Hi, my name is Shawn and I’m a recovering Magic-aholic.

Magic is like paper crack to me. I find it consumes my life when I’m playing it. It becomes my goal in life, I will forsake food, personal hygiene and even intimate relations when I’m on a bender. It’s a sad part of my life but I thought it was behind me.

Struggling through Magic addiction is a daily challenge. I fight to avoid the Magic cards at the grocery, I refused the free Magic tournaments at the local game store. I’d been clean for almost a year when it happened.

I’m ashamed to admit my weakness but here, amongst a gathering of others with my problem I feel relieved to admit it. I had a moment of weakness and I slipped up. It wasn’t with that shiny foil packaging, I wasn’t huddled in the alley behind the game store.. no, I gave in to Magic last in my home and there was no physical evidence left afterward, just a note on my bank account for the purchase of 2500 Microsoft points. ( I only needed 800, but I wanted some extras on hand to buy cards later)

There is something so insidious about the digital version. It’s too perfect a translation in fact. While currently I can’t sidle up to the counter and pay for my next fix of booster packs and I don’t have access to the thousands of cards in my physical library I have little doubt the masterminds behind my addiction already have the plan for my digital downfall in the works.

Read the full article »

You’d have to be living in a cave to not have come across the Apple iPhone its many fanatical disciples. Most people who have them seem to not be able to put them down as if their brains might cease to function if they moveed too far away. We’ve even had to introduce a “no iPhones during gaming” policy for certain hard cases. Yes you know who you are.

There are a plethora of applications for this portable Pandora’s Box. Adam Sessler has taken it upon himself to look at the extremely varied apps labeled as games. Considering that both iShoot, the miniaturized Scorched Earth, and the infamous Baby Shaker apps are both classified as games, what comes to mind for each user can be vastly different. Sessler describes the phenomena best noting, “Distinction is not an American trait.”

I’m a fan of machinima productions, from the high quality like Red vs. Blue and the “Still Seeing Breen” music video to the Neverending Nights series, its amazing what a few creative gamers and cinematographers can come up with using video games as their tools. Well stumbling around the net I found an interesting article at LowPings.net featuring a number of interesting Half-Life 2 machinima that I’d previously not seen before that feel more like professional cinema productions than fan films.

The post includes some roughs and I found Combine Nation, which is like Combine Cops, and Ignis Solus which is like an existential art piece with flamethrowers. We keep having this debate as games not being or creating art.. but these cinema pieces definitely show that while you may debate the merits of games themselves, as tools of creation they can be something quite a bit more.

The post also links to some interesting series like Maintenance Man, Freeman’s Mind and Escape from City 17, a live action production I mentioned a few months back.

Here’s a quick reminder of how awesome video editing can make HL2 a tool for movie creation:

Any way you cut it the convergence of games and cinema is here.. lucky us, we just get to sit back and enjoy the results. I’m always on the look out for new series or shorts, feel free to share your favorites in the discussion boards in this post and maybe we’ll highlight them in a future article.

Game music can make or break a gaming experience.

The best soundtracks, you remember forever - like just about all of the Final Fantasy music by Nobuo Uematsu. MADWORLD, Sega’s experimental game for the Wii had a pretty interesting hip hop score and now fans of the music or the game can relive their experiences while driving through rush hour traffic crammed behind the soccer mom van and the yuppie convertible.

The game features music by OX, Doujah Raze, Sick-YG, Bandy Leggz, Wordsmith, S.O.U.L. Purpose, and Optimus. The lyrics (in typical hip hop fashion) feature some suggestive and explicit lyrics befitting a game about smashing people with violent intent.

The game’s soundtrack includes 20 songs and will be available through retail or via sumthingdigital.com or Apple’s iTunes music store.

Sumthing Else Music Works is bringing the Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts soundtrack out to videogame music fans everywhere.

The Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts Original Soundtrack features original musical compositions by Robin Beanland (Killer Instinct, Conker’s Bad Fur Day), Grant Kirkhope (Banjo-Kazooie, Banjo-Tooie) and David Clynick (Perfect Dark, Perfect Dark Zero).

The Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts OST will be available at retail stores June 30 as well as for digital download on Sumthing Digital www.sumthingdigital.com and iTunes.

Last week we saw the id/Bethesda merger under parent company ZeniMax Media and there was much rejoicing, but what if Electronic Arts merged its two online game developers into one giant super developer wouldn’t that raise some eyebrows and be general cause for mass excitement?

Well that actually happened as the publishing giant reorganized a bit putting RPG mavens Bioware and long time MMO developers Mythic in the same division. While the two studios will remain mostly autonomous for the time being, they now both have a single reporting line up the chain to the big bosses and money men. That single leader? Bioware’s Dr. Ray Muzyka.

