awesome old school video game commercials Blast to the past.
