2010 Noteworthy News |
- 3/1/2010 — Random House Sets Out to Apply Storytelling Skills to Videogames — Wall Street Journal
- 2/28/2010 — USC ranked No. 1 among video-game design programs — USA Today
- 2/28/2010 — Video gaming captivates not only the young in years; it's becoming a family affair as moms and dads relive years of original video consoles — Wooster Daily Record (OH)
- 2/27/2010 — Louisiana cities blaze the trail for economic development — The Missoulian (MT)
- 2/26/2010 — Pac Rat: The fight to preserve old video games from bit rot, obsolescence, and cultural oblivion — The Atlantic
- 2/25/2010 — In Development at Champlain College: a Video Game to Help Prevent Domestic Violence — Chronicle of Higher Education
- 2/25/2010 — Wii Games Speed Stroke Rehab — WebMD Health News
- 2/24/2010 — Growing up gaming — New Times of San Luis Obispo (CA)
- 2/23/2010 — League of gamers — ESPN.com
- 2/23/2010 — Money Matters: Teaching seniors to avoid money fraud — NY1
- 2/22/2010 — Future animators, developers offered more options at colleges and universities — Newark Star-Ledger (NJ)
- 2/22/2010 — Purdue assistant professor develops suicide prevention educational material — The Journal and Courier (IN)
- 2/22/2010 — Playpower offers video games, skills to youth internationally — The Carnigie Mellon University Tartan (PA)
- 2/22/2010 — Fashion 2.0: New video games help kids try the field on for size — New York Daily News
- 2/22/2010 — For Mature Audiences Only: Video Game Ratings — NPR
- 2/22/2010 — Turning Flat Photos Into 3-Dimensional Buildings — New York Times
- 2/22/2010 — Handing the city over to nerds — Philadelphia Metro (PA)
- 2/22/2010 — Winning video game creation nets Santa Rosa man's team $100,000 — Santa Rosa Press Democrat (CA)
- 2/19/2010 — Video Games Teaching Students Math — WCIV-TV, Charleston, SC
- 2/11/2010 — WPI Students Garner Credits for Helping to Create New Video Game — WPI News (MA)
- 2/7/2010 — New game warns of abusive relationships — Central Florida Future
- 2/7/2010 — A High-Tech Alternative for Hollywood Hopefuls — The New York Times
- 2/2/2010 — DU students pursuing degrees in gaming — KDVR-TV, Denver, CO
- 2/2/2010 — Minnesota Zoo releases new chapter in wolf game — Minneapolis Star-Tribune (MN) blog
- Archives
Random House Sets Out to Apply Storytelling Skills to Videogames Random House, eager to cash in on the lucrative videogame business, has set up an in-house team to create original stories for videogames and provide story advice for games in development. The book publisher, a unit of Germany's Bertelsmann AG, has started looking for a buyer for two original projects, one a fantasy adventure and the other a horror thriller. Each of the proposed games has a cast of characters, suggested stories, and an analysis of the type of gamer in mind. Random House also has struck a deal with Stardock Corp., a software developer based in Plymouth, Mich., to work on the coming launch of Stardock's strategy game "Elemental: War of Magic." Publishers are hungry for new ways to generate sales as they cut back on the number of book titles published annually. Economic pressure is likely to grow in coming years as the sale of electronic books, now an estimated 3% to 5% of total book sales, becomes increasingly significant. E-books are expected to generate less revenue per unit compared with hardcover titles.
Wall Street Journal — By Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg
3/1/2010
USC ranked No. 1 among video-game design programs Have designs on a career creating video games? Now there's a cheat sheet to help you find the best schools. Head west, to the University of Southern California's Interactive Media Division, for the top undergraduate education in game design. That's the finding of a new listing from test-prep company The Princeton Review, known for its annual college "best" lists, including Best-Value Colleges (BestValueColleges.usatoday.com) — and, let's be honest, its best party school list as well.
