Sex and Viloence in Games

Video Games from MUSCLEBEAVER on Vimeo.

[via Bruce On Games]

Yes, the wedding is over, but hey just to keep things interesting and at a certain level of stress, we bought a house! We move in 2 weeks:) He's especially excited for the basement because he's got all sorts of terrain ideas for his Warhammer 40k game that he plays with his buddies.

Also, crazy time at work. They bumped up a deadline by a few weeks so we've been crunching hard. Game is looking AMAZING though. Will post info on it when it's announced:)

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Video Games | Left 4 Dead 2 | E3 09: Teaser

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

squee! Can't wait! Chainsaws and frying pans:) RPS has a great article previewing everything, from the new special infected to the new characters.

PuzzleQuest Galactrix

Wow, I'm impressed by just how much more difficult the new version of PuzzleQuest is. Not always in a good, challenging kind of way wither. There are a few questionable design choices that make the game just plain frustrating at times too (at least on the DS version).

The buttons have a really small area to hit. Miss the button by just a few pixels and you're floating off into space, waiting to make the round trip to get back to your original location once again. It wouldn't have been that difficult to widen the buttons by that much. Or, my second major peeve with the game, allow the player to navigate using the buttons, it doesn't have to be 100% touchscreen. Menus especially. There's no reason that up, down and A to confirm shouldn't work...just like it does for almost every other game out there.

Thankfully, you don't require a lot of speed/accuracy to play the game, so while these points are endlessly frustrating, the game still remains addictively fun. And it's really nice to be able to play it in bite-sized pieces while travelling back-and-forth to work on the metro. All in all, I can foresee myself playing it just as long as I've played the original (still playing the expansion currently:)

Legends of Zork

(March was INSANE! But I'm back, tanned and married, ready for gaming once again.)

This morning, I started playing Legends of Zork, which, while taking place in the Zork universe is a whole lot more like ye ol'BBS door game, Legend of the Red Dragon. That's not a strike against it, mind you. I LOVED that game and beat it several times.

I can see myself enjoying it, when I remember to play it. It's easy enough to bang out a turn in about 15 mins. Not enough of a Zork experience for you? Then you can buy credits for more Action Points (turns) with their microtransaction/sponsor-based system. I think that getting additional turns is a bit more motivation for purchasing than buying special clothes like you can in some other free-to-play games. At least you get something worthwhile rather than just superficial.

I hope LoZ has the lasting power that LotR did. It looks like they've added some neat systems, like with the cards which I don't fully understand yet, though I did find one in my adventuring this morning already.

Want to friend me in the lands of Zork? I'm NilPixelCount, as always.

Blogging Around

While I haven't had much time to write my own rants and essays lately, I have still been busy posting on the interwebs. You can find me posting niche-news to 3 different IGDA sites.

• IGDA Montreal Chapter - Here I post the reports (which I write on ocassion too) along with local industry news. I also serve on the Advisory Board for the chapter, which has been a great experience so far.
• Women In Games SIG - Given that the focus of the Special Interest Group (SIG) is pretty obvious, guess what kind of news items I share here?
• Game Design SIG - This SIG just launched recently, so if you're a Designer or are interested in game design, join in! You don't need to be a member of the IGDA to participate. You can check the blog for regular game design news that I post.

So check in on those sites if you're interested in the topics! :)

When life takes over

It's not that I've forgotten that I have a blog or something. I mean, there's all this stuff that I want to post about! Like the awesomely reactive AI in F.E.A.R. 2 or finishing Chrono Trigger DS or reading The Design of Everyday Things. There's tons going on that's worth talking about! It more a matter of finding the time to actually do these things!

Currently, time not spent at work is time spent on the upcoming wedding. The one that's in 12 days! With family coming in from out of town and details to finalize, it's been a bit hectic coordinating every thing.

It's not a terribly traditional wedding and with both of us being game designers there's a bunch of gaming geekiness worked into the whole thing, some of it subtly, some of it blatantly.

When we're back from the honeymoon (CANCUN!!!!) I'll be sure to post pictures and tell you how we kept it true to who we are:)

Steamed

For my birthday, one of my friends got me Left 4 Dead for the PC, which is cool since most of my friends seem to play the game on the PC and only a few play the Xbox version that I already have. So now I can play with everyone!

In other words, feel free to add me on Steam. My account is the same as on Xbox Live: NilPixelCount.

It's zombie killing time!

Breast is best... for video games, according to a study

The most brilliant video game study ever has concluded that playing video games is linked to... breast-feeding! Violence, anti-social behaviour, forget it! The newest information shows that people who were breast-fed as babies are most likely to grow up to play video games.

Hopefully this tongue-in-cheek study can be thrown around every time someone confuses correlation with causation.

Hanging with the cool crowd

Once again, I do have to say that I love working in the video game industry. I just got from a wonderful meal that took several hours and extended into drinks post-meal at 2 very cool venues in trendy Old Montreal. So much amazing talk and brain-picking went on since I was in the company of many fascinating people, including the producer on Price of Persia and two people from LittleBigPlanet.

Such a great exchange of ideas and expressions of passion, it was really revitalizing to talk with them for so many hours about gaming. From gushing over each other's games to discussing how we plan to take our upcoming projects to the next level, it really dragged me out of the hum-drum day-to-day experience and reminded me WHY I want to be doing this.

This is something worth being passionate about.

I can't wait to hear them present at tomorrow's IGDA meeting!

Beware of liquidation sales!

Yes, Circuit City is going out of business and there could be some great deals...but maybe not as good as you might think! This video from Good Morning America shows just how you could get ripped off. It's pretty astonishing that these companies can get away with this.