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Sports video games such as EA's Madden and NHL series have held cover athlete votes to determine the athlete gracing the cover of the latest game. 2K Sports took that a step further by announcing a cover art contest for WWE 2K14 today. Fans that enter the contest have a chance to see their entry as an alternate piece of cover art that ships on the inside of the game's case, since The Rock has already been announced as the game's primary cover wrestler.

The contest rules also note that the winner will receive a copy of WWE 2K14, and one runner-up will receive a copy of the game as well. Head over to 2K Sports' contest site to download assets for individual wrestlers, as well as those red, fiery background images seen on the covers of 2K Sports games. To enter your custom cover for the game, you'll need to tweet a link to your image with the hashtag #wwe2k14cover.

Gawker Museum Can't Explain Why Ancient Statue Suddenly Started Spinning | Gizmodo 20 Secret Passageways and Rooms Hiding in Plain Sight | Jezebel New Allegation: Paula Deen Paid Black Employees in Beer | Lifehacker How I Earn My Living Buying and Selling Appliances on Craigslist

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has been having a rough year, having allegedly been caught on tape smoking crack and then subjected to the great and terrible scrutiny of our sister site, Gawker proper. At least he got a video game out of the deal . Can you help Ford avoid reporters and crack pipes long enough to earn the cash to buy back the incriminating video? Extra! Extra! Games' Stay Mayor, now available for free on Google Play, doesn't specifically call this particular mayor Rob Ford, but just look at the guy. That is not a healthy video game character. Oh, and there's also the app description. Uh oh. Looks like the Mayor’s in a buttload of friggin’ trouble with that alleged video of him smoking crack! And who knows if it even exists, amiright? But juuust in case, why don’t you help him collect a heap of cash to buy it before The Gawker does. Only your twinkle toes can out-maneuver the Blood Thirsty Media to help him collect more than they did in that damn “Crackstarter” campaign. $201,255 to be exact. And hey, everyone needs a little boost now and then, so make sure you collect power up buckets of deep-fried courage for more footballs to throw at life’s problems... but make sure you avoid those pesky crackpipes! Unless Gawker's been on a hush-hush Crackstarting bender while I wasn't looking, I'd say that's the guy. Stay Mayor is not a very good game starring the likeness of a man who is not a very good mayor, so it all balances out. You can get it free on Google Play right here.

Here’s what’s going on Talk Among Yourselves, our reader-written blog: TheUnfathomableTruth links to another crazy theory about what might be going on in Metal Gear Solid V. PyramidHeadCrab wants to know what your favorite Pokemon are. He’s also got some thoughts on what the perfect Pokemon game would look like. And JJTheTexan takes a look at the Nintendo arcade games that have been lost to history. And you can always go join the voices talking about video games and life in TAY Classic and in the TAY: Open Forum.

Trent Oster, creative director on Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, said publisher Beamdog is currently mired in "legal hell" and that work on the current patch and even future aspirations are on "indefinite hold."

Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition was pulled from the App store and Beamdog's digital distribution service last week over "contractual issues" with an unnamed publishing partner. "The prognosis [for resuming work on Baldur's Gate] is mixed," Oster told Rock Paper Shotgun. "Best case, we can sort this out soon. Worst case, this could be in legal hell for a while. I like making games, but this contractual dispute bullshit keeps me up at night."

The original plan was to offer Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition following the re-launch of the first game, but those plans are on hold now. "Baldur's Gate II: Enhanced Edition is on indefinite hold, as is the current patch," Oster added. Oster even had plans to pursue development on Baldur's Gate 3 down the line, to which he said, "we are still interested in the concept, but currently I'd say we're very demoralized."

Corporations are notoriously slow creatures. That slowness generally stands in direct proportion to the size of the corporation itself. The bigger the beast, the more people, bureaucratic processes, and legal wrangling every single decision must be pumped through before any kind of minute decision can be made. It's why I never expect much when fan outcry arises toward the various monolithic companies that make up the video game industry. Especially in the case of a behemoth like Microsoft, whose Xbox One DRM policies became the subject of much derision over the course of the last month. Here was a company that was laying out its carefully built plans for a new console, its first in eight years. This is unquestionably a huge undertaking, involving years of research and development, and considerable capital. Yes, people reacted poorly when Microsoft announced that it would not allow traditional used game sales on the system, and would require online check-ins every 24 hours in order to even play offline games. Seemingly, in its mind, the potential riling up of DRM-weary consumers was worth the risk given the potential long-term benefits of the tech.

Patrick's Xbox One story as it appeared on BBC's Click (thanks to Rowan Pellegrin for sending this over!)

Until, of course, it very suddenly wasn't.

To say Microsoft's reversal of those aforementioned policies this week was a surprise would be a gross understatement. Nobody saw this coming. Not the developers we talked to at E3, not the various press people commenting following the show, not anyone. Even if you believed Microsoft could be worn down at some point in the future, I hardly expect you could have foreseen them making such a jarring about-face less than a week after E3's conclusion.

This is not how companies typically react to fan or media outcry. Usually there's a lot more quiet hand-wringing as they attempt to adjust messaging, or even just flat indifference to the whole thing. Which isn't to say game companies never listen to fans, but this kind of complete reversal on such a seemingly fundamental policy that had just been announced is practically unheard of. All that research, all that preparation, all that money, essentially tossed off in the hopes that fan response would turn back in Microsoft's favor.

Yes, Microsoft has been presenting these changes as very much the result of "fan feedback," that nebulous term that could refer to the myriad angry message board and comment thread postings, the consistent feed of backlash from the games press, or even less public factors, like pre-order sales. For my money, I tend to lean on that latter one. In my experience, nothing sets a game company's ass aflame quite like soft pre-order numbers. We don't know exactly what pre-orders look like for either the Xbox One or the PlayStation 4, but there's enough anecdotal info going around to suggest that Sony's E3 press conference, with its promises of no new restrictive DRM policies and a $100 cheaper price tag, brought the company terrific early results.

