The Daily Galaxy: News from Planet Earth & Beyond

Spore is Coming: The Video Game Einstein & Darwin Would Love!

It has been an age and a day waiting for Spore to finally be released, and delay after delay has frustrated fans of would be game before it even hit the shelves. But finally, the games creator and designer, Will Wright, announced Tuesday that Spore will be hitting those same shelves September 7, worldwide!

 

Computers Host the Vastest & Fastest Video Game Ever Seen

Do you savor that moment when you load up a game and hit "start", knowing you're about to chill with some electronic entertainment and leave the world behind?  Enjoy it while you can, because in the future the computer might decide to play itself instead.  A group of Hungarian researchers at Eotvos University have trained an artificial intelligence to play Ms. Pac-man, and are celebrating this advance in artificial system education - perhaps unaware that they've just made humans redundant even in the field of slacking off.

The Biomedical "SETI" Program -Gamers Using Their PS3s to Assist in Medical Research

In a groundbreaking new way to conduct scientific researcher, gamers are allowing their PS3s to hone in on molecule simulations rather than aliens. In fact, anyone who owns a Sony PlayStation3 can assist biomedical researchers by donating their system’s downtime to help compute enzymatic reactions and ion conductivity. The project is known simply as the PS3GRID.

Pro Evo 2008

As games and licenses get bigger and better, we're treating to ever increasing levels of spectacle and wonder: vast virtual environments that make the Sistine chapel roof look like ten minutes with a spraycan, colossal set pieces that make the Pyramids look small-minded, and Normandy beach landings reminiscent of, well, the goddamn Normandy beach landings.

The only price we have to pay for these wonders is the death of creativity and originality.  A game that costs a bajillion dollars and four years to develop (the PS3 cell processor requires a team of ten MIT doctorates simply to turn on for development), nobody will risk that investment on anything but the most guaranteed return.  Think of the last five major releases you played - were there any that didn't have numbers in the title, sequel number substitutes like "Galaxy" or "Corruption", or that veered from the formula of "Tough guy shoots beautifully rendered things"?

Continue reading this post at The Galactic Emporium

Scientists Publish First "Immune Attack" Video Game

Some call it a breakthrough in medical teaching methods; others call it a step in the right direction, a bound toward an educational focus in gaming.  But most of us will probably just settle with, "A video
game about the immune system?  What?!"

Strangely enough, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), in cooperation with Brown University and USC, has finalized their development a new medical video game – the first of its class – Immune Attack.  The game is designed to help students who otherwise wouldn't exactly find polyphosphates or genomes particularly stimulating.

The game's protagonist, a teenage boy, is diagnosed with a medical immunodeficiency disease and must figure out what's wrong inside his body before he meets an untimely demise (in other words, don't screw up, or little Freddy will be a 'little dead-y').

GCHQ, the Surveillance Arm of British Intelligence Infiltrates Video Gaming

You would have thought that online gaming couldn’t have gotten any weirder. Gold selling, virtual sex acted out through second life, and a whole host of fetishes await the avid gamer at the touch of a button. But now, in a continuing trend of in-game advertising, you are being recruited for spy work.

Bioshock: A Shocking Experience for Gamers

The year is 1960: imagine you're flying on a commercial airliner just minding your own business; counting the number of peanuts in the bag they give you, looking at the people to your right and left, wondering why they're on the plane, and what they might have going on in their life.  BAM! Out of nowhere, you're spiraling down into a watery grave.  But you're lucky.  You survive.

Facade -The AI Videogame that Will Make You Cry

"Play Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas' Façade, and at some point, you realize, with all the certainty in the world, that someday videogames will have the power to move you emotionally." - Games For Windows magazine, May 2007
         
If you have any interest at all in AI, read this.

New Video Game Claims to Decipher the Psyche of People Around You

Imagine having your own personal mind reader that can tell you if your lover is a cheat, or your boss is lying to you. ''Heart Scan'' is a breakthrough new video game from Sega Corp., that can analyze people's voices for a range of feelings like nervous, calm, happy, dissatisfied or irritated.

The Falcon: A New 3-D Touch Experience for Gamers

The Falcon is the first 3D touch device developed on a commercial scale. It allows users to feel weight, shape, texture, dimension, and force effects when playing touch-enabled PC games.

Bay Area-based Lunar Design was asked to take a high-end industrial controller produced by Swiss company Force Dimension, a $20,000 device used by scientists and engineers for technical training and research, and transform it into a desktop version that would cost consumers only 1% of the original design. Somehow they managed the feat.

Starcraft 2 and n Vengeance

If you’ve ever wondered about the Russian criminal justice system, and the speed with which it acts – which we all have at one time or another – then this is for you.

Valentin Kiseliov has been served with a 3 year conditional jail sentence, as punishment for developing an emulator of the server part of the online game Ragnarok Online. The highly popular MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), developed in South Korea, has seen itself made in to an animated TV series and is currently awaiting its sequel.

