Exactly how much is a rupee in The Legend of Zelda? Apparently $3 in US currency. How is this useful or practical to anyone? It isn’t, of course. In an article that only a nerd could love, Maxim has taken seven video game currencies and converted them to US dollars.
Should life be more like video games? Is such a proposition even possible? Jane McGonigal thinks so. What does she mean? McGonigal believes that games are simply more rewarding than real life and that people would respond better to a real world with game-like attributes.
But just who is Jane McGonigal and why should anyone care? She’s a senior researcher at the Institute for the Future, but you can simply call her a futurist. It’s her job to predict how the latest fad might shape the landscape of the future.
No, she does not believe the world needs magic mushrooms that will make people grow, or ghosts chasing people through the super market. She does, however, believe that a major flaw of reality is that it simply isn’t as rewarding as games. If you get up and go to work everyday, there is very little actual feedback given from reality other than a paycheck. Compare that with a video game where you are constantly given feedback about how well you are doing your job and even tips on how to do it better. (more…)
As video games becomes bigger business in the world of media, so do the films based upon them and centering around the culture of gaming. Three new film projects are making news for gamers.
First, is the new Max Payne film. Based off the two game series, the film starts Mark Wahlberg (The Departed) and is directed by John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines). The movie is currently slated for release in 2009. Above you will see one of the first pictures of Wahlberg on the set, apparently in costume. It isn’t much to look at, and the film itself seems like even less of a big deal. Is anyone really clamoring for a Max Payne film after all these years? Click the image for a larger version. (more…)
Bobby Kotick is a happy guy right now. With the upcoming Vivendi merger, which will bring Blizzard and World of Warcraft under the Activision umbrella, the sky is the limit for what Kotick’s company can do.
At the recent Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in California, the CEO of Activision discussed how they would use Blizzard’s expertise in the world of online gameplay to help open a new door for some of the company’s best selling titles. Starting with the Guitar Hero franchise, Kotick proposed using Blizzard’s “institutional expertise” to bring PC editions of Guitar Hero to the “roughly 300,000 game rooms between China and Korea.” This would be a feat definitely not insurmountable considering the popularity of the title and the fanatical gaming community in Korea. (more…)
Women may be gaining ground in a male dominated society in the real world (see Hillary Clinton), but what about in the virtual world? Well, they’re getting there. Sony’s new spy themed console MMO is even concerned with “technical” details such as the difference between A-line and pencil skirts. It’s a brace new world for traditionally sexist game design, indeed.
Tale of Sony’s attention to detail comes from MTV’s Multiplayer blog and their interview with Sherry Floyd of SOE Seattle. Floyd works on the art content for The Agency. It’s all part of a bigger piece on Sony’s initiative to get more women into game design through the G.I.R.L. (Gamers In Real Life) scholarship program for women wanting to study game design in college. Floyd noted about the game she is working on (more…)
Not that there is anything wrong with it, but over half of men and nearly three quarters of women play MMOs as the opposite sex. That’s right, that cute elf warlock you’ve had your eye on the past few weeks might actually be a dude. It’s not quite The Crying Game, but more like the ending of the first Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
The findings come from a study at Nottingham Trent University. T hey found that 54% of men liked to play as women, while 70% of women liked to play as men. Chief researcher Zaheer Hussain explains, “It seems that women gender swap for a variety of reasons, such as to avoid unsolicited male approaches on their female characters, or because they felt male characters were treated better by other males during the course of the game.” You mean, female gamers are tired of being treated poorly by male gamers? Sadly, that probably does come as a shock to many.
As for the bigger news of cyber-cross-dressing, how in the world will Halo players deal with such news? Anyone who has played that game has dealt with the rampant homophobia and racism spouted over Xbox Live. Perhaps they are simply women pretending to be ignorant 13-year-old boys? Probably not. (more…)
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