If you're Microsoft, I have a hard time believing you scrap such a noteworthy chunk of your system's architecture just because a lot of angry people on the Internet were angry. Companies are trained to learn that these kinds of complaints are typically more indicative of a vocal minority. But actual, tangible sales? That's another story entirely. If people aren't pre-ordering your console to the degree that you're expecting, that's when you would typically see a company leap into action to affect change. A leap this high and this fast tells me that something was very seriously wrong in Microsoft land, and that this was not just some play to appease an upset audience, but a desperate attempt at total course correction in the face of what I can only assume they foresaw as an impending doom scenario.

Even more intriguing than Microsoft's immediate about-face was the reaction that followed. Unsurprisingly, those who had spent the last 20-some-odd days deriding the Xbox One's DRM system were generally quite thrilled. But almost immediately after the announcement hit, another side of the argument piped up. While there had been some vocal supporters of Microsoft's new DRM--typically, those who believed that such a system would be the impetus to put consoles more on par with Steam's currently (mostly) beloved digital library system--their voices were largely drowned out by people who weren't into these restrictions one bit.

Former Epic Games honcho Cliff Bleszinski has been one of the more vocal opponents of Microsoft's reversal.

So now, this previously shouted down group had reason to pipe up even louder, as the opposition quieted down. They were most certainly being fueled by numerous developers, who came out in dismay over Microsoft changing a policy that they believed would save the industry from eventual collapse. A predominantly dire attitude was taken on by prominent figures like Cliff Bleszinski and Lee Perry as they spoke of doomsaying numbers that they proclaimed showed how bad things have gotten in top-tier game development. The thing is, they're not wrong. The current model is deeply in the red, with not a lot of return on investment for increasingly bloated game budgets. That bloat, as most developers will tell you, is the direct result of the staffing and resource requirements inherent to crafting "top quality experiences" in the kinds of timetables major publishers require. Games that sell millions of copies are often still "disappointments," because they're not hitting the kinds of targets the publishers had banked on. Whether those expectations were ever realistic to begin with is, sadly, not often up for debate, since usefully precise data on game budgets and sales numbers is still generally kept away from the public view.

But as Chris Kohler notes in a piece written Friday, this isn't just an either/or argument. It's not literally: "We get rid of used games, or top quality video games go away." Nothing so binary has ever existed in this business. Companies have failed and succeeded in widely varying forms over the course of the last few decades, and how the industry might reshape itself in the face of unsustainable costs is very much an unknown. Cliff seems convinced that not having these new digital licensing tools would guarantee the status quo of tons of DLC, microtransactions, and the return of online passes, inevitably leading to some kind of eventual cataclysm. I don't think we really know that to be our only possible future yet.

Removed from the apocalyptic foretellings, some people were just mad because the various sharing features built into the system sounded pretty great. The family sharing feature, which would have allowed you to share any game you owned with up to 10 family members on any Xbox One, sounded really ideal. While some doubt over the veracity of that feature's description popped up later last week, those claims--that the system would only allow family members to play shared games for up to 60 minutes at a time, before being told to buy the full product--seem to have been debunked by various Microsoft men via Twitter.

And then there was the ability to access your entire games library digitally, even if you bought a physical copy originally. Losing that one does suck, no question, but if someone really is invested in the current vision of an all-digital future, Microsoft says they'll still have every game published on the system available day-and-date digitally alongside the disc-based copies. Access might not be quite as broad as it was before, but it still allows for a notable upgrade over Microsoft's current system, where disc-based games tend to lead their digital versions by quite a margin.

So certainly, there is reason to lament some of the losses in the wake of Microsoft's change, but such lament comes with a level of faith that a lot of consumers evidently weren't willing to put in Microsoft's $500 machine as it previously stood. Now, sans these restrictions, it seems that Xbox One preorders have risen on various retail sites. Granted, the PS4 still had a strong week-long lead of positive press driving it into Amazon's top sellers list, and with many of those pre-orders put in, we're now seeing those who held out on Microsoft meeting its about face in kind. Again, actual numbers for these sorts of things we won't know about until somebody decides a sufficient benchmark has been reached to put out a glowing press release, but it does seem like Microsoft has gotten a shot in the arm here, if nothing else.

Did Microsoft's about-face change your mind when it came to pre-ordering an Xbox One? I mean, I'd already pre-ordered one, but if I didn't need one for my job, I'd have waited.

It's also really only put-off what may still yet be an inevitable all-digital future, as the New York Times noted this weekend. Many seem to think that physical media isn't really long for this world. Even if Microsoft is removing its DRM restrictions on the Xbox One, there's no reason to believe they couldn't just implement that stuff again whenever it feels the market dictates. We are most certainly progressing toward a heavily digital games market, as indie games and day-one digital releases have become increasingly normal. It's been a slow push, and not everyone is there yet. The bandwidth isn't there for everyone, nor is the affordable storage space. But if you look at where we are now compared with, say, five years ago, the digital market has expanded by leaps and bounds. In another few years, the used market may begin to dry up all by its lonesome, with no forceful nudging from console makers. All those features Microsoft was talking about could easily be plugged back in, and at a time when the market is actually prepared for this kind of shift. And isn't that how it ought to be, anyway? The consumers dictating the fate of the used games market, instead of the game companies dictating it to us?

Whether or not this gambit pays off in the end, on some level, you just have to admire the moxie of it all. Sony drilled Microsoft at E3, and managed to rally the core gaming audience behind them in a way that a single console maker hasn't been able to in ages. Where Microsoft looked out-of-touch and indifferent, Sony looked self-aware and clever, and clearly were able to parlay that into strong early numbers. In making this change so abruptly, Microsoft may have dimmed Sony's E3 afterglow a bit, and brought itself back into the race. We have ourselves a ballgame again folks, and when two companies compete with this kind of fierceness, it's we, the consumers, who most often win in the end.

