The past few weeks have been a distressing time for those in the business of data security - and equally testing for those in the business of convincing consumers that their data is in safe hands. But with Lulzsec, unofficial symbol of the hackstravaganza, disbanded and drawing an at least conceptual line beneath the recent spate of data breaches and security hacks, can we condemn the experience of the last few weeks as yet another brief blip in internet history?
Fantasy writer Joe Abercrombie grew up in Lancaster, UK, rolling dice and plugging away at an Acorn Atom, before venturing south to London where he worked as a film editor. His leap into fantasy writing came in 2006 with The First Law Trilogy (described by Pulitzer prize winner Junot Diaz as “the finest epic fantasy trilogy in recent memory”). While his professional career has zigged and zagged, one thing has remained constant: his love of videogames.
If cloud gaming service Gaikai lives up to its promise, it threatens to drastically change the way players approach online gaming and will likely have a disruptive effect on the traditional retail market, too. For an article on the service in the current issue of Edge, we caught up with company founder David Perry to discuss the challenges of rewiring the gaming industry, how it all works and why FarmVille deserves your respect.
If cloud gaming service Gaikai lives up to its promise, it threatens to drastically change the way players approach online gaming and will likely have a disruptive effect on the traditional retail market, too. For an article on the service in the current issue of Edge, we caught up with company founder David Perry to discuss the challenges of rewiring the gaming industry, how it all works and why FarmVille deserves your respect.
Despite the colourful cast of assailants that have met their demise at the hands of Ninja Gaiden's Ryu Hayabusa, from demons to lightning gods, what we saw of the series' third entry at E3 featured far more down-to-earth adversaries. We sat down with Team Ninja producer Yousuke Hayashi to discuss the challenge of balancing difficulty and accessibilty, the need for greater connection with your enemies and a new focus on swordplay.
Despite the colourful cast of assailants that have met their demise at the hands of Ninja Gaiden's Ryu Hayabusa, from demons to lightning gods, what we saw of the series' third entry at E3 featured far more down-to-earth adversaries. We sat down with Team Ninja producer Yousuke Hayashi to discuss the challenge of balancing difficulty and accessibilty, the need for greater connection with your enemies and a new focus on swordplay.
Prised from our hands-on with Battlefield 3’s riotous Rush mode at this year's E3, we sat down with Lars Gustavsson, lead multiplayer designer and 12 year veteran of the franchise to talk about the series’ development, level design and tactics.
Prised from our hands-on with Battlefield 3’s riotous Rush mode at this year's E3, we sat down with Lars Gustavsson, lead multiplayer designer and 12 year veteran of the franchise to talk about the series’ development, level design and tactics.
Battlefield 3 executive producer Patrick Bach tells us that taking on Call Of Duty won’t mean compromising Battlefield tradition, and explains why the title’s authentic tone is married to an intentionally fantastical plot.
Battlefield 3 executive producer Patrick Bach tells us that taking on Call Of Duty won’t mean compromising Battlefield tradition, and explains why the title’s authentic tone is married to an intentionally fantastical plot.
Rockstar will not publish Team Bondi's next game, according to a former member of staff at the Sydney-based LA Noire developer.
The source, in emails seen by GI.biz, claims that Rockstar's dissatisfaction with the management style of Team Bondi co-founder Brendan McNamara and the amount of money it sunk into the project has left the Sydney studio looking for a different publisher for its next title.
Spare a thought for Shuggy, because his antic creators have brought him into the world surrounded by a perfect storm of glittering self-sabotage. Along with that forgettable name (The Adventures of Shaggy? Of Shigsy?) and a cumbersome, if well-intentioned, level selection UI, Smudged Cat Games has opted for a graphical style of such unrelenting clip-art blandness that your body may physically reject it on first sighting. Steady yourself: if you can get past the menu interface and go beyond the visuals, a leaderboard scramble of peculiar invention awaits.
