#pax
With vibrant colours and fluffy puppies, Okami should be the stuff of dreams. This? This will haunt me the rest of my living days. As seen on Game Informer. More »
#nsfw
Uwe Boll, the German filmmaker best known for his film versions of video games, is helming two movies about World War II. Both films were shot back-to-back. One is based on a video game and features zombie Nazis. The other? More »
#pc
Markus Persson, aka Notch, the man behind current cult darling Minecraft, has revealed that he's about to get a little more serious, setting up a studio and hiring some help to work on a new game. More »
#yakuza
Sega is releasing a new Yakuza crime game this month in Japan. This game already has a title — Yakuza: New Chapter Black Panther. The Japanese company has another new Yakuza game. This game doesn't not have a title. More »
The very same mall we walked through to enter the inaugural PAX East this past March just saw a heavy influx of Lemmings, care of the folks at ZUG and "a few dozen" of their "closest friends." The video contains at least one water-based Lemming fatality -- you've been warned!
#xbox360
Despite being one of the cooler elements of Kinect's original E3 2009 reveal, the ability to "scan" real world objects and use them in games won't make the peripheral's launch. But that doesn't mean the tech is forgotten about. More »
#idoru
Haruna Anno is not a simply an idol. Run-of-the-mill idols aren't kick ass at Street Fighter and... Spelunker. Anno is a game idol. And she's got Atari raincoats to prove it? More »
#piracy
Earlier this week, Nintendo quietly released a firmware update for its DSi handhelds, the sole purpose of which seems to be to stop people from using flashcarts on their consoles. More »
Creat's support for the PlayStation Network seemingly has no end. Although the studio's TerRover was just released this week, Creat has already revealed its next game: Skyfighter, an "unabashedly retro" side-scrolling shooter. The gameplay looks straightforward -- players take control of a small fighter plane, gunning and bombing over 21 levels -- but that's to be expected of a title from a studio whose previous works include Hamster Ball and Smash Cars. Skyfighter will also have a multiplayer mode, but TheSixthAxis reports that it will be offline only.
Surprisingly, the game is arriving on the PlayStation Store for PS3 in just a "few weeks" time. Perhaps Creat wants Skyfighter to fly under the radar -- but we're certain the sales team wouldn't appreciate that.
#clips
This winter, an animated feature film version of Japanese soccer role-playing game Inazuma Eleven will be hitting theaters in The Land of the Rising Sun. More »
While PS3 owners are already enjoying the demo for Tecmo Koei's Quantum Theory, it looks like the denizens of Xbox Live will have to wait a little longer. Unfortunately, we don't have a solid date for the demo's Xbox debut, with an official announcement saying simply that it will arrive "later this month."
Don't worry about it too much though, we're sure you'll find something to keep you busy for the rest of the month.
#internet
Google launched a new search service today, which returns query results as you type them in. Let's see how it handles some of the most popular video game series. More »
Google has been long-admired for its unique company motto: "Don't Be Evil." Critics will note that some of Google's practices have fallen from that mantra, but it's a better place to start than, say, Zynga, the company known for the popular Facebook games FarmVille and Mafia Wars. "Zynga's motto is 'Do Evil,'" a former employee of the company told SF Weekly. "I would venture to say it is one of the most evil places I've run into, from a culture perspective and in its business approach. I've tried my best to make sure that friends don't let friends work at Zynga."
The driving force behind this bitterness and resentment of Zygna is the company's derivative culture. "You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers," one employee recalls Zynga's founder, Mark Pincus, telling the team. The SF Weekly report shows clear examples of Zygna's copy-paste attitude: there's Farm Town (pictured right), which preceded FarmVille (left) by months; and Playfish's Restaurant City, coming before Zynga's Cafe World.
Zygna has already been sued by Digital Chocolate for the use of the Mafia Wars name. According to another employee, lawsuits have been accounted for, with the company mindful of possible settlements. "I was around meetings where things like that were being discussed, and the ramifications of things like that were being discussed -- the fact that they'd probably be sued by the people who designed the game," he says. "And the thought was, 'Well, that's fine, we'll settle.' Our case wasn't really defensible."
Supposedly, things are changing. With hundreds of millions of dollars invested in the company, the public has been placing much more attention on Zynga's upcoming games. The era of the quick copy-paste cash-in may be over for Zynga, with at least one employee saying that there's a "new emphasis on original content and more sophisticated applications to draw in and keep users."