USA Today — By Mike Snider
2/28/2010
Video gaming captivates not only the young in years; it's becoming a family affair as moms and dads relive years of original video consoles Playing video games was once the province of "geeks," according to streetdirectory.com, "Just How Popular Are Video Games?;" but it has reached such a level of popularity almost no portion of the population is immune to its appeal. Even adult men and women play them in their spare time, according to the site, which ascribes the largest PlayStation and Xbox customer base to the 25-36-year-old age group. Entertainment Software Association purports the average age of a video game player is 35, and 49 percent of gamers are 19-49 years old.
Wooster Daily Record (OH) — By Linda Hall
2/28/2010
Louisiana cities blaze the trail for economic development Economic development doesn’t have to be an exercise in wishful thinking. In some communities around the country, such efforts have led to successful and robust results. Take Baton Rouge, La., and its neighbor, Houma. These Southern communities changed their fates after recognizing some hard truths. To stay vibrant they would have to reinvent how they attract and retain businesses, and to do that, they would need outside help.
The Missoulian (MT) — By Betsy Cohen
2/27/2010
Pac Rat: The fight to preserve old video games from bit rot, obsolescence, and cultural oblivion Matt Kirschenbaum slips a five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disk into his Apple IIe’s drive and flips the switch. The 26-year-old machine, which his family bought when he was a child, squeaks to life. A pixilated green dragon fills the screen, as a tinny synthesized voice, not unlike T-Pain’s, drones “sea dragon, Sea Dragon, SEA DRAGON!” Kirschenbaum is an English professor at the University of Maryland and the associate director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, and the computer symbolizes his lifelong love of all things digital. But the ancient Apple is about more than novelty and nostalgia—it is one of the few ways to access games like Sea Dragon in their original format. Thousands of them are at risk of disappearing completely, stuck on decaying disks and locked behind a confusing hedgerow of copyrights and ownership disputes. In response, two years ago Maryland, Stanford, Illinois, and the Rochester Institute of Technology teamed up with the Library of Congress and Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life, in a $2.15 million program to develop standards for preserving video games and “virtual worlds”—that is, online multiplayer systems like EverQuest and World of Warcraft.
The Atlantic — By Clay Risen
2/26/2010
In Development at Champlain College: a Video Game to Help Prevent Domestic Violence A team at Champlain College wants to educate boys about the effects of violence against women. So they are creating a product using two things that appeal to their target audience: soccer and video games. The university's Emergent Media Center is working on a project with a grant from United Nations Population Fund to design a game for boys between 9 and 13. The project, created with support from the Population Media Center, features soccer matches broken up by narrative sections, with players facing social decisions on and off the field. The game should appear online sometime in March, and the production team will formally debut the game during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa this summer. Ann DeMarle, the Emergent Media Center's director, said that the group chose soccer because it is a sport popular around the globe -- perfect for a game that the U.N. and Champlain hope will have international appeal. It also provides a competitive environment where sportsmanship lessons can be taught, Ms. DeMarle said, and it interests boys who are at age when they look to peers for how to behave.
Chronicle of Higher Education — By Jill Laster
2/25/2010
Wii Games Speed Stroke Rehab Active Wii video games may bring some fun into stroke recovery, helping patients regain lost strength and motor skills in the process. In a first-of-its-kind study, 11 stroke victims with weakness in their arms could reach out and grab objects more easily and more quickly after two weeks of playing the active video games. In contrast, 11 stroke patients who played card or block games for two weeks showed no change in arm strength afterward, says Gustavo Saposnik, MD, director of the Stroke Outcomes Research Unit at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.
