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It may be a matter of public record that I harbor a certain degree of dislike for Activision/Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, but really only in the sense that I wish him an eternity of pain and suffering at the claws of specially-trained torture demons, that his blighted genescape be eradicated from this earth as one might eradicate smallpox or plague. But I only feel this way because his pompous bean-counting has already damaged a creative industry, and he’s intent on turning that creativity into something that can be quantified on a spreadsheet. Still, reading my latest Game Informer, I could hardly blame Kotick for the remark that he wouldn’t have paid seven million dollars for Blizzard in 1995. Of course, he later paid something like 18 billion dollars for the company, but that was later.

What kind of games are battery powered? Well, one kind is the kind that Robert Green makes at his company, Battery Powered Games: the kind that run on Android devices. (It was tempting to write “cell phones” but that isn’t entirely accurate. More than one class of device runs Android.)

Life sometimes has a way of biting us in the ass! Brilliance has it rewards, but if brilliance is far ahead of technology, or if you have secondary objectives, that bite can really hurt.   While there are circumstances where being bit in the ass can be pleasureable, it can also create a slow burn that never quite goes away, eating at your psyche as well as your pocket book.  If we have learned nothing over …

SEGA’s complexly-named studio director Constantine Hantzopoulos indicated to GamaSutra and 1UP that the Wii rail shooter Dead Space: Extraction’s unbelievably poor sales since launch (fewer than 10,000 units in a month) served as a “litmus test” for whether or not SEGA – which has nothing to do with EA and had nothing to do with Dead Space: Extraction – would produce Mature-rated titles for the Nintendo Wii platform.

Given that the SEGA-published Madworld and House of the Dead: Overkill, also for the Wii platform, underperformed, and the fact that Dead Space: Extraction got its ass handed to it, Hantzopolous indicated that future Mature-rated titles for the Wii will not be forthcoming from SEGA.

But in the meantime, while most of you are trying to alternately kill yourselves with drinking and resurrect yourselves from a killer hangover, I will turn back and look on 2009, trying to figure out what it is that people will remember it by once it is gone. When I say “people” I mean “me”, of course.

Kotaku reports on Stephen Totilo’s experience with an incomplete, pre-release build of French developer Quantic Dream’s upcoming Heavy Rain, a PS3 exclusive that lots of people are watching, not only as one of the games that really leverage the inherent power of the PS3, but also as one of those exclusives that might tip the scales in Sony’s favor for the first time this generation. Totilo’s reactions weren’t entirely positive, though; and it’s not surprising …

1UP reports that Final Fantasy XIII, set for release in Japan on December 17, has gotten its very first review from Weekly Famitsu, one of the most widely-read periodicals in the biz.

And they FUCKING TRASHED IT, giving the release an unbelievable 39 out of a possible 40 points. It’s an epic fail! Gamers everywhere are gathering their torches and pitchforks, preparing to storm Famitsu offices. As Kevin Gifford of 1UP says,

Well, they like it – but not quite enough to give it the perfect score everyone expected.

What the hell? Why does everyone expect a perfect score? No one’s seen the god damned game except in tightly controlled junket settings. And now Japanese gamers are all hot and bothered because FFXIII is one point off from a perfect score. I think the real question is who would use an out-of-forty scoring rate.

The International Game Developers Association announced on Monday that it is launching a health care program through an alliance with Association Health Programs, a service reserved for members – and one of the goals founder Ernest Adams dreamt of way back when he created the organization, only to be (along with a bevy of subsequent leaders) thwarted by the global nature of the organization and the immense legal complexities involved. While details of the program …

Yesterday Steerpike wrote a thoroughly enjoyable take on Electronic Arts going back to its evil ways, but in all the fuss and rightful condemnation we shouldn’t be forgetting that there are other players in this game too and that they’d like a minute under the spotlight as well.

Poor EA. Just as the publisher, long-reviled as a frumious monsterporation of creativity-gobbling soul-holery, was beginning to recover its tarnished rep among gamers and industry, it gets walloped by losses for its trouble. $391 million in losses last quarter, plans to slash another 1,500 employees – this time from Pandemic, Maxis (!), Tiburon, Mythic, Black Box, and the internal Command & Conquer team – along with about a dozen titles on the current slate. All …

So, the biggest title this season finally drops. The successor to 13-million-strong-in-sales Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is finally out, sans the Call of Duty prefix, marking a true beginning to a new IP and, possibly the birth of yet another gaming related but general-population-targeting controversy. Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or failing to read Tap-Repeatedly) in the last couple of weeks, you are aware just what we’re talking about here. In one …

I mean seriously, what is the matter with this guy? First he decides to stir up a pointless ruckus by complaining that Valve’s Steam service is exploitative of the little guy, a conflict of interest for Valve, and untrustworthy – an act for which he is universally condemned, and called much harsher names than I’ve called him. Then today he decides it’d be wise to further assify himself by accusing Valve/Steam’s position on PS3 sales …

If we didn’t love gaming none of us would spend a couple of hours each day here, checking out what’s new at Tap-Repeatedly.com.  The fact is, we love not only the process of playing the games, but are equally mystified and fascinated by the process of game design, development as well as production.  For years we kind of hid in the dark, listening to our parents’ criticisms about our seemingly insatiable desire to play our …

Bitmob delves a bit deeper into the various potential sexual escapades of characters in Bioware’s upcoming epic Dragon Age: Origins. It would seem that after the tame-but-maligned-by-Fox-news hot alien lesbian sex scene from Mass Effect, the team’s kicked it up a notch. Unfortunately, based on writer Demian Linn’s experience, they’ve not done it that well.

So IndustryGamers and others are reporting a new controversy surrounding Infinity Ward’s upcoming Modern Warfare 2: it looks like, for at least a small portion of the game, you will play as a terrorist, with the objective of gunning down civilians in an airport terminal. It’s sparked quite the little inferno. I’m okay with this, and I’ll tell you why. But I do worry about the mainstream kneejerks… and I’ll tell you why.