Reports out of China state that woman suffered at least one ruptured breast implant after lying on her stomach for four hours and gaming. According to Chinese news reports, Xiao Ai (a pseudonym) had recently got into an iOS app called Dragon Summon and was often staying up late to play the game. Earlier this month, she was in bed, playing the app for a long session, when she felt a pain in her chest. Ai was rushed to the hospital, and Xinhuanet reports that the hospital's doctor said she was in a bad position for an extended period of time, putting pressure on the implants and causing the rupture. (The Chinese news sources do not specify if both implants, which she got five years ago, were affected.) Implants or not, it's always a good idea to take breaks while gaming—stand up and change your posture. This is important stuff. Don't forget. 女子趴在床上玩游戏4小时导致胸部硅胶破裂 [News.CH via SZNews via Beijing Cream] Photo: wavebreakmedia | Shutterstock To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft. Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

The Last of Us' reign at the UK charts summit lasts on, with Animal Crossing: New Leaf unable to turn over the Naughty Dog game for the second week running. As the UK prepares for two weeks of tennis (and inevitable rain), the two games hold their 1-2 seedings despite dropping around half their sales.

They're no doubt helped by a quiet week for the country's retailers; the only new release that charts in the top 40 this week is MotoGP 13 in 15th. So it's a top ten full of familiar faces, with FIFA 13 in third, Tomb Raider in fourth, and er, Max Payne 3 in fitfh. Over a year after leading the UK charts in its debut week, Rockstar's shooter enjoys a 600 percent rise in sales thanks to a big old price promotion.

Summer's here, and for Chinese college students this means two things: summer vacation and/ or graduation! To celebrate their graduation and their friendship, a group of graduating students got together to cosplay their favorite characters from the first person shooter Cross Fire. This group of students, eight in number, are part of the graduating class of 2013 at Hunan province's Central South University. Having played CF during their four years together, they decided to get together to show off their love for CF. Cross Fire is a first person shooter developed by South Korea's SmileGate. It was shut down in Korea in 2012 but still operates in China. There, the game has a cult following akin to that of Counter-Strike. There is currently a version available to play in the US. [大学生拍CF版毕业照 制服皮鞭彰显个性] Tencent Kotaku East is your slice of Asian Internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am. Eric is Beijing based writer and all around FAT man. You can contact him @FatAsianTechie@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @FatAsianTechie.

Collectible figures purveyor Gaming Heads announced a deal with Sony Computer Entertainment to produce a line of statues themed around their crossover fighting game, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. Who's up first? That would be Jak and Daxter. The silent protagonist of Naughty Dog's classic platformer series, Jak, along with his chatty, human-turned-ottsel friend, Daxter, will be immortalized in the form of a single 15-inch statue inspired by the cover art of the very first game, The Precursor Legacy. I'd say they did a pretty good job recreating the scene:Gaming Heads is producing two versions of the statue. The regular version is priced at $190 and is limited to 750 pieces, while the exclusive version, which sports a sweet-looking bronze finish for an extra $10, is limited to 350 pieces worldwide. The statues will be done sometime towards the end of the year, and can be pre-ordered through Gaming Heads' website. Jak and Daxter [Gaming Heads] Jak and Daxter Exclusive Edition [Gaming Heads] Cover art courtesy of CoverGalaxy.com. Questions? Comments? Contact the author of this post at andras-AT-kotaku-DOT-com.

This is Egashira 2:50. He's a Japanese comedian, who recently got his own posable figure. And damn, it's creepy. That's okay, I guess, because Egashira 2:50 (who Kotaku has previously featured here and here) is pretty creepy, too! He's also considered the "most annoying" comedian in Japan. (That, however, didn't stop Sony from having him promote the last Patapon game in Japan!) His gag—well, one of them—is that he sticks his hand in his tights and goes "boom". In the first few of days of going on sale, figure collectors have already swapped out the Egashira bits for plastic hijinks. Have a look: Earlier this month, Egashira got in trouble after dropping his pants during another promotional event and diving into a crowd. Naked. "Creepy Woody", of course, refers to the posable Toy Story figure that was packaged with an unsettling face. Photos solimatsusnake, yamaontsa, saburo_fps, chione70, narusehironori, narusehironori, yobaopoanaphi, oootao2352, oootao2352, oootao2352, chione70, matome To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft. Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

Over the weekend, an event for Hyperdimension Neptunia: The Animation ended after a man allegedly stormed the theater stage, wielding a weapon and reportedly demanding to see one of the anime's voice actresses. The event, held on Saturday in Tokyo's Ikebukuro, premiered the first two episodes of upcoming Hyperdimension Neptunia animated program, which is based on the series of video games. The event featured cast members, such as voice talent Rie Tanaka. The incident was tweeted out in real time, with early reports saying the man was carrying a crowbar (some called it a "blunt weapon"). According to Twitter user @Aozaki_n, the man had a scarf covering his mouth and took to the stage during a cast talk session. Everyone on stage fled, according to Twitter users (via Yaraon!) the man screamed, "There's a criminal among us!" and "Get Rie Tanaka out here!" MSN, however, reported that the suspect was talking "nonsense". The police were called and soon arrived on the scene, where they took the 30-something year-old man into custody and discovered he was carrying a knife. According to Sponichi, the suspect has since been charged with violating the country's strict Firearms And Swords Control Law. Tanaka's talent agency released a statement saying that the voice actress suffered minor injuries when fleeing the stage. Understandably, her management added that more than anything, Tanaka was dealing with significant mental trauma after the ordeal. Rie Tanaka is one of Japan's most popular voice actresses. Previously, she appeared on hug pillows and trading cards, and she also released cosplay photo books. Last year, she got married and ended her fanclub. There's speculation online in Japan that the weekend's bizarre and frightening incident could be related to that decision. アニメ『超次元ゲイム ネプテューヌ』イベントでキャストトーク中に「この中に犯罪者がいる！」[Yaraon!] To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft. Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

