Library of Congress to begin cataloging video games

The Library of Congress is teaming up with major universities across the country to begin a 2-year initiative with the sole intent of figuring out just how institutions can preserve video games for years to come, while making the content accessible for use and study.

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Ten features should be embraced by game designers

A really great list of features that game designers shouldn't take for granted.

From Business Week:

Steve Krug argues in his book Don't Make Me Think! that a good program or product should let users accomplish their intended tasks as easily and directly as possible. The less time it takes a person to complete a desired task (even if only by a few seconds), the more satisfying it becomes. When that happens, people are more likely to use a product in greater frequency and return for more. So in the spirit of improved usability, here are ten standard features every videogame designer should embrace.

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The Endgame Syndrome: Why do we abandon games?

In the current state of gaming, releases come out so frequently that we constantly have new "stories" to choose from. The biggest catalyst of "Endgame Syndrome" is definitely this factor. Since production values and budgets have risen to new heights, most games are gorgeous to look at.....

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Virtua Fighter 5 Demo available on Xbox Live

Virtua Fighter 5, the world-renowned fighting game, now features online gameplay. VF5 also lets you download replay data of top players from its online leaderboards, and includes the latest updates to game balance, in-game items, and CPU rival character AI. Experience the fun now in this downloadable demo.

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Overwhelmed by Email? One Firm Goes Email-Free on Fridays

The idea isn't just to get people away from Outlook for the day, but to get them interacting more in person or even over the phone, hopefully to encourage better idea generation and more effective problem solving than the coldness of email can offer.

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Y: The Last Man

In the course of my surfing the web while watching the triplets, I found an interesting article about Brian Vaughan, a graphic artist whose work was up for a Wired RAVE award earlier this year.

One of the books he publishes is called Y: The Last Man. It's a graphic novel about the last man on earth after a mysterious virus kills every other mammal on the the planet with a Y chromosome. Which means that the he is literally the last man on earth; only females survived the plague.

I haven't picked up a comic since Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore's Watchmen, but I am going to head to my favorite comic shop and see if I can get caught up on this series.

Have you read this? What did you think of it?

Valve co-founder Gabe Newell gives his opinion on PS3

"I think [PS3 is] a waste of everybody’s time. Investing in the Cell, investing in the SPE gives you no long-term benefits. There’s nothing there that you’re going to apply to anything else. You’re not going to gain anything except a hatred of the architecture they’ve created. I don’t think they’re going to make money off their box."

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EA Acquires BioWare, Pandemic

The opposite direction of Bungie Studios. Just as Bungie steps towards independence, BioWare and Pandemic Studios walk away from it, as Electronic Arts announced an agreement with investment firm Elevation Partners to acquire VG Holdings Corp., the parent company of the two studios.

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Why it makes sense for Bungie to break away from Microsoft

There has been a whole lot of discussion about the possibility of Bungie leaving Microsoft. Some of the feedback from the community has been "they can't leave Microsoft owns them" or "why would Microsoft let them leave".

This is only my opinion and not based on any knowledge specific situation.

The idea of Bungie breaking away is plausible because Microsoft owns Halo, not Bungie. The company was acquired in 2000 by Microsoft to ensure the development of quality games to launch a little system called the Xbox.

If, and this is a big if, the developers at Bungie could buy their way out of their agreement with Microsoft then they would be free to develop games for other consoles.

I am sure they would come back to do Halo 4 , but I would bet that Sony would love to have them develop an A-list exclusive for them as well. Looking at the success of companies like UbiSoft and Epic has to have the folks at Bungie wondering what are they leaving on the table as far as dollars go being tied to Microsoft. This could also be a win in the short term for Microsoft because they may retain the distribution and publishing rights to select future titles for a timed period after the split.

Bungie Actually Leaving Microsoft?

Rumors are floating abound that Halo masterminds Bungie will be leaving Microsoft. The source being a reader blog from Seattlepi.com stating that in fact, as of yesterday, Bungie is no longer part of Microsoft. While the majority of Internet denizens are stating that this could never happen and that it’s not true, we’ve heard the opposite...

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Retail reveals new Xbox 360 Arcade package

A new version of the 360 is due out later this year; it's the core version repackaged with 5 Xbox Live Arcade Titles and a memory card.

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