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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 30 moments that defined the video game industry From consoles to genres, from lawsuits to graphics, these are the 30 big moments that define the video game industry—from 1977 to the early 00s.
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.
These photographs make video game worlds look real The Continuous City is a book that looks at virtual environments through a different lens.
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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 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.
Legendary Commodore 64 Daffy Duck game finally found, playable for first time It’s a 228KB download, which was huge for the time.
40 memorable nude gaming moments This article should not be viewed by anyone... anywhere... ever.
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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.
This article was originally published March 2016. For some, playing a video game to completion isn’t enough. They want to reveal the secrets behind its creation. Turning their fevered gaze towards cut content and cancelled games, these individuals assemble in online communities, their goal being to uncover fresh information about our favourite games and the abandoned titles we never got to play. Unseen64 is one such community. Started by a group of Italian friends in 2001, the website has grown into an international venture, staffed by volunteers from all around the globe. These volunteers are responsible for scouring the web for news about unfinished and rejected games, to archive for…
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Under the thumb: the evolution of buttons How the buttons we press daily were formed over many decades.
How Breath of the Wild plays with our nostalgia Nintendo's masterpiece re-invents the Zelda series, and part of that is growing up alongside its players.
Former jewel thief reviews GTA 5’s jewelry heists A former jewel thief has taken Grand Theft Auto 5’s heists to task, and explains how he would have done it instead.
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Warcraft III: Reforged is yet more proof Blizzard’s not the company it once was User score: 0.5. Beyond the visual downgrades, visual glitches, stutters, crashes, missing features, and connectivity issues, Blizzard now has a total disconnect with its audience.
Blizzard used to be synonymous with addicting and highly polished games, and had Midas’ golden touch for anything to do with entertainment. Now it seems as if the company is almost intentionally trying to show us just how much they just don’t give a shit. The recent launch of Warcraft III: Reforged is just the latest demonstration of the fact. The only reason this controversy has blown up at all is because it’s a remaster of a cherished classic game that was made back when Blizzard still had people with a passion for video games. Media outlets like Newsweek – while acknowledging the sorry state of the game at launch…
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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.
10 Xbox things to remember on Xbox’s 15th anniversary Did you know the console was almost called 'Odyssey of the Mind'? Really.
One person’s long, arduous quest to restore the first color arcade game Ed Fries, a former Microsoft executive, has restored part of gaming's history in his garage.
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Pokemon GO disables tracking and fans are furious Instead of fixing a bug, they decided to amputate the feature entirely. Thanks…
The latest update of Pokemon GO completely removed its feature tracking relative locations of Pokemon, while neutering third party apps that aided users with exact locations. This was called a “fix” to a bug that would mistakenly show three footsteps for every Pokemon regardless of their location. But by fixing the feature they actually meant amputation, which left Pokemon GO players stumbling in the dark. The update along with Niantic’s poor communication has enraged fans of the game. Third party apps like Pokevision mapped out exact locations of Pokemon, allowing players to find the good ones without having to tediously walk in circles. The new update effectively made it impossible for these apps…
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The magic of video game cartography Video game maps shift and redraw the borders between real and imaginary.
‘Experiment 12’: the disturbing result of 12 indie devs taking turns to make a game Our look inside the strange chaingame made by 12 different indie developers.
Under the thumb: the evolution of buttons How the buttons we press daily were formed over many decades.
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Elite’s AI created super weapons and started hunting players. Skynet is here. Frontier has had to strip out a bugged feature to stop players from being wiped out from the galaxy.
A bug in Elite Dangerous caused the game’s AI to create super weapons and start to hunt down the game’s players. Developer Frontier has had to strip out the feature at the heart of the problem, engineers’ weaponry, until the issue is fixed. It all started after Frontier released the 2.1 Engineers update. The release improved the game’s AI, making the higher ranked NPCs that would fly around Elite’s galaxy more formidable foes. As well as improving their competence in dog fights, the update allowed the AI to use interdiction hardware to pull players travelling at jump speed into normal space. The AI also had access to one of 2.1’s…
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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.