Quest for the Perfect Gaming AI

I look back on my life and I realize I was actually very lucky when it came to computers and video-games. One of my earliest memories in fact is playing Pong, widely held as the first video game of all time. Years later I played games on the Mac at school, and then in 1997 acquired my very first laptop, a Toshiba brick that could have been used as artillery in the most recent Gulf War if necessary. I played Duke Nukem, Doom 2 and Wolfenstein.

Tauren the Quest Giver: Best. Game Developers. Ever.

Take a moment, and picture your stereotypical game designer. Have you got it? Ok, good, now let’s get on with this story.

Reported in the Orange County Register, this is a tale of a brave young boy and some of the most generous people you’re likely to hear about in a while. Ezra Chatterton, a 10-year old from Riverside, has a brain tumor, diagnosed as metastatic cancer. Crunching headaches in March lead to an emergency visit to the hospital in April, where he was sedated and didn’t wake up for a week. During his time after waking up in the hospital, young Ezra only wanted to play World of Warcraft.

Starcraft 2 -The Worldwide Cult

Saturday the 19th brought with it some of the best news I have received in a long time. For some time now fans of the video game company Blizzard, have been awaiting the big announcement that was  scheduled for Saturday. Theories about a World of Warcraft expansion, a Diablo III MMORPG and a sequel to the hit real time strategy game Starcraft were at the top of everyone’s mind; which one would it be?

Evolution of Video Games

In the same way that each new generation of Intel chips defined our desktop software, video game series often outlive the consoles, and this has meant that developers have had the opportunity to rebuild their games and characters over and over again on new and increasingly powerful.

A team at Playstation Universe has created a selection of montages to illustrate this ‘evolution’ of gaming from

Rachet & Clark, Project Gotham, Super Mario, Halo, Gran Turismo, Devil May Cry, Grand Theft Auto, and Final Fantasy to Tekken. Posted by Jason McManus.

Gallery- Evolution of Video Game Classics

SPORE -The Next Really Big Thing: An Intelligent Simulation Game Darwin & Hawking would Love to Play

We're totally psyched about SPORE, an epic journey that takes you from the origin and evolution of life through the development of civilization and technology and eventually all the way into the deepest reaches of outer space. Spore, due for release this fall, is a simulation game created by Will Wright (The SIMs) and EA that allows players to control various life forms from the cellular to the galactic level.

The core of "Spore" is its creature editor, which Wright says gives players the ability to build creatures in minutes that in the past would have taken professional game designers a couple of days.

Spore is Coming: The Video Game Einstein & Darwin Would Love!

It has been an age and a day waiting for Spore to finally be released, and delay after delay has frustrated fans of would be game before it even hit the shelves. But finally, the games creator and designer, Will Wright, announced Tuesday that Spore will be hitting those same shelves September 7, worldwide!

 

Computers Host the Vastest & Fastest Video Game Ever Seen

Do you savor that moment when you load up a game and hit "start", knowing you're about to chill with some electronic entertainment and leave the world behind?  Enjoy it while you can, because in the future the computer might decide to play itself instead.  A group of Hungarian researchers at Eotvos University have trained an artificial intelligence to play Ms. Pac-man, and are celebrating this advance in artificial system education - perhaps unaware that they've just made humans redundant even in the field of slacking off.

The Biomedical "SETI" Program -Gamers Using Their PS3s to Assist in Medical Research

In a groundbreaking new way to conduct scientific researcher, gamers are allowing their PS3s to hone in on molecule simulations rather than aliens. In fact, anyone who owns a Sony PlayStation3 can assist biomedical researchers by donating their system’s downtime to help compute enzymatic reactions and ion conductivity. The project is known simply as the PS3GRID.

Pro Evo 2008

As games and licenses get bigger and better, we're treating to ever increasing levels of spectacle and wonder: vast virtual environments that make the Sistine chapel roof look like ten minutes with a spraycan, colossal set pieces that make the Pyramids look small-minded, and Normandy beach landings reminiscent of, well, the goddamn Normandy beach landings.

The only price we have to pay for these wonders is the death of creativity and originality.  A game that costs a bajillion dollars and four years to develop (the PS3 cell processor requires a team of ten MIT doctorates simply to turn on for development), nobody will risk that investment on anything but the most guaranteed return.  Think of the last five major releases you played - were there any that didn't have numbers in the title, sequel number substitutes like "Galaxy" or "Corruption", or that veered from the formula of "Tough guy shoots beautifully rendered things"?

Continue reading this post at The Galactic Emporium

Scientists Publish First "Immune Attack" Video Game

Some call it a breakthrough in medical teaching methods; others call it a step in the right direction, a bound toward an educational focus in gaming.  But most of us will probably just settle with, "A video
game about the immune system?  What?!"

Strangely enough, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), in cooperation with Brown University and USC, has finalized their development a new medical video game – the first of its class – Immune Attack.  The game is designed to help students who otherwise wouldn't exactly find polyphosphates or genomes particularly stimulating.

