Do serious games developers ignore mainstream videogames?

Those interested in serious games have long been preoccupied with defining serious games themselves, and the outcomes are rarely illuminating. On his member blog at Gamasutra, Raymond Ortgiesen criticizes the term ‘serious games’ but also goes on to bemoan serious games developers’ tendencies to ignore the progress made in traditional videogames in terms of immersion [...]

Driving and texting – a game to gauge distraction

The New York Times, with help from psychology professors David Strayer and David E. Meyer, has created a game to simulate the effects of texting whilst driving a car. The interface works because it’s so awkward – you’re expected to steer the car into traffic lanes using number keys whilst simultaneously typing text message responses [...]

Playstation Home boasts 7 million users

The PS3’s Home virtual world service is now 7 months old. Peter Edward, director of the PlayStation Home platform group, reported at Brighton’s Develop conference that there are now 7 million Home users – and that a typical European visitor spends 56 minutes in Home per session. The service also generated $1 million in micro-transactions [...]

Kodu game creator on Xbox Live

Microsoft Research’s Kodu on Xbox 360 allows users to create their own games using a visual programming interface. Through a series of ‘if…then’ commands it’s possible to create complex interactions such as ‘if player presses R trigger then unicycle jumps and changes to random colour’. While the resultant games are likely to be small in [...]