WebMD Health News — By Charlene Laino
2/25/2010
Growing up gaming It’s close to noon on a Saturday and three guys are huddled around a computer monitor staring at lines of code. The room is hot, the stagnant air thick with a dank smell like that of a high-school locker room. Empty Pepsi cans litter the tables. The only sounds are the dull hum of computer fans and the gentle snoring from someone who’s passed out on the floor while Jon Moorman, Evan Ralston, and Eriq Augustine concentrate on their video game: Road to Redemption. Moorman, Ralston, and Augustine haven’t slept all night. Phyllis Douglas, their artist, just left for a few hours after designing the main characters, the world, and the animations for the game. In about three hours they’ll reach the halfway point of the Global Game Jam, a 48-hour game-development marathon whose participants have one objective: building a game by the time the clock runs out. Thousands of other programmers internationally are attempting to reach the same goal. This year, the room at Cal Poly is one of just three Game Jam locations in California and the mood is upbeat. Turn the clock ahead 24 hours, and the team is still giddy, excited by the challenge. But ultimately they’ll fail to accomplish their goal. That’s OK: Everyone else will fail, too, and no one will really care.
New Times of San Luis Obispo (CA) — By Colin Rigley
2/24/2010
League of gamers What does Kobe Bryant keep locked inside his briefcase? His collection of championship rings? Endorsement contracts worth millions? Proof of Sam Cassell's alien bloodline? Try Xbox 360, TV, controllers and a copy of "NBA 2K10." "I'm like the James Bond of gaming," Bryant said with a smirk. "I bring this on the plane with me and let the guys play." And Bryant's not alone, as 2K Sports delivered these secret agent-like gaming devices to top stars throughout the league, including Derrick Rose, Brandon Jennings, Josh Smith, Chris Paul and Tyreke Evans.
ESPN.com — By Jon Robinson
2/23/2010
Money Matters: Teaching seniors to avoid money fraud A new free interactive video game provided by the city can help teach senior New Yorkers how to protect their identities and their finances. Money Matters reporter Tara Lynn Wagner filed the following report. Identity theft is hardly a game, but city officials have developed a teaching method that can be fun and effective. Teaming up with the Aging In New York Fund, the Department for the Aging has developed a new interactive financial literacy game called "It's My Money," which aims to help seniors avoid falling victim to scams. "Seniors are targeted more often and they are also more trusting, so we are trying to educate seniors about how to ask questions and protect themselves, to safeguard themselves and their assets," says Ali Hodin-Baier of the Aging In New York Fund.
NY1 — By Tara Lynn Wagner
2/23/2010
Future animators, developers offered more options at colleges and universities When Tavainya Smith told her mother she wanted to make video games for a living, she might as well have said she was joining the circus. "Are you crazy?" said Smith’s mother. "Do they actually pay people to do that?" It turns out that they do, and Smith, 21 — who will graduate next year from Bloomfield College with a degree in video game development — hopes to join the ranks of thousands of high-salaried workers employed by the video game industry. Video game sales are outpacing movie box-office receipts, and colleges and universities everywhere are taking notice.
Newark Star-Ledger (NJ) — By Venuri Siriwardane
2/22/2010
Purdue assistant professor develops suicide prevention educational material Suicide and death used to be taboo topics in high schools, but now school counselors are being trained to help students deal with these issues. But identifying the student that needs urgent help is still difficult. "They are depressed, they are looking at (suicide) as a solution, they are not looking for someone to talk to," said Joyce Grimble, guidance director at West Lafayette Junior-Senior High School. To help train school counselors, Carrie Wachter Morris, an assistant professor at Purdue University, has developed the Suicide Risk-Assessment Game, a virtual training tool.
The Journal and Courier (IN) — By Taya Flores
2/22/2010
Playpower offers video games, skills to youth internationally Oregon Trail and Lemonade Stand games on an Apple II computer probably raise a sense of nostalgia among many who played these games as children. Although obsolete in the United States now, eight-bit games are making a comeback for educational purposes in developing countries through the work of Ph.D. student Derek Lomas at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) and his organization, Playpower. The original inspiration came from a 2007 internship with Qualcomm in India, where Lomas noticed inexpensive computers, about $12 in U.S. dollars, being sold in Indian markets. While experimenting to see how well the computers, based off only an eight-bit processor, worked, he discovered that they had the ability to play video games similar to Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). With most of the NES patents expired and a wealth of information left by hackers of the system, this seemed to be a perfect opportunity for Lomas to begin creating free educational video games for a new generation of learners.
