Gaming

Whilst Innovation may not be Dead, where is the Courage in the Games Industry?

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8707 arcade cabnets Whilst Innovation may not be Dead where is the Courage in the Games Industry

People often ask where the innovation has gone in the games industry. I have been guilty of it on the past. In fact, this article was going to be titled with that exact question.

However, the more I drafted the piece and the more I thought about it, the more I realised that innovation is still alive and kicking in our industry, albeit sometimes quietly. What is missing now is courage.

When I first really got into games, everything seemed innovative. People were really beginning to understand what games could be. This was back in the Days of the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64. Read More ...

If anyone can set up a website and review games, is the traditional games press doomed?

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1110330 new magazines If anyone can set up a website and review games is the traditional games press doomed

The Internet is saturated with sites and blogs that publish games news and reviews at a phenomenal rate. Within seconds of press releases being sent out, they appear on the Internet in a dozen different ways. Technologies such as Twitter and Facebook allow us to release snippets of information without even needing to write a full article. Games reviews get published on the Internet days, weeks or sometimes months before the traditional printed press have a chance to release theirs.

I spoke to one very unhappy staff writer recently, who was complaining that he needed to have reviews written for a magazine that was to be published in 2 months time. He could not convince his editor that it would be pointless releasing reviews of games 2 whole months after everybody else. Read More ...

Reviews – Resetting the Value baseline

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[dc]A[/dc]s a person who runs a games review site, I am extremely fortunate and get to try out not just games, but gaming related hardware. Anyone who has seen my site will know there are quite a few headset reviews as well as reviews of gaming mice.

Just recently though, I have had a slight crisis over how I perceive value. One of the things people often criticise reviewers for, is the lack of connection they have to average buyers. I always thought that I was pretty good at this, but I may have slipped a little! Read More ...

Meet the distracted, multi tasking and gamified workforce of the future.

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Recently I was lucky enough to be given an hour to chat with a group of 16 and 17 year olds about Social Media and technology in general.

It started with a general chat about how we communicate in day-to-day life. I was amazed that the first answer I got was “Facebook”. I had twitter, Xbox live, MSN and email before we got to talking! Face to face human interaction. However, as I spoke to them more and more I began to understand why. They take digital communication for granted in the same way we who are older take face to face communication for granted. They thought that was the answer I was looking for. It is just as natural to them. Read More ...

Combat School, retro games, imagination and broken bones.

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Combatschool Combat School retro games imagination and broken bones

I suppose I could call this the “Realification of Games”, but I won’t!

A slightly related more recent article I wrote can be found here Don’t See what’s there, see what’s not there.

“When I were a lad, games were better”.
That is often an opening gambit of any retro game lover. Of course it is not precisely true for all retro games. It would be more accurate to say; “when I were a lad, I loved the games we had available to us”.

That is not to say some were not better, but try convincing a modern gamer that any C64 game was better and they will laugh at you – before trying it. You see the sad fact is, they all look crap compared to the current photo realistic games we have. Read More ...