Summer’s starting to wane, which means we’re entering the fall gaming season, ripe with blockbuster titles and another jam-packed edition of PLAYED. This month, we check out augmented reality’s impact on the web and gaming’s inherent tie, as well as MTV’s newest avenue for up-and-coming acts, via the Rock Band Network.
While the summer season is considered the gaming industry’s slow time of year, this month’s PLAYED shows that people are still beating the heat by playing games. With the recession’s impact on everyday life, we look at how players are changing their gaming habits in the current economic climate.
It’s that time of the year, where the gaming industry puts its best foot forward and shows off the newest gear, the latest innovations, and, of course, the best games you’ll be playing over the next 365 days. The Electronic Entertainment Expo came roaring back to life in Los Angeles this past month and Denuo’s gaming expertise was there to take it all in.
Upon returning from the Electronic Entertainment Expo, my eyes had to readjust to not seeing projection monitors the size of a high school around every corner. The industry has been long without a big, loud proclamation of its growth and limitless future and this year’s E3 was exactly that. Plus, I saw Mini Me playing video games, which pleased me to no end. This was my first E3 and, by all accounts, it was a great one to be a part of. Every company had something remarkable to show and it became next to impossible to find a bad game on the show floor. That said, here’s my personal Top Five titles that I instantly pre-ordered from the expo.
Authenticity is a factor in gaming that had to wait for the technology to catch up to it. In the early days, the two blips on the screen could easily service as “ping pong paddles,” but not as something like a real-life personality or established fantasy characters (like the infamous dragon-duck from the Atari 2600 classic, “Adventure”). Now that consoles can push life-like experiences in both graphics and immersion, games are held to a higher standard of authenticity, whether its how a receiver catches a pass or a comic-book hero destroys a building. There’s no room for scuttling details away because of technological limitations. Lucky for us, developers are rising to the occasion, earning success through remaining authentic to the core values behind their titles and representing them in the unique ways that gaming allows.
