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Kids who play video games have better memory and better control over their motor skills than kids who don’t, according to a new study looking at adolescent brain function. Video games might not be responsible for those differences — the study can’t say what the causes are — but the findings add to a bigger body of work showing gamers have better performance on some tests of brain function. That lends support to efforts to develop games that can treat cognitive problems. “This study adds to our growing understanding of the associations between playing video games and brain development,” said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, in a statement. The study used data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, which launched in 2018 and is tracking brain development in thousands of children in the United States as they grow into adulthood. Participants periodically go through a battery of assessments, including brain imaging, cognitive tasks, mental health screenings, physical health exams, and other tests. To study video games and cognition, the research team on this new study pulled from the first set of assessments in the ABCD study. It included data on 2,217 children who were nine and 10 years old. The ABCD study asked participants how many hours of video games they played on a typical weekday or weekend day. The research team divided the group into video gamers (kids who played at least 21 hours per week) and non-video gamers (kids who played no video games per week). Kids who only played occasionally weren’t included in the study. Then, the research team looked at the kids’ performance on tests that measure attention, impulse control, and memory. The video gamers did better on the tests, the study found. They also had differences in brain activity patterns from the non-gamers — they had more activity in brain regions involved with attention and memory when they were performing the tests. Notably, there were no differences between the two groups on measures of mental health (more evidence rebutting widespread concerns that video games are bad for emotional well-being). This study adds to a large body of work showing differences in the brains of gamers compared with non-gamers and hinting that gamers have an edge on certain types of brain function. Companies are trying to leverage those differences to develop video games that treat cognitive conditions. Akili Interactive, for example, has a prescription video game to treat ADHD, and DeepWell Digital Therapeutics wants to find the therapeutic value in existing games. But despite all that work, it’s still not clear why there are differences between gamers and non-gamers in this age group. It could be that video games cause the improvements in cognition. It could also be that people who already have better attention for tasks like the ones in this study are more drawn to video games. There are many different types of video games, as well — this new study, for example, didn’t ask what games the gamers played. “Large gaps in our knowledge on this topic persist,” wrote Kirk Welker, a neuroradiologist at the Mayo Clinic, in a commentary accompanying the study. | Video Games |
Mushroom Kingdom, here we come.Gif: Illumination/NintendoUniversal, Illumination, and Nintendo just smashed the question mark block that is their upcoming animated The Super Mario Bros. Movie—but it wasn’t a mushroom or flower that popped up. It was a first-look teaser trailer.OffEnglishThe trailer debuted at New York Comic-Con and gives us a tantalizing look at the film, which is hitting theaters on April 7, 2023. As previously announced, Chris Pratt is voicing Mario, Charlie Day is Luigi, Anya Taylor-Joy is Peach, Jack Black is Bowser, Keegan-Michael Key is Toad, Seth Rogen is Donkey Kong, Fred Armisen is Cranky Kong, Kevin Michael Richardson is Kamek, and Sebastian Maniscalco is Spike. Charles Martinet, the voice of Mario from the video games, will also appear.The first word of the Super Mario Bros. film hit back in 2017 and it’s been in the works ever since. Chris Meledandri, founder and CEO of Illumination, which is known for the Despicable Me and Minions movies, is producing along with the Nintendo’s legendary Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario. Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic are directing from a script by Matthew Fogel.No matter what you think of the trailer, or the end product, it’s easy to imagine just how important this film is to everyone involved. Nintendo got more than a little burned back in the 1990s with the live-action film, to a point where it basically closed its doors to movie studios for decades, with the notable exception of Pokémon. If Mario works, who knows what could be next? The Legend of Zelda? Metroid? Mario Kart? Luigi’s Mansion? Truly the possibilities are endless.What are your thoughts on this? Are you worried about the voices? Is Mario still a big enough draw for the film to be a hit? Is Illumination the right partner for Nintendo? Let us know below.G/O Media may get a commissionWant more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel and Star Wars releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. | Video Games |
An attendee uses a Microsoft Xbox One controller while playing a video game at the Paris Games Week, a trade fair for video games in Paris, France, October 29, 2019. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/File PhotoRegister now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comAug 10 (Reuters) - Gaming companies are facing a slowdown in demand for video games from pandemic highs, raising doubts about their ability to weataher an economic downturn.Rising prices and a lack of hit titles have added to problems for video game publishers Activision Blizzard Inc (ATVI.O) and Electronic Arts (EA.O) that are also battling supply-chain delays and a shift in consumer choices due to easing lockdowns.The latest proof of that came on Tuesday from gaming platform Roblox (RBLX.N) whose revenue growth eased to just 30% from 83% two quarters ago. read more Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comU.S. consumer spending on video games fell 11% in June and is expected to decline 8.7% this year, data from analytics firm NPD showed."The job market is still hot, there is plenty of froth on the economy causing aggressive inflation and the relaxation of COVID restrictions are leading consumers to consider spending on more experiences outside of the home," said Jesse Divnich, senior vice president at Interpret, a video game market research firm.Activision Blizzard reported smaller-than-expected quarterly profit, while rival Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive (TTWO.O) warned of disappointing sales ahead."When you have 50% of big bank economists saying we might be in a recession in the next quarter or two, my attitude is... we're in a recession and... we are seeing some softness," Take-Two top boss Strauss Zelnick told analysts.Console makers too have taken a hit as gaming revenue dropped for Xbox-maker Microsoft (MSFT.O), while PlayStation-maker Sony (6758.T) cut its forecast and Nintendo (7974.T) posted lower sales.The weak demand comes as double whammy for these firms that are struggling with component shortages.Gaming chipmakers are seeing a knock-on effect of the cooling demand. Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD.O) said sales of its sales of graphic gaming cards fell, while Nvidia (NVDA.O) flagged a 19% sequential drop in revenue.Analysts and company executives, however, expect the industry to grow above pre-pandemic levels, leaning on the launch of delayed titles and an easing of parts shortages.Data firm Newzoo showed the global games market will generate $196.8 billion in 2022, gaining 2.1% compared to a 7.6% jump in 2021."Video games aren't bulletproof, but they do tend to fare well during challenging times," Steven Bailey, an analyst at research firm Omdia said.(The story corrects firm's name to Interpret from SVP Games Research in paragraph 5.)Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comReporting by Tiyashi Datta, Ankur Banerjee, Eva Mathews and Nivedita Balu in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun KoyyurOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | Video Games |
Early on in Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, one of the trio of lead characters gives a fictional interview to a very real video games publication. The troubled but passionate Samson Mazur tells the interviewer, “There is no more intimate act than play, even sex.” This is an explosive statement, but a perfect one in the context of a novel that treasures the act of play and holds it sacred. In some ways, this is a thesis statement for Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow itself: the novel opening its heart, and showing you what it is truly about.Video games are seldom treated in literature as a site of emotion, but in Zevin’s work they are the very landscape that the full spectrum of relationships, grief, and love play out in. The world of video games is a surprisingly uncommon location for the modern commercial or literary novel, despite the fact that they have long since evolved from children’s toy or tech curio into a form of entertainment that is so mainstream as to be ordinary.In Stephen Sexton’s award-winning poetry collection, If All the World and Love Were Young, the structure is a direct reflection of the narrative and physical journey through the Super Nintendo System classic, Super Mario World. Each piece in the work is named after, and directly in conversation with, a level in the game. The emotional core of the work is that it is an elegy for his mother: as we read the poems, we are at once situated in the strange, pixelated world of the game, on Yoshi’s Island, in Donut Plains: but crucially, we are also in Sexton’s childhood, in front of his television, in the landscape of his youth. The discussion of video game terms such as “infinite lives” becomes richer and deeper when we take that language and place it back into our own navigation of loss. This requires readers to allow a technical video game term to become poetic, to transfer meaning and to develop depth.Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow also engages with this dissonance: in video games, death is simply part of play. When you die, you start again. As metaphors go, this very standard video game mechanism becomes deeply confronting.Video games are much younger than books, and we are only at the beginning of what they might becomeWhen asked about what she thought of where video games and literature are in relation to each other as mediums, Zevin said, “video games are an incredibly young form – obviously, much younger than books, and we are only at the beginning of what they might become”.She’s right: the relative newness of video games in comparison to the novel is what truly separates them, making their intersections all the more special, and rare. The earliest video games emerged in the 1950s, long before the black and white home consoles that brought Pong into living rooms in the 1970s. From that single compelling screen all the way up to the psychedelic, shallow touch of Candy Crush, or the rolling and emotive landscapes of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, or the delicate artistry and literary merit of Disco Elysium, video games have come an extraordiary distance both technologically and artistically in the 50 years since Pong. In contrast, the first Greek and Latin texts that could be considered prose novels come from the first century. Fifty years is a dot, a pixel, in comparison with the history of the book.Arguably video games have far more in common with cinema, when it comes to their growth as an art form: around 50 years after the birth of the moving image in 1895, in 1941, audiences were met with Citizen Kane. As far back as 2017, the Hollywood Reporter noted that the video games industry was earning nearly three times as much as the film industry.We now see video games intersecting with television and cinema more regularly, but still, literature and poetry are on the other side of a chasm. The writers who bridge this, such as Zevin and Sexton, are forging an important path. Ernest Cline’s popular but hugely divisive Ready Player One certainly did make inroads across this gap in 2011, but Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow takes a more humane and elegant path through video game culture than the quite literal and dated feel of Cline’s book. Tomorrow is a work about people who play games to survive, and who make games to live: it does not use the language of video games as set dressing. Rather, the world of video games and video game development is just the landscape in which life plays out. This work doesn’t punish you for not knowing who Solid Snake is, or never having played a farming simulator. Tomorrow is about love, above all things, and if you miss a reference, you won’t feel it.Waterstones’ head of fiction, Bea Carvalho, notes Tomorrow’s approachability: “The history of gaming here is fascinating and the nostalgia is stunning: it will be an instant classic for any gaming fan, and will surely encourage many readers to dust off old consoles. But Zevin’s talent is such that prior fandom is by no means a prerequisite, as she uses the art form as a prism through which to understand the era’s political and technological landscape and to explore identity, grief, mental health, success and failure, among many other topics.”By no means are Sexton, Zevin and Cline’s works the only books about video games, or the only works of art in which video games are central to the emotional arc. Alan Butler’s On Exactitude in Science, shown at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2017, presented Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi in a cinematic diptych with his own mirroring work: a frame-by-frame recreation of Reggio’s original shot inside the world of Grand Theft Auto 5. Further back still in 1979, long before Charlie Brooker’s Bandersnatch brought the interactive story to modern homes via Netflix, Lynn Hershman Leeson’s installation Lorna invited viewers to participate in an interactive narrative using a remote control, television and laser disc system to choose their way through a harrowing story about agoraphobia.In nonfiction, Boss Fight Books have been publishing slim, considered volumes of personal essays and close studies of games since 2013, and are arguably en route to becoming a Rough Trade Books of the medium. Each Boss Fight Book focuses closely on a single video game, and the author’s perspective on it, as well as the history of the work, from Earthbound to Goldeneye, closely reading not only the game but often the life of the writer the game touched, too.Video games have been flickering at the edges of other art forms for almost as long as they have existed, and watching them become the heart of novels such as Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is hopeful. Games are an intimate experience, as is the experience of reading literature and witnessing art – and this intimacy is what can connect them, and draw them closer together. Their pasts may be misaligned, but their tomorrow is full of promise. | Video Games |
Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto via Getty ImagesFacebook plans to close down its Facebook Gaming app, which lets users watch and play video games on-demand.Starting Oct. 28, Facebook Gaming will no longer be available on iOS and Android, while gaming features will continue to be accessible via the main Facebook app."We want to extend our heartfelt thanks to all of you for everything that you've done to build a thriving community for gamers and fans since this app first launched," the company said in an update on the Facebook Gaming app."This was truly a community-led effort to bring new gaming features to Facebook," it added."Despite this news, our mission to connect players, fans and creators with the games they love hasn't changed, and you'll still be able to find your games, streamers and groups when you visit Gaming in the Facebook app."Read more about tech and crypto from CNBC ProLaunched more than two years ago as the Covid-19 outbreak stoked a boom in both playing and watching video games, Facebook Gaming was once viewed as a potential threat to Twitch, the dominant player in that market.Facebook, owned by the newly rebranded parent company Meta, has struggled to gain a foothold in the live game streaming market. According to a report from market research firm Streamlabs, in the second quarter of 2022 Facebook Gaming accounted for only 7.9% of the market share for amount of hours watched, behind Twitch (76.7%) and YouTube (15.4%).Facebook isn't the first internet giant to have tried and failed at recreating the Twitch formula. In 2020, Microsoft shuttered its own streaming service, Mixer, after signing a multimillion dollar to have the famous Fortnite player Tyler "Ninja" Blevins stream on its service exclusively.YouTube, Twitch's closest competitor, has found more success chipping away at Twitch's dominance. The company's YouTube Gaming division has managed to tempt away top talent from Twitch lately, including Ludwig Ahgren, Rachell Hofstetter and Timothy Betar — better known online under their respective aliases "Ludwig," "Valkyrae" and "TimTheTatman." | Video Games |
Many adolescents game a lot without negative effects on their wellbeing HomeNewsMany adolescents game a lot without negative effects on their wellbeing A new study published by University of Oxford researchers in an open-access journal, JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting, shows that although many school-age adolescents are spending considerable time gaming, it is not having a negative impact on the wellbeing. The OxWell Student Survey is one of the largest school surveys of adolescent health and wellbeing in England. More than 12,000 secondary school-aged students (12-18 years) took part in the latest survey in June-July 2021 and provided information on how much they game.Almost one-third (31.2%) of students that answered questions on their gaming reported spending at least 3.5 hours each day playing games on any electronic device (‘heavy’ gamers), but a fifth (21.8%) reported not engaging in any gaming. The study identified different profiles of adolescents who game for longer periods of time based on their psychological wellbeing, how much time they spent playing games on different electronic devices, and how much control they have over their gaming behaviours. They found that most of the ‘heavy’ gamers were experiencing no negative effects with regards to their well-being and 44% of ‘heavy’ gamers reported higher wellbeing than those who play games less or do not play them at all.Lead author Dr Simona Skripkauskaite of Oxford's Departments of Experimental Psychology and Psychiatry, said: 'Our findings suggest that there is a change in how adolescents are spending their free time with a substantial proportion choosing to spend most of this time playing video games. It is reassuring to see that, for most, this is not related to co-occurring wellbeing issues or mental ill-health. These findings suggest that, rather than worrying about the time spent playing video games, we should explore the opportunity of video gaming as a potential tool to find more affordable, creative and less stigmatising ways to reach and help adolescents experiencing emotional and behavioural difficulties.'The study highlights, however, that this was not the case for everybody. 1 in 12 adolescents who were ‘heavy’ gamers did report a loss of control over gaming and wellbeing issues. They were more likely to be female and report gaming on their mobile phones. They were also, however, more likely to report previous experiences of abuse or anxiety and aggressive behaviours, suggesting that those with traumatic experiences and mental health issues may turn to gaming as a coping mechanism.Co-author Mina Fazel, Professor of Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Oxford's Department of Psychiatry, said: 'Our findings are similar to those in adult gaming populations and highlight that the majority are not experiencing negative effects gaming. There is, however, an important subgroup of adolescents who are more likely to show signs of problematic use of gaming and lower mental health, and these findings can help us better identify these young people who are more likely to be females who are playing on their phones.'The full paper can be read in the journal JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting.Other research from the OxWell Student Survey can be read here. This research was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research Applied Research Collaboration Oxford and Thames Valley at Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and the Westminster Foundation. Latest | Video Games |
From “Fortnite,” courtesy of Epic Games READ MORE: The Metaverse Will Make Gamers of Us All (CoinDesk) The metaverse may be many things to many people, but one thing everyone agrees on is that a lot of people will come together in its virtual worlds to play video games. “Video game developers are likely to be the primary designers of the metaverse because at its core the metaverse is a video game,” Janine Yorio, head of real estate at online investment platform Republic, and Zach Hungate, director of gaming at Everyrealm, a metaverse innovation and investment company, declare in CoinDesk. Video games, they say, are the primary activity that will bring us to the metaverse in the first place, and then have us coming back over and over and over again. “Video games have become a primary form of socialization,” they argue. “The metaverse generation of children up to age 18 today has very different expectations from technology — even compared to millennials. They spend time in interactive environments where they play games, socialize with friends, build small businesses, and buy and sell things.” Watch This: Is Gaming the Gateway to the Metaverse? Today’s youth wants the socialization of playing together online. They believe the next set of metaverse video games will not be after-thoughts or mini games but the main experience. This will include first-person shooters like Fortnite as well as old-school arcade games that resemble Super Mario Brothers or Pac Man. Other times we will procrastinate with more mindless pattern games like Candy Crush or build worlds like the Sims or Second Life. If that’s beginning to sound like a lot like Ready, Player One then Yorio and Hungate would concur Author Ernest Cline’s vision of the metaverse is as a grandiose virtual reality where people spend the majority of their time, offering an escape from a reality battered by social, economic and political strife. The metaverse, in their conception, will consist of robust and highly customizable video game worlds. The games will be of an extremely high quality, often built by AAA gaming studios. They may also be built on the blockchain and it is video game developers who will be the architects of this world. “When a person turns a door knob in the metaverse, the door swings open. That is not just a 3D architectural model, but a world with cause and effect — and few coders outside of gaming studios know how to program that world.” “Video games have become a primary form of socialization. The metaverse generation of children up to age 18 today has very different expectations from technology — even compared to millennials. They spend time in interactive environments where they play games, socialize with friends, build small businesses, and buy and sell things.”— Janine Yorio & Zach Hungate Video game developers are typically among the best and brightest graduates of computer science educational programs because video game development is highly complex. “The person writing the code must think in 3D,” they say. “These developers cannot be created rapidly in coding schools the way that HTML developers are, which means there will be a greater demand for game development talent from remote locations and emerging markets, causing a new economic opportunity for those who are crafty enough to teach themselves game development.” Watch This: The Metaverse Explained in 14 Minutes You can read a full transcript of the video here. Are you interested in contributing ideas, suggestions or opinions? We’d love to hear from you. Email us here. | Video Games |
Spending time playing computer games does not have a negative impact on mood, according to the largest study of its kind.University of Oxford researchers tracked nearly 39,000 adult gamers and found “little to no evidence” linking the number of hours spent playing video games with emotional wellbeing.The results call into question policies designed to counteract the supposed ill effects of gaming, such as China limiting young people’s playing time to an hour a day.Professor Andrew Przybylski, a psychologist with the Oxford Internet Institute, who oversaw the study, said his team had found “pretty convincing evidence that increasing or decreasing the amount of time you spend playing games isn’t good or bad for you”. He said: “You would have to play a whole | Video Games |
Rockstar’s next instalment in its Grand Theft Auto series could be one of the most anticipated video games in existence, and a new purported leak could offer us our best look yet at GTA 6. The trove of data, which PCGamer discovered via a GTAForums post by the alleged hacker themselves, contains some 90 videos of clips from the game, with debug code and interfaces running and helping back up the veracity of the claims.
Interestingly, the hacker (who goes by ‘teapotuberhacker’ on the GTAForums) also claims to be the person responsible for the recent Uber hack, and says that they got the video by gaining access to a Rockstar employee’s Slack account — which is the same MO for Uber’s massive breach.
The leaks themselves appear either legitimate, or fakes created with such a high degree of attention to detail and authenticity that they have won over what was initially a very skeptical GTAForums member audience. Various clips from the leak depict both male and female protagonist characters, which does fit with other reports about what to expect in the forthcoming game. They also show gameplay taking place in a Miami-analog fictional city, again matching early reports about what GTA 6 will bring to the franchise.
It’s worth noting that these videos likely show an older build, which some indication they could be from around 2017. The game has been reportedly in development since 2014 (GTA 5 originally launched in 2013) so it would be reasonable to expect development snapshots to be from various builds over the years. Earlier this month, Rockstar rolled the credits from GTA 5 and GTA 5 Online on its website, titling the page ‘Thank You,’ which many took as a sign that it was winding down active development on the long-running and much-expanded fifth instalment in the series to focus more directly on the forthcoming sequel.
We’ve reached out to Rockstar owner Take-Two Interactive but did not hear back immediately. We’ll update this post with more if and when they respond. | Video Games |
A man rides an electric bike past the Tencent headquarters in Nanshan district of Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China September 2, 2022. REUTERS/David KirtonRegister now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSept 7 (Reuters) - Chinese tech giant Tencent (0700.HK) is increasing its minority stake in Ubisoft (UBIP.PA) in a deal with the company's founding family that values France's biggest video game maker at more than 10 billion euros ($9.88 billion) amid a wave of buyouts in the industry.The deal underscores the appetite of deep-pocketed Chinese gaming giants for foreign studios and comes just a week after the acquisition by NetEase of unlisted French video games maker Quantic Dream.It also caps a difficult four-year period at Ubisoft, home to the "Assassin's Creed" and "Tom Clancy's" video game franchises, marked by a succession of delays of new video games and allegations of sexual harassment that led to a revamp of its top management. Ubisoft's share price has fallen by more than half over the period, from about 100 euros to less than 44 euros on Tuesday.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comThe transaction makes Tencent part of a shareholder pact with Ubisoft's founders, the Guillemots, and gives it a total stake in the video game maker of more than 11% through the acquisition of a stake in the family holding.This includes the acquisition by Tencent of a 49.9% stake with 5% voting rights in Guillemot Brothers Limited, Ubisoft said in a statement.Tencent's investment in Guillemot Brothers Limited, which owns the bulk of the family's 15% stake in Ubisoft, amounts to 300 million euros, at an implied valuation of 80 euros per Ubisoft share. That values Ubisoft at more than 10 billion euros.China's largest social network and gaming firm also has the right to raise its direct stake in Ubisoft to 9.99% from 4.5% currently, said Ubisoft.Tencent saw its Hong Kong-listed shares drop more than 2% in morning trade on Wednesday.Reuters reported in early August, citing sources with direct knowledge of the matter, that Tencent planned to raise its stake in Ubisoft as the Chinese gaming giant pivots to the global gaming market. read more "Tencent is a key shareholder partner for many of the industry's leaders, who have created some of the most outstanding video games," Chief Executive Officer Yves Guillemot said. "This transaction reinforces our ability to create strong value over the coming years."The Chinese firm will not be able to sell its shares for a five-year period, beyond which the Guillemot family will have a pre-emptive right to buy the shares, Ubisoft said.Tencent also pledged not to increase its direct stake in Ubisoft beyond 9.99% in capital for a period of eight years.Matthew Kanterman, director of research at Ball Metaverse Research Partners, said such a deal structure does not seem to be a change to the long-standing strategic partnership between the two firms."Overall it's a bet by Tencent that Ubisoft can improve its execution and unlock value in its catalog of intellectual property, the pair can create new mobile games based on that IP and that they can bring existing Ubisoft titles into China once the regulatory climate improves," he said.Tencent, which bought its first 5% stake in Ubisoft in 2018, is also providing the Guillemot's holding with a long-term loan to refinance its debt, the group said.($1 = 1.0119 euros)Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comReporting by Tassilo Hummel and Mathieu Rosemain; Additional reporting by Josh Ye and Julie Zhu; Editing by Leslie Adler and Christopher CushingOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | Video Games |
Revenue from mobile games accounts for more than half of the mobile gaming market. Sony is looking to diversify beyond consoles with its new dedicated PlayStation mobile gaming division.Mateusz Slodkowski | SOPA Images | LightRocket via Getty ImagesSony set up a dedicated PlayStation mobile gaming unit in a major push to diversify beyond consoles.The Japanese gaming giant launched PlayStation Studios Mobile Division on Monday and said it will run independently of the console business.Sony also said on Monday it acquired Helsinki- and Berlin-based mobile game developer Savage Game Studios.The move comes after a tough second quarter for Sony's gaming division, and the company's downgrading of its full-year profit forecast for the business as the Covid-induced boom — during which people were stuck at home playing video games — begins to fade.Sony also continues to face supply chain issues and cannot meet the demand for its flagship PlayStation 5 console.Sony has dominated the console market for several years, thanks to the PlayStation. But the company is now looking to diversify. This year, the Japanese gaming giant said it plans to release around 50% of games on PC and mobile by 2025, up from about a quarter currently."For that to happen, Sony needs to make big bets on mobile gaming," Serkan Toto, CEO of Tokyo-based game industry consultancy Kantan Games, told CNBC.And the opportunity is big. Consoles account for about 27% of the $196.8 billion games market, whereas mobile makes up more than half of revenues, according to Newzoo.Sony's mobile strategyThe purchase of Savage Game Studios continues Sony's recent acquisition drive as it looks to boost the development of titles across platforms."PlayStation Studios must continue to expand and diversify our offering beyond console, bringing incredible new games to more people than ever before," said Hermen Hulst, head of PlayStation studios. "Acquiring the talented team at Savage Game Studios is another strategic step towards that goal."Sony said that Savage Game Studios is working on an "unannounced new AAA mobile live service action game." A "triple A" game is an informal industry classification usually for a blockbuster type of title. A live service game is usually a title where developers continually update and add content to extend its lifetime and generate revenue over a longer period of time.Read more about tech and crypto from CNBC ProThe success of Call of Duty Mobile and Diablo Immortal on mobile, both of which were originally designed for console and PC, show there is demand for well-known titles on smaller screens "if executed well," according to Daniel Ahmad, senior analyst at Niko Partners.Sony's mobile strategy is likely to lean on its massive library of intellectual property (IP) but also with a focus on developing specific games for smaller devices, Kantan Games' Toto said."Sony is very likely to not only bring existing PlayStation IPs to mobile but also encourage studios to develop new franchises for smart devices from scratch," Toto said.Chances of successSony is the latest console maker to make a big step into mobile gaming. Microsoft's Xbox gaming unit has also begun making early moves into mobile. Nintendo has, for the last three years, also been focusing a lot of effort on the smaller screen gaming format.Globally, Sony will compete with companies it hadn't really before, particularly Chinese giants Tencent and NetEase — two of the world's largest mobile gaming players.But Toto said Sony's chances of success are still high."The mobile gaming market is overcrowded. There are over 1 million games in app stores nowadays. But players such as Sony, even if they are new entrants, can still make it just because of their fire power," Toto told CNBC."There are not many companies like Sony out there, with such strong branding, a whole range of high-performing studios and a treasure trove of valuable IPs." | Video Games |
Gaming 'can be DEADLY for children': Action-packed missions might kick-start life-threatening arrhythmias in kids with undiagnosed heart issues, study suggestsThe researchers were from The Heart Centre for Children, Sydney, Australia They studied 22 children who lost consciousness while playing video gamesExperts said adrenalin surges from the excitement of playing can prove lethal Published: 00:00 EDT, 11 October 2022 | Updated: 00:00 EDT, 11 October 2022 They're popular for getting adrenaline pumping, while carrying none of the risk of war.But playing action-packed games like Call of Duty can be deadly for children with heart conditions, scientists warn.Electronic gaming can kick-start life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias in children with no history of health problems, a landmark study has found.Experts said adrenalin surges from the excitement of playing can prove lethal to some youngsters with often-undiagnosed heart problems. Electronic gaming can kick-start life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias in children with no history of health problems, a landmark study has foundResearchers from The Heart Centre for Children, Sydney, Australia, studied the cases of 22 children who suffered with sudden loss of consciousness while playing video games.They found multiplayer war gaming was the most frequent trigger, resulting in an 'emotionally charged' state amongst players.Some children having died following a cardiac arrest with several heart rhythm conditions later diagnosed, putting the surviving children at continued risk if they kept playing.Claire Lawley, of The Heart Centre for Children, who led the study urged parents to look for any warning signs, such as blackouts when gaming.She said: 'Video games may represent a serious risk to some children with arrhythmic conditions; they might be lethal in patients with predisposing, but often previously unrecognized arrhythmic conditions.'Children who suddenly lose consciousness while electronic gaming should be assessed by a heart specialist as this could be the first sign of a serious heart problem.'Catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia (CPVT) a rare inherited heart rhythm disturbance found in young people and children, was one of the most common causes.Adrenaline from strenuous physical activity and heightened emotions, such as gaming, can lead to blackouts, palpitations and dizziness.Long QT syndrome (LQTS) is a rare inherited condition that affects around one in 2,000 people and that can cause abnormal heart rhythms, was another.Researchers found most children (63 per cent) had potentially relevant genetic variants among the patients, with significant implications for their families.In some cases, the discovery led to multiple family members being diagnosed with an important familial heart rhythm problem, according to the findings published in the journal Heart Rhythm.Scientists believe the adrenergic stimulation related to the 'emotionally charged electronic gaming environment' was behind the phenomenon.At the time of the cardiac incidents, many of the patients were in excited states, having just won or lost games, or were engaging in conflict with companions.While it is not a common occurrence, the authors believe it is becoming more prevalent as gaming culture is increasingly popular.Christian Turner, who co-wrote the study, said gaming could no longer be viewed as a 'safe activity' for those carrying these risks.'We already know that some children have heart conditions that can put them at risk when playing competitive sports, but we were shocked to discover that some patients were having life-threatening blackouts during video gaming,' he said.'Video gaming was something I previously thought would be an alternative 'safe activity.''This is a really important discovery. We need to ensure everyone knows how important it is to get checked out when someone has had a blacking out episode in these circumstances.' Advertisement | Video Games |
A growing operator of family entertainment centers has purchased a site in Burleson for its third North Texas location.Alley Cats operates entertainment centers in both Arlington and Hurst.Now, the company has purchased an 8.4-acre site south of Fort Worth at the northwest corner of John Jones Drive and Alsbury Boulevard in Burleson.The 50,000-square-foot Burleson Alley Cats entertainment center will have two dozen bowling lanes, a laser tag facility, video games, a rock climbing wall, batting cages, meeting and party rooms, a restaurant and outside miniature golf, pickleball and a go-cart track.The center will open next year.Frank Bullock of Henry S. Miller Co. handled the property sale.“The 2020 COVID shutdown halted our search, but fortunately we got going again in January 2022 and were able to secure the perfect location for their unique entertainment concept,” Bullock said in a statement.Ciera Bank provided financing, and the city of Burleson provided incentives for the project.“This is a public-private partnership with the city investing substantially in the project,” Miller Co.’s Michael Gresback said. “Burleson has wanted a family entertainment complex for several years and created an economic incentive package.”Related:Another apartment community on the way in Melissa | Video Games |
Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Ash and Pikachu in the first Pokemon movie in 2001Ash Ketchum, the lead character in the Pokemon anime series, has won the Pokemon World Championship.Fans of the franchise have expressed their delight at the character becoming the strongest Pokemon trainer in the world, more than 25 years after the first episode of the programme aired.A tweet from the official Pokemon Twitter account congratulating Ash has received almost 200,000 likes.The series, which originated as a video game, has run for over 1,200 episodes.The anime has followed Ash Ketchum in his quest to become a Pokemon Master since 1997, when the character met electric mouse creature Pikachu on his 10th birthday.Over the last 25 years, viewers have watched him train as he aimed to become the strongest Pokemon trainer. In the series, Pokemon trainers catch mythical creatures known as pocket monsters and battle them against each other.As well as the animated TV show, the original Japanese Game Boy game also spawned a trading card game, more than 20 movies and a host of merchandise from pogs (collectable cardboard discs) to soft toys.Most seasons of the anime follow Ash's journey across various fictional regions catching Pokemon as he aimed to win eight gym badges to qualify for their Pokemon League.Final battleBut the latest series, Pokemon Ultimate Journeys, has worked differently as it has seen Ash travelling around the world, rather than being limited to one region. Viewers have previously seen Ash win two tournaments - the Orange League from the Orange Islands season, as well as the Alola League in Pokemon: Sun and Moon.But to win the World Championship, Ash had to overcome strong trainers from across his travels. Ash's final battle against former world champion, Leon, spanned four episodes. It also saw the return of former companions from previous seasons of the anime who have since been retired, such as fan favourites Brock, Misty and Dawn. Sarah Natochenny, the voice actor for Ash in the American version of the anime, tweeted: "YESSSS!!! Our boy is the very best like no one ever was!!!!" while a number of adult fans of the show tweeted that the finale had made them "emotional".It is unclear whether Ash and Pikachu will return for the anime's next season.It has become tradition for a new season of the anime to coincide with the release of new Pokemon video games. The two newest Pokemon games, Scarlet and Violet, will be released on Friday 18 November. | Video Games |
Shane Rafferty plays video games for a living. He’s neither a developer nor a ranked professional, but his work revolves around gaming all the same: Rafferty is a gaming technology specialist. As the name suggests, he uses technology—and video games in particular—to provide social and emotional support for hospitalized children and their families.Though the job description sounds like fantasy, gaming technology specialists are a reality at more than 50 hospitals worldwide. Among them is the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Since August 2021, Rafferty has played dozens of games there, ranging from Mario Kart to Tetris to Super Smash Bros., with hundreds of kids.Rafferty comes from a health care background, so he’s no stranger to educating patients, distracting them, and helping them cope with diagnoses, but gaming allows him to connect with patients over common interests, too.“It’s a great way to build rapport with them and break down barriers,” Rafferty says.Beyond building relationships, he’s also found that playing alongside (or against!) the kids helps them forget they’re in the hospital. It gives them a chance to engage in play, same as their peers.“They’re sitting down, they’re playing Mario Kart,” Rafferty says, “and they’re not thinking about how they’ve been stuck in the same room for the last month. Instead they’re thinking, ‘I need to get this red shell so I can beat this guy who thinks he’s hot stuff.’”Being able to offer that reprieve via gaming, which both Rafferty and the kids enjoy, is especially rewarding.Just Another Day in the LifeThe title “gaming technology specialist” can be a bit of a misnomer, as Rafferty’s day can include everything from bedside gaming sessions to console troubleshooting to consultations with other departments and even donors.As Rafferty puts it: “I wear a lot of hats.”Rafferty has three primary tasks at Lurie. The first is to maintain the hospital’s entertainment technology. This includes the consoles in the playroom area on the hospital’s 20 mobile game carts, and any tech loaned out to patients’ individual rooms. He troubleshoots controllers, installs updates, and confirms the appropriateness of the apps downloaded onto the hospital’s iPads. He also orders new equipment as needed.These are tasks that improve patients’ quality of life. They’re also tasks that might get shifted to the back burner without a dedicated specialist.“Our child life team is focused on interacting with patients’ families, doing procedure supports, and providing education,” Rafferty says. If a game isn’t working, “they don’t have time to say, ‘Alright, is Minion Rush up to date?’”Handling the burden of tech maintenance is just one of the benefits of a gaming technology specialist. There’s also Rafferty’s second task to consider, one that informs the first: His job requires him to stay up-to-date on the newest trends in tech and gaming.In this research Rafferty is never alone. His position is currently funded by a two-year grant from Child’s Play, a game industry charity. Through this partnership Rafferty receives not only donated equipment (such as the hospital’s 3D printer) but also access to the larger gaming technology specialist community, with whom he meets weekly to swap ideas.Research is one way that Rafferty can address individual patients’ needs. For example, using that donated 3D printer and a modified model Rafferty printed an adaptive holder for paintbrushes. The device includes a ring that slips on to the patient’s hand, and a clip for a brush. It makes the arts more accessible for patients who struggle to hold pens or brushes.3D-printed Master Chief helmet.
Photograph: Child's Play/Children's Hospital ColoradoIt’s something Rafferty suspects wouldn’t happen without a position like his, because the steps involved fall outside most job descriptions. IT employees may not have the health care background to identify what’s developmentally best for pediatric patients. Doctors and nurses focus on medical care, and child life specialists, who support hospitalized children and their families via education, advocacy, and therapeutic play, may not have the appropriate tech background. For example, to create that adaptive holder, someone would first need to get a 3D printer, and then they’d need to learn how to use it. After that they’d still need to find or create a model.“Our team members would love to do that,” Rafferty says, “but they’re already overwhelmed.”It’s an overwhelm that patients may also experience, particularly with lengthy hospital stays. Rafferty’s final task, and his favorite of the three, is to alleviate that via direct interaction. This can range from bedside sessions of Tetris to the use of VR during minor procedures such as dressing changes, blood draws, port accesses, or IV starts.He also assists with the hospital’s CC TV show, which features a Jackbox Games segment where patients can join in with their phones, bedside.The Charity Reimagining Pediatric CareChild’s Play, the charity providing Rafferty’s grant, was established in 2003. In 2017 they began offering their capacity-building grants to hospitals interested in employing a gaming technology specialist. Since then they’ve funded 35 positions in the United States, Canada, and Kenya.These grants are one of the organization’s main focuses, according to Kirsten Carlile, Child’s Play’s director of philanthropy and partner experiences.“We put a lot of emphasis—and a lot of the funds that we raise—toward these positions,” she says.After all, it’s no easy task to establish a new profession, but for Carlile the benefits are well worth it. Gaming technology specialists make room for play, a crucial aspect of child development.The benefits of play have been well documented. Research often splits play into three types—unstructured, semi-structured, and structured—with many focusing on unstructured. One such study, published by the American Academy of Pediatrics and cited more than 2,000 times since 2007, noted that play “contributes to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and youth.” More recent research, including a 2021 study on the impact of the pandemic on play, suggested the same. The importance of play has been noted by the United Nations as well, in Article 31 of the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child.Adjustable iPad holder for patients who need to lay flat on their backs.
Photograph: Child's Play/Lurie Children's HospitalStructured play, which can range from playing catch to playing video games, is important too, though fewer studies look at it. A 2019 study called structured play “a promising approach to improving self-regulation in young children” and a potential way to improve behavior management, such as learning how to take turns. A 2020 study suggested that when it comes to physical activity, structured play was more effective than its unstructured counterpart for improving faculties like memory.Although play in all its forms is universally important for kids, it isn’t possible to create a universal gaming technology specialist position. What works for a hospital with 20 pediatric beds, for example, may not work for one with 300.Gaming technology specialists, then, ultimately look different at each hospital. Some are part of child life, while others are considered IT. Some focus on tech, and others on patients. Some work alone, and others have a team of volunteers. Even the official job title changes by location, from “recreation gaming specialist” at John Hopkins in Florida to “therapeutic gaming and digital technology specialist” at Seattle Children’s Hospital.It’s because of these differences that Child’s Play places very few restrictions on their grant money. One of their only rules is that, by the end of the grant period, the hospital should be able to fund the position on its own. This is why Rafferty occasionally spends time with donors, so he can share his experiences firsthand.Due to these differences across hospitals, as well as the overall nascency of the position, it’s easiest to answer questions of impact anecdotally. In an effort to find commonalities, Carlile noted that Child’s Play is currently in the first phase of a research study. They plan to publish their data after completing a second, but Carlile says it’s too soon to say when that will occur.Getting InvolvedCarlile encourages interested hospitals to reach out to Child’s Play even before applying for a grant. She’s happy to help staff start necessary conversations with their leadership, finance department, or HR. No hospital is too big, or small, to apply.Individuals can donate money to Child’s Play to support their grants and equipment donations. They can also purchase items directly for specific hospitals using Child’s Play’s wishlist map, which highlights hospitals that have partnered with the organization.If Child’s Play doesn’t work with your local hospital, other charitable gaming organizations may operate in your area, including Gamers Outreach and Charity Gaming. Both do similar work and support hospitalized children by funding gaming technology specialist positions and/or equipment donations.Since there is no official registry of gaming technology specialists or which charities work with specific hospitals, the easiest way to support programs near you is to reach out to your local hospital. Some even offer volunteer opportunities, where you just might meet your local specialist. | Video Games |
Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft, speaks on stage during the Ubisoft E3 conference at the Orpheum theatre in Los Angeles, California June 15, 2015. REUTERS/Mario AnzuoniRegister now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSummaryCompanies'We can do whatever we want,' founder CEO saysUbisoft to create three mobile games with NetflixTencent deal comes on heels of M&A wave in gaming industryPARIS, Sept 10 (Reuters) - Ubisoft (UBIP.PA), France's biggest video games maker, is still open to other partners after a deal in which China's Tencent (0700.HK) will raise its stake in the company, its co-founder and CEO Yves Guillemot said on Thursday.Guillemot's comments, made at a closed press event whose content the company asked not to be made public before a showcase event online on Saturday, came on the heels of a rough day for Ubisoft's stock, which tumbled 17% after the group announced Tencent would become its single biggest shareholder with an overall stake of 11%. read more The deal values the "Assassin's Creed" maker at about $10 billion.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com"We remain totally independent and we can act with any outside company if we want to," said Guillemot, who along his four brothers founded Ubisoft in 1986. "That was a big negotiation with Tencent," he added. "We can do whatever we want."Traders and analysts have said the Tencent deal, which sees the world's largest games firm by revenue enter into a shareholder pact with the Guillemots, removed the speculative appeal of Ubisoft shares.The group has long been seen as a takeover target as the Guillemots hold a minority stake in the group. Still, the Guillemot brothers managed to fend off a raid by French tycoon Vincent Bollore via his media group Vivendi (VIV.PA).Smaller mobile video game maker Gameloft, formerly led by Yves Guillemot's brother Michel, was gobbled up by Vivendi six years ago.The secretive siblings, sons of agricultural traders from a small town in Brittany, western France, have vowed to protect their independence, a goal which Yves Guillemot, 62, reasserted on Thursday. "Our first intention is to own our destiny," he said.MEANINGFUL PROGRESSThat prospect was tested recently by a combination of weak financial results and allegations of sexual harassment, that led to a revamp of the company's governance and pledges to change a corporate culture described as sexist by some former employees."Yes, we stumbled, and we acknowledge that", Guillemot said. "We learned a lot along the way and have made meaningful progress with concrete action plans collectively led by our leaders."Ubisoft burnt through about 200 million euros in cash operationally during its 2020/2021 financial year, having generated 169 million of operational cash flow the year before.The company's financial woes came on top of several delays in the release of new video games and heightened pressure on management, in the midst of a boom and M&A wave in the video game industry.These were notably marked by Microsoft's plan to acquire "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard for $69 billion.As part of its plan to return to growth, Ubisoft is aiming to deploy its three "pillar" games - "Assassin's Creed", "Far Cry" and "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six" - on all digital platforms, Guillemot said.The group aims for these three brands to reach a total of 3 billion euros in annual revenue within five years, Guillemot said.Guillemot said "Assassin's Creed" will release its next edition "Mirage" in 2023. Ubisoft is also partnering with streaming platform Netflix (NFLX.O) to develop three original mobile games, including one based on Assassin's Creed.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comReporting by Mathieu Rosemain; Editing by David HolmesOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | Video Games |
Microsoft’s plan to buy video game giant Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion could have major effects on the gaming industry, giving the Xbox maker control of many more popular titles.
But to get to the next level, Microsoft must first survive a barrage of government inquiries from New Zealand to Brazil, and from U.S. regulators emboldened by President Joe Biden to strengthen their enforcement of antitrust laws.
In the United Kingdom, regulators on Thursday threatened to escalate their investigation unless both companies come up with proposals within five days to ease competition concerns. More than seven months after Microsoft announced the deal, only Saudi Arabia has approved it.
“A growing number of countries are subjecting major global transactions to deeper scrutiny,” said William Kovacic, a former chairman of the five-member U.S. Federal Trade Commission. “Many of the jurisdictions that are exercising that scrutiny are significant economies and can’t be brushed off.”
READ MORE: Blizzard Entertainment chief is out amid legal storm of discrimination, sexual harassment claims
Microsoft has faced antitrust scrutiny before, mostly notably more than two decades ago when a federal judge ordered its breakup following the company’s anticompetitive actions related to its dominant Windows software. That verdict was overturned on appeal, although the court imposed other, less drastic, penalties on the company.
In recent years, however, Microsoft has largely escaped the more intense regulatory backlash its Big Tech rivals such as Amazon, Google and Facebook’s parent company Meta have endured. But the sheer size of the Activision Blizzard merger has drawn global attention.
The all-cash deal is set to be the largest in the history of the tech industry. It would give Microsoft, maker of the Xbox console and gaming system, control of popular game franchises such as Call of Duty, World of Warcraft and Candy Crush. There’s also a growing sense that past review of Big Tech mergers was too lax — such as when Facebook bought Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014.
“Collectively, that means that the kinds of concessions you’re going to have to make become more difficult,” Kovacic said.
The possibility of Microsoft gaining control of Call of Duty has been particularly worrisome to Sony, maker of the PlayStation console that competes with Microsoft’s Xbox. In a letter to Brazilian regulators, Sony emphasized Call of Duty as an “essential” game — a blockbuster so popular and ingrained that it would be impossible for a competitor to develop a rival product even if they had the budget to do so.
