A University of Liverpool study has found that women make up just four per cent of the UK games industry workforce.
That’s down by eight per cent from 2006, according to PhD student and study author Julie Prescott, who suggested that inflexible working practices were largely to blame for the drop in numbers.
The Playful conference is set to return to London later this month with another diverse range of talks about games and play.
Eclectic and all about videogames’ fringes, “it’s a day about play, games, innovation, education, feelings, dealings, and minds reeling,” according to organiser and games consultancy Pixel-Lab.
Keita Takahashi, creator of cult sensation Katamari Damacy and more recently Noby Noby Boy, has left his post at Namco Bandai.
The seventh annual PAX Prime conference drew 67,600 visitors, up 7,000 on last year's attendance figure.
The strong showing at last week's fan-themed event in Seattle - where Gearbox’s work on Duke Nukem Forever was revealed - confirmed that PAX remains the single biggest US-based consumer show devoted to PC and console games, according to Big Download.
Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIII is to receive a long overdue release on Xbox 360 in Japan.
The RPG will launch for Microsoft’s console on December 16 for 4,980 yen, (£39 / $60), a year after its December 17, 2009 PS3 release, according to Famitsu (via Gamasutra).
With Microsoft and Sony poised to release their motion-control devices, Wii-related PR buzz has been somewhat muffled. Even Nintendo’s own hardware focus has moved on to the 3DS. Though its sales remain extremely healthy, you’d be forgiven for thinking Wii was winding down. THQ believes otherwise, and has bet the fate of a new device on it. The device is uDraw, a Wii graphics tablet which allows you to wield a stylus against its slippery plastic surface and see the results appear on the TV screen.
Microsoft has announced that it will release a high-end Xbox 360 Kinect bundle in the UK on November 10.
An Xbox 360 250GB with Kinect and Kinect Adventures will be “available for a limited period” for £299.99, alongside the previously announced Xbox 360 4GB console with Kinect and Kinect Adventures for £249.99, the company said.
Kinect will launch in Japan on November 20, Microsoft has confirmed.
The Kinect accessory bundled with Kinect Adventures will cost 14,800 yen (£114 / $177). The device will also be available with the Xbox 360 4GB and Xbox 360 250GB, both packing in a copy of Kinect Adventures, for 29,800 yen (£230 / $356) and 39,800 yen (£308 / $475) respectively.
Six months after the inaugural Indie Game Challenge (IGC), the October 1 deadline for submissions for the second annual competition is fast approaching.
2011’s competition has been expanded to include international professional and amateur game developers competing in different categories for two grand prizes of $100,000.
Game industry analysts have weighed in with sales forecasts for August 2010 ahead of the expected release of US market data from the NPD Group this Thursday.
Wedbush Morgan’s Michael Pachter forecast software sales of $445 million, down six per cent compared to last August’s $471 million.
Tandem Events has issued a call for speaker submissions for the second Develop Liverpool conference.
“Designed to meet the demands of the thriving game community based in the north of England”, the event will feature three tracks and multiple networking sessions.
The conference will take place on November 25, 2010, alongside Software City, which is organised by Merseyside ICT.
South Korea’s Game Rating Board has reportedly implemented new measures requiring all titles released in the country to be classified by domestic officials, and that game developers pay for the classification process.
According to online reports, one-off classification fees – ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars based on file size - being demanded by the Game Rating Board are likely to have a significant impact on indie developers unable to afford the cost.
Sony has launched a new PS3 firmware update, version 3.42, “to address security vulnerability in the system software”.
Microsoft veteran Andre Vrignaud has announced that he is to leave his position as director of game platform strategy at the Xbox maker to take on a new role at Amazon.
Vrignaud has worked at Microsoft since 2002, helping manage the overall gaming platform strategy for Xbox, Xbox Live and Windows.
The iPad launched to familiar Apple hype, but very few games have so far lived up to the company's "magical and revolutionary" product message. While developers increasingly embrace social networks and online play, the iPad's large touchscreen offers the opportunity to gather players around a single device, bringing social gaming back to the living room. Koduco Games thinks its latest title, PongVaders, will do exactly this.
A highlight from our community-written blogs, featuring a discussion on cooperation and trust.
In his recent keynote, Steven Poole champions the very real emotional value of cooperation in games. Ambrus_Veres agrees and worries that developers compromise games' cooperative potential by being too heavy-handed when it comes to guiding players through their own narratives.
As part of a wider interview about PopCap’s first forays onto Facebook with Bejeweled Blitz and Zuma Blitz, vice president of social games Jon David has been discussing dealing with a platform where the ground is often shifting underfoot.
Atlus USA president Shinichi Suzuki has reassured fans that the company will continue to make games after recently being dissolved by its owner, Index Holdings.
The "disastrous launch” of strategy game Elemental: War Of Magic has resulted in an unspecified number of layoffs at Michigan, US-based PC publisher and developer Stardock.
The news was originally reported by ShackNews and later confirmed by Stardock CEO Brad Wardell.
It’s unfair that a lovingly crafted and aesthetically stylish game should have turned out to be so philosophically depressing. Echoshift is a beautiful and clever little puzzler, with its haunting army of shadow puppets and harmonised trilling woodwinds on the soundtrack. But what is disturbing about it is inseparable from its central mechanic, encapsulated in the developers’ own cute name for the concept: ‘self co-op’.
Realtime Worlds’ Project MyWorld has reportedly been bought by an American company.
As vice president of social games, Jon David has overseen PopCap’s first foray onto Facebook with the potent Bejeweled Blitz, a concentrated 60 second take on the gem-based puzzle game. As PopCap readies its second assault on the platform with Zuma Blitz, we sat down with David to discuss what the developer has learned about social networks, the changing face of Facebook’s viral channels and the tricky business of monetising games.
Mafia II retained the top spot on the UK all formats chart during the week ended September 4, according to data from GfK Chart-Track.
Kane & Lynch: Dog Days remained in second place, ahead of Wii Sports Resort, Toy Story 3 and Red Dead Redemption.
Take-Two has confirmed rumours that Borderlands maker Gearbox Software is currently completing work on the long in development Duke Nukem Forever.
The firm said in a press release that its 2K Games division will release the title – which was originally announced in 1997 - for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC “in calendar 2011”, adding that it holds “the exclusive, long-term publishing rights to the game”.
IndieCade, the annual festival of independent games, has announced the finalist titles for its 2010 event, taking place from October 8-10 in Culver City, California.