Dr. Muzyka’s ascencion to the head of the organization basically also points to the exit of Mythic’s longtime leader Mark Jacobs. According to Jacob’s blog the MMO pioneer is taking a sabatical for awhile and he leaves with a classy ‘I’m not going to dish on anything, I’m just going to thank folks and peacefully step aside’ sort of announcement - a classy response that we don’t get to see so often these days.

Regarding the future path of the now combined studio’s efforts, Dr. Muzyka indicated in an official response over on IGN that:

Anything’s possible. We can’t say it wouldn’t happen. There’s no active plans, currently to do that, but the teams at Mythic and BioWare I know from talking to all of them, they’re really excited about working together, so I think that fuels a lot of cool things.

Warhammer: Age of Reckoning is still holding strong in the WoW dominated MMO market while Bioware’s first effort - the much anticipated Star Wars: The Old Republic is still a ways off. Mythic has a lot of experience that could help the minds at Bioware pull off their vision of Star Wars and maybe even put a dent in the Warcraft numbers but only time will tell if this pairing will be all it seems.

So, do you like drinking Dr. Pepper while you’re playing your EA Games? If so, you’re going to really enjoy this piece of news.

Electronic Arts and Dr. Pepper have entered into an agreement that will see Dr. Pepper providing codes for exclusive DLC for EA Games throughout 2010, starting with The Sims 3.
If you’re a Sims 3 fan, you can grab codes from Dr. Pepper that will unlock one-of-a-kind beach party items, or everything you need for a perfect tailgating party.

Tony Jacobs, Vice President of Marketing for Dr Pepper, said,

“The first-of-its-kind partnership with EA will give Dr Pepper fans an unrivaled experience by adding exclusive value to their games such as new levels and items. EA is the only media company that could reach our target audience with the breadth and depth of titles for gamers on any gaming platform.”

Honestly, these types of arrangements are going to become more and more prevalent in the future. As gaming becomes more and more accepted by mainstream marketers, there will be more tie-in opportunities to reach gamers as a market. This will end up being good for the industry, and good for individual gamers as well, as it will give us more opportunities to get cool little add-ons for our games like these.

You can check out the full text of the press release after the break.

Read the full article »

Are you a fan of the old school arcade action games like Golden Axe, Magic Sword, Knights of the Round or Dungeons and Dragons: Shadow Over Mystara? Well Nexon America, the folks behind Maple Story,  just announced that their latest online game, Dungeon Fighter Online, has just entered the closed Beta stage. The company is looking for a few good testers to help them prepare the game in its final stages of development.

Dungeon Fighter Online allows players to play as one of five character classes while proceeding through levels of combat against monsters in a side-scrolling dungeon. The game insttutes the familiar action-RPG concepts as players buy or earn new skills and equiptment to aid in their fight. Interested parties can apply at the Dungeon Fighter Online homepage and find out more about the upcoming game there as well.

I’m not one of those gamers who hates the casual game market, in fact I think its the lifeblood of gaming these days - my kids for example are for more likely to be found playing mini-games on AddictingGames.com or Gaia or any of the billion casual flash game portals than they are to fire up their favorite console games. The casual game industry has insinuated itself into the hearts and minds of every generation from toddler to elder and quite a lot of gaming is happening in browsers these days.

Well, it seems Nickelodeon, the children’s network that hosts such moments of TV gold as iCarly and Drake and Josh, has decided the time has come to produce yet another video-game award show - AddictingGames Showdown.

On July 27th at 8:00 Eastern Time they will offer a web centric special highlighting a number of web and casual games. The show is touted to be a live convergence event featuring one of the cast of the aforementioned iCarly show - Jerry Trainor. Trainor will host the event and present the insightful categotries, many o f which are obviously designed to reflect the young audiences’ sense of fun over technical art. The sneaked categories include gems like “Best Performance by a Monkey” and “Most Courageous Stick Figure Stunt”.

Personally I’m not sure we need yet another gaming oriented awards show, let alone one witht he Nickelodeon flair but it is interesting to see the network segregating casual games away from the traditional console offerings that dominate most gaming events. Also how valid would an “award show” be in any other industry if it was say the “Paramount Pictures Academy Award”?

AddictingGames.com  has a vested interest in attracting new players not to the casual market as a whole.. so I’ll be surprised if this is anything more than a coordinated marketing event for the website and Nickelodeon.

Some of the best things about Team Fortress 2 were the videos for each team player. The personality quirks (read insanities) make everything better… including crash test dummies. Here’s your mandatory laugh for the day folks…