The U.K. watchdog’s preliminary inquiry raised similar worries. It said Microsoft’s control of popular Activision Blizzard games raised concerns that the deal would hurt rivals in multi-game subscription services and the cloud gaming market.
One solution could be a settlement in which Microsoft agrees to ensure that console-making rivals such as Sony or Nintendo won’t be cut off from popular Activision Blizzard games. Microsoft has already publicly signaled its openness to that concept.
Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, has said the company committed to Sony to make Activision games like Call of Duty “available on PlayStation beyond the existing agreement and into the future” — although many are skeptical about how long those promises would last if not set into regulatory consent decrees.
On the other hand, Microsoft also has a much better reputation in Washington than it did in 2000. It is “seen as more reasonable and sensible” on issues such as data privacy, Kovacic said.
Microsoft has also been working to win over skeptics in the U.S., starting with a labor union that’s been trying to organize Activision Blizzard employees. Democratic lawmakers have also expressed concern about allegations of Activision’s toxic workplace culture for women, which led to employee walkouts last year as well as discrimination lawsuits brought by California and federal civil rights enforcers.
WATCH: What Activision Blizzard’s acquisition by Microsoft means for its pending lawsuits, gamers
In March, the Communications Workers of America had issued a call seeking tougher oversight of the deal from the U.S. Department of Justice, the FTC and state attorneys general. But a June 30 letter from the union to the FTC said it had switched to supporting the deal after Microsoft agreed “to ensure the workers of Activision Blizzard have a clear path to collective bargaining.”
Gaming represents a growing portion of Microsoft’s business, despite the company’s efforts to portray itself and Activision Blizzard as “small players in a highly fragmented publishing space,” per a document filed with New Zealand’s Commerce Commission.
In 2021, Microsoft spent $7.5 billion to acquire ZeniMax Media, the parent company of video game publisher Bethesda Softworks, which is behind popular video games The Elder Scrolls, Doom and Fallout. Microsoft’s properties also include the hit game Minecraft after it bought Swedish game studio Mojang for $2.5 billion in 2014.
The Redmond, Washington, tech giant has said the gaming acquisitions will help beef up its Xbox Game Pass game subscription service and its mobile offerings, particularly from Activision Blizzard’s King division, which makes Candy Crush.
Dutch game developer Rami Ismail said Microsoft’s subscription-based service has thus far been a positive for smaller game studios trying to get their content to users. But he’s unsure about the long-term impact of the merger.
“Xbox Game Pass as a product has been really good in getting interesting, creative games funded that might not have the normal market reach to be successful,” Ismail said. “On the flip side, as power consolidates, there is less of an incentive to do anything like that.”
Microsoft rivals are also consolidating. Sony in July closed on a $3.6 billion deal to buy Bungie Inc., maker of the popular game franchise Destiny and the original developer of Xbox-owned Halo. Take-Two Interactive, maker of Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, in May completed a $12.7 billion deal to acquire mobile gaming company Zynga, maker of FarmVille and Words With Friends. | Video Games |
NEW YORK -- The virtual cat hero from the new video game sensation "Stray" doesn't just wind along rusted pipes, leap over unidentified sludge and decode clues in a seemingly abandoned city. The daring orange tabby is helping real-world cats as well.Thanks to online fundraising platforms, gamers are playing "Stray" while streaming live for audiences to raise money for animal shelters and other cat-related charities. Annapurna Interactive, the game's publisher, also promoted "Stray" by offering two cat rescue and adoption agencies copies of the game to raffle off and renting out a New York cat cafe.Livestreaming gameplay for charity isn't new, but the resonance "Stray" quickly found from cat lovers is unusual. It was the fourth most watched and broadcast game on the day it launched on Twitch, the streaming platform said.Viewers watch as players navigate the adventurous feline through an aging industrial landscape doing normal cat stuff - balancing on railings, walking on keyboards, and knocking things off shelves - to solve puzzles and evade enemies.About 80% of the game's development team are "cat owners and cat lovers" and a real-life orange stray, as well as their own cats, helped inspire the game, one creator said."I certainly hope that maybe some people will be inspired to help actual strays in real life - knowing that having an animal and a companion is a responsibility," said producer Swann Martin-Raget, of the BlueTwelve gaming studio in Montpellier, in southern France.When Annapurna Interactive reached out to the Nebraska Humane Society to partner before the game's launch on July 19, they jumped at the chance, marketing specialist Brendan Gepson said."The whole game and the whole culture around the game, it's all about a love of cats," Gepson said. "It meshed really well with the shelter and our mission."The shelter got four copies of the game to give away and solicited donations for $5 to be entered into a raffle to win one. In a week, they raised $7,000, Gepson said, with the vast majority of the 550 donors being new to them, including people donating from Germany and Malta. The company also donated $1,035 to the shelter."It was really mutually beneficial," Gepson said. "They got some really good PR out of it and we got a whole new donor base out of it."Annapurna also bought out Meow Parlour, the New York cat cafe and adoption agency, for a weekend, as well as donating $1,000. Visitors who made reservations could buy "Stray" themed merchandise and play the game for 20 minutes while surrounded by cats. (The game also captivates cats, videos on social media show.)Jeff Legaspi, Annapurna Interactive's marketing director, said it made sense for the game's launch to do something "positively impactful and hopefully bring more awareness to adopting and not shopping for a new pet."Annapurna declined to disclose sales or download figures for the game, which is available on PlayStation and the Steam platform. However, according to Steam monitor SteamDB, "Stray" has been the No. 1 purchased game for the past two weeks.North Shore Animal League America, which rescues tens of thousands of animals each year, said it hadn't seen any increase in traffic from the game but they did receive more than $800 thanks to a gamer.In a happy coincidence, the shelter had just set up a profile on the platform Tiltify, which allows nonprofits to receive donations from video streams, the week the game launched. The player channeled donations to the shelter, smashing her initial goal of $200."We are seeing Tiltify and livestreaming as this whole new way for us to engage a whole different audience," said Carol Marchesano, the rescue's senior digital marketing director. Usually, though, organizations need to reach out to online personalities to coordinate livestreams, which can take a lot of work, she said.About nine campaigns on Tiltify mention the game "Stray," the company's CEO Michael Wasserman said. JustGiving, which also facilitates charity livestreams, said it identified two campaigns with the game.For his part, Gepson from Nebraska reached out to an Omaha resident who goes by the name TreyDay1014 online to run a charity livestream. Trey, who asked that his last name not be used, has two cats, one of which he adopted from the shelter.Last week, he narrated to viewers watching live on the platform Twitch as his cat character batted another cat's tail and danced along railings."If I found out my cat was outside doing this, I'd be upset," Trey said, as his character jumped across a perilous distance. Moments later, a rusty pipe broke, sending the tabby down a gut-wrenching plunge into the darkness."That is a poor baby," Trey said somberly, "but we are okay."A $25 donation followed the fall, pushing the amount raised by Trey for the Nebraska shelter to over $100 in about 30 minutes. By the end of four and a half hours of play, donations totaled $1,500. His goal had been to raise $200."This has opened my eyes to being able to use this platform for a lot more good than just playing video games," Trey said.Copyright © 2022 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. | Video Games |
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg debuted the new metaverse avatars at the company's Connect conference. Zuckerberg's avatar featured legs, which he said was "probably the most requested feature." The company also announced a new $1,499 Quest Pro virtual reality headset, and new partnerships. Loading Something is loading. Thanks for signing up! Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. Mark Zuckerberg debuted his new avatar in real-time during Meta's Connect event on Tuesday.It was the first time the Facebook founder has held a public conference in Meta's Horizon World metaverse. Zuckerberg took the opportunity to announce the updated avatars, which he said will be rolled out later this year across phones and virtual reality headsets. He called the new avatars "more expressive and detailed than anything else today."The new avatars will also have legs, something Zuckerberg said was "probably the most requested feature on our roadmap."The metaverse avatars didn't have legs before because it was harder in virtual reality to accurately position where body parts like legs are, the Facebook founder said. "But seriously, legs are hard, which is why other virtual reality systems don't have them either," Zuckerberg said.Zuckerberg's announcement came just a few months after the billionaire was slammed on social media for an avatar he posted on Instagram. Social-media users were quick to diss the image which showed Zuckerberg's avatar standing in front of an Eiffel Tower, with some likening the graphics to 1990s video games like Zelda and Quake. Zuckerberg shared an updated metaverse avatar image Friday after being widely mocked for a previous version. Mark Zuckerberg At the time, Zuckerberg responded with an updated avatar and admitted the previous image was "basic.""The graphics in Horizon are capable of much more — even on headsets — and Horizon is improving very quickly," Zuckerberg said in an Instagram post in August. Grimes also took the opportunity to slam Zuckerberg and his avatar, calling him "under-qualified" to run the metaverse and saying the billionaire's virtual reality plans are "dead" before they've truly begun.Earlier this week, The New York Times reported that Zuckerberg had fast-tracked a new avatar following the criticism, with one Meta graphic artist claiming in a since-deleted LinkedIn post that he and his team had designed roughly 40 versions of Mr. Zuckerberg's face over a four-week period before a final version was approved."We started with simple graphics and we're doing a ton of work to meaningfully improve how Horizon will look and feel over the next year," Zuckerberg said at the Meta Connect event. "The Metaverse needs to feel inspired."But, Meta has faced headwinds in recent months, as the company's stock has been hammered amid Zuckerberg's new plans for the company. Shares of Meta neared a four-year low on Tuesday. Internal memos obtained by The Verge last week showed Meta's VP of the Metaverse, Vishal Shah, telling Metaverse employees working on the Horizon Worlds app they are on "quality lockdown" for the rest of the year to fix issues in the app before its released to more users.In one memo, Shah said the app's onboarding experience is "confusing and frustrating." Shah said employees working on the app weren't spending a lot of time on it."Why don't we love the product we've built so much that we use it all the time," Shah wrote. "The simple truth is, if we don't love it, how can we expect our users to love it?" The Facebook founder announced at the event that the new avatars will eventually be available via a partnership with Zoom, as well as on Android and Apple phones. During the event, Meta unveiled its new $1499 Quest Pro virtual reality headset. The company also announced several new partnerships with NBCUniversal and Microsoft, including a metaverse experience based on "The Office" and the opportunity for people to use Microsoft tools like Word and Excel in the metaverse. | Video Games |
We may earn a commission if you buy something from any affiliate links on our site. Learn more.The UK recently declined to regulate prize draws as a form of gambling, but does it matter? The industry has moved on to more problematic ways to make money.Photograph: Sibani Das/Getty ImagesWhenever a term from the world of video games enters broader society, it’s a safe bet that it’s not for a good reason. Loot boxes—like Hot Coffee or Gamergate—don’t buck this trend. For at least the past five years, driven by a mix of grassroots Reddit organizing and parental horror stories—“my teen spent £6,000 on FIFA cards”—these randomized prize draws have attracted the world’s ire; in several countries, they’re now illegal. Last week, after a 22-month consultation, the UK government decided that loot boxes will not be regulated under betting laws. Despite finding a link between these systems and problem gambling, the government has left regulation up to the industry.Nuance has been lost in this discussion. It’s never just been a binary choice between bans—“the nuclear option,” says David Zendle, a professor in computer science at the University of York—and letting the industry run wild. This is “misdirection,” he says, and gives the impression to gamers that they are at risk of losing their games. The precedent it sets is disappointing. It shuts down debate about regulation of any kind, leaving industry-friendly groups like the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) to pick up the slack. After all, loot boxes are not the only industry practice that needs to be examined. Predatory monetization is endemic.Researchers trace the first loot boxes back to the Chinese free-to-play MMO ZT Online, released in 2006, where players opened virtual treasure chests. This formula mutated through various mobile games until it reached core franchises: in 2010, Valve incorporated them in Team Fortress 2. The success of Activision Blizzard’s Overwatch and its rewards of color-coded rarity led to a bevy of major titles, including Activision’s Call of Duty: WW2 and Xbox’s Gears of War 4, incorporating them as well. The practice reached a nadir with Electronic Arts’ Star Wars: Battlefront 2, in 2017, a “pay-to-win”’ system that generated outrage and saw congressman Chris Lee from Hawaii label the game “a Star Wars-themed online casino.” EA redesigned the system, but lost billions, and regulatory bodies started to take notice: Belgium would ban loot boxes in 2018.Currently, it’s Fifa Ultimate Team that most people would associate these systems with. The odds of picking, say, a Prime Moments R9 card are ludicrously low (EA won’t tell us how low exactly). Converted from the in-game currency of FUT coins, the card is worth thousands of dollars. Whether a system like this (or more egregious examples; not all loot boxes are built the same) constitutes gambling, or causes problem gambling, is both a hot topic and a red herring: The bottom line is that loot boxes provide another avenue for the vulnerable to ruin their lives. The correlative evidence between loot box engagement and problem gambling symptoms is robust. The thin line between gambling and gaming is a burgeoning academic field. And the rush I felt as a child when I pulled a shiny Venusaur from my booster pack is indistinguishable from the rush I feel as an adult when I win a hand of poker, or, more equivalently, hit big on roulette.This all leaves a bad taste in the mouth, but it also suggests that predatory monetization boils down to gamblification. This isn’t the case. “Loot boxes are the thing many people know about,” says Zendle. “But at the same time as the loot box existed, there have always been other instances of players reporting exploitation or coercion.” Even if the UK had banned loot boxes, explains James Close, a lecturer in clinical education at the University of Plymouth, it would have made little difference. Fearing regulation, many game publishers have already moved on. Overwatch 2 won’t use loot boxes, and even EA, says Close, with a little effort, could switch up its business model. Monetization has diversified (in some cases for the better, he says) but this goes for the predatory kind, too.One study, published in the Journal of Business Ethics by Zendle and Elena Petrovskaya, a PhD researcher at the Centre for Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence at the University of York, asked 1104 players of video games to describe a time when they felt exposed to transactions that were perceived to be “misleading, aggressive or unfair.” Zendle and Petrovskaya purposefully cordoned off discussion of loot boxes; gamers still brought them up, which, they write, “highlights the high degree to which gamers perceive loot boxes to be predatory, and reflects the level of attention which loot boxes have received thus far.”The study found 35 different techniques over eight domains: “game dynamics designed to drive spending, product not meeting expectations, monetization of basic quality of life, predatory advertising, in-game currency, pay to win, general presence of microtransactions and other.” The examples, several of which run afoul of UK consumer protection regulations, are numerous: Gamers cited aggressive advertising in Candy Crush that targets them when they cannot quite complete a level, or inventory space limits in Fallout 76 and Elder Scrolls Online that make it difficult to enjoy the game.One of the most overlooked issues is in-game currency, Close says. It isn’t just that transactions often leave the player with enough left over to encourage more spending—players in the study cite League of Legends as particularly guilty here—it’s also the obfuscation that in-game marketplaces are allowed to get away with. (Diablo Immortal recently received a lot of criticism for this.) Personally—and I’m sure there are worse examples—the most confounding system I’ve ever come across was Mario Kart Tour, a game heavily influenced by gacha mechanics. In the game, you receive rubies for completing races, which let you “fire off the pipe” (a loot box system) to get more karts. But gold coins are the game’s actual in-game currency, and are also used to buy karts. On top of that, you gain or lose “points” based on your position in a race, which let you unlock stars, which let you enter cups and start the cycle over again. The game also recommends a standard monthly battle pass payment. In-game currency always reminds me of the bit in The Simpsons where Homer purchases 1100 dollars of Itchy and Scratchy money—“like real money, but fun”, says the cashier—only to find out that no shop accepts it.The fact that no one talks about this cost obfuscation, Close argues, is bizarre. The layer of abstraction these currencies create over real money is a psychological nudge called “material distortion.” You would never be able to get away with it in a brick-and-mortar store—imagine a candy shop where you asked kids to trade their money for gold tokens before they entered. “The consumer-rights bodies would be on that shop straightaway, saying, ‘You’re not allowed to do that—everything has to be priced in real currency,’” he says. (You can, of course, get away with this at arcades.)Many of these systems don’t even hide their intentions. There are games that mask slot machines and draw you in with freebies in a manner that resembles the ways casinos offer free drinks and food to keep you in the building. Unity’s CEO John Riccitiello recently claimed that developers who do not not make games with monetization in mind are “fucking idiots.” And from a purely commercial standpoint, is he wrong? One payment of 60 dollars for a game is a comparatively huge risk for investors: You bank on making most of your profit in a tiny window around a release. It’s a “roll of the dice,” says Adrian Hon, CEO and founder of games developer Six to Start. “When we were looking for investment for Zombies Run and Six to Start ages ago, people would be like, ‘What does your spreadsheet look like in terms of the user acquisition?’” he says. “And I was like, ‘Well, Zombies Run is not a normal mobile game.’”Hon says he’s seen a friend turn on loot boxes and immediately take in six figures. It’s difficult for developers to turn down that kind of money, let alone compete with those that don’t. “You’re not going to be able to spend as much money on advertising or marketing. You’re not going to be able to spend as much on talent acquisition,” says Hon. “And so other people who are less scrupulous are going to outspend you. So this idea of self-regulation–it’s just insane.” Regulation could take many forms, such as tax breaks for companies who transparently share data about player spending with independent research bodies, or the creation of new bodies for classifying games. Unregulated, it’s a pie-in-the-sky idea that the industry will somehow, on its own, become more benevolent.Ultimately, stricter regulation seems essential to video games’ continued development as an art form. As Hon suggests, predatory monetization salts the earth of creativity. The games built on these systems exploit their players—they aren’t art, but propaganda, another way to turn play into work. And the history of loot boxes demonstrates that the most exploitative systems can become mainstream if they prove they can turn a serious profit.Will Bedingfield is a staff writer at WIRED covering video games and internet culture. He studied at the University of Leeds and King’s College London and is based in London. | Video Games |
Caroline Grace has always enjoyed vintage technology. An IT tech in the Mid-Ohio Valley, they collect retro games, laser discs and cassette tapes, but mostly, vinyl records. Their collection is in the thousands, and hundreds of those are video game soundtracks. “I’ve been a big fan of games all my life,” says Grace. “Some of my earliest memories are playing games like Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap and Goof Troop with my dad and brother. I get positive feelings from listening to the Wonder Boy III music now. I have a lot of pleasant memories of playing it with my family back in the day.”The idea of buying video game soundtracks on vinyl may seem counter-intuitive: the most hi-tech digital entertainment medium meeting this fragile relic of the analogue era. But gaming albums have been steadily rising in popularity since the early 2010s. Partly that’s thanks to the wider vinyl revival, but it’s also due to the efforts of specialist record labels such as Data Discs, which produces beautiful albums based on vintage video games. “When we started the label in late-2014 there wasn’t really anyone releasing game soundtracks on vinyl,” says co-founder Jamie Crook. “We had been half-joking about trying to release Streets of Rage for the best part of a decade and we’re still surprised that no one else beat us to it. It just seemed abundantly clear that game soundtracks were going to be one of the next growth areas, alongside Japanese ambient, especially after the huge popularity of film soundtrack labels from 2012 onward.”The idea became a reality when Cook sent a speculative email to Streets of Rage composer Yuzo Koshiro: he was on board immediately, as was Sega Japan (“though I think they were also a little bewildered”). Consequently, Data Discs was able to license a number of releases spanning Sega’s history, from Sonic to Shenmue, and has since broadened to other classic Japanese titles such as Okami, Ikaruga and surprise best-seller Policenauts, the old cyberpunk thriller from Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima.Surprise best-seller … LP cover for the Policenauts soundtrack. Photograph: Data DiscsNostalgia seems to be a major draw for many collectors. Alongside Data Discs, labels such as movie soundtrack specialist Mondo and hip New York-based indie Ship to Shore PhonoCo also produce high quality albums for classic games. “Nostalgia plays a big part in my vinyl collecting – I will go out of my way to acquire records for games that I enjoyed as a kid,” says Chris Hansen, an IT contractor for the Department of Homeland Security in Mississippi. “I got into collecting vinyl in 2016 when I heard about Mondo’s release of Castlevania. I own every Castlevania game, it’s my favourite series, so I had to get the record. When I started looking into other releases, I discovered that Data Discs had put out Streets of Rage and Streets of Rage 2 on vinyl. I’ve been hooked ever since.”But it’s not all about the past; a huge number of contemporary video games are accompanied by vinyl soundtrack releases, whether that’s an orchestral score for a bestselling Triple A blockbuster, or an electronic soundtrack for a cult indie game composed entirely by a lone musician. For small studios, it can be tough to make a living from game sales alone in such an over-saturated market, so selling merch to a dedicated fanbase is an important source of revenue.the cover art for the Ikaruga soundtrack LP. Photograph: Data DiscsThere is also an important community element to video game vinyl. Releases tend to be limited editions and not always widely marketed, so fans meet up on Discord servers and Reddit forums to swap tips and compare collections. “We sometimes help each other get our personal ‘holy grails’,” says Pete Boyle, a collector based in Leeds. “Last year, I mentioned in passing that I missed the original release of the Firewatch soundtrack by Chris Remo. Minutes later I received a message from someone offering to sell it to me at cost plus post. It was in my hands less than two weeks later! We look out for one another. I have made some incredible friends for life.”In the early 2010s, Austin Wintory’s beautiful cello-led soundtrack for Journey and the 1980s-splashed electropop of Hotline Miami 2 showed how varied and musically accomplished game scores had become. Now, from global Final Fantasy concert tours to BBC Radio 3’s excellent Sound of Gaming programme to the forthcoming gaming concert at the BBC Proms, game soundtracks have been accepted as an art form alongside film scores. For many players, listening to game music is a personal, immersive experience, because we may have listened to it not just through a 90-minute film, but tens of hours of play.“The concept of dynamic music – or music that changes to your environment or actions – is unique to games,” says Sound of Gaming presenter Louise Blain. “As players, we have come to rely on music to tell us we’re in danger, to react when we draw our swords, and tell us to calm down when the coast is clear. It is our soundtrack, no one else’s.“Film music never needs to fill the gap when we get distracted and wander off the beaten path to see what we can find hiding deeper in the woods. Red Dead Redemption 2 composer Woody Jackson jokingly called some of the 60 hours of music he’d composed for the game ‘cowboy yoga music’ because those atmospheric strings had to accompany us everywhere. Game music understands that we want to lose ourselves and take in the scenery as well as ticking off quest lists. It also means that the more time we spend, the stronger our emotional connection can be.”This is a really vital point. Game music reminds us of places that we have effectively lived in. What’s more, we often play alongside friends, so game music is the sound of a shared journey, bringing to life all the emotions that entails. “There are two soundtracks that will always remind me of a particular time in my life,” says Dutch vinyl collector Jill Verhage. “The soundtrack to Ori and the Blind Forest, as it is one of the last games my best friend played before she passed in 2017, and the soundtrack of Ori and the Will of the Wisps, which always brings me great sadness knowing she never got to experience that game.”Whatever else motivates collectors, these are beautiful artefacts. At Data Discs, the team spends days sourcing archival video game art for their releases. “On occasion, we’ve tracked down the original paintings, either from the licensor’s vaults or through private art collectors, and have had HD photographs taken,” explains Crook. “The rights for artwork can sometimes be complicated too. For example, for our After Burner II release, we had to license the cover image of the F-14 Tomcat directly from Northrop Grumman, which was a very laborious (and expensive) process, but ultimately worth it.”Soundtrack albums so easily become an extension of a game’s aesthetic. They are large enough to show off its artwork, and they have an element of discovery too, with extensive liner notes, glossy inserts and luscious packaging. And like video games, they are tactile, concerned with skill and ritual. You treat vinyl records with reverence and care, dropping the needle so that it falls as softly as a good jump in a platform game. And when the music starts, you are transported. | Video Games |
More than 90 videos and images of Grand Theft Auto VI, the long-awaited follow-up to 2013’s Grand Theft Auto V, one of the best-selling video games of all time – leaked online over the weekend, in one of the biggest confidential data breaches in gaming history.The footage was posted to the GTAForums website by a user going by the name teapotuberhacker, who claimed to have accessed it by hacking Rockstar’s internal company Slack feed and gaining access to their servers.The original post has since been taken down, but not before the images and video proliferated across social media. Rockstar Games’ parent company, Take-Two Interactive, has been issuing takedowns to remove the footage from YouTube and Twitter.The hacker has also threatened to leak the source code for Grand Theft Auto V and the in-development version of Grand Theft Auto VI, inviting Rockstar Games to negotiate a deal.Rockstar Games and Take-Two have yet to comment on the leak, but sources close to Rockstar have indicated to the Guardian and Bloomberg that it is genuine, and represents an early-in-development build of the game that is already a year old.The footage shows animation tests, level layouts and gameplay tests, including some fully voiced conversations between characters. The footage shows a female protagonist in a fictionalised modern-day Miami, Vice City, also the setting of 2002’s Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.The videos clearly show an in-progress version of the game, with debug commands and other technical information overlaid. Rockstar confirmed that GTA 6 was in “active development” earlier this year, though early work on the game probably began in 2014.Leaks are damaging to video game developers not just because of the confidential information that they represent, but because a leak can adversely affect a game’s perception before release. It is usual for in-development builds to look rough until the final months of development, and they are rarely representative of the finished game – something that uninformed viewers often don’t understand. Developers who spend years of their lives making big-budget games are demoralised by leaks that do not show the quality of work that they strive for in the complete product.Prominent developers across the games industry have spoken out in sympathy with the people working at Rockstar Games over the weekend.Neil Druckmann, of Naughty Dog, whose 2020 game The Last of Us Part II was leaked in its entirety prior to release, tweeted: “To my fellow devs out there affected by the latest leak, know that while it feels overwhelming right now, it’ll pass. One day we’ll be playing your game, appreciating your craft, and the leaks will be relegated to a footnote on a Wikipedia page.”Grand Theft Auto V has sold 170m copies in the nine years since its release, making it one of the most successful entertainment products ever released. Along with its online multiplayer mode, GTA Online, it is estimated to have generated in excess of $900m for Take Two in 2020 alone. Grand Theft Auto VI is expected to break records when it is released – though Rockstar has indicated that it is still several years away. | Video Games |
From the stylish Evercade to the old-school Sega Genesis Mini, these machines will have you bleeping, blooping, and blasting back to the good old days.Do you remember the alluring 8-bit music, flashing screens, and excitement of the arcades? Maybe you spent happy hours in front of an early home computer or game console. Or perhaps you just want a taste of what early video games were like. Everyone loves new retro-looking games, but if you really want to scratch that nostalgic itch, you need to revisit the classics.There are many ways to play retro games, but perhaps the easiest is to snag a retro gaming console. I grew up in the arcade and owned a string of computers and consoles over the years, so when updated versions of these systems were released, I jumped at the chance to test them. These are the retro gaming consoles worth your time.Updated June 2022: We added the A500 Mini and the Analogue Mega SG.Special offer for Gear readers: Get a 1-year subscription to WIRED for $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com and our print magazine (if you'd like). Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day.If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDPhotograph: EvercadeBest OverallEvercade VSWith an authentic, minimalist 1980s aesthetic, this retro-gaming console offers an eclectic mix of classic games from different systems and publishers, including titles like Missile Command, Double Dragon, and Speedball 2. Games come in collections on $20 physical cartridges. There are more than 260 officially licensed games from Atari, Technos, Data East, Codemasters, and Piko Interactive, but new releases are rolling out all the time—the company recently added a Bitmap Brothers collection. Pop the flap and you’ll find space for two cartridges inside. Press the power button and a light strip blinks to life and turns red, followed by synth-wave music and high-resolution box art that gives you the retro feels.The rectangular controllers remind me of NES controllers with shoulder buttons, but they are probably the weakest element here—too lightweight and not comfortable for long play sessions. Luckily, you can use most third-party controllers (wired or wireless), and the console supports up to four players. Games run smoothly and mostly look good on the big screen. You also get display options, including the original ratio and artificial scan lines, control schemes with support for remapping, and the ability to save anywhere. All of that at an affordable price makes this the best retro console for most people.Photograph: PolymegaFor Cartridge CollectorsPolymegaWhether you’re an avid collector or happen to have a stack of old cartridges and discs in the loft, the Polymega may pique your interest. Designed as the one retro console to rule them all, this modular system has optional add-ons for NES, SNES, Genesis (Megadrive), or TurboGrafx that can accommodate the original cartridges and controllers from those systems. The large black base unit Polymega also plays Sega Saturn, PlayStation, Sega CD, TurboGrafx-CD, and Neo Geo CDs. The controller most resembles a DualShock pad, but the modules each come with an authentic-feeling version of the original gamepad—they even offer a light gun.Build quality is excellent, and the software emulation is impressive, with time saves and screen-filtering options. I tested the Super module after dusting off my old Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country carts, and it has been a blast introducing my kids to these classics. When you first insert a cart or disc, you get the option to run it or install it to the internal storage (it has 32 GB out of the box, but you can expand with an SD card or SSD), which is great for enthusiasts who want to preserve their collections. The carousel menu is slick, with box art, screenshots, and descriptions for each game. Real estate under the TV is at a premium, so replacing multiple systems with a single box is appealing. It comes with a handful of obscure titles preinstalled, but it only makes sense for gamers with large physical game libraries right now.Developer Playmaji had a tough time realizing this console, and orders can take a while to ship. What’s here already is impressive, and there’s an N64 module coming. If Playmaji can work out a way to offer its library of classic titles to buy and download, this could be the ultimate retro console, but it is certainly not cheap.Photograph: EvercadeBest HandheldEvercadeThe Evercade (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is a handheld console that debuted in 2020, offering the ability to play titles that were available on old systems like the NES, SNES, the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive), Atari Lynx, and the Mattel Intellivision. It has a 4.3-inch screen and works great as a portable gaming device, but you can also plug it into your TV with a Mini-HDMI to HDMI cable. The Evercade doesn’t precisely match the feel of specific systems and their controllers, but it runs games smoothly, offers a save function, and has decent battery life.Games are organized into collections on $20 cartridges with booklets that give a short history of each title. All of Evercade’s cartridges work on both the VS and this original Evercade, with the exception of a couple of Namco collections that were only licensed for the handheld. If you want multiplayer and prefer to play on the big screen, the Evercade VS above is a better choice.★ Alternative handheld: If you’re looking for a retro console to play old handheld games from systems like the Game Boy, Game Gear, and Game Boy Advance, keep an eye out for the Analogue Pocket, which we’re testing right now.Photograph: SEGAMost RetroSega Genesis MiniWhen it comes to official mini consoles, the Sega Genesis Mini (also known as the Mega Drive) is the pinnacle. Less than half the size of the original but with the same design, it looks the part. There’s even a fake volume slider and flaps that open, though sadly it can’t accommodate cartridges. It plugs into your TV with the included HDMI cable. The two wired three-button controllers feel authentic, but you can buy a wireless six-button controller that’s even better.The experience is elevated by a strong lineup of titles that run smoothly and look exactly as you remember. Alongside several Sonic the Hedgehog games, there’s Ecco the Dolphin, Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, Golden Axe, Tetris, Street Fighter 2, and many more—42 in total—with less filler than on most other mini consoles (though, annoyingly, there’s no Mortal Kombat). Everything is tied together neatly with specially composed menu music from the talented Yuzo Koshiro. Of all the consoles I tested, this was the most evocative.★ Alternative: The Analogue Mega SG ($190) (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is expensive, and it doesn’t come with any games or controllers (they cost $25 apiece). But it can play old Sega Genesis cartridges, so it’s a solid choice if you have a box of them in the basement. Thanks to an FPGA chip, this console runs the original games just as you remember them. Photograph: AmazonFor Arcade LoversNeo Geo Mini Few will remember SNK’s Neo Geo console from 1990, such was the dominance of Nintendo and Sega at the time, but it matched the performance of the company’s multi-video-system (MVS) arcade cabinets. But the new Neo Geo Mini unusually emulates an arcade cabinet rather than a console. It has a tiny 3.4-inch screen and a joystick with four buttons. It’s a little awkward to play on, so you may prefer to buy a Neo Geo Mini Pad controller. You get a power cable in the box, but you’ll need an AC adapter, and you should buy an HDMI to Mini-HDMI cable to play on your TV.With 40 games presented in true arcade style, including a prompt to spend credits when you die, the emulation is great. Plus, SNK added the option to save and return to any point. It’s a fighting-heavy lineup of games, including series like Metal Slug, King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, and Samurai Showdown. There are some fun games you’ll struggle to find elsewhere, and the arcade cabinet design makes it a great desk ornament.Photograph: SonyFor Die-Hard Sony Fans OnlySony PlayStation ClassicThe dinky PlayStation Classic looks cute, but Sony’s retro gaming console is a letdown. It comes with two wired controllers, a power cable, and an HDMI cable, but there’s no official wireless controller option, and you have to supply your own AC adapter. With just 20 games on board, this is a limited PlayStation lineup, and there’s no easy way to add new titles. Thankfully, there are some real classics, including Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil Director’s Cut, Tekken 3, and Twisted Metal. The experience is marred by poor emulation and inconsistent performance. The menu is distinctly barebones. Some of the early 3D games don’t look great on modern TVs, and there has been no attempt to upscale or remaster them. At least there’s a virtual memory card built in for saves. Despite some of the disappointments here, the Classic does boast a great list of games that chart its evolution and remind us why it was so impactful.Photograph: RetrogamesClunky Yet AuthenticRetroGames C64 MiniThe Commodore 64 made its way into millions of homes in the early ’80s when home computers began to take off. The C64 Mini is a miniaturized version of the beige plastic original, but its keys are just for show. It comes with a joystick and plugs into your TV with the included HDMI cable. There’s no AC adapter, but any phone charger you have lying around will do. There are a couple of USB ports, so you can add a keyboard or a second joystick, or even plug in a flash drive.With 64 games installed, from Impossible Mission to Boulder Dash, there’s plenty to choose from, but not all are classics, and there’s no booklet or instructions, which makes some of the titles almost unplayable. It does run the Commodore 64 BASIC programming language, so you can load custom ROMs to add more games if you don’t mind jumping through a few hoops. The whole thing is a little clunky, the 8-bit graphics look horrific on a 65-inch TV, and the joystick brought me no joy at all, but none of that is inconsistent with the original.Photograph: Retro GamesFor Amiga FansA500 MiniReleased in 1987, the Commodore Amiga 500 wasn’t big in the US, but it was one of the most popular home computers in the UK and across Europe, and it sparked a fierce rivalry with the Atari ST. Both offered a leap in gaming quality and a raft of new titles, like Alien Breed, Speedball 2, and Worms (all available on the A500 Mini alongside another 22 classics). The A500 Mini looks the part, though the keyboard isn’t usable, and it relies on emulation. You get a delightfully chunky replica mouse and gamepad (you can buy a joystick separately), and there is a USB port, so you can run more games from a flash drive (using the WHDLoad system). The A500 Mini also supports the Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) of the A1200.Within an hour of plugging it in, I was deep into a season with Brutal Deluxe and had the rapidly blistering thumb and aching hands to show for it. The D-Pad on the gamepad is a problem, especially when you want diagonal movement, but I was able to plug in the joystick from the C64 Mini and use that instead. The included games are glitch-free, and much as I remember them. The A500 Mini plugs into your TV via HDMI and can run at 50 or 60 Hz with 720p resolution. While some older games look horrendous on a modern 65-inch screen, these titles all hold up well. You get four save slots per game, and loading is instantaneous, so you can jump back in where you left off. It is a little pricey for what you get, but if you are willing to track down and sideload your faves, the A500 Mini is a great way to relive the Amiga glory days.Photograph: NintendoHonorable MentionsOther Retro ConsolesIt’s a shame that two of the best retro gaming consoles in recent years, the NES Classic Mini and the SNES Classic Mini, have been discontinued. Both feature great designs with a miniaturized look that’s true to the originals, silky performance, and strong game lineups of Nintendo’s greatest hits. You can still buy them online (usually from third-party resellers), but prices are seriously inflated. The SNES Classic Mini, for example, was $80 at launch, but a reseller has it for $220 on Amazon right now. You might have better luck buying one used. Nintendo fans keen on some classic gaming action might be better served by snagging a Switch and buying a Nintendo Switch Online membership ($20 for a year) to access more than 100 NES and SNES titles (here’s the full list). Add the Expansion Pack ($50 for a year) and you can get these N64 games too.If you’re craving some old-school pocket-sized Nintendo fun, check out the revived Game & Watch ($50) line. They are limited to a couple of games each, but when those games are Super Mario or Zelda titles, that can be enough for hours of fun.Simon Hill has been writing about tech for more than a decade. He is a regular contributor to WIRED, but you can also find his work at Business Insider, Reviewed, TechRadar, Android Authority, USA Today, Digital Trends, and many other places. Before writing, he worked in games development. He lives... Read more | Video Games |
Peak “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” happened more than 30 years ago. Back then, the cartoon was the show you had to watch if you were to function in classroom society. You had to be up-to-date on the latest Shredder and Krang plot and maybe own the latest action figure.
The nostalgia for those days is so strong because the turtles blanketed every part of childhood, covering television, movies, toys and, of course, video games. That last element wasn’t perfect at the start but after a few tries fans got a good “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” title. Konami found the right genre in the beat’-em up and that tradition continues today with “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge.”
At first glance, it seems as if the developers at Tribute Games are aping the arcade game and the SNES classic “Turtles in Time.” That would have been a solid but unexciting effort. But if players dig deeper, they’ll find that “Shredder’s Revenge” is so much more. Some of the same developers behind the brilliant “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game” poured an inordinate amount of love into this project and created a video game that stays true to the franchise’s peak era while also advancing the genre forward.
Players fight Rocksteady toward the beginning of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge” but the challenges ahead delves deep into the cartoon lore of the 1980s. (Dotemu)
CHASING TROUBLE
Through 16 episodes, players will chase after Krang and Shredder and uncover their plot for New York. It’s not exactly deep storytelling and games in this category don’t offer much in terms of complex themes. What “Shredder’s Revenge” does do successfully is pull players through a trip down memory lane. It’s a short but satisfying stroll, in which players will meet characters that were introduced through the cartoons. They’ll encounter familiar foes such as Rocksteady and Bebop but the campaign dives into the deep cuts of the animated series and includes allies such as the Punk Frogs and Neutrinos along with other adversaries such as General Traag, Slash and Leatherhead. Tribute Games mines the lore to give older fans moments of long-forgotten recollection.
Players can use a few non-turtle characters such as April O’Neil, Splinter and Casey Jones in “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge.” (Dotemu)
ADVANCED GAMEPLAY
What’s just as impressive as the devotion to the source material is the developer’s elegant way of advancing the game mechanics. “Shredder’s Revenge” is still accessible to players who just want to button mash their way to victory. Players have simple attack and jump buttons that can get them through the campaign, but if they want to gain a sense of mastery in combat, Tribute adds a dodge and super attack buttons along with a taunt.
The dodge lets players avoid damage if they time it right. The taunt button lets players do a quick animation that fills up the Ninja Power bar. That meter is important because it lets players execute a powerful super attack that can help clear the screen of enemies. These mechanics create more of a strategic element as players have to attack while avoiding damage to build up the power bar. Once it’s full, they’ll have to judiciously use the super attack when necessary.
In addition, the characters also have a dash attack and other moves that come in handy during certain situations. All the moves seem essential and useful. In multiplayer that supports up to six people, teamwork takes center stage as allies can share health, revive a fallen friend and even perform a co-op attack.
The combat is deeper than anything from 1990s, but the system isn’t so complex as to be burdensome. It feels just right for newcomers and veterans alike. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge” is best played with friends in the living room. (Dotemu)
REASONS TO REPLAY
Although the campaign isn’t long, “Shredder’s Revenge” does offer players plenty of reasons to replay the game after the story mode is over. The game lets players pick up to seven heroes that include the core turtle team, April O’Neil, Splinter and Casey Jones (He’s available once they beat the campaign). What’s smart is that each hero can be leveled up through gameplay and gain more health, Ninja Power meter and other perks. If players want to explore the campaign’s depth, they can power up each of the other characters who all have their own distinct styles of play.
Donatello has range with his bo, but he’s slow. Raphael is powerful but players need to be good at short-range fighting. In addition, the game has multiple challenges and secrets hidden throughout each episode, so there’s even more incentive to tackle the campaign multiple times. It’s a game that’s so fun and easy to pick up that players won’t mind that.
That’s just a testament to how much love is in every pixel of “Shredder’s Revenge.” Fans can feel the affection for the franchise, and it shines through every button presses and cowabunga. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge”
Three and a half stars
Platform: Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5
Rating: Everyone 10 and up | Video Games |
Children play a video game called League of Legends in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; a large new US study published in JAMA Network Open indicates there may be cognitive benefits associated with video gaming - Copyright AFP PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRAIssam AHMEDParents often worry about the harmful impacts of video games on their children, from mental health and social problems to missing out on exercise.
But a large new US study published in JAMA Network Open on Monday indicates there may also be cognitive benefits associated with the popular pastime.
Lead author Bader Chaarani, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont, told AFP he was naturally drawn to the topic as a keen gamer himself with expertise in neuroimagery.
Prior research had focused on detrimental effects, linking gaming with depression and increased aggression.
These studies were however limited by their relatively small number of participants, particularly those involving brain imaging, said Charaani.
For the new research, Chaarani and colleagues analyzed data from the large and ongoing Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, which is funded by the National Institutes of Health.
They looked at survey answers, cognitive test results, and brain images from around 2,000 nine- and ten-year-olds, who were separated into two groups: those who never played games, and those who played for three hours or more a day.
This threshold was chosen as it exceeds the American Academy of Pediatrics screen time guidelines of one or two hours of video games for older children.
– Impulses and memory –
Each group was assessed in two tasks.
The first involved seeing arrows pointing left or right, with the children asked to press left or right as fast as they could.
They were also told to not press anything if they saw a “stop” signal, to measure how well they could control their impulses.
In the second task, they were shown people’s faces, and then asked if a subsequent picture shown later on matched or not, in a test of their working memory.
After using statistical methods to control for variables that could skew results, such as parental income, IQ, and mental health symptoms, the team found the video gamers performed consistently better on both tasks.
As they performed the tasks, the children’s brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Video gamers’ brains showed more activity in regions associated with attention and memory.
“The results raise the intriguing possibility that video gaming may provide a cognitive training experience with measurable neurocognitive effects,” the authors concluded in their paper.
Right now it’s not possible to know whether better cognitive performance drives more gaming, or is its result, said Chaarani.
The team hope to get a more clear answer as the study continues and they look again at the same children at older ages.
This will also help exclude other potential factors at play such as the children’s home environment, exercise and sleep quality.
Future studies could also benefit from knowing what genres of games the children were playing — though at age 10 children tend to favor action games like Fortnite or Assassin’s Creed.
“Of course, excessive use of screen time is bad for overall mental health and physical activity,” said Chaarani.