Japanese artist Rokudenashiko has a dream. She wants to make a "pussy boat", like an actual boat (well canoe). Oh, she also wants people to chill out about vaginas, too. Warning: This article has content some readers might find objectionable. Rokudenashiko creates dioramas with rather unique terrains: plastic molds of her vagina. Originally, the artist thought it would be funny to decorate molds of her genitalia. Not everyone was so amused. Some, according to the artist, got upset. There's a long, proud history of vagina motifs in art. However, in Japan, the vagina still is somewhat taboo (it's worth noting that Japan isn't alone in this regards). So, it's easy to see why Rokudenashiko's art would raise eyebrows. The art's branding revels in taboo, too. Rokudenashiko, whose pen name means "good-for-nothing kid", calls her dioramas "deko-man". "Deko" is short for decoration. "Man" is short for the Japanese word "manko" (まんこ), which means "pussy". It's one that you should definitely not utter in polite company! In Japanese, "vagina" is often discreetly referred to as "asoko" (あそこ), which literally means "over yonder" but translates to "down there". "Even when a TV station asked me to be on their show," Rokudenashiko recalls, "they wouldn’t dare to let me say "deko-man' because 'man' is from the taboo word manko." Rokudenashiko explains that her art was inspired about her worries about her own private parts and how the genitalia has unfairly been labeled obscene. "I wanted to make pussy more casual and pop," the artist says. "That's how I came to make a pussy lampshade, a remote-controlled pussy car, a pussy accessory, a pussy smartphone case, and so on." She has even made a couple pussy Gundams and also published a "Deko-Man" comic book (note that here there is also a pun between "man" in "manko" and the Japanese word "manga"). While silicon molds are suitable for Rokudenashiko's dioramas, they don't suit her larger ambitions, like a pussy bed, a pussy door, a pussy car, or even a pussy boat. "I was wondering how I can make it possible, and then I finally found that [a] 3D scanner can make it happen easily," she says. "[A] 3D scanner can be used to make a pussy boat that will go across the ocean!" Rokudenashiko is crowd-funding her plan to get the necessary tech to make her pussy canoe dreams possible and row her pink vessel across Lake Geneva. Currently, Rokudenashiko has 385,500 yen (US$3,920) out of her 514,800 yen ($5,235) goal. The crowd-funding deadline is September 6, and she plans on writing about the experience on a woman's culture site and as well as cartoons. Those who contribute to her crowd-funding project must live in Japan, but those who contribute can even get some of Rokudenashiko's scanned data. No clue what you'd do with it, but hey, all that matters little in the world of nautical vaginas! わたしの「まん中」を3Dスキャンして [Campfire] Photos: ろくでなし子 To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft. Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

