Famicom 1983

Heroes of the App Games

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 20:24:46 +0000

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have an Angry Birds and Doodle Jump mashup, just to see which of your favorite video game app heroes would win in a brawl? Well, I have. Yes, I have, and I bet you have too. I was checking out the gaming channel on DirecTV in New Mexico the other day and one guy was talking about Battleground’s King and little minions going up against Defend-G’s comparatively high tech fighting power and what an epic fail that would be for Battleground. It thought it was funny, so I decided to do a little web search and see if other people had similar ideas.

That’s when I came across a neat infographic that actually pairs up popular iPhone gaming app heroes against each other and sorts them by four categories: speed, skill, strength, and smarts. Depending on how highly the heroes score in each of those categories, the outcome varies from set to set. It’s kind of a nice way to get a visual for an imaginary romp through app games that takes your main characters out of context.

Social Gaming by the Numbers Graphic

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 19:07:15 +0000

Social gaming is a massive venue. It’s currently estimated that more than 232 million users play games from developer Zynga on a monthly basis. The majority of online and social gaming has taken place on Facebook in recent years, but now Google’s social network, Google+, has started to rock the gaming world with its recent announcement that it would be launching a new social games service, which it has indeed launched.

Despite offering players 16 games including the popular Angry Birds and Bejeweled Blitz, offering software developers more generous financial terms than competitors, and gaining a huge amount of sign-ups since coming out of its closed beta status last month, Google+ still lags behind Facebook in the realm of social gaming, possibly because people already used to Facebook don’t see the point in trying something new.

Who is playing all of these social games? What are the demographics of the people contributing the most to their popularity within social networks, and which games are the hottest? Check out this infographic for more data on the state of social gaming:

What Makes a Game Truly Great?

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 15:57:51 +0000

Just like in the world of fiction writing, game story development plays a critical role in the success of the game. Almost as important as its graphics, user controls, and playability across a variety of platforms (or a single console), the game story is what most people will still remember years after the big boss has been defeated and the light has returned to some dreary kingdom they spent a few virtual weeks in. It’s not going to be the key combinations for the special attacks that are retold over and over and over again – but the action, in story form, as a narrative is what people will share with their friends.

Case in point: you aren’t going to say “Man, it’s the best game ever because when you hit A and B while pressing the Z button, your character gets this leaping slice attack with his sword that looks really cool!” But you might say, “It’s the best game ever, and it was hard to defeat Qwizmo the Terrible. I had to go through eight caves in an underground ice palace that had been buried following the departure of Princess Nunya twelve years ago. I had to beat these three big dudes with special powers like lightning, fireblast, and treecalling before I could get to Qwizmo. By the time I did, my energy was all depleted and if it hadn’t been for this super powerful fairy from another dimension, I would have been toast! But she saved me, and after a fight that lasted a long time, I finally beat Qwizmo when I realized his weakness is gravity and used my magnetic blade enhancer to attract him to the ground, then cast a critical lightning strike from my enchanted weapon that did him in.”

See? Much more interesting conversation. And it’s about the plot, not necessarily the technical specs.

One of the most memorable and well loved story-centric game series’ of all time is The Legend of Zelda. The hero, Link, is basically the same throughout all versions of this game — but story continuity is often lacking between titles, and Link has emerged from a variety of similar backgrounds. The games are not a continuous or even synchronous story. Link appears in many incarnations throughout the series, sometimes as a very young boy, and others at various ages through young adulthood. He has been human, but also has been a Hylian (an elf-like humanoid inhabitant of the world of the Legend of Zelda games.) Sometimes he is aided by a special friend, such as his horse Epona, or the fairy Navi. He is normally on a mission to assist Princess Zelda of Hyrule in some regard against the antagonist Ganon (Ganondorf.) It is a timeless story where magic, enchanted weapons and items, puzzles, and music all come together to help the hero get through the game. This is what makes a game truly great.

College Degrees in Game Design

Fri, 20 May 2011 18:26:19 +0000

We all love gaming, but did you know you can make a sweet and high paying career out of your favorite hobby? You can actually go to college and major in game design, and go on to help create some of the world’s most excellent games. Here is a list of some of the top colleges offering gaming degrees, so fill out your FAFSA and let’s get started!

University of Southern California, Interactive Media Division

Location: Los Angeles, CA

Degrees offered: Major/Minor
Student/Faculty ratio: 9:1
Annual tuition: $38,570

DigiPen Institute of Technology

Location: Redmond, WA

Degrees offered: Major/Minor/Conc.
Student/Faculty ratio: 12:1
Annual tuition: $476 per credit

Drexel University, RePlay (Digital Media & Computer Science)

Location: Philadelphia, PA

Degrees offered: Major/Minor/Conc.
Student/Faculty ratio: 9:1
Annual tuition: $29,800

Becker College, Game Design and Game Programming

Location: Worcester, MA

Degrees offered: Major/Concentration
Student/Faculty ratio: 39:1
Annual tuition: $23,725

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences

Location: Troy, NY

Degrees offered: Major/Minor/Conc.
Student/Faculty ratio: 14:1
Annual tuition: $38,100

