In case you felt your simulated reality gaming experience was lacking a certain candy-colored pop starlet, The Sims Studio has announced their plans to team up with Katy Perry for exclusive in-game content. A special Perry-flavored collector's edition of The Sims 3 Showtime will drop in March 2012, preceded, presumably, by a heavy stream of advertisements featuring the singer herself.
Last year, Razer had a good run at reinventing PC gaming hardware as we knew it. I don't think the Blade ever took off as it might have deserved, but the dual-screen technology was a smart and effective way of solving some of the problems PC gamers might have with their interface. Unlike console gamers, those who play on their computers generally use hardware that wasn't designed for the kind of activity they're undertaking. The guts of their portal to the game-verse may be more powerful than any other, but they're still hammering away on keys and buttons meant for typing words and clicking links. Most don't seem to mind, but there have got to be continued ways to bridge the gap between use and design. Razer seems to be interested in building those bridges.
Cheating is one of those things that, though it is an undesirable trait in people, it may also be one of the more ubiquitous aspects of human psychology. We’re designed to compete, and we’re predisposed to wanting to win. However, a recent survey shows that those people that are most likely to cheat in social games (online games on PCs, consoles, and social networking sites) are as much as three and a half times more likely to cheat in real life in everything from stealing towels from a hotel to cheating on one’s spouse.
The survey, conducted by casual game maker PopCap Games, polled 1,200 adult consumers on their gaming and lifestyle habits. Of those consumers that admitted to cheating in casual social games, 48% reported that they have also cheated in real life compared to 14% of those that said they did not cheat in social games. The result is that individuals that report cheating in social games are 350% more likely to cheat in real life as well. This may not come as much of a shock to people, as the same individual characteristics that lead to cheating in games will also lead people to cheat in life, but the correlation is dramatically high. Read more about Cheaters At Social Games Are 350% More Likely To Cheat In Life
Aw. If you're a Valve fanatic who's been in and around the internet anytime in the past few years, you've probably picked up on the supposed Half-Life 3 viral marketing. A few suggestive domains had been registered only to display the lambda logo or a cleverly masked image of the G-man. And of course there have been miles and miles of message board chatter regarding the next episode in the series; everything from people who claim to know Gabe personally to people who presume to have figured out secret hints about episode 3 hidden deep within Portal 2. Well, curious fans can put away their sleuthing kits; Valve has issued a statement saying that they have not yet released any kind of promotion for another Half-Life game.
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has won a host of awards since it’s release on November 11th. Despite some bugginess (and some bug-inducing patches), Skyrim took home Spike’s Game of the Year Award, as well as X-Play’s Game of the Year award and a recent Game of the Year Award by the Kotaku community on their Speak Up forum (this last one by over twice the votes of its closest competition). It’s only been 2 months and Skyrim is sweeping the critical and fan-based accolades.
There must be something about media institutions with three-letter names. They start off as great, breakthrough forces in their field, redefining what it means to like music or movies or games, giving fans new channels through which to absorb supplemental goodies for their favorite entertainment. Then that new countercurrent picks up revenue, starts to go mainstream, and the former supplier of real culture suddenly becomes mainstream and boring and useless. Instead of steering fans to the good stuff, it steers fans to the most advantageous places to spend their money. We've seen it with MTV (and Rolling Stone, etc.) in the music world and now we're seeing it with IGN in gaming.
Zombies are still a hot commodity in the gaming world as developers continue to come up with new channels through which players can shoot, slice, and smash the undead. I guess turning all the villains into brainless, disgusting humanoids is one way to make gratuitous violence in video games extra fun without making us feel at all bad about it. I am beginning to feel as though the zombie shoot-em-up genre is getting a little over-saturated, what with the Left 4 Dead and Dead Island and Dead Rising series all filling that niche rather competently. Maybe what we need is something with a little less gore and a little more heart. Maybe we need something like Amy.
R 
ole-playing games are a special classification of escapist fantasy, for a special niche audience of gamers. Sure, you can pick up a copy of Call of Duty and slog it out for hours with friends and complete strangers. However, the narrative is only as long as it takes to finish a multiplayer map, and the payoff is in the K/D spread, or the item unlocks. Battle gaming is a sitcom, easily digestible in small, convenient chunks. Likewise Civilization, Starcraft, and other simulator games put you in the driver seat, but the only narrative arch is what you find in dominating other civilizations. The payoff is in their destruction, and when you’re finally king, it’s time to start over with a different group. Read more about The Four H's: Type-casting RPG Gamers
PopCap created a modern classic with “Plants vs. Zombies,” one of the most addictive games ever created. Somehow cute, odd little zombies and adorable plants battle it out on your front lawn, and you must keep the zombies from invading the house and eating your brains! Don’t worry; it’s not graphic or scary. It’s more like cute and cuddly.
Terraria might be the best $10 I've spent on a game in recent memory. I've logged more hours on that one little platformer than I care to disclose. It's got the open-world addictiveness of Minecraft with, I daresay, even more charm and intrigue than the ever-popular building game. It takes a very simple concept and stretches it out to the playing time of a full scale RPG. And it all runs on my netbook.
The game has sold remarkably well on Steam, with over a million copies downloaded. Thanks to their success, the developers can keep building their pixelated universe. In a few days, Terraria will see its biggest update yet, with lots of new toys and features for us to play with.
Read more about Terraria 1.1 to Arrive December 1st