Marathon and Marathon 2: Durandal are available as iOS apps. The classic Marathon Spoiler Guides might be good companions.
DoubleHappy Game Creator
DoubleHappy, by Instinct, the same folks who make the GetShopped ecommerce plugin for WordPress, is an interesting game creation tool. All the game elements are stored in WordPress using custom post types and other advanced features, but it was their demo of the HTML5 editor that most amazed me. The games still play in Adobe […] » about 100 words
Video Game Controller Family Tree
Sock Master did some outstanding work tracing the lineage of video game controllers from 1977 to now without missing any of the weirdness in between. » about 100 words
Retro Atari 2600 Video Game Cover Art
Sure you played Asteroids and Defender, but did you play these?
Somebody Somewhere Is Starting The Gamer’s Rights Movement
Annalee Newitz tells me that video game developers are looking for cheaters by installing spyware with their games. Blizzard, developer of World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo is among the biggest names doing this. Greg Hoglund, quoted at Copyfight, notes: I watched the [software] warden sniff down the email addresses of people I was communicating […] » about 300 words
Game Law Redux
Matt says my attempts to analogize online roleplaying games to more familiar contests like chess or automobile racing are “just silly.” But his response appears to reinforce my point rather than refute it. It is the responsibility of the gamers and gaming organizations to create and enforce rules. People violating those rules are subject to […] » about 300 words
Wide World of Video Games
Matt started talking up the weird issues developing around multiplayer online games a few weeks ago. Then soon after he blogged it, a story appeared in On the Media (listen, transcript)
Short story: online gaming is huge — one developer claims four million paying customers. More significantly, the interplay between real and virtual worlds might create new challenges for this real world legal system. “Theft” of in-game money and equipment among players in the online world is possible, but it’s lead to the real-world arrest of at least one person and the murder of another when authorities refused to act.
One argument is that these games occupy players time and cost money, so in-game theft results in real-life loss. Baloney. Chess and Monopoly occupy great deals of time, but try telling the cops I rooked your knight. Money? A huge number of Americans invest time and money on building and racing cars on the approximately 1800 racetracks around the country. Real time and and hard-earned money are lost when cars crash, but the track has its own rules “rubin’s racin, Cole” — and none of us would excuse a driver for off-track violence against a competitor.