But he said the results showed video games might be a better use of screen time than watching videos on YouTube, which has no discernible cognitive effects. With 2,400 staff representing 100 different nationalities, AFP covers the world as a leading global news agency. AFP provides fast, comprehensive and verified coverage of the issues affecting our daily lives. | Video Games |
Kevin Conroy Voice of Batman Dead At 66 11/11/2022 8:34 AM PT Kevin Conroy, known as the voice of animated Batman for decades, has died ... TMZ has learned. Kevin passed away Thursday, according to his rep Gary Miereanu ... following a short battle with cancer. The actor moved out to California in 1980, first getting cast in the soap opera "Another World" ... before working in theater and television for a number of years. Many remember Kevin as the titular voice of Batman for decades, first playing the dark knight in "Batman: The Animated Series" from 1992 to 1995. Since first breaking out as the comic book hero, Kevin's played the character on TV, in movies and even in video games countless times -- including "Batman Beyond," 2001's 'Justice League' series, "Batman: The Killing Joke" and every Batman 'Arkham' series video game. He took home 7 awards over the years for his voice acting ... including Best Actor for his video game work in 2015. Kevin wrote a story called "Finding Batman" as part of DC Comics' Pride anthology in 2022 ... going over his experiences in his life as a gay man. Fellow voice actor Diane Pershing, known for playing villain Poison Ivy alongside Kevin, shared her pain following Kevin's passing ... writing, "He will be sorely missed not just by the cast of the series but by his legion of fans all over the world." Kevin is survived by his husband Vaughn C. Williams, sister Trisha Conroy, and brother Tom Conroy. He was 66. RIP | Video Games |
Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Kevin Conroy is best known for voicing Batman for 30 yearsKevin Conroy, who is best known for voicing Batman, has died aged 66.He first played Bruce Wayne 30 years ago in Batman: The Animated Series and went on to appear in a number of TV shows, feature films and video games.He also voiced the superhero in the video games Arkham Knight and Arkham City and also appeared in a 2019 episode of Batwoman.His agent Steven Neibert told the BBC: "The voiceover community lost one of the greats."I am completely devastated as I worked with him for over 25 years."Conroy was described as a "dear friend" by casting director Andrea Romano.She added that: "Kevin's warm heart, delightfully deep laugh and pure love of life will be with me forever." DC Comics said they were "deeply saddened" by the news. Star Wars actor Mark Hamill, who played Batman's nemesis The Joker in Batman animations and video games, said Conroy was "one of my favourite people on the planet" in his statement, adding he "loved him like a brother". In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2017, Conroy said he had got his inspiration for the voice of Batman from the 1930s film The Scarlet Pimpernel."I played Bruce Wayne as sort of a humorous playboy to counteract the brooding nature of Batman," he said. | Video Games |
Touchscreens don’t always get the job done. Try one of these WIRED-tested smartphone controllers for your iPhone or Android instead.Mobile gaming has never been more popular. You can relax with a casual puzzle, indulge your tower defense addiction, or dip into some competitive shooter action. These days, there’s something for everyone. The latest phones can run demanding, graphically impressive titles, so ports of popular PC and console games are increasingly common, but they are not always fun to play with touchscreen controls. What you need is a mobile game controller.We tested several of the top smartphone controllers by playing various games for hours at a time to find the very best performers. These are our favorites. We’ve marked which platform each controller officially supports, though there may be others that unofficially work. And be sure to check out our many other guides, including the Best iPhones, Best Android Phones, and Best Mobile Games, to level up your gaming kit.Updated July 2022: We added new controllers from GameSir and PowerA.Special offer for Gear readers: Get a 1-year subscription to WIRED for $5 ($25 off). This includes unlimited access to WIRED.com and our print magazine (if you'd like). Subscriptions help fund the work we do every day.If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. Learn more. Please also consider subscribing to WIREDPhotograph: 8BitDoBest Overall8BitDo Pro 2With a unique combination of features, a thoughtful retro design, and solid performance, all at a reasonable price, this is the best mobile controller for most people. The D-pad is all too frequently a disappointment in phone controllers, but not here. The buttons are satisfying, and the analog sticks are sensitive. I love the subtly textured back, which adds grip. There are double shoulder triggers with two clever programmable buttons around the back so you can keep your thumbs on the sticks. This Bluetooth controller can connect to four devices, so you can easily jump between a Nintendo Switch, MacBook, Android or iOS phone, and Windows PC, or you can connect with a cable using the controller’s USB-C port. Just make sure you snag an 8Bitdo Mobile Clip ($15) to go with it.The 8BitDo Pro 2 has a rechargeable battery inside that’s good for about 20 hours, but it is removable, and you can swap in two AA batteries if you need. To sweeten the deal further, the 8BitDo Ultimate Software app for Android or iOS lets you remap buttons; tweak the stick, trigger, and vibration sensitivity; and even set up custom macros in your favorite mobile games. All this controller lacks is support for PlayStation and Xbox. Officially works with Nintendo Switch, Windows (Steam), Mac, Android, and iOSPhotograph: GulikitRunner-UpGuliKit KingKong 2 ProResembling a Switch Pro controller, the KingKong 2 Pro has a quality feel and good looks, with contrasting silver shoulder buttons and a black finish. It is textured for enhanced grip and feels comfortable in the hand for long sessions. Silky-smooth joysticks and satisfyingly clicky buttons make it a pleasure to use, and the D-pad is decent. The main innovation is the electromagnetic joysticks designed to combat drift. (A couple of months in and no drift so far.) There is also a programmable button for Auto-Pilot Gaming (APG), allowing you to record up to 10 minutes of gameplay and tap the button to repeat. The vibrate is strong, and there’s a six-axis gyroscope for Switch games.The GuliKit KingKong 2 Pro has a 1,000-mAh battery that's good for up to 24 hours. There’s a USB-C port and Bluetooth for wired or wireless connections. I mostly played Hades on the PC, but the controller worked well with Cat Quest 2 on my iPad too. Individual buttons make it easy to jump between your phone, computer, laptop, and Nintendo Switch. The lack of a companion app is good and bad; there’s a learning curve to calibrating features, and firmware updates must be manual. On the other hand, who wants another app? The controller comes with a snug, molded, translucent carrying case that just has room for the cable too.Officially works with Android, iPhone, Nintendo Switch, and WindowsPhotograph: GameSirBest CompactGameSir T4 MiniIf you’re not a fan of the cradle style and don’t mind just propping your phone up to play, this tiny controller is a pocket-friendly option. Even with my large hands, I like the feel. The offset twin sticks are smooth, and the buttons are responsive, but the triggers are shallow, and the D-pad is only passable. I love the translucent design and the internal RGB lighting that highlights the buttons (you can also cycle modes and choose from nine colors). Pairing is easy via Bluetooth 5.The 600-mAh battery is an inevitable downside, but it delivers up to 10 hours of gameplay, and you can recharge via the USB-C port. It takes three hours for a full charge. Vibration motors and a gyroscope make it a good pick for playing on the Nintendo Switch. The customizable Turbo button is handy for some games, enabling you to automate single or group button presses. I played a few hours of Cat Quest 2 on my iPad Mini and found the T4 Mini surprisingly fun to use.Officially works with iPhone, Android, Nintendo Switch, and WindowsPhotograph: BackboneFor iPhone GamersBackbone OneThe Backbone One (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is a delight. Plug the Lightning connector into your iPhone, stretch the controller over it, and play. The buttons and bumpers feel nice and clicky, with super-fast response times, and there's broad support for PS Remote Play, Xbox Remote Play, and Steam Link, as well as Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, Google Stadia, and GeForce Now. Essentially, even if you don't love mobile gaming, this little controller can turn your phone into a console or PC. But the experience might change your mind about mobile games; I played Stardew Valley for so long I forgot I was playing on my phone. The built-in headphone jack is a nice touch.What really sets Backbone One apart is its optional app. All of the features are free for the first year. I love the searchable catalog of controller-supported games and the automatically recorded and edited in-game highlights. There's also an interface for seamless voice chat and multiplayer lobbies, as well as one-tap Twitch streaming and support for iOS Gaming Mode. (Note: As the iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max have large cameras, Backbone offers an adapter for free; check the box during checkout or order one separately.) —Louryn StrampeOfficially works with iPhone, Google Stadia, Nvidia GeForce Now, Xbox and PlayStation Remote Play, and Steam Link ★ Another alternative: The RiotPWR ESL ($70) is a more traditional controller with an Xbox layout that connects to your iPhone via Lightning cable for lag-free gaming and pass-through charging. If you can get past the unfortunate ESL brand color scheme (green and yellow), this is a solid pick for games on iOS or remote play from Xbox, PlayStation, or PC. It also has a headphone port, and there's an Android version too.Photograph: SteelSeriesFor PC GamersSteelSeries Stratus+Replacing its predecessor, the Duo, on this list, the SteelSeries Stratus+ is perfect for flicking between games on an Android device and your PC or laptop. It feels much like an Xbox Wireless Controller, with a similar button layout, although it has symmetrical thumbsticks with a disappointingly mushy D-Pad offset at the top left. You can connect wirelessly to an Android phone or Chromebook via Bluetooth LE 4.1 or use the USB-C port to connect a cable for PC gaming. If you crave wireless PC gaming, the Stratus Duo ($59) is still a better pick, because there’s no Wi-Fi support with the Stratus+, but you do get a smartphone clip in the box, and it’s a clever new design that folds flat for easy storage.While the Duo was prone to disconnecting from my Pixel 6, my week with the Stratus+ has been plain sailing. SteelSeries says the battery can go for up to 90 hours, and just 15 minutes of charging gets you 12 hours of gameplay. Playing bursts of Jydge through the week, there’s still battery life, and it feels slick and accurate. The Stratus+ also worked well with games in my Steam library without configuration, and it’s a recommended controller for Nvidia’s GeForce Now.Officially works with Android, Windows (Steam), Nvidia GeForce Now, and ChromebooksPhotograph: PowerAFor Xbox Remote PlayPowerA Moga XP-5 XIdeal for Xbox Remote Play, this controller will feel instantly familiar to Xbox owners, and it even has an Xbox button in the center, like the official model. It's much lighter, but there are solid standard Xbox buttons, grippy thumbsticks, and a couple of programmable pushers on the back. The only disappointment is the mushy D-pad and the lack of any haptics. The clip design is smart, with two adjustable joints and a cradle that expands to accommodate most phones. It even has minimal forked prongs that avoid the power or volume buttons on the side of your phone. The connection to your phone is a choice of cable or Bluetooth.With a 3,000-mAh rechargeable battery inside, the Moga XP-5 X boasts long battery life and can even double up as a portable battery pack. It charges via a MicroUSB port in the top, and there’s a USB-A port that can be used to plug a cable into your phone’s USB-C port (the supplied cable caters to both). Weirdly, there’s no Xbox support, so you can stream Xbox games from your console to your phone with Remote Play, but you can’t play on the Xbox itself with this controller.Officially works with Android, Xbox Remote Play, and Windows★ Upgrade pick: The PowerA Moga XP7-X Plus ($100) offers everything the XP-5 X does but you can also remove the stand in the center to slot in your phone (my Pixel 6 Pro fits nicely). It is sturdy, offers plenty of buttons (only a screenshot button is missing), and can wirelessly charge your phone. But it is expensive, has a MicroUSB port when I’d prefer USB-C, and only a 2,000 mAh battery, so stick with the XP-5 X unless you really want that spring-loaded cradle to fit your phone in.Photograph: GamesirFor Android GamersGameSir X2With a Nintendo Switch aesthetic and button layout, this controller is compact and doesn’t need much power, making it ideal for on-the-go gaming. It stretches open to cradle virtually any Android phone in its rubbery embrace, accommodating devices up to 6.8 inches long and 0.39 inches thick (it can even hold a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3). The textured sections provide great grip, and you get solid twin joysticks, a D-pad, and plenty of buttons, though the shoulder triggers are basic. It sports a USB-C connector for smooth gaming, with much lower latency compared to Bluetooth controllers.I tested it with the Pixel 6, and it felt tailor-made for twin-stick shooters like Jydge. It worked with most of the games I tried, but not all, and if you need to map keys, you must use the buggy and confusing Gamesir app. I do worry about the long-term impact of the swiveling USB-C connector on my phone’s port, and since there’s no power button, you won’t want to leave your phone in it all the time.Officially works with Android, Microsoft xCloud, Google Stadia, and GeForce Now★ Newer version: The GameSir X3 ($100) is an upgrade on paper with refined buttons, more options for the joysticks, and a cooling fan on the back, but I recommend sticking with the X2 and saving yourself some money because the fan adds bulk and weight and it needs power via a dedicated USB-C port (it has a separate USB-C port for pass-through charging of your phone).Photograph: SonyFor PS5 OwnersSony DualSense ControllerIf you have a controller as good as the DualSense, you should use it every chance you get. It's a PlayStation 5 highlight that’s highly responsive, refined, and durable. And since it supports Bluetooth, you can pair it with your smartphone just as you would any other Bluetooth device (here’s a pairing guide). It won’t work with every game, and you won’t get the full benefit of the adaptive triggers unless you use it with the PS5, but it makes a great mobile stand-in. If you like the idea of playing PlayStation games on your phone, try the PS Remote Play app for Android or iOS.Add an Orzly Gaming Clip ($13) to mount your phone, and you are all set. You can also use the PS4’s DualShock 4 controller with smartphones (it pairs via Bluetooth, too.)Officially works with Android, iPhone, PlayStation, and WindowsPhotograph: MicrosoftFor Xbox OwnersXbox/Microsoft Xbox Wireless Controller (White)If you already play on Xbox, you may as well use the Xbox Wireless Controller with your phone. We have an easy pairing guide, and it’s a cinch to pair with an iPhone, iPad, Android phone, or tablet via Bluetooth. It may require configuration for some games, and it’s not going to work with everything. If you are an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscriber, find out how to stream Xbox and PC games on your Android phone. Add a PowerA MOGA Mobile Gaming Clip ($10) to mount your phone, and game on.Officially works with Android, iPhone, Xbox, and WindowsPhotograph: NintendoFor Nintendo OwnersNintendo Switch Pro ControllerYou can use a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller with Android, but sadly there’s no official iOS support. To connect to an Android device, simply hold down the sync button on the top of the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller until it starts flashing. Turn on Bluetooth on your phone and go to Settings, Connected devices, and choose Pair new device, then select the Pro Controller. Just like the PS and Xbox controllers, it won’t work perfectly with every game.Officially works with Nintendo Switch and AndroidPhotograph: IogearFor Mouse and Keyboard FansKeymander 2 MobileFor some of us, playing a first-person shooter just doesn’t feel right without a keyboard and mouse. This unusual niche device enables you to play on an iPhone, iPad, or Android phone with a wired or wireless keyboard and mouse, but it does so in a confusing, cobbled-together kind of way. You need either the official Sony PlayStation 4 controller or Microsoft Xbox One wireless controller with Bluetooth (specifically Model 1708), and those connect via MicroUSB cable to the Keymander 2. It's essentially using the controller support to connect the mouse and keyboard, and you configure them in the K2 Mobile Game Dock app.The dock is a little flimsy, but it managed to hold my iPad in place, with ports in the side and back for plugging everything in. I struggled to get it all working, as the instructions are not the clearest, but once it was hooked up and configured, playing Fortnite, Call of Duty, and Minecraft was a breeze. The Keymander 2 Mobile could also work well for remote play on PlayStation or Xbox or for a streaming service like Stadia. Just be aware that only games with controller support work well, and you do need to tweak settings frequently for best results.Officially works with iPhone, Android, Nintendo Switch, Xbox and PlayStation Remote Play, and Google Stadia Simon Hill has been writing about tech for more than a decade. He is a regular contributor to WIRED, but you can also find his work at Business Insider, Reviewed, TechRadar, Android Authority, USA Today, Digital Trends, and many other places. Before writing, he worked in games development. He lives... Read moreLouryn Strampe is a product writer and reviewer at WIRED covering a little bit of everything. She especially loves discounts, video games … and discounted video games. She previously wrote for Future PLC and Rakuten. She currently resides in northern Illinois with two fluffy cats. | Video Games |
A logo of Tencent is seen at its booth at the 2020 China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) in Beijing, China September 4, 2020. REUTERS/Tingshu WangRegister now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comHONG KONG, Aug 4 (Reuters) - Tencent Holdings Ltd (0700.HK) plans to raise its stake in French video game group Ubisoft Entertainment SA (UBIP.PA) as the Chinese gaming giant pivots to the global gaming market, four sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.China's largest social network and gaming firm, which bought a 5% stake in Ubisoft in 2018, has reached out to the French firm's founding Guillemot family and expressed interest in increasing its stake in the firm, the sources said.It is not clear how much more Tencent plans to own in Ubisoft, valued at $5.3 billion, but Tencent aims to become the single largest shareholder of the French company with an additional stake purchase, two of the sources said.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comTencent plans to buy a part of the additional stake in Ubisoft, the maker of the blockbuster "Assassin's Creed" video game franchise, from the Guillemot family, which owns 15% of the firm, three of the sources said.Tencent could offer up to 100 euros ($101.84) per share to acquire the additional stake, two of the sources with knowledge of the internal discussions, said. It paid 66 euros per share for the 5% stake in 2018.Ubisoft shares surged more than 15% after the Reuters report. Shares in Guillemot Corp SA (GTCN.PA), the holding company in which the Guillemot family owns the majority shareholding, were trading up more than 7%.Two of them added the Chinese firm will also seek to acquire shares from public shareholders of Ubisoft, to boost its ownership and become the single-largest shareholder.About 80% of the French firm's shares are owned by public shareholders, according to its latest annual report.All the sources declined to be named as they are not authorised to speak to the media.Tencent and Ubisoft declined to comment.Representatives of the Guillemot family could not be immediately reached for comment.The details of the deal have yet to be finalised and are subject to change, said the people who spoke on condition of anonymity as the information is private.The planned stake purchase, Tencent's latest major foreign deal since a regulatory crackdown in late 2020, will help it offset some of the pressures in the domestic gaming market. China's video games market, the world's largest, has become fiercely competitive."Tencent is very determined to nail down the deal as Ubisoft is such an important strategic asset for Tencent," one of the people said.At the top end of 100 euros per share, Tencent's offer will be a premium of 127% to the stock's 44 euros average price over the past three months, and is close to its historical price ceiling at 108 euros in 2018.Tencent has submitted to the Guillemot family a term sheet - a non-binding offer describing the basic terms and conditions of an investment, said one of the people, with a price "way above" the company's current price to ward off potential competition.The aggressive offer also comes as global gaming power houses have been rushing to snap up quality independent game makers in recent years, which are in scarcity, two of the sources said.Tencent's senior executives flew to France in May to meet the Guillemot family about the purchase, two of the people said.DOMESTIC PRESSURESChina's gaming regulator has not granted any new game licences to Tencent at home since June last year, before it froze gaming approvals for nearly nine months. Since it resumed approvals in April this year, none of the past four batches included the company. read more In May, Tencent reported that its domestic game revenue dropped 1% in the first quarter while international game revenue rose 4%.Tencent, which has stakes in U.S. video game developers Epic Games and Riot Games, said in June it would release its flagship mobile game "Honor of Kings" globally by the end of the year. read more In 2016, it bought a majority stake in "Clash of Clans" mobile game maker Supercell for roughly $8.6 billion, one of the world's biggest ever gaming deals.It also owns 9% of UK video gaming firm Frontier Developments and said last year it would buy another British developer Sumo in a $1.3 billion deal. read more Ubisoft, whose titles also include "Prince of Persia" and "Rainbow Six", in May forecast lower operating profit for 2022-23 after the company reported operating income for 2021-22 that missed estimates. read more ($1 = 0.9819 euros)Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comAdditional reporting by Pamela Barbaglia in London, Sudip Kar-Gupta and Richard Lough in Paris; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Jacqueline WongOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | Video Games |
By Tom GerkenTechnology TeamImage source, Getty ImagesThe UK government has decided video game loot boxes will not be regulated under betting laws, despite it finding a link between them and gambling harms.In a long-awaited call for evidence, it instead told the video game industry to take action to protect young people.It says it will step in if firms do not act, and also wants loot box purchases to be restricted to adults, unless approved by a parent or guardian.One academic said he was "dismayed" by the government's approach.Loot boxes are an in-game feature involving a sealed mystery "box" - sometimes earned through playing a game and sometimes paid for with real money - which can be opened to reveal virtual items, such as weapons or costumes.They have come under fire in recent years, with consumer groups in 18 European countries backing a report calling them "exploitative" in May.Gambling Act unchangedThe government was considering whether loot boxes should form part of its yet-to-be released review of the Gambling Act 2005 - but it has decided against this.Video game publishers have been told they must bring in "sufficient measures" to govern player safety, such as protecting vulnerable adults and fully disclosing the odds of getting certain items from loot boxes."While many loot boxes share some similarities with traditional gambling products, we view the ability to legitimately cash out rewards as an important distinction," it said in the report."In particular, the prize does not normally have real world monetary value outside of the game, and its primary utility is to enhance the in-game experience. "The Gambling Commission has shown that it can and will take action where the trading of items obtained from loot boxes does amount to unlicensed gambling, and it will continue to take robust enforcement action where needed."The government plans to launch a video games research framework later this year, which it hopes will work with academics and people from the industry to improve the available data. It said there were "limitations in the evidence base regarding loot boxes".'Insulting' Kinder Surprise comparisonHowever, some say the government has not gone far enough in its response.James Close, from the University of Plymouth, who has published research on the link between gaming loot boxes and problem gambling, said he was "dismayed" by the report."I take issue with some of the citation of the evidence base," he said. "The report released yesterday did show strong links with problem gambling. "They cited those things, but then they equally said there's no evidence of causation here. They might not be able to support causation, but if people at serious risk of harm are engaging heavily in this form of monetisation, then it doesn't matter whether loot boxes cause problem gambling."Dr Close also raised questions about whether the government was right to say prizes did not have real-world monetary value outside the games, as some secondary markets online allow players to easily sell the items acquired in-game.His research, published in 2021, found loot boxes "are structurally and psychologically akin to gambling".But games publisher EA previously defended them, comparing loot boxes to children's toys Hatchimals or Kinder Surprise.Adrian Hon, chief executive of game developer Six to Start and author of forthcoming book You've Been Played, called this comparison "obviously ridiculous"."It would be like there's a Kinder Surprise shop in your bedroom and you can buy as many as you want," he said. In order for the two to be comparable, he added: "When you open them up there's fireworks going off everywhere."And you can get this amazing toy that you can use in the game that you play with your friends. That's not a Kinder Surprise - the comparison is insulting, really." | Video Games |
I recently moved into a new house and faced that most terrifying of prospects: a few days without internet access. On top of all the other dependencies that this enriching, vile invention has created in us, all the games I’ve been playing required patches, updates, or someone to play against. I was – gulp – gameless!Luckily, I had found my old Game Boy Advance while moving, rejected and forlorn in a freezer bag in the bottom of a box with a handful of game cartridges, unfingered for nearly 20 years. It had been my constant companion on flights to from Glasgow to London back when we didn’t have phones with games, and I was appearing on what seemed like every single one of those Top 100 War Movies/TV embarrassments/Songs That Use Flowers As Metaphors for Sex. (And Richard and Judy.)You are familiar with the sensory overload that comes with games playing in 2022, yeah? Firing up God of War on a Sauron ultimate build PC through an 85-inch OLED TV or whatever the latest thing is? This is the opposite. This is the first time I have suffered a sensory underload. I literally didn’t notice anything when I switched the Gameboy Advance on. Had I lost the power of sight? Was I deaf? The machine was so dim and quiet.Then I saw a button with the shape of a sun on it. Ah, this must be the backlight, I surmised. And pushed it.The screen got darker. Oh dear. The backlight already was switched on.Legendary video game developer Shigeru Miyamoto holds up the new Nintendo Game Boy Advance in Los Angeles, May 2001. Photograph: John Barr/APHow did we ever manage to play this machine? Did we have better optometrists in 2004? Was the world somehow darker, to allow this screen to stand out more?The sound problem was easier to explain: there was none. The years of freezer bag storage had not been kind to my Game Boy Advance speaker, so for tonight I would use headphones.Ah. No headphone slot. You need an adaptor. What!? That’s as primitive and unhelpful as … every single iPhone in 2022.So, I played in silence. My son does that with all games, which I have always thought is the strangest thing ever. But I gave it a go.I lasted five minutes on Mario vs Donkey Kong. A barely readable screen and no sound made it the gaming equivalent of watching bag blown down a city street on a foggy day. Then I had an idea: I would try it at night. With no other sensory distractions.This was better. I could now see the screen, though as I do not yet have curtains, I treated my neighbours to the sight of a 6 foot 1 inch, 230 lb man inside an empty room with his face lit by a pixelated glow, perhaps inspiring them to write a successful serial-killer movie.But the games were worth it. Mario vs Donkey Kong is still an exceptional platform puzzler, the Manic Miner update we dreamed of as 80s kids. Mario Golf is a joyful return to the days where your swing wasn’t at the mercy of a fiddly thumb joystick.Returning to The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap was like finding an old pair of Adidas Gazelles that don’t smell. Cool comfort. Any fun that was lost playing it in silence was made up for by the fact that I named my character MYBUTT, so characters kept saying: “Where’s MYBUTT?” It really is the simple things in life that please me.Advance Wars 2 is still perfection when it comes to turn-based action strategy, and had me wondering if we even need fancy graphics and sound in games, or indeed whether we need any game released after 2004. If the 90s truly were the greatest era for original video games, weren’t the first half of the 2000s the cherry on top, before the always-online-constant-patches-and-microtransactions era began?Advance Wars on the Game Boy Advance Photograph: NintendoI feel a more intimate, immersive connection to these games, but that may just be because my face is pressed right up to the tiny screen so that I can see it. And why are my hands suddenly 10 times larger and clumsier than they were two decades ago? Is it monkeypox?There are disappointments though. Some games have not survived storage: Tony Hawks American Sk8land is as broken as its spelling. Super Monkey Ball is similarly bricked. The biggest dagger to the heart is my broken copy of Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon, which I remember as a masterpiece. As a nostalgia trip, this is like loading a C90 full of Spectrum games and getting an R Tape Loading Error. Or getting no reply from girls you fancied at school on Friends Reunited.And then I remembered a hack from the cartridge days of yore: I take it out the Shining Force cartridge and I blow into it. I slap it firmly back in and switch it on. It works! The old “Magic Cartridge Blow” Special Move still working at my age gives me the biggest gaming exultation I have ever experienced. My neighbours are treated to the sight of a 6ft 1n, 230lb Scotsman dancing by the light of a Game Boy Advance screen. They may never recover. But I don’t care. I am off to the land of Rune in the kingdom of Guardania. I am off to 2004, and I may not want to return. This article was amended on 7 September 2022 because an earlier version referred to “Puma Gazelles”, when those shoes are by Adidas, not Puma. | Video Games |
The previous game in the series, Grand Theft Auto V, is one of the best-selling video games of all time. A view of a store promoting Grand Theft Auto IV, in London, on April 29, 2008.Nathan Strange / AP fileSept. 19, 2022, 2:45 PM UTCRockstar Games, one of the largest video game publishers in the world, was hacked over the weekend, the company announced Monday.The hacker gained access to videos and other files from Grand Theft Auto VI, Rockstar’s upcoming major title.Screen grabs and footage from the upcoming game circulated on Telegram and Twitter over the weekend, and were viewed by NBC News. The previous game in the series, Grand Theft Auto V, is one of the best-selling video games of all time. “We recently suffered a network intrusion in which an unauthorized third party illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information from our systems, including early development footage for the next Grand Theft Auto. At this time, we do not anticipate any disruption to our live game services nor any long-term effect on the development of our ongoing projects,” Rockstar said in an announcement posted to Twitter.“We are extremely disappointed to have any details of our next game shared with you all in this way,” the announcement said.This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.Kevin Collier is a reporter covering cybersecurity, privacy and technology policy for NBC News. | Video Games |
The video game industry is predicted to shrink for the first time since 2015. In a report released this week, UK-based market research firm Ampere Analysis said the global video games content and services market will decline by 1.2% in 2022 to $188 billion. The annual decline comes after a boom in video game sales during the COVID-19 pandemic. Between 2019 and 2021, the market expanded by 26%, hitting a record $191 billion last year, according to Ampere. The market report cites supply shortages, the war in Ukraine and a potential recession as factors contributing to the decline. Ampere research director Piers Harding-Rolls said the industry isn't "recession proof." "After two years of huge expansion, the games market is poised to hand back a bit of that growth in 2022 as multiple factors combine to undermine performance," said Harding-Rolls in the report. "Even so, the year will end well ahead of pre-pandemic performance, and the outlook for the sector as a whole remains positive."The market is predicted to continue growth in 2023, with sales expected to rise from their record-breaking mark in 2021 to $195 billion. | Video Games |
Image: LionsgateSince 2014, Keanu Reeves has shot, stabbed, library book’d, and horse’d dozens of gangsters and hired guns to death across three (going on four) John Wick films. While we know that the franchise will continue with the upcoming prequel series The Continental, and there’ll be another film in a couple of years (plus the Ballerina spinoff film reportedly led by Ana de Armas), Lionsgate is looking to keep the series going any way it can. And in this era of IP and franchises hopping from one medium over to another, that means video games aren’t out of the realm of possibility.OffEnglishDuring a recent earnings call earlier in the week, Lionsgate CEO John Feltheimer said that the company had been looking at pitches for a video game based on the films. While nothing’s set in stone yet, he did tease that should a game come to fruition, it would most likely be from a triple-A developer. “I don’t want to get ahead of myself here...we have been fielding proposals. We certainly are interested in moving that forward, but I don’t want to say anything more about that at this time.”Thus far, the only video game to come out of the franchise was John Wick Hex, a 2019 timeline strategy game from developer Bithell Games that served as a prequel to the films. Beyond that, Reeves himself is no stranger to games: outside of playing Johnny Silverhand in 2020's Cyberpunk 2077, he played Neo in the live-action cutscenes of 2003's Enter the Matrix, and again in last year’s The Matrix Awakens tech demo. And even if the game doesn’t star him, it’s likely that he’d show up in some capacity, given that the franchise is basically built around him. But the big question would be, which developer could bring John Wick’s mix of kung fu and gunplay to a video game format and make them both feel equally satisfying instead of a shooter that just happens to have some not terrible melee combat? Let us know who think could make that happen in the comments below.[via IGN] Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel and Star Wars releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. | Video Games |
Satya Nadella, chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp., speaks during the virtual Meta Connect event in New York on Oct. 11, 2022.Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesNext time you're bored on a Microsoft Teams call, try joining your colleagues in a game of Minesweeper.Microsoft on Wednesday added a collection of casual games to its Teams chat and calling service as the company tries to get people to spend more time in the app. Solitaire will also be available, along with a new game called IceBreakers created by Microsoft to help teammates get to know one another.Microsoft is attempting to cast Teams as the premier destination for work, expanding on a product that exploded during the pandemic, when employees were forced to gather and collaborate virtually. Teams is now available on most popular devices, and desktop software developers including Adobe and SAP have developed Teams integrations.By adding games, Microsoft is trying to sprinkle some fun into the equation and perhaps even strengthen bonds at work. Employees can come together remotely to win at a game of Minesweeper, a puzzle game with clickable squares that includes some virtual mines that must be avoided. People can also just watch the entertainment."Enhanced spectator mode allows everyone, whether actively playing that round or not, to follow the action and engage with the players on screen," Nicole Herskowitz, a Microsoft corporate vice president, wrote in a blog post. She likened it to the experience of watching "Jeopardy."Games are a familiar product for Microsoft. In addition to the whole Xbox franchise, which launched in 2001, the company has a host of ways to play casual games. The classic Klondike game, for example, is part of the Microsoft Solitaire Collection app for Windows.In January, Microsoft announced plans to acquire Activision Blizzard, which publishes first-person shooter games in the Call of Duty franchise, for close to $69 billion. The deal must first clear regulatory hurdles.Minesweeper and Solitaire both debuted with Microsoft in 1990. Solitaire, a variation of a card game from the 1800s, was a utility designed to help people get comfortable with Windows and learn to use a mouse, but it wound up becoming the most popular game on the operating system, The Washington Post reported in 1994. The newspaper said Bill Gates, Microsoft's co-founder and first CEO, had such a grave addiction to Minesweeper that he took the game off his PC.The big play now for Microsoft is getting executives to renew and expand their subscriptions to Office 365, a critical bundle that the company is currently rebranding as Microsoft 365. Office represented 23% of Microsoft's total revenue in the third quarter.Microsoft is even positioning games as a potential way to improve cognitive development. In an email to CNBC, a Microsoft spokesperson cited a study of over 2,000 children suggesting that those who played video games saw gains in working memory compared with those who did not play.As part of its new release, Microsoft is also bringing a mobile-friendly game called Wordament to Teams. The Boggle-like game appeared in 2011 after Microsoft asked employees to build Windows Phone apps in their free time, leading two staffers to devise the game as something for them to play with their wives. The game, which challenges players to spot words among a grid of letters, has racked up 1 million downloads on Android.The Microsoft spokesperson said the IceBreakers idea was particularly popular."As we tested different game ideas across Microsoft, this was one of the most requested game types, and we listened to the feedback to create this game," the spokesperson wrote in the email.Minesweeper, Solitaire, Wordament and IceBreakers are in the Games for Work app for Teams, which is available now for Microsoft enterprise and education customers. Administrators have to enable access to apps in Teams for users to play the games. The company will pull more games from partners into Teams in 2023, Herskowitz wrote.WATCH: Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's art collection shatters record with $1.6 billion auction | Video Games |
Several independent sources say Varun Chheda, the Purdue student who was stabbed to death in his dorm room early Wednesday morning, was playing video games over a Discord voice chat before and during the stabbing.A student at the vigil Wednesday night said someone he knows was on a Discord call with both Chheda and accused killer Ji "Jimmy" Min Sha on Tuesday night while they played video games together. The classmate reportedly said Sha lost the game, “rage quit,” left the Discord call, and moments later, Chheda was dead.Arunabh Sinha, one of Chheda's childhood friends, confirmed in a call with The Exponent that Chheda was gaming while on a Discord call Tuesday night. Sinha wasn't on the call, but the people that were told him they heard the attack and screams but didn't know what was happening. When they woke up the next day, they saw the news of Chheda's death.A Yik Yak user said Wednesday night they heard from McCutcheon South resident assistants that Chheda was on a Discord call at the time of the attack.A screenshot of a Discord chat shared with The Exponent shows members of a chat seemingly reacting to hearing the stabbing.“Those screams were literally the worst thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” one wrote. “Do you guys know a Jimmy?”Another said they should get Chheda off the call.“At this point the best thing to do is kick Varun off the call,” they said. “Hopefully give privacy of some form.”The Exponent asked Purdue spokesperson Tim Doty early this morning to confirm or deny the alleged circumstances."No update or new information on our end," he said in an email. The Tippecanoe County coroner's office confirmed the 20-year-old Purdue senior killed overnight in McCutcheon Hall early Wednesday was stabbed to death.Chheda was a data science major from Indianapolis.Coroner Carrie Costello sent out a press release saying the cause of Chheda's death was "multiple sharp force traumatic injuries."Purdue police identified the suspect as 22-year-old junior in cybersecurity Sha from South Korea.PUPD Chief Lesley Wiete told reporters Wednesday morning near McCutcheon that investigators were not certain of a motive, but "I believe this was unprovoked and senseless." | Video Games |
Playing video games could cause life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias in children with undiagnosed heart conditions, a scientific report has found.Investigators said they had uncovered an uncommon but distinct pattern among children who lose consciousness while playing electronic games.
They warned that Call Of Duty-style multiplayer war games were the most frequent trigger for such episodes.And in the report published in the journal Heart Rhythm, scientists urged parents to take children who suffer the blackouts to see a heart specialist."Video games may represent a serious risk to some children with arrhythmic conditions; they might be lethal in patients with predisposing, but often previously unrecognised arrhythmic conditions," lead investigator and specialist Dr Claire M Lawley said.
"Children who suddenly lose consciousness while electronic gaming should be assessed by a heart specialist as this could be the first sign of a serious heart problem." Image: People considered for competition in eSports should be screened for potential conditions, the study said. Pic: AP She and her team carried out a systematic review of related literature along with other research to identify cases of children with sudden loss of consciousness while playing video games. Across the 22 cases they found, multiplayer war gaming was the most frequent trigger - and some of the children died following a cardiac arrest.Heart rhythm conditions including catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia (CPVT) and congenital long QT syndrome (LQTS) types 1 and 2 were the most common underlying causes. And the study also found a high incidence of potentially relevant genetic variants (63%) among the patients, which the scientists warned had significant implications for their families.In some cases, children losing consciousness while gaming led to many family members being diagnosed with an important familial heart rhythm problem."Families and healthcare teams should think about safety precautions around electronic gaming in children who have a condition where dangerous fast heart rhythms are a risk," Dr Lawley said.The scientists suggested that video games were not always the "safe alternative" to competitive sports they were often considered to be.They said that at the time of the cardiac incidents, many of the patients were in excited states, having just won or lost games, or were engaging in conflict with companions."We were shocked""We already know that some children have heart conditions that can put them at risk when playing competitive sports, but we were shocked to discover that some patients were having life-threatening blackouts during video gaming," added co-investigator Christian Turner."Video gaming was something I previously thought would be an alternative 'safe activity.' This is a really important discovery. We need to ensure everyone knows how important it is to get checked out when someone has had a blacking out episode in these circumstances."And while the phenomenon is not a common occurrence, the study found it was becoming more prevalent."Having looked after children with heart rhythm problems for more than 25 years, I was staggered to see how widespread this emerging presentation is, and to find that a number of children had even died from it," said co-investigator Dr Jonathan Skinner.It added that people being considered for competition in eSports should be screened for potential conditions in the same way as athletes in traditional sports. | Video Games |
A concerned gamer wrote in to Sen. Ted Cruz’s podcast to ask how he feels about loot boxes. (Yes, Ted Cruz has a podcast where he talks about loot boxes—my editor made me double-check). We, as a society, have consequently learned so much more about how Cruz feels about gaming than we have ever wanted to know.If you don’t immediately associate Cruz with video games, you are forgiven. Normally when one talks about the man, they’re talking about the state of gun rights laws in his state of Texas, or abortion access, or the many times in which he has been publicly embarrassed. According to an email read on Cruz’s podcast seeking comment from the failed presidential candidate, the internet user Asmongold wanted to know what the senator’s stance on loot boxes was, and we now know.If you want to know the actual answer to the question, it is this—like a good libertarian, Cruz is concerned about scenarios where children are put in harm’s way, like being encouraged to gamble, but doesn’t believe the government should be involved. When it comes to his personal use, though, apparently Sen. Cruz does in fact pay to win regularly in the video games that he claims to play.“Now I'm something of a gamer. I'm not a gamer like hardcore Twitch streamers and I don't do the massive multiplayer games,” Cruz said. “I'll tell you, I don't like it when you can buy in-game items and sort of make your character stronger or get advantages. Now I'll confess when I play some games, I'll sometimes buy it because it is more fun in some way. Your character has a lot more great stuff that would take you six months or a year to build up.”(Motherboard emailed Ted Cruz’s office to ask what games he is playing—and what he’s spending money on—but they did not immediately reply. He must have been too busy suspiciously not denying that he is the Zodiac killer and hanging out with his father, who may or may not have been complicit in the assassination of JFK).Cruz concluded this segment by saying that he is open to hearing arguments about loot boxes but doesn’t think it’s a government issue, which is strange, because his personal experience of loot boxes and free-to-play mechanics seem to perfectly line up with all the arguments that call these monetization schemes manipulative and addictive precisely in ways that demand government attention, if not oversight. In a bizarre aside, he also wanted to add that he loves the movie Ready Player One, which probably no one other than him has ever both watched and enjoyed.“I've seen it several times, but I just happened to do a rewatch last week,” Cruz said, summarizing the plot of the film about people obsessed with virtual reality, which probably even its famed director Steven Spielberg didn’t repeatedly watch willingly. “People amass money in virtual reality and it ends up for many people subsuming the world. There are hard challenges, and we're not yet to the dystopian world of Ready Player One, but well, we might be on a path towards that.”Next time you log onto the OASIS to look for another one of Halliday’s Easter Eggs and get stomped by some freak that bought every level of the battle pass, take a moment and consider that you may have had the honor having been beaten by Senator Ted Cruz, the kind of gamer who is able to see the issues at hand but also feel totally OK at profiting from them—and also the kind who is so inept that he is willing to pay real currency to get a marginal edge on bored pre-teens wasting time now that school’s let out.ORIGINAL REPORTING ON EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS IN YOUR INBOX.By signing up, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy & to receive electronic communications from Vice Media Group, which may include marketing promotions, advertisements and sponsored content. | Video Games |
You are alone and disoriented, waist-deep in pool water. Wading aimlessly around the interior room with wall-to-wall tile, your memory evades you. After making your way through a doorway bathed in light, the next room is a pool and the following room. Shit. Your anxiety is swelling, but you soon find a small ledge to get out of the water.There’s no time to relax. A shiver goes down your spine as you hear a mysterious splash off in the distance. While trying to get a clear look, something disappears behind the corner. You continue walking along the ledge. The splashing sounds closer. A walk turns into a jog which turns into a sprint. You slip, fall, and hit your head against the wet tile as everything goes black. When you awake to the chlorine stench, it all starts to rush back. You are trying to escape the Backrooms.What Are the Backrooms?The Backrooms are not a real place. According to Vice, the concept originated on 4chan in 2019 with a single eerie image of a fluorescent-lit interior. The original photo elicited a strong reaction from the internet, and capturing its essence is difficult. Often described as an office space, the image shows no furniture or people. The viewer looks through an entryway covered with mismatched, yellow wallpaper and at an empty room coated in cheap, brown carpet. You can partially see another open passage, but the view is obstructed.In response to the photo, online posters envisioned a place beyond our world, an abandoned maze filled with moist carpet only reached by slipping through the cracks of reality. In video game culture, this reality breaking is often referred to as no-clipping. The unreal place is divided into levels with different environments, potential monsters, and survival ratings.The Backrooms are considered to be a creepypasta and follow in the long, long footsteps of Slender Man circa 2010, but the concept predates that. Throngs of people on the internet become obsessed with a scary core idea. They write reams of fan fiction expanding the horror story, stretching it to their own vision and venturing far from any original intent. Viral videos from amateur filmmakers ignite further public interest.I first encountered the Backrooms creepypasta during a bout of insomnia last month. A YouTube video titled “The Pool Rooms (Found Footage),” from Jared Pike’s channel, was recommended to me. In the video, a camera operator wades through shallow water. My first two paragraphs above are an imagined encounter set inside his creation. The New York City–based artist’s Instagram page is a bastion of partially submerged interiors.In the video description, Pike gives credit to Kane Pixels as an influence. Pixels is the online pseudonym for a 16-year-old visual effects artist from California. His most popular video, from earlier in 2022, “The Backrooms (Found Footage),” has over 26 million views on YouTube. A celebrated figure on the active r/backrooms subreddit, the praise Pixels receives is well deserved. His recent “Backrooms - Pitfalls” video is genuinely terrifying with a slick, high-value production that includes use of motion capture from the Rokoko Smartsuit Pro II.TikTok dominates today’s social media landscape, and the Backrooms creepypasta has found another welcoming home on the short-form video app where segments of users eagerly consume various conspiracy theories and spooky lore. The Native American legend of skinwalkers trended on the platform in 2020.A viral TikTok showing edited footage of Google Earth zeros in on Japan and reveals an otherworldly sinkhole inside a large building with a nearby, flying robot. Insider reports that the Japanese building featured in the video is real and from an old water park, but Google Earth does not let you peek inside.The Lonely Gamer EffectWhat sets the Backrooms apart from Slender Man and other previously popular creepypasta is what I call the lonely gamer effect. The expression of alienation is more complete. A person no-clips into the Backrooms, fully severed from reality, and they’re all alone. The Slender Man was a towering figure of the imagination layered on top of the real world. You could try to run for help if pursued by Slender Man, but you’re cut off from society and face monsters alone in the Backrooms.Pent-up feelings from a multi-year pandemic that incentivized social isolation likely contributed to the public’s fascination. Dan Erickson, creator and showrunner on the workplace thriller Severance, told Input that the Backrooms were one of many sources of inspiration for his television series.During the height of Slendermania, the creepypasta affected video game culture with YouTubers like Markiplier playing through Slender: The Eight Pages around Halloween in 2012. The Backrooms are having a similar impact on video games with a free title on Steam and dedicated Roblox experiences, but this creepypasta has video game culture woven into its core lore. Structural elements of the Backrooms, with crowdsourced levels and monsters, are the product of a culture fascinated by video games en masse and searching for additional creative outlets.Now that you have a little more context about where the Backrooms came from, you really ought to keep searching for an escape back to reality. Finding the way home is almost impossible, and the shadows keep inching closer. | Video Games |
A huge leak of early footage from the next Grand Theft Auto won't impact the game's development, the publisher's chief executive has said.In what was one of the most high-profile cybersecurity breaches in the industry's history, dozens of videos showing various robberies, shoot-outs, and open-world driving were posted to an online message board in September.
The incident saw the franchise's notoriously secretive developer Rockstar forced to release a statement, acknowledging a "network intrusion in which an unauthorised third party illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information from our systems".Rockstar said it was "extremely disappointed" to have details of the next GTA "shared with you all in this way", following almost a decade of speculation about the game.The last instalment has become one of the highest-grossing entertainment releases ever since its 2013 debut, with development of the sequel only confirmed for the first time earlier this year.
