Category Archives: Yahoo! Games

Bet the FarmVille: How Facebook games are like casinos

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Playing a game on Facebook from the comfort of your living room couldn’t be any further away from the loud, smoky casinos of Las Vegas or Atlantic City. But scratch that surface a little and you’ll find that, aside from the complimentary cocktails, the two are virtually identical.

Both are designed to keep you sitting there playing, unaware of the passing hours. Both attract millions of visitors per year.

And both rely heavily on a small percentage of those visitors to make up the majority of their income.

Read more at Yahoo! Games

Video game industry wants $1.1 million from California

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Securing a court victory that clearly defined the First Amendment rights of video games was just the beginning for the Entertainment Software Association. Now it wants California to pay its legal bills.

The video game trade group has filed a motion with the U.S. Supreme Court for reimbursement of attorney’s fees in the case of Brown v. EMA, fees that add up to $1.1 million (and could go even higher).

Read more at Yahoo! Games

Can downloads save the video game business?

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For the most part, 2011 has been a pretty crummy year for video game sales.

Other than April, every month has shown declines. For the year, the industry is 10 percent behind 2010’s pace. That puts video games retail on track for its third consecutive year of negative growth — the first time that has ever happened in the gaming world.

As retail sputters, more and more publishers are looking to downloadable games to help fill the gaps.

Read more at Yahoo! Games

Wesley Snipes: Actor, prisoner…game designer?

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Passenger 57 has taken up a new hobby.

As he serves out a three-year prison sentence for failure to file federal income tax returns, actor, producer and all-around butt-kicker Wesley Snipes is adding ‘game developer’ to his resume. The man filmgoers know best as the vampire hunter Blade has teamed with Finnish developer Lapland Studio to release ‘Julius Styles: The International.’

Read more at Yahoo! Games

Star Wars: The Old Republic rankles fans with odd pre-order campaign

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No one has doubted that Bioware’s upcoming massively multiplayer game, Star Wars: The Old Republic, was going to be, well, massive. But the unusual — and baffling — pre-order experience for the game is causing a disturbance in the Force.

Typically, pre-orders are pretty simple: You put down a deposit, you wait for the game to come out and you’re guaranteed a copy on day one. But with The Old Republic, it’s a bit more complicated.

Read more at Yahoo! Games

PopCap Games turns 9-year-old into game developer

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Owain Weinert is nine years old — and like countless children his age, he plays lots of video games. He wants to make them, too, so he conceived and designed a title on his own.

For most kids, the story would end there. But Owain has leukemia. And with the help of the Make-A-Wish foundation, he got to spend some time with the developers at PopCap Games (Bejeweled, Plants Vs. Zombies) earlier this year, impressing the game makers so much that they developed the game he had conceived.

It went live on the App store Thursday.

Read more at Yahoo! Games

GoldenEye remake on the way — again

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James Bond might be in a holding pattern on the big screen, but 007’s getting quite a workout in the gaming world.

With its remake of the seminal shooter GoldenEye 007 proving a hit on the Wii last winter, Activision is sprucing up the game for high definition consoles, with plans to release it later this year.

Read more at Yahoo! Games

Now open: The World of Warcraft/Starcraft theme park

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Mickey Mouse may have two theme parks under his belt, but The Horde is getting ready to rush his castle.

What seemed like the stuff of a fanboy fantasy – a theme park dedicated to mega-hits World of Warcraft and Starcraft – has opened its gates in China. Dubbed “World Joyland,” the park is located just north of Shanghai and brings new meaning to the term “E ticket.”

Read more at Yahoo! Games

Ubisoft fights used sales with online pass system

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Add Ubisoft to the list of publishers who are throwing up barriers for buyers of used games.

The French publisher has unveiled a new system dubbed the Uplay Passport that will include a one-time code with each game, giving players access to locked content — including online multiplayer. Buyers of used copies will have to shell out $9.99 to utilize those features.

Read more at Yahoo! Games

Why are movie games so bad?

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It’s not that often that you can definitively point to the beginning of a trend. But when it comes to really bad video games based on movies, there’s a pretty clear starting point.

It was 1982, and Atari was hoping to capitalize on the monster success of Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.” It gave the game’s developers less than six months to create the title — and the rush-job showed. Wise players bypassed it and Atari ended up burying thousands — if not millions — of unsold copies in a New Mexico landfill while ushering in what would become known as the great video game crash of 1983.

Nearly 30 years later, things really haven’t changed that much.

Read more at Yahoo! Games