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These videogames are not art, they are extreme pornography

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:42:35 GMT

Jacqueline Hunt: "My organisation, Equality Now, has heard a lot from the fans of some of these games. We highlighted the game RapeLay, produced in Japan, as one example of many that promote violence against women. In RapeLay the player manipulates an onscreen penis to simulate rape of a woman and her young daughters over and over again."

Zelda Producer Reveals Big Secret

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:03:56 GMT

In an interview with Eiji Aonuma, the producer of The Legend of Zelda, the German based magazine Videogameszone has adept a big secret about The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The question was, why Link got an item without doing anything. Were more temples intended for Ocarina of Time? Hit the jump to learn more.

What Won't Be Coming To Video Gaming In 2010

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 07:49:23 GMT

Kotaku:

2010 will bring us many, many things. Some good, some bad, but all of them, things. We'll be dealing with a lot of that this week, but for now, I'd rather talk about things we won't be seeing.

As we've seen this holiday season, a year can be as notable for what didn't show up as for what did. And 2010 will be no different.

Here are some things that you may hope will be coming over the next 12 months, but really, probably won't.

Top 25 Games of the Decade - #10 Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:12:52 GMT

"Running across walls and performing acrobatic flips to new heights was the reason why gamers were instantly hooked. From beginning till the end, The Sands of Time was a gorgeous game to see in motion. The character art stood out above the rest of the sequels due to the personality that Mechner and the development team provided for The Sands of Time.

Add in the wonderful time-manipulation and breathtaking environments, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was a 'Tour de France' of gaming excellence."

Laptop and Desktop Gaming Done Right

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:29:09 GMT

"We have been building and supporting systems for industry for many years and are all gamers at home. Looking at the competition, we saw configurations being offered that seemed to be based more on marketing than science. For example, paying hundreds extra for the extreme processor in a system that is not poised to take advantage of the extra horsepower. This, in our opinion, didn't seem fair to the buyer and lead them to believe that by paying more they'd get more frames per second in their games. Also, many competitors offer a dizzying array of options which allows the customer to potentially configure a system that is not balanced and therefore would have a poor performance to price ratio.

Furthermore, we saw the opportunity to cater specifically to the World of Warcraft (WoW) community and set forth to design systems that were geared for that game (as well as others). We lab tested and benchmarked many different games to find a well-rounded solution at each price point. We also decided we wanted to openly publish the benchmark results we observed in our lab so the customer can make an informed buying decision and will have appropriate expectations."

Famitsu review scores

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 08:02:43 GMT

The latest Famitsu review scores have been released, which includes a very high score for The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines, Metal Slug XX, and Darius Burst reviews.

A Brief History of Tekken

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:28:57 GMT

Gunaxin writes: "The long running Tekken series is one of video gaming's finest examples of the beloved "a couple of guys punch and kick the shit out of each other" genre. With the recent release of Tekken 6 we've decided to take a look back at history of the franchise. And since completely gratuitous eye candy is a proud tradition of the fighting game genre we've decided to take a look back at the history of that too."

Beefjack: Do We Censor Games Enough?

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:56:39 GMT

Beefjack Writes: Way back in the 1640's, the English Parliament passed acts that would ban books that were considered potentially dangerous. The governing body, in its wisdom, wanted to protect the people from information that could hurt them. Shortly after this act was passed, John Milton published his famous article, Areopagitica. This work intellectually picked apart the logic behind censorship, inspiring anti-censorship discussion for years to come.

GameStream – Why are games and the mainstream media still at odds?

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:31:33 GMT

Critical Gamer Writes: I'll start this article with a disclaimer – to truly examine the relationship between gaming and mainstream media, it'd probably take a University thesis, around 756 cigarettes, twelveteen source books and an ungodly amount of coffee. Instead, this article hopes to look at how gaming has been portrayed in the media recently and hopes to draw a few conclusions as to the relationship between the two.

IncGamers Column - When Betas Go Commercial

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:25:29 GMT

IncGamers' Tim McDonald explains why he finds the path some public betas tread distasteful.

From the article: "I don't have a problem with the companies that genuinely need public feedback, or that genuinely use beta information. MMO betas, for instance, are pretty understandable; it's content designed for thousands of players at the same time and a lot of work needs to go into it to make sure that things are balanced, fun, and well-paced - and that they can actually support high player loads. Likewise, a few companies are doing reasonably clever things. The current Elemental beta, I'm told, pretty much strips out the graphics entirely. The idea there seems to be that users won't be distracted be graphics, be they incredibly pretty or incredibly unfinished, and that they'll focus entirely on the things that matter, like whether or not the game is actually, y'know, fun. Important, that."