media

• [Games Theory] The start of something beautiful in San Francisco

  Thursday April 02, 2009 @ 12:25 AM (UTC)

  Aleks Krotoski

  The Guardian, Thursday 2 April 2009

  There is a sea change in the games industry, and thank heavens to Betsy. It’s no secret that the output of the games industry has hit me like a damp squib in recent years: my favourite pick in 2007 was a low-key Japanese romance and last year it was a web data tracking tool. After almost a decade working through the vast ocean of games technology, my interactive Babylon was a karaoke game. To say I was disillusioned with the populist zombie and gangster thrillers that consumers and critics crowed over was an understatement.

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• [Games Theory] Please release me from Mary King's Riding Star

  Thursday March 12, 2009 @ 12:22 AM (UTC)

  Aleks Krotoski

  The Guardian, Thursday 12 March 2009

  Tell most people of a certain age that you’re involved with the games industry and you get two responses: a contemptuous, “Must be great to play games all day” snarl, or a starry-eyed, “I’ve got a great idea for a triple-A game!”. Newsflash, folks: as a hack, I’m only one industry evolutionary seam above the slime mould, belonging to the bulging genus Liggerus Maximus, which is presumed to survive by feeding on free beer and launch party swag.

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• [Games Theory] Gamers: all your data are belong to us

  Thursday February 26, 2009 @ 12:20 AM (UTC)

  

  Aleks Krotoski

  The Guardian, Thursday 26 February 2009

  When the news broke last week that researchers had gained access to a phenomenal – I mean phenomenal – amount of data about player behaviours scraped from the EverQuest II servers, the web went wild. Gamers around the world panicked, and virtual sabres rattled.

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• [Games Theory] Battleships v Super Mario - who wins the mind game?

  Thursday February 12, 2009 @ 12:15 AM (UTC)

  

  Aleks Krotoski

  The Guardian, Thursday 12 February 2009

  Steven Johnson, the author of Everything Bad Is Good for You, recently argued a case against traditional board games. Classics such as the US game Candy Land and Battleships were described as “games of pure chance” and “moronic” on the weblog Boing Boing in comparison with the digital toys available to his children.

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• [Games Theory] Stand by: games are the next content revolution

  Thursday January 29, 2009 @ 12:10 AM (UTC)

  Aleks Krotoski

  The Guardian, Thursday 29 January 2009

  Ten years ago, everything looked up for the games industry – there were three brand new consoles on the shelves, a world of handheld machines to captivate us and the internet knocking on the door. It was bold, it was brash, and it was big money.

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• [Games Theory] I'm ashamed we swallowed the games-as-pariah myth

  Thursday January 15, 2009 @ 12:07 AM (UTC)

  Aleks Krotoski

  The Guardian, Thursday 15 January 2009

  I’m still fuming at reports from last week – including one in the Guardian – about claims that the online game World of Warcraft was “one of the top reasons for college dropouts in the US”. After this 11 million-strong multiplayer game came under attack by a student adviser in Minnesota, the US Federal Communications Commission representative Deborah Taylor Tate took the bait and made it into an international story. To our discredit, we swallowed the line, and I’m utterly dismayed at the way it was handled.

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• [Games Theory] What's at the top of our gamers' list of choices?

  Thursday December 18, 2008 @ 12:05 AM (UTC)

  Aleks Krotoski

  The Guardian, Thursday 18 December 2008

  If your eyes have landed here, it’s likely you’re already a gamer. If that’s the case, you are likely to have already purchased the games that made the top five of our readers’ choice list. The rest of this column should give you a slightly warm but overpoweringly smug glow, knowing that you are part of a gamer collective with mutually great taste in entertainment. If, instead, you’re a gamer’s loved one grasping for ideas about what buy for Christmas, let your panicked eyes rest here, your journey’s end in the search for the perfect gift.

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• [Games Theory] Welcome aboard our wounded spaceship

  Thursday December 04, 2008 @ 12:03 AM (UTC)

  

  Aleks Krotoski

  The Guardian, Thursday 4 December 2008

  Not content with merely writing about games, the Guardian’s Games blog has produced its first game, a collaboratively generated text adventure set on a wounded ship deep in space. Our hero is a hapless space captain, alone, running out of oxygen and hounded by hungry space grues. You have one objective: fix the ship or die. A simple premise, perhaps, but one that took hundreds of volunteer hours to develop, and a journey that taught us all deep respect for the men and women behind the games we play.

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• [Games Theory] Is the games industry really immune to a recession?

  Thursday November 20, 2008 @ 11:57 PM (UTC)

  The Guardian, Thursday 20 November 2008

  Aleks Krotoski

  Gamers are so cocky. As the rest of the world crumbles around them, they sit on their comfy sofas, controllers in hand, looking smug. After all, it appears that the only market continuing to rise is theirs. The final quarter of the year has traditionally been the make-or-break time for consumer electronics; the Thanksgiving holiday in the US signals an international scrum in games stores. Most games companies wait until now to fire their big guns, and they are rewarded.

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• [Games Theory] Little Big Planet signals the start of 'Game 3.0'

  Thursday November 06, 2008 @ 11:55 PM (UTC)

  

  Aleks Krotoski

  The Guardian, Thursday 6 November 2008

  I am quite open about my relationship with the PlayStation 3. To date, the Sony console has done nothing for me. Until this week, the machine has sat under a substantial layer of dust and cat fur, discarded in favour of the superior games to both buy and download on the Nintendo Wii and the Xbox 360. I was even able to play SingStar, my traditional favourite party piece, on the PlayStation 2. But that all changed this week when the game I’ve been looking forward to more than anything in recent memory finally arrived.

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