News
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Doom co-creator emerges from wilderness.
John Romero, the co-creator of seminal shooters Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein, has emerged from the videogame wilderness with a Facebook app.
It’s called Ravenwood Fair, and it’s a bit like FrontierVille. It’s published by the wonderfully-named LOLapps, according to VentureBeat. Screens are below. Isn’t it cute?
Romero acted as a consultant on the game. It is the first game Romero has worked on that has been released in years.
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Has beat its retreat to 2011.
The Kinect and PlayStation Move versions of Michael Jackson: The Experience have been pushed back to Q1 2011.
We had expected them this autumn. The DS, PSP and Wii versions are coming out on 26th November.
Ubisoft has plenty on its Kinect slate already for 2010: Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, Fighters Uncaged and MotionSports.
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56 million play Facebook games every day.
Of the 250 million people who play games on Facebook, around 50 million are addicted and 50 million pay to play.
Those gobsmacking numbers come from a colourful report on All Facebook, an unofficial Facebook fansite. Help was given by Nielsen, Games.com and InsiderFacebook.
The report claims there are 500 million people that use Facebook and 53 per cent of them play games. And for once, they’re not all men – 69 per cent are female.
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Real ID furore “kind of a side thing”.
World of Warcraft and StarCraft II creator Blizzard’s recent kafuffle with its fans over the use of Real ID in its forums has taught it a valuable lesson: gamers like anonymity because it ties into their desire to suspend reality.
“That’s been a very interesting thing for us to wrap our heads around at Blizzard,” Battle.net project director Greg Canessa told Gamasutra.
Weeks before StarCraft II was released Blizzard about-turned on its plan to force gamers to use their real names when posting in its forum.
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Britain’s Independent newspaper reports that a new study has proven a link between violent imagery in games and movies, and desensitization of teenage boys to actual violence. The study, which has been widely re-reported in news media and gaming sites, is being positioned as the “smoking gun” that links videogame violence and angry young men, which naturally scares a lot of gamers and makes moral grandstanders happy. The problem is that it actually does nothing of the sort… …
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BioShock is a critical darling that continues to be played and adored by roughly all of mankind, whereas Minecraft is a java-based creation game played by a niche cabal of super geniuses with either very boring desk jobs or tons of free time to kill. What happens when these two worlds collide? A fan made video that can only be described as scumtrulescent. Take a look… …
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Now that Fallout: New Vegas has been finished, released, and is making its way around homes across the country, it’s time to start messing around with it to make it even more interesting. Enter GECK… …
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Fresh on the heels of a class-action lawsuit being filed against it, social games publisher Zynga has launched an iPad version of its mega hit Farmville. So now those annoying people on the subway will have another reason to never look away from their screens when they walk through the doors… …
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EA CEO John Riccitiello reveals solid sales-dollar total for shooter series reboot, which has already sold 1.5 million units.
Yesterday, Electronic Arts tried to dispel negative press perceptions about Medal of Honor by announcing the game had sold 1.5 million units. Last week, concern over mixed reviews of the game–which is supposed to be EA’s answer to the Call of Duty series–was blamed for a one-day, 6 percent slide in EA’s stock price.
Today, EA CEO John Riccitiello explained how well the game is doing in terms of sales dollars. When asked on the Fox Business Network if publishers could gauge consumers’ appetite for games leading up to this holiday season, Riccitiello said the following:
“I think we can. For instance, a title we released a couple of weeks ago–Medal of Honor? It’s already done, in its first five days, $100 million at retail. Compare that to box office for a major movie. For instance, Social Network is out right now, and three weeks in, it has yet to get to $100 million. So when you have a single game trumping Hollywood box office in five days, it doesn’t look so bad.”
He rebuffed the host’s suggestions that reviewers had been “smacking down” Medal of Honor by calling it a “spectacular game.” “It’s a little like movie reviews–there’s an opinion for everyone,” he said. “There are some that absolutely love it; it’s gotten more 90 reviews than almost any other game we’ve seen this year, and it’s also gotten some 60 reviews.”
Riccitiello believes the review divide derives from the game’s subject matter, not its gameplay. He explained, “I think what’s happened in this case is that the battle takes place in Afghanistan. That’s a tough subject for a lot of people, and I think that’s caused some polarizing reviews.”
When the host suggested you could play as the Taliban in an early version of the game–a side now called simply “opposing force”–Riccitiello explained that the single-player portion of the game was a story of “good versus evil,” which cast players as a US serviceman. In the multiplayer, he explained, one side has to be the opponent by default. “When you played cowboys and Indians as a kid, somebody had to be the Indians. It’s not really fun if everyone’s a cowboy,” he summarized.
Medal of Honor shipped for the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 on October 12. For more information on the game, check out GameSpot’s full review
Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot
“Medal of Honor scores $100 million in 5 days” was posted by Tor Thorsen on Wed, 20 Oct 2010 15:47:22 -0700 -
Compilation of Kratos’ first two outings goes downloadable for PS3 alongside November 2 launch of Ghost of Sparta.
Get the full article at GameSpot
“God of War Collection rages on PSN” was posted by Brendan Sinclair on Wed, 20 Oct 2010 15:11:58 -0700