Addressing the hack during publisher Take-Two's second quarter earnings call, reported by VGC, CEO Strauss Zelnick said: "With regards to the leak, it was terribly unfortunate, and we take those sorts of incidents very seriously indeed."There's no evidence that any material assets were taken, which is a good thing, and certainly the leak won't have any influence on development or anything of the sort. More on Video Games Gaming can kill children with undiagnosed heart issues, scientists say Ted Lasso's AFC Richmond debuts as playable team in FIFA23 Setback for Microsoft's £59bn plan to buy video game company Activision Blizzard "But it is terribly disappointing, and it causes us to be ever more vigilant on matters relating to cybersecurity."The footage appeared to confirm previous reports GTA 6 would be set in Vice City, a fictionalised representation of Miami seen in previous games. Reports suggest the game will feature two protagonists in a Bonnie and Clyde-style story, including the first playable female character in series history.Fans will be relieved to hear that the leak will not impact development, given the already long wait. It is by far the biggest gap between new instalments since the GTA series began in 1997.The last game has now sold more than 170 million copies worldwide, it was revealed in Take Two's earnings call, helped by it being re-released on the current generation of consoles earlier this year. | Video Games |
There are certain seminal roles of stage and screen that all actors crave to play in their lifetimes. King Lear. John Proctor. Lady Macbeth. Willy Loman. Hannibal Lecter. And of course, Mario.Charles Martinet, who plays the happy little plumber in the video games, was initially told in his audition to speak like “an Italian plumber from Brooklyn”. (Martinet claims his portrayal of Mario is inspired by Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, but that’s by the by.) Then there was Bob Hoskins, who played Mario in the notoriously bad 1993 film Super Mario Bros, and knew the qualities he was bringing to it from the get-go. “How do I prepare for the role?” he said, crankily flinging the question back at a reporter, who was visiting the famously chaotic set amid endless script rewrites and Dennis Hopper tantrums. “I’m the right shape. I’ve got a moustache.”Compare all of the above to what Chris Pratt told Variety this year, when it was announced he would be voicing Mario in the upcoming animated film, The Super Mario Bros. “I worked really closely with the directors, and trying out a few things, and landed on something that I’m really proud of and can’t wait for people to see and hear,” Pratt said, adding that his voice would be “unlike anything you’ve heard in the Mario world before”. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning The trailer for The Super Mario Bros film is now out. Apparently, “unlike anything you’ve heard in the Mario world before” sounds a lot like “a voice your dad might fall asleep to while watching almost any recent middling action thriller”. For Chris Pratt’s Mario sounds just like Chris Pratt, with the briefest hint of Paulie Walnuts in there for good measure. (Which, if you’re hungry, sounds delicious.)Pratt’s Mario voice has been delighting seemingly everyone online for months, since before anyone had even heard it. For a start, there was the way Pratt was approaching the role – with an earnest intensity that suggested he might channel Daniel Day-Lewis and work as a plumber or jump on a turtle.there’s a strange air about today. everyone innately understands that the Before is almost over. tomorrow the trailer for the super mario movie starring chris pratt premieres. he’ll run into frame, open his mouth, and speak. we’ll all hear his voice. then begins the After.— roman (@romanisgarbage) October 5, 2022
A lonely, damaged, hopeless nation braces itself to hear Chris Pratt's Mario voice— Chris Evangelista (@cevangelista413) October 4, 2022
But even before that, it was the casting itself: an instant example of Hollywood’s cynicism and laziness, with every single animated film now throwing cash at a shopping list of starry names to get bums on seats. It’s why Patrick Stewart, who has probably performed every role in the opening paragraph, also once played a poo emoji. (It is worth noting that France and Brazil elected for two random guys who sound like Martinet to dub Mario in the new flick instead.)Some have fretted that Pratt, who is not Italian, will perpetuate damaging Italian-American stereotypes by attempting a more distinctive accent. Anyone who is still worried about that, remember: this is a video game character who, when left alone by a player, says lines like: “Night nighty. Ahhh spaghetti, ahhh ravioli, ahhh mamma mia”.Chris Pratt saying he worked so hard on the Mario voice only for it to sound like Chris Pratt is the funniest thing— Comet 🐑🌟 | Lumi Pilot | Workin' on comms (@starteas) October 6, 2022
if i don’t hear chris pratt talk about gabagool in a full italian-american accent at least once in the mario movie im demanding a refund i don’t care— Alanah Pearce ❄️🪓 (@Charalanahzard) October 7, 2022
Pratt would have been rubbished if he’d gone down the “it’s-a-me” route. Instead, he’s dipped his toe into the “fuhgeddaboutit” pool, and he’s being rubbished for that too. But Pratt didn’t end up in this mess just because he’s the most widely disliked of all the famous Chrises (a consensus reached due to his apparent self-seriousness, love of guns and Bible-inspired dieting). It is also a consequence of Hollywood’s bad timing. For Pratt has become the new Ryan Reynolds circa 2017, and Taika Waititi circa 2021: once beloved for the few things they did and now wearyingly ever-present, doing too much, all the time. And Mario isn’t the end of it. Guess who will be the next voice of Garfield in 2024? | Video Games |
Screenshot: HBOFinally, a better look at Pedro Pascal as Joel in HBO’s The Last of Us series. The Mandalorian star shows his face as an apocalypse survivor out for redemption in a world riddled with “clickers,” humans who have mutated into zombies thanks to the worldwide Cordyceps Brain Infection outbreak. Here Pascal plays the lead of the successful PlayStation video game franchise, and (once again) is tasked with a mission to get a kid through a very wild frontier. OffEnglishIn an HBO reunion, Game of Thrones standout Bella Ramsey also stars as Ellie, who finds herself under Joel’s care to get through quite possibly the grimmest timeline. Watch the trailer below!Clearly, we’re not done with the zombie era on television and Pascal adopting another child with his set of skills is enough to have us follow him into the hordes of clickers. Better yet, can I go through the world protected by Pedro Pascal? I can be baby. Kotaku details that the trailer features glimpses of various moments from the first game from the looks of very dark and shadowy virus-ravaged world. Joining Pascal and Ramsey are Gabriel Luna as Joel’s brother Tommy, Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson (who played Joel and Ellie respectively in the video games) as new characters. Fellow Last of Us game cast Merle Dandrige and Jeffrey Pierce also will feature: Dandridge will reprise her role as resistance leader Marlene, while Pierce will also play a new character for the series.The Last of Us premieres in 2023.Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel and Star Wars releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. | Video Games |
Chris used to spend hours a day playing video games, but stopped after deciding they were eating up too much of his time. But when he saw Axie Infinity last May, he was hooked. Inspired by Pokemon, Axie Infinity is a video game about training and battling monsters. That sounds like a million other games, but one thing makes Axie Infinity atypical: It's built on the blockchain.Axies are the Pokemon of Axie Infinity, but are owned as NFTs. Players earn a cryptocurrency called Smooth Love Potion by battling them. You can breed Axies, which you can then either battle or sell. Chris, who declined to give his real name and only goes by the pseudonym Cryptobarbarian, felt he could justify playing video games again -- as long as it paid."It was fun for the first few weeks but it gets boring really fast," the 28-year-old said. "From there, he says, Axie Infinity became purely about making money. Axie Infinity is a browser game. Accessing it is free, but you need to buy a team of three Axies in order to play. At its peak of popularity, bottom-tier Axies cost around $350 each, meaning playing the game once required a four-figure investment. The game allows Axie owners to lease out their monsters to other players, however. A longtime crypto investor, Cryptobarbarian told me that he bought $30,000 worth of Axies and loaned them out in return for 40% to 70% of the profits. (CNET wasn't able to verify his purchases.)The strategy paid off at first. Axie Infinity was a hot ticket in CryptoTown, generating over $10 million a day last August. But thanks to a combination of poor in-game economics, inflation threatening the real world's economy and a $600 million hack, the price of Axies and the game's cryptocurrency collapsed. "I got around 100 players playing for me with high-end Axies," Cryptobarbarian said to me over Twitter, "which overall cost around $100,000 at the height and are now worth nothing."To gamers, stories like this provide ample reason to reject "Web3 gaming," a term referring to the integration of NFTs and cryptocurrency into games. The significant carbon footprint of ethereum and bitcoin adds to the resentment. Be it Ubisoft bringing NFTs into Ghost Recon or Square Enix investing in cryptocurrency technology, gamers have fiercely resisted the blockchain coming anywhere near their industry. Sky Mavis The fear is crypto and NFTs will deform gaming into a side hustle, transforming its purpose from entertainment to money making. Play-to-Earn titles such as Axie Infinity prove their point; they're not games as much as they are financial speculation with the veneer of a game."I've never met anyone that played it just for fun," Cryptobarbarian said of Axie Infinity, "only to make money." But Axie Infinity doesn't represent the future many Web3 developers envision for gaming. Video game firms, both small and large, are developing titles they hope will clean the slate of Web3 gaming. All are on carbon-neutral blockchains such as polygon or solana, which are far more efficient than ethereum. (Whether they're as secure is an open question.) The goal isn't to make titles that entertain crypto speculators, but rather to make games fun enough that people can justify playing them regardless of whether they earn crypto or not. "I've long been a believer that gaming is one of the consumer internet categories that is most likely to bring on mainstream adoption of crypto," said Amy Wu, head of gaming at FTX Ventures, an investment firm. "But I also believe when you have a hit game with Web3 elements, it's very likely that the majority of players will never actually trade those tokens. They're just playing the game."Free to play, play to ownThe upcoming wave of Web3 games will range from free-to-play mobile titles to big-budget AAA games for PC and console. On the simpler end of the scale is Shatterpoint. With an art style inspired by Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, it's an action RPG for Android and iOS that, on paper, looks like many top App Store games. There's a single-player campaign plus a PvP multiplayer mode. You earn new weapons and gear as you progress and, much like Fortnite and Call of Duty, the multiplayer is broken up into different "seasons".But these seasons, broken up by "the shattering" in the game, is where the blockchain comes in. Players will be given a certain list of goals each season. If they complete one -- say, being one of the first 100 players to reach level 50, or staying atop of the PvP leaderboard for a certain amount of time -- their character will be converted into an NFT. Only a limited amount of NFTs will be minted per season. There are two reasons why players might want to bother scoring an NFT. The shattering acts as an in-game reset, so any gear you've collected will vanish. NFT characters, of which there will be a limited amount each season, are permanent. However your character looks when it's minted into an NFT, with whatever combination of gear equipped, that's how it'll look in perpetuity. The second benefit is that these NFTs can be sold on a marketplace -- if there's a market for them.A screenshot from Shatterpoint. Estoty Games There are three crucial elements that make this model sustainable, says Shatterpoint developer Benas Baltramiejunas. First, the game is free to play -- unlike P2E games like Axie Infinity, which requires the upfront cost of three Axie NFTs. Second, none of the items retained as an NFT can resemble "pay to win" mechanics. There can only be cosmetic benefits to owning it, not a competitive edge. Last, and most important, the game is designed with the assumption that most people playing won't be interested in minting their character as an NFT. It has to be fun for them too."We're using the NFT approach to create a bit of competitiveness, to incentivize players to play," he said. Shatterpoint is monetized by traditional microtransactions and from taking a small cut of NFT sales -- 2.5% is the traditional cut creators take. Baltramiejunas hopes that focusing on NFTs will result in both better game design and fairer prices. If developers can create a compelling game, revenue can theoretically be sorted out organically through whatever the playerbase decides the value of the NFTs are. "In free-to-play games you have whales which account for 10% of the player base but 90% of the revenue," Baltramiejunas said. "If you only have those microtransactions for monetization, you are only focusing on those whales during the content creation, and you're leaving everybody behind. However, with NFT integration, you don't need to monetize that aggressively. The market decides." NFT brands expand into gamingWhile Shatterpoint is a mobile game that produces NFTs, the coming years will see many examples of the reverse: NFT collections turning into games. NFT drops, such as the famed Bored Ape Yacht Club, are doubling as crowdfunding platforms that produce games. Creators earn millions in royalties from sales, and use that money to expand the brand, theoretically boosting NFT prices in the process. Some brands are expanding into TV and film. Many are dabbling in gaming.One such example is My Pet Hooligan. It's a product of AMGI Studios, an animation studio where former Pixar animator Colin Brady serves as chief creative and technology officer. The studio sees Unreal Engine 5 and blockchain technology as the next technologies that will drive entertainment, Brady told me at the recent NFT.NYC conference. AMGI Studios' goal of 2021 was to use Unreal Engine 5 to create an animated film for Netflix at half of the traditional cost. While the film was being greenlit, Brady explained, AMGI technical lead Kevin Mack approached him about starting an NFT collection. The result was My Pet Hooligan, a set of 8,888 3D rabbits. "We sold out in less than a minute, and all of a sudden people started saying, 'hey, when movie? When TV show? When video game?' Brady said. "So we said, we actually already have a studio full of Unreal Engine programmers, let's try making a game." My Pet Hooligan NFTs on OpenSea. AMGI Studios/OpenSea The result is Rabbit Hole, a sandbox game that looks like a mix of Grand Theft Auto and Ratchet and Clank. Rabbit Hole is currently in closed alpha, available only for My Pet Hooligan NFT holders with only one map functional. The build of the game I saw at NFT.NYC was impressive. It was certainly incomplete, with noticeable frame-rate issues, but had the clear foundation of a fun sandbox game.Rabbit Hole will eventually be available for PC and console. Brady says the goal is to reach 1 million players by the end of the year. He describes it as a virtual Disneyland, less of a game and more of a place to socialize, the way people use Roblox and Fortnite. To that end, the studio developed a companion facial-recognition app for phones. If you perch your phone where a webcam typically is on a computer, it'll track your face and replicate all facial movements on your on-screen Hooligan. Unlike Shatterpoint, which will integrate just NFTs, Rabbit Hole will use both NFTs and crypto. It will have a play-to-earn mechanic -- or play and earn, as technical lead Kevin Mack prefers to say -- in the form of in-game currency Carrots. These will be used to buy clothing, dances and more for the Hooligan avatars, but it doubles as a cryptocurrency that can be exchanged for ether or bitcoin. You can earn money playing Rabbit Hole, but Brady said it's not going to be life-changing money. "We think you should just be able to jump into the game and start playing as a generic Hooligan," he said. "You start earning Carrots, and then maybe in a couple of months you realize, 'wait a second, I've earned a hundred dollars worth of Carrots.'" Then there's the NFT element. This is primed towards holders of the 8,888 My Pet Hooligan NFTs. While players who download the game will start with a generic Hooligan, My Pet Hooligan owners will be able to use their NFT as an avatar in the game. If the game gets popular enough, Mack said, there will be a certain prestige to owning one of these avatars. But he recognizes that to make that happen, the team has to make a game that people actually want to play."Superman No. 1 is valuable because Superman was a great comic," he said. "I think the NFT space for a while started to get that a little backward, where they thought the things were valuable just because they were collectable." To infinity...Of all the NFT brands expanding into games, Bored Ape Yacht Club is the biggest. BAYC creators Yuga Labs are developing Otherside, a "metaverse" MMORPG. The term "metaverse" is nebulous, but in this case it refers to an open world where items are owned as NFTs and in-game currency is crypto that can be exchanged for dollars. Details on Otherside are scant, but Yuga has a huge warchest for it. The game's map will be made up of 200,000 plots of land, which players can buy and own. Over $350 million was raised from selling land back in May. Otherside may be the Web3 game with the highest budget, but perhaps the most ambitious is Star Atlas. In development since 2020, Star Atlas is crafted like a traditional AAA game. Inspired by Eve Online, CEO Michael Wagner told me there are around 200 developers working on the game. It's scheduled for release in 2026. Like Eve Online, Star Atlas is half game, half space simulator. Players ride spacecraft throughthe galaxy, socializing and battling with each other, exploring exoplanets, mining lands and meteors for resources and so on.
Games like Eve Online are giant, big enough for players to lose themselves in for years. Star Atlas hopes to mimic that feat. On the way to doing so, it uses almost every new tool Web3 offers.It starts with funding. Wagner said $185 million in revenue was raised in 2021, through the sale of an Atlas token and NFT ships, with a "substantial margin" of that funding development. In the game, ships, items and land will be owned as NFTs. There will be a comprehensive crypto economy built atop the game, which Wagner says will allow for not just a market, but a labor economy too. The economy isn't just in the game; part of Star Atlas will be built on the blockchain, meaning elements will be open source. People will be able to develop apps on top of this data, for things like spacecraft maintenance or resource management. Part of Star Atlas' economy will involve taxation. Just like real life, a certain percentage of all sales will go to a treasury. There will be a DAO, or decentralized autonomous organization, in which token holders can vote on how these funds are used, be it to fund a new marketing campaign or a user engagement campaign. Then there will be another DAO specifically for the game itself, where token holders can vote on changes to the game, like additional features or ways to balance combat. "We've structured the economics of the DAO such that we don't lose control in the near term," Wagner said. "But in the future, it would even be possible for them to vote us out as the principal developer of the game and bring in somebody new if they think they could deliver the product in a superior fashion to us." Risks and rewardsThe potential of Web3 gaming is tremendous, but its challenges are enormous. An examination of Star Atlas alone highlights many issues Web3 developers are likely to face. First and foremost, making video games is hard. Making high quality AAA games is harder still, even for incumbent game studios, and the Star Atlas game alone is audacious in its ambition. The Web3 components offer additional opportunity for failure: An imbalanced economy, for instance, has the potential to completely break the game. Then there's security and regulation. Crypto has been a digital Wild West for years, with scams endemic. Regulators are slowly changing that. It's an open question whether Web3 gaming can survive in a regulated environment. "In many countries, consumer protection is the number one driver of regulations. Given gaming is so mainstream, it will be a topic," said FTX Ventures' Wu. "100%, these assets are going to be regulated."The final issue is the very commodity that fuels crypto tokens and NFT projects: hype. As Brady noted, it took less than a day for My Pet Hooligan holders to demand the announcement of a game, movie or TV show to sustain hype and lift the NFT value. Games will need to be developed in a way that separates players from the crypto-rich speculators. Speculators outbidding each other can artificially raise the value of in-game items, which blocks players who actually want to play the game from accessing them. Recall the speculative bubble that caused the cost of entry to Axie Infinity to inflate to nearly $1,000. "I'm personally not interested in someone who's paying $100,000 for an NFT," said Brady. "That's a certain echelon. That's not normal society. I'm only interested if this helps every person."Of all the developers I spoke to, a recurring theme was mistrust of any games company that promises a regular income, or dangles the possibility of earning enough money to quit the rat race. "Play to earn is not sustainable and is going to die off," said Baltramiejunas. Instead, the goal is for Web3 games to be more engaging than the games you play today, with the benefit of some pocket money on the side."If the game was good I would be satisfied with a little money as long as it's not totally a time waste," said Cryptobarbarian, reflecting on how much money he'd need to earn to justify playing games again."If I could earn some lunch money with it that would be nice. But I think that will take at least a few more years before it happens." | Video Games |
Photo: Sean Gallup (Getty Images)The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the agency that brought you great hits like airport facial recognition, kids in cages, and a short-lived Disinformation Governance Board, is setting its sight on another supposed hotbed of terror—video games.OffEnglishThis week, the DHS awarded terrorism and misinformation researchers a $699,763 grant to investigate the ways extremism can spread through online gaming communities. The DHS hopes the researchers will use the grant to develop a set of “best practices and centralized resources,” for game makers to monitor and evaluate potential extremist activity occurring on their games. The DHS grant was first reported on by Vice.In its announcement, the DHS acknowledged some of the positive community-building aspects of online games, noting how many have, “become focal points of social activity and identity creation for adolescents and young adults,” but went on to criticize developers for failing to properly account for the ways extremist groups could potentially use those same platforms to promote harmful conduct.“Extremists have used video games and targeted video game communities for activities ranging from propaganda creation to terrorist mobilization and training,” the DHS writes. “Game developers in general–from small, independent studios to billion-dollar multinational corporations–have lagged in awareness of how extremists may attempt to exploit their games, and how their communities can be targeted for radicalization.”The grant money will go towards a joint project by the Middlebury Institute’s Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism, mental health non-profit Take This, and Logically, a company claiming to use artificial intelligence to address misinformation. In addition to setting best practices and standards, the groups will conduct a series of workshops for monitoring, detecting, and preventing extremism exploitation in game spaces aimed at, “community managers, multiplayer designers, lore developers, mechanics designers, and trust and safety professionals.”Anyone who’s spent more than a few minutes on popular multiplayer games can attest to the unpleasant, often flagrantly racist sentiments hollered out over chats and slithering through chat boxes. Though none of that’s particularly new, reporting and research show extremist groups, particularly those of white nationalist persuasion, are both recruiting disaffected gamers and then encouraging them to act on their ideologies in the physical world.In 2017, The New York Times and other outlets reportedly found video-game chat app Discord played an outsized role in mobilizing Unite The Right members in Charlottesville, Virginia. Similarly, the Anti-Defamation League released a survey in 2019 of U.S. video game players and found that 23% of respondents said they’d been exposed to extremist white supremacist ideology in online games. When you consider somewhere around 90% of teens reportedly play some form of video games, that potentially amounts to a hell of a lot of exposure to shitty racist rants.At the same time, the DHS and its associated tendrils like ICE and TSA aren’t exactly known for their moral tact or deep consideration for civil liberties. In 2020, under the Trump Administration, American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony D. Romero called for the wholesale dismantling of the DHS after agents were deployed to agitate, and in some cases snatch, anti-racist protestors throughout the country.“The short history of DHS has been filled with violence, the stoking of fear, and a lack of oversight,” Romero wrote. “We can preserve our freedoms and our security better by dismantling DHS and beginning anew.” | Video Games |
When it comes to screen time and video game time for children, most of us are a bit cautious. But is all screen time bad per definition? It turns out that reality is more nuanced than that, as research shows that there are benefits to playing video games for boys.A UCL-led study on the effects of screen time on children shows that boys that frequently play video games at age 11 are less likely to exhibit depressive symptoms three years later. Interestingly enough, the same study also shows that girls actually appear to develop more depressive symptoms when they spend larger amounts of time on social media. When it comes to screentime in general, we are presented with a wide range of activities. Some activities are beneficial for developing minds, where others are detrimental. UCL psychiatry researcher, Aaron Kandola, stated in a press release that if we are to create recommendations and guidelines about screen time, it should be founded on our knowledge of how these various activities may affect mental health as well as the substantiality of these effects. According to Kandola, video games have been an important social platform for young people during the pandemic. Although the team couldn't confirm whether playing video games improves mental health, it didn't appear harmful in their study and may actually have some benefits.The study focused on data from the rather large Millenium Cohort Study done on a group of over 11.000 adolescents. The research group consisted of a nationally representative sample of young people that have been involved in research since they were born in the United Kingdom between 2000 and 2002. At age 11, the participants answered questions about the time they spent playing video games, on social media, and on the internet in general. At age 14, they also responded to questions concerning depressive symptoms, such as low mood, loss of pleasure, and reduced concentration.After analyzing the results, the science team discovered that. Three years later, boys who played video games on most days had 24% fewer depressive symptoms than boys who played video games less than once a month. This result only appeared among boys with low physical activity levels on average, and researchers did not observe the same effects among girls. The researchers hypothesize that this might suggest that less active boys may gain more enjoyment and social interaction from video games on average.The researchers claim that mental health benefits might be derived from problem-solving, social, cooperative, and engaging elements commonly found in video games. There may also be other explanations for the link between video games and depression, such as differences in social contact or parenting styles, sadly there was no data available to support that hypothesis. Perhaps this could be a topic for further research.One additional interesting find was that girls (but not boys) that used social media most days of the week, at age 11, had 13% more depressive symptoms three years later than those who used social media less than once a month. Previous research has observed similar trends. This further strengthens the point that not all screen time is the same. Consequently, screen time guidelines would benefit from differentiating between different types of screen time.Lastly, one thing to keep in mind is that, like with most things in life, moderation is essential. Also, be sure always to promote physical activity to break up lengthened periods of inactivity. As always, be sure to check out the published paper for more in-depth information about the study mentioned in this article. Further reading:Prospective relationships of adolescents' screen-based sedentary behaviour with depressive symptoms: the Millennium Cohort StudyUCLDo video games cause violence? | Video Games |
Published November 11, 2022 6:55AM Updated 7:00AM article FILE - A child’s brown eyes are pictured in a file image. (Photo by Roberto Machado Noa/LightRocket via Getty Images) Children spend a lot of time in front of screens these days, between using laptops or tablets at school, watching TV, playing video games, and using cell phones. Experts say this frequent use can cause issues for their eyes, and parents are encouraged to set limits and remind kids to take breaks. Studies have indicated that the prevalence of nearsightedness — called myopia — has been increasing in the United States and worldwide. Nearsightedness occurs when the eye grows too long from front to back, and as a result, people have better good vision but poor distance vision, according to the National Eye Institute. Dr. Allison Babiuch, a pediatric ophthalmologist for the Cleveland Clinic, said the rate of nearsightedness has nearly doubled since 1971, which researchers believe is related to a combination of factors. "Mostly environmental factors of being inside and looking more at near things like reading, and also screens, like small screens," Babiuch said. "And then also not spending as much time outside in the sunlight." One study, published in 2021 in The Lancet, linked screen time with a higher risk and severity of nearsightedness in both children and young adults. The global team of researchers found that high levels of smart device screen time, such as looking at a cell phone, was associated with around a 30% higher risk of myopia. When combined with excessive computer use, that risk rose to around 80%, according to the study. What should kids be doing instead of screen time? The World Health Organization recommends parents cap their child's daily screen time at two hours. Meanwhile, viewing a digital screen makes the eyes work harder and can also make them susceptible to the development of other vision-related problems, such as computer vision syndrome (CVS) or "digital eye strain" — an issue common in both children and adults. Symptoms of digital eye strain include headaches, dry eye feeling, and blurry vision, Babiuch said, adding that these symptoms are temporary and the effects of digital eye strain can improve with new screen habits. RELATED: Americans check their smartphones 96 times a day, survey says Prevent digital eye strain with 20-20-20 rule Ideally, Babiuch said the best way to treat digital eye strain is by cutting down on screen time. The American Academy of Pediatrics encourages parents to help their kids develop healthy media use habits early on. For children younger than 18 months, screens are discouraged beyond video-chatting with loved ones. Parents of children 18 to 24 months of age who want to introduce digital media should choose high-quality programming or apps and use them together because this is how toddlers learn best. For children older than 2, the AAP says to limit screen use to no more than 1 hour or less per day of high-quality programming. But managing a child’s screen time can be challenging for families, and sometimes these limits aren’t always possible. As a result, experts also recommend using the 20-20-20 rule. For every 20 minutes of screen time, give your eyes a 20-second break and try to look 20 feet away. "Other things you could do, depending on how severe your symptoms are, are trying to remember to blink, which can be hard to remind yourself to blink. But, even just resting your eyes by closing them for even a few seconds can help," Babiuch said. "Some people do use artificial tears — eye drops — to help re-lubricate their eyes. Usually, you don’t have to do that if you can take enough breaks and limit the screen time," she added. If a child’s vision problems persist, parents should talk to an eye doctor. RELATED: Study: Greater screen time in young kids linked to more reported behavior problems This story was reported from Cincinnati. | Video Games |
Activision games "Call of Duty" are pictured in a store in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., January 18, 2022.Carlo Allegri | ReutersEU antitrust regulators on Tuesday opened a full-scale investigation into Microsoft's $69 billion bid for "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard, warning the deal may hurt competition. The U.S. software company, which announced the deal in January, is betting Activision's stable of games will help it compete better with leaders Tencent and Sony, with the latter being a critic of the deal. "The Commission's preliminary investigation shows that the transaction may significantly reduce competition on the markets for the distribution of console and PC video games, including multigame subscription services and/or cloud game streaming services, and for PC operating systems," the European Commission said in a statement. "In particular, the Commission is concerned that, by acquiring Activision Blizzard, Microsoft may foreclose access to Activision Blizzard's console and PC video games, especially to high-profile and highly successful games (so-called 'AAA' games) such as 'Call of Duty'," it said. | Video Games |
Underpaid, undervalued and frustrated: video game voice actors are demanding change after one raised concerns over pay and explained why she would not be reprising her role in a multimillion dollar franchise.Now others are speaking out and calling for better and more equitable treatment for actors who earn a tiny fraction of what many of the games make in revenue.On Saturday, the actor Hellena Taylor – the original voice of the lead character in the multimillion-selling Bayonetta games – posted a series of videos on Twitter, explaining why she was not continuing her role in the series’ third instalment. She said that after being asked to re-audition for the role she played in 2009’s Bayonetta and 2014’s Bayonetta 2, she was offered a $4,000 flat-rate fee for the job. The games have made more than $450m in revenue.Taylor said she declined. “This is an insult to me, the amount of time that I took to work on my talent, and to everything that I have given to this game and the fans,” she said, asking supporters to boycott the game “in solidarity with people all over the world who do not get paid properly for their talents”. She said she no longer feared the consequences of speaking out. “I can’t even afford to run a car. What are they going to do, take my clothes?”Taylor’s experience is extreme, but not unique. Speaking to the Guardian, several video game voice actors – high profile award-winners among them – shared their frustrations about their pay and conditions in an industry that has an estimated worth of nearly $200bn. Those working in the UK claim their rates – largely set and controlled by outsourcing companies, whom developers pay to recruit and record voice talent – have not risen meaningfully in 15 years, despite the games industry’s enormous expansion in that time.“Some people might think that getting paid $4,000 to do a game sounds amazing,” says John Schwab, who plays Dandelion in the Witcher series of games. “But the commitment that it takes to get a game done – we’re talking dozens and dozens of hours of recording. And on top of that, the travel that nobody pays for, the agents’ fees, the tax … People think you show up, work for two hours and a game comes out. Absolutely not.”Schwab estimated that, after costs, Taylor would have cleared around half the amount she was offered. “I can sympathise with her situation … You get a few thousand pounds to play a lead character, and then that video game makes $700m. How does that make you feel, when you’ve created the role?”Famous Hollywood actors recruited to provide voice work for games – such as Keanu Reeves, who stars in Cyberpunk 2077 – get paid much more. One agent gave an example of £100,000 for a four-hour recording session.Side Global, one of the outsourcing companies that provides voice overs for video games, pays on a tiered system that actors described as “insulting” and “discriminatory”. In a guidelines document seen by the Guardian, the company sets out the criteria for different tiers. Tier 1, which pays £250 an hour plus a £500 buyout fee per job, is described as “the superstars of games voiceover”, while noting “some client budgets will not be able to accommodate Tier 1 actors. Because of this, if an actor chooses to be classed as Tier 2 instead, to ensure more chance of being put forward, they may do so.”Tier 2 actors are paid £50 less an hour, with a £400 buyout and Tier 3 comprises “new signings, drama graduates and actors less known to us”, “older actors who are doing less work on stage and screen”, and those voicing “niche, exotic or complex characters” who may specialise in a “native accent”. These actors are paid £200 an hour, with a £350 buyout. Unlike in TV and film, video game actors are not paid residuals.Trevor White, who has worked with Side for more than a decade, voicing a range of game characters, said: “There was no rise in pay in years, and then in 2020 we were being incentivised to take a pay cut to work at all,” he said. “The growth in the games industry is exponential, more than film, TV and theatre, and somehow those of us who help supply the voices for those games are getting paid far less. It just doesn’t make sense.”One long-standing performer said: “In contrast to screen actors, video game actors come into the room with little or no information about the project, before they are expected to give a naturalistic and nuanced performance – in addition to screaming, shouting and grunting – by reading a script off an Excel spreadsheet they’ll have been lucky to have received the evening before.“Players have started to expect the same experience in games as when they watch a film, and people are winning Bafta awards for their work in games. But the industry still doesn’t see the actor and their work as something to think about until the very end of the process. All game actors want is fair working practices and a fair wage.”In 2021, in conjunction with Equity UK, the trade union for creative practitioners, some performers tried to get outsourcing companies to sign an agreement promising better terms. Few companies agreed.Liam Budd, an industrial official for audio and new media at Equity, said: “Royalty payments are the norm in most creative sectors, where the creative contribution of the artist is significant. However, there is a systemic problem in the games industry, with the digital giants and publishers hiring voiceover artists, performers and other creative freelancers at the lowest rate they can get away with.”Every video game actor who spoke to the Guardian expressed the same frustrations: a lack of transparency and fairness regarding what outsourcing companies are getting paid by developers, compared with what they are paying the actors.White said: “I can’t tell you how many hours we’ve all put in to try to make realistic progress in terms of transparency and fairness in this business. But we’ve been met with a lot of resistance, obfuscating and avoidance, and I’m sick and tired of it, frankly.” | Video Games |
Playing Chucklefish's Eastward is like coming home to a place I've never been before. After its 2018 reveal, I was immediately drawn to the game’s Zelda-like adventure elements, unusually colorful post-apocalyptic narrative, and motley crew of characters. But most of all, I was wowed by its gorgeous, highly detailed environments constructed entirely of pixel art."What Eastward does best is create a world that feels like the games we played growing up,” my brother said after the game’s September 2021 release. It joins Extremely OK Games' puzzle-platformer Celeste and Eric Barone's mega-hit farming simulator Stardew Valley (also published by Chucklefish) in a rapidly growing club of video games tapping into nostalgia with high-end pixel art graphics and a retro aesthetic. But while many of these games look like they could have been released on the Super NES or Sega Genesis, they offer more complex graphics and gameplay than those systems could ever handle.But how does a quirky pixel art game like Eastward make such an impression in an industry obsessed with horsepower and realism? These games see pixel art as more than a relic of the past. It's no longer about technical compromise and limitations, but a flourishing art form inextricably tied to video games. Over the past decade, pixel art has experienced a renaissance thanks to the popularity of indie-developed games like Celeste and Eastward. Twenty-five years after Sony and Nintendo tried to kill it, it's proving popular not just for its nostalgic appeal but as a platform for modern gaming experiences.4-Pixel Face"Pixel art has a lot of parallels with Impressionism," Pedros Medeiros says from the Vancouver, British Columbia, offices of Extremely OK Games. Medeiros is the visual artist behind indie darling Celeste. His work famously uses blocky, impressionistic pixel art to convey more emotional punch than many AAA games with sky-high budgets and all the cutting-edge technology in the world.Like the Impressionist paintings of Monet, pixel art asks the player to fill in the blanks with their own experiences, forming a unique personal relationship with the creator. By nature, pixel art is limited by its canvas. Unlike other types of visual art created by paint brush, watercolor pencil, or 3D polygon, pixel art is created one color block (pixel) at a time. And more often than not, the canvas for pixel art is low resolution. Celeste's protagonist, Madeline, doesn't really have a face in the game. "It's just four pixels," Medeiros says. "But players see a face, right? And the face they see is not the same face I see."I came of age in the 1990s, when Nintendo was blowing minds with 3D adaptations of its Mario and Zelda franchises and Sony was actively suppressing 2D pixel art games on its brand new PlayStation. Despite exceptions like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Suikoden II, pixel art's impressionistic relationship with the player was effectively wiped out by creative and corporate ambitions to chase hot tech.The indie game boom over the past decade has helped restore pixel art's reputation, says Christina-Antoinette Neofotistou, a pixel artist with decades of experience. "Smaller teams with smaller budgets can produce a game that would command AAA budgets in the ’90s."Better known as castpixel, Neofotistou is an illustrator, animator, and game developer. She worked on Space Jam: A New Legacy The Game for Warner Brothers—a *Final Fight–*style beat-’em-up with gorgeous pixel art graphics reminiscent of the Game Boy Advance's trademark chunky style.“Pixel art is, in essence, geometric problemsolving," Neofotistou says. "Pixels, like mosaic tiles, cross-stitches, and weave loom knots, have ideal configurations they ‘like’ to be in.” This is a simple way to describe the intense push-and-pull of an artist trying to solve a puzzle. “I like the magic-trick quality of it—making the viewer go, ‘How did they do that with so few pixels?’”Among Neofotistou's major inspirations are Susan Kare, the pioneering pixel artist behind Apple's trademark icons on the first Macintosh computer, and Avril Harrison's work on classic games like The Secret of Monkey Island, Loom, and Prince of Persia. Looking further back in time, she points to Pre-Raphaelite painters and Golden Age illustrator Beatrix Potter. This broad range of inspirations shows that art is a continuum across time and mediums, she says.The presiding point from both Medeiros and Neofotistou is that pixel art is not a style, but a broad artistic medium. It's the artists themselves that bring style. This can be seen just by comparing screenshots of Celeste and Eastward—both are pixel art, but the tone, texture, and visual impact of each is uniquely defined by its creators. As a medium, pixel art's usage will ebb and flow in the same way oil paints might give way to watercolors depending on popular trends. Right now, the tidal forces pulling at pixel art are nostalgia (which is “marketable to adults with disposable income who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s,” according to Neofotistou), its relative affordability, and the desire among pixel artists and fans to recognize it as a legitimate modern medium."I feel some games use nostalgia almost as a crutch," Medeiros says, explaining that he believes pixel art can become disassociated with nostalgia to create new experiences. Artists like Medeiros and Neofotistou—who has established novel techniques during her long career—are continuing to push the boundaries of what gamers expect from modern pixel art."It's undeniable that pixel art games evoke nostalgia," Medeiros admits, "even modern ones." But any nostalgia in Celeste is more of a happy accident than intentional, he says. While some players might experience the feeling because of their gaming history, many other players weren't even alive during the 8-bit era that inspired its visuals, resulting in a very different reaction. So Medeiros intentionally avoids relying on nostalgia when designing game visuals. "It's not a feeling that our games want to convey."Not Your Parents' PixelsPixel art was originally designed to be viewed on the unique hardware of CRT televisions by leveraging low resolutions, bright phosphors, and inefficient video signals in creative ways to squeeze more out of pixel art. Modern pixel art, on the other hand, is handcrafted for super-clean, high-resolution fixed-pixel displays like OLEDs, which changes the way the artists apply their work—and that's created new opportunities and challenges.Looking back on those earlier days, Neofotistou recalls that many pixel artists at the time saw pixel art and low resolutions as a hindrance. "Most teams and individual artists happily jumped to higher resolutions when they became available," she says. "But artists who do not embrace limitations also do not take the art form to higher highs. Artists are able to do so much more with the tools available to them now."So while artists like Final Fantasy's Kazuko Shibuya were tied to the technical constraints of 1980s game consoles, Neofotistou and Medeiros enjoy the puzzle-box nature of using a nearly limitless tool set to create art defined by limitations set by themselves, not the technology. This discipline is what separates modern pixel art from its predecessor, says Neofotistou. "What if, using NES restrictions, I can make pixels on a screen look better than any NES artist at the time had the knowledge, skill, time, or budget to make?"Not only does pixel art have creative implications, it also opens new doors for how games are made, says Medeiros' colleague Maddy Thorson, who rose to prominence as the writer and designer of Celeste."Pixel art is so small file size-wise, we could keep all the gameplay graphics for Celeste in system RAM," she explains. Celeste's infamous difficulty is built around the concept of trial-and-error, and the player will die so often during a playthrough that the game has a cheeky death counter. Storing graphics in RAM allows for the player to instantly restart after they've died, reducing frustration and adding to the "Ooh, I'll get it next time!" feeling that makes the game so addictive.It also allowed Thorson to tweak and reload levels without having to restart the game, helping her create Celeste's intricate level design and pixel-perfect platforming. "It's just so fast with pixel art."While Thorson says she's prototyped 3D game ideas, pixel art remains the most comfortable medium for Extremely OK Games. "It's about picking our battles," she says. "When do we stay in our comfort zone, and when do we step outside?"Retaining pixel-art graphics for Extremely OK Games’ next title, a "2D explor-action" game called Earthblade, allows the team to spend their ambitions on elements like level design, combat, and narrative. Medeiros laughs as he recalls reading fan comments online about how Celeste could run on retro gaming hardware. It's not possible—even if the game does run at a resolution similar to Game Boy Advance games. With a familiar visual foundation in place, Medeiros and Thorson bring their worlds to life through other means, including tricks that didn't exist during the ’80s: graphical elements that break the game's typical 8x8 grid layout, realistic lighting, layered scrolling backgrounds, and impressive special effects.There's a vocal part of the community who are dissatisfied by modern pixel art games like Celeste adding visual flares to the basics defined decades ago, says Neofotistou. But for her, it's a sign of an evolving medium. And she sees an opportunity for more graphical styles to follow the road paved by pixel art. "It’s a reinvention of the AAA gaming wheel by indies, and it’s very exciting."Similarly, Medeiros expects a surge in games inspired by the PlayStation's *Tomb Raider–*style low-polygon graphics. Just like pixel art has picked up new tricks and ditched the jank, these 3D games will also be refined for a new audience. "It's way more important to make games that look the way you remember games looking in that era, not exact recreations," he says.Pixel PerfectionOnce predominant and then discarded, pixel art has been revitalized by artists like Neofotistou and Medeiros. Buoyed by the rising tide of indie game development, their work reveals a maturing medium that's here to stay. Just as the simple pixel art of the ’80s gave way to more sophisticated techniques in the ’90s, a similar evolution is occurring now as pixel art is being rediscovered as a modern technique. Technological limitations lie in tatters; the canvas of possibilities is endlessly broad for the future of the medium."Pixel art doesn’t need to be pigeonholed as retro," says Neofotistou. "We use the tools that are most appropriate for the vision we’re trying to implement."Medeiros sees a future for pixel art that's rife with experimentation and novel techniques. Even if the current pixel art movement goes away when this tail end of the indie game boom ends, Neofotistou says, making things using pixels can’t and won’t go away. We've just barely scratched the surface of what pixel art can offer as a creative medium."From ancient Greek and Roman mosaics to stained glass to cross-stitching, weaving, and bead art to dot-matrix printers and cheap LCD indicators on the fronts of public transport buses or rice cookers," describes Neofotistou, "the placement of discrete points on a grid to represent an image isn't going away any time soon."Art is an evolving medium, building off its past to explore new corners of the human experience and imagination as new styles and techniques become popular. Just as those mosaics and stained glass led to LCD watches and Pong, the pixel art of the past is influencing creators now to create new building blocks for the future of gaming.More Great WIRED Stories📩 The latest on tech, science, and more: Get our newsletters!4 dead infants, a convicted mother, and a genetic mysteryThe fall and rise of real-time strategy gamesA twist in the McDonald’s ice cream machine hacking sagaThe 9 best mobile game controllersI accidentally hacked a Peruvian crime ring👁️ Explore AI like never before with our new database✨ Optimize your home life with our Gear team’s best picks, from robot vacuums to affordable mattresses to smart speakers | Video Games |
Latest in tech CCTV Now playing China limits amount of time minors can play online video games (August 2021) EV Safe Charge Now playing This mobile robot can reserve parking spots and then charge your EV CNN Now playing Internet Explorer is no more. CNN reported on the 'browser wars' it started in 1996 Now playing Robots could soon look human, with living skin and hair Jemal Countess/Getty Images North America/Getty Images for TIME Now playing Apple's CEO responds to evolving workplace dynamics Apple Now playing See the new features coming to iPhones Northwestern University Now playing Meet the researchers revolutionizing micro-scale robots for medical use Caltech/Reuters Now playing This new technology helps drones survive strong winds Now playing How Paris Hilton became 'The Queen of the Metaverse' Now playing See Google Street View's new camera and the garage where the tech is built Shutterstock Now playing Why privacy experts are warning against using period-tracking apps Now playing Big Tech and Ireland: How the combination made Ireland one of Europe's wealthiest countries Markus Tatzgern Now playing This mask makes breathing in virtual reality more realistic Google Now playing See how Google's new AR technology works CNN Now playing In 1997, an IBM computer beat a chess world champion for the first time Now playing In 2005, an iPod was sold every two seconds. See how CNN covered the phenomenon London/Beijing CNN Business — NetEase appears to be in hot water. The Chinese gaming company delayed the launch of a widely anticipated video game in mainland China this week after one of its social media accounts was blocked for allegedly making a politically sensitive comment. “Diablo Immortal,” which was slated to be released on Thursday, has been postponed until further notice, according to an announcement on NetEase’s (NTES) Chinese website on Sunday. The title was co-created by NetEase and Blizzard Entertainment, a division of Activision Blizzard (ATVI). NetEase did not provide a reason for the last-minute delay, but suggested in its statement that it was making technical updates to the game. The company did not share a new release date, and declined to comment further on the matter. Some online users this week speculated that the company had gotten into political trouble. Users on Twitter shared screenshots purporting to show that the game’s official account on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, had posted a comment in May which translated to “why does the bear still not step down?” The reported post was seen by critics as a potential reference to Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has been compared to the cartoon character Winnie the Pooh. CNN Business was not able to immediately verify the authenticity of the screenshots. NetEase declined to comment on the matter, referring CNN Business to its original statement. Cheeky netizens in China have often linked Pooh to Xi, claiming there is an uncanny resemblance between the two and provoking the wrath of Chinese censors. A notice on the Weibo account for “Diablo Immortal” said that it was currently suspended from posting, citing a “violation of relevant laws and regulations.” Weibo did not immediately respond to a request for further information. Some users on Chinese social media suggested that creators of game may have “insulted” China. “Diablo Immortal,” a multiplayer game that allows users to slay demons in an ancient world, had received approval for its Chinese release by the country’s media watchdog, the National Press and Publication Administration, last year. The title had already received 10 million installations ahead of its China launch, as of June 10, developers said on its official Twitter account. News of the delayed China launch shook investors. NetEase stock tanked 7.8% in New York and 6.7% in Hong Kong on Monday immediately following the announcement, before rebounding the next day. Its shares closed up 1.2% in Hong Kong on Tuesday, and were last down 1.5% in US premarket trade. Chinese authorities have clamped down heavily on video games in recent months, with the government introducing strict time limits for minors last summer. Those rules stipulated that users under the age of 18 should be allowed only an hour of play time between 8 pm and 9 pm on Friday, weekends and public holidays. The country’s state-owned media called out titles that were popular among young people, suggesting that they were having harmful effects on players and describing gaming as a form of “spiritual opium.” NetEase, an industry leader in China, has been no stranger to the crackdown, with officials telling the company and fellow Chinese behemoth Tencent (TCEHY) last September to focus less on profit and more on discouraging any potential “addictions” to their games. | Video Games |
After a decade of work, scientists at UC San Francisco’s Neuroscape Center have developed a suite of video game interventions that improve key aspects of cognition in aging adults. The games, which co-creator Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD, says can be adapted to clinical populations as a new form of “experiential medicine,” showed benefits on an array of important cognitive processes, including short-term memory, attention and long-term memory. Each employs adaptive closed-loop algorithms that Gazzaley’s lab pioneered in the widely cited 2013 Neuroracer study published in Nature, which first demonstrated it was possible to restore diminished mental faculties in older people with just four weeks of training on a specially designed video game. These algorithms achieve better results than commercial games by automatically increasing or decreasing in difficulty, depending on how well someone is playing the game. That keeps less skilled players from becoming overwhelmed, while still challenging those with greater ability. The games using these algorithms recreate common activities, such as driving, exercising and playing a drum, and use the skills each can engender to retrain cognitive processes that become deficient with age. “All of these are taking experiences and delivering them in a very personalized, fun manner, and our brains respond through a process called plasticity,” said Gazzaley, who is professor of neurology in the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences and the founder and executive director of Neuroscape. “Experiences are a powerful way of changing our brain, and this form of experience allows us to deliver it in a manner that’s very accessible.” The lab’s most recent invention is a musical rhythm game, developed in consultation with drummer Mickey Hart, that not only taught the 60 to 79-year-old participants how to drum, but also improved their ability to remember faces. The study appears Oct. 3, 2022, in PNAS. The eight-week program used visual cues to train people how to play a rhythm on an electronic tablet. The algorithm matched the degree of difficulty—including the tempo, complexity and level of precision required for a tap to be considered on-beat—to each player’s ability. Over time, the cues disappeared, forcing the players to memorize the rhythmic pattern. When the participants were tested at the end to see how well they could recognize unfamiliar faces, electroencephalography (EEG) data showed increased activity in a part of the brain on the right side (the superior parietal lobule) that is involved both in sight reading music and in short-term visual memory for other tasks. The researchers said the data indicate that the training improved how people bring something into memory and then take it back out again when they need it. “That memory improved at all was amazing,” said Theodore Zanto, PhD, an associate professor of neurology in the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences and director of the Neuroscience Division at Neuroscape. “There is a very strong memory training component to this, and it generalized to other forms of memory.” A second game, the Body Brain Trainer, published recently in NPJ Aging, improved blood pressure, balance and attention in a group of healthy older adults with eight weeks of training. The game also improved a key signature of attention that declines as people age and is related to the ability to multitask. In addition to the usual adaptive algorithm targeting cognitive abilities, the eight-week training included a feedback mechanism to ensure that participants were exercising at the right level. “We had people wearing a heart rate monitor, and we were getting that heart rate data and feeding it into the game,” said Joaquin A. Anguera, PhD, associate professor of neurology in the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences and director of the Clinical Division at Neuroscape. “If they weren’t working hard enough, the game got harder.” Neuroscape published the results of yet another study last year in Scientific Reports on a virtual reality spatial navigation game called Labyrinth that improved long-term memory in older adults after four weeks of training. All three studies demonstrated their results in randomized clinical trials, extending the finding from 2013 that digital training can enhance waning cognitive faculties in older adults. “These are all targeting cognitive control, an ability that is deficient in older adults and that is critical for their quality of life,” Gazzaley said. “These games all have the same underlying adaptive algorithms and approach, but they are using very, very different types of activity. And in all of them we show that you can improve cognitive abilities in this population.”
