Gazerk: The Gamer Search Engine

Ziff-Davis has launched a search engine to "to provide users a multi-dimensional view of search results, placing web content into categories specifically relevant to gamers: game reviews, cheats and screenshots" called Gazerk which seems to work more or less as advertised. It's a pretty intelligent ploy for old ZD and will probably be a new way I can find sites blocked by the corporate firewall.




tagged: game, gaming

Break Into Games Competition

At E3, the world listened to Microsoft's founder Bill Gates single out GarageGames' Marble Blast Ultra as his six-year-old son's favorite game. On June 5th, 2006, GarageGames will again stand out from the crowd as they launch the B.I.G. (Break Into Games) Competition -- the nation's most exhaustive search to showcase America's greatest independent videogame developers. Culminating with a light-hearted American Idol style finale, the entrants and winners will vie for prizes including professional gaming hardware and coveted publishing deals with GarageGames and its partners.

All B.I.G. entrants will be given the opportunity to build their game prototypes with a free trial version of the impressive, new Torque Game Builder (TGB) from GarageGames, which will empower them to build amazing games from scratch and compete for top prizes and recognition. Said GarageGames President Mark Frohnmayer, "We've seen compelling games prototypes created with TGB in one to two weeks."

-- American Idol for Indie Video Game Developers?

Despite that being the most inane press release title of the century, I can attest that the Torque Game Builder (formely known as Torque 2D) is pretty decent stuff. Well worth a trial. The Break Into Games competition sounds pretty neat, but sadly I can't find any more info on it on GarageGames' site.




tagged: game, gaming

Seattle Times Disses On Da Vinci Game

By now, odds are that you've read "The Da Vinci Code," seen the Tom Hanks movie, picketed about one or the other somewhere, or sued author Dan Brown. And you might not immediately think that the story — about an American professor and a French cryptographer racing to decipher clues that will shake the Catholic Church — lends itself easily to a video game.

It doesn't.

This mix of abstruse puzzle-solving, stealth and awkward fighting is like a video-game celise. (That's the spikey thing that Silas the killer albino monk, and other especially zealous members of the ultra-conservative Opus Dei sect, wrap around their thighs for penance.)

-- "Da Vinci" is labored fighting, thick codes: Pray for patience


tagged: game, gaming

Listen To The Cat

In a early morning coffee haze, this seems really funny:



From LCLS's photostream.




tagged: cat, gaming

HDMI Not A Problem?

Joystiq is trying to explain why HDMI isn't quite the deal most people are making it out to be. It seems the real necessity to have HDMI to produce 1080p content is the DRM for playback which would insist on an encrypted feed. Wow, Sony's crazy DRM concepts are shooting a bullet into their crazy format concepts which is dragging down their crazy pricing concepts.

Go figure.

The illustrious Boing Boing has more on this:

Of course, no customer wants this. It's crazy to think that there are manufacturers out there who are devoting engineering resources to purposely degrading the quality of their products. Especially since there's very little HDMI equipment in the field today -- chances are the high-def screen you have in your house today is plugged into a PC, and isn't HDMI-ready at all. No reason not to use these cheap, plentiful screens with high-def players, except for the cartel's insistence that you shouldn't.

The agreement to stay away from the image constraint token for four or six years is a way to get around this. If the DRM is kept switched off for the first 4-6 years, there's an opportunity to lure people into accepting it -- to buy into devices, media, players, screens, storage and other components with HDMI crippleware within, but inactive.

-- HDMI, the Manchurian DRM - a Broadcast Flag dormant until 2010



tagged: sony, gaming

Wired On Dual Card Graphics

Even with today's systems, there are caveats. Don't expect dual graphics cards to offer much improvement in older titles such as Quake 3, Unreal Tournament or Half-Life 2, or in other games that rely more on CPU computation and less on graphics processing. The frame rates might even decrease when playing some older games using SLI or CrossFire dual-graphics cards compared to using a single card, especially if the monitor resolution is set to a low value.

Despite those shortcomings, component makers are betting on increased demand for multiple-graphics-cards systems. High-end motherboards with four or more graphics-card slots will see wide-scale deployment next year, ATI's Raja said. Indeed, Nvidia already sells quad-SLI-enabled graphics cards, but adoption remains limited to the ultra-high-end gamer set due to high cost, availability of motherboards and driver issues.