On the last Tuesday of the term, I was able to talk with pupils from Loriston and Kirkhill primary schools over Glow Meet about their P7-S1 transition project. Along with Charleston and Abbotswell primary schools, all primary 7 pupils studied Healthy Living as the basis of a transition project to Kincorth Academy. This is a little taster of what went on during the project. You will be able to find out more at SLF 2011 on Thursday 22 September, 1.15pm at this seminar.
Using a dedicated glow group, pupils from all schools were asked to design and upload a flyer to promote healthy living to a document store. All pupils had access to these stores and were encouraged to look at others work and leave comments. However, flyers were not the only media that the pupils created and shared.
My ex Consolarium colleague, Charlie Love, spent time with all 4 primary schools, giving them all an overview and a few lessons on using Scratch to create games. They also used the tutorials available in the Consolarium Glow Group, as well as looked at remixing projects from the Scratch website.
The pupils were incredibly motivated and challenged by the this activity and they told me in the meeting that while it was hard to do the programming, they worked through the problems as groups. If they couldn’t find a solution, they used a forum within Glow to ask for help / get feedback from their classmates / peers in another school / a teacher.
These games were also uploaded to the Glow group for feedback from other schools. One of the boys in Kirkhill primary school told me that the feedback he got back via glow helped him make his game more playable. This was echoed by pupils at Loriston primary school.
All pupils found the the online community a valuable source of help and feedback, but would of liked to have Mr Love there in person more often to help out with any problems they had. However, by not having he expert on hand, meant the the pupils did have to seek alternative help. As well as the online Glow community, in many cases, some pupils who really got into the game design / scratch projects, became the in-class expert that many pupils turned to for help.
You can play some of the games online at the Scratch website here, or, if you have a Glow account, visit the glow group and see all games and flyers here.
Within the group, pupils from P7 and the secondary schools were encouraged to use a forum to discuss any questions / fears they may have about coming up to the Academy as well as seek help with their Scratch Projects.
You can find out more about this transition project, its links to CfE, use of Glow and their first experience of Game Design at SLF 2011 – sign up here.
Dave Perry, founder of cloud gaming service Gaikai, acknowledges latency as "the biggest elephant in the room" but claims that his firm has gone to great lengths to mitigate for it.
Dave Perry, founder of cloud gaming service Gaikai, acknowledges latency as "the biggest elephant in the room" but claims that his firm has gone to great lengths to mitigate for it.
So, it’s the end of the school year and Modern Foreign Language pupils at Firrhill High School in Edinburgh have been reflecting on the use of My French Coach on the Nintendo DS in their French lessons. One of the pupils, wrote about her and her classmates experience of the DS in the school magazine, Firrhill Heights.
You can read her article here.
Helene Clark, the languages teacher who lead the project is delighted with the impact the game has had on her pupils learning and spoke to Elizabeth Buie at the TES about her experience. You can read the article here.
As a result of the project, Helene submitted a proposal for funding from the PTA at the school in order to buy language based DS games, and other games the Consolarium have used in the past, to be kept in the school library for pupils to borrow in order to improve their French, or indeed get a taster of a new language. Helene stated:
I managed to purchase 14 games for our school library, as well as 2 DS consoles. The idea is that children will be able to borrow the games as they can borrow books to practice French, German, Spanish and Mandarin at their leisure. I have also purchased a couple of “My Word coach” and “Brain Training” games to show that some games can be used to support literacy and numeracy.
The My French Coach games for the DS have been discontinued, however, Ubisoft have made the game (and others) available on the iPod touch / iPad at a cost of £2.99 from the AppStore, thus making it even more accessible to pupils / departments who have these devices.
Organisers of Develop in Brighton have announced that LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule will be interviewed by Phil Harrison during a keynote session at this year's conference.
Harrison, who signed LittleBigPlanet when president of Sony Worldwide Studios, will interview Media Molecule co-founders Alex Evans, Mark Healey and Kareem Ettouney in the conference's opening keynote, dubbed Living Inside A Molecule.
This month's rather fetching double-wrapped cover features Nintendo's next great hope, Wii U. We go hands-on with the hardware and deliver our detailed thoughts. We haven't forgotten the rest of E3, though, and you'll find extensive coverage of the Californian show, along with additional game previews, in Knowledge.
