Gamer Culture

I recently took a trip to Toronto, Ontario to celebrate my birthday with my twin sister (albeit a bit belatedly).  We saw some of our extended family, went to a Jays game (they lost, unfortunately), and spent some time at the ROM.  None of this is important (well, at least in the context of this blog), since I also spent some time in the Ontario Science Centre, and their special exhibit, Game On 2.0.

In the words of the Science Centre:

[On] Sept. 26, 1969, a radio signal over 1.5 billion light years away struck a circuit that raised the curtain at the Science Centre’s official opening. It was one of the world’s first interactive science museums.  The Science Centre has since welcomed more than 46 million visitors for a range of fascinating experiences in science and technology. It is one of Ontario’s most significant cultural attractions, focused on interactivity and hands-on learning for visitors of all ages.

An exhibition about gaming seems right at home. more »

The month of June is always a special month for me. My birthday is in June, and Mario Marathon hosts an event to help fund my favorite charity, Child’s Play. Some of you may be asking yourselves, “What are these events? Why are they important?” Well, I’m glad you asked. more »

There has been a trend developing recently in the indie game world.  A lot of people have been giving certain developers flak for what they view as ‘being uncreative’, and making games with a similar style to countless other recent games.  For starters, recently there have been a lot of ‘silhouette’ games, in terms of graphical presentation, and many players view this art direction as a sign of a lazy developer, particularly given how popular the style is becoming in some recent indie titles.  This ‘oversimplification’ applies not just to the visual presentation of some of these games, but also to the user interface, game play, and various other elements of the game.  However, some of these games are completely, utterly unique in many ways, and are often viewed as a cross between game and art.  Let’s take a look at a couple from European developers Boss Baddie.

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When MLG (Major League Gaming) announced the player swap program with the GSL (Gom Star League), there was a lot of discussion.  Was MLG getting more out of the deal? Were the foreign players getting the short end of the stick with only a Code A placement?  Regardless of how you felt, everyone was excited to see a cast of pro Korean players come down to participate at MLG Dallas:  MMA, Moon, LoSirA, and Bomber; and then, as if that were not enough at the last second Bomber had to drop out (for visa reasons) and was replaced by the Kratoss himself oGsMC.  Had the God of War arisen to deny foreign players even this tournament?

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In a world where most media forms are available as illegal, free copies before they are even available legally, people are constantly faced with the decision of whether to purchase legal copies of their games.  For some people, the fact that pirated games are illegal is a sufficient reason to avoid them.  But as one of our newer users, Sandeepan, asked recently, are there other reasons why gamers should purchase legal copies of games rather than pirate them?  Answers from several different users made a compelling case that yes, there are.

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Video games are addictive. There are plenty of studies on this. For most games, this is not intentional, because they only had a one-time payment of ¤50.* However, lately, games include DLC for a price, and it becomes more important to keep the player addicted. MMOs were the first to do this, but now it’s leaking into other types of games as well. In this article, I’m focusing on everyone’s favourite war-themed hat simulator, Team Fortress 2. more »

Every hardcore gamer might be familiar with this problem: after an all night gaming session, it becomes very hard to get to sleep! Images of those headshots keep shooting through your head, and it may take quite some time before you finally catch some sleep.

David therefore asked for some kind of trick to calm down after a gaming session. Well David, here are the 7 best ways to do so!

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Team Fortress 2 has been running a charity drive for the recent Japan disasters in a unique manner.  Between March 23^rd and April 6^th, Valve is selling three hats and two noisemakers in TF2’s in-game store with all proceeds from them going to support the Red Cross’s efforts in Japan.

Who would buy such a thing?  Well, I would for one.  On March 29^th, Valve noted that they had sold $300,000 USD worth of these items.

For reference, the items being sold are:

• Humanitarian’s Hachimaki – 7.49 USD
• Benefactor’s Kanmuri – 19.99 USD
• Bell Noisemaker – 1.99 USD
• Gong Noisemaker – 0.49 USD
• Japan Charity Bundle – 29.96 USD, including all of the above
• Magnanimous Monarch – 99.99 USD

  (Why are the images featuring the RED Spy? Well… check out my StackExchange avatar!)

You’ll see more articles from me down the line, likely about Team Fortress 2, with maybe a little World of Warcraft or Monday Night Combat thrown in.

DATELINE TARSONIS SECTOR… no, wait.  I made that joke once before and no one thought it was funny.  Let’s skip that and boil down to the TSL.  For those of you who aren’t giant Brood War nerds who dream about watching MenSol[ZerO] from an Opera balcony in a tuxedo, you’re probably unfamiliar with the history of the TSL.  Back in the dark ages of Brood War, if you wanted to be a professional StarCraft player, but didn’t want to transplant yourself to Seoul, there weren’t many options available to you.  These days, a $30,000 tournament doesn’t seem to turn heads, but once upon a time you were lucky to find a $200 tournament.  WCG, was the only place for American StarCraft players to compete.  Many of the big names today were once WCG medalists (Day9, Artosis, Idra, iNcontroL).  But WCG wasn’t that often, and the tournaments were small.  So a small group of gamers, under the name TeamLiquid, started up their own tournament and even managed to land Razer as their backer.  For North American Progamers, this was a landmark moment. more »

Welcome to PAX

For those of you who didn’t make it to PAX this weekend, you have my most sincere sympathy; it truly is an amazing experience for a gamer.  From playing Duke Nukem Forever on the expo floor to listening to Scott and Kris talking about making blamimations to watching Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins play D&D, there really is nothing quite like PAX; I highly recommend attending if you find yourself in the Seattle or Boston area.  I’m sure you’ve seen some of the news for Duke Nukem Forever or Final Fantasy 14, but there are a lot of games shown off at PAX.  For those of you who couldn’t make it out this year, I thought I might review some of the lesser known titles which were shown off at PAX this year. more »