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Microsoft wanted installation to just work, more uniform interfaces, better community building features, online integration between PCs and consoles, and a unified retail attack to give the platform the cohesive appearance it's sorely lacked. But what we've ended up with is just prettier packaging and a pretty good magazine.
Every year, the gaming media descends on widely covered conventions like GDC, E3 and the Tokyo Game Show, where great floods of humanity swell and surge while the biggest names in the industry try to convince us that have the skeleton key to gaming bliss. But these are not the only conventions eager public relations masterminds and confident executives attend, and the unseen and largely uncovered conventions have more power to direct the casual consumer than E3 ever has.
A game is just a game. My Halo 3 pre-order isn't generating interest for anyone but EB/GameStop, and when I finally cash it out next week, it will have instantly depreciated by about 50 percent. This is what we call economics of the stupid.
If WotC isn't aiming to be the Blizzard of the tabletop gaming industry, it's certainly putting on a good show.
As the games become more important and the hardware less so, maybe the simplest path to Rapture really is the best one. If I'd just stop worrying and learn to love the Box, the little big guy could finally be set free and I'd get to see first-hand what all the hullabaloo is about. It certainly makes sense. So why do I, and the PC crowd at large, struggle against it?
That Electronic Arts pretties up the lawsuits brought against it or that Dow Chemical wouldn't want you to know about what happened in Bhopal is both obvious and a great example of why you should be skeptical of anything derived from a source anyone can edit.
"One of the locations we'll be taking you this evening is a construction site," said the NCsoft representative at the front of the bus. "Because they're using blasting caps, there's a very real danger of injury. So we'll need to collect your cell phones."
Russ Pitts takes a trip to Richard Garriott's Castle Britannia and lives to tell the story.
Yahtzee Croshaw called me a craven douche last week because I chose not to purchase the 2005 action-adventure game Psychonauts when it was released. My first instinct was to defend my honor by telling him about all the other weird games I've bought over the years (got a copy of Bad Mojo on your shelf, Yahtzee?), but I decided instead that maybe my energies would be better directed toward discovering what all the uproar was about.
I'm not a religious man in any sense of the word, but I've heard of the Seven Sins. Employed a few of them, even. But in the gamer hierarchy of evil, no sin is greater than envy. It's the yarn entwined into the fabric of our beings. True, we lust after the latest gadgets, games and gewgaws, but show us a picture of someone else possessing that object we covet and all before us turns to red.
BioShock was released four days ago and is already on most publications' "must buy" lists. Reviews are trending toward 10, and everyone who's anyone in game writing has something to say about it. But should you buy it?
We here at Team Humidor think you should make up your own mind, and to that end, have offered up the following reasons to buy (and not to buy) BioShock.
A lot has changed since GameTap's release, though. In the last few months I've seen and heard more mention of GameTap in gaming forums, podcasts and editorials than I have in its two-year lifespan. Although it doesn't yet seem to garner the same attention as other high-profile content delivery services, like Nintendo's Virtual Console or Valve's Steam platform, GameTap looks to be gaining ground.
One of the major responsibilities a debate moderator has (other than counting how many times someone says "strategery") is posing interesting and bombastic questions to the panel.
With that in mind, I wanted to reach out to members of The Escapist Forum for questions they might want to ask about the future - and present - of virtual economies.
The recent furor over the slaughter of black zombies by the very white Chris Redfield in Resident Evil 5 isn't the first time complaints about game-based racism have been raised, although it's certainly one of the most tenuous cases. While examples of overt bias in videogames are rare, they tend to attract disproportionate levels of attention because, well, they're videogames. The medium is a lens, focusing and amplifying everything - violence, sex and prejudice - beyond their inherent values. What's often forgotten is just how far we've come.
Where some people have beauty salons or bars, though, gamers have virtual worlds. IRC, instant messaging and message boards are all something most internet users can understand, but there's nothing quite like hanging around in-game to gain a true appreciation for the human need for interaction.
Poor Microsoft. They've been run through the ringer lately. Most recently, they announced that every single Xbox 360 sold has the same defect that can cause the unit to overheat and malfunction, rendering it permanently unusable.