20 years ago Lance E. McDonald rescued an Amstrad CPC-464 at a market in country Victoria. He was six years old. Now, married with two young children, Lance is on a mission. He wants to make a video game like the ones he used to play, using the tools he first learned when he was in primary school. The video game is called Black Annex and he’s building it by himself. He’s building it using QBASIC. Lance E. McDonald is batshit insane. In country Victoria a six year old Lance E. McDonald sits in front of a computer. He types the following words onto his Amstrad: 10: INPUT “What is your name”; name$20: PRINT “Hello “; name$ He types “RUN”. His small jaw gapes in amazement. His life will never be the same again. 20 years later Lance E. McDonald types something different into a computer; into a digital thesaurus. First word: “Hostile”. Response: a stream of synonyms, among them the word “black”. Second word “Takeover”. ‘Conquest’, ‘acquisition’, ‘invasion’. None of them are quite right. Annexation? Too clumsy. How about we shorten it. Annex… that’s good. That’ll do. “Black Annex”. Lance E. McDonald likes the sound of that. 5.30pm. The Customer Service department of an Australian ISP. Lance McDonald shuts down his computer. He leaves the office and walks home. He looks after his children. At 8pm his kids go to sleep. From that point, until the early hours of the morning, Lance is Man Fight Dragon. And he is working on his brand new video game Black Annex. You may have heard of Black Annex. It’s not like other video games. Black Annex fits the definition but it’s also a literal challenge; a testament to the stubborn lengths one man will go to in the name of nostalgia. With all the software available to independent developers, Lance E McDonald could make life easy for himself. But no, Lance wants to make Black Annex completely from scratch. In QBASIC. Black Annex is a game about subterfuge. It’s a game about corporate espionage and sabotage. But it’s also the story of one man building a video game like the ones he used to play, using the tools he once used when he was six years old and his jaw gaped in wide-eyed amazement. “Well, I guess it’s that whole nostalgia thing. When I refer to “toys” I used to play with as a kid, I literally mean that BASIC was one of my favorite toys from my childhood.” Lance E. McDonald has a room littered with relics; a house drenched in a once-hidden dimension of video game history that barely existed. He has a floppy drive atop a Super Nintendo that plays bootleg games. He has three different 3DOs. He has six different PlayStation 2s, including one of the old-as-hell external HDDs. He has every version of the PlayStation ever made including the ultra rare Net Yaroze that lets you create homebrew games. “It’s literally just shelves and shelves of bizarre stuff like this,” he says. He once built a telephone exchange emulator from a Linksys PAP2 for his Dreamcast, just so he could play games online using an ADSL connection connected to the Dial-up Modem in the Dreamcast. “I just get an idea in my head like, ‘I’m gonna buy every modem that was ever released for home consoles and try them out’ and I just go on a binge like that.” On a cold Sunday morning in 1992 a six year old Lance and his stepfather saw a sign next to an object lying on the ground and the sign said ‘computer’. Next to the sign lay an Amstrad CPC-464 and a sack of cassette tapes. The family had spent the last few years getting accustomed to video games, playing the Atari 2600 (“I really liked Lazer Gates and Demon Attack,” says Lance. “The rest of my family liked River Raid”). The rusty machine gathering dust on the market place floor had an air of intrigue to it. His stepfather bought the Amstrad and Lance brought it home. “It was dumb, though,” remembers Lance. “No matter what you typed in, it would just say ‘Syntax error’.” Syntax error. Days later a friend of his brother came round. He dusted off one of the tapes, he typed “LOAD”. The machine emitted a high pitched screech and then stopped. “RUN”. And then, magic. Buried deep in the library inside the primary school where Lance E. McDonald learned to read and write was a series of books called “UNDERSTANDING THE MICRO” and the librarian looked confused when a young boy tried to check it out. This was just the beginning. “My step-brothers’ cousin had magazines with pages and pages of code you could try out,” says Lance. “I spent hours and hours entering other peoples’ code and writing my own.” Years later Lance’s brother had a Super Nintendo. One of the games he used to play religiously was Killer Instinct. Killer Instinct was cool, but Lance wanted to make his own games. He stole the instructions, and made a text adventure in BASIC featuring the characters he read about it in the biography pages of the manual. Lance E. McDonald had fallen in love with BASIC. Later his family upgraded to a 486. Cutting edge. It had a CD-ROM, a sound card, the works. But when another friend of his brother introduced him to QuickBASIC 4.5, a form of QBASIC that allowed him to write in BASIC and then compile his work into an exe. file, his eyes widened with the heightened excitement of endless possibility. Lance would go on to learn dozens of other, more powerful languages — and his job requires programming in PHP and Javascript — but when he gets home and everyone is dead asleep he returns to the his first love, the language he learned as a child, “HOW TO UNDERSTAND YOUR MICRO” weighing down his school bag, magazines scattered across his bedroom floor. A Killer Instinct instruction manual open at the biography pages. “I still like to play with the toys I had when I was a kid,” explains Lance. “So I still use BASIC when I have a choice.” What is Black Annex? Black Annex is a game much like the games you used to play, built in the way games used to be built, by a man who used to play these games as a young boy. Black Annex is an excuse; to do something insane in a modern age where modern tools are easily attainable and stupidly accessible. Black Annex is a self-inflicted wound; a borderline insane challenge; a labour of love. “I guess it’s that whole nostalgia thing,” says Lance. Black Annex is an isometric game in the vein of Syndicate, built entirely in QBASIC. So in that sense it’s a game about replicating those same feelings, that same experience, in the most authentic way possible. But for Lance E. McDonald those feelings run deeper; there’s an extra layer to his nostalgia. “I guess it’s that whole nostalgia thing,” says Lance. “It’s obvious that Black Annex is meant to refer back to games that people played a long time ago, but the entire development process, for me, has had that same appeal. Not just playing, but building Black Annex is a nostalgic experience for me.” It’s one thing to build a game that looks and plays like the games you once played; another to build that game with the tools and language you once cherished. Black Annex plays into the nostalgia we all share for a certain type of game, but the guts of it are soaked in the efforts of one man grasping backwards towards a very personal and unique history. “I hope the entire heart and soul of the game being built on my own personal nostalgic feelings will always be there in spirit,” says Lance. “It’s one thing to make a “retro” game, but to emulate the entire way you used to play around with building games when you were a kid really gives the whole product a different feeling deep down inside. “Or maybe I’m just imagining the whole thing.” Black Annex began life as a design document called “Corporate Firefight Game”. Then it was a tech demo. A man walking around an office environment decked out with desks and chairs; faceless drones in the periphery. It was designed as an exercise. What was possible with BASIC, how far could Lance push it? Pretty far. Before long animation tech existed, the main character could destroy the furniture as a distraction to the drones; a ‘vision cone’ system was developed to add a layer of drama to the proceedings. At one point Lance asked himself a question: if I were to dedicate a serious amount of time to this project, what would be possible? What could I achieve? “I opened up the design doc and started thinking about what I would created if I worked on this a lot longer than I’d initially planned.” “I’ve always wanted to make an isometric game,” admits Lance. “It’s just a style that I love.” Black Annex is the end result of an obsession that ekes through decades. It’s an interactive memory; one human being’s personal history collated into a single video game. Video games can be the end result of millions of man hours accumulated by hundreds of human beings bashing at code, fiddling with state of the art software at the behest of a publisher, and that’s fine but Black Annex sits static at the other end of that spectrum: a personal video game; every line of code written by one man huddled in a corner surrounded by old consoles and the library books he never returned. “Black Annex is turning into a great example of a game I wanted to exist,” says Lance. The next time we speak to Lance E. McDonald he’s just come back from E3 after winning an Industry pass; receiving what he described as “the wonderful chance to fork out a few thousand dollars and talk to people about Black Annex”. He hopes the media contacts he made over in Los Angeles can help transform his own enthusiasm for his very personal video game into something global in scale.. Next up is PAX Australia, Black Annex was selected among five other games to be displayed at the Indie Showcase, and it’s a far shorter trip than the one he just made to Los Angeles. I gotta see if it holds up without any pretext like that. Lance asks me a question. He’s been given a media list, most of the journalists who have expressed interest in attending PAX are on this list. When would be the best time to send those emails out? Maybe in the morning, I suggest. But not too early, around 9.30 in the middle of the week? I’ll do that, he replies. Make sure you mention that the game is written in BASIC, I add. Nah, he says. I gotta see if it holds up without any pretext like that. The last thing Lance sends me is an image: a screencap of a hundred emails in draft. Every morning I wake up to press releases, sometimes dozens of them. They all say the same thing, my name clearly inserted into a template, mailed off to hundreds, maybe thousands of journalists. “My new mobile game featuring some sort of animal has just been released on iOS, please thank you to review.” Comes with the territory. Lance’s email is different. A hundred personalised emails, maybe more. Every subject line is different. I can see the opening line to every email, clearly manually written without a trace of copy and paste, every single keystroke made by a human hand. “Hey Logan, Mark said you’d be at PAX, want to check out my game…” “Hey, it’s Lance here, Aussie Indie video game dev person…” “Heyo Matt, just wanted to shoot you a quick email…” Lance could have written one single email. He could have bcc’d it to every single person on that list. He didn’t have to type it all out manually. Lance could have built a video game using the same technology everyone else uses, but why would he want to do a thing like that? You can check out Lance E. McDonald’s game Black Annex at PAX Australia as part of the Indie Showcase, or head to its Steam Greenlight page here. This story originally appeared on Kotaku Australia.

