by Jake Harris
Thursday 15th March 2012, 13:45 BST
I am not an economist nor a business analyst. All of the opinions henceforth presented are purely from my biased consumer perspective, but it is from this vista that I watch with grim satisfaction as the ship that is the videogame retailer GAME sinks slowly beneath the tide of 21st century market forces.
When I was little, getting a new game was an event that provided an excitement that I will probably neve...
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by Jake Harris
Tuesday 6th March 2012, 22:27 BST
[Much of what I’m going to address here goes for the media in general, but videogames are often targeted for their influence due to the youth of their audience and the immersion that they provide, so I think these things certainly warrant talking about. Never fear, it’s not going to be anything like this disaster of videogame analysis.]
When you’re gunning down ambiguously middle-eastern enemies in one of the many videogames depicting mo...
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by Jake Harris
Tuesday 28th February 2012, 16:25 BST
This week saw the release of the PSVita, Sony’s latest offering to the handheld gaming market. It has its work cut out for it: the Vita has been born into direct competition with Nintendo’s increasingly popular (and significantly cheaper) 3DS. At least the Vita’s predecessor, the PSP, established a strong worldwide fanbase from which the PSP can reap sales. Oh wait, the PSP sold less than half the number of DS (the 3DS’s predecessor) ...
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by Jake Harris
Thursday 23rd February 2012, 15:29 BST
Let me tell you something you might not know: there are places in the world where competitive gamers are regarded as highly as any sportsman; television channels worldwide are springing up, dedicated to ‘electronic sports’; and in November 2011 the biggest ever e-sports prize, $1,000,000, was awarded to a Ukranian Dota 2 team.
E-sports are big, and getting bigger, but get little or no coverage in the mainstream gaming media, let alone ...
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by Jake Harris
Tuesday 14th February 2012, 11:00 BST
Imagine, if you will, that you are playing a game of football. Not Fifa; we’re in real life now. You’re two-nil down, twenty minutes into the second half. Do you sprint off the pitch and just join the winning team in another match? Or let’s say you do lose. Would you walk up to the opposing team’s captain and shout “Fuck you” in his face? I think not. All of the above was a poorly veiled metaphor for the way people act in online...
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by Tristan Dunn
Monday 13th February 2012, 23:23 BST
Blackberry realized a number of years ago that it wasn’t just business people who wanted to use their phones. Everyday people saw the benefits of having a smartphone that could give them access to their email, the internet and increasingly Facebook on the go. The Blackberry Curve 8520 then is Blackberry’s attempt at tapping this market of people. This is their entry-level model that starts at an impressive £130 sim-free. With such affordabil...
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by Jake Harris
Tuesday 7th February 2012, 22:28 BST
Fanaticism is commonplace in gaming. Ceaseless battles rage across the vastness of the internet over whose console is superior, forums flame with debate over why Bioware beats Blizzard and today I saw “Halo is 4 n00bz” written in the snow. (Actually I wrote it myself just so I could put it on this list, but you get my point)
We’re probably all guilty of it to some extent. At school, me and my friends were Nintendo fanboys, and rega...
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by Jake Harris
Tuesday 31st January 2012, 11:09 BST
The relationship between videogames and girls is a strange one. There’s a lot to say about the portrayal of women in games, but that has been discussed time and again on the internet and I don’t want to go too much into that here. I’m going to have to touch on it, however, in order to get to the root of what I do want to talk about: the way guy gamers treat girl gamers.
We’ve all seen “Tits of GTFO” or “Make me a sandwich” in...
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by Jake Harris
Tuesday 24th January 2012, 13:25 BST
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim If you’ve ever sat down and played Limbo, the puzzle-platform game from indie developer Playdead, you probably already have a good idea what the answer to the question “can games be art?” is. If you haven’t played it, forget this blog and your degree and go and play it now. It’s awesome. From its silhoutte art-style to the enigmatic plot I wouldn’t hesitate to call it “a work of art”. But what do I rea...
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by James Vincent
Tuesday 18th October 2011, 20:10 BST
Two weeks ago at Facebook f8 (the company’s annual conference) Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Timeline, the new format for Facebook profiles that aims to “tell your life story” in a single page. The new layout offers you a vertically-scrolling profile spanning your entire Facebook-existence. You can pick a year, a month, even a single day, and instantly see your activity for that date: pictures, status updates, events, wall-posts: every aspec...
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