How online gaming can destroy the videogame consoles.

Video games have always set them apart from computer games although not many people know the difference. Ok so you want to know the difference. Well here we go. It is quite simple in fact. Computer games are played on a personal computer or notebook/laptop these games are single player games that can often be played online with other players there, for it often are secondary multiplayer games. This means that you are not playing with 2 or more friends on one personal computer or notebook/laptop but everyone is at their home playing the game alone but sharing it online with their online friends. While Video games are played alone, not online and with several friends on that same console. Also Video games used to be less in to the graphical games but more in to the game play experience. But this all changed a few years ago when game consoles started to go online. Making the gap between video games and computer games closer and closer. Read more

Our first game generated psychopaths.

How far does game violence have to get before we see our first game generated psychopaths?

With the world of realism entering the world of videogames, the violence rapidly followed its footsteps. More dark alleys, more sniping up to people and slitting their throats with blood spraying on the walls, floor and on your screen. The sound of a person choking in his own blood. These are things we more and more find relative normal in games these days. So what? So why do I care? Well already I see kids playing these games and sure it is the parent’s responsibility, but they just don’t think it is that bad. But what do they know? The kid buys a game and plays it in his room without the parent ever seeing it and maybe even not knowing the existence of the actual game in the kid’s room.

This all still is the responsibility of the parent, but I think shop owners should never sell these games to kids when they’re alone. Also when there is a parent with the kid they should be made aware of the terror and violence that is in the game. But this will never happen and game developers will never stop making these games. Simply because if you put 18+ on your game it sells much better!! Sure the stats say that only 5% of the games in the gaming industry is a 18+ game but that is NOT what we see in the game shop! Read more

Presentation at ‘De Vijf Hoeven’

What are the effects of video gaming on young children?

I am Manon Kaletzky, a student of the science of education. For a school project, it was my job to give a presentation for parents and other tutors.

I was very lucky to have met Maikel; his help made it possible for the two of us to give a presentation together. He provided me insight to the world of gaming, and helped my orient myself and my work to the subject. Through books, articles and Maikel’s help, I ultimately learned a lot about gaming. I was tasked with discovering what the effects of video games are on children, as well as how to use games in education. Read more

Girls suck at playing games!

Or do they? I don’t think so, although the biggest part of the gaming community does think girls and games don’t mix.

“Girl Gamers only play puzzle games or kiddy games with Barbie’s, ponies or other cute pets in it while eating candy and dressed up in pink dresses right?”

Read more

3D gaming: probably doomed

Have you ever seen people wearing silly-looking glasses while watching a movie? Ever wondered what the deal was with those? Well, even if you haven’t, I’ll explain it anyway. They are watching what some people call a 3D movie. It works simply by letting one eye see the image from one camera angle, and the other eye sees the same scene from a slightly offset camera angle, creating a stereo image for your eyes. Through this process, the viewer is given the illusion that he sees the movie in 3D. Read more

IGAD Breda Is A Game Design School Like No Other

Today Kevin and I (Maikel) traveled to Breda, an old town in the Netherlands; we had been invited by a teacher from a school there to have a look around. After battling a windy and rainy day on my motorbike with Kevin holding on for dear life, we arrived at the NHTV International University of Applied Sciences. A branch of this University is called IGAD, which stands for International Game Architecture and Design, and it is at this department of the NHTV that the teacher Stefano Gualeni lectures. When we arrived,  Stefano was eagerly waiting to give us our tour of the faculty.

Read more

1974 Gaming: Does the crowd decide or are they curious?

Today, 23 November 2006, a small group of NiSuTe members went to a Dutch gaming event called the Gameplay located in Utrecht. It’s a gaming event that is getting bigger and bigger every year, and this year was no exception. This time they even let the retailers and press enjoy the show one day before the crowd does. This is nice for this gives me a chance to see what the press and retailers are thinking, or find attractive.

So there I was, standing at Utrecht’s central station, camera and press card ready. Already I saw the first sighs of colleagues and fellow gamers gathering there. I went to pick up the rest of the crew; they were lunching at a restaurant nearby. We talked a bit there and went to the main event hall. But it seemed the press had to make a detour. So from the inside we had to go back outside and had to walk behind the immense building to a door on the other side. Once in we had to show our press passes and picked up our press kits. The hall was very spacious and dark (somehow that is always the case with gaming events) and big and flashy stands popped out of this gloomy darkness like small sparkling diamonds. They really did go level up this year! And it needs to be said that they did a good job at it.

Some eye catchers were the Microsoft stand, The PSP stand and the Wii stand. As you can see in the pictures below all stands were pretty nice. But one seemed to get a bit more attention than the others. Wii won’t call any names which one that was. But you probably know any way!

As retailers were gathering around to play and the press were hunting for more press kids and booth babes to photograph (sure we made some to just for you) we started to look for the little unseen jewels of this gaming events floor. And yes, we found some. Philips even impressed me a bit with a nice PC gaming set up. The Philips amBX is a creation of Philips that really puts you in the game. We made an appointment with Philips about this in the very near future so I won’t tell to much about it now.

Kenneth bumped in to the World of Warcraft Card game and started to drool all over it. I think he liked that one but that might just be me. The card game is much like other card games. Sitting round the table with actual cards, not a videogame. Not my kind of game. Maybe Kenneth will tell us more about that soon.

Now let’s tell a bit more about the gigantic 3 (you know, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo). As you have read before, their stands were impressive and had tons of games to play. Although Sony didn’t think it was that important to have more than 3 playable games for the PS3. The PSP was well taken care of with a lovely booth full sparkling PSP screens begging to be played. But some how we got distracted, by something else. Ahh, well just look here at these pics.

Then we turned our attention to the Microsoft stand. This time they provided us with enough new and old games to keep us busy. They even had a hummer ready for us to play Gears of War in. Pretty impressive I must say. Only nothing really popped out of the list of games. Too bad because some of us were really looking forward to Lost Planet. Well can’t have them all.

Finally we came at the Nintendo stand and there was only one thing that really amused us there. It was very crowded and people were screaming and laughing. People were swinging and swaying or just playing the games on the Wii. So we gave it a go again. Just to see if its still fun to do after our adventure we had a few weeks ago at Nintendo’s Benelux office. And as you can see we had fun although it took some of us (who played the Wii for the first time) some getting used to. So I had to tell some of them that they don’t need to swing their arms that hard. I only hope that they will calibrate the Wii’s better for tomorrow’s crowd. Well that was it for me! Thanks for reading this little insight of the Dutch “Gameplay 2006”