The game's protagonist, a teenage boy, is diagnosed with a medical immunodeficiency disease and must figure out what's wrong inside his body before he meets an untimely demise (in other words, don't screw up, or little Freddy will be a 'little dead-y').

GCHQ, the Surveillance Arm of British Intelligence Infiltrates Video Gaming

You would have thought that online gaming couldn’t have gotten any weirder. Gold selling, virtual sex acted out through second life, and a whole host of fetishes await the avid gamer at the touch of a button. But now, in a continuing trend of in-game advertising, you are being recruited for spy work.

Bioshock: A Shocking Experience for Gamers

The year is 1960: imagine you're flying on a commercial airliner just minding your own business; counting the number of peanuts in the bag they give you, looking at the people to your right and left, wondering why they're on the plane, and what they might have going on in their life.  BAM! Out of nowhere, you're spiraling down into a watery grave.  But you're lucky.  You survive.

Facade -The AI Videogame that Will Make You Cry

"Play Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas' Façade, and at some point, you realize, with all the certainty in the world, that someday videogames will have the power to move you emotionally." - Games For Windows magazine, May 2007
         
If you have any interest at all in AI, read this.

New Video Game Claims to Decipher the Psyche of People Around You

Imagine having your own personal mind reader that can tell you if your lover is a cheat, or your boss is lying to you. ''Heart Scan'' is a breakthrough new video game from Sega Corp., that can analyze people's voices for a range of feelings like nervous, calm, happy, dissatisfied or irritated.

The Falcon: A New 3-D Touch Experience for Gamers

The Falcon is the first 3D touch device developed on a commercial scale. It allows users to feel weight, shape, texture, dimension, and force effects when playing touch-enabled PC games.

Bay Area-based Lunar Design was asked to take a high-end industrial controller produced by Swiss company Force Dimension, a $20,000 device used by scientists and engineers for technical training and research, and transform it into a desktop version that would cost consumers only 1% of the original design. Somehow they managed the feat.

Starcraft 2 and n Vengeance

If you’ve ever wondered about the Russian criminal justice system, and the speed with which it acts – which we all have at one time or another – then this is for you.

Valentin Kiseliov has been served with a 3 year conditional jail sentence, as punishment for developing an emulator of the server part of the online game Ragnarok Online. The highly popular MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), developed in South Korea, has seen itself made in to an animated TV series and is currently awaiting its sequel.

Quest for the Perfect Gaming AI

I look back on my life and I realize I was actually very lucky when it came to computers and video-games. One of my earliest memories in fact is playing Pong, widely held as the first video game of all time. Years later I played games on the Mac at school, and then in 1997 acquired my very first laptop, a Toshiba brick that could have been used as artillery in the most recent Gulf War if necessary. I played Duke Nukem, Doom 2 and Wolfenstein.

Tauren the Quest Giver: Best. Game Developers. Ever.

Take a moment, and picture your stereotypical game designer. Have you got it? Ok, good, now let’s get on with this story.

Reported in the Orange County Register, this is a tale of a brave young boy and some of the most generous people you’re likely to hear about in a while. Ezra Chatterton, a 10-year old from Riverside, has a brain tumor, diagnosed as metastatic cancer. Crunching headaches in March lead to an emergency visit to the hospital in April, where he was sedated and didn’t wake up for a week. During his time after waking up in the hospital, young Ezra only wanted to play World of Warcraft.

Starcraft 2 -The Worldwide Cult

Saturday the 19th brought with it some of the best news I have received in a long time. For some time now fans of the video game company Blizzard, have been awaiting the big announcement that was  scheduled for Saturday. Theories about a World of Warcraft expansion, a Diablo III MMORPG and a sequel to the hit real time strategy game Starcraft were at the top of everyone’s mind; which one would it be?

Evolution of Video Games

In the same way that each new generation of Intel chips defined our desktop software, video game series often outlive the consoles, and this has meant that developers have had the opportunity to rebuild their games and characters over and over again on new and increasingly powerful.

A team at Playstation Universe has created a selection of montages to illustrate this ‘evolution’ of gaming from

Rachet & Clark, Project Gotham, Super Mario, Halo, Gran Turismo, Devil May Cry, Grand Theft Auto, and Final Fantasy to Tekken. Posted by Jason McManus.

Gallery- Evolution of Video Game Classics

SPORE -The Next Really Big Thing: An Intelligent Simulation Game Darwin & Hawking would Love to Play

We're totally psyched about SPORE, an epic journey that takes you from the origin and evolution of life through the development of civilization and technology and eventually all the way into the deepest reaches of outer space. Spore, due for release this fall, is a simulation game created by Will Wright (The SIMs) and EA that allows players to control various life forms from the cellular to the galactic level.

The core of "Spore" is its creature editor, which Wright says gives players the ability to build creatures in minutes that in the past would have taken professional game designers a couple of days.