Video Games Blog

Browser Pong

s1acker writes “Stewart Smith of Stewdio has created a version of Pong in HTML 5 and JavaScript, in which you play using the windows of your browser.”

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Virtual Space Station Sold For $330,000

Pirx Danford writes “The world record sale for a virtual item was surpassed yesterday by the avatar known as Buzz Erik Lightyear, when he acquired a very special piece of property. For the incredible amount of $330,000, the space station Crystal Palace has been won by Buzz in the in-game auction system of Entropia Universe. The player who won the auction is known as one of the best crafters within the game, and like with Chuck Norris jokes, there are a bunch of sayings about what Buzz Erik Lightyear can achieve.”

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Defense Grid XBLA Title Update Available

Those playing the award-winning Defense Grid: The Awakening on Xbox LIVE Arcade will receive an automatic title update when they launch the game on their Xbox 360, starting today.

The update addresses issues that have affected some users, and also addresses the game’s overall balance and scoring. This opens up the leaderboards to new competition for those looking to attain the highest scores and perfect their strategies across all of the maps and modes of the game.

Additionally, the ability to download DLC packs has now been exposed in anticipation of downloadable content coming in the near future. More on DLC will be announced in 2010. For more discussion on the title update, visit the Defense Grid forums at defensegrid.hiddenpath.com.

Here are the details on the Defense Grid update:

Issues Fixed:

• A game hang on start-up that affected some users has been fixed. If a user profile was stored on an MU, there was a chance of the game locking up with a solid white screen as it communicated with Xbox LIVE to verify the profile. This has been fixed such that there should no longer be a hang, and workarounds are no longer needed to start the game for those users. The Xbox LIVE Arcade logo screen of the updated game now has a black background rather than a white background in order to make it easy to visually identify that the game has been updated to the new version.
• Surround sound audio drop-outs have been fixed. The audio stream from the game would pause for milliseconds at certain times over optical or HDMI connections, causing some models of Audio/Video surround systems to stutter when playing back surround audio. This has been fixed.
• Cannon tower firing rates during fast forward have been fixed. Previously cannon towers would fire at twice their intended rate during fast forward. This made them twice as powerful as they should have been when fast forward was held down.
• Several Leaderboard fixes. Games played, damage done, and aliens destroyed leaderboards would at times not update when the user played a game. They now will. Mission specific leaderboards would also update the number of towers and power cores even if a new high score was not attained and this has been fixed. Borderlands modes beyond campaign or campaign challenge modes did not write to the leaderboards and now do as well.
• Some voice commentary could still be heard in the game even if the voice volume was set to zero. This has been fixed.
• The resource counter in the mission summary screen now displays more than 6 digits.

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Borderlands Mad Moxxi DLC Out Now

2K Games announced today that Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot*, the second game add-on content developed by Gearbox Software for the highly acclaimed Borderlands^TM, is now available from Xbox LIVE Marketplace for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft for 800 Microsoft Points. Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot will be available for the PlayStationNetwork beginning January 7, 2010 for $9.99 and Windows PC in early 2010. The explosive excitement of Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot further enhances Borderlands‘ reputation as one of this year’s best role playing shooter experiences.

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Google Might Get Into Hosted Gaming Via YouTube

bizwriter writes “A recent patent application from Google describes a way to provide ‘the collaborative generation of interactive features for digital videos, and in particular to interactive video annotations enabling control of video playback locations and creation of interactive games.’ Get into the description and you find it’s about building games on top of video submissions, making it sound that Google plans to extend its YouTube site into an associated gaming site.”

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Duke Nukem 3D Ported To Nokia N900

andylim writes “It looks as if Duke Nukem isn’t completely ‘nuked’ after all. Someone has ported the 90s classic on to a Nokia N900. As you’ll see in the video, you control Duke using the Qwerty keypad and shoot using the touchscreen. I’m wondering how long it will take for this to get on other mobile platforms.” In other Duke news, reader Jupix points out that 3D Realms’ CEO Scott Miller recently said, “There are numerous other Duke games in various stages of development, several due out this year. We are definitely looking to bring Duke into casual gaming spaces, plus there are other major Duke games in production.”

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OnLive One Step Closer

hysma writes “It looks like OnLive, the remote gaming system that steams HD video over the Internet, is one step closer to becoming reality, according to an article on DSL Reports in response to a lengthy video presentation by founder & CEO Steve Perlman at Columbia University. Perlman demonstrated the UI, spectating, using the service on an iPhone, and other features.”

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Graphic Novelist Calls For Better Game Violence

eldavojohn writes “Landry Walker (alternative comics creator of X-Ray Studios) has a brief opinion piece at Elder Geek asserting that all he wants for Christmas is more realistic game violence. While he acknowledges the world probably isn’t ready for it, he wishes that getting shot in a video game was a bit more like getting shot in real life. From his piece: ‘… that’s my problem with video game violence. Bullets are something we shrug off. Point blank fire with a machine gun is something that a tiny bit of flexible body armor and 20 seconds sitting on a magic invisibility inducing gargoyle can cure. Time and time again, I’ve heard people claim that they want to see a greater degree of realism in video games. But that’s a lie. We don’t want realism. We want fantasy. We want unlimited ammo and we want rapid respawns. We want to jump out of second story windows without a scratch. We want to dodge bullets and shake off mortal wounds without pause.’ What say you, reader? Would this bring a new level of impossibility to video games or would there be a way to balance this out?”

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Religion in Video Games

The Opposable Thumbs blog recently took a look at how religious themes are handled in video games. Most makers of mainstream games are hesitant, given the strong feelings of most consumers on the subject, but other companies are trying desperately to bring religion into the spotlight. Quoting: “Part of the problem is that the game industry is often touted as being a corrupting influence for the youth of the world. Criticism against the game industry has come from leaders as high up as the current Pope, and many of us who have been exposed to sermons bemoaning the influence that games and movies have on kids. Even when groups like the Christian Game Developers Foundation put out a video encouraging developers to create wholesome titles for kids, the attitude conveyed towards current members of the industry was contemptuous at best. Needless to say, games with heavy religious content are usually fringe projects, independently created and oftentimes sporting dodgy production values, because publishers wisely don’t want to risk boycotts from legions of the faithful.”

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Girl Gamers More Hardcore Than Guys

TheClockworkSoul writes “Scientific American reports on a study published this month in the Journal of Communication, which found that women who engage in a role-playing game online actually commit more time on average than the male players do. The authors surveyed 7,000 players logged in to EverQuest II (PDF), and found that the average age of the gamers surveyed was 31, and that playing time tended to increase with age. Interestingly, however, the female gamers not only tended to log more time online (29 hours per week versus 25 for the males), but were also more likely to lie about how much they really play.”

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