The Carnigie Mellon University Tartan (PA) — By Jennifer Tharp
2/22/2010
Fashion 2.0: New video games help kids try the field on for size Video games have taken players to battlefields and football fields. Now they're taking you into the world of fashion. Two haute new games are ¬paving the way for the next generation of players: creative and tech-savvy teen and twentysomething girls. "This is definitely a growing market. Fashion-themed games can be so multifaceted and sophisticated, which is what this demographic wants," says Alissa Bell, Atari Inc.'s director of communications. Atari is set to launch a Project Runway video game on March 2, the first in a series of games for the Nintendo Wii, based on the hit Lifetime network show.
New York Daily News — By Nicole Carter
2/22/2010
For Mature Audiences Only: Video Game Ratings The video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is breaking sales records this year. But its violent content is not suitable for all audiences. The goal of the game is to hunt down Russian ultranationalists with machine guns, sniper rifles and grenades. So the Entertainment Software Rating Board gave it a mature rating — meaning people under the age of 17 should not play. Rating video games is important for parents who want to control what types of games their kids are playing, but who are often unaware of the content of those games.
NPR — By Jesse Baker
2/22/2010
Turning Flat Photos Into 3-Dimensional Buildings Rome wasn’t built in a day, but in cyberspace it might be. Computer science researchers at the University of Washington and Cornell University are deploying a system that will blend teamwork and collaboration with powerful graphics algorithms to create three-dimensional renderings of buildings, neighborhoods and potentially even entire cities. The new system, PhotoCity, grew from the original work of a Cornell computer scientist, Noah Snavely, who while working on his Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Washington, developed a set of algorithms that generated three-dimensional models from unstructured collections of two-dimensional photos.
New York Times — By John Markoff
2/22/2010
Handing the city over to nerds Philadelphia's annual brain drain gives video game developer Mike Worth a headache. Worth, of Narberth, has been frustrated that local gaming graduates always take off for cities with stronger industries. "We lose 40 game graduates every year who make an average of $60,000 to $70,000 per year," he said of the city's inability to keep young techies, mostly because of taxes on businesses and wages much higher than other cities. Even in Worth's case, who started Bryn Mawr-based Space Whale Studios, a game development company, the city's business tax structure has prevented him from setting up shop downtown.
Philadelphia Metro (PA) — By Brian James Kirk and Brian X. McCrone
2/22/2010
Winning video game creation nets Santa Rosa man's team $100,000 Brian Lee, 23, of Santa Rosa has loved video games since he was very young, and it's paid off. Lee is a member of a college team that last week won the inaugural Indie Game Challenge for video game creation in the non-professional category, at a conference in Las Vegas and will now share a $100,000 prize with four of his classmates. A 2004 graduate of Cardinal Newman High School, Lee designed the character, graphics and music for the game “Gear,” which was the Grand Prize Winner. Lee is a junior at Digipen Institute of Technology in Redmond, Wash,, where he is studying coding for video games. He intends to pursue a career in graphic programming.
Santa Rosa Press Democrat (CA) — By Clark Mason
2/22/2010
Video Games Teaching Students Math The days of counting math problem out on your fingers are out. Instead students are using their fingers to navigate through virtual worlds and its all part of the lesson plan. “We’re playing Tabula Digita which is a math game, which pretty much is a video game on the computer but it teaches you math strategies,” said 7th grade Gregg Middle School student Michaela Cooper. “It’s a variety of math skills that are part of our state standards such as mixed numbers, decimals, percentages ratios, orders of operations. There’s even an algebra component,” said Patrick Pye, Instructional Technology Specialist, Gregg Middle School. SPAWAR is paying for the game in three middle schools in Dorchester District 2, through a Department of Defense grant. Students have been using for two months now, and the results are adding up.
