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These photographs make video game worlds look real The Continuous City is a book that looks at virtual environments through a different lens.
The above image is not an old photo of a street. It’s Grand Theft Auto V. You may well remember Gareth Damian-Martin’s stunning shots of Metroid Prime, originally taken for his digital zine Heterotopias. Beautiful video game screenshots are ten-a-penny, but Damian-Martin’s work is something quite different – not least in the fact they’re taken using an analogue camera – in looking to capture not just a specific image of a game, but the nature of that place. To catch some of that ambiguity around the edges that, in the memory, hazes over beloved places and almost makes them seem like they exist. Following the production of three issues of…
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Actual news outlet reports girl was virtually raped in GTA V News outlet claims modders are hackers, and they're "staging violent attacks" in Grand Theft Auto. Evidence: a lunatic blogger.
Under the thumb: the evolution of buttons How the buttons we press daily were formed over many decades.
Woo-Hoo! The making of Stranglehold "There were definitely moments that made you feel like you're in a John Woo movie."
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A history of griefing: gamers who ruin your day for kicks Sometimes it’s purely for fun, sometimes it’s to make a point, and sometimes it’s even to make a profit.
You’re in the zombie nightmare of DayZ and about to be eaten by one of the charging undead when suddenly a helicopter appears. Its pilots – and simply owning a helicopter lets you know they’re big shots – gun down your pursuer and offer you a lift. What you don’t know is that instead of flying you to safety, your destination is the tiny, featureless Schadenfreude Island some 15km off the main coast of Chernarus. The only reason they’ve saved you is for the amusement of knowing you’re condemned to stand there until you waste away, and that they were smart enough to fool you. Griefing: it comes in many…
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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.
Media calls for VR safe spaces Everyone will finally be safe in places where nothing can hurt you to begin with.
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.
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Seditionis: Tower Defense reinvents while making love to the classics Seditionis harkens back to classic tower defense games while adding gripping new features—and we can't stop playing.
I’ll come right out and say it. Seditionis: Tower Defense is one of the best tower defense games on the market right now, which is a surprising feat considering it’s from a first time indie game developer in the form of one man. Any good tower defense game must be addictive and rewarding and abide by a few core tropes, but Junson Chan’s game rises above its peers by gloriously reinventing everything else. Yet loading up this game will take you back to a nostalgic past where tower defense dominated the internet and made the other genres hide in piss in pants terror. You see, the game builds on those…
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The untold story of PlayStation Home, Sony’s most successful disaster Plagued by problems from the start, PlayStation Home never officially made it out of beta before it was shut down. But it was also very profitable. This is its story.
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.”
The secret to the success of the greatest MMO of them all Vanilla World of Warcraft fed on the blood, toil, tears and sweat of its players, testing their patience and resolve - but that was part of its magic.
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How to improve your online poker game 15 tips to help you get better and start winning.
The World Poker Tour reports there are 100 million poker players across the globe. Pokers’ popularity continues to grow, and here are a few reasons why you and everyone else is hooked: It requires skill: Poker takes strategic thinking and focus. Professional poker players spend years practicing and perfecting their game to win tournaments. This is exciting for players who value games that reap a reward based on their efforts. It’s sociable: Poker games in-person and online offer many opportunities to socialize. Friends, family, and strangers congregate to enjoy the game. And, of course, win. It’s accessible: Poker is now open for everyone to play online. Meaning players no longer…
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The largest ever MMO battle—3000 players!—was an accident Someone forgot to pay rent, resulting in a space battle involving over 3000 players and $300k worth of the game's currency gone forever.
The best JRPG you’ve never heard of The SNES was the home to a lot of classic Japanese RPGs, but this one is in danger of being lost to time.
Love in a time of Warcraft Sarah found herself cast as the Yoko Ono of WoW, being blamed for the dissolution of what has been a successful raiding guild.
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The ultimate history of fighting games Fighting games have always been around. The first one on this list landed in arcades in 1976!
The Street Fighter games are arguably the best-known fighting titles ever released (only Mortal Kombat comes close), and the series has sold a staggering 37 million copies. Fighting games, though, have been around since the very beginning of the medium. The first one we hit on this list landed in arcades in 1976 – a full 40 years ago! Lace up your gloves, charge up your ki, and let’s write the book on the history of fighting games. I tried to play, either on original machines or through emulation, every single game that could be considered a “fighting game” in the history of video games. I’m going to try and talk…
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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.
10 hilariously offensive Steam games you aren’t allowed to buy any more In memoriam the best of the worst banned games in Steam's storied history.