The second thing I thought after I saw District 9, right after "holy shit", was "man, I hope they release action figures for that mech". Sadly, we're a few years on and that hasn't happened, but where official merch is found wanting, custom builders can get the job done. Built to "GI Joe" scale (so 3 3/4 inches), artist Chris "Sabretooth" Hooton made four figures, one for Wikus, one for Christopher and his kid, and one for the mech with the pig cannon. What's awesome is that while Wikus and Christopher are "heavily modded" versions of existing figures, the other two were built from scratch. DISTRICT 9 CUSTOM ACTION FIGURE SET 3 3/4" 1:18 SCALE [Sabretooth, via Super Punch]

Bam fu, the next game from Fingle developer Game Oven Studios, is available right now for free on iOS and Android devices. It's a fast-paced multiplayer game where each player tries to out-tap his rivals and secure the most pebbles. It's simple, but could settle some pretty major arguments.

Game Oven is already at work on a side project, which the team aims to spend just one week developing. It's a minimalistic, two-player-only game that Game Oven founder Adriaan de Jongh teases with the following image: two circle icons with fancy hats and the prompt, "hold longest to win." Again, simple - but absurdly intriguing.

We first got wind of the "Delta Six," a super-realistic assault-rifle controller for those who like to put the FP into their FPSes, back in October. Predictably, the gun's purpose and look didn't play well in mainstream coverage, so it was pulled off the market. Now it's back, after a successful $200,000 Kickstarter. Delta Six is brought to you by David Kotkin of Miami, a teacher who developed the Avenger (the product behind this comprehensively embarrassing shitshow) and was able to retire from his career in education off the money he made. Kotkin correctly noticed the mainstream squeamishness with developing super-realistic gun controllers and figured that was where his next project lay. Things started out well enough but after this story and others started appearing, the Delta Six found few allies in public. Kotkin told the Miami Herald that the notoriety scared off a public relations firm, "whose owner cited 'moral reservations,'" and that Arduino, the microcontroller staple of PC and console mods, itself backed away from a partnership because of the potential stink. Originally planned to sell for $89 with conventional backing, the Delta Six's May Kickstarter listed $225 as the unit's retail price. If you wondered what the potential stink might be, the Miami Herald contacted our old friend, the disbarred opportunist gasbag Jack Thompson, for his opinion. Thompson ventures that "you’ll probably see legislation at the state or federal level to outlaw this kind of thing for sale to civilians." OK. It's not to say reasonable people don't have their reservations, too. Even Kotkin's wife won't let their 11- and 8-year-old sons play with the Delta Six, but she's otherwise proud of his inventiveness and accomplishments. "When it comes to the gaming gun, you look at all the violence that's occurred and it's really difficult for me to say this is a great idea," she said. Speaking as someone who has reviewed three rifle attachments for the PlayStation Move, I don't think it's a great idea for other reasons. People keep pushing for more and more realistic gun peripherals, forgetting that it's actually a less efficient and more physically demanding way to play an FPS. Kotkin's weapon certainly does look realistic, and aiming down sights by peering through a scope, or reloading by shoving against its clip assembly does sound neat. But once the novelty of these things wear off, you're still standing in front of your television, using your hands to move your field of vision, and getting shot to pieces by people making smaller and faster motions with their thumbs. Retired Miami-Dade teacher stirs controversy with realistic video game gun [Miami Herald]

Dragon Age: Inquisition ditches the "3," as slyly revealed during EA's E3 press conference. This decision isn't an attempt to make the name The Game Formerly Known As "Dragon Age 3" stick - EA Labels President Frank Gibeau tells IGN it's a "tactical marketing decision."

"There wasn't anything that strategic about it, to be blunt," Gibeau says. "We just wanted to draw more attention to the fact that Inquisition is an all-new chapter inside of the Dragon Age universe, as opposed to people expecting a follow-on to Dragon Age 1 and 2 in a literal, linear sense."

The word "Inquisition" needs to stand out, Gibeau says, since that's what this Dragon Age story is all about: "There's a whole bunch of gameplay and features and big story choices related to how you go through this Inquisition that happens in the world."

We're sure this is all comforting news for Joystiq's Sinan Kubba, who definitely thought he was losing it when that "3" didn't show up during the EA conference.

The Villager's haunting, dead-eyed look has gotten a lot of treatment since his introduction as a new Smash Bros. fighter, but he hasn't yet gotten the Kotaku 'Shop Contest treatment. Let's take care of that this week. While The Villager already has a submission pending on Know Your Meme, and there's a ton of crap floating around the Internet featuring him, let me remind you this contest is based on original work. So don't post other folks' .gifs or image macros or whatever down below. (In fact, while nothing is forbidden, really, image macros don't do well in this contest. I don't think one has ever been named a finalist.) Surely you've got something in mind, like Clockmocker did a week ago (above). Realize that particular image has been used so much it, or variants of it, probably won't make the cut for the finals. Or, if you're being adventurous, feel free to use other characters, either new or recurring, from Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. Google Image search! It's your friend. While most of you are smart enough to figure out how to upload images, here are some simple steps to take for those less familiar with the practice. 1. Create your 'Shop and save it to your desktop. 2. Go to the bottom of this post and click "Discuss." 3. This brings up a comment window. Click the icon that looks like a picture. 4. This brings up another window called "Insert Image." Click "Choose file" if you're uploading your 'shop from your desktop 5. Alternatively, you can upload the 'Shop to a free image hosting service. I suggest imgur. Then paste the image's URL into the field that says "Image URL." Note: this must be the URL of the image itself, not the page where it is displayed. That means the URL ends in .jpg, .gif, .png, whatever. 6. Add editorial commentary and hit submit and your image will load. If it doesn't, upload the image to imgur and paste the image URL as a comment. I promise I will look at it. 7. Large-size images may not upload properly, though we have seen some big-ass animated .gifs upwards of 5 MB. If you're still having trouble uploading the image, try to keep its longest dimension (horizontal or vertical) under 1000 pixels, or the whole thing under 2 MB. Alright! Have at it. Thanks very much for your participation. To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood.

