video To coincide with the release of the teaser trailer for 007: Skyfall, Sam Mednes’ turn at helm of the James Bond machine, Activision released a trailer for the Bond game it will release this fall to accompany the film. 007 Legends doesn’t actually have anything to do with Skyfall but is instea
Three years ago Jason Rohrer signed a deal to make his first game for a traditional publisher. The man bend the now iconic Passage (a game that seems to have made everybody cry, at some point), reached an agreement with Majesco to make an ambitious political game for the Nintendo DS. Diamond Trust o
Facebook’s IPO last Friday was by a major disappointment by most accounts. The implications of the underwhelming launch had a negative impact on Zynga, whose own IPO in late 2011 was similarly disappointing, closing at a lower price than it launched at. Is there a structural cause connecting the amb
In its bid to remain at the center of the ever-shifting videogame business, EA announced it will waive all fees for crowd-funded games for 90 days on its PC-based distribution platform Origin. The first confirmed title to take advantage of the offer is Wasteland 2, the sequel to the beloved PC rolep
Video Tale of Tales, the game design duo behind The Graveyard, Vanitas, and Fatale, are working on a new game for autumn 2012. The project, Bientôt l’été, is an abstract multiplayer game inspired by French writer and filmmaker Marguerite Duras. Like their earlier work, Bientôt l’été won’t be about
“There are no second acts in American lives,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote. The sentiments seems to be painfully true with athletes migrating from the locker room to the board room. Last week, Curt Schilling’s 38 Studios had to choose between paying its employees for the week or going into default on a
Though the trial between Activision and Call of Duty co-creators Jason West and Vince Zampella has yet to begin, pre-trial documents released last week claimed that the publisher tried to hack into the duo’s work computers. Thomas Fenady was Director of IT at Activision in 2009 and in a pre-trial de
What are the roots of free-to-play capitalism? Michael Thomsen argues that in-game commodities and microtransactions are not new ideas so much as the latest ways that videogame companies instrumentalize us.
The ever-popular genre of medieval role-playing continues its downward march with Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, a collaboration between game-design heavyweight Ken Rolston, fantasy luminary R.A. Salvatore, and comics auteur Todd McFarlane. Michael Thomsen finds the results less than uninspiring; th
Nintendo’s new Zelda opus is a paean to learning and wonderment. Michael Thomsen dissects the contradictions at the heart of Skyward Sword, both mechanical and human.
What sense can be made of the influx of game mechanics and forms? Michael Thomsen argues that recent videogames have pruned their rules with purpose, bringing us into the beginning of a neoclassical era of game design.
Why a series of mini-games about swimming, vegetables, and balloons is one of the more profound titles in recent memory. Michael Thomsen breaks down the expressive abilities of Nintendo’s Wii MotionPlus controller.
We speak with researcher and assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford University, Ingmar Riedel-Kruse, about making games with microscopic lifeforms.
Think games are smart now? MyCyberTwin’s John Zakos and his business partner Liesl Capper-Beilby are hoping to bring their moldable AI clay to everything from massively multiplayer games to microwaves. Will AI in games be too smart for its own good?
