General gaming |
- Does One Award Warrant a Game of the Year Edition for Dead Island?
- What If the Cost of Games Continued to Rise Since the '80s?
- What If the 1993 Video Game Violence Hearings Resulted in Government Censorship?
- Book Review: Exploring Video Gaming's Near-Death with "1983"
| Does One Award Warrant a Game of the Year Edition for Dead Island? Posted: 22 May 2012 03:19 PM PDT Dead Island is set to be re-released in a Game of the Year Edition package next month, a fact that is the source of some complaints. It's not so much that the game is being bundled with its DLC that is the problem; it's the labeling of the game as Game of the Year, a title which many feel it is not deserving of. It is completely understandable why a publisher would want a game re-release to be positioned as a "Game of the Year Edition." That title carries with it a certain connotation of quality, that it was among the very best, if not the best, games released during the year it originally came out. Game of the Year Editions are commonly associated with the likes of Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, Red Dead Redemption, and other critically acclaimed games. There is a certain expectation that a GotY Edition consists of a terrific game and bonus content (be it downloadable content or expansion packs) that early adopters had to pay extra for, with all of this often coming at a sub-$60 price. |
| What If the Cost of Games Continued to Rise Since the '80s? Posted: 22 May 2012 03:07 PM PDT
Feature 1UP COVER STORY  1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF? What If the Cost of Games Continued to Rise Since the '80s?Cover Story: A sad look at a hobby that became too damn expensive.December 12, 1985 You'll never guess what I got for my birthday! I woke up this morning, walked into the living room, and saw Dad playing Nintendo in front of the TV! He was having trouble with the first level of Mario, so I sat down and helped him jump over the pits until we got to the flagpole at the end. After that, we brought out the Zapper and played Duck Hunt until dinner time. Mom got kinda mad at Dad for buying something so expensive, but he told her that my birthday only comes once a year. |
| What If the 1993 Video Game Violence Hearings Resulted in Government Censorship? Posted: 22 May 2012 01:30 PM PDT
Feature 1UP COVER STORY 1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF? What If the 1993 Video Game Violence Hearings Resulted in Government Censorship?Cover Story: Peer into a dark and twisted present we'll (thankfully) never know.I n late 1993, state senators and certified oldsters Joseph Lieberman and Herb Khol got a whiff of this whole "video games" thing and decided to use their unholy powers to investigate the issue. While our friends in Germany and Australia often find amazing games banned outright or plagued with hilariously conspicuous censorship, we Americans escaped with a barely perceptible slap on the wrists thanks to the efforts of testifying industry vets who actually knew the subject at hand. But one can only wonder what the '90s gaming landscape (and beyond) would have looked like if the iron fist of government oppression punched the living daylights out of our beloved hobby... |
| Book Review: Exploring Video Gaming's Near-Death with "1983" Posted: 22 May 2012 12:18 PM PDT
Feature 1UP COVER STORY  1UP COVER STORY | WEEK OF MAY 21 | WHAT IF? Book Review: Exploring Video Gaming's Near-Death with "1983"Cover Story: Thirty years ago, video games almost died. We examine the possibilities.W ith his latest book, 1983, game journalist and historian Chris Kohler has chosen to take a slightly different tack then he employed for his massive treatise Power Up: How America Gave Video Games an Extra Life a few years back. Rather than approaching the topic of video games from a wide-ranging, all-inclusive perspective, Kohler instead drills down here into a single crucial moment in time for the young medium: The near-crash of the industry in year 1983. Despite the Orwellian overtones of the title Kohler has selected for his work, there's nothing ominous about the story contained herein -- perhaps, except, the idea that video gaming could have been snuffed out entirely a mere decade after Pong's debut. A combination of gold-rush greed, incompetence, and '80s corporate culture nearly suffocated the fledging entertainment medium just as it was hitting its stride. The Warner corporation's eagerness to cash in on their purchase of Atari, combined with the influx of low-quality, externally developed 2600 games after Activision broke away to become the first third-party developer, nearly buried the industry beneath a deluge of self-cannibalizing mediocrity. |
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