No wires for you! (Well, a few wires actually). Depending on your living situation you might be able to lace your wall with speaker cable, but that's not an option for a lot of people, including me, and it's a pain. Enter the Vizio S4251w-B4 5.1 Soundbar, a very cool product with a terrible name. The Vizio has all the trimmings you'd expect from a budget soundbar, but pulls a Roku 3 trick by connecting the rear left and right speakers to the wireless subwoofer, effectively giving you actual 5.1 surround with a soundbar system. It's kind of cheating, and kind of brilliant. The Vizio typically retails for $330, but we recently saw Costco knock it down to an insane $230. Now Amazon has done the same, offering the product to their Prime members for $228 bucks. This is both the easiest 5.1 solution ever and the best deal on a 5.1 solution. [Amazon] This Vizio was Wirecutter's runner-up for best budget soundbar (at $330), and a previous model was Gizmodo's choice for best soundbar under $300. Note: You must be a Prime member and add the item to your cart to see the price. Here's a free Prime Trial and here's Friday's Moneysaver. Bonus Deals Games • Pre-order LEGO Marvel for any platform, get $10 Amazon credit. | via Daily Game Deals • PS3/360 Remember Me ($52) | Amazon via Daily Game Deals • PS3/360 The Walking Dead ($20) | Amazon via DealNews • PS3 Ni no Kuni ($20+shipping) | Club Namco via Ben's Bargains | Lowest ever Tech • Corsair Vengeance K60 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard ($60) | Newegg via eDealinfo | Use code EMCYTZT3662 and rebate on page • Thing that makes your computer's USB port output 5.1 sound ($40) | Amazon Media • Mad Men Season 5 [Blu-ray] ($25) | Amazon via Daily DVD Deals • Blood Simple + Fargo + Raising Arizona + Miller's Crossing [Blu-ray] ($19) | Amazon via Daily DVD Deals • Heat Steelbook [Blu-ray] ($10) | Amazon via Daily DVD Deals • Jaws [Blu-ray] ($11) | Amazon via Daily DVD Deals • Jurassic Park [Blu-ray] ($11) | Amazon via Daily DVD Deals • Rescue Me Complete Series [DVD] ($30) | Amazon via Daily DVD Deals • Here are a whole bunch of FREE .mp3's from Rolling Stone. Inventory • That sweet $10 T-shirt sale at Threadless is still going Keep up with Shane Roberts on Kinja and Twitter. Check out Dealzmodo for more great tech deals, and Deals.Kinja.com for even more discounts. This is a Moneysaver One-Shot, a post focusing on a single deal, sale, or category. Join us every weekday at 2:15pm ET for the full Moneysaver roundup, brought to you by the Commerce Team. We're here to bring Kotaku readers the best gaming deals available, and to be clear, we also make money if you buy. We want your feedback.

Welcome to Kotaku's Sunday Comics, your weekly roundup of the best webcomics, chosen by our readership. The images enlarge if you click on the magnifying glass icon in the lower right corner. Brawl In The Family by Matthew Taranto. Published June 21. Read more of Brawl In The Family Penny Arcade by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik. Published June 19. Read more of Penny Arcade Awkward Zombie by Katie Tiedrich. Published June 17. Read more of Awkward Zombie Manly Guys Doing Manly Things by Kelly Turnbull. Published June 19. Read more of Manly Guys Doing Manly Things Nerf NOW!! by Josué Pereira. Published June 20. Read more of Nerf NOW!! Brentalfloss the Comic by Brent Black, Andrew Dobson and Dan Roth. Published June 17. Read more of Brentalfloss the Comic Virtual Shackles by Jeremy Vinar and Mike Fahmie. Published June 17. Read more of Virtual Shackles Another Videogame Webcomic by Phil Chan and Joe Dunn. Published June 21. Read more of Another Videogame Webcomic Corpse Run by Alex Di Stasi. Published June 17. Read more of Corpse Run Nerd Rage by Andy Kluthe. Published June 21. Read more of Nerd Rage

I think the craziest thing about this free-to-play fighter is that the name Tekken: Revolution hasn't been used yet.

Plenty of great entries for this week's 'Shop Contest, drawing on a dynamic trio photo-op comprising Nintendo's Satoru Iwata, Reggie Fils-Aime, and Shigeru Miyamoto. How do you win with that exploitable? I'll give you advice: Go to E3, screw up like I know you will, and wind up in a barrel, like dystopika! If you're not familiar, that's a reference to Breaking Bad, as is this week's winning 'Shop (sciteach's mournful Iron Man kid was a very, very close second). Others were less subtle in their jokes, but no less hilarious either. Still, Mike, Walt and Todd getting rid of Miyamoto is the kind of dark and culturally relevant humor we like around these parts. Grats, dystopika, and all who made this week's finals! First, the exploitable everyone was using: And now the finalists: Acynyc2000 arniejolt Brandon0151 ChosenCharacter DanRather dummysystem dystopiq giantboydetective gren-aid HampstaSandwich hugmungous mac46 RJT sciteach sciteach Skyrider slushstomper

Controlling games with brainwaves is a vogue research subject—Patricia Hernandez herself tested out a demo that involved tossing trucks telekinetically—but a team of researchers have applied it to a competitive game—Pong—with the goal of allowing a paralyzed person to make the ceremonial kickoff of the 2014 World Cup. Duke University showed off its work to a summer camp meant to encourage high schoolers to pursue careers in engineering and technology. The game was developed by David Schwarz, a Duke Ph.D candidate. Their controller doesn't sound like much fun. It involves "headgear with spider-like arms, each containing a saline-soaked, felt-padded electrode." Like Patricia's experience, calibrating the device took some doing and some physical gestures for effect, but after a few tries they could manipulate the paddle with their minds only. Schwarz's lab is working to make their technology capable of controlling an exoskeleton, allowing the paralyzed to recover independence. The goal of making a ceremonial kickoff at the World Cup is one aspect of that. Students play video game with their minds at Duke [The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C.]

David Dreger, a contributor to Rooster Teeth and its Achievement Hunter video series, was found dead in a Vancouver park on Thursday, concluding a nearly monthlong search. He was 28. A cause of death has not yet been determined.