Gazzaley is a co-founder, shareholder, advisor and member of the board of directors at Akili Interactive Labs, a company that produces therapeutic video games and has licensed Body Brain Trainer.
About UCSF: The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF's primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area. UCSF School of Medicine also has a regional campus in Fresno. Learn more at https://ucsf.edu, or see our Fact Sheet. ### Follow UCSF
ucsf.edu | Facebook.com/ucsf | YouTube.com/ucsf Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Article Title How musical rhythm training improves short-term memory for faces Article Publication Date 3-Oct-2022 Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system. | Video Games |
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain UniSA researchers are undertaking a major study to better understand how and why parents play video games, and they're calling on Australian moms and dads to share their gaming experiences. More than 3 billion people around the world play video games on their smartphone, console or computer, with the Australian video game industry now worth over $220 million, doubling in value since 2016.
While those numbers are good news for the gaming business, they also indicate the extent to which gaming has become a mainstream, cross-generational pastime—the average age of video game players is now 35, with almost half identifying as female.
Given those figures, it's clear that gaming is as much a pursuit for moms and dads as it is for the kids, and researchers at the University of South Australia are currently working to better understand how parents engage with video games and how their experiences might be enhanced.
UniSA communication and media expert Dr. Fae Heaselgrave is leading a study exploring how parents balance caring duties with their gaming interests, what the mental health and well-being benefits of gaming are for parents, and how this niche group of gamers can be better serviced by the games industry.
As part of the research, Dr. Heaselgrave's team is inviting parents to participate in an online survey to share details of their gaming activities.
"Anecdotally, we know video games can be an important leisure activity for many parents, but parental responsibilities and time constraints may mean parents engage with gaming in different ways from other groups of gamers," Dr. Heaselgrave says.
"As parents are rarely represented as members of the gaming community, our current study aims to challenge this status quo and shape industry practices around inclusive game design by highlighting the specific needs and practices of parents who play video games."
Dr. Heaselgrave says the research will also explore differences in gaming between mothers and fathers, to understand more about the opportunities and challenges each parent faces in relation to gameplay.
"The issues we're exploring might be technical factors such as game content and design, as well as social issues relating to stereotypes and expectations about parental roles and societal perceptions of gender in relation to gaming and technology, but we expect gaming will have a positive impact on parenting too.
"We're also really interested in all levels of gameplay, from the person who occasionally plays a mobile game on the train to work, to the hardcore enthusiasts who devote significant time to gaming."
The survey, titled Play and Pause: Exploring the video game-playing practices of parents in Australia, will be open until the end of October and provides a perfect opportunity for parents who game to voice their experiences and to identify what they want and need from the industry, and society, to better support their gameplay experiences.
Play and Pause can be found on Twitter at twtplayandpause. Citation: Game on Mom and Dad: Researchers call on parents to discuss their video game use (2022, October 6) retrieved 6 October 2022 from https://techxplore.com/news/2022-10-game-mom-dad-parents-discuss.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only. | Video Games |
Post Malone Gamin' For Charity ... Raises Over $200K!!! 8/4/2022 12:50 AM PT Post Malone raised a huge chunk of change for a handful of charities by picking up a controller, putting on his headset, and playing one of his favorite video games. The singer did a series of "Gaming for Love" live streams on Twitch in July playing the battle royale game Apex Legends for Human Rights Watch, Project HOPE, United Way and The Trevor Project. He ended up raising over $196K through donations over the 4 nights ... part of the cash was from Respawn Entertainment, which created the free-to-play game. The company donated $40K for Post's hard work, putting him over the $200K mark. Post's final stream went down with a 60-person tournament on a private server ... he got $76,026 in donations that night, going out with a bang. The guy's a big fan of the video game, too -- he's popped up in content creator's streams from time to time to play some Apex with them, and even mentioned it's his favorite game of the genre during an episode of the "Full Send Podcast." FYI -- the guy's going to launch a new YouTube gaming account and upload all of the streams with a donation button for anyone wanting to continue to help out. | Video Games |
The absence of the E3 expo in Los Angeles for the past two years has left a gigantic vacuum in the video game calendar. Last week, the industry did its best to fill that gaping content maw with three online events – the Summer Game fest, the Xbox and Bethesda showcase and the PC gaming show. They were underwhelming for many seasoned players. Major reveals included a remake of The Last of Us, a remake of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, Street Fighter 6, Final Fantasy XVII and news about the reimagining of the classic role-player System Shock.Even fresh titles seemed familiar. Sci-fi horror game The Callisto Protocol, from one of the makers of Dead Space, looked like … Dead Space. And it was frustrating that our first extended look at the long-awaited sci-fi adventure Starfield focused not on the wonders of interplanetary exploration but on a long shootout with identikit space pirates. It may seem churlish expecting radical ideas from the mainstream industry, and there was a lot of interesting fare from independent developers on show, but now that we’re entering the mid-phase of the console generation, I was expecting at least a couple of innovations. We did get Japanese gaming auteur Hideo Kojima promising, at the Xbox event, that his next project would make revolutionary use of Microsoft’s cloud gaming infrastructure, but who knows when we’ll see that.Sign up for Pushing Buttons, our weekly guide to what’s going on in video games.There are obvious reasons for this lack of bleeding-edge thinking. Triple A game development is ruinously expensive – new games often require several studios working in tandem, with hundreds of specialist staff toiling for years on a project. The burn rate on salaries alone is enough to make even Elon Musk’s eyes water. And as in the film industry, we’re seeing a cultural and artistic malaise around the whole concept of “new”.Frustrating … a long-awaited look at StarfieldThis fear is tackled brilliantly in a post by game developer Kyle Kukshtel. Games, he argues, no longer have the capacity to explore innovative concepts because they are trapped in an ever-tightening production loop built around the replication and recommodification of what’s been successful in the past. This has always been partially the case with big games, but the gap between products we’re nostalgic about and products that are contemporary has drastically narrowed – which the excitement for a remake of The Last of Us, a game that’s barely a decade old. Rather than look to the future, video games are now being designed as instant cultural artefacts, because nostalgia has become indivisible from the present.There were several games I was excited by during the events season: The Alters, a psychological thriller from 11 Bit Studios; the interactive Lynchian adventure As Dusk Falls; the space farming sim Lightyear Frontier. But much of the time, I was watching enemies being shot, loot being collected, weapons being crafted, characters levelling up – the reflexive mechanical structures that feel utterly entrenched.Kukshtel referenced the late cultural theorist Mark Fisher, whose lecture The Slow Cancellation of the Future posited that we’re trapped in a cultural stasis from which no new significant artistic movements or developments can emerge. “Cultural time has folded back on itself,” Fisher said. Hence, endless regurgitations of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Ghostbusters mythologies; of 1980s action flicks and 1970s rock albums on vinyl.While watching the big three summer gaming events I kept seeing games and thinking: “Hasn’t this been shown before? Haven’t I played this?” The truth is, I had, many times, in many slight aesthetic variations. For all their stylistic bravado and megaton noise, the one thing all those shooting games may have finally, decisively and conclusively killed is the future.What to playIncredibly tense … Dead by Daylight. Photograph: Behaviour InteractiveScary games are in at the moment, partly thanks to the current renaissance in horror cinema. Dead By Daylight has been out for a few years but it’s currently just £5.99 on Steam and at that price it’s an absolute steal. Best described as an asymmetric multiplayer online slasher sim, the game has four players working together as civilians trapped in a Lovecraftian nightmare zone, like the Upside Down in Stranger Things, while one player takes control of the supernatural psycho killer stalking them. Escaping means powering up a series of generators to unlock the exit doors, but the killer characters all have special powers and ridiculous stabby weapons to make life challenging. It’s incredibly tense, with a massive capacity for jump scares and I love how most players taking part as the killer get really into the role, mercilessly playing with their prey. The game now includes lots of classic cinematic villains including Freddy Krueger and Michael Myers, which adds to the nostalgic horror fun.Available on: PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, XboxEstimated play time: ongoingWhat to read There’s been a huge amount of controversy over Diablo Immortal, a new free-to-play mobile version of the popular “dungeon crawler” game, Diablo. Users have made it the lowest-scoring game on Metacritic for its insatiable micro-transaction system. Rebecca Jones of gaming site Rock Paper Shotgun did a deep dive into the economics and found that it could cost up to £46k to completely outfit your character with the best gear. Ouch. The absence of E3 has led to a lot of debate about how much we need a physical conference in the age of digital gaming and Covid. The Electronic Software Association has announced that the event will return in 2023, but Brendan Sinclair at GamesIndustry.Biz believes it will never be the same again. I’ve been to 10 of them and I remember most of the truly momentous announcements because I was in the room with fans and fellow journalists. That excitement and discovery is impossible to replicate via live-streamed trailers interspersed with product placements for energy drinks. But maybe that’s just me. What to clickThe best games of 2022 so farHorror classic The Last of Us has been remade for PlayStation 5 and PCThe Quarry is an engrossing buffet of horror staples – reviewPlease Fix the Road review – turn chaos to calm in this pleasing puzzleQuestion BlockAfter watching my 18th first-person shooter trailer last week, I asked Twitter for favourite examples of first-person games with no guns. Ellen Rose of the wonderful gaming YouTube channel Outside Xtra recommended ancestral mystery What Remains of Edith Finch, with the simple words, “outstanding game”.BBC Radio 3 Sound of Gaming presenter Louise Blain went for the real estate sim House Flipper: “It’s so easy to spend hours pottering around enjoying paint stipple detail while attaching radiators to walls,” she wrote.Elsewhere, the most popular responses were almost all from small studios (take a deep breath): Return of the Obra Dinn, Thirty Flights of Loving, Firewatch, Gone Home, The Stanley Parable, Paradise Killer, Outer Wilds, Proteus, Dear Esther, The Forgotten City, Virginia and Eastshade came up time and time again, and all are worth playing. What every one of these shows is how much formal experimentation is still possible in first-person genre. And as my gran used to say, where there’s formal experimentation, there’s hope. | Video Games |
For a period between the winter of 1983 and the summer of 1986, my life was completely dominated by the Commodore 64. The seminal home computer, launched 40 years ago this month, featured an 8-bit microprocessor, a huge 64k of memory and a set of graphics and sound chips that were designed by the engineers at Commodore’s MOS Technology subsidiary to power state-of-the-art arcade games. That didn’t happen. Instead, Commodore president Jack Tramiel ordered the team to build a home computer designed to smash the Atari XL and Apple II. So that’s what they did.I didn’t know any of this when my dad brought home a C64 one afternoon a year after the launch of the machine. Ours came with a Dixons cassette featuring a number of little demo programs and a copy of Crazy Kong, a version of Nintendo’s Donkey Kong, written entirely in Basic, and fairly mediocre. I played it to death anyway. That Christmas, I asked for some actual good games, which would include the legendary multi-stage shooter, Beach Head, the inventive platformer, Lode Runner and the footie game International Soccer, one of the few titles to come on a cartridge rather than a cassette tape.At that time, programmers were still getting to grips with the machine. Offering twice the memory of most rivals, its hardware could also handle seamless scrolling allowing natural movement around larger game maps, and eight multicolour sprites on screen simultaneously. The superlative SID sound chip acted as a built-in synthesiser, allowing specialist computer musicians such as Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway to produce chip music of great beauty and complexity – some of which was celebrated at a Commodore 64 orchestral concert a few years ago. We take it for granted now, but this was also a plug-and-play machine – unlike many other computers of the era, it didn’t need an adaptor to connect to your TV, or a special interface to plug in a controller. It was ready, right out of the box, like a video game console: a vital step forward for home computing.The 8-Bit Symphony Commodore 64 orchestral concert Photograph: Jason MoonDuring my first months as a C64 owner, I was buying early games magazines such as Personal Computer Games and Computer and Video Games, obsessing over news and previews, writing endless wish lists. A new nextdoor neighbour moved in: his name was James (he’s now better known as the actor Jimi Mistry) and he also had a C64. We got to know each other by swapping games – I remember he had the beautiful martial arts adventure Karateka by Jordan Mechner, who would go on to make the Prince of Persia titles, and I was amazed by its atmospheric cinematography. It hinted at a future in which interactive stories would be more than “knight saves princess”.1984 was the explosive year. Games such as Bruce Lee, Boulder Dash, Summer Games and Pitstop II came along in quick succession, showing the visual and tonal variety of C64 titles. It is difficult now to sum up the impact of seeing the ultra-smooth character animation in spy game Impossible Mission or hearing the synthesised voice in Ghostbusters. I became part of a little collective of C64 owners in my town; we’d swap games, read each other’s magazines, and go on software hunting field trips around Stockport town centre – Debenhams, Dixons, WH Smith, Boots, a couple of specialist computer stores down little sidestreets. When Mastertronic started selling budget games in video rental shops and newsagents, our search widened. My mum used to take me to Wythenshawe library, where they rented out games for 10p a week. You could also submit cards requesting new titles. The staff there got to know me pretty well.I loved the fluidity of C64 games – the genres we now know really well were still blurred and malleable. The Sentinel was a puzzle game, but also sort of sci-fi horror; Spindizzy was an exploration game, but also a puzzler; Gribbly’s Day Out was a platformer but also an arcade adventure. These games built surreal, yet geometrically naturalistic worlds in an early sort of 3D, the sharp pixel visuals cleverly suggesting reflective surfaces and flowing water.Jaddua McAdam, 13, in his home in Sydney, Australia, programmes his Commodore 64 in October 1983. Photograph: Fairfax Media Archives/Fairfax Media/Getty ImagesThe game I played most with my dad was Leaderboard, a golf sim set on a series of island courses that would draw on screen as you watched. I can still vividly remember sitting with my dad on our gaming bench silently watching the fairways block out in front of us. It was programmed by Bruce Carver, one of the star creators of the era, who also made Beach Head and Raid Over Moscow. Carver was one of a generation of programmers and designers who really started to develop a theory and practice of how to create compulsive home video games. “There’s a lot of thought given to what’s going to be the most playable screen,” he said in an interview with Computer! magazine in 1985. “You want to take that user to the point where his hands start getting sweaty, and he’s always making decisions on what he’s going to be firing at, or what he’s going to do.“If you just always have the same thing for him, he’s going to get bored really quickly, so you make his mind work, you give him options ... We try to very subtly put those all through the game, so it’s not really apparent, but it retains the interest for a long time.”This was important because we were seeing a definitive split, between the turn-’em-over-quick philosophy of the arcade, and the longevity of home console and video game design. Between 1985 and 1987, the C64 was in its absolute pomp. Titles such as Wizball, Sid Meier’s Pirates!, International Karate and The Last Ninja, were prescient indicators of the games industry to come, with sprite animations, immersive worlds and complex narratives.Of course, this kind of thing was happening on the Spectrum too, but I really associate that machine with the early 1980s. Its indie aesthetic, the bizarre Python-esque humour, the glitchy, splattered visuals – they all recall the era of alternative comedy, experimental synth pop, recession and unemployment. It was counter-cultural and idiosyncratic. The Commodore 64, however, is the mid-80s: sleek, flashy visuals, MTV and pastel-coloured positivity. In many ways, it was the absolute best indicator of where games were going: toward the mainstream. And in technological terms, the Spectrum was a dead-end, but the C64 led us to the Amiga, laying the foundations for the era of point-n-click adventures, turn-based strategy games and expansive adventure platformers. Its formative Compunet online system and thriving demo scene also fed the games industry with talent, ideas and a sense of community for years to come.Laying the foundations … the Commodore C64. Photograph: INTERFOTO/AlamyThe games I played on the C64 during that era of my life have left an indelible mark on me – perhaps because they were practically all I thought about during those impressionable years. Paradroid, Thing on a Spring, California Games, Dropzone … these experiences provided access to rich little worlds, captured in a multitude of colours on the tiny CRT TV in our kitchen. They were where I wanted to be and possibly, in a lot of ways, where I still am.The wonderful book Commodore 64: A Visual Compendium, an intelligently curated selection of C64 screenshots and imagery, contains a quote from graphic artist Paul Docherty that really captures the era: “Painting in pixels was never more magical for me than when I was sitting in a darkened room with just a joystick hooked up to the C64 and the cathode ray tube glowing in front of me.”He was talking about the experience of making games for the machine. But like millions of others at that time, I felt the same about playing them. | Video Games |
The acclaimed PS4 game Horizon Zero Dawn is reportedly being remastered for PS5, according to Video Games Chronicle and MP1ST.The outlets report that the updated version of the game will sport new accessibility options and improved visuals, including new character models, animations and lighting. These updates will bring the game in-line with its recently released sequel, Horizon Forbidden West.According to the outlets, a separate Horizon multiplayer game is also in development. Sony has not officially announced either project.Released for PS4 in 2017, Horizon Zero Dawn would go on to become one of the system's best-selling games. The title was later ported to PC in 2020, with added ultra-wide monitor support and an unlocked frame rate.This would not be the first time Sony remastered one of its recent titles. Earlier this year, the company released The Last of Us Part I, a PS5 remake of the acclaimed 2013 PS3 game. | Video Games |
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comSummaryCompaniesCut gaming unit annual forecast by 16%Gaming unit op profit fell 37% in Q1Game software sales slumped 26% to 47 mln unitsLack of high profile titles, COVID easing have hurt demand -CFOTOKYO, July 29 (Reuters) - Sony Group Corp (6758.T) trimmed its profit forecast on Friday after a weak first quarter for its PlayStation business, which it blamed on waning consumer interest due to a lack of new games and an easing of COVID-19 constraints dampening stay-at-home gaming.Sony said the business would draw support, however, from its upcoming game slate and as it addresses supply chain snags that have disrupted production of its hit PlayStation 5 console."Last quarter was just a bump in the road for Sony," said Serkan Toto, founder of the Kantan Games consultancy.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com"It looks like Sony is actually now getting more and more PS5s into stores, especially in the U.S. and Europe."Operating profit at Sony's key gaming unit fell 37% in the April to June quarter from a year ago, which Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki blamed on a lack of top titles and the return of normalcy to people's lives amid the COVID-19 pandemic."The growth of the overall game market has decelerated as opportunities to go out have increased following a decline in COVID infections," Totoki said.Sony cut the annual operating profit forecast for its gaming unit by 16%, citing an expected fall in games sales from external developers while booking expenses from an earlier-than-expected closing of its deal for "Halo" creator Bungie.Its group-wide operating profit forecast for the year to next March was cut by 4% to 1.11 trillion yen ($8.37 billion).Sony Group Corp's new line of headphones and monitors targeting the growing PC market for video games, the Inzone line, is displayed during its unveiling in Tokyo, Japan, June 29, 2022. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-HoonSony posted a 9.6% rise in first-quarter operating profit to 307 billion yen, beating analyst estimates, boosted by demand for its movies and television shows.The conglomerate has said it aims to sell 18 million of its hit PS5 consoles this fiscal year as supply chain snarls ease and it ramps up production. It sold 11.5 million units in the year ended March."With recovery from the impact of the lockdown in Shanghai and improvement in component supply we are working to bring forward supply for the year-end holiday season," Totoki told a news briefing.Sony sold 2.4 million PS5 units in the first quarter, only a slight increase from the same period a year earlier, while software sales slumped 26% to 47 million units.Sony competes with Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), which is aggressively acquiring content to push to its Xbox Game Pass subscription service.Sony's Redmond, Washington-based rival this week reported a decline in gaming revenues in its fourth quarter and upcoming high-profile game titles have been delayed.PlayStation's pipeline includes hotly awaited titles such as a remake of "The Last of Us" in September and "God of War Ragnarok", due for release in November.Sony shares closed flat ahead of earnings. The group's shares have lost around a fifth of their value this year, compared with a 3% drop in the blue-chip benchmark Nikkei 225 (.N225).($1 = 132.6600 yen)Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comReporting by Sam Nussey; Additional reporting by Nivedita Balu; Editing by Stephen Coates and Edmund KlamannOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | Video Games |
Chinese video game giant NetEase has been aggressively expanding overseas as the domestic market slows down amid tighter regulation. It now has fully-owned gaming studios in the U.S., Europe and Japan as it focuses on games beyond just mobile and PC.Arjun Kharpal | CNBCNetEase announced Wednesday that it has acquired a French games developer as the Chinese technology giant continues its aggressive international expansion drive.The Hangzhou, China-headquartered firm bought Quantic Dream, marking the establishment of its first fully owned gaming studio in Europe.NetEase and its rival Tencent have been upping their efforts overseas as the Chinese domestic games market slows down amid tighter regulation.Over the years, Tencent has been prolific in acquisitions and investments in overseas gaming companies. NetEase is now catching up.This year alone, NetEase has set up gaming studios in Japan and the U.S.NetEase has typically been focused on PC and mobile gaming, extremely popular formats in China. Mobile gaming makes up more than half of its global games revenues. But more recently, the tech giant has been expanding into console games.Quantic Dream, a 25-year-old studio, will focus "on creating and publishing its video games on all platforms, as well as supporting and publishing third-party developed titles," according to a press release.That highlights NetEase's intention to grow across mobile, PC and consoles.The acquisition of Quantic Dream is in line with NetEase's strategy of acquiring well-known international characters and franchises. Quantic Dream is currently developing a game called Star Wars Eclipse, based on Disney's space adventure movies. NetEase has already released mobile games based on the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.NetEase's international push comes as regulators in China continue to scrutinize the games market, though there are signs of some easing. Last year, authorities restricted the amount of time those under 18 years old could play online games and froze the approval of new titles. In China, games need the green light from regulators to be released and monetized. Those approvals restarted in April.In an interview with CNBC last year, Hu Zhipeng, vice president at NetEase and one of the top bosses of the technology giant's video games business, said that he aims to eventually have 50% of the company's gaming revenue come from overseas, up from around 10% now.Competition in the global games market is heating up.Sony, a leader in console gaming and producer of the PlayStation, announced on Tuesday that it is setting up a dedicated mobile division, which will put it in competition with the likes of Chinese giants Tencent and NetEase. | Video Games |
After 10 years in exile, fans of gruelling psychological horror can finally pack their bags: Silent Hill is reopening to visitors. During a YouTube presentation on Wednesday evening, Konami announced a reboot of the acclaimed sequel Silent Hill 2 and two new adventures, Silent Hill Townfall and Silent Hill F. A new movie tie-in, Return to Silent Hill, and an interactive live stream series, Silent Hill Ascension, were also teased.The remake is being developed by the Polish studio Bloober Team, known for horror titles such as Blair Witch and The Medium. Also involved are key members of the original Silent Hill development team, including the composer Akira Yamaoka and concept artist Masahiro Ito, best known for his creation of Silent Hill’s most infamous monster, Pyramid Head.During an interview video shown as part of the presentation, Bloober Team’s creative director, Mateusz Lenart, explained that while the studio wanted to stay true to the atmosphere of the original game, certain elements were being modified for the modern era; this would include a move from a third-person camera to an “over-the-shoulder” viewpoint. “We want the game to make the same strong impression today as the original did 21 years ago,” he explained. A post on the PlayStation blog added further details, including the game’s development using the new Unreal Engine 5.There was no information about a release date but the game will be launched on PC and PS5, the latter as a console exclusive for 12 months.The first of the two new Silent Hill titles, subtitled Townfall, is being developed by No Code, the Glasgow-based studio behind the spooky adventures Stories Untold and Observation, in conjunction with the producer Annapurna Interactive. A teaser trailer featuring a retro portable TV device gave little away, and no details about a release date or platforms were revealed. The second new title, Silent Hill F, is set in Japan and is being written by Ryukishi07, author of the visual novel series When They Cry. Another teaser hinted at a combination of Japanese mythology and the Swedish folk horror film Midsommar. Again, there was no mention of a release date.Two new spin-offs were also announced. A movie is on the way, Return to Silent Hill, from the director Christophe Gans, responsible for the original Silent Hill film. Several media companies, including the interactive livestream specialist Genvid and the JJ Abrams-founded Bad Robot, are also collaborating on an interactive streaming series named Silent Hill Ascension, set to begin next year, which will allow viewers to change the course of the narrative as it happens.During the transmission, the producer Motoi Okamoto confirmed that Konami is working with other developers around the world on further Silent Hill projects, yet to be announced.Nice bonnet … Silent Hill F promises folk horror galore Photograph: KonamiThe Silent Hill series has been dormant for a decade, with the last instalment, the poorly received Silent Hill: Downpour, arriving in 2012. At that time, a reboot of the series, titled Silent Hills, went into development at Kojima Productions, the studio set up by Hideo Kojima, creator of Metal Gear. That project was announced via a short playable demo titled PT, released in 2014 and widely considered the scariest video game experience ever made. A year later however, Silent Hills was cancelled amid reports of nosediving morale and poor working environments within Konami studios.For a number of years it looked as if Konami was more interested in its hugely profitable pachinko machine business than the somewhat unpredictable video games market. Two years ago, however, rumours began circulating that the publisher was to re-ignite three of its key video game franchises – Metal Gear, Castlevania and Silent Hill – with numerous projects and development studios mentioned, but without any official confirmations. At the time, gaming news sites speculated that there might be more than one new Silent Hill title in development, including a reboot or continuation of the main series.It wasn’t until Sunday night, however, that a tweet from the official Silent Hill account, beginning with the tantalising sentence “In your restless dreams, do you see that town?”, promised an official announcement video. Konami may have been absent from Silent Hill for a decade, but after the 45-minute stream, the extent of its commitment to that eerie little town became very clear indeed. | Video Games |
By Hamzah AbbasBBC News11 November 2022, 14:55 GMTUpdated 3 hours agoImage source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Ash and Pikachu in the first Pokemon movie in 2001Ash Ketchum, the lead character in the Pokemon anime series, has won the Pokemon World Championship.Fans of the franchise have expressed their delight at the character becoming the strongest Pokemon trainer in the world, more than 25 years after the first episode of the programme aired.A tweet from the official Pokemon Twitter account congratulating Ash has received almost 200,000 likes.The series, which originated as a video game, has run for over 1,200 episodes.The anime has followed Ash Ketchum in his quest to become a Pokemon Master since 1997, when the character met electric mouse creature Pikachu on his 10th birthday.Over the last 25 years, viewers have watched him train as he aimed to become the strongest Pokemon trainer. In the series, Pokemon trainers catch mythical creatures known as pocket monsters and battle them against each other.As Pokémon turns 25 its cards trade for big moneyPokemon taught me 'being a loser is OK'As well as the animated TV show, the original Japanese Game Boy game also spawned a trading card game, more than 20 movies and a host of merchandise from pogs (collectable cardboard discs) to soft toys.Most seasons of the anime follow Ash's journey across various fictional regions catching Pokemon as he aimed to win eight gym badges to qualify for their Pokemon League.Final battleBut the latest series, Pokemon Ultimate Journeys, has worked differently as it has seen Ash travelling around the world, rather than being limited to one region. Viewers have previously seen Ash win two tournaments - the Orange League from the Orange Islands season, as well as the Alola League in Pokemon: Sun and Moon.But to win the World Championship, Ash had to overcome strong trainers from across his travels. Ash's final battle against former world champion, Leon, spanned four episodes. It also saw the return of former companions from previous seasons of the anime who have since been retired, such as fan favourites Brock, Misty and Dawn. Sarah Natochenny, the voice actor for Ash in the American version of the anime, tweeted: "YESSSS!!! Our boy is the very best like no one ever was!!!!" while a number of adult fans of the show tweeted that the finale had made them "emotional".It is unclear whether Ash and Pikachu will return for the anime's next season.It has become tradition for a new season of the anime to coincide with the release of new Pokemon video games. The two newest Pokemon games, Scarlet and Violet, will be released on Friday 18 November. | Video Games |
In the 51st minute of Halo – a military space-opera that’s among the first shows on new streaming service Paramount+, with a one-episode taster on Channel 5 – Pablo Schreiber takes his helmet off. His character, disaffected soldier Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, lets the scared and angry girl he’s chaperoning see his strong face and sad eyes. It is the show’s first convincing human interaction – before then, we’ve been playing games.Halo was the video game that, when it debuted in 2001, perfected the first-person shooter genre – where you see through the eyes of the character you’re controlling as they fire at baddies. It made the launch of the Xbox console a hit for Microsoft, and helped introduce grand narratives to games, basing its bullet-fests on a mythology about a battle centuries from now between the United Nations Space Command and an alien theocracy called the Covenant.Halo the series seeks entry to a pantheon of great TV shows dramatising video games that already includes … actually, that hall of fame is as empty as an abandoned cave on an irradiated planet. Turning games into telly doesn’t make a lot of sense: stick within the existing story and there likely won’t be enough to power a drama; abandon it for your own ideas and the goodwill from gamers is lost.Armed with the game’s chunky backstory, Halo ought to have a decent shot at bridging that gap. But its opening episode butts up against another dilemma: how to please Halo fans without perplexing newcomers who don’t know their Forerunners from their Precursors. We begin during the year 2552, in a dusty outpost on the planet Madrigal – the TV show keeps the game’s clunky placenames, including the human base planet named Reach – where the participants of a raucous card game discuss their rebellion against the UNSC, and the fearsome Spartans against whom resistance is futile because “they just keep on killing”.Yerin Ha as Kwan Ha in Halo. Photograph: Adrienn Szabo/Paramount+Not long after, some marauders rock up, blasting heads and legs off a ragtag gang of teens in the woods before attacking the rebel compound, eviscerating opponents with spooky glowing sceptres. These 10ft, metal-clad lizards just keep on killing! Ah, but then some other, even mightier armoured titans arrive to massacre the first lot. We go inside one of their helmets to see what the soldier sees, as he selects weapons and scans the battleground – just as an Xbox player would. With all the lizard folk dispatched, the main guy says something tough and pithy in American action-movie idiom, overheard by one of those teens, a girl who is the only survivor of the rebel gang. Roll opening titles.For the uninitiated, it takes a while to work out that the human rebels were ambushed by the nasty, lizardy Covenant, and that their regular nemesis the Spartans, a genetically engineered fighting force deployed by the UNSC and led by Master Chief, were the ones who tried to save them. Gamers have enjoyed a live-action version of a Halo level, but the rest of us have sat through a middling battle scene with murky protagonist motives.Cut to UNSC HQ, where Natascha McElhone is wearing one of those white calf-length jackets with thin grey piping that we’ll all be sporting in the 26th century. She is UNSC boffin Dr Catherine Halsey, swishing stuff about on a giant touchpad and pointing her otherworldly bone structure at helmet-cam footage of the most interesting part of the Madrigal mission: while doing a situation report after the battle, John-117 found some sort of psychic amulet, touched it, and had visions. A dramatically inert encounter with the officious Admiral Parangosky (Shabana Azmi) confirms that Halsey is a loose cannon with a scientific curiosity – she’s created a bald clone of herself and stashed it in a cupboard, despite being ordered not to – that is at odds with the doctrines of the UNSC, a colonial operation whose smooth propaganda belies the ruthlessness with which it maintains control.As Master Chief’s encounter with the mysterious artefact triggers childhood memories that were suppressed when he became a Spartan, he questions everything he knows and goes rogue, with the rebel survivor (Yerin Ha) his unlikely sidekick. What for much of the first episode is a sterile mix of trigger porn and talky world-building suddenly has potential for a bit of Replicant/Cylon nature-of-humanity philosophising, with a dash of strong/silent Mandalorian cool about the hero. But as a sci-fi show that wants to deliver something more rewarding than its source material, it’s too slow to load. | Video Games |
Argentina will win Qatar World Cup according to FIFA 23 video game... which correctly predicted the last THREE tournament championsArgentina will win the World Cup, according to FIFA 23 computer simulation Messi scored the lone goal in final against Brazil, according to the video game It correctly predicted winners of last three cups as Spain, Germany and France England failed to top their group and were knocked out in the Round of 16 Published: 11:37 EST, 9 November 2022 | Updated: 11:51 EST, 9 November 2022 Gary Lineker once said: 'Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win.'But not according to the boffins at Fifa, who have used data to predict that Argentina will win the World Cup in Qatar, with Germany knocked out in the quarter finals.England will fare even worse, struggling through their group as runners-up before losing to Netherlands in the round of 16 in another knockout heartbreak, something you may not need a computer to predict.The video game has run a simulator to forecast each result of the 64 games of the tournament, and used the same system to correctly call the last three winners. Argentina are set to win the World Cup in Qatar, according to a simulator which has correctly backed the last three winners Lionel Messi's side has gone 36 years without a trophy since the glory years of Diego Maradona and his Hand of God heroicsIt is a good omen for Lionel Messi's side who have gone 36 years without a trophy since the glory years of Diego Maradona and his Hand of God heroics.The South American side are second favourites at 6/1 to win the first tournament in the Middle East, but Fifa 23 says they will beat Brazil 1-0 in the final to claim football's biggest prize.Argentina will beat the Dutch in the quarter finals before edging out France 1-0 in the semi-finals, setting up a mouthwatering final with their rivals Brazil, the simulator claims.Lionel Messi scores the only goal in the final and also wins the Golden Boot as the competition's top scorer with eight goals in seven matches, the game predicts.Fifa has forecast the previous three World Cup and correctly predicted the winners each time. The World Cup kicks off in two weeks in the first ever tournament held in winter due to the Qatar heatSpain, Germany and France all came out trumps in the simulations, adding to the hopes of Argentina this time around.EA Sports uses the in-depth player ratings featured in the Fifa video games to stage the virtual tournament.A victory for Argentina would be fitting for Messi in what is likely his final ever World Cup, with arguably the greatest player of all time yet to win the sport's most coveted trophy.He came close in 2014 when Argentina finished as runners up to Germany thanks to a stoppage time winner from Mario Gotze.In Fifa's predicted team of the tournament were fellow stars Kylian Mbappe from France, and Brazil's Vinicius Jr and Richarlison. Advertisement | Video Games |
Kid #1 informed me the other day that Horizon Zero Dawn was coming off PlayStation Plus at the end of October. I wrote about what this game meant to me back in July, playing it at a time when I had multiple life challenges, and the escapism and sense of achievement at completing it was a lifesaver. I did NOT complete the extra chapter The Frozen Wilds, however, because I moved to a new job, leaving consoles and TVs behind for a month or so. I passed the game on to the aforementioned oldest kid to play and she adored it even more, putting it up there with Zelda Breath of the Wild and The Last of Us on her best ever list.Now she had done her completionist, 100%-ed-it-on-the-hardest-difficulty thing with it, she was about to return to the sequel – and wondered if I wanted to nip in there while the PlayStation was free and get The Frozen Wilds done before it disappeared off Sony’s subscription service and into the ether.She handed over the joypad to me, still warm from her adventures, and I felt a sense of kinship. A passing back of the gaming torch I had passed to her a few months ago. It was a beautiful thing.I restored my old save-game and was back with Aloy, running around in the Frozen Wilds. That was basically it, for ages. Running around, and not a lot else – because I had no clue what I was doing. Keith Stuart wrote beautifully recently about his fractured memories of games played decades ago, but this was one I had only played three months before, and I had already forgotten everything.I kept asking Kid #1 what the controls were and how to craft stuff and whatnot. She sat there, explaining patiently as if I was an elderly parent in a care home whom she had to teach how to eat soup without spilling. Eventually I got back into the swing of it, even though I’d lost a few threads of the story, making certain plotlines a tad confusing. But this is a modern open-world game, yeah? Just head for the marker on the map and fight stuff.And fight stuff I did. And I have to say I was pretty damned good at it, carving through an assortment of robotic mechanical prehistoric hybrid monsters like a knife through warm cliche. I sat like this for about an hour thinking, “The old man’s still got it, eh?” Even when I came across new fearsome beasts, I was picking them off with a couple of perfect ranged arrow attacks then steaming right in there and meleeing them into oblivion with just a few swipes. My technique was perfect.This guy? Nailed him. No problem … Horizon Zero Dawn. Photograph: SonyThen I heard whispers behind me. It was my daughter and my wife. I turned around. And they stopped whispering. If you have a daughter and a wife, and they stop whispering when you look at them, that means they are whispering about YOU.“OK guys, what’s up?” I finally sighed.“Are you enjoying the game, Dom?” asked my wife.“Yes, I am, as a matter of fact.”“You look pretty good at it,” she continued.“Thank you,” I said, “I was thinking the exact same thing.”I noticed Kid #1 smirking.“What difficulty are you playing on?” she asked me.“I don’t know. Same one as when I played before. Normal?”“Really, Dad?” she said. “I think you should check.”So, I paused the game, went into settings, and checked the difficulty.The level was not on Normal. It wasn’t even on Easy. It was on Story.Back in July I had set up a photo of me changing the difficulty level of Horizon Zero Dawn to Story mode for a gag I sent to a friend. I hadn’t changed it back. (True story, honest!) So here I was in October – the month that people received a book about my old show GamesMaster, which influenced a generation of gamers – playing a game in Story mode. The bottom rung of the gaming skill ladder. The level that is so easy it can be completed by a jar of pickles. No wonder my family was laughing at me.It was enough to make me consider retiring from video games. Except I’m not. Because, you know what? It was actually fun on Story level. It was stress-free. I think I might play EVERY game on Story difficulty now. I am 52 years old. I have paid my gaming dues. I blistered my fingers on a million Mega Men when gamers today were but a twinkle in a parent’s eye. In the same way as I have stopped caring about what clothes I wear, I now officially give zero late-middle-aged fucks about how awful I am at games.The rest of you can crack on with your MANIA BASTARDO levels of difficulty. I will be that elder family statesman who sits in a deckchair on the beach while the kids go surfing. Happy to wriggle my toes in the sand, go for a shallow paddle in a rockpool, and just have fun. | Video Games |
Over 54 million users play Roblox, a popular multiplayer online game, every day and nearly half of them are under the age of 13, according to the company. At first glance, it may seem cartoonish and harmless but one watchdog group is sounding the alarm about inappropriate content in the game.Roblox is promoted as a game that "brings people together through play," where kids can get creative and build their own worlds and games and share them with others virtually.However, the nonprofit group Common Sense Media says it can be easy for kids to stumble onto content that is sexual, racist, homophobic or anti-Semitic in nature.Bennett, 9, told "Good Morning America" he discovered such content unintentionally while playing on Roblox two years ago. "I found this random game ... and I heard a bad song and a bad picture," the boy recalled.The Roblox app seen displayed on a smartphone screen and a Roblox logo in the background in this photo illustration, March 30, 2021.SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images, FILEBennett's father Bryan said he still remembers when his son spoke up and showed him what he had found."I'll never forget how he kind of leaned over and handed me the iPad and he goes, 'Dad, you know, something doesn't look right,'" Bryan told "GMA."The graphic Bennett had found -- one of a woman's rear end in a thong -- appeared even though his Roblox account had age restrictions in place."I enabled the account restrictions which, according to Roblox, meant that my son would not be able to play any games that weren't specifically curated and deemed appropriate by Roblox," Bryan said, adding that he found additional inappropriate content on Roblox after the first incident.Roblox told ABC News that Bennett's experience isn't common and the company has improved its moderation systems since 2020 and that the company takes steps to prioritize children's safety."These types of experiences are not reflective of the Roblox platform and are in clear violation of our Community Standards," the corporation said in a statement. "The safety of our community, especially children, is our top priority. We have strong systems and protocols in place to ensure these types of experiences are swiftly removed within minutes whenever bad actors attempt to circumvent our rules and that the possibility children would ever come across this content remains extremely low. We're continually working hard to ensure people of all ages have a positive and safe experience on our platform."Oftentimes, inappropriate content appearing on Roblox is uploaded by independent users and isn't listed or promoted by Roblox, according to the company. Roblox said the inappropriate content is promoted in users' profiles or on social media platforms like Discord or TikTok. Roblox moderators take down such games and rooms when they're discovered but because the gaming platform is so expansive, they can't keep up with the sheer amount of content getting created constantly."A lot of it does wind up getting pulled down when it's found. But it can easily be re-uploaded within a matter of seconds," Jeff Haynes, a senior editor of video games and websites at Common Sense Media, explained.Common Sense Media rates Roblox as age appropriate for children 13 and over but it does note that the gaming platform has "continuing challenges with problematic content." For younger children, the group said it's "potentially OK" as long as "account restrictions are turned on and parents pay close attention to their kids' activities." | Video Games |
The Vaults in the Fallout series might be the worst place to spend your time after an apocalypse.Screenshot: BethesdaIf the world were to end, you’d probably want to be as sequestered as possible—preferably underground with a freshly stocked pantry, your loved ones close by, and plenty of stuff to distract you from the fiery inferno outside your door. Apocalypse media loves a good bunker plotline, but the fallout shelters we see in television, movies, and video games are rarely the best places to lay your head down to ride out the end of days; just look at the likes of Fallout, Into The Night, or The 100 to see my point. This list compiles some of the worst, most grotesque, and eeriest bunkers in recent years, with shelters that tried everything from draining people of their blood to experimenting with cryogenics.(Spoilers abound, proceed with caution.)2 / 10Mount Weather - The 100 (2014-2020)Mount Weather - The 100 (2014-2020)The 100 takes place nearly a century after a nuclear apocalypse has wiped the majority of humanity off the face of the planet. The mega-space station that formed in the wake of the apocalypse sends down 100 prisoners to test the conditions on Earth. The group’s target is Mount Weather, a real fallout shelter in Virginia that could house some government personnel in the face of nuclear annihilation. The bunker serves a similar purpose in the show’s second season, housing the descendants of a pre-apocalypse American government in a lavish underground complex that is secretly killing outside survivors and using their blood as medicine to treat radiation burns. 3 / 10Howard’s Fallout Shelter - 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)Howard’s Fallout Shelter - 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)The sequel to 2008's blockbuster kaiju film Cloverfield saw the franchise take a hard left into psychological thriller territory. 10 Cloverfield Lane tells the story of a young woman named Michelle, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who wakes up after a car crash in the doomsday shelter of John Goodman’s Howard Stambler, along with John Gallagher Jr.’s Emmett. From there, Michelle has to decide which is worse: Howard’s unhinged behavior while mourning the loss of his daughter, or the potential apocalyptic threat that may or may not be awaiting her outside.4 / 10NATO Military Shelter - Into The Night (2020-Present)NATO Military Shelter - Into The Night (2020-Present)Into The Night is a Belgian Netflix series that explores what happens when the sun is suddenly probably going to microwave us. No joke: our cast of characters begin their journey on a red-eye flight, but as the sun suddenly begins emitting radiation that destroys all DNA and penetrates everything except water, they are forced to continue flying into the night (get it?). The show’s second season takes place mostly in an underwater bunker that has everything: food, clothes, community, and an intimidating military presence that forces the characters on a journey across Europe from their shelter in Bulgaria to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway. 5 / 10Mother’s Bunker - I Am Mother (2019)Mother’s Bunker - I Am Mother (2019)Imagine being the first human born after an extinction event kills everyone on Earth. Throw in a maternal caregiving robot and a mysterious woman (Hillary Swank) breaking into your fortified bunker, and you’ve got the plot of Netflix’s 2019 sci-fi flick I Am Mother. Mother’s bunker is completely automated, allowing her to gestate, raise, feed, and educate the children that will repopulate planet Earth. It sounds idyllic. That is, until our main character realizes she might just be a test subject in a large experiment.6 / 10The Heralds’ Missile Silos - Far Cry 5 (2018)The Heralds’ Missile Silos - Far Cry 5 (2018)Ubisoft’s anthology video game series Far Cry released its fifth installment in 2018. Far Cry 5 takes place in a rural Montana county where a cult of religious zealots calling themselves Eden’s Gate begin to overthrow the local government and intimidate, kidnap, and murder the locals. The cult is led by a charismatic preacher named Jospeh Seed who is preparing his people for “The Collapse,” a nuclear apocalypse that Eden’s Gate will shield themselves in missile silos that have been renovated into bunkers.7 / 10Raven Rock - Oblivion (2013)Raven Rock - Oblivion (2013)Tom Cruise’s Jack Harper—also known as Tech 49—is an end-of-the-world mechanic just like any other: he is tasked with repairing the drones that scour Earth for remaining aliens in the wake of a war that has decimated the planet. Once his job is complete, Jack and his wife Victoria will be able to join the rest of humanity, which has been evacuated to a space station departing soon for Titan. Or will they? The “aliens” that are being hunted by Jack’s drones are actually humans, and Jack and Victoria are clones of pre-war humans that were captured by an extraterrestrial artificial intelligence. The humans that remained after the invasion are holed up in Raven Rock Mountain Complex, a real-world nuclear bunker located in southern Pennsylvania, and they risk annihilation by simply stepping foot outside.8 / 10Philadelphia - 12 Monkeys (1995)Philadelphia - 12 Monkeys (1995)12 Monkeys is a staple of modern time travel fiction, which sees prisoner James Cole (played by Bruce Willis) sent back in time from 2035 to 1996 to stop the Army of the Twelve Monkeys from releasing a deadly virus that causes a worldwide breakdown (sounds familiar). In 2035, Cole lives underneath the ruins of Philadelphia in a subterranean militaristic society run by the mad scientists that figured out how to send humans back in time. Cole is serving a minimum of 25 years in prison, and while he is able to leave his underground dwelling to collect biological samples, wild animals pose a threat, as nature has reclaimed the planet.9 / 10The Vaults - Fallout (1997-present)The Vaults - Fallout (1997-present)The long-running Fallout video game series takes place in an alternate history where American scientists figured out how to reliably use nuclear energy after World War II, leading to decades of social and economic prosperity wrapped up in a shiny retrofuturistic aesthetic. Over time, this lifestyle came to an end as resources became scarce, culminating in 2077 with “The Great War,” which ended in a worldwide nuclear holocaust. Vault-Tec, a corporation specializing in fallout shelters, anticipated this war and built dozens of fallout shelters across the United States called “vaults.” Civilians could purchase space in these bunkers, which were secretly designed to serve as testing facilities for various sociological experiments. For example, in Fallout 4 (the most recent main series game), Vault 111 was used to test the effects of cryogenics, Vault 75 trained child soldiers after staff murdered their parents, Vault 81 exposed its residents to various sicknesses to design a cure-all medicine, and so on. Be careful where you seek shelter, even if the outside seems worse. | Video Games |
Forget what media says about how violent gaming causes violence. Sensationalism gives science a bad name. Instead, let’s look at research flooded with nuanced insights that do not give an easy answer.
