Play games = become better surgeons (!)

Here’s one for all the naysayers who think playing games is about as beneficial to your well-being as say taking a dive off Republic Plaza. What do you know; US researchers have actually noted that surgeons who play video games become better at what they do:
Gentile presented several studies on video games including one involving 33 surgeons specializing [...]

Exclusive Session with Will Wright at the Zoo

By Low Kuan Wei, GET Junior Year
SimCity, The Sims and now Spore. Will Wright created them all. When I realized that I was given the rare opportunity to attend an exclusive session with him, I was very excited. After all, I am an avid fan of The Sims myself, as well as, eagerly awaiting Spore. [...]

A history of gaming platforms

Here’s another article from Gamasutra looking at the early gaming platforms. The age of some of these platforms is beyond the age of most GET students but there could be one or two students in the course who may vaguely recall these. Plenty of photos in the article that will help contextualize what gaming machines [...]

Gaming and Society

Here’s an informative perspective on the current issues of gaming, society and demography. Yep it sounds suspisciously like a certain lecture topic in Introduction to Computer Games (INCG), and especially if you had to write an essay on it. Even if not, it’s still a useful summative write-up on the current issues; including who social [...]

Show Me The Money (Gold)!

Ai-blog.net has a pretty interesting critique on an especially relevant aspect of AI, specifically pathfinding. Yep the bug bear that torments many a game designer and frustrates players when it’s not done properly.
Folks in GET Junior Year will know that they’ll be covering pathfinding soon enough in the syllabus. The article’s very well illustrated with [...]

Game Review Clichés

If you’ve spend any measure of time reading game reviews, or more likely there’s a workshop series you’ll need to be attempting soon as a GET student, you would have seen phrases like “”An evolution, not a revolution”, “Snap-the-controller-in-half frustration” etc.
Well, on that, those terms really mean:
“2. Snap-the-controller-in-half frustration - You won’t actually feel this [...]

Outsourcing game development

Here’s an interesting write-up on the outsourcing of game development to the follow-up of Command and Conquer 3 released last year, Kane’s Wrath. It seems a little opinion-based but it’s nonetheless still a thoughtful read on the risks of outsourcing. A snippet here:
Now, some of the outsourcing has worked. For example, while much of the art and [...]

Lessons in GTA IV

The GTA IV Education review has been posted into the Game Reviews by Students & Staff last week here. But here’s an alternative take on the lessons GTA IV can impart, courtesy of Strategy Informer. One excerpt below:
1. Family Comes First

From the moment hero Niko Bellic steps off the boat, he backs up and protects [...]

Writing game reviews

There’s a short course/workshop on writing game reviews that’s already taken by some of the current senior GET students. For the GET students in the second year now, this course will be coming along soon enough. Do bookmark the link below till then—it provides pretty useful information on how to go about writing those reviews.
How [...]

RRODs

The typical GET student will be all too familiar with the Red Ring of Death, or the RROD, even if he doesn’t own an XBox360 personally. How’s that? Well, the XBox360 in the game club is very red and dead from exactly this fault.
So here’s a bit of news about the RROD, as reported by Mirror.co.uk on how much [...]