Soon after the BBC announced its intention to make a film about Grand Theft Auto, I read a few tweets and comments expressing disappointment about the planned production. Some are underwhelmed that the film, due in the fall, will tell the story of the making of the GTA games, rather than providing a lurid excursion to its fantasy gangster world. I…
This weekend, I watched The Visit. I didn't mean to, exactly — my girlfriend's teen sister was having a birthday, and we took her and a few friends out to celebrate. Said teens really, really wanted to see The Visit, so there I was, actually paying money to see a new M. Night Shyamalan movie. I thought it might be…
If Square Enix had its way with Star Wars, Boba Fett, Darth Vader and your everyday Stormtrooper would be a much more fearsome force than what we've come to know over the years. Did we say if? We mean when. As part of the Star Wars Variant Play Arts Kai line, Square Enix reimagined all three characters. While Boba Fett and Darth Vader…
Marie Foulston is helping to plan a party. Her shopping list includes several video projectors, two furry Xbox controllers, a large wading pool and as many un-lubricated condoms as she can get her hands on. London's The Wild Rumpus, the sixth in the raucous series of curated video game exhibitions, will take place this Saturday. The event brings people together in…
The gaming industry used to be flooded with interesting peripherals. The era of the music game gave us piles of plastic instruments across two generations of consoles. PC gamers embraced racing wheels and flight sticks. Even NES gamers fell in love with the Advantage. The act of adding accessories to your system for specific games was well understood, and even…
Bob has narcolepsy, and if you're not careful, he will die. A group of students from the Danish National Academy of Digital Interactive Entertainment are bringing their perilous puzzle game Back to Bed to the 2013 Independent Games Festival. One of eight finalists entries in the competition's Student category, Back to Bed centers on a man with terribly inconvenient narcolepsy…
The guy who made the Xbook and the PlayBook "laptops" that take Xbox One and PlayStation 4 gaming on the go may have outdone himself. The "Xbook Duo" at last unites the Xbox One and the Xbox 360 in the same console. This is a proof of concept only. Master modder Ed Zarick is, alas, not making these for other people, even…
Documentary film CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap had its world premiere this weekend at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, and while the film touched only lightly on the relationship between gaming's gender gap and coding's gender gap, creators and industry professionals agreed that the connection between the two is real in a panel discussion following the screening. CODE…
Sony Computer Entertainment America's vast, glass-fronted campus is a humming nexus of the digital age, a droning place of clicking mice and clacking keyboards. But deep inside the San Mateo tech-hive there are a few tightly connected rooms where life takes on an analog tone, one that is different from Silicon Valley's usual vibe. These are the studios where soundtracks…
A product designer from South Africa and Destiny gamer decided to combine his skills and hobby to create something wonderful: a 3D printed, life-sized weapon from Destiny. Specifically, Kirby Downey recreated the Thorn exotic hand cannon complete with working trigger, hammer and rotating barrel. The entire gun can be assembled without the need for any glue. To make the prop, Downey…