Video games, even violent games, improve many aspects of cognition because of gameplay. Still, there is a slight downside in some circumstances. This article excludes game addiction and only considers recreational gaming. Violent games: Restart or Exit? Research shows it’s ok to restart. Why do we play violent games? Myth: Violent video games make players violent Do violent games make people violent? No long-term aggression after habitual and temporary violent gaming Children are at risk, but watching games isn’t a problem The player character induces aggressive or non-aggressive behavior Violent games make us feel good but don’t reduce aggressive thoughts So, what explains the observed violence claims? The environment pushes people toward aggression Violent games may make players less helpful Some violent people choose violent games to maintain their identity Sensational stories are sticky and make us overestimate their occurrence Games are played as an excuse to protect oneself Gaming frustration leads to aggression Violent games bring out aggression in angry people more than others Toxic gaming Takeaway Why do we play violent games?
Why people play violent games has a relatively easy answer. They improve mood through entertainment and cognitive engagement. Games also tend to make us feel more attractive and powerful. Other mechanisms sustain a gaming habit, too. Many forms of rewards from the game increase the likelihood of playing again and again. Pure points, victories and defeats, motivation to overcome defeats, social bonding through multiplayer gaming, etc., make it easy to play violent games. The very sensations involved in violent games make them more attractive to our senses.
A personality trait called sensation-seeking affects what games we choose. The more sensation-seeking we are, the more stimulation we need. So we may choose more intense games. Sensation-seeking is an overall tendency to prefer intense, novel, and varied stimulation. And sensation seekers are often easily bored, take risks, and prefer instant gratification. This trait can lead a person to choose aggressive games that satisfy sensation-seeking needs. Because sensation seeking reduces as we grow older and is more intense in men, we see more young men choosing violent games who also grow out of them.
Myth: Violent video games make players violent
Claim: Violence in games make people violent.Consequences: Parents, educators, and laypeople blame games for violence without probing into other more significant causes of violent behavior. They also lobby to restrict game-time and encourage political agendas that devalue video games.Realistic version: Violent games do have the capacity to desensitize people to violence, but studies show healthy individuals do not get violent because of gaming. In most cases, factors other than the actual violence within the game better explain real-life violence.Reasonable action: Focus more on general mental health, addiction problems, environmental stress, and a person’s thought process and previous learning instead of blaming games. They are known to cause violent tendencies.
Focus more on general mental health, addiction problems, environmental stress, and a person's thought process and previous learning instead of blaming games for promoting violence. Click To Tweet
Do violent games make people violent?
No long-term aggression after habitual and temporary violent gaming
The amount of research exploring the link between violent gaming and aggression is exponentially increasing, with possibly thousands of studies getting published each year. Reviews and meta-analyses of those studies are also rising to settle the debate. And we are very close to one scientific consensus – there are short-term increases in aggressive feelings after violent gaming, but they are weak, so they vanish, and there are no long-term negative effects of violent gaming. However, there are many, many social and biological factors that create an external link between aggression and violent games (next section).
Gamers can clearly distinguish between game violence and real-life violence, even after long-term gaming. Their neural patterns show their brains don’t respond differently than non-gamers to actual violence. However, each individual’s history with violence and personal tendencies are more significant than gaming regarding violent behavior. Desensitization can reduce the necessary “stop signal” to not act on violent ideas induced by the games, but this is very rare. Like when people have used guns to kill others as if they are in a game. In most cases, more severe mental health issues and previous learning influence such violent choices.
A longitudinal study compared those Grand Theft Auto 5 players (a violent anything-goes game), Sims 3 players (a life simulation drama game), and non-gamers. Their psychological profile was detailed on many aspects of mental health, social behavior, and cognitive functioning 2 months before and after 2 months of daily gaming. Contrary to popular belief that violent gaming makes people violent and aggressive, researchers found no long-term evidence of violent tendencies emerging from violent games.
There is some (read: very weak) link between increased video game spending and fewer homicides across the globe. This may be because those spending more on video games have an outlet for aggression. Or spend more time gaming, so less time killing. Or have money to afford help and cope with difficulties (gaming can be an expensive hobby). Or it’s an accidental correlation.
Children are at risk, but watching games isn’t a problem
When it comes to children playing violent games, research says 10-13-year-olds are quite malleable in what they learn and what they think is expected or normal. For them, playing violent games is linked to more aggression in real-life play for boys and not girls. However, watching games doesn’t seem to increase aggression much for boys and possibly does not affect girls. The study shows that watching streams on YouTube or Twitch isn’t necessarily bad.
The player character induces aggressive or non-aggressive behavior
Many games are played with an avatar on screen. This avatar can be male, or female, with customized clothing and accessories, or sometimes even something like a spoon or an apple. The nature of this avatar affects behavior. Researchers found that men using male avatars had higher aggression shortly after gaming than men using female avatars, women using male avatars, and women using female avatars. The expected behavior of the avatar might affect how a person uses it in-game. For example, making your avatar a predatory monster might inspire more aggression than a worm with a hat. One amplifying factor is how much the gamer relates to the avatar; higher emotional investment in the avatar might make gameplay more stereotypical of the avatar. A wizard might show intelligent behavior, while a troll smacks enemies with a club.
Violent games make us feel good but don’t reduce aggressive thoughts
Many gamers believe violent games are cathartic – they feel good after releasing pent-up anger and frustration. They often play an aggressive game after feeling aggression in real life and then hope to release that energy. However, research shows that violent games are not cathartic but do improve mood. They don’t reduce aggressive thoughts after gaming, but that arousal from gaming is more positive. Gamers who experience a positive mood after gaming believe their aggression has reduces because of virtual action. And that continues the cycle of using games to feel good. Violent games can improve mood after gaming in many ways: Rewards, a sense of accomplishment, distraction, social connection, high-energy engagement, etc. Aggressive behavior isn’t generally cathartic – it doesn’t erase the aggression; it tends to amplify it. For example, an angry person punching or shouting into a pillow might make them feel worse and angrier. Similarly, those who are generally angry tend to get more aggressive after violent gaming, the same way aggressive behavior during anger makes it worse.
Since there is no black-and-white conclusion to how violent games affect behavior, why do we see a link between the two? So, what explains the observed violence claims?
Assuming the claims of violence through gaming are not fake or exaggerated, where would they come from? Are there real mechanisms that indirectly connect violent gaming and real-life aggression? Help me run this site with a donation :) The environment pushes people toward aggression
Environmental factors amplify the association between violent video games and aggression, reduced empathy, and aggressive thoughts (not actions). The link is stronger for more extreme violence in games, but it’s not a direct link. Hostile environment, unsafe space, poor lighting, high noise, easy drug access, overcrowding, lack of healthy entertainment options, and high temperature determine how much video gaming translates into aggressive behavior. Without these factors, the link between violent video games and violence almost vanishes. These factors are known to make people violent, even without exposure to violence in games. These are also reasons that make a person prone to addictions and escapism.
Violent games may make players less helpful
A meta-analysis concludes that violent gaming reduces a helpful attitude toward society (prosocial behavior) and empathy. And, men and women are equally prone to these negative effects. A more recent study tested novices and regular gamers on the impact of violent games, violent media, and violent books on cooperative behavior. Their results showed violent media does not reduce cooperation and prosocial behavior. Both novices and regular (single-player and multiplayer) gamers were equal in prosocial tendencies. According to them, the media does not prime a person to instantly induce violent tendencies. Lack of empathy or helpfulness may be considered passive-aggressive or negligent in some cultures.
Some violent people choose violent games to maintain their identity
Already violent people choose violent games to channel their impulses and aggressive tendencies. Desperation for power and control makes people aggressive. Unhealthy beliefs like “I will do what I want when I want, and no one can stop me” manifest in games first and then in real life. People tend to choose activities that are more in sync with their identities. So a mild person would choose calm games, and an aggressive person would choose aggressive games. Sometimes, the opposite might occur if they use games to regulate their emotions – a calm person might choose aggressive games to increase their excitement. In contrast, an aggressive person might choose quiet games to control their aggression.
Sensational stories are sticky and make us overestimate their occurrence
Games make people less sensitive to violence, so they talk and joke about violence, creating the illusion that they are more violent. Similarly, sensationalized studies and news that involve gaming and violence are more available in people’s awareness. So we estimate the frequency of such events to be higher than it is because we judge prevalence using ease of access to examples. This is the availability heuristic.
Games are played as an excuse to protect oneself
People use violent movies and games as an excuse to justify behavior. One mechanism here is that violent people may believe circumstances control their actions more than themselves. They may also be biased to believe negative behavior is caused by outside influence and positive behavior is their own choice. This is the “self-serving bias,” where good things are attributed to the self and bad things are blamed on circumstances or outside forces. Research shows that aggressive adolescents tend to have a strong self-serving bias and an external locus of control – their behavior was caused by others and not their own choices. These tendencies occur when one self-image is threatened.
Gaming frustration leads to aggression
Frustration because of high game difficulty might be causing aggression instead of violent themes. This aggression may be short-lived because there is a big chance that frustrated gamers don’t continue the game and move on to something else that is less frustrating. The game difficulty itself discourages gaming.
Violent games bring out aggression in angry people more than others
People’s baseline angriness affects the link between violent games and negative attitudes toward anger and online aggression. Consider 2 gamers who play the same amount of violent games and everything else is the same. Then, the angrier one will show a more casual attitude toward violence and more online aggression. For the non-angry one, there may be no connection. If violent gaming doesn’t cause a change in attitude toward violence, there may be even lesser aggression. The key insight here is that violence from games is less important than a person’s default anger and attitude toward aggression. Developing a healthy attitude toward aggression can be enough to remove violent games from the list of possible causes of aggression.
Takeaway: It appears that those already on the edge of getting more aggressive become aggressive after violent games. And factors unrelated to violence within games should sufficiently explain most cases where violent video games get linked to violence in real life.
Toxic gaming
Many gamers know of a toxic gaming culture. In it, gamers bully new or weak players, attack with insults, cross boundaries into personal lives, and make a hostile environment around gaming. Toxicity occurs with a nudge of competitiveness that brings out the worst behavior, much like in many sports and music fandoms. This is when gaming is less about fun and engagement and more about unhealthy behavior. One major problem is that gaming can be contagious and contagious behavior amplifies as it spreads. A few aggressive gamers in a group can convert an entire group into aggressive gamers, which normalizes aggression. This becomes an opportunity to increase aggressive behavior just a little bit till there is a new normal.
Those between 10 and 19 years of age (adolescence and teenage) are quite prone to the problem of normalizing aggressive behavior through a toxic gaming culture. Research on German adolescents shows that violent gamers tend to have more physical aggression 30 months later and show a toxic trait – hostile attribution bias. This is a bias where we assume others’ neutral or unclear actions as aggressive/hostile actions even when there is no evidence of aggression. The hostile attribution bias can normalize interpreting others negatively and promote aggressive defensive behavior. Combine this with contagious gaming, and it becomes a slippery slope.
While violence isn’t the biggest concern in games, there is a problem with sexist games that cultivate sexist attitudes. But this is a story for another day. It is likely to have the same controversy for decades ending with a soft conclusion that environmental factors and not actual gaming imagery affect sexist attitudes. The question is then – are sexist games for sexist people or is a game making people sexist, or is it both or none, or is it specific elements that affect each individual uniquely?
Takeaway
Long and short exposure to violent gaming generally does not induce violent behavior, even if there is a temporary rise in violent thoughts. The violence in games is probably not the main reason for violence. But it could be a small nudge toward aggression. Environmental factors like lack of safety, upbringing, ideologies, normalizing aggression, etc., are likely to explain violent behavior better. Children and adults risk learning that violence is normal through a toxic gaming culture. The best way to look at the effect of violent gaming on aggression is to consider specific individual factors on a case-by-case basis and not generalize. Considering the case of a random well-adjusted gamer, violent games appear safe for the mind.
Hey! Thank you for reading; hope you enjoyed the article. I run Cognition Today to paint a holistic picture of psychology. My content here is referenced in Forbes, CNET, Entrepreneur, Lifehacker, a few books, academic courses, and research papers.
I’m an applied psychologist from Bangalore, India. Love sci-fi, horror media; Love rock, metal, synthwave, and pop music; can’t whistle; can play the guitar. Help me run this site with a donation :) | Video Games |
Loot boxes in video games will not be banned in the UK, despite a government consultation finding evidence of a “consistent” association between the features and problem gambling.Loot boxes have attracted comparison with gambling because they allow players to spend money to unlock in-game rewards, such as special characters, weapons or outfits, without knowing what they will get.The features, popular in games such as Call of Duty and the Fifa football series, were effectively banned in Belgium in 2018, but the culture minister, Nadine Dorries, said the UK would not follow suit.Instead, after a 22-month consultation, she said the government would discuss tougher “industry-led” protections with the UK’s £7bn gaming sector, drawing allegations from one expert that “foxes are guarding the hen house”.Legislating to impose curbs or a prohibition on loot boxes as part of an expected overhaul of the UK’s gambling laws could have “unintended consequences”, Dorries said.“For example, legislation to introduce an outright ban on children purchasing loot boxes could have the unintended effect of more children using adult accounts, and thus having more limited parental oversight of their play and spending,” the government said, in a response to the consultation published in the early hours of Sunday morning.The government also concluded that while there was “a stable and consistent” association between loot boxes and problem gambling – identified across 15 peer reviewed studies – it could not be sure that there was a causative link.“Our view is that it would be premature to take legislative action without first pursuing enhanced industry-led measures to deliver protections for children and young people and all players,” it said.Another factor in the decision is that loot box rewards cannot legitimately be exchange for real money, meaning players cannot in theory “cash out” as they might when gambling.However, the Gambling Commission has previously warned that third-party sites are allowing people to exchange the rewards for real money.While the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) stopped short of proposing legislation, Dorries said: “Children and young people should not be able to purchase loot boxes without parental approval.“In addition, all players should have access to spending controls and transparent information to support their gaming.”Ministers are expected to pursue tougher curbs through talks with the UK video games industry. This will be done via a working group, which is scheduelled to deliver its first update in the first three months of 2023.“We expect games companies and platforms to improve protections for children, young people and adults, and for tangible results to begin to be seen in the near future,” the DCMS said. “If that does not happen, we will not hesitate to consider legislative options, if we deem it necessary to protect children, young people and adults.”Sign up to the daily Business Today email or follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDeskDr David Zendle, a video games expert at University of York, criticised the decision, saying: “Prior select committee inquiries have unambiguously shown that certain bad actors within the video game industry cannot be trusted to self-regulate when it comes to player protection.“By making those same industry bodies the ones that are responsible for regulating loot boxes, DCMS is essentially guaranteeing that foxes are the ones guarding the hen house.” | Video Games |
The voice actor behind the titular character in the video game "Bayonetta" is calling on fans to boycott the franchise's third installment, claiming the flat rate she was offered to reprise her role was not a "decent, dignified living wage."“I decided to do it to stand up in solidarity with people all over the world who do not get paid properly for their talents," Hellena Taylor, who voiced Bayonetta in the English language version of the franchise's games released in 2009 and 2014, said in a series of videos posted to her Twitter account over the weekend.Taylor, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, said she was offered $4,000 for the role, which she suggested was too low given her years of experience. The franchise is worth $450 million, not including merchandise, according to her. “Bayonetta” publishers Nintendo and SEGA of America did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Game developer Platinum Games also did not respond to a request for comment.“This is an insult to me, the amount of time that I took to work on my talent and everything that I have given to this game and the fans,” Taylor said in one of the videos, which had been viewed more than 9.4 million times as of Monday evening. “I’m asking the fans to boycott this game and instead spend the money you would spend on this game, donating it to charity.”Taylor’s viral videos have reignited a discussion surrounding fair pay for voice actors in the gaming industry, with many online voicing their support for her. One Twitter user wrote "pay your leads more," in response to a Platinum Games’ tweet promoting the Oct. 28 release of the third installment. "I was excited about this game…. Now I’m not even going to buy it," another person wrote on Twitter. "This is coming from someone who owns Bayonetta 2 on the Wii U. Why do so many industries treat voice actors poorly?!?""I canceled my Bayonetta 3 preorder," yet another user wrote. Voice actor salaries can varySome gaming industry experts say many factors go into deciding how much a voice actor is paid. Without more context from the publishers and developers, it’s hard to know what is fair compensation in Taylor’s case, they said. Taylor voiced Bayonetta in the first two games. She has not shared what she was paid for her work with the first two installments. “We don’t know if this is 40 hours of work or if they’re saying, ‘We’ll give you $4,000 to come in and do pick-ups,’” said Mike Hayhurst, the senior director of voice operations at BLEND, a voice-over services provider that helps connect actors and gaming companies on both mobile and console games.Rather than having a set salary, Hayhurst said, video game voice actors often have an hourly rate that’s agreed upon before they begin recording. He said that payment depends on a range of factors, including experience.Video game voice actors are eligible to be represented by the Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.In 2017, SAG-AFTRA reached an agreement with video game companies, after a nearly yearlong strike by the union against video game producers, developers and publishers, Variety reported. The agreement put in place a bonus structure that provides additional payments to performers based on the number of sessions worked. In 2020, that agreement was extended to 2022. It’s set to expire Nov. 7. According to a 2020 SAG-AFTRA rate sheet, the current rate for a day performer (up to 3 voices/4-hour day) is $956.75. For a day performer (1 voice / 1 hour), the rate is listed as $478.50. Voice-over sessions for video games are usually four hours, according to SAG-AFTRA.It’s unclear whether Taylor is a member of SAG-AFTRA. A representative for the union did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In some cases, video game voice acting is more than delivering lines of dialogue in a booth. It can involve full performances in motion and performance capture studios, with some productions spanning years. Voice actors are a crucial part of the gaming experience, Hayhurst added. Game companies often want to do everything in their power to keep the same voice actor of a character when possible, he said. That’s because players spend so much time with these characters, he said, it can be jarring to hear a figure they’ve grown attached to sound different suddenly. “It’s paramount that we keep the same actors in the same applications ... it’s important to keep that same sound because, in a game setting, fans of the game are playing it, they’ve probably spent many, many hours listening to this voice,” Hayhurst said. “It is very important to keep that continuity.” The industry's pay equity dispute not newVoice actors have long been sounding the alarm on unfair wages. In 2008, voice actor Michael Hollick told The New York Times that he was frustrated by his pay on Rockstar Games’ “Grand Theft Auto IV.” After voicing the lead role of Niko Bellic, Hollick said, he was paid $100,000. The game made $600 million in its first three weeks, according to the Times.Hollick said he was grateful to be in the game but added “it’s tough, when you see Grand Theft Auto IV out there as the biggest thing going right now, when they’re making hundreds of millions of dollars, and we don’t see any of it.”At the time, voice actors didn’t receive any secondary compensation, sometimes called residuals or royalties, for their work. Hollick told the Times that he didn’t blame Rockstar for the pay issues.“I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games,” he said.A spokesperson for Hollick did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Rockstar also did not immediately respond.After Taylor tweeted her videos, several other voice actors shared what they were paid for their work on Triple A titles. Sean Chiplock, a voice actor with roles in video games such as “Marvel’s Avengers” and the remake of “Final Fantasy VII,” tweeted about his compensation on the blockbuster game “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.”“I was paid approx $2,000-$3000 overall because it was based on the total number of hours in the studio (which was higher because of voicing 3 characters in a single game),” Chiplock tweeted.He later clarified: “(Note that I mean per game, not total across both. Don’t want folks getting the wrong idea and treating it as even worse than it actually is.)”Chiplock did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Nintendo, the developer of Zelda, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Fans urged to 'keep an open mind'On Saturday, “Bayonetta” director Hideki Kamiya wrote a tweet seemingly alluding to Taylor's videos and claims. “Sad and deplorable about the attitude of untruth,” Kamiya wrote. “That’s what all I can tell now. By the way, BEWARE OF MY RULES.”Kamiya did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding his tweet. Actor Jennifer Hale, who picked up the mantle of voicing the titular character for the third installment, issued her own statement Monday on Twitter, titled "About Bayonetta 3." As a "longtime member of the voice acting community," she said, she supports "every actor's right to be paid well and have advocated consistently for this for years."“Anyone who knows me, or has followed my career, will know I have great respect for my peers, and that I am an advocate for all members of the community,” Hale wrote.Hale did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.In her statement, she said her nondisclosure agreement prevents her from speaking on the situation at length. She urged fans of the franchise to "keep an open mind" about the game, which she noted has been "created by an entire team of hard-working dedicated people." She ended the statement saying she hopes that all parties involved "may resolve their differences in an amicable and respectable way." | Video Games |
After 15 years at Nintendo of America, including a memorable stint as the company's president, Bronx-born Reggie Fils-Aime is still a force in the video game industry. In addition to his recent autobiography Disrupting the Game, he's a regular at industry events like the recent PAX West, where we caught up with him for a conversation about the future of gaming. You can watch the full conversation in our video above, or read the highlights, lightly edited for length and clarity, here. Read more: Transition From Switch Will Be 'Significant Challenge,' Ex-Nintendo Head SaysOn the metaverse and VRReggie Fils-Aime: I find when we're talking about the metaverse, we really need to be clear what it is that we're talking about. I'm old enough to remember that people loved to put ".com" on the end of a business, just to try and make it interesting and provocative 30 years ago. And so when I think about the metaverse, for me, it's an environment where you've got a range of different experiences, you've got a common currency, the environment is progressive in terms of what you can do and the things that you can participate in.As I think of the metaverse, there are early examples of it. Whether you look at Roblox, whether you look at the work that Fortnite and Epic Games are doing, it's going to continue to become more and more immersive. I do believe it's going to be gaming-led, I don't believe that it has to have an element of VR. I actually believe that augmented reality is going to progress much further and much faster. I'm a much bigger proponent, in part because I've seen great AR experiences brought to the consumer. I haven't yet seen that wonderful VR experience that I find compelling.Read more: PSVR 2 Hands-On: Sony's New VR Headset Wowed MeOn NFTsI believe that blockchain as a piece of technology can be interesting, but it has to provide value to the player. It can't just be a new way of monetizing. There needs to be something inherently positive for the player for this as technology to take off. So I'm not for or against NFTs. I want to see an example that really adds value and I have to say, I haven't yet seen that example.Fils-Aime with an old pal. Getty Images Would Nintendo ever go back to making separate living room and handheld devices again?At this point, I'm like any other passionate fan of [Nintendo], you know, wondering, trying to figure out where the company goes next. I think that the company certainly has seen a lot of benefit from having all of their development activity focused on one platform, versus having it support two different platforms. I think that's going to be very difficult to walk away from, but Nintendo is a company that is always looking at the same marketplace that everyone else sees but they're approaching it somewhat differently. I think you can never say never with that company.
Should the people who make video games unionize? Well, I think it's important to step back and really think about what does a worker need in order for that part of their life to be fulfilled? The first thing they need is economic stability, right? They need to know that they have a job, they need to know that they're going to have a paycheck. The second thing they need is economic mobility, meaning, when as a worker, you're ready to grow and ready to take on that next big challenge, the company needs to provide that. The third thing that workers need is to be recognized at their workplace. There needs to be not only the basics of safety, but there needs to be emotional rewards provided by the job and by the employer.I believe that when one of those three needs aren't being met, then you have a problem. And that is where we've seen unions step in and, not only in the gaming industry but, across all other industries and situations. Specifically within gaming, you see that when you have a workforce that doesn't have a stable work schedule, or they feel that they're not being paid adequately, or they're being forced to relocate and their relocation expenses aren't being reimbursed, these are the behaviors that have given rise to a push for unionization.From my perspective, as an employer, you need to satisfy those three base requirements of your workforce. And when you don't, then you run the risk of a number of different challenges, unionization being just one. You could also have situations where you have a workforce that is completely demoralized where you have a situation where you have a high level of churn in your workforce. These are all bad things. So I am neither for nor against unionization. I think unionization is an output that happens when those three core needs of a worker aren't being fulfilled.Fils-Aime debuts the Nintendo Switch at a press event in 2017. Neilson Barnard/Getty Images Is the current trend of big game companies buying up other big game companies good for gamers?You can point to very specific mergers or acquisitions, and I do believe that there is something positive to come for the player. The example that I would use is Take-Two and Zynga coming together. I think in the end, that's going to have positive output for the player and for the consumer. I say that because Take-Two has all of these wonderful franchises, but they've really never been successful in the mobile space. If you can imagine the best of their franchises now having a really strong mobile experience, I think that would be wonderful and I think a number of their fans would really say that that is a positive outcome.As these large acquisitions and mergers happen, I do believe that it's going to spur a boon in the independent developer community. I say that because oftentimes these mergers are happening and the focus is going to be on those big franchises. Well, game developers love to create things that are new, that are different. I'm convinced that a number of senior developers are going to end up leaving these mega industry players and go off and to create their own studios and bring to life that creative idea that is stuck in the back of their head. I think we're gonna see another renaissance of this great independent developer content.You can watch the full conversation with Reggie here. | Video Games |
Tencent has faced a number of headwinds in 2022 including a Covid-induced slowdown in the Chinese economy and a tougher market for gaming.Bobby Yip | ReutersTencent posted its first ever quarterly year-on-year revenue decline as stricter regulations around gaming in China and a resurgence of Covid-19 in the world's second-largest economy hit the technology giant.Here's how Tencent did in the second quarter, versus Refinitiv consensus estimates: Revenue: 134.03 billion Chinese yuan ($19.78 billion) vs. 134.6 billion yuan expected, a decline of 3% year-on-year.Profit attributable to equity holders of the company: 18.62 billion yuan vs. 25.28 billion yuan expected, a decline of 56% year-on-yearDuring the quarter, Tencent faced macroeconomic headwinds stemming from a resurgence of Covid in China and subsequent lockdowns of major cities, including the financial metropolis of Shanghai. Authorities have committed to a zero-Covid policy which has caused disruptions across the world's second-largest economy.China's economy grew just 0.4% in the second quarter, missing analyst expectations. Meanwhile, China's domestic video games industry has also faced challenges due to stricter regulation. Tencent makes about a third of its total revenue from gaming.Last year, Chinese regulators introduced a rule limiting the amount of time children under 18-years-old could spend playing online games to a maximum of three hours a week and only during specific times.Regulators also froze the approval of new games between July 2021 and April this year. In China, games need to get the green light from regulators before being released and monetized.Analysts at China Renaissance said in a note published last month that Tencent launched just three mobile games in the second quarter. So the company has relied on its existing popular titles to generate revenue.This is a breaking news story. Please check back for more. | Video Games |
A new study suggests that a person who strongly identifies as a "gamer” is more likely to be prone to “extreme behaviors” like racism and sexism, and defending their community at any cost. While the issues of toxicity and radicalization have long been known to be an issue within some parts of the video game community, the mechanisms of how this occurs aren't fully understood. The new research suggests that a key part of understanding is knowing how strongly the “gamer” identity pervades into a person’s life. "When the gamer identity is very core to who you are as a person, that seems to reflect what we call toxic gamer culture tends to reflect more exclusion than inclusion. So things like racism and sexism and misogyny,” Rachel Kowert, the research director at Take This, a non-profit that provides mental health information to the gaming industry and one of the paper's authors, told VICE News. “All these things that we know exist in gaming spaces seem to be internalized by those who very closely identify as being part of that community." It should be noted that this is only referring to a small, toxic portion of the gaming community writ large, which numbers in the billions, as many positive communities and elements exist within gaming culture. That said, some extremists, especially those in the far-right, use gaming communities as a recruitment ground. Research has found that places like Steam and Discord are popular areas for white supremacists. It’s a problem that the industry long didn’t necessarily want to grapple with, but that’s slowly changing, and some game companies are calling out misogyny. Even the term “gamer” is one that has also been disputed within the community with the term frequently being used for toxic gamekeeping. For some, a “gamer” is only people who play on PCs, for others, it’s only people who play competitive multiplayer games, or if you play on easy mode, you're not a gamer, and so on and so forth. The term can be exclusive for many and has been a hot button issue in the community as of late.For the three studies the researchers conducted for the paper, they allowed the respondents to define themselves as gamers and didn’t offer an operational definition. The research was conducted by Kowert, Bill Swann, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and Alexi Martel, a psychology PHD student, for the academic journal Frontiers in Communication. The researchers conducted three different studies all analyzing gamers’ beliefs. The studies were conducted by surveying hundreds of people who played video games. Kowert said that to understand the research you need to understand the concept known as “identity fusion.” They define this as when an identity is almost the defining trait of a personality, something that pervades all aspects of a person’s life. "We have individual identities and social identities. So I am Rachel, I am a female, and I'm a gamer. I love The Witcher. These are my social identities and are separate,” said Kowert. “Identity fusion is when the social identity, the individual identity, fuses together you can't tear them apart…. The way in which fusion is shown to develop makes them more susceptible to more extreme behaviors." Kowert used the example of someone who was in the military for years, that identity leaks into all aspects of their life, until there is not much difference between “Doug the soldier” and “Doug the father.” Those who have gone through this identity fusion are susceptible to “extreme pro-group behavior.” There is a subset of gamers who turned to video games for the community as they don’t necessarily have it elsewhere in their life and they form a strong bond within the subculture. In the paper, the authors dub this a “double-edged sword” as they can find a community, which could have positive outcomes, but could also be introduced to a toxic community and hateful speech. In the worst-case scenario, this may lead some to “be lured into embracing extremist beliefs that lead them down the path to radicalization.Some in the gaming industry are attempting to address the issue of toxic behavior and extremism in the gaming communities. Games have also been used as effective counter-violent extremism tools as well, particularly through the use of bespoke ”serious” games in educational settings. Decount, a well-known game in this genre, walks players through the radicalization journey of ISIS and far-right extremists. Like every large community, gamers aren’t a monolith, so the study's authors decided to look at the difference between two popular gaming communities—Call of Duty and Minecraft. The paper found that anti-social behavior like racism and misogyny correlated stronger with fans of the Call of Duty series. “So this can vary across communities depending on what kind of people that you are spending a lot of your time with,” said Kowert. “I don't think it's necessarily about content, but about the community in which you're being immersed.” The authors are quick to caution people from reading too heavily into this and more research is necessary. The effects of gaming have long been a hot topic issue, and often sensationalized by cable news and politicians looking to scare parents. Kowert told VICE News she’s always worried that her research will be taken out of context and used to attack the community. Kowert is clear she’s “not saying that all games are bad or all gamers are extremists.” “I think that games are wonderful places that have more positive things to offer the negative things across the board,” she said. “I think it's important that we have the conversation that games are being leveraged in this way because we're not having that conversation and therefore we can't mitigate it if we don't have the conversation."Get the latest from VICE News in your inbox. Sign up right here.By signing up, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy & to receive electronic communications from Vice Media Group, which may include marketing promotions, advertisements and sponsored content. | Video Games |
Gameplay footage of what appears to Grand Theft Auto VI has been posted online this Sunday, in what amounts to one of the biggest video game leaks in history.Grand Theft Auto VI is the highly anticipated sequel to Grand Theft Auto V, which is one of the most successful video games in history, selling 169 million copies and generating over $6 billion in revenue.A user on GTAforums is behind the leak and posted almost 100 videos of the game in action. Unlike official gameplay trailers we're used to seeing, these videos feature unfinished elements, including placeholder textures and unfinished character models. Many of them are short. One, which is a little more extensive, shows a male and female character robbing a diner. Others feature a woman visiting a strip club, one clip shows a poolside conversation. This is very much par for the course in Grand Theft Auto games, all of which feature missions very much like this. The addition of a female playable protagonist also reflects much of what was reported by Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier about the upcoming Grand Theft Auto VI game, which is apparently two years away from release. Other details like the game's setting, in the fictional city of Vice City, appear to be confirmed in the leaked footage.In a tweet, Schreier said he confirmed with sources at Rockstar that the leaked footage was genuine. Not that there was much doubt, but I’ve confirmed with Rockstar sources that this weekend’s massive Grand Theft Auto VI leak is indeed real. The footage is early and unfinished, of course. This is one of the biggest leaks in video game history and a nightmare for Rockstar Games— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) September 18, 2022 "Not that there was much doubt, but I've confirmed with Rockstar sources that this weekend's massive Grand Theft Auto VI leak is indeed real. The footage is early and unfinished, of course," Schreier tweeted. "This is one of the biggest leaks in video game history and a nightmare for Rockstar Games."Some gamers, used to polished footage of upcoming releases, reacted negatively to the early leaks, but games in early development usually look like this. Rockstar has reportedly been working on Grand Theft Auto VI since 2014. At this point no-one knows precisely how old this footage but, as The Verge notes, the game appears to be running on RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3080 cards, which means the build cannot be any older than two years. With the game not set for release for another two years, this matches up: big budget video games that far from release rarely look close to finished.Rockstar didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. | Video Games |
4 seconds ago News 0 Views Lower than two weeks after shutting down its Stadia streaming service, Google has introduced a brand new vary of Chromebooks “constructed for cloud gaming”. The Acer Chromebook 516 GE, Asus Chromebook Vibe CX55 Flip and Ideapad Gaming Chromebook from Lenovo laptops will embody options designed to supply optimum gaming on-line. The laptops can have GeForce Now preinstalled, with help for Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta) along with Amazon Luna (mainland USA) and Google Play. Eurogamer Newscast: Was Google Stadia all the time destined for failure? All three laptops will characteristic 120Hz+ excessive decision screens, WiFi 6 or 6E, RGB gaming keyboards (on choose fashions) and immersive audio. They’ve additionally been independently examined by sport efficiency measurement platform GameBench to make sure a easy expertise with 120fps and console-class enter latency of underneath 85ms. They can even have help for GeForce Now’s highest efficiency RTX 3080 tier, for as much as 1600p decision and 120fps gameplay. Video games on Nvidia GeForce Now and Google Play could be looked for and launched utilizing the Chromebook’s search performance, with different cloud gaming platforms anticipated to be added in future. Google can be partnering with peripheral producers like Acer, Corsair, HyperX, Lenovo and SteelSeries to make sure their equipment are appropriate with the brand new Chromebooks. The information comes lower than two weeks after Google shut down its personal cloud service Stadia. Gamers have since been left with largely unusable Stadia controllers, though some customers are trying to mod their controllers to stop e-waste. Sure, 1000+ Video games | Cloud Gaming Chromebooks Check Also | Video Games |
By Craig Weightman - Staffordshire University, Lecturer in Games and Visual Effects, Staffordshire UniversityIf you’ve ever wondered whether you could make a real contribution to the world but aren’t sure you have any really meaningful talents, perhaps you should look at how you play computer games. A growing body of research suggests that the virtual world can show you what you are truly capable of. While some people see video games as a means of living out fantasy, the truth is who we are in the virtual world largely reflects who we are in the real one. For instance, one piece of research has found that a player’s real values match their in-game decisions, suggesting that their true personality often gets reflected in a game scenario. There is also evidencethat our ability to lead is strongly reflected in the way we form relationships in video games.Some of us are fortunate enough to be aware of these kinds of skills and can take advantage of them in real life as well as in the virtual world. Some players even list their in-game achievements on their CVs. But there are also many people who are capable of much more than they realise. In fact, the above research suggests that the in-game decisions we make and the behaviour we show while playing can tell us about value systems and skills that are, perhaps, unconscious.This is because when we are playing in an engaging simulated scenario, we can enter a state of “flow”. This is a psychological phenomenon characterised by an extreme focus on tasks, an innate sense of joy, matching our skill level with the level of challenge and, interestingly, a total lack of self-consciousness. In other words, we are so involved in the game scenario that we are reacting more authentically instead of filtering behaviour through our perceived social expectations and rules.Given that these characteristics often stay in the area of game play and aren’t put to use in the real world, there is a clear need to make people more aware that games have this revelatory power. At the very least, there should be a way for the persistence, problem-solving skills and motivation of many game players to be transferred to their ordinary working lives. After realising this need, I am developing a system to help people uncover these traits and ultimately lead better lives. The system comprises two sections. The first part is a game that allows players to solve problems in a variety of ways and exposes the kind of unconscious qualities mentioned above. The software monitors the behaviour and choices made during play and logs them in a unique profile for that player.Drawing on research that categorises gamers according to what motivates them to play, the game will let players choose between actions that indicate skill levels and personality types, as defined by tests such as Myers Briggs. These actions could include putting items together for tool making for solving problems, choosing to explore new areas alone, or even how one player converses with another.The downside of existing personality tests is that they are effectively self administered. This means that the answers can be second guessed and biased. By having a system where natural behaviours are stimulated, and then measured against personality indicators, the results are more likely to truly represent the players.Putting your talents to useThe second part of the system feeds the gathered data back to the player as a way of reflecting their unconscious behaviour. The personality traits identified can then be matched to ideal career paths that better suit the latent tendencies uncovered. This could even be tied in to existing online job search facilities to find better suited jobs.Ultimately, this system gives players a way to take their lives to the next level by helping them to make plans more in line with their latent talents, values and preferences. If someone has the opportunity to work in a real job that reflects their talents in the same way the right video game does, they’re more likely to frequently experience the gratifying state of flow, resulting in greater happiness and satisfaction.In psychology, we call this kind of realising or fulfilling the potential of your talents “self-actualisation”, and it sits on top of the hierarchy of what we need to be happy. So, ultimately, using video games to uncover our true talents could help us find a way to fully express who we are, simply through the daily living of our lives.Source: The ConversationMore articles on gaming:Playing video games is good for your brain – here’s howWhy video games are the new iq testsDo video games cause violence? If you enjoy our selection of content please consider following Universal-Sci on social media: | Video Games |
The UbiSoft Entertainment logo is seen at the Paris Games Week (PGW), a trade fair for video games in Paris, France, October 29, 2019. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comJuly 21 (Reuters) - French video game producer Ubisoft Entertainment SA (UBIP.PA) on Thursday cut its top-line growth guidance due to the impact of two game delays, after posting net bookings slightly above its forecast for the first quarter.In recent months Ubisoft has been facing delays and waning demand from the sales highs seen earlier in the pandemic. It also faces competition from blockbuster titles and free-to-play games.Ubisoft, whose titles include "Prince of Persia" and "The Division", said it continued to expect a significant top-line year-on-year growth, while slashing it to above 10%.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com"We revised our top-line growth guidance that was above 20%, now to be above 10%. That reflects the impact of game delays, mostly Avatar," said co-founder and Chief Executive Yves Guillemot in a call with analysts.The maker of the "Assassin's Creed" blockbuster franchise postponed the releases of "Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora" and a smaller unannounced premium game to 2023-24. Both titles were originally slated for the current year.The group expects net bookings for the second quarter to come in at around 270 million euros and still sees a non-IFRS operating profit of around 400 million euros in 2022-23."The negatives of lost revenue and profit is offset on the earnings level by the upfront on the mobile licensing deal ... and cost-cutting," Jefferies notes.Ubisoft announced a "high-value" mobile licensing deal for one of its major franchises and said it was pursuing cost optimization, as it revealed in an analyst call the cancellation of games such as Splinter Cell VR and Ghost Recon Frontline.The Paris-listed company posted a 10% drop in net bookings to 293.3 million euros ($324.63 million) for the three months ended in June, compared with its guidance of around 280 million euros.IFRS 15 sales for the first quarter came to 318.2 million euros, down 9.8% compared with 352.8 million euros generated last year.($1 = 0.9802 euro)Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comReporting by Enrico Sciacovelli and Federica Mileo in Gdansk
Editing by Kirsten Donovan, Matthew Lewis and Andrea RicciOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. | Video Games |
That specter prompted Tardif to volunteer for a first-of-its kind US trial, known as the POINTER study, which is examining whether computer-based brain exercises similar to video games, in combination with a healthy diet, physical exercise, and social interaction can ward off dementia for those thought to be most at risk.Butler Hospital and The Miriam Hospital, both in Providence, are jointly running one of five POINTER study sites nationally, and are recruiting volunteers from Greater Boston and Rhode Island.“Maybe I can do something to reduce my chances of getting it,” Tardif said. “Or if [researchers] get something from me that could help somebody else, that’s terrific.”An estimated 5.8 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s — a number that is expected to rise sharply with aging baby boomers. But with diminishing hopes for an imminent, effective Alzheimer’s medication, studies testing the protective power of computer-based brain exercises, as well as lifestyle interventions, have taken on new urgency.“We are not going to get a blockbuster treatment that will come through and vanquish Alzheimer’s any time soon,” said Dr. Stephen Salloway, a neurology and psychiatry professor at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School and co-leader of the Rhode Island trial site.The POINTER trial aims to enroll 2,000 people across the country, including about 400 in New England. Volunteers must be age 60-79, generally exercise less than three times a week, and have slightly high blood pressure, cholesterol, or blood sugar, or some family history of memory problems.Participants are assigned to one of two groups: a structured group that receives instructions and regular coaching for adopting a Mediterranean-style diet with more fruits and vegetables, and for increasing social interactions, approaches that may be helpful in warding off cognitive decline.“If we can control the risk factors for heart disease and stroke, we are going to keep your brain healthier,” Salloway said.They also are expected to adhere to specific computerized brain-training exercises and prescribed aerobics, strength-training, and stretching.The other group receives more general information about exercise, good nutrition, and the benefits of engaging in socially and mentally stimulating activities, such as learning a new skill or hobby.Researchers will evaluate both groups of volunteers every six months for two years, measuring changes in cognition and physical health.The brain exercises include a computer software program, known as BrainHQ, that is designed to be challenging in very specific ways. Using a video game-like approach, it tests and strengthens participants’ attention, brain processing speed, memory, spatial navigation, and people skills.The POINTER study, with $35 million from the Alzheimer’s Association to recruit and run the trial sites, is expected to receive up to $47 million more from the National Institute on Aging to perform brain scans of participants. The scans, it is hoped, will provide important clues about why the interventions are, or are not, effective.“There’s the possibility that by exercising our brain ... maybe that does change some of the biology, but we just don’t have the evidence to be able to make firm statements about that,” said Dr. Dana Plude, deputy director in the Division of Behavioral and Social Research at the National Institute on Aging, who oversees many of the institute’s dementia-related studies. “So we need this kind of research in order to answer those kinds of questions.”Over the years, evidence has been mixed on whether certain forms of cognitive training may be more effective than others in forestalling cognitive decline. Some studies, for example, have suggested doing crosswords or other problem-solving puzzles may help, while others found little effect. But results from a landmark study, known as the ACTIVE trial, found that healthy older adults who received specific brain-training, called speed of processing, had a 29 percent lower risk of dementia after 10 years than an untreated control group.(Speed of processing requires participants to spot a target in the middle of the screen while simultaneously noticing a target in the periphery — even when they flash on screen very briefly.)Various brain exercises may help with everyday activities, such as in driving, recalling people’s names, and finding your car keys.Plude, from the aging institute, said his agency is funding trials that take different approaches to uncover which activities might be most effective.“Some people who want to do these sorts of things may prefer to do them individually, and they would be uncomfortable in a group, and other people won’t do it unless they’re in a group,” he said.“Let’s try to do these kinds of training activities in various ways and see which ones have traction,” Plude said. ”And it’s probably not going to be one-size-fits-all.”Working on that theory, Plude’s division also recently funded a small, one-year study in California that tests whether brain exercises embedded into an already-popular community-based physical fitness program are effective at consistently drawing people to participate.It awarded $465,000 to Posit Science, the company that created BrainHQ, to develop a brain-boosting program with the YMCA of San Francisco that also includes training in better nutrition, physical fitness, stress reduction, and improvements in sleep and social interactions.“The goal of this grant is, let’s take the known science of dementia risk reduction and let’s build a curriculum that can be run at any YMCA, or in church basements, or network of any health-based community centers across the country,” said Henry Mahncke, Posit Science’s chief executive.Another new trial the aging institute is funding is called PACT, underway in Florida. The $44 million, five-year trial will enroll 7,600 people and study whether computerized brain-training exercises can reduce the risk of mild cognitive impairment and dementias including Alzheimer’s disease.All told, the the National Institute on Aging is supporting 423 active clinical trials on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, with nearly twice as many involving nonpharmaceutical interventions, such as the ones at the YMCA and in Rhode Island, compared to those involving medications.Heather Snyder, vice president of medical and scientific relations at the Alzheimer’s Association, said both approaches may prove to be effective.“Anyone who has lived with someone in their family with Alzheimer’s, you understand the challenges a family faces, to improve the quality of life but also to get ahead of it, so people have more time to do things with their families and to have the best quality of life they can,” she said.That sentiment resonates with Tardif, the North Attleborough grandfather who lost his mother to Alzheimer’s and is participating in the Rhode Island POINTER trial.His favorite part of the trial, he said, is group conversations with the other volunteers, who offer healthy recipe tips, such as adding spinach to fruit smoothies, as well as encouragement to stick with the program when he is tempted to skip some activities.“I am trying to get better to avoid Alzheimer’s, and having these people will help me in that journey,” he said. “I am hopeful it will help my brain.”Kay Lazar can be reached at [email protected] Follow her on Twitter @GlobeKayLazar. | Video Games |
Image: HoYoverseIf you play video games, there’s a good chance that you play (or are at least aware of) Genshin Impact. The action-RPG from developer HoYoverse that first reminded people of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has been a big deal since it first landed in 2020, with players and fans alike falling hard for the game’s world and characters. And with how popular it’s become, it’s the perfect time for it to get an anime.OffEnglishHoYoverse revealed a trailer for the anime shortly before the weekend began during a livestream for the game’s upcoming 3.1 update. The anime project comes courtesy of Ufotable, the anime studio currently behind Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba and Fate/Zero. It’s a trailer that doesn’t do much more than tell you that Genshin Impact’s going to be an anime and shows off the game’s world, but dang if it doesn’t look beautiful. And what’s more, it’s a “long-term project,” which means it won’t be a one-off handful of episodes, though that’s not clear if it means it’ll be a straight adaptation of the game’s story. Set in the world of Teyvat, Genshin Impact follows Lumine or Aether, the respective female or male player character (also known as the Traveler), as they get trapped in Teyvat and endure to save their kidnapped twin. To do so means going through Teyvat’s seven nations, making allies and becoming embroiled in each nation’s current catastrophe. Post-launch updates often add new characters, regions, and quests for players to dive into, including a crossover with Aloy from Horizon. Given how influenced by anime Genshin is, it makes sense that it would make the jump over to animation. It’s a medium that video games seem particularly better suited for: outside of Arcane, series like Castlevania and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners from earlier this week make a great case for this. And this is an area Ufotable’s no stranger to, as the studio handled anime adaptations for Bandai Namco’s God Eater and the Tales games Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Zestiria. Whenever it releases, this Genshin Impact anime can’t have come at a better time. [via IGN]Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel and Star Wars releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. | Video Games |
Bayonetta 3 Credit: Platinum Games Platinum Games and Nintendo revealed the release date for the upcoming action game Bayonetta 3 today. The game is set to release on Nintendo Switch on October 28th, so get ready for some witchy angel-killing from our favorite BDSM antihero. Bayonetta is one of those terrific characters who manages to be a sex symbol and empowering to women all at the same time. She has guns in her high heels and her outfit is made out of her magical hair, which is why as she jumps around and uses her magic hair powers, sometimes you catch a glimpse of skin. Honestly, it’s not only very clever character design, it’s turned into one of the best (and sexiest) action game franchises out there, with a powerful female protagonist who kicks the crap out of wicked angelic forces and never flinches from a scrap. So, naturally, it’s incurred the wrathful scolding of various stuffy game journalists and the occasional angry parent or politician—in spite of the fact that the character was at least in part designed by a woman (the character was created jointly by Hideki Kamiya—a man—and Mari Shimazaki—a woman—but is obviously the product of a large team of creative and technical wizards). For anyone still convinced by these arguments, I will point you to this Paste Magazine article by Maddy Myers who takes aim at the concept of the “male gaze” and how game criticism still isn’t ready for deep discussions about topics like ‘sex positivity’ and so forth (though one would have hoped we’d come a a long ways since the article was written, I’m not sure we have). In one particularly salient passage, Myers points out that American culture itself is partly the culprit for the stuffy interpretations of Bayonetta as some kind of male-gaze-sex-object:
“Part of the bias against Bayonetta is due to our own anti-sex baggage as a society (at least, here in the States)—but an even bigger part, I think, is that videogame criticism just isn’t ready to talk about Bayonetta. You can tell, given critics’ frequent usage of the phrase “male gaze,” that we’re still a little bit far behind when it comes to understanding feminist media criticism, and the concept of sex-positivity in general might be a little too advanced in level for game criticism. “What would a game with a female heroine who has actual sexual agency even look like? Would we know it if we saw it? Would we be able to recognize it, if we put it on a shelf between Dante’s Inferno and Killer Is Dead? Am I ever going to stop being annoyed when I see supposedly progressive male games critics arguing on Twitter about which sexually empowered women in games do or do not make them feel uncomfortable? FYI, men? I’m pretty sure Bayonetta doesn’t care if you like it. And I know Hideki Kamiya doesn’t.”
