In a recent interview, anti-violence video game crusader Jack Thompson addressed censorship, how youth respond differently to video game violence than adults, and how he varies from Feminist Frequency critic Anita Sarkeesian.
With recent blockbuster games like Batman: Arkham Knight providing a rich graphical experience for gamers, some developers may feel pressure to spend more time on visuals than the content of their games. This is not the case for Bethesda Softworks, which boasts an atmosphere for their upcoming Fallout 4 in which gamers can interact with everything they see.
At the San Diego Comic-Con, Daniel Radcliffe expressed disbelief in video game critics’ assertion that violent games make violent people. The Harry Potter star was also confused as to why Rockstar Games, developer of Grand Theft Auto, was suing the BBC over the production of Game Changer, a film that explores a censorship crisis surrounding the game.
In the past, Capcom has re-released titles that gamers have to buy again for content updates, but the company recently announced a “service-based approach” for Street Fighter V content released after the initial launch of the game.
Hungarian developer Neocore Games announced its “persistent sandbox action-RPG” game Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor – Martyr, which it will be working on with Warhammer 40,000 developer Games Workshop. The game will be coming to Mac, PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in 2016.
After being pulled along with many other Marvel titles, action game Deadpool has been put back on sale on Steam. This re-release comes in the midst of a buildup of publicity and excitement for the Deadpool movie, which casts Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson/Deadpool and is set to debut on February 12, 2016.
World of Warcraft has announced a new player vs. player (PvP) mode that will allow gamers to battle as a member of the opposing Horde or Alliance factions in Ashran or Battlegrounds.
While Sony and Microsoft debuted their PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles in China within the past year, only 9 million out of China’s 515 million gamers use a console. Due to content censorship, prices, and pirating, Sony and Microsoft are expected to sell less than 550,000 consoles, combined, this year, with online PC and mobile games expected to haul in $16.8 and 4 billion, respectively.
Speaking at the Develop conference in Brighton, England, British Culture Minister Ed Vaizey stressed that video games are a vital part of British culture.
Deep Silver, the publisher of survival horror game Dead Island, has dropped German developer Yager from working on Dead Island 2 after working on the project for three years. The decision perhaps reflects why the game has been delayed from the original spring 2015 release date until 2016.
Randy Pitchford, CEO of game developer Gearbox Software, spoke at the Develop conference in Brighton, England. He addressed gamers that criticized first-person shooter Aliens: Colonial Marines and Gearbox’s search for a development partner for a new Duke Nukem title.
Accusations involving drug abuse by professional video game players that have been circling in the eSports community have been raised again due to an admission by one professional in a recent interview.
The world of Azeroth, as depicted in Blizzard Entertainment’s popular World of Warcraft franchise, is being made into a movie, Warcraft, which will debut in June of 2016. Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), the company responsible for the special effects, has released a video giving viewers a 360-degree view of Azeroth while flying on a griffin.
In response to the passing away of Satoru Iwata, gamers, game developers, and media worldwide made tributes to the Nintendo President’s legacy. These tributes came in the form of videos, artwork, and letters of grief and fondness.
Satoru Iwata, the President of Nintendo, died on Saturday, July 11, 2015, from a bile duct growth, a form of cancer. He was 55-years old.
Naoki Satomi, CEO and President of Sega, commented that the company’s recent games have “betrayed” the trust of gamers. He hopes to improve the quality of Sega’s video games to rebuild Sega’s brand.
Thatgamecompany’s 2012 Playstation 3 adventure game Journey will be released for the PlayStation 4 on July 21, 2015. The game features cross buy, meaning that gamers who have already bought it for the PlayStation 3 will get a free download for the PlayStation 4 version.
Cliff Bleszinski, former design director for video game developer Epic Games and founder of Boss Key Productions, posted a vine in which he pinched the pop-out breasts of a mouse pad depicting an animé girl.
To the disappointment of many gamers, the graphics on Ubisoft’s action-adventure game Watch Dogs, released in 2014, were not up to par with those showcased in its demo at the 2012 E3 event, leading Ubisoft to change their policy for demonstrating game’s before their release.
Rocksteady Studios’ final installment in their critically-acclaimed Batman series, Batman: Arkham Knight, introduces players to a new dynamic duo of not bat and bird, but bat and car. Since the Batman: Arkham games are of high caliber, this review will compare them not merely to other titles in the market, but specifically to the other two Rocksteady games in the Arkham series to highlight the value added, or lost, by Knight.
After noting a decreased interest in slot machine gambling among young people, Las Vegas casinos plan to implement skill-based gambling with video games.
Call of Duty Black Ops 3: Zombies is coming to Comic-Con International from Thursday, July 9 to Saturday, July 11. The new Zombies mode will be featured and an “Escape Room Challenge” will present gamers with a real-life zombie-themed game.
Gamers who are fans of Nintendo’s Metroid series were displeased with Metroid Prime: Federation Force, a 3DS game whose E3 trailer has about 7,000 likes and 70,000 dislikes on YouTube at the time of writing.
On June 14, 2015, Bethesda Softworks released Fallout Shelter, a simulation game about managing the populace of an underground fallout shelter in which female characters can become pregnant. But the reactions that the pregnant characters have to in-game events were criticized by feminist cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian:
In the last four months, Australia outlawed over four times as many PC games as it did from 1994 to 2014. Around 220 computer games were denied classification since March 2014, rendering them illegal to sell or display, compared with only about 50 banned games from 1994 to 2014.
