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 …
A sad update to a story from the other day: contrary to early rumors that owner EA was simply going to slash staff at Pandemic Studios, news comes in now that the ten year old studio will be shut down entirely and all 200 staff laid off. This is the first of what’s sure to be many casualties, as EA has committed to reducing its workforce by 1,100 people in order to offset a nearly …
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 …
Tapper Emeritus Old Rooster was first to announce Alice’s return, and I followed on with a rambling but love-laden panegyric to the underappreciated game. Now we have a trailer, a date, and a rawther minimalist new teaser site. Only two years remain to find out of American McGee still has his mojo, or if blunders like Bad Day L.A. and Grimm are all we can expect from him now. UPDATE: Aieee. It looks like that …
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.
I’ve been in a bit of a gaming slump over the summer and into the fall. Nothing has really caught my attention. I drove a Fallout expansion around the block earlier this summer but it just didn’t stick. I made another run at Guild Wars, buying up the last two releases, Factions and Nightfall, killing a couple of weeks grinding away before sputtering to a stop. Korsakovia was an interesting foray into the Half Life …
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.
So there I was, minding my own business last Friday night, when a friend of mine – a lawyer, I hasten to add – calls me up and, over the course of a half hour, literally tricked me into picking his wife up at the train station and driving her 35 miles back to his house through a massive end of the world storm, without my ever realizing that I was being manipulated. And he did it with Borderlands, which I’d bought over Steam. The PC version didn’t come out until the 26th, so I was patiently waiting. All that changed when Pete bamboozled me into collecting his wife with the bribe of co-op 360 Borderlands.
Looks like the joint publishing venture between THQ and Russian 1C company is about to come to fruition: 4A Games’ Metro 2033, based on a Russian novel series of the same title, is nearing completion and will find its way to Westerm shores (hopefully with that great voice actor narrating) sometime in 2010. Metro 2033 tells the tales of a postapocalyptic Moscow, where citizens hundle in the subterranean Metro system, and hints at a game …
Sir Peter Molyneaux, Commander of the British Empire, has dished publicly about what he believes to be the five most innovative games of the past 20 years. I agree with him on all but one.
And to think that just a few short years ago, Polish developer CD Projekt was nothing more than a small localization company that did translations of big games (they did Baldur’s Gate) for the Eastern European market. All that changed with The Witcher, the first CD Projekt-developed game. While the RPG was initially troubled by technical issues and long load times, CD Projekt’s continued support and releases of major upgrades allowed the game to get …