The Art Institute of Vancouver, Game Art & Design/Visual & Games Programming

Location: Vancouver, BC (Canada)

Degrees offered: Concentration
Student/Faculty ratio: N/A
Annual tuition (GAD): $25,352 (international); $22,835 (domestic)

Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Interactive Media and Game Development (IMGD)

Location: Worcester, MA

Degrees offered: Major
Student/Faculty ratio: 14:1
Annual tuition: $36,890

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab

Location: Cambridge, MA

Degrees offered: None
Student/Faculty ratio: 7:1
Annual tuition: $37,510

Now that you have some of the basic information you need to check out these schools’ individual programs, you can look them up online to learn the details. In addition to the colleges listed in this article, you may find other schools offering courses and certifications, if not degrees, in game theory and design. Some of these can even be taken partially or entirely online — a real plus for non-traditional students, or those constrained by the demands of working full time. Often, distance learning modules can be much more convenient for students, but can lack the personal and hands on experience of being in a physical classroom. This is particularly true for people studying programming and design. cable bundles

So, weigh your options carefully and choose what is best for you. You might be surprised at how easy it is to find a major in video game design, and at all the opportunities you will have once you have completed your course work. It’s a booming field right now, and you should expect to learn not only the kinds of design theories involved in console gaming, but also the emerging mobile gaming markets.

Console vs Gaming rig–Which is Better?

admin — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 13:16:31 +0000

Well the debate has been going on for quite awhile now. Which is better, the console or the gaming rig? There are die hard fan boys on both sides of the aisle, but we will try to look at the issue from a non-fan boy perspective. Simply put, which one will give you the better gaming experience, the console or the gaming PC.

The Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 are quite popular and are priced around $199 to $299. They all have a pretty impressive line up of games and offer the ability to play online. Some games are available for the PS3 that are not available for the Xbox 360, and vice versa. A lot of avid gamers own two out of three of these consoles or all three consoles. Even though the technology for these consoles came out 5-6 years ago, the Xbox 360 and PS 3 still boast rather impressive graphics and game play.

The thing we should look at here is the price of the consoles. They are relatively cheap and they give a great gaming experience. You only have to pay $199-$299 and you are good to go for a number of years. This is usually good enough for the casual gamer, but the more demanding gamer might want more. That is where PC gaming comes into play.

With PC gaming you can create your own gaming machine. You can decide if you want a budget rig with a $400 budget or you want a state-of-the-art rig that costs $2,500 The graphics that some of the higher end gaming PCs produce are breathtaking. Being able to run a game like Crysis at the highest settings is an unbelievable experience, especially if you have the right monitor to view it on. If you decide to go mid-range and spend about $800-$1000, you will still build a gaming machine that is vastly superior to any console that is currently on the market. This gaming pc should last you about 2-3 years. The good thing is that in 2-3 years, you may only need to upgrade the graphics card and you should be good for another 2-3 years.

The console vs gaming rig argument basically comes down to money. If you have the money to build a great gaming PC, do it and you will not regret the experience. It should be noted that this pc will not only be used for gaming. You can use it for all other PC related activities, so that should be a factor to consider. If you can’t afford the money for a nice gaming pc, the consoles will do just fine.

There is just so much more you can do with a gaming PC than you can do with a console. Nobody is going to ban you from online play if you modify your gaming rig. If you modify your Xbox 360 or PS3, you will get booted from online play permanently.

The Importance Of Gaming

admin — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 13:15:56 +0000

When you are looking to play games all the time it can be difficult at times to find the reasons why you should play some games. Once you know that these games can help improve your hand to eye coordination, they will help you in getting to expand your imagination, and they will be able to help you in learning about different lands it could be easy to see that this is the best choice available for your needs in entertainment and learning process.

Improving your coordination between your hands and eyes is a good thing. When you do this, it will be easy to see that you can start to do other tasks that you may have never thought possible before. However, you will also find that you may finally have the upper hand when it comes time for the typing contests or other things that you have to do in a competition type setting to help you land some of the jobs that you want to have to help you with your employment.

Expanding your imagination is something that you may want to think about all the time. However, you could find that you may not be able to expand on this from time to time because you are not able to figure out what you want to think about. When you playing the games, though, you will discover that you can feel like you are moving into the make believe worlds that are present in the games. Then you will be able to enjoy the expansion on your imagination because you will be placing yourself into the setting of each of your characters that you are playing on the game.

Some of the games that you can find for your system will be educational in nature. If they are educational, you will find that you can learn something new each time that you decide to play the games. piracy protection Then you will not have to worry about people telling you that you are wasting your time while playing, but instead you could prove to them that you are learning by showing off your vast knowledge of items that they may have never heard about before because they do not play the games.

Being able to explain to people why you play games as often as you do can be a challenge at times. That is when you should know about the importance of this and how you can explain it to people. Once you know about this, it will be easy to let people know about why you are playing the games and that could easily help sway them to your point of view in wanting to learn about the games as well. Some of the reasons that you can tell them about is the improve coordination of your hands and eyes, the ability to expand your imagination in a make believe world, and the learning that you can have from some of the educational games that are available for you to play on.