Milo and the Ethics of Xbox Natal

So who’s seen Milo?
Those of you who are avid gamers like me know what (who?) I’m talking about. The Natal system was unveiled last week during E3: a motion-sensing, controllerless interface for the Xbox. It’s bleeding-edge stuff. The system performs motion-capture in real time, can recognize faces and voices, and allows for a whole [...]

Zombie Apocalypse

You never thought you’d see this, did you: a whole site dedicated to zombie apocalypse flash games.
There’s some cool stuff out there.

This is a screenshot from one of my recent favourites, SAS Zombie Assault. It’s a basic but fun top-down third-person shooter. There’s a levelling-up function, as you get money for killing zombies, which you [...]

Old-School Pwnage is Back

Ladies and gentlemen of the gaming public, I give you Robokill – current king of the Flash Games.
You are a sophisticated robot killing machine, daringly inserted into the Titan Prime orbital station. Titan Prime is overrun by evil robots.
Kill the evil robots.
All evil robots must die. The screen fills with flashing blaster fire and epileptically [...]

Recursive Gaming

OK, it had to happen. Here’s a game about . . . making a game. A Massively Multiplayer Online game.
Behold, MMORPG Tycoon.

I await the outpouring of user reviews.
In related news:
Latest from Blizzard, and it’s hot:
‘Warcraft’ Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing ‘Warcraft’
Plus, no matter what game you’re playing, red team wins more often. [...]

EA Microtransactions display worrying signs of Evil

We’ve posted about microtransactions before on Objective 514. That post spawned quite a bit of discussion. Most of you seemed cool with paying for stuff – snazzy hats, for instance – as long as the stuff you bought didn’t actually affect game performance.
Well, guess what – the barely-established taboo has already been broken. By EA, [...]

Still Too Soon for a Holocaust Game?

 
British game designer Luc Bernard is taking heat for creating a video game based on the Holocaust.
In Imagination is the Only Escape, players take on the role of a  young boy in German-occupied Eastern Europe who attempts to escape the horrors of the real world though an imaginary one.
At least one Holocaust survivor has spoken vehemently against the still-unreleased game. Jack Kagan, originally from [...]

Gaming’s Biggest Moments, According to Sid Meier

 
Industry giant Sid Meier laid out his list of the most important moments in gaming history to a small group of journalists at a luncheon last week.
The prolific game designer and co-founder of Firaxis Games cited three developments as being critical moments in gaming history:

IBM’s development of the personal computer;

The appearance of games like Sim City that encouraged players [...]

Design Game, Save World

You think that headline is a joke? It may seem funny, but check out the best thing to come out of GDC this year: this rant by Jane McGonigal.
Here are her slides.

Watch it. Awesomeness.

I’m off to save the world now.
[cross-posted to just another meme vector]

This is gonna be big

Spore is coming. It’s from Will Wright, who brought us Sim City, Sim (every thing else) and The Sims (bestselling game series ever in the history of everything).
Take a unicellular creature and evolve it out through sea, land, to intelligence, tribal, civilization, and eventually explore the galaxy. The player learning curve is going to be [...]