In the third Bayonetta game, Platinum Games has included a new self-censorship option that let’s you turn off the bits where Bayonetta shows skin whilst twirling her magical hair and adds more clothing to other characters with skimpier outfits as well. Several thoughts here: I vastly prefer a self-censorship option over Sony’s recent approach, which is basically to censor the crap out of anything headed to the West compared to its Japanese equivalent. This has become the norm with Sony’s localization efforts and has affected some Nintendo games as well, with localizers taking out bits that they assume some Americans might find offensive. Self-censorship keeps that in players’ hands and is something we’ve seen with game violence in titles like Call Of Duty which allow you to turn off blood and gore for younger or more sensitive players. I still prefer no censorship at all because kids will always find a way to access inappropriate content and we shouldn’t be so fussy about it and shelter them from everything. And if you’re a fully grown adult offended by this stuff maybe play something else. It’s not that hard. There are like 20 billion video games out there now. Finally, this mode is called Naïve Angel Mode which is absolutely hilarious. What else has the initials NA? North America! This has to be a dig at North American audiences and the ridiculous PC censoriousness that’s cropped up here over the last decade or so. There’s no way they came up with this and it just coincidentally has the same initials as North America. I love it. It reminds me of games that make fun of you for choosing Easy Mode. Wolfenstein: The New Order’s easiest mode is called "Can I Play, Daddy?” for instance. But this is the first time I’ve seen a Japanese game outright mock American culture for being so censorious while still giving the scolds among us something they’ve been asking for all these years. Bravo, Platinum Games! We salute you!
Bayonetta 3 is out on Switch on October 28th and I am ready for it, though I wish it was coming to platforms with better graphics. Too bad nobody other than Nintendo would fund the sequels! Maybe someday they’ll start making PC ports of some of these games.
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Skip to content The cloud gaming service by Google, known as Stadia, will be shut down on January 18, 2023. Until this time, the service will remain live for all players. Refunds for all hardware bought through the Google Store, in addition to games and DLC bought from the Stadia will be rolling out in the next few months. Stadia has tried to be the Netflix of video games but has been an overall failure. It allows users to stream video games at resolutions of up to 4K HDR at 60 FPS directly to any device with an Internet connection and access to a dedicated application. Read more: Making The Upgrade To Windows 11? Here’s How The biggest issue with the service, outside a limited library of titles and struggles to secure exclusivity deals with big publishers, was forcing people to pay a monthly subscription to access games they had to purchase through the service. This means that even if you already have a game you want to stream with Stadia in your Steam library, you would not be able to use the service unless the game itself was bought through Stadia. Such issues have already been solved for years by other competitors. One of the best examples includes NVIDIA GeForce Now, which connects multiple stores, including Steam, to the service. According to Phil Harrison, vice president and general manager of the consumer gaming service stated that although “Stadia was built on a solid technology foundation, it failed to gain traction” with enough users. Rumors of a shutdown began as early as 2021, in which the company began closing major in-house development studios. Surprisingly, Google denied all claims of a shutdown just a few months ago until making this recent announcement. The Editors The Daily Juice is an independent digital media platform covering a wide range of topics on all things otaku. Recent Posts link to Wordle Today (#467): September 29, 2022 Wordle Today (#467): September 29, 2022 The popular web-based word puzzle game gives players up to six chances to guess the answer to a random five-letter word. Every day is a new challenge, and this article is here to help you guess the... link to Overwatch 2 Releases October 4 Overwatch 2 Releases October 4 After so long, Overwatch 2, the successor to the popular team-based shooter by Blizzard Entertainment, is releasing on October 4, 2022. The devs claimed they wanted to redefine what a sequel... | Video Games |
PlayStation VR2 costs more than the most expensive PS5. I get why, but it’s still too much money.We’re on the precipice of a new era for virtual reality. Meta just launched its high-end Quest Pro, Sony will be releasing PSVR2 in February, and Apple is heavily rumored to jump into the game with its own VR / AR headset very soon. I’m finally ready to buy a VR headset, and this is the generation that it feels like I should be joining. But now that we’re finally seeing actual prices for them, I’m getting some major sticker shock.Do I want PSVR2? Yes, but it costs so much. Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The VergePSVR2’s $549.99 price is already high, but tack that on with the starting PS5 price of $399.99 and it means the minimum cost to use PSVR2 is $950. The Quest Pro, a standalone VR headset, costs $1,499.99. And don’t expect Apple’s headset to be cheaper; if anything, it seems like it will be even more expensive, with Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reporting that it could cost more than $2,000.To be fair, these headsets are loaded with advanced technology. PSVR2 is a big upgrade over the first PSVR, with features like an OLED screen, four built-in cameras to track your movements, and vastly improved controllers versus the PS3-ea Move wands that the original PSVR relied on. The Quest Pro is much sleeker than the Quest 2, has inward-facing cameras to track your facial movements, and lets you see full-color passthrough video. Apple’s headset is rumored to even let you make payments with your eyes. If VR is going to go mainstream, it needs a more mainstream priceBut if VR is going to go mainstream — and Silicon Valley is investing billions to make that happen — companies will need to pair all that fancy tech with a price a normal person would pay. The Quest 2’s original $299 price felt a lot more reasonable. It’s a capable standalone VR headset that you can use for things like games and fitness apps, much like how some people might already use the $299 Nintendo Switch.It’s also proven to be a hit, with nearly 15 million units sold as of June, according to IDC. That’s particularly impressive given Sony just said it’s sold 25 million PS5s, meaning a product in a relatively new category isn’t that far behind the most coveted console on the planet. Sure, Meta recently raised the price of the headset by $100, but it’s still an easier pill to swallow than the grand you’ll have to invest for the next gen.Is the Meta Quest Pro worth more than three times the cost of the Quest 2? Photo by Alex Heath / The VergeIt’s worth noting that Meta is positioning the Quest Pro largely as a work-focused device, not something for the average consumer; for most people, the Quest 2 is the Meta headset they should buy (at least until the Quest 3 launches next year). But if the Quest 2 is good enough for many, do we really need tech companies pushing extremely high-tech and high-cost VR devices? They might be aspirational, and I get that they need to push the boundaries to eventually bring costs down, but is the Quest Pro worth more than three times as much as the Quest 2?But for those wanting to try higher-end headsets, these companies are asking people to commit a lot of money to what are largely still fledgling platforms. Meta continues to employ a “build it and they will come” approach to innovation on the platform, and it’s snapped up quite a few notable VR studios along the way instead of making its own killer apps. (Even the team that makes Horizon Worlds doesn’t really use it.) This is unlike Nintendo, which makes weird hardware but obvious ways to use it, or Apple, which is famous for matching great hardware and great software. Well, usually. We’ll have to see if the iPhone maker has a successful pitch for its VR headset.That’s probably why I’m most optimistic for the PSVR2, in spite of the high cost. With the original PSVR, Sony went out of its way to make great games that made sense, and I’d suspect it will do the same for PSVR2. My colleague Victoria Song was wowed by Sony’s signature PSVR2 title, Horizon Call of the Mountain, and that’s one that was built specifically for Sony’s hardware. Sony’s commitment to making video games for a video game-focused VR device probably means that the games will be good.I do want to try the whole bow and arrow schtick with Horizon Call of the Mountain. Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The VergeUnfortunately, PSVR2 isn’t compatible with the many games for the original PSVR, so you’ll have to start from scratch with your PSVR2 library and hope that developers keep making games for the hardware. If you buy it at launch, you’re taking a big bet on the future of the platform.For weeks, I’ve been mentally preparing for the worst after seeing the PlayStation Edge controller’s eye-watering cost, but I’m still surprised about how much you’ll have to pay for the PSVR2. Based on our hands-on impressions, it seems like it could be worth the price, so there’s a good chance I’ll be doing my best to get a preorder on November 15th, even if I wish I weren’t paying as much. At least I already own the PS5. | Video Games |
The increasing time devoted to video gaming by both adolescents and young adults during the past 2 decades has led to a spirited debate about the effect of this pastime on both individuals and societies. Stakeholders in this conversation include the burgeoning electronic gaming industry, video gamers, parents, educators, health care professionals, and governments. China has recently imposed a nationwide rule limiting online video gaming to 3 hours a week to protect youth. In contrast, proponents of video games around the world have claimed both educational and cognitive benefits for participants. To clarify the impact of video games on personal and societal health, neuroscientists have researched the effects of video gaming on the human brain, an effort that has included many functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. As part of this widening investigation, Chaarani and colleagues1 studied the neurocognitive ramifications of playing video games by analyzing publicly available fMRI data from the National Institutes of Health–sponsored Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study cohort. In their analysis, published in this issue of JAMA Network Open, the authors discovered that 9- and 10-year-old children who played at least 21 hours of video games per week demonstrated higher levels of performance on fMRI emotional working memory (n = 679) and response inhibition tasks (n = 800) compared with a group of similarly aged control individuals who did not routinely play video games. Moreover, the patterns of cerebral cortical blood oxygenation level–dependent fMRI activation exhibited during these tasks statistically differed between groups when assessed with a false discovery rate–corrected P value of .05, suggesting differing methods of cerebral function. This analysis, among the largest reported in the literature, adds to a heterogeneous body of data suggesting that regular video game participation alters cerebral cortical responses to some types of stimuli and may confer certain cognitive advantages. In other fMRI studies of video gamers, improved performance was found in the gamer group in such diverse cognitive domains as visual responsiveness,2 executive function,3 and reward system stamina.4 However, the results of some fMRI studies have been less favorable for video gamers. For example, some fMRI evidence indicates that players of first-person shooter games experience blunted emotional responses to violent stimuli.5 Despite often conflicting conclusions,6 the body of evidence that the brains of video gamers may exhibit certain functional variances compared with the brains of non–videogamers, at least when assessed by fMRI, is increasing. Making any recommendations based on fMRI studies of video gaming is challenging. By the nature of their design, most fMRI studies on this topic fail to establish causality between video gaming and purported brain functional alterations. Some studies may simply be uncovering inherent brain characteristics that lead certain individuals to gravitate toward video gaming. If, in fact, video games are altering neurocognition, the longevity of any cerebral changes induced by this activity remains largely unknown. An additional concern is that the umbrella term video games includes a wide variety of individual game styles, including abstract tests of visuospatial coordination, fantasy community building, role-playing, virtual vehicular races, and military-style first-person shooter games. Consequently, one must also ask to what degree the specific variety of video games pursued by participants influences cognitive changes. To this point, Chaarani and colleagues1 reported the number of hours their research participants devoted to video games on a weekly basis; however, the specific makeup of those games remains unknown. Although much research has been directed at the effects of violent video games on the limbic system, other styles of video games have garnered much less interest among researchers. Another important question that remains unanswered is whether task-based fMRI is a neutral testing mechanism for assessing the cerebral consequences of video games. In many ways, undergoing a task-based fMRI examination is much like playing a video game. Within the confines of the scanner, fMRI participants commonly view various forms of visual stimuli by means of a liquid-crystal display screen or video goggles. Many fMRI tasks require the examinee to respond to these stimuli by pushing buttons on a small handheld device. This testing format may favor video gamers who have spent many hours using a game controller to respond to a variety of stimuli presented on a television screen. Beyond fMRI, many neurocognitive tests are likewise administered using a video-style format. Much more testing certainly needs to be performed on the brains of video gamers without the use of video screens. By doing so, we may come to understand whether the positive or negative cognitive effects of these games have implications beyond the realm of interacting with gaming consoles. In conclusion, through their analysis of an fMRI data set from large ABCD cohort, Chaarani and colleagues1 have contributed yet another piece to the puzzle regarding the influence of video gaming on cognitive function and health. Their results suggest a possible benefit to video gaming in the realm of working memory and executive response inhibition. However, large gaps in our knowledge on this topic persist, including such issues as causality, the influence of video game styles, and the impact of any bias introduced by a video-based testing environment. Much future research will be required to address such knowledge deficits before scientific evidence can guide health recommendations or societal policy. Back to top Article Information Published: October 24, 2022. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.35729Open Access: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC-BY License. © 2022 Welker KM. JAMA Network Open.Corresponding Author: Kirk M. Welker, MD, Division of Neuroradiology, Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, 200 First St SW, Rochester, MN 55902 ([email protected]).Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None reported. | Video Games |
Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld has a long association with video games. Not only was the author himself a fan of Doom, Thief, and The Elder Scrolls, but the relationship between his satirical fantasy world and video games goes all the way back to 1986’s The Colour of Magic – a text-adventure adaptation of Pratchett’s first Discworld novel. Later games based on Pratchett’s work include 1995’s Discworld, a notoriously difficult adventure game voiced by actors including Eric Idle and Tony Robinson, and 1999’s Discworld Noir, a 3D detective game where you play as the universe’s first private investigator.But the most ambitious Discworld game in existence is not officially associated with Terry Pratchett at all. The Discworld MUD is a text-based “multi-user-dungeon” – an early form of online role-playing game where everything from places to in-game actions are described in words. Created in 1991 by David “Pinkfish” Bennett, the MUD has been in consistent service for over 30 years, and today offers the most detailed depiction of the Discworld outside of Pratchett’s books. Not only does it feature most of the key locations, from the city of Ankh-Morpork to areas such as Klatch and the Ramtops, it has seven guilds, player-run shops, and countless quests and adventures featuring many of the Discworld’s most notable characters. It even has its own newspaper.Terry Pratchett. Photograph: Joby Sessions/Future/Shutterstock“I have a long, long history of falling into things by accident,” says Jacqui Greenland, one of the six administrators who oversee the MUD’s operations. Known in-game as Sojan, Greenland has been associated with the MUD for most of its history, first logging on while at university in November 1992. At the time, it was known as Discworld 3, one of several Discworld-themed MUDs in operation. Indeed, the first that Jacqui heard of it was when a friend told her: “Don’t bother with Pinkfish’s Discworld, because it’s crap.”It’s true that back in 1992, it was was nothing like the vast and highly intricate game that it has become today. It was a small, unremarkable fantasy adventure that happened to be set in Ankh-Morpork. “It had nothing that made Discworld Discworld,” Greenland says. “It was fairly generic.”But then, it received the grace of Terry Pratchett to continue development, after the author declared his awareness of these projects via a UseNet post. “He said ‘This is an offer, if you promise never to make a profit, and you write me an email, I’ll send you an email giving you permission’,” Greenland says. “David Bennett’s got that email somewhere.”This permission acted as a catalyst that spurred on Discworld 3’s other unique attribute: a community that was as interested in creating quests, characters and storylines as it was in play. In her 30-year involvement with the MUD, Greenland only spent nine months as a player. “I had these ideas about what could be added, and in the end, someone just said ‘I can’t be bothered listening to you tell me what to do constantly, so I’m just going to promote you to creator so you can do it yourself.’”Since the MUD’s creation in 1991, over 800 people have contributed to it as creators, writing new areas, character dialogues, quests, guilds, item descriptions, and much more. Today, it has over 12m lines of code. For context, the Witcher 3 – regarded as one of the best RPGs ever made – has between one and two million lines of code.The city of Ankh-Morpork, as depicted within the Discworld multi-user dungeon. Photograph: Kefka’s Discworld MUD MapsThis isn’t the only indicator of the Discworld MUD’s scope. One of its veteran players, who goes by the username Quow, provides a quickfire tour. “There’s something like 20,000 individually crafted and detailed rooms, each with room objects and room chats, and then somewhere around 16m terrain rooms filling up much of the Disc between those places,” he says. “We have Djelibeybi and Ephebe in the Klatch deserts, Genua, well described from the Witches books, Bes Pelargic in Agatea, all the quaint little villages in and around Lancre and the Ramtops in general.”Arguably more remarkable than the MUD’s size, however, is the detail in which players can read about and interact with the Discworld. “I remember what impressed me most about it to start with was the depth of the implementation,” says Kake, one of the MUD’s current creators, who joined in 2004. “If there was a street with a tree in it, you could look at the tree, which might tell you something about its branches, and then you could look at the branches, which might mention a bird’s nest, and then you could look at the nest, which might tell you it had eggs in it – however far you went down there was never an error message claiming that the thing you were trying to look at wasn’t there.”Jacqui Greenland.It’s a level of detail that any fantasy game would be proud of. But the Discworld is no ordinary fantasy realm. Pratchett’s work blends satire, parody, allegory and sociopolitical commentary, all in a highly distinctive comedic tone. It would be a difficult style for any individual to replicate, let alone a loose collaboration of creatively minded gamers. So how do the MUD’s creators approach the tricky prospect of adapting Pratchett’s style?The answer is that they don’t. At least, not specifically. While the MUD is set in Pratchett’s Discworld, it isn’t intended as a one-to-one adaptation of his work. The layout, for example, is based on officially published maps of the Discworld. But there’s also a lot of stuff that you won’t find in Pratchett’s Discworld. “Our focus these days is more on keeping the game fresh, interesting, fun, and well-balanced,” Kake points out, “using our own imaginations and ideas about what new things players will enjoy.”Greenland states that the MUD’s approach to humour derives as much from the influence of David Bennett as it does Pratchett’s own writing. “The zany sense of humour, bizarre bits and pieces, that all came from David Bennett,” she says. Indeed, since Pratchett’s death in 2015 (and arguably for some time before that), the chief source of inspiration has been the community’s own interactions with the game they’ve built. The MUD is ultimately a role-playing game, and RPGs thrive on the overlap between play and creation.A scene from Ramtops Pub: this is what the game actually looks like when you’re playing. (Screenshot courtesy of Jeanie)Take the two in-game newspapers. One of these, the AM Daily, is edited by a player known simply as Jeanie. “The AM Daily is published once per month, and you can buy a copy of the current edition from newspaper boxes and characters, or subscribe and have it delivered each time a new edition is published,” she says.The paper covers events that have happened in the game through the month, with stories ranging from game updates to guild activities and player-run events. It’s similar to a community blog that a developer would run for any modern game. But the fact it’s published inside the MUD by players themselves, means that stories often interweave with the game’s own fiction. “There was an excellent fictional serial story that was set in the city of Ephebe as found on the MUD,” Jeanie says. “You could follow the steps of the story’s protagonist and find the artisan he met or the taverna he went to for a glass of wine.”Perhaps the most enduring influence Pratchett’s work still holds over the MUD is the author’s progressive and inclusive outlook. For example, there is a relatively large proportion of blind players, so it has been updated multiple times to make it compatible with screen-readers. The creators also continually update some of the MUD’s older rooms, where humour or descriptions manifest as lazy stereotyping or punching down. “We’re not trying to make an exact copy of the books, but rather to create a world inspired by Pterry’s work,” Kake explains. “It’s clear from reading his books that he carried on learning and growing throughout his life, and I think we as creators can best continue his efforts working to eliminate racism, fatphobia, transphobia, and other prejudices from our game.”It is not an online utopia. Like any online community, it encounters issues with harassment and abuse, and combating it requires an active stance. “Most of my input these days is being the boogeyman no one wants things escalated to,” Greenland says. I ask her how often such problems come up. “Not that frequently. But even once a year is too much for me.”Discworld MUD gathering in 2002, taken by a MUD player Derek Harding.Players’ commitment to maintaining and updating the MUD is a big part of why it has remained active for so long, despite the huge advancement and proliferation of video games during that time. The community isn’t as large as it once was, and its founder David Bennett hasn’t been involved for over a decade. But you’ll still find the Discworld being explored by 50 to 100 players at any one time, and it is still being updated, with the day-to-day operation overseen by a new generation of administrators such as Aristophenes and Pit.Greenland herself doesn’t play or create much these days. Instead, she keeps the lights on, running and maintaining the server on which the Discworld’s thousands of rooms, hundreds of player-characters, and millions of lines of code are housed. I asked her what’s kept her involved for all this time.“I don’t know why I keep on doing it, why I keep having that passion,” she says. “I’ve literally spent a whole day of a holiday in a foreign country, remotely logging in to start bringing the server backup online, because it died. I have an attachment to the place that I developed at university 30 years ago, and it’s never left.” | Video Games |
This illustration picture shows a person waiting for an update of Epic Games' Fortnite on their smartphone in Los Angeles on August 14, 2020.Chris Delmas | AFP | Getty ImagesIn this weekly series, CNBC takes a look at companies that made the inaugural Disruptor 50 list, 10 years later.Amid the popularity of free-to-play, downloadable games and gaming platforms like "Fortnite," "League of Legends," and Roblox, it's become extremely rare that a high-profile video game is released now without some sort of recurring payment strategy — a far cry from the typical $60 standalone game purchase that dominated the video game industry as recently as less than a decade ago.But as video games have shifted away from solely console-based experiences to more digital- and mobile-driven platforms, the business model and how gamers interact with the games they play have significantly shifted as well."In 2013, it was very controversial to say that the free-to-play business model would be the next major dominant model within all of gaming," said Kevin Chou, the co-founder and former CEO of mobile gaming company Kabam. "Mobile games [then] were pretty much free-to-play games, but we were saying, 'You know, it's not just mobile games, but gaming, in general, is going to move in that direction.'"In-game purchases were a nascent business for most console and PC games, but the success of social games like FarmVille showed the potential.That has now become the model for even the biggest video game franchises. Activision Blizzard's "Call of Duty," while still maintaining its yearly new edition release, saw more than $1 billion spent worldwide on its free-to-play mobile version of the game while its "Warzone" platform hit the 125 million player mark in June. It also made the newest version of its "Overwatch" series, which generated $1 billion in sales in its first year of release in 2016, into a free-to-play model. Take-Two Interactive's "Grand Theft Auto V," perhaps the best example of a standalone game that's still finding success with nearly 170 million units sold as of August, said its GTA online platform has seen its audience grow 49% since the first quarter of 2020.Kabam, which was named to the inaugural CNBC Disruptor 50 list in 2013, had initially evolved from developing free-to-play games for Facebook to creating first- and third-party games for social, web, and mobile platforms. Like what Fortnite has found success with, Kabam leaned into well-known properties, creating games around movie franchises like "The Hobbit" and "Fast & Furious."But while these games are considered free-to-play, there is a very lucrative side to them. While the initial download might be free, gamers are incentivized to buy things like seasonal "Battle Passes" that provide new items and other cosmetic prizes as they progress through the game.That has proven to be a goldmine for gaming companies. Activision Blizzard said it had $5.1 billion in in-game bookings for its 2021 fiscal year, which includes things like "World of Warcraft" subscriptions, skins and items in "Warzone" and "Overwatch," and other microtransactions — a 5.2% year-over-year increase. That compares to $8.35 billion in net bookings for 2021, which encompasses the sales of games both digitally and physically.Kabam also benefited, with its revenue growing 70% in 2012 to more than $180 million helped by its game "Kingdoms of Camelot: Battle for the North," which the company said was the top-grossing iOS app that year.Much of the growth in the popularity of seasonal gaming passes is credited to Epic Games' Fortnite, which generated more than $5 billion in its first year after release through the sale of items and seasonal passes.But that also has come as the slowing console and PC gaming market has looked to replicate the fast-growing mobile gaming landscape, as well as the video game industry flattening even further so there's less of a line between different types of games and gamers.Mobile gaming has outpaced the growth of the broader video game market over the last decade and is estimated to take in $136 billion in global spending this year, compared to a combined $86 billion for PC, console, and handheld console gaming combined, according to a study by data.ai and IDC."Consoles are not dead, PC games are not dead, but mobile games are a big driver of the entire market," Chou said.Part of that has come as the quality of mobile games has improved, as well as developers pushing quality console-level games to mobile, Chou said. He pointed towards "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds," a battle royale game similar to Fortnite. The game, developed by South Korean game publisher Krafton, was wildly successful on PC and consoles but was also ported over to mobile, where it has grossed more than $8.5 billion globally."What's happening is you're seeing companies take games at the quality of the PC and console game in every level and bringing it on mobile," Chou said. "You still have players still playing on PC and consoles, but you're also able to grow the audience a tremendous amount."That has also been enabled by cloud gaming, which allows gamers to access their games or saved files remotely or via their phone or other devices. While Google recently shut down its digital gaming service Stadia, Chou said that other gaming services like Sony's PlayStation Plus cloud streaming, Amazon's Luna, and Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming are helping to bring "constant game quality to mobile.""There are people who love their consoles and are continuing to buy consoles, but in other parts of the world you wouldn't buy a console necessarily but now they could play the exact same way – it's a way to increase the user base dramatically without selling more consoles," Chou said.The investment in mobile gaming will likely increase as more M&A happens in the gaming space, which has seen a flurry of deals this year.Microsoft proposed buying Activision Blizzard in a $68.7 billion deal in January, which was followed by Sony announcing a plan to acquire Halo developer Bungie for $3.6 billion. Take-Two acquired mobile gaming company Zynga, known for its FarmVille game, for $12.7 billion in January.NetEase, the Chinese game developer, which has released mobile games based on Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, acquired French developer Quantic Dream in August in a push for international growth and to further compete against rival Tencent.Sony is also looking beyond consoles, having announced plans for a dedicated PlayStation mobile gaming unit in August. The company said earlier this year it plans to release about 50% of games on PC and mobile by 2025, up from roughly 25% today. Nintendo has also looked to put more emphasis on mobile games in recent years.Kabam itself was a target in 2017, being acquired by South Korean gaming company Netmarble.Chou, who has since co-founded esports organization Gen.G and is currently the managing partner of crypto venture studio SuperLayer, said he still sees growth ahead for mobile gaming, specifically noting the possibilities that Web3 can bring to free-to-play games and the industry more broadly."There's so much innovation in gaming – I think if I could do it all over again, I don't think I would have sold the company," Chou said of Kabam.Sign up for our weekly, original newsletter that goes beyond the annual Disruptor 50 list, offering a closer look at list-making companies and their innovative founders. | Video Games |
CNN Business — It began by mailing out DVDs, then evolved to become a production and streaming powerhouse. Now Netflix appears to be making its next big bet on the future of gaming. The streaming giant is building its first in-house video game studio in Helsinki, Finland, as it expands its empire over mobile games, Netflix announced Monday. The news comes after a tough year for Netflix (NFLX), which said it lost subscribers for the first time in more than a decade and has seen its stock plunge more than 60% in 2022, amid a broader market downturn. Despite some recent cost-cutting efforts, Tom Forte, senior research analyst at D.A. Davidson, said he sees the pivot into gaming as an “example of Netflix (NFLX) playing offense, not just defense.” “To Netflix’s credit, they’re a long-term thinker,” Forte said. “If you think about their pivots, the DVDs to streaming, they think long-term and they act long-term.” Forte added that Netflix was especially astute in “identifying early” that gaming was a competitive threat to its audience, given how much time people are now spending both playing and streaming video games. This segue also provides another way for Netflix to monetize some its more popular franchises, including the “Stranger Things” series. The new gaming studio will be helmed by Marko Lastikka, a veteran from gaming giants Zynga and Electronic Arts, Netflix VP of Game Studios Amir Rahimi said in a blog post. “This is another step in our vision to build a world-class games studio that will bring a variety of delightful and deeply engaging original games — with no ads and no in-app purchases — to our hundreds of millions of members around the world,” Rahimi said. He added that Helsinki was chosen to house the new studio because it is “home to some of the best game talent in the world.” Earlier this year, Netflix acquired Helsinki-based studio Next Games. Rahimi said the new studio, however, will be built “from scratch.” Monday’s announcement brings Netflix’s total number of gaming studios up to four. In addition to its acquisition of Next Games, the company has previously acquired Night School Studio and Boss Fight Entertainment. Netflix’s Rahimi said each studio has “different strengths and focus areas” and together will develop a diverse suite of games for Netflix users. Netflix Games have been live for a little over a year now. The streaming giant now has 32 games that have been downloaded some 30 million times globally, according to data shared with CNN Business on Tuesday by market research firm Apptopia. Netflix games can be downloaded and played on mobile devices including Android phones and tablets, as well as iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, but are not currently available on other consoles. Offerings range from retro adventure game “Stranger Things: 1984” to “Hextech Mayhem: A League of Legends Story.” In the past month, 1.63 million people on average engaged with Netflix’s games on a daily basis, according to the Apptopia data. This figure represents just a tiny fraction of the company’s 220 million paying subscribers. In his announcement, Rahimi stressed: “It’s still early days.” “Creating a game can take years, so I’m proud to see how we’re steadily building the foundation of our games studios in our first year, and look forward to sharing what we produce in the coming years,” Rahimi said. | Video Games |
“My dream was to have a doodle house and doodle over everything within that house,” artist Sam Cox told NBC News.Oct. 17, 2022, 2:17 PM UTCIt would be an unlikely sight anywhere, let alone in the English countryside. But nestled among rural homes with manicured gardens is a mansion covered entirely in cartoon-like doodles.Nothing is spared. Everything outside and inside the house is covered in black-and-white squiggles, a riot of video-game and comic-book inspired cutesy characters. The sofa, the stove, the fridge, the television and even the car parked outside have all been painted on. The six-bedroom property in England's Kent County is home to Sam Cox, 28, an artist who goes by the moniker “Mr. Doodle.” Cox told NBC News during a visit to his mansion Wednesday that after doodling over his bedroom at his parents' house when he was 15, he knew he wanted “to live in a completely doodled environment. “So my dream was to have a doodle house and doodle over everything within that house,” he said, adding that he funded his current home through sales of his increasingly popular doodle art.Artist Sam Cox and his wife, Alena, outside their house.Mo Abbas / NBC NewsCox, whose soft-spoken demeanor belies his wild red hair and bespoke black-and-white suit — covered in doodles, of course — has previously said that he once bartered his artwork for food as a student. His career took off in 2017 after videos of him spooling out doodles using thick black paint in a seemingly never-ending stream of consciousness went viral, netting him 2.7 million followers on Instagram. Today his pieces sell for tens of thousands of dollars and feature in promotional tie-ups with major brands such as Puma, Fendi and Samsung. Crowds quickly form when he works in public.Cox said his playful works were often compared with those of the late U.S. artist Keith Haring, whom Cox called “an amazing, great artist.” "Mr. and Mrs. Doodle" at their dining room table. Mo Abbas / NBC NewsHe said that plenty of other street and graffiti artists had also influenced him along the way, “as well as cartoons and video games that I played as a kid. “None of it’s ever sketched or anything like that because I find that when I add a sketch or pencil out something, it just kills the flow of the organic nature of a doodle,” he said Cox, who frequently showcases his work in time-lapse videos spread across walls and canvases, refers to his doodling as a “virus.”“When I was young, maybe about 16 years old, I realized that doodling was just kind of taking over my life. … I started drawing on my parents’ furniture and everything around me. I wanted my doodles to take over everything,” he said. “So I just became obsessed with it in the best way possible. And it’s been like a happy obsession ever since really.” Mo Abbas / NBC NewsThe mansion is covered entirely in cartoon-like doodles.Mo Abbas / NBC NewsSuccess, however, took its toll in 2020, when Cox said he was hospitalized for six weeks owing to stress brought on by the administrative side of his work.“I went through a wave of hallucinations and delusions from thinking that I was speaking to God to being hired to doodle all over Donald Trump’s wall,” Cox wrote on his Facebook page shortly afterward.He has since recovered, and now has the support of his Ukrainian-born wife, Alena, 32, who is also an artist. They married last year.They collaborate on some projects, with Alena introducing color to Cox’s hitherto monochrome creations.“Mrs. Doodle likes to color in my doodles so we sometimes work together on canvases or big pieces of work,” Cox said.“In the future we’ve got plans for maybe projects on the scale of this,” he said, gesturing at the mansion. “We could work together and create a colorful creation, or something new or something different, so watch this space.”Mo AbbasMo Abbas is a London-based multimedia producer for NBC News. | Video Games |
“I was really obsessed with video games and anime as a kid. Hero characters were always especially inspiring to me. I started drawing characters from video games and anime and got really into creating my own characters as well. I was mostly just drawing at first, and then doing digital painting in Photoshop. I started getting into 3D in 2015, and I’m still really invested in making characters, using them to express different emotions, moods, and concepts, and have created some 3D interactive art experiences (which are essentially games) as well. I honestly love the cross-disciplinary approach. Most of my work is based on the culture surrounding tech — whether it’s socializing through the metaverse, sharing memes and meme humor, or gender identity and video games, I just keep finding new topics that interest me.“I think 3D work is kind of like a black box. Not many people know the work that goes into it. It becomes even more complicated when you start looking at VR work. Because of this, I think simple tools can come off as complex and it becomes difficult to distinguish what to value. Concept aside, it takes a bit of education on the techniques artists use to create their work to start allocating value. In the future, as technology like 3D, AR, VR, and AI continues to become more accessible, we will see a lot more of this type of work around in people’s homes, in digital frames, etc.” “I started drawing super early, as in before I could speak, and made my first recognizable figures when I was 1.5 years old. I had a solo art exhibition when I was 5, which was on national news. I was really good at math and science so I attended a high school for gifted kids, where I represented my country in Chemistry Olympics. I have to say there was also a socio-cultural push toward not being an artist, and adults around me kept telling me that I would waste my academic brilliance if I stayed in the arts. At age 18, I decided to study architecture would be the best for me since it is a discipline where art, science, and tech converges. I think because I studied so many different things over the years and was exposed to so many influences my style kept changing. But one thing remained the same: my passion for drawing as a thought form.“I call my approach infra-disciplinary, as in below/beyond disciplines. This is a time where a lot of disciplines blend into each other, and we have areas of study, such as neuroeconomics, ethnochoreology, psycholinguistics, and so on. ‘Working at the intersection’ involves being open to knowledge coming from multiple resources and always keeping your antenna on. Specifically with projects that involve biological sciences, I try to follow the latest publications on the subject and start correspondences with labs and scientists. It is a way of gathering knowledge of knowledge, harmonizing it, making outlines, and thinking: How do I convey all of this in a meaningful accessible way to the audience who may or may not be familiar with these topics already? In a way it is science communication, yes, but I am more interested in sculpting artistic experiences of high intellectual quality and affective substance.“I draw and sculpt by hand, and there’s a part of me who hates the fact that I have to sculpt on a flat surface (think Wacom tablet). I am so much better when I am not limited by the confines of computer interfaces. At the end of the day, human body is a more complicated and superior technology than digital technology. Nothing can replace the feeling of working with materials and surfaces directly. However digital tech helps with distribution, scale, reproduction, and modification. So both have its advantages and disadvantages. History of art is parallel to history of humankind; humans have always created artifacts and have always made artistic gestures. It doesn’t surprise me that we turn to technology right now as that’s what dominates our culture, our bodies and minds. What really intrigues me about modern technology is, though, what looks like an artwork right now can become someone’s reality tomorrow. Art opens up imagination, makes it possible to imagine new worlds, new experiences, new cultures.“There’s a common belief that art is about the self and is an expression of the self. I want to think that art is much more than self-expression. It is high time that we realize how crucial art is for our survival and create effective support networks for creativity, imagination, and artistic production.” “I have always been a visual person, and I have always enjoyed creating things and making art. Ironically, I didn’t consider art to be an actual path forward till after I graduated from art school. I thought I would just go into design, as a happy medium for creativity and work. I was satisfied enough with what I was doing but couldn’t shake the feeling of wanting more. So I began creating art again on my own. That’s when everything shifted, and I began to commit to a journey of seriously pursuing art. From that moment forward, my decision to create art became my life practice as well as a visual journey, serving as a dialogue, in my exploration and reflection on the future of humanity in conjunction with technology. While the tools and methods that I use continuously evolve, I have stayed true to the themes and focus of my art. Striving to create emotive work that places the viewer within my mind to experience my world as their own. My desire as I move forward with my work is to continue to explore themes of impermanence, patterns, time, the future of humanity and reality and spirituality as relating to technology and beyond. Through the use of tools like mixed reality, AI, and animation, I seek to create immersive worlds that blend multiple layers of reality into a cohesive experience — much as I imagine reality existing itself.“The cross-disciplinary approach is born out of necessity as well as from my deep lifelong love and interest in technology. I am always in motion and looking for new creative tools to explore, so it’s something that comes to me naturally. For me working at the intersection of art and technology lies within the newly forged relationships and alliances between creatives and technologists. This is a unique moment in time where technologists and digital artists find themselves uniquely paired in a symbiotic relationship of interdependency. Technologists need artists to test, troubleshoot, promote, and basically figure out how to best use their products. And artists, depend upon technologists to make these new tools and technologies accessible and available to create work that has potentially never been imagined or experienced before.“Technology is adding this whole new dimension to art and what it means to be an artist. Now with AI, you can be a visual artist solely using words. Art to some degree has always been about escapism, but now artists are becoming the architects of reality, creating and constructing new identities and worlds. What we are doing now goes beyond art and over time will redefine existence as we know it. And perhaps usher in a new era as well.” “As I was completing my studies in film production, I realized that video was much more fascinating to me than film; I was particularly drawn by its electronic aspect and its potential to exist in a tentacular manner. The works of pioneers of video and computer art, such as Steina and Woody Vasulka, Dan Sandin, and Lillian Schwartz, were important inspirations for me at that time. I was working mainly with analog video synthesizers and video feedback, sculpting the electronic signals to create abstract architectures. As my interest in architecture evolved, I started to integrate 3D animation into my process, which allowed me to create more complex environments while exploring a language that would mix analog and digital technologies. The constant integration of new techniques allows me to explore the themes that run through my work in ever-changing forms: the influence of architecture and the digital environment on our perception of the world, the relationship we have with the virtual aspect of existence, the fusion between technology and the organic world. Video has always been like a portal toward other forms of interest. I am interested in the traces that humans leave and how they become an intrinsic part of an ecosystem. For the last year, I have been doing 3D scans of abandoned objects, such as cars or computer screens. I am now recontextualizing them in disproportionately large dimensions within landscapes seen from afar. I see these abandoned objects like ruins of monumental architecture.“My practice is rooted in video art and 3D animation, which is the starting point to explore the infinite potential of digital images. To me, video is a malleable medium, which can be extended into installation, 3D-printed sculptures, photogrammetry, live performance, VR, prints, etc. I perceive my practice as a tentacular approach, each new project reaching for new forms and integrating new techniques. I have always been conscious about creating a dialogue and referencing the history of art, starting with the history of electronic art, and eventually, with other forms of art such as paintings, sculptures, architecture, and sound art for example. I believe that digital art is the continuity of art history. The technologies have changed, but to me, it is like painting and sculpting with electricity and pixels.” “As a kid, I always had a camera with me and loved to paint. Through the years, I have enjoyed creating visceral pieces with different mediums. I like to focus on new ways of creating work that explores and uncovers unexpected emotions. My practice is always evolving as I grow — I use various mediums, color palettes, subjects, and technologies to find new ways of expressing myself through my work.“I get excited when I figure out a way to create something new, and a cross-disciplinary approach allows me to do that. My work often starts with a question or energy that I feel, and then I explore it in front of the camera to find answers — both literally and abstractly. I am often taking creative risks in my work, and new technologies are very much a part of my exploration: They allow me to create pieces that are unusual, hopefully emotive, that offer a new perspective to the viewer.” | Video Games |
A New Type of ADHD Treatment
The question of whether video games have a positive or negative impact on children with ADHD has long been an area of contention among researchers and clinicians. Now, the debate has entered a new phase. For the first time, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a video game to be prescribed as a treatment for ADHD for kids 8 to 12 years of age.
