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Games blog + Culture

Tuesday 17 April 2012
Star Trek: the video game – is it the new Mass Effect?

Star Trek: the Enterprise is in trouble. Again ...

Keith Stuart: Kirk and Spock team up for a new Star Trek 'bro-op' game based on the JJ Abrams reboot of the classic franchise
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Posted by
Keith Stuart
16.18 BST
Thursday 15 March 2012
Is Journey a game or a piece of interactive art?

Journey: is it a game, or is it art?

Keith Stuart: Released this week on PlayStation 3, Journey is one of the most talked about games of the year so far. But what exactly is it? And does it have more in common with art than gaming?
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Posted by
Keith Stuart
15.47 GMT
Monday 27 February 2012
The Seed: where theatre, gaming and botany collide

The Seed: an unlikely combination of formal gardens, theatre and alternate reality gaming

Keith Stuart: An intriguing interactive theatre project from Goat and Monkey looks set to bring alternate reality gaming to the great gardens of Sussex
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Posted by
Keith Stuart
11.31 GMT
Thursday 26 January 2012
A club night aimed at gamers? It's music to the ears

Sore thumbs and feet: Indulge yourself in your favourite retro games while listening the latest tunes at Nintendisco. Photograph: Mark Newton/Alamy/Alamy

Simon Parkin: How two ex-music industry mavens settled upon a winning formula – club nights and retro video game Continue reading...
Posted by
Simon Parkin
19.36 GMT
Monday 3 October 2011
Gears of War 3 writer Karen Traviss on the art of game narrative

Karen Traviss: Gears of War novelist turned game narrative writer.

It's rare these days for a major video game not to have a tie-in novel series – but it's even rarer for the writer of those novels to be drafted in to the development team. Yet, that's exactly what happened when Karen Traviss, the author of several Gears of War books, was invited to pen the storyline for Gears 3.
Previously responsible for a series of Star Wars novelisations, Traviss started out as a journalist, working as a defence correspondent for both print and TV. Her experience of writing about the armed forces has clearly come in useful for her work in the games industry: alongside the Gears novels, she's also working on a series for Halo.
So what can a writer bring to a major games series, and how should a story be told through the medium of interactive entertainment? Here's what Karen had to say…
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Posted by
Keith Stuart
17.31 BST
Sunday 2 October 2011
Fallen City: could a game help us find a solution to society's ills?

Angries on the move in a scene from the newsgame Fallen City. Photograph: Channel 4 Education

A forthcoming game from Channel 4 seeks to analyse how our cities might be mended by empowering communities, writes Keith Stuart
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Posted by
Keith Stuart
00.04 BST
Thursday 5 May 2011
LA Noire: The interactive detective

A scene from LA Noire ... featuring Mad Men actor Aaron Staton (left)

Keith Stuart: The makers of Grand Theft Auto are set to revolutionise gaming by exploring the noir crime genre. Here the aim is to interrogate criminals – not kill them
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Posted by
Keith Stuart
20.00 BST
Monday 14 March 2011
SXSW 2011: SCVNGR's Seth Priebatsch on how gaming will change the world

Seth Priebatsch's SXSW speech in pictures (click for full image). Illustration courtesy of Nora Herting/ImageThink

Seth Priebatsch unleashed 180 seconds of organised chaos on SXSW Interactive on Saturday, turning the 4,000-strong audience into a giant trading pit. The charismatic, high-speed founder of business location tool SCVNGR wanted to show how game dynamics – in this case based on the classic card game Pit – can help solve real problems, giving everyone in the audience a coloured card to trade as a metaphor for organising action around climate change. It's all part of his vision for the next generation of the web, one he describes as "the game layer".
The card-trading game was, he admitted, a bit of a gamble – he even had an alternative "consolation on your failure" slide lined up just in case. He was only about 60% sure it would work on this scale, but the room was buzzing with energy. "Climate change is a complex problem with no central lever, and with unequal distribution of resources. But I was confident in those game mechanics, that it would be exhilarating and that we could analyse the dynamics to show what had happened. If we can tie all that back into what we do, then even if we can't tackle problems as big as global warming, we can make them more manageable." Continue reading...
Posted by
Jemima Kiss
12.44 GMT
Tuesday 15 February 2011
Tim Schafer brings Sesame Street to the Kinect

Sesame Street: Will Cookie Monster and co appeal to today's gamers?

Ok, for me it was more about Jamie and the Magic Torch, Mr Benn, Why Don't You? and Grange Hill but Sesame Street is definitely up there when it comes to kids telly from back in the day. Warner Bros will be banking on this nostalgia as they have just announced Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster for the Kinect (Xbox 360). Most surprisingly of all the game will be developed by Tim Schafer of Monkey Island and Brutal Legend fame. Quite what influence he will have on the finished game will be revealed when released this Autumn, but he certainly seems
keen. Continue reading...
Posted by
Greg Howson
16.00 GMT
Tuesday 16 November 2010
Tech Weekly podcast: Stories in games at the Bradford Animation Festival

A special on stories in games, presented by Keith Stuart
Posted by
Keith Stuart, Scott Cawley
14.08 GMT
Friday 23 April 2010
Doctor Who Adventure Games launch in Sheffield

School pupils in Sheffield survive a Dalek invasion to be among the first to play the new Doctor Who video game City of the Daleks
Posted by

11.03 BST
Wednesday 3 February 2010
What can we learn from a video game based on Dante's Inferno?

Dante's Inferno has become a fairly gory video game

The Dante here is no poet but a crusader - and a bloodbath ensues
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Posted by
Ralph Pite
00.05 GMT
Friday 22 January 2010
Scene it? Bright Lights! Big Screen!

Scene It? Bright Lights! Big Screen! Annoying Host!

Todd Nash: It's a decent enough party game, but what a shame about the host
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Posted by
Todd Nash
17.20 GMT
Tuesday 30 June 2009
Tech Weekly: Sex, blogs and video games

Why are eyebrows raised when sex scenes appear in video games, but not in film, TV, music or literature? And the Girl With a One Track Mind discusses bloggers' anonymity
Posted by
Aleks Krotoski, Bobbie Johnson, Zoe Margolis, Scott Cawley
22.00 BST
Monday 16 March 2009
Not so 2D: World of Goo creator on being indie

Ron Carmel is one-half of the indie game phenomenon 2D Boy, the company that developed the refreshing World of Goo. Its runaway success has propelled the former EA developer into game stardom, and at this year's SxSWi, I grabbed him to get a few tips for hopefuls.
Posted by
Aleks Krotoski
00.50 GMT