-- Doom 3 Like You've Never Seen

I get more gloomy about PC gaming's future as I think about it. And trust me ... I don't want to be that guy. I've been an advocate of PC gaming since the 386. However, with the 360 and the PS3 emerging it seems that PC's real strength is the ability to chock so much hardware into a box that nobody's console will able to compete. Cell processor? Meet dual 7800s on my 64bit beast! ..... which cost me three grand. People are out there, right now, complaining about spending $600 for a machine which will undoubtably perform much better than your average $1,000 computer ... and still do all the media playing you need. Provided you aren't planning on writing a paper, there's no reason either the 360 or PS3 couldn't be made to perform most of a PC's common task. Games, web, email and IM. Heck, pretty soon my DS will be capable of that.



tagged: pc, gaming

Chris Bateman's Play With Fire

Chris, known to some around these parts from his Only A Game blog, has announced that his game previously known as Fireball will be henceforth known as Play With Fire and also mentions that it's possibly to get the hook up with Manifesto Games. For more on the game's mechanics, check out a first look at it.



tagged: game, gaming

Guardian on "Live Anywhere"

As Jez comments on Joystiq, the kind of pervasiveness promised by Microsoft through this service could create revolutionary access and consumption of massively multiplayer online games. I propose that it will also enhance the potential social aspects of offline/single-player products as well. Xbox360's Live is already a kind of meta-game in which members of the community "play" with reputation and trade. They may not be explicit aims of the service, but these factors have proved to be a large part of the fun. We've already seen this emergent meta-playfulness in many online games.

-- Pervasive gaming brought to you from Microsoft

I remain skeptical that, like many of Microsoft's initiatives when they first launch, it will be able to live up to the hype it produces. Microsoft will often try and brand (and rebrand) technology surrounding their core interests with ideas but often not fulfilling the potential (until perhaps much later on).

Still, Sony should be peering over their shoulder here. It's a lot better to have something like Live Anywhere to talk about than nothing at all.



tagged: microsoft, gaming

Lost: The Video Game

Not just freeze frames or ARG style campaigns ... next is a title out by Ubisoft Montreal:

While the details have yet to be ironed out, Bruce Gersh, senior vice president of business development with ABC Entertainment, says ABC hopes to broaden the show's appeal with an interactive experience unlike any other.

"As we are developing this game, we'll be keeping in mind the core viewer, but also the core player," he said. "We're gonna have a lot of fun with it."

Gersh points out that while the show's characters will likely be involved in some way, the creation of the game may lead to new characters that could have the chance to jump out of the game and into the show

-- Get 'Lost' in New Video Game



tagged: lost, gaming

Da Vinci Movie Breaks Expectations

The reviews may have panned it, the games surrounding it might flop ... but the movie did better than analysts predicted.

Real Life Katamari

Slideshow also available. Via Boing Boing


tagged: katamari, gaming

Massive Mugen 2D Fighter Tournament

Mugen is a fighting game engine which "allows for anyone to create characters, stages, and other game objects through interpreted text files and graphics and sound compilations". Someone has taken this to compile a massive tourney of over 700 classic fighting characters (digg it). While it might not resolve all of those "Scorpion versus Spiral" debates echoing through hallowed halls, it should be hilarious.


tagged: game, gaming

Sony's Short Term Strategy

Apparently several of Sony's launch titles might not make it for, you know, launch. In response to this, Sony's David Reeves says "we have built up a certain brand equity over time since the launch of PlayStation in 1995 and PS2 in 2000 that the first five million are going to buy it, whatever it is, even it didn't have games".

The more I read about the PlayStation 3's launch ... the more I think that Sony's short term strategy is that they don't have a short term strategy. Competitive pricing? Nope. Great launch library? Apparently not. And that's likely both games and Blu-Ray. Unique features unavailable elsewhere? Doesn't look like it.

Sony's strategy seems to be - sell it at high prices for the early adopters and in 6-8 months hope to be able to drop prices somewhat when there is a better selection available. In other words, let the high tech collectors pay for some of the costs up front. Honestly, it's not completely unlike Microsoft's 360 launch, except we're throwing in new factors like high def storage formats.

I think it's a bit of a shame, but I don't share in the Sony doomsday theorists. It's easy to lose sight of Sony's weight in the consumer electronics market. A good example could even be the PSP. It's not that unique of a product, it's not cheap and it has some questionable technical choices (UMD) combined with some very solid ones (that pretty, pretty screen). Anyone else would have probably had both knee caps taken out by Nintendo long ago. While Sony might not have been able to knock the DS off the handheld throne, it certainly doesn't seem like it's going anywhere.





tagged: sony, gaming

STOB: Thomas Wins

Thomas earned another victory in Corvus' Spring Tournament Of Bloggers. It was a bit closer this time. TBone got a quick stealth kill and a frozen headshot for an early lead and while I managed to whittle it away a bit, it ended 4-2 and I think the most I could have gotten out of the deal would be to narrow the gap by another point. One of the harder things about 1v1 Hunters is that if someone really doesn't want to get fragged, they have a lot of choices to evade.

I think I'm up against Corvus or Seth now.


tagged: game, gaming

For Sunday: A Monkey And A Hat

From la vacacione de Sterno.