TikGames promises an entertaining, gory, interactive experience
By Tom Pakinkis Oct, 7, 2011

A video game based on Chucky, the murderous doll at the centre of the Child's Play horror films, is in the works. 

For those not familiar with the Child's Play series (which kicked off in 1988), it tells the story of a serial killer who transfers his soul into a doll before he dies. TikGames are taking on development duties and are the first company to gain game rights for the franchise. "We're proud to be able to bring a fan-favourite movie character, such as Chucky, to gaming platforms," said co founder and vice president of publishing for TikGames Alex Tikman. "Fans have been asking for a Chucky game for years and, soon, gamers around the world will be able to enjoy highly-entertaining, interactive, downright gory experiences with this brand."

Read more here –>computerandvideogames.com

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By Business Wire Sept. 20, 2011

Blizzard Entertainment announced today that the closed beta test for Diablo III, its highly anticipated sequel to the best-selling Diablo action role-playing game series, has begun. 

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By Brett Molina Sep 19, 2011

Starting next month, fans of DC Universe Online will get to enjoy the massively multiplayer online game without a paid subscription.

Publisher Sony Online Entertainment revealed it will switch to a free-to-play model in late October. "We believe this new model will expand the DCUO experience and offer more options that cater to every type of player so they can play the game in a way that fits them," says SOE president John Smedley in a statement. When players boot up DC Universe Online, they will have three subscription options: free, premium and legendary. The free option grants access to missions and raids, as well the ability to create two characters and join a league of heroes or villains. Players who spend at least $5 on in-game items such as downloadable game packs will receive the Premium option. This also provides more character and inventory slots for created characters.

Read more here –>usatoday.com

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Retailer planning to create its own portable platform for cloud gaming.

By Mike Sharkey Sep 12, 2011

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By: Matthew Humphries Sep. 6, 2011

For a number of years now it has been possible to purchase a new graphics card with the promise of a free promotional game. Inside the box with your new card will be a code that can be entered on a website along with your personal details in return for access to a digital copy of a particular game for free. AMD offers such a freebie with some of its ATI graphics cards, but due to a lack of security some 1.7 million promotional keys for Codemasters’ DiRT 3 have been accidentally leaked. The reason access to all these keys has been granted is due to a lack of .htaccess on AMD’s site. .htaccess is a directory level configuration file commonly used for restricting access to particular directories on a server. Without it, anyone can gain access to the directory that holds all the keys as a big list in several text files. The keys AMD uses are for Steam, so copy pasting one into the appropriate section of your Steam client should unlock the game if that particular key hasn’t been used before. However, if you do find a link to the keys we suggest you don’t try and use one. AMD will no doubt ask Valve to kill all these codes once it has realized what happened. Valve in turn could decide to ban any account that has used such a key. This, like many other recent episodes, demonstrates how important it is to get the security right on a website and associated servers. These games were meant to be free, but only after you spent a few hundred dollars on another product. Now there’s 1.7 million copies of the game available for free, but luckily easily blocked through Steam if AMD chooses to go that route. 

Read more here –>geek.com

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I won't lie, this news made me a bit angry.
By Pete Davison, Aug 30, 2011

On the surface it's a relatively good idea — Gears, as a game which will undoubtedly be successful and played online for many months to come, is sure to have plenty of DLC already planned, so why shouldn't gamers be able to effectively "preorder" the add-ons for a lower price? There are doubtless those who will happily throw down 60 notes for a copy of Gears and then purchase the Season Pass without a second thought. This will put their total cost for Gears of War 3 up to the $90 mark but ensure they won't have any ongoing costs as new stuff comes out for the game. It's like the "lifetime subscription" option which a lot of new MMOs offer, only marginally cheaper. Except you're not playing a continually-shifting MMO — you're playing a game which will apparently get four packs of DLC over its lifetime. For a publisher to willfully admit up front that the game you're buying in the box on the shelf is not the complete experience, and that if you want to guarantee yourself said complete experience you should spend at least half as much again? That, to me, seems not only a bit rude but rather presumptuous — particularly when the announcement of this additional content comes before the game has even been released. So far as big-name games on the HD consoles go, that's the way things are going. It's enough to give you pause when a new game comes out — on the one hand, you want to play the awesome new game that's just been released, but on the other, you'd quite like to wait until the game is actually finished. Publishers seem to see this "Season Pass" system as some sort of happy medium meant to placate people like me, but I don't buy it. Literally. 