WCIV-TV, Charleston, SC — By Courtney Rochon
2/19/2010
WPI Students Garner Credits for Helping to Create New Video Game Tamlyn Miller and Ryan Chadwick haven't yet graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), but they've already landed coveted credits for design, writing, and voiceover work on a newly released video game by Watertown, Mass.-based Dejobaan Games LLC. The game – "AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! – A Reckless Disregard for Gravity" – has been nominated for an "Excellence in Design" award at the 12th annual Independent Games Festival, which will be held March 11 in San Francisco, Calif. Miller and Chadwick are majors in WPI's innovative Interactive Media and Game Development (IMGD) program. They interned in summer 2009 at Dejobaan, whose founder and president, Ichiro Lambe, is a WPI graduate. Lambe took the students under his wing and invited them to help develop the video game, which is available for purchase only online. Miller, a senior; and Chadwick, a junior, have continued with Dejobaan on a contract basis to work on the game developer's 14th title, while they continue their studies at WPI.
WPI News (MA) —
2/11/2010
New game warns of abusive relationships The pages of Zoe’s journal may read like that of any other teenage girl. Zoe, 14, likes drawing, religion, biology, acting and martial arts. She also likes to spend time with her friends. Zoe, a character in a new online video game designed to educate children about violence and abusive relationships, has even found time for a boy, Jake. “He’s two years older than I am and different from any other guy I know,” says Zoe in the game. “I haven’t gone out with anyone before, but maybe this’ll be the year.” But the year she thought she would begin a fun chapter in her life brought one of the hardest situations any girl could experience. She began spending less time with her friends and missing school, and some of her friends began to suspect her new relationship with Jake was unhealthy. Fortunately for Zoe, she isn’t real.
Central Florida Future — By Manuel Cintron
2/7/2010
A High-Tech Alternative for Hollywood Hopefuls “House lights up!” proclaimed the silver-haired former lawyer who, with blue jeans, black T-shirt, black safari jacket and Nikes, looked oh-so Hollywood in an oh-so Chicago bastion, the Merchandise Mart. As four understudies from the Second City comedy troupe entered the sound stage, they were trailed by film students climaxing three weeks of labor by taping a half-hour faux “Saturday Night Live.” It featured comedy sketches, droll pre-taped mock commercials and a live performance by Rhymefest, a hip hop artist. The students get academic credit by handling sound, cameras, lights and the funny people, all with the help of professionals, and their polished handiwork, “Live at the Mart,” may soon be shown on NBC locally or nationally. It underscored the glitz, teamwork and market-driven pragmatism at the core of Chicago’s Flashpoint Academy of Media Arts and Sciences, one of the country’s most curious and disorienting educational institutions. Imagine Pixar, Disney, Nintendo and Dreamworks all melded into a vocational setting. Started in 2007, this is a pricey ($25,000 a year) two-year school intended for those not motivated by high school, or brief college stays, but who are captivated by technology.
The New York Times — By James Warren
2/7/2010
DU students pursuing degrees in gaming Many College students spend hours playing video games. But at the University of Denver, some call it course work. The university is one of several offering a degree in video game design. Students can get a B.S. focusing on the programming side, or they can get a B.A. which includes more of the arts. "To me, this is the best degree on campus," said Professor Scott Leutenegger. The program focuses on humane games including games for change, health or education.
KDVR-TV, Denver, CO — By Kim Posey
2/2/2010
Minnesota Zoo releases new chapter in wolf game The Minnesota Zoo is on the prowl again with a new installment of its hit computer game, WolfQuest. WolfQuest: Survival of the Pack is available now to download for free for PCs and Macs. This edition of the wildlife simulation allows players to establish a territory, raise cubs and form a family pack as they live the life of a wolf in Yellowstone National Park's Slough Creek. Players can go it alone or play with up to four friends online.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune (MN) blog — By Randy Salas
2/2/2010
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