I’m fairly certain most of the MMO gaming population is currently in Northrend, but for those still stuck at work (you mean you didn’t take off?), I wanted to wish you all a happy WotLK release day. I’m currently waiting for the game to finish downloading and installing (thank you, MMO Champion). And then it’s bye bye Outland, hello frosty cold new place.
I’m taking the wait time to think about the most pressing question I believe most players ask themselves upon launching a new expansion: What to do first?
Which of my 70s do I want to level to 80? Should …read more

SCAD student Danial Floyd, inspired by insipid coverage of sex in games discussions and by the rambling rants of Yahtzee over at Zero Punctuation, put together a rousing Flash presentation as part of a Media Theory class that looks are the past, present, and Floyd’s suggestions for the future of sex in video games. Have a look:

 
Floyd calls for game developers to portray sex, rather than exploit sex and then proceeds to remind his viewers that the gaming industry is still a baby relative to other established mediums like film. Therein lies the key in my opinion, as …read more

I’m a slowpoke!
Aiza over at Gamerlite tagged me for a meme about week and a half ago that pokes around in my gaming preferences and most embarrassing moments.

Name and Job/s (if you want to share it) – Erin, winemaker (no really!) and not-so-closet uber-nerd.
You’re currently playing? – Stuck with Call of Duty 2 after switching to Mac, waiting for CoD4. Singstar, Guitar Hero, Casual Games on the road at Kongregate.
Favorite game genre/s – FPS, RPG, some MMO, some racing
Favorite game/s of all time – Medal of Honor: Allied Assault; Mario Kart; Rogue Spear; Final Fantasy VIII (I …read more

Reporting from Montréal this week where, thankfully, I’m staying in a rather anglo-centric area so that I don’t insult/torment French culture with my mutilated Franglais. Although my reasons for being here are non-gaming, it certainly hasn’t stopped me from scouring my area around Saint-Catherine and Guy for information.
I’m happy to report that video game culture is alive and well here in Montréal. I’m staying two doors down from a large 24-hour gaming café, Ubisoft, Eidos and EA are all within a short walk (I’ll stalk them later), and the number of studios developing either games, or software for …read more

There’s a point when yesterday’s innovation becomes today’s over-used, highly obnoxious crap. Call it a fad, call it a momentary lapse in development judgment, but sometimes things just get a little out of hand and a neat characteristic of one game (deemed successful), soon reaches out, propagates, and enslaves the entire gaming world.
Everyone’s favourite cranky game blog, Sarcastic Gamer, nominated 5 fads that it felt were the worst offenders over the last decade. I absolutely agree with all of them, and think that post could likely serve as a “what not to do” list for future game developers. We’ve all …read more

So you’ve always considered yourself a hardcore gamer. You’ve boasted to your friends and sat atop your throne of Gaming Greatness. But time has past. You’ve gotten older. Gotten married. Maybe have more responsibilities. So, are you still really hardcore? 
TechRadar has listed ‘11 Signs That You’re Not A Hardcore Gamer’ to help you answer the eternal question.

You prefer playing against the computer
You only play when your girlfriend is out
You believe that winning isn’t everything
It’s been days, not hours since you last switched on your console
You like your Xbox 360 and your PS3 equally
You fondly remember a ‘golden age’ of gaming
You …read more

The race is one to build on an internet-wide phenomenon (Facebook) and apply it in a focussed fashion to the games industry. I’ve been reading quite a few press releases lately that detail several startups getting capital funding, and existing sites expanding their functionality, all in an effort to entire gamers to live out their gaming social lives on their site. Here’s some of the ones I’ve stumbled across:
GameStrata.com — an online ranking system and social network, the site develops “community tools for gamers”. Form Groups aligned with your game of choice, have your own personal forum, share tips and …read more

Scourge of fans of both quality cinema and protecting the unspoiled reputation of gaming’s great franchises, Uwe Boll has also been known to come out swinging at critics of his work with such vastly intelligent retorts as calling the reviewer “stupid”. For years, many in the gaming community have been praying that no more of his hijinxs get funded by major movie studios and it looks like we may just get our way, thanks to Boll himself.
In a typically Bollian reaction to an online petition at FearNet, Uwe the Wonderful brushed aside the pleas of 18,000 people, all requesting that …read more

Another take on the platform wars predicts that consoles will go the way of the dinosaur, a somewhat surprising statement given that it was spoken by Sandy Duncan, the former Vice President of Microsoft’s European “Home and Entertainment” division.
Duncan, whose opinion I whole-heartedly agree with, cites convergence as the major threat to the ongoing viability of dedicated gaming equipments, such as consoles. Nothing illustrates technological convergence quite as clearly as mobile phone technology. In the last decade, bulky, expensive phones have metamorphisized into sleek, stylish personal accessories that not only act as phones, but also as dayplanners, emailers, cameras, camcorders, …read more

Based on recent statistics that show PC platform games accounting for only 14% of the total game sales in 2007, the alarmists are back at the oft-heard panic button, ringing in the doom of PC gaming in the face of the uber-advanced technology now present in consoles. It used to be that PC processors slaughtered the capabilities and in-game performance of any and all console challengers, but with things like PS3 “The Cell” processor and graphics ships rivalling top of the line PC products…is the PC a dying gaming beast?
If you take the figures at face value than sure, PCs …read more