Read more here –>pcworld.com

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By: Guillaume Gouraud July 5, 2011

The simple fact is that since the release of Avatar in 2009, 3D has infiltrated practically every aspect of entertainment. People now have the option to watch sports broadcasts, Blu-rays, video games and other 3D-enabled content from the comfort of their own living room. While gaming is perhaps the most alluring of these capabilities — depending on who you ask — the marketplace isn't the most user friendly or accessible at the moment. With different 3D technologies and TV companies battling it out, it can be hard to keep the tech straight. To assist, we at 1UP have employed industry veteran Darkworks (makers of Cold Fear) to give you a crash course in how 3D works and what equipment you'll need to get started. Our ability to recognize depth, the third dimension, is due to a unique process known as Binocular Single Vision. This is achieved based on the fact that we have two distinct eyes positioned inches apart from one another. Each eye has a slightly different line of sight which allows us to see two different perspectives of the same image. Looking at an individual object while covering one eye at a time, you most likely will notice a slight shift in the image. This is call parallax, and because it is based on line-of-sight, nearby objects will have a larger parallax than those that are more distant. Our brains then fuse those two images together through a process known as stereopsis to form a single percept. This allows us to not only distinguish the length, width and height of objects, but the depth and distance between them as well. 

Read more here –>1up.com

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Long-running superhero MMO set to make the switch later this year.
By Mike Sharkey Jun 22, 2011

Seven-year-old superpowered MMO City of Heroes is the latest subscription-based online game to make the transition to a free-to-play model. Paragon Studios and NCSoft have announced that City of Heroes Freedom is now in development and set for launch later this year. Promising to redefine the long-running super hero MMO on the cornerstones of content, rewards, and choice, Paragon said it has been working on its hybrid F2P model for City of Heroes for over a year in an effort to improve the overall customer experience. "Freedom is about getting more content into the hands of our players, whether they are subscribing or playing for free," Brian Clayton, Executive Producer at Paragon Studios, said in a statement. "To do this, we've looked at City of Heroes from the ground up and focused on three ways to enhance the experience by giving our players more choices, greater rewards and the best content we've ever produced. And for the first time ever, players can choose to enjoy more than seven years of content for free."

Read more here –>pc.gamespy.com

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Sales of violent video games directly tied to a decrease in lower crime rates.
By Mike Sharkey Jun 22, 2011

In the video games and violence debate, the steadily declining crime rate in the United States has often been cited by gamers as evidence gaming does not, as some would lead you to believe, turn youths into violent killers. Now a group of professors has added a level of validity to the correlation, publishing the results of their research in which they conclusively state, "violent video games lead to decreases in violent crime." A BBC article entitled "U.S. Crime Figures: Why the Drop?" cites 10 possible reasons why, over the past 20 years, FBI figures show a consistent drop in murder and robbery rates. Among those reasons is the study by University of Texas at Arlington and Baylor University professors and the Centre for European Economic Research, "Understanding the Effects of Violent Video Games on Violent Crime." "Regulation of the video game industry is usually predicated on the notion that the industry has large and negative social costs through games' effect on aggression," the study states. "Many researchers have argued that these games may also have caused extreme violence, such as school shootings, because laboratory evidence has found an abundance of evidence linking gameplay to aggression. Yet few studies before this one had examined the impact of these games on crime." By looking at the sales volume of violent video games on a weekly basis and comparing those sales to weekly aggregate violent crime incidents from the National Incident Based Reporting System, the researchers found that the number of criminal incidents recorded by law enforcement actually decreased in conjunction with violent video game sales.

Read more here –>gamespy.com

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