I was in San Francisco when demonstrators in Berkley were doing everything imaginable to drive out the US military recruiters, including (but not limited to) women making out with potential recruits to stop them from going into the offices. Despite these efforts there’s definitely been no slowdown in military recruitment. In fact, according to the New York Times, the economic downturn and slower news from Iraq have more people joining up then ever. So guess who the Army’s next target for recruitment is…gamers!

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When I begged and finally bribed my way into the Game Developer’s conference in San Francisco last year, a large part of my motivation for doing so was festooned on the banner hanging above the escalators towards the vaulted halls full of personal heroes and mouth-watering exclusive sneak peaks.

Activision was giving a big, exclusive presentation of their upcoming title Prototype complete with game footage, a panel discussion with the developers, and I desperately wanted in…

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It’s a frequent subject of both feminist rants and rails against creative cookie-cutting: the same-ness of the types of playable video game characters there are out there.

Video game companies employ some of the most impressive draftsmen and character designers out there. So why does every male character feature rugged good looks and bulging biceps, and all the female ones look like they’ve stepped right off the airbrushed pages of Maxim? They even get shoehorned in where they don’t fit: Psi-Ops was supposed to be about a Psychic Soldier, and I’m supposed to believe this beefcake’s best weapon is his mind? Textbook example of how a bad choice in character design that undermine a game’s entire premise. Read More »

Pardon the pity party, but in high school, I really had no one to talk to about video games. My gender and my aggressive personality set me apart from the real nerds who were the gamers back then. Of course, in the days before I discovered the eternal, in-depth conversations taking place on internet message boards, the main people I subjected to my strongly specialized opinions were my very patient parents.

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It might be yet another sign that gaming is becoming a serious industry; the government backed EPA program called Energy Star, which rates and approves electronics for their environmental impact, now includes gaming consoles on its list of researched goods. The question is; do green issues affect your gaming rig choice? Read More »

It’s a video game. It’s a sociology experiment. It’s a publicity stunt. It’s financial suicide. It’s surrendering to the file-sharing criminal underground. It’s calling the torrent-pirate’s bluff by robbing them of their favorite justification.

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Facing a troubled economy and disgruntled investors coming to collect $240 million worth of debt, video game publisher Midway is looking to cut the fat by cutting it’s payroll: CEO Matt Booty has announced plans to ax some 25% of it’s workforce and cancel several unannounced games.

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I was around halfway through Final Fantasy X-2. I’d reached the cut scene where you’re supposed to “find out” Lenne and Shuyin’s final fates—which I hated, because I had been awake and attentive enough that I was pretty sure I had already figured out their fates—so I braced myself for some redundant info-dump and was completely blind-sided by what is still one of the best scenes I have ever seen in a video game.

Take one attractive young couple. Combine the flavor of a tragic, untimely death in which they express their undying love. Then add a bit of desperate bravado on his part, some heroic self-sacrifice on hers, make sure they reach out to each other after their bloodless, slow-motion mortal injuries, flavored with trademark Square-Enix visual bedazzlement, and assemble around one unabashedly romantic pop song…and you have the one and to-date only cut scene ever to move me to tears.

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