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GamesPosts Tagged: ‘gaming’
Two products that have gained some buzz on the showroom floor at CES this year are the Razer Edge gaming tablet and the Nvidia Shield handheld console system. Both are aimed at gamers, both put the playing experience in your hands, complete with screen. And both promise to deliver top-notch graphic performance along with smooth gameplay. Let’s take a closer look.
This Saturday marks the 25th anniversary of Warhammer 40k, which is sort of a big deal if you’re male between the ages of 13 and 60 who digs sci-fi violence and the sweet, seductive scent of acrylic paint. The franchise kicked off in 1987 as a sci-fi take on Games Workshop’s fantasy tabletop game “Warhammer.” From there, it steadily sucked in sci-fi influences to become its own distinct world: novels, movies, video games and of course vast armies of tiny soldiers.
I grew up painting figurines and playing war games with my dad, so I have a warm place in my heart for Games Workshop. But the don’t pay me to reminisce. They pay me to bring the science. So here, for your enjoyment, are five sciencey reasons to be thankful for the Warhammer 4oK universe:
I have yet to play the hit role-playing game “Skyrim,” but more than a few tales of gamer obsession leave me hesitant to test its waters. After all, do I really have time for a game that’s “better than real life?” And what am I to make of the gamer who filled his home with the beheaded female corpses?
I enjoy a good blood-soaked video game romp as well as the next guy, but stuff like this really makes me ponder the effects of violent video games on the human psyche. Just consider this recent Indiana University School of Medicine study, which suggests violent video games alter brain areas involved in inhibition and emotional modulation.
To catch up anybody not in the know — last August, Web comic Penny Arcade posted a strip commenting on the absurdity and moral ambiguity of MMORPGs. Its content, and the creators’ response to criticism, has led to a fair amount of backlash on the Web. After the jump is some background and links to five objective discussions of the matter.
Movies aren’t the only thing going 3D. NVIDIA has been hyping its 3D gaming features in 2010. Its latest graphics card can now support multiple monitors in 3D – It is called 3D Vision Surround. You can see a demo of the three-screen rig at the end of this video…
If you follow my personal Twitter, you may have read my blathering about swing dancing and the awesomeness therein. I took my first swing class in April from a group called Down South Swing, and since then, things have … escalated. I’ve taken all the swing classes Down South Swing currently offers, plus courses in Charleston and Lindy hop, and I have more classes on the horizon over the next couple of months. This weekend, I made it to a dance at Georgia Tech, and while I was there, it struck me … social dancing is a lot like gaming. Find out how after the jump.
Let’s talk Tetris, shall we? HowStuffWorks certainly has its share of gamers, Robert, Jonathan and Tracy among them. (Check out Tracy’s recent GameCrush post if you don’t believe me.) Lacking the skills, I’m not among them, but even I have dabbled in Tetris. And when I say “dabbled,” I mean consumed by the simple game to the point that I had a hard time removing myself from my roommate’s computer to complete my college thesis. I even dreamed about Tetris.
This talk is given by Carnegie Mellon Professor, Jesse Schell (who also runs a game design company and formerly worked at Disney). If you have ever thought about creating a video game, or any computer game, his half-hour talk is both enlightening and amusing. He looks at the dramatic changes that have occurred in the […]
That sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Except I’m not talking about playing video games, I mean programming them. Perhaps that’s slightly less fun, but still I think it’d be neat to design a game. But I had no idea how serious so many colleges and universities were about it until I ran across Don Reisinger’s post on CNET a few minutes ago.
Massively multiplayer online role playing games — or MMORPGs — are games in which a player takes on a fictional persona in a virtual world. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about MMORPGs, and why they’ve become so popular.
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