A video history of video game boobs We’ve come a long way to get to the virtual sweater puppies of today, so enjoy this video history of video game boobs.
Metroid Prime like you’ve never seen it before An extract from the new issue of Heterotopias.
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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.
Gamers have a magical gift to discover things that designers never intended them to. In a game that’s always evolving and changing like Destiny, there are lots of opportunities for exploitation. Some, like the now canonical Loot Cave, make life easier by allowing us to skip the grind, but others are just for laughs. These are some of the most hilarious exploits dedicated Destiny players have found to make the game more fun. From fantastically cheesy ways to kill bosses to painless ways to level up, these are the funniest Destiny exploits the game’s seen so far. Auto-leveling controller Watch this video on YouTube This goes beyond the level of mere…
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J. B. Harold: the 20-million-selling game series you’ve never heard of With their labyrinthine plots and adult themes, the J.B. Harold games drummed up huge sales in Japan. But despite their success, they never made it to Europe.
Eight things that just don’t make sense in the Pokemon universe Twenty years of backtracking and flip flopping until there are more contradictions than a M. Night Shyamalan movie about time travel.
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.
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Hacker receives developer-sanctioned death penalty in Guild Wars 2 Sweet justice.
Aside from feeding that loot treadmill addiction so you can stave off delirium tremens for just one more night, arguably the best part about playing an MMO is that it’s a growing, ever-changing, living world. In MMOs, players will often affect the game in an way that’s so big — through creating trends that sweep through the community, or by exploiting certain game systems on a grand scale — that the developers take notice, like with Destiny’s now-canonical loot cave. Recently, a hacker was terrorizing ArenaNet’s Guild Wars 2 until the game’s player community gathered their own evidence on this player’s misdeeds, reported it to ArenaNet, and had the hacker’s character put to death…
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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.
10 ways to instantly end your streaming career To end—or ignite??—your streaming career, you need to get naked, say naughty words, lie, and cheat.
5 plot twists that would have made great games even better When done right, a twist can be truly spectacular. Here's what they should have done...
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The Good, the Bad, and The Dovahkiin This beautiful compilation highlights some of the more memorable glitches and oddities one may come across during their Skyrim adventures.
As humankind continues to delve deeper and deeper into the valleys and plains of my beloved Skyrim, those of us who are occasionally forced from this beautiful world must sate our battle lust with YouTubes. Thankfully, Criken knows exactly what every Dovahkiin needs when there are no dragons around to be slain. Watch as he scales mountains and trolls wagons in the name of Talos. This beautiful compilation highlights some of the more memorable glitches and oddities one may come across during their adventures. Pay close attention– or else you too may experience death by cookery. It’s real. I swear. Be warned that spoilers and salty language abound in this…
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Why Zelda dungeons are so great Let's dig into how the dungeons work so well with Mark Brown's great crash-course.
The incredible career of writer and game designer Flint Dille He’s worked on everything from Transformers to Diablo to Pokemon GO, and can tell you all about Vin Diesel’s D&D character.
The psychology behind your backlog of unplayed games As games become ever cheaper and ever longer, we must necessarily accrue ever bigger piles of unplayed titles. Feel bad about it? Psychology can explain.
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10 most messed up Mass Effect 2 mods Things are about to get dumb.
Prep the Derp Drive, Joker, and set a course for epic lulz. Things are about to get dumb. Days of YouTube lurking led me to this fantastic collection of unintelligible, side-splitting nonsense. I’m starting to believe that the creators of these videos were on some seriously hard drugs and I am concerned for their well-being. Because they need to keep making these. Their ranks were originally determined by the amount of time I spent slamming my face into my keyboard while I laughed, yet I discovered sometime later that they really can be viewed in no particular order. Number one just happens to be the video that about pushed me…
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10 ways to instantly end your streaming career To end—or ignite??—your streaming career, you need to get naked, say naughty words, lie, and cheat.
The 11 most ridiculous Pokémon ever captured Not every pocket monster is a classic. Once you’ve run through the good ideas, you have to start looking a little deeper for inspiration.
Development hell: 12 funny tales from game dev history There was a time when lax employment legislation meant development teams could be locked in the office overnight.