They could have put their money into more traditional businesses, like a funeral home or a dry cleaner or real estate development. Instead, the Cook Inlet Tribal Council of Alaska chose to fund a video games company. They say it's the first one in the United States owned by indigenous people. Upper One Games announced its founding this week at the Games For Change Festival in New York. USA Today reports that it will partner with E-Media, a New York-based company founded by a former Activision executive, to release two titles next year. (A screenshot of one is above). The tribe's president said they looked to video games, instead of other investments, because they wanted to connect their efforts to their youth. One title, which is planned for a commercial release, will be based on traditional Alaska stories, though subsequent efforts will explore other cultures as well. As for the studio's name, Upper One is a play on Lower 48, the term by which Alaskans commonly refer to the contiguous United States. Indigenous-owned game company making titles on culture [USA Today]

New Avengers #7: This series has been all about putting the best and brightest minds in the Marvel Universe down an incredibly slippery slope of good intentions. So far, the slide has been breakneck with a universe-threatening event—and just a little bit more moral erosion—happening just about every issue. Things quiet down a little bit here but the lack of fisticuffs makes the character tensions even more enjoyable. How good do good guys have to be to save the world? That’s debatable. But, they certainly don’t have to tell the world’s biggest tyrant what they’re up to. I’ve written before about how the Black Panther is one of my favorite superhero characters and this series has been shown off one of the reasons why. T’Challa and his unique place in the Marvel Universe serve as a window into a sort-of superpowered statecraft, which was a highlight of the Black Panther series written by Christopher Priest. In the same vein, the diplomacy that happens in New Avengers #7 juggles several world-ending situations, with the fate of each hinging on the personalities of the people having them. It’s here that writer Jonathan Hickman gets to execute some nice tweaks on how these characters are usually portrayed, ably abetted by strong Mike Deodato artwork: The impulsive Sub-Mariner extending an olive branch for peace, Dr. Doom—usually uber-confident and arrogant—inviting enemies into his home to try and extract knowledge from them or Reed Richards being cagey and even a little bit sinister in response to that. New Avengers continues to be a series where the trajectory is entertainingly difficult to predict. Yes, you know that Iron Man, Dr. Strange and the others are all heading to some sort of existential hell. But what will the stops be? Who’ll get there first? Fantastic Four #9: Remember that Von Doom arrogance I mentioned above? This issue of the main Fantastic Four book has it in spades. I know that Marvel holds writers’ summits to plan out their big events and whatnot but I have to wonder if the preponderance of Doom in this week’s comics is a happy coincidence or something intentional. What I like most about this issue is how it renders Doom’s supervillain existence as this inevitability, almost as if he’s a force of nature. The word ‘nativity’ invokes the birth of something divine and to see it used here is a great way to hammer home Dr. Doom’s standing in the Marvel Universe. Plus, I’m always a sucker for alternate realities costumes and the ones on display here are pretty damn great. My favorite? The one were we can see Doom’s face. It basically says, “Nothing happened to my face. I’m just evil, the same way I am in every other universe.”

Hey Patrick? I'm no doctor, but I don't think being upside down is a genetic trait.

This second episode of the live-action Payday 2 web series picks up where the first one left off: the crew is in the middle of robbing a bank and is about to make its escape from the vault. Payday 2 will launch on PS3, Xbox 360 and PC in August.

What's happened in the business of video games this past week ... QUOTE | "We expect the Xbox One to sell as many units as the PS4. If we are wrong, we think that Microsoft is prepared to lower price next year."—Analyst Michael Pachter, reacting to Microsoft's reversal of policies concerning connectivity and used games for the Xbox One. QUOTE | "Nintendo are brilliant about bringing people into the industry, and I think their hardware is starting to get in the way of that."—Veteran designer Peter Molyneux, talking about how the Wii U just doesn't seem to be world-changing like some earlier Nintendo hardware. QUOTE | "Massively harder. Ridiculously harder. Most of us are dead and gone."—Digital Extremes creative director Steve Sinclair, explaining what it's like for mid-size development studios these days. QUOTE | "We're a believer on the Wii U."—Martin Tremblay, Warner Brothers Interactive president, talking about how the publisher is still committed to doing more Wii U titles. QUOTE | "We're not actually talking about Wii U yet."—Call of Duty: Ghosts executive producer Mark Rubin, explaining that he really doesn't know if Activision will do a version of the game for the Wii U. STAT | $12 billion—Projected revenue from mobile gaming worldwide in 2013, according to App Annie and IDC; in-app purchases account for more than half of that, and the percentage is growing. QUOTE | "People lost friends and colleagues that they have battled through projects with."—Mark South, COO of Little Big Planet Vita developer Double Eleven, talking about the strain of downsizing the studio. QUOTE | "If you don't focus on a few features, then you're going to end up with an average, crappy game."—CD Projekt Red executive producer John Mamais talking about The Witcher 3 design process. STAT | 44%—Drop in US retail sales of entertainment software in May, according to NPD; hardware sales fell 31% and accessories fell 6%. QUOTE | "The fact is it's a tool—a weapon—wielded with a heavy hand by publishers."—Veteran designer Warren Spector, talking about the use of Metacritic in the game industry. QUOTE | "When you get criticism, that means people are paying attention to your work."—Killer is Dead developer Suda 51, responding to criticisms of how his games portray female characters. QUOTE | "It's got a lot more legs left in it and the PS4 has given it a shot in the arm."—Sony's UK managing director Fergal Gara, talking about why he thinks the PS Vita has a bright future ahead. QUOTE | "If you create that structure and have an inclusive culture, women will come to the industry."—Pernilla Alexandersson, CEO of gender equality consultancy Add Gender, talking about improving the role of women in the industry. QUOTE | "We're not gunning for Call of Duty. We're doing our thing."—Respawn co-founder Vince Zampella, talking about how his new game Titanfall is not competing with the franchise he helped create for Activision. This Week in the Business courtesy of GamesIndustry International Image by Shutterstock