Turn your Excel spreadsheet into an RPG with Arena.Xlsm Just because you’re stuck in Excel all day doesn’t mean you can’t do some questing.
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The weirdest fighting games of all time Most fighting games have some degree of strangeness to them, but there are those who are downright bizarre.
The fighting game genre is one of the biggest in the industry, but even the most die-hard fan will admit that it can often times be somewhat… odd. Serious fighting games like Street Fighter feature characters that can launch projectiles from their hands, emit electricity, or stretch their limbs to unnatural lengths. The Virtua Fighter series, which is praised for its realism, also has its fair share of goofy characters. Most fighting games have some degree of strangeness to them, but there are those who are downright bizarre. We’ve rounded up some of the most outlandish, eccentric, and unconventional fighting games to ever be released. We’ve only picked games that…
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Maps that matter: how to build great multiplayer FPS maps We spoke with a group of top game designers and covered just about everything about making maps people want to play again and again.
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.
What your MMO says about you We've got you figured out.
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The 11 craziest video game feats ever captured on video These 11 videos show people taking ordinary video games and making them truly extraordinary.
Video games: how much do we love them? Enough to inspire us to devote a good chunk of our lives to them, at the very least. The incredible world of electronic gaming has something for everybody, from the base casual to the most hardcore multi-monitor Eve Online sock-pooper. We’re going to be talking about the upper echelon of gamers in this piece: the men and women who don’t stop at mere enjoyment and instead fight for utter mastery. These are people who squeeze every last byte out of their games, twisting them under their mental strength until they crack. These 11 videos show people taking ordinary video games and making them truly extraordinary.…
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The Lost Arcade: a rose-colored look at the last arcade in NYC, the legendary Chinatown Fair From Times Square to Coney Island you could find people playing arcade games all day and all night, but it wasn’t meant to last.
That time the Japanese adapted Crash Bandicoot and completely butchered it The classic PS1 game was much different in the Land of Rising Sun, which completely misunderstood the franchise.
The world of video game vinyl Down the video game record collection hole.
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How our caveman instincts explain why we play video games Video games are fun - that’s a given. But here's why we derive so much pleasure from them.
As I was playing Threes on my mobile phone the other day, it occurred to me that there’s something intrinsically satisfying about tidying up in video games. Taking a messy screen full of numbers and shuffling them neatly into one big number is not only addictive, it taps into a strong desire to put everything in order. The same feeling pops up when clearing the screen in Tetris or mopping up all of those pesky flags in Assassin’s Creed. But where does this desire to tidy up come from? And what function does it serve? “It makes total sense,” says Phil Robinson, director and curator of the Museum of Games…
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Hacker receives developer-sanctioned death penalty in Guild Wars 2 Sweet justice.
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.
Video game journalism is killing itself Game journalists are killing themselves through political peacocking and attacking consumers.
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10 hilariously offensive Steam games you aren’t allowed to buy any more In memoriam the best of the worst banned games in Steam's storied history.
Long gone are the days of Steam Greenlight, where users could launch games into the highly lucrative Steam marketplace through sheer vote brigading. Gone too are the wild west days that followed in those glorious glasnost days of literally anyone being able to publish literally anything – as long as Gabe got his $100. It’s current year and Steam has embraced its mainstream status by doing what reputable platforms are supposed to do: adopting a Heckler’s veto editorial line guided by the illuminated coastal principles of NPR. So here it is, our memorial page to the most hilariously offensive games in Steam’s storied history. If you want to play any…
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‘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.
10 beautiful 2D games exclusive to the PlayStation (PS1/PSX) The future of gaming was 3D, but the PlayStation had several beautiful 2D exclusives.
The craziest things people ever did to persuade parents to buy video games Kids can be very creative when they want something.
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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.
Whether it had to start somewhere, ran low on cash or had a crazy one-off idea, almost every big games studio has worked on some surprising games. A football JRPG, a Shrek tie-in, various kinds of licenses, these largely forgotten titles often reflect periods of uncertainty, when talented studios needed a project to keep the lights on and would work on whatever was going. Some of these games are, of course, terrible. Others, like Irrational’s Tribes Vengeances, are cult classics that have come to be regarded as highpoints for their series. Whatever the story though, they’re all surprising. Wayne Gretzky Hockey (Bethesda) Watch this video on YouTube These days the idea…
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The history of Wing Commander Wing Commander’s paved the way to the modern video game industry, and its design continues to influence game development to the present day.
The best JRPG you’ve never heard of The SNES was the home to a lot of classic Japanese RPGs, but this one is in danger of being lost to time.
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.
