Author: Danielle Riendeau

News

Seven-year-old breaks every imaginable stereotype to become youngest game programmer

While #Objectify – a Twitter movement held to raise awareness of stereotypes women in the game industry need to deal with, by objectifying attractive men in the industry – has basically come and gone, and the conversation about women’s experiences in the industry continues across sectors, one event in the corner of Philly made it all look like child’s play. – – – During a January Bootstrap Expo at UPenn, seven-year-old Zora Ball (above) became one of the youngest people ever to program a complete game all by herself. Ball has become the youngest individual to create a full version…
News

New advances in videogame therapy heal the mind and soothe the soul.

There’s been a proliferation lately of games that address mental illness – particularly anxiety and depression. From the brilliant, difficult Actual Sunlight to today’s release of Depression Quest, the taboo of talking about mental illness in game is starting to peel back. Anecdotally, it also seems more people in the game industry are starting to open up about their own personal brushes with mood disorders. A number of high profile developers and writers– like Russ Pitts and PopCap’s Jeff Green, among many others – have made statements about suffering from similar maladies as of late. Overall, it seems like gaming…
News

The dream of throwing trucks with your mind is here.

Not long ago, I wrote about the science behind one of the world’s first truly bionic limbs – and imagined the use of the miraculous tech for gameplay purposes. The allure of being able to control a game – or have one’s emotional state be an actual variable in gameplay – is fascinating and intoxicating, and one new Kickstarter project is already lined up to make good on it. Throw Trucks With Your Mind is a multiplayer-focused game where you … wait for it … throw trucks with your mind! No, seriously! Using your brainwaves, you unleash your psychokinetic powers…
News

We’re preparing for the post-Valentine’s robot takeover.

It’s one of the most common sci-fi – and video game – tropes: the fear of a hostile robot takeover. The terror that humanity’s breakneck technological race to create better machines will result in the creation of a master race that’s bigger, better, stronger, and much, much smarter than we are. It was the very plot of The Matrix and The Terminator series, the theme of Battlestar Galactia, the underlying drama of I, Robot, and the narrative domain of such seminal games as System Shock 2, Portal, and the recent Binary Domain. This terror has found its way out of…
News

What is the ratio of video game bullets to real-life ammo?

Logically speaking, guns don’t kill people – it’s what comes out of them that you need to watch out for. Wired just published an infographic-rich feature that examines the proliferation of ammunition in the United States, and it’s positively crazy. – – – As the nation debates, again, the best way to curb gun violence, many of the questions focus on the firearms themselves. But an equally important consideration is ammunition. Roughly 10 billion rounds are manufactured in the US each year, with a weight equal to two Titanics. More to the point, it’s enough bullets to pump 32 rounds into…
News

New Kinect project at London hospital gives sick kids the power to control the weather

It’s been said many times, many ways – but it’s true that the most interesting uses on the Kinect platform are almost never commercial games. Woodland Wiggle is not only one of the coolest – a combination art installation and play space – it’s also one of the most heartwarming. You see; it’s a permanent installation at The Royal London hospital, aimed at helping sick children heal and deal with the obvious stressors of illness and hospitalization. Woodland Wiggle is an interactive game displayed on a television the size of a room. Children can enter into a storybook illustrated world enabling…
News

Is this the first 400-year long Flash game?

Thoughtful and methodical, 400 Years is a humble Flash game with bold ideas. You play as a sort of living stone face (think pixel art Easter Island statue). You move through the 2D world, as one does in a platformer, only, instead of giving you a jump command, pressing the space bar advances time, season by season. You have precisely 400 years (with four seasons each), to reach the end of the game. – – – To accomplish this, you must make clever use of your time-advancing abilities. In winter, water freezes, allowing you to walk across ponds and lakes.…
News

Videogame designers big and small agree on what’s broken, just not on how to fix it.

Anna Anthropy, acclaimed designer of games such as Dys4ia and author of Rise of the Video Game Zinesters, thinks that game development should be blown wide open. According to Zinesters, Anthropy wants everyone in society – particularly the outcasts – to be making games, so that the actual opinions of the underrepresented become the majority. The cream will rise to the top in her scenario, and the underground will become the mainstream. She has little patience for the celebration of adolescent male power fantasies we so often see in big budget titles. Believe it or not, Heavy Rain creator David Cage’s recent DICE talk…
News

The Skyrim food truck tour has returned, still gives no credit to Kill Screen for idea

We don’t always comment on marketing, but this occasion warrants a very special mention. In order to advertise for upcoming MMO The Elder Scrolls Online, publisher Bethesda and publishing giant Future US are planning a food truck tour of America. They’re stopping at all of the major gaming media events – SXSW, PAX, E3, as well as a number of bigger universities. What I really want to know is what they’ll be serving. Fake mead? Goofily named burritos? Smoked turkey legs? Probably the turkey legs. – – – There are more than a few good ideas in Gus Mustrapa’s Things…