The game is called EndeavorRx and is made by Akili Interactive. It is designed to improve attention for children with either inattentive or combined-type ADHD.
The FDA approval was based on a group of 5 studies involving 600 children with ADHD. In one study, one-third of the children showed no measurable attention deficit on at least one measure of objective attention after a month. In addition, half of the parents also noted a significant change in their child’s day-to-day impairments. FDA approves video game for treating ADHD in kids l GMA
Building on Prior Studies with Adults
The game had its origins in research conducted by Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD at the University of California San Francisco. In 2013, he published an article in Nature reporting that six weeks of training with a video game called Neuroracer, in which the player seeks to discern relevant cues from distracting ones during a car race simulation, improved attention in older adults. His study concluded that the improved attention after playing the game was due to enhanced function in a brain network involved in cognitive control, and is necessary to pursue goals.
EndeavorRX uses similar technology repurposed for children. Gazzaley is a co-founder of Akili Interactive. The game is currently only available for use on an iPhone or iPad. Users will be able to download it from the device;s app store. It doesn’t require any special equipment and is intended for use as part of a therapeutic program, which could include medication and other types of therapy. Currently, the game coasts about $350.
A Continuing Controversy
Though the FDA approval has generated a great deal of excitement, the idea of using video games to treat ADHD still has its skeptics in the medical community. Notable among them is Dr. Joseph F. Hagan Jr. of the American Academy of Pediatrics. He believes that more and larger studies are needed to justify the FDA’s approval,and that there is still uncertainty about the long term effects of video game usage on children with ADHD.
For now, however, parents have a potentially potent new tool to use as part of their child’s ADHD treatment plan.
References
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/15/21292267/fda-adhd-video-game-prescription-endeavor-rx-akl-t01-project-evo
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/the-link-between-adhd-and-video-games#1
https://www.dailyherald.com/news/20200618/constable-prescription-adhd-video-game-needs-study-doctor-says
https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/06/417841/fda-approves-video-game-based-ucsf-brain-research-adhd-therapy-kids
https://www.engadget.com/fda-first-prescription-video-game-kids-with-adhd-144535385.html Other Posts You Might LikeShare on Social Media | Video Games |
Tülay McNally, director of inclusive design at Electronic Arts, chooses her words carefully as we chat about creating diverse characters for video games. Raised in Germany, McNally is no stranger to the international video game industry. She worked at Square Enix, Sega, and Bioware before joining EA. McNally’s team at EA assists with the development of characters from underrepresented groups and with public communication.Her caution is warranted—Activision Blizzard was ripped to shreds a month before our interview for its reductive approach to video game diversity, one which assigned numerical scores to marginalization, turning identity into a kind of scorecard that developers could use to determine who they should include (or exclude) from character rosters. McNally remains excited to talk about EA’s inclusive design framework, although she is quick to emphasize that the company is not taking a legalistic approach to diversity.“It's really a loose framework of guiding principles and design philosophies that we customize to our engagements with each game team,” says McNally. She points to Maxis Studios, the team behind The Sims 4 (which recently added the ability for players to customize their Sims’ pronouns), as part of the company already seeing success creating content with a diverse player base in mind and not needing as much assistance. “Some other game teams may be more at the beginning. They may need a bit more support, education, and hand holding,” she says.Released in 2018, EA’s Battlefield V received backlash for putting women in World War II combat. Despite this, a foundation for the company’s approach to inclusive design at scale was laid through collaborations between the Pacific expansion development team and the company’s Asian and Pacific Islander employee resource group. An intensive review process for this Battlefield V downloadable content covered everything from initial trailers and storyboards to tiny weapon charms and player skins. In addition to its employee resource group, EA reached out to geopolitical consultants for contextual authenticity.After helping lead the volunteer initiative on Battlefield V, McNally crafted a business case for continued use of an inclusive design framework and presented it to EA’s chief operating officer, Laura Miele. The company created a new position for McNally as a result of that meeting: director of inclusive design. Talking about her current team of four at EA, she says, “Two of them are focusing on game accessibility. The other two focus more on the cultural sensitivity and representation side, and also working with game teams.”Volunteer employees and a new internal team supplement the work of outside, professional consultants. “We know that we need that guidance,” McNally says. It’s a fight against hubris, not a trade-off.Although some conservative consumers might react negatively to the prospect of inclusive character design, the case for approaching video game storytelling from multiple perspectives is not only concerned with equity. Inclusivity is also good for business. One goal of the inclusive design framework at EA is to spark discussions with developers throughout a game’s creation. It doesn’t make financial sense to wait till the later stages of development to start asking questions that could require time and resource-intensive fixes.For McNally, involvement with a game’s creation is just the start. Developers could spend years perfecting a project only to have everything go up in flames if the marketing team bungles a rollout. When Battlefield 2042 added its first nonbinary character, Sundance, McNally’s team assisted in the announcement. She says, “I really appreciated that the producers and the community manager reached out and said, ‘We want to make sure we have a proper communication plan in place when we are revealing the character.’” Members of the community team were trained on how to respond to anticipated questions on social media.Following internal discussions, the announcement of the Sundance character emphasized their enticing coolness, not their gender identity. McNally hopes this approach avoids alienating marginalized people and makes characters with diverse backgrounds feel normal to players. “What really matters is that we have a strong character design and a meaningful story to tell to make it authentic, cool, and accepted,” she says.The work McNally does is a big part of EA’s effort to connect with the next generation of players. “They play differently,” she says, speaking about Gen Z. “They want different things from companies. They want companies to be good to their developers, and they want companies to take a stance on social issues, for example.”McNally also sees connecting with video game communities around the world as critical. “I think there are opportunities to do more research in different regions and different languages,” she saysAccording to McNally, it requires more than training programs and workshops for a AAA developer to create successful video games featuring a wide range of authentic characters. Businesses need to dedicate resources and hire a diverse workforce to achieve meaningful impact. Right now, McNally’s focus is on the future and letting developers learn from their mistakes. She says, “Without safe spaces where we can learn, where we can fail, and learn from it to improve, none of the practices and processes are really going to make a difference.” | Video Games |
Written by Aileen Zaera, Sr. Creative Sorceress of Ugami Inc. In the ‘80s, kids left aside the sport balls, toys, and bicycles in their gift requests and began to ask for video games. This technological advance completely redefined entertainment. Some parents get worried about the side effects of these tech developments on the minds of children. They will go and limit their access to gaming because of this. For a long time, this source of entertainment remained connected to the children's world. But the inevitable happened: Those children grew up and became adults. Spoiler alert: Most of them never left aside their love for video games. Jose Carlos Cerdeno With the incredible advances of this industry, it is not surprising that almost all of today's culture is connected to the gamer world values. Even the web is full of content and products developed for gamers from the Mandela effect in video games to news about the latest GPUs on the market.
The video games money path
Every day more companies consider gamers as their target audience, which is not vain. As we mentioned before, the ‘80s kids are now independent adults with jobs who love video games.
In the USA alone, 79% of current gamers are actually adults, and 64% of adults in the country play video games on daily basis. Nobody should ignore this number. Especially considering that in 2021, at least 191.12 million gamers were registered in American territory.
Also relevant is the fact that the gender gap in video games is not as big as is believed. A little more than 40% of gamers are, in fact, women. Of course, this translates into money, more accurately, nearly $50 billion in net profits in the US alone. kjekol These figures alone serve to explain the reasons for paying attention to this entertainment industry. Companies like Ugami have decided to launch a debit card for gamers with benefits and features focused on the gamer community.
Gaming can be an expensive hobby. This type of debit card is perfect for keeping an eye on your finances while you enjoy your favorite activities and more, as you can use it daily to buy or pay for non-gaming-related products and services.
But what about the kids? Can a 17-year-old get a debit card?
Just as the video game industry is not just for kids, the financial world is not only for adults. Debit cards are an ideal financial instrument to teach the youngest how to manage their finances.
In the case of a debit card for gamers, they will learn essential lessons about finances while earning significant rewards designed just for them. For reasons like this, you might wonder if your 17-year-old can get a debit card.
Fortunately, it is possible to get this type of card for young people. They just have to have the authorization of their parents or a legal guardian, who will take care of signing up the teen for this type of account.
Will the video game industry keeps growing?
Yes! This industry is about to take its next technological step with the arrival of the metaverse and advances in virtual reality. Today it is not about captivating stories and the most demanding and realistic graphics on the market, but about immersion.
Enemies with repetitive movement patterns or moving a ball from one side of the screen to the other with two bars have been long forgotten. Today the gamer must feel that they are inside the plot, not as a superficial observer, but as the one who makes the actions happen in one way or another.
Now everything is about open worlds, decision making, character customization, buying accessories, packs, and DLCs. Sounds like a lot, but we promise this is just the beginning. You just have to sit down, grab your favorite controller and wait a little bit to be amazed! The future is here, and it’s fun.
This is a content marketing post from a Forbes EQ participant. Forbes brand contributors’ opinions are their own. | Video Games |
Netflix is going all-in on video game development with the establishment of an internal studio in Helsinki, Finland, the streaming giant said Monday. It will make original games with no ads and no in-app purchases, Netflix said."This is another step in our vision to build a world-class games studio that will bring a variety of delightful and deeply engaging original games ... to our hundreds of millions of members around the world," said Amir Rahimi, vice president of Game Studios at Netflix, in a press release.Leading the studio is former Zynga executive Marko Lastikka. Zynga is primarily a mobile developer known for making games such as FarmVille, Words with Friends, CSR Racing and other casual titles. This new internal game studio is not Netflix's first. Earlier this year, Netflix purchased Helsinki-based Next Games which made last year's mobile title Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales. Netflix also purchased Texas-based Boss Fight Studio earlier this year and California-based Night School Studio last year.Netflix's push into gaming is part of the company's larger strategy to keep eyeballs on its platform. When Fortnite became a cultural phenomenon in 2018-19, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said the battle royale title was more of a threat to it than TV and movie streaming rival HBO. Last year, Netflix began integrating games into its mobile apps, letting users download titles to their phones. The games were largely casual affairs, but there were a few hidden gems such as Poinpy. At the moment, it's uncertain whether Netflix will stick to more casual titles or aim to make AAA games, like those from Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft. Read also: Most Netflix Subscribers Reportedly Haven't Tried Its Video Games | Video Games |
GameStop, Activision Blizzard, Nintendo among ETF's top 10 holdings Exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, offer investors the opportunity to dabble in sectors that have an interest in with a modest investment. ETFs are pooled investments, like mutual funds, that offer investors diversification because stocks are bundled together. For instance, anyone who enjoys video games and wants to try their hand at investing in stocks and securities in the gaming sector, they should consider the Wedbush ETFMG Video Game Tech ETF.This ETF’s top 10 holdings include Roblox, GameStop, Nintendo, Activision Blizzard, Stillfront, Take-Two Interactive, International Games System, Krafton, SciPlay and Bilibili. Ticker Security Last Change Change % GAMR ETF MANAGERS TRUST WEDBUSH ETFMG VIDEO GAME TE 62.48 +0.23 +0.37% Why and how does an ETF allow a person to invest in a market sector that they are interested in? Thematic ETFs like GAMR allow an individual or portfolio manager to focus on the growth of a specific market segment utilizing the knowledge and expertise of analysts that focus on the specific theme of interest, said Bryan Masucci, a director at ETF Managers Group based in San Diego.TRAVEL ETF OFFERS EXPOSURE TO FAST-GROWING INDUSTRYFor example, according to Masucci, GAMR is designed to capture the various elements and types of companies that collectively represent the video game technology market segment."From chip creators to software [game] developers, from large cap to small cap, the companies must meet a set of criteria for inclusion in the index and then weighted in a way to create the most pure-play index staying true to the overall theme," he said. The outside of a GameStop store in strip mall located in San Jose, California. | iStockWHY ETFS ARE A GOOD INVESTMENT VALUEHas the pandemic affected the popularity of gaming?Masucci said that video games were already popular before the pandemic in many forms, from console and PC to mobile gaming."We all have a gaming console in our pocket; the shelter-in-place orders offered the opportunity in the form of more time and frankly boredom that needed to be alleviated," he added. "Gaming filled a void for kids and adults alike. Unable to go out and socialize, video games offered the opportunity to connect with friends for a shared experience, working together to accomplish a common goal."GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HEREHow to make the leap to try an ETF if you’re a new buyer?If you’re interested in purchasing the GAMR ETF because of your interest in video games and the gaming industry overall, do your research. "Buy with conviction," recommends Masucci. He points out that charts are referenced regularly that prove investing is about time in the market rather than timing the market. | Video Games |
The worst thing about video games is also the best thing: their addictiveness. When you find the right one? The rest of the world can go to hell. That helped me as a child: I could use them to escape the more painful parts of growing up. Parents didn’t fight in Manic Miner. You didn’t have to worry about Stephen Gibson battering you on the way home from school in Chuckie Egg.As a parent of young kids, I was a dreadful hypocrite, always saying they should be doing something more worthwhile than playing Mario Kart – even though, when they would ask me “like WHAT, Dad?”, the only answer I could think of was “the stuff the other parents brag about their kids doing on Facebook”.Now that two of my kids are officially adults and the youngest is 16 going on 40, I am out of that stage. But last month I sank into video games for comfort again. I was drowning in an ocean of first-world adult problems, and instead of using drink and drugs to cope, I decided to use open-world RPGs.Some of the happiest moments in my life have taken place in virtual worlds. I have lost myself in Final Fantasy VII, Deus Ex, The Witcher 3, most GTAs and Red Dead Redemption. Put a game with irresistible progression in the hands of a good writing team and you have my undivided attention.Irresistible progression … Red Dead Redemption 2. Photograph: Rockstar GamesIn an open-world RPG, you get virtual versions of all the problems you go through in real life, only you can actually solve them. You have control. I fired up Horizon Zero Dawn, which had languished on my must-play list for years, and even though I was playing as a young female nomad searching for the reason her post-apocalyptic land is full of machine dinosaurs going nuts, I saw parallels with my struggles to parent teenagers in 2022. At one point a shaman said to me, “When we teach the young to walk on shifting ice, we teach them to just put one foot in front of the other.” That may be cod philosophy bullshit, but it’s the kind of cod philosophy bullshit I needed last month.Like all RPG characters, Aloy has to make big decisions about where to go and when. I had a huge decision to make about a job on the other side of the world. In a game you can make a bad decision, but you get another chance to make a better one. And in life’s harrowing 2022 reboot, sometimes we just need the self-belief that comes with eventually making the right decision, even in the stakes-free world of a video game.In one mission, Aloy helped to obtain medicine for a sick child. I had two family members going through horrible hospital stuff. And you know what? The game was no help at all there. None whatsoever. But drilling a bad guy with arrows while imagining it was one of the builders next door did help my rage at the fact that there’s a roll of emergency tape where the path down the side of my house used to be. Next to the crater.Life was giving me lemons, but Horizon Zero Dawn gave me a big bowl of tasty, joyous gaming moments: climbing up a Tallneck machine and viewing the world; figuring out the right tactics to take down a Stalker machine that can turn invisible; sprinting over a hill hunting a rabbit, only to come face to face with a hitherto unseen gargantuan machine-monster.A tallneck in Horizon: Zero Dawn. Photograph: Sony Computer EntertainmentI am left-handed and always struggle with using my right thumb to aim in shooters, so the archery-based combat was initially really tough for me. I would say to myself, “You think aiming an arrow into a pretend metal dinosaur in a made-up video game is hard? Not as hard as hearing the kids weep when our second pet died in the space of a year.” While I wouldn’t recommend this mantra for everyone – my own kids weren’t fans – it did help me persevere until I got so good at aiming with my right thumb that I now no longer wee on the toilet seat.Just as well, the (perfect) difficulty curve meant that over the course of 50 hours, I progressed from getting my ass kicked by tiny bipeds to facing down an onslaught so large the screen was literally full of mega-monsters, blocking the sun, with little old me in the middle. I was so wonderfully exhausted and satisfied at the end of THAT I watched a game’s closing credits for the first time ever.I’m not saying that video games are a solution to life’s problems. I’m just saying that if you need an escape from the things in life that you can’t control, games can do that better than anything, because they are so absorbing. And maybe sometimes an addiction isn’t necessarily bad. I am addicted to running. And climbing mountains. And folk always say that stuff is great when I post THAT on Facebook to pretend my life is fantastic.Yes, it’s escapism: the problems remain in the real world when you exit the virtual one. But this is one aspect of video games that links the gamer I was as a child to the middle-aged version. Now, as they did back then, they just give me a damn break for a while. | Video Games |
Since April 2022, Chinese regulators have begun approving video games again after a months-long freeze in signs Beijing's crackdown on gaming is easing.Feature China | Future Publishing | Getty ImagesShares of Chinese gaming companies rose Wednesday after regulators approved a slew of new games, a sign that some of the headwinds for the sector could be easing.The list published Tuesday by China's National Press and Publication Administration did not include approvals for games from giants Tencent and NetEase.Tencent shares were flat in Hong Kong trade but the continuation of game approvals, which resumed in April after a monthslong freeze, has lifted other companies.NetEase's Hong Kong-listed shares were nearly 3% higher in afternoon trade while streaming giant Bilibili was up more than 4%. Bilibili had two games approved in the latest tranche.Shares of Kingsoft, another publisher, were also higher in Hong Kong trade.Meanwhile, a subsidiary of TikTok-owner ByteDance also had a game approved. Beijing-headquartered ByteDance has been making an aggressive play in the online gaming sector through acquisitions that have helped it rack up player spending.In China, games need to be approved by regulators for release and to be monetized.Beijing has targeted gaming as part of its intense scrutiny of technology companies over the past year and a half. Last year, China introduced rules that capped the playing time for online games for children under 18 years old to a maximum of three hours per week. Regulators subsequently froze the approval of new games for several months.Read more about China from CNBC ProThat has had a big impact on companies that rely heavily on gaming. China's biggest gaming company Tencent posted its slowest revenue growth on record in the first quarter of this year.But the three rounds of gaming approvals since April suggest the crackdown may be easing."We believe the two consecutive months of approvals should allay market concerns about industry trends," Jefferies equity analyst Thomas Chong said in a note on Tuesday.Chong noted that Tencent, NetEase and Bilibili are among the companies "set to benefit from more visibility on gaming approvals."Daniel Ahmad, senior analyst at Niko Partners, said the return of approvals to one batch per month is a "positive sign for the industry" but noted these have only been for domestic games."Based on historical precedent, we do expect to see the first batch of import titles approved in the near future," referring to games developed by foreign publishers. | Video Games |
A few weeks ago, I went to a Charlie Puth concert from my computer. The concert was in Fortnite, in the new State Farm Park arena in the iHeartland area of the game’s island. For a half hour or so, I watched and listened to Puth play the hits, as I also flew and parkour’d around the island playing the iHeartLand mini games.This is the concert, or at least a concert, of the future: more interactive, more immersive, and taking place in purely digital spaces. For artists of all genres and statures, “What’s up, Roblox!” is the new “What’s up, Cleveland!” Digital concerts are nothing new, of course. But starting with Travis Scott’s Fortnite show in 2020, the music industry has taken new notice of platforms like Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft. While we continue to debate what “the metaverse” even is and how much time we all want to spend there, it’s been clear for a while that there’s something that works about concerts where thousands or millions of people can get together and see a show from around the globe. It’s certainly better than getting sniped from a tree by a 12-year-old Goku, which is the other way I’ve recently been spending time in Fortnite!For the third and final episode in The Vergecast’s Future of Music miniseries, we set out to figure out what a metaverse concert is and why it seems to work. Should they be one-off spectacles like the ultra-designed Scott show in 2020? Or should they be more like the Puth concert I watched in September, which amounted to just a video playing on a screen inside a video game?The true answer, at least so far, is that nobody knows. Community matters, interaction matters, but everything else is wide open. There’s a novelty to all these shows so far, with fans happy just to see their favorite artists embrace new platforms. But that won’t last forever, and eventually, digital concerts will have to compete for your attention with all the other exciting stuff happening online — and even happening elsewhere on the platform.Musicians have long been at the forefront of a lot of internet trends; music videos helped turn YouTube into a giant, and artists make up many of the biggest names on social media. People connect to music and the people who make it in uniquely powerful ways. Will that translate into video games, or the metaverse, or whatever you want to call these digital spaces where people increasingly spend their time? We’ll see. I’ve never been in the same room as Charlie Puth, but I’ve now seen him in concert. That counts for something.The Vergecast / A podcast about technology and emotionsSubscribe | Video Games |
Loot boxes in video games will not be banned in the UK, despite a government consultation finding evidence of a “consistent” association between the features and problem gambling.Loot boxes have attracted comparison with gambling because they allow players to spend money to unlock in-game rewards, such as special characters, weapons or outfits, without knowing what they will get.The features, popular in games such as Call of Duty and the Fifa football series, were effectively banned in Belgium in 2018, but the culture minister, Nadine Dorries, said the UK would not follow suit.Instead, after a 22-month consultation, she said the government would discuss tougher “industry-led” protections with the UK’s £7bn gaming sector, drawing allegations from one expert that “foxes are guarding the hen house”.Legislating to impose curbs or a prohibition on loot boxes as part of an expected overhaul of the UK’s gambling laws could have “unintended consequences”, Dorries said.“For example, legislation to introduce an outright ban on children purchasing loot boxes could have the unintended effect of more children using adult accounts, and thus having more limited parental oversight of their play and spending,” the government said, in a response to the consultation published in the early hours of Sunday morning.The government also concluded that while there was “a stable and consistent” association between loot boxes and problem gambling – identified across 15 peer reviewed studies – it could not be sure that there was a causative link.“Our view is that it would be premature to take legislative action without first pursuing enhanced industry-led measures to deliver protections for children and young people and all players,” it said.Another factor in the decision is that loot box rewards cannot legitimately be exchange for real money, meaning players cannot in theory “cash out” as they might when gambling.However, the Gambling Commission has previously warned that third-party sites are allowing people to exchange the rewards for real money.While the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) stopped short of proposing legislation, Dorries said: “Children and young people should not be able to purchase loot boxes without parental approval.“In addition, all players should have access to spending controls and transparent information to support their gaming.”Ministers are expected to pursue tougher curbs through talks with the UK video games industry. This will be done via a working group, which is scheduled to deliver its first update in the first three months of 2023.“We expect games companies and platforms to improve protections for children, young people and adults, and for tangible results to begin to be seen in the near future,” the DCMS said. “If that does not happen, we will not hesitate to consider legislative options, if we deem it necessary to protect children, young people and adults.”Sign up to the daily Business Today email or follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDeskDr David Zendle, a video games expert at University of York, criticised the decision, saying: “Prior select committee inquiries have unambiguously shown that certain bad actors within the video game industry cannot be trusted to self-regulate when it comes to player protection.“By making those same industry bodies the ones that are responsible for regulating loot boxes, DCMS is essentially guaranteeing that foxes are the ones guarding the hen house.” | Video Games |
Video games and heavy metal music have long shared a passing curiosity with one another. Look no further than the iconography of Doom, or Tim Schafer’s Brütal Legend, for evidence of that. But it was in the mid 00s – during the reign of music and rhythm games such as Guitar Hero – that the link was most obvious. Count me among the ranks of those who learned about Pantera and Megadeth by way of the plastic instrument.Which is why this year’s Metal: Hellsinger is on my radar. The game is a cross between a first person shooter and a rhythm game: by matching your shooting to the tempo of the music, you build a score multiplier that increases the damage you deal. We’ve seen this before in BPM: Bullets Per Minute, but Metal: Hellsinger brings its own setting and original heavy metal soundtrack to the party.In 2016, creative director David Goldfarb was playing through the new iteration of Doom and complementing it with his own soundtrack. “I was listening to Meshuggah… and at some point my shots overlapped with the rhythm, and I thought: ‘Oh, that’s cool.’” Along with a few other novel ideas – such as playing as the demon rather than the demon hunter – this realisation laid the early groundwork for Metal: Hellsinger.“I really wanted to do metal in a way that I didn’t feel like anybody had done before,” says Goldfarb. “Doom has its techno metal. Brütal Legend has its licensed songs – and we knew we couldn’t afford to get licensed songs.”He approached the composer duo Two Feathers, made up of musicians Elvira Björkman and Nicklas Hjertberg, who had worked with him before. They set out to create their own metal record, designed from scratch. “We have done lots of dynamic music and lots of games before,” says Björkman. “[This time] we wanted to go all in … let’s make it so interactive that it might blow their fucking minds.”You can try out a demo of Metal: Hellsinger on Steam now, and as in all good rhythm games, the interplay between music and gameplay feels magical in its best moments. The fast-paced shooter action plays off against the desire to remain locked into the rhythm. Maintaining the game’s 16x multiplier has an added bonus, too: that’s when the vocals kick in, so playing the game well is the only way you will hear the impressive list of guest vocalists, including elusive metal icons such as System of a Down’s Serj Tankian.Players have noticed that certain weapons allow for higher scores than others, limiting your options if you want to chase the top leaderboard scores – but Goldfarb says that the demo is running on older code, and that the scoring is being reworked before release. This is just as well, because Hellsinger really does feel like a rhythm game rather than a shooter with tacked-on musical elements, and rhythm games live and die by their leaderboards. Games such as this are not about achieving perfection, but rather that feeling of getting just a little bit closer to it with each playthrough. Like practising an instrument, they give you the satisfaction of gradual mastery. | Video Games |
Still from "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring."New Line CinemaSwedish company Embracer Group said Thursday that it agreed to acquire Middle-earth Enterprises, which owns an intellectual property catalogue and worldwide rights to "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy and "The Hobbit." Embracer is buying Middle-earth Enterprises from the Saul Zaentz Company, which has owned the rights to the fantasy works since 1976. The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the deal, which gives Embracer the rights to movies, video games, board games, merchandising, theme parks and stage productions relating to the works by J.R.R. Tolkien"I am truly excited to have The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, one of the world's most epic fantasy franchises join the Embracer family," said Lars Wingefors, the company's founder and CEO, in a release. "Going forward, we also look forward to collaborating with both existing and new external licensees of our increasingly stronger IP portfolio."The purchase was a part of six acquisitions by Embracer Group totaling 6 billion Swedish krona (about $572.8 million).Embracer Group is a games and entertainment-focused company with a market capitalization of 87.5 billion Swedish krona (about $8.36 billion). The company said it plans to use the Tolkien intellectual property with Asmodee, its board and card game subsidiary that has licensed Tolkien IP in the past, and Freemode, its new entertainment and video game group.The company said it will explore "additional movies based on iconic characters such as Gandalf, Aragorn, Gollum, Galadriel, Eowyn and other characters from the literary works of J.R.R. Tolkien."The purchase comes ahead of the premiere of Amazon's "Rings of Power" series on Sept. 2. The company spent nearly $250 million to license the rights in 2017. An animated movie from Warner Brothers is expected in 2024, and a mobile game from Electronic Arts is also in the works.Representatives from Embracer Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment. | Video Games |
You are here News ReleaseMonday, October 24, 2022
Additional research necessary to parse potential benefits and harms of video games on the developing brain. A study of nearly 2,000 children found that those who reported playing video games for three hours per day or more performed better on cognitive skills tests involving impulse control and working memory compared to children who had never played video games. Published today in JAMA Network Open, this study analyzed data from the ongoing Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, which is supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and other entities of the National Institutes of Health. “This study adds to our growing understanding of the associations between playing video games and brain development,” said NIDA Director Nora Volkow, M.D. “Numerous studies have linked video gaming to behavior and mental health problems. This study suggests that there may also be cognitive benefits associated with this popular pastime, which are worthy of further investigation.” Although a number of studies have investigated the relationship between video gaming and cognitive behavior, the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the associations are not well understood. Only a handful of neuroimaging studies have addressed this topic, and the sample sizes for those studies have been small, with fewer than 80 participants. To address this research gap, scientists at the University of Vermont, Burlington, analyzed data obtained when children entered the ABCD Study at ages 9 and 10 years old. The research team examined survey, cognitive, and brain imaging data from nearly 2,000 participants from within the bigger study cohort. They separated these children into two groups, those who reported playing no video games at all and those who reported playing video games for three hours per day or more. This threshold was selected as it exceeds the American Academy of Pediatrics screen time guidelines, which recommend that videogaming time be limited to one to two hours per day for older children. For each group, the investigators evaluated the children’s performance on two tasks that reflected their ability to control impulsive behavior and to memorize information, as well as the children’s brain activity while performing the tasks. The researchers found that the children who reported playing video games for three or more hours per day were faster and more accurate on both cognitive tasks than those who never played. They also observed that the differences in cognitive function observed between the two groups was accompanied by differences in brain activity. Functional MRI brain imaging analyses found that children who played video games for three or more hours per day showed higher brain activity in regions of the brain associated with attention and memory than did those who never played. At the same time, those children who played at least three hours of videogames per day showed more brain activity in frontal brain regions that are associated with more cognitively demanding tasks and less brain activity in brain regions related to vision. The researchers think these patterns may stem from practicing tasks related to impulse control and memory while playing videogames, which can be cognitively demanding, and that these changes may lead to improved performance on related tasks. Furthermore, the comparatively low activity in visual areas among children who reported playing video games may reflect that this area of the brain may become more efficient at visual processing as a result of repeated practice through video games. While prior studies have reported associations between video gaming and increases in depression, violence, and aggressive behavior, this study did not find that to be the case. Though children who reported playing video games for three or more hours per day did tend to report higher mental health and behavioral issues compared to children who played no video games, the researchers found that this association was not statistically significant, meaning that the authors could not rule out whether this trend reflected a true association or chance. They note that this will be an important measure to continue to track and understand as the children mature. Further, the researchers stress that this cross-sectional study does not allow for cause-and-effect analyses, and that it could be that children who are good at these types of cognitive tasks may choose to play video games. The authors also emphasize that their findings do not mean that children should spend unlimited time on their computers, mobile phones, or TVs, and that the outcomes likely depend largely on the specific activities children engage in. For instance, they hypothesize that the specific genre of video games, such as action-adventure, puzzle solving, sports, or shooting games, may have different effects for neurocognitive development, and this level of specificity on the type of video game played was not assessed by the study. “While we cannot say whether playing video games regularly caused superior neurocognitive performance, it is an encouraging finding, and one that we must continue to investigate in these children as they transition into adolescence and young adulthood,” said Bader Chaarani, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont and the lead author on the study. “Many parents today are concerned about the effects of video games on their children’s health and development, and as these games continue to proliferate among young people, it is crucial that we better understand both the positive and negative impact that such games may have.” Through the ABCD Study, researchers will be able to conduct similar analyses for the same children over time into early adulthood, to see if changes in video gaming behavior are linked to changes in cognitive skills, brain activity, behavior, and mental health. The longitudinal study design and comprehensive data set will also enable them to better account for various other factors in the children’s families and environment that may influence their cognitive and behavioral development, such as exercise, sleep quality, and other influences. The ABCD Study, the largest of its kind in the United States, is tracking nearly 12,000 youth as they grow into young adults. Investigators regularly measure participants’ brain structure and activity using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and collect psychological, environmental, and cognitive information, as well as biological samples. The goal of the study is to understand the factors that influence brain, cognitive, and social-emotional development, to inform the development of interventions to enhance a young person’s life trajectory. The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study and ABCD Study are registered service marks and trademarks, respectively, of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services About the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA): NIDA is a component of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIDA supports most of the world’s research on the health aspects of drug use and addiction. The Institute carries out a large variety of programs to inform policy, improve practice, and advance addiction science. For more information about NIDA and its programs, visit www.nida.nih.gov.About the National Institutes of Health (NIH):
NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov. NIH…Turning Discovery Into Health® ### | Video Games |
HBO is adapting the critically acclaimed video game franchise into a television series. After decades of maligned Hollywood adaptations of critically acclaimed video games, the tide might finally be starting to turn. Several high-profile TV series based on hit video games are currently in development, helmed by showrunners with a deep passion for the source material. Many also believe that television is an inherently better medium than film for adapting sprawling video games.
Of all the upcoming video game adaptations, few are as highly anticipated as HBO’s upcoming “The Last of Us” (January 15 on HBO). Neil Druckmann’s post-apocalyptic video game and its sequel are some of the most beloved games of the past decade. The artistry behind both “The Last of Us” and “The Last of Us Part II” has been held up as some of the best interactive storytelling in recent memory. And HBO has assembled quite the creative team for its adaptation. The upcoming drama series will be executive produced by the talents behind some of HBO’s most successful projects, as well as the minds behind the video game franchise. Craig Mazin (“Chernobyl”) and Carolyn Strauss (“Chernobyl,” “Game of Thrones”) will executive produce alongside Neil Druckmann (“The Last of Us” and “Uncharted” video game franchises), Evan Wells (Naughty Dog, the game’s development company) and PlayStation Productions’ Asad Qizlibash and Carter Swan. We’ve gathered all the most up-to-date info about the buzzy show. Keep reading for everything you need to know about HBO’s “The Last of Us.”
Tyler Hersko and Samantha Bergeson contributed to this story.
“The Last of Us” Reveals Early 2023 Release Date
“The Last of Us”screenshot/HBO
The highly anticipated HBO series will debut Sunday, January 15 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO. “The Last of Us” takes place 20 years after modern civilization has been destroyed. Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie, a 14-year-old girl, out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal and heartbreaking journey as they both must traverse the U.S. and depend on each other for survival.
Craig MazinSipa USA via AP
Craig Mazin is Spearheading the Show
After writing and producing a massive hit in “Chernobyl,” Craig Mazin could have done just about anything in Hollywood. He chose to spend his newfound creative capital on “The Last of Us” with the hope that it could usher in a new era of high-quality video game adaptations. Mazin discussed his work on the HBO series and the challenges of adapting video game IPs for film and television in an interview with IndieWire in August. At the time, Mazin noted that HBO’s willingness to support an adaptation of “The Last of Us” could mark a shift where Hollywood begins to look at video game adaptations with more seriousness.
“I don’t think the folks at HBO were necessarily plugged into the game world, but it would only take them 20 minutes on Google to realize that ‘The Last of Us’ is the ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ of video game narratives. Just by dint of the fact that they said ‘yes’ [to a 10-episode first season], you get a feeling that this is going to be different,” Mazin said in an August 2021 interview.
The series is written by Mazin and Neil Druckmann, who wrote and co-directed the video games. It’s a co-production with Sony Pictures Television. PlayStation Productions, Word Games, and Naughty Dog produce. “Beanpole” director Kantemir Balagov has been tapped to direct the pilot for HBO’s adaptation. Jasmila Žbanić and Ali Abbasi will also direct episodes of the show.
“Craig and Neil are visionaries in a league of their own,” Francesca Orsi, executive vice president, HBO Programming, said in a statement on November 20, 2020. “With them at the helm alongside the incomparable Carolyn Strauss, this series is sure to resonate with both die-hard fans of ‘The Last of Us’ games and newcomers to this genre-defining saga. We’re delighted to partner with Naughty Dog, Word Games, Sony and PlayStation to adapt this epic, powerfully immersive story.”
“The Last of Us”Screenshot/Twitter
The Story Follows a Brother and Sister Traveling Across a Post-Apocalyptic United States
HBO’s synopsis for the upcoming series reads reads: Twenty years after modern civilization has been destroyed Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle Ellie, a 14-year-old girl, out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey, as they both must traverse across the U.S. and depend on each other for survival.
“The Last of Us Part II”Sony Both “The Last of Us” Games Were Almost Universally Praised By Critics
“The Last of Us” video game was a critical and commercial success for Sony and Naughty Dog. The developer’s 2020 sequel, “The Last of Us Part II” was also a commercial success and sold over 4 million copies within its first weekend. The 2020 sequel was lauded by IndieWire’s David Ehrlich, who wrote that the sequel improved on the original classic in almost every way.
Pedro PascalEvan Agostini/Invision/AP
Pedro Pascal Plays Joel
“The Mandalorian” star Pedro Pascal is adding another genre TV credit to his resume with his lead role on “The Last of Us.” And Pascal believes there are quite a few similarities between the ways the two shows approach their beloved source material.
“It’s similar to the way Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni treat ‘The Mandalorian,’ in how [Mazin and Druckmann] are treating ‘The Last of Us’ — it’s in good hands because they love it so much,” Pascal recently said. Well, clearly Neil created the video game, but Craig loves it so much,” he said. “So it really is made for the people that love it. And there’s some very intense storytelling for people who might be less familiar.”
Bella Ramsey on “Game of Thrones”HBO
Bella Ramsey Plays Ellie
Pedro Pascal is going to have some company in the form of Bella Ramsey. The “Game of Thrones” standout has been cast as Joel’s sister, Ellie on the show. And it appears that the two castmates are already getting along, as Ramsey has been known to joke about their lack of video game skills on Twitter.
Nick OffermanJordan Strauss/Invision/AP
Nick Offerman Plays Bill
In a piece of fan-favorite casting, Nick Offerman has signed on to play the survivalist Bill. He took the role over from Con O’Neill.
The Trailer Shows the Apocalyptic Aftermath and a Surprise Cast Member
“The Last of Us”HBO
“The Last of Us” trailer introduces fans to Joel (Pedro Pascal) who is tasked with smuggling tween Ellie (Bella Ramsey) out of a quarantine zone to safety across the U.S. in hopes for a cure for the zombie-like plague. “Yellowjackets” star Melanie Lynskey appeared in the trailer as a surprise cast member, along with Murray Bartlett and Nick Offerman who were previously announced to star. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. | Video Games |
The Recording Academy announced Thursday (June 9) several brand-new Grammy categories: Songwriter of the Year, Non-Classical; Best Alternative Music Performance; Best Americana Music Performance; Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games And Other Interactive Media; Best Spoken Word Poetry Album; and the special merit award for Best Song for Social Change. All categories will go into effect in next year’s 2023 ceremony. "We're so excited to honor these diverse communities of music creators through the newly established awards and amendments, and to continue cultivating an environment that inspires change, progress and collaboration," Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. said in an official statement. "The Academy's top priority is to effectively represent the music people that we serve, and each year, that entails listening to our members and ensuring our rules and guidelines reflect our ever-evolving industry." The Songwriter of the Year, Non-Classical award will be the first time non-producing and non-performing songwriters who do a significant amount of work will receive a prestigious, honorary award for their major work and impact in the music industry. Without these writers, we would not have many of your favorite hits and bops — something songwriters have been reminding the Recording Academy about in recent years. In 2022, a stipulation was removed from the Album of the Year category that required songwriters and collaborators to have contributed to at least 33 percent of an LP’s contents in order to be included in the nomination. The removal allowed for more songwriters to have a chance at being honored with those awards, especially on releases with multiple co-writers. The addition of a Songwriter of the Year award in the pop realm furthers this recognition. “My background is as a songwriter and a creator, so it really made a lot of sense to me that we would honor somebody like the Songwriter of the Year similar to the way we do a producer, best engineered album, things like that,” Mason Jr. said to Rolling Stone. “What’s important is the songwriting community felt like it wanted to be heard, and the Academy agreed wholeheartedly and is excited about this award.” According to the Grammys website, the Songwriter of the Year, Non-Classical award honors “the most prolific non-performing and non-producing songwriters,” in an effort to spotlight those whose work often happens behind the scenes. Best Alternative Music Performance and Best Americana Performance were created to give shine to tracks and singles in those respective genres. Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media celebrates the original scores in gaming, and Best Spoken Word Poetry Album highlights artists and their work either on its own or set to music. Notably, the Recording Academy has also introduced a “special merit award” for Best Song for Social Change. The award “will be determined by a Blue Ribbon Committee and ratified by the Recording Academy Board of Trustees. Submissions must contain lyrical content that addresses a timely social issue and promotes understanding, peacebuilding and empathy.” Find more about all the new changes right here. | Video Games |
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