Backhand of Justice

What will it take for videogames to become a spectator sport in the United States? read more

Starcraft II is the finest RTS ever made. As someone who has played the highlights of the genre from the past 15 years I feel qualified to make this statement. Funnily enough, the only benchmark game I missed was the original Starcraft, a critical omission considering by all accounts it was a paragon of the genre.

It would be redundant to discuss the virtues of the game; my previous articles cover this thoroughly. Instead, I want to refute some of the criticisms of the game that have arisen online. There are two significant ones: that the game is merely a graphical update of the original Starcraft, and that the game ignores the evolution of the genre over the past decade. As I will discuss below, these arguments are without merit. read more

Has Blizzard caught lightning in a bottle a second time? Is Starcraft II any good? read more

Gamasutra’s Chris Beault claims that Starcraft II’s ladders are its biggest flaw. Is this unfair criticism, or does he have a valid point? read more

Social gaming is the new hotness. Haven’t you heard? Zynga is taking over the world, and Mafia Wars and Farmville are the most popular games on earth. What, you just own a Playstation 3 or an Xbox 360? Those are so passe. I’m sure you play on your own, in the dark, while we’re happily picking blueberries with our friends.

Is this really what it has come to? Is social gaming the future of gaming, as many Facebook gamers claim? Is a single player experience in the form of ‘core games’ a brief aberration that will be relegated to the least social of creatures? read more

I’m not going to pretend that this website is the most high profile site on the net, but I do my best to at least spell words correctly. Somewhere along the line, Red Redemption, an Oxford based game developer, was tricked into believing publicity from Backhand of Justice could help sell their games (yeah, don’t ask me either, I’m sure my readership of 4 will move the needle).

Having said all that, I am still going to do their bidding as I assume they will give me a share of the mammoth riches they earn with their new game. Red Redemption, are you ready for your closeup? read more

If I were to name the greatest game development companies in the world, Blizzard would be vying for the top position with heavyweights like Valve and Naughty Dog. It has three of the top franchises in games: Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo. Nobody can remember the last time they made a bad game, and the only way they could improve would be to bring back the Lost Vikings franchise.

Does it concern anybody else that Mike Morhaime (head of Blizzard) now reports directly to Thomas Tippl? Is this the beginning of the end for Blizzard? read more

Shigeru Miyamoto said that videogames didn’t sell well in 2009 because ‘we were not able to produce fun-enough products.’ When the creator of Mario, Zelda, Starfox, Donkey Kong and Cold Fusion (Nintendo scheduled release 2011) speaks, the videogame community listens.

Do games really need to be fun, though? Not all books are fun, and critics frequently ridicule ‘fun’ books like John Grisham novels or the Da Vinci Code. Nobody can really argue that The Hurt Locker was more fun than some of the other films released this year, but that doesn’t prevent it from winning the awards? Will games always just be fun? read more

If you haven’t been following recent game news, you might not have heard of GameCrush. It’s a service where you can pay $8.25 for a 10 minute Xbox Live game or 6 minute flash game. Why would you do this when you can play for free? Because GameCrush allows you to play with women. read more

People (mouth-breathers) like to demean games as silly wastes of time. They’re probably right, at least if you’re referring to the current crop of games. Can they be harnessed towards something useful? We’ve seen labeling pictures turned into a game. We’ve seen manipulating proteins turned into a game. What about teaching Microsoft Office?

A new game called Ribbon Hero attempts to turn learning and practicing Microsoft Office techniques into a game. This is just the first step: soon everything will use games to teach. read more