Nukezilla

Study Claims Only 4% of Videogame Industry Employees Are Women

Sam Jordan — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 15:42:59 +0000

A study highlighted by the British Sociological Association has claimed that just four percent of people working in the videogames industry in the UK are women. According to the study carried out by PHD student Julie Prescott, the amount of women working in the industry has dropped from %12 (an already low figure) in 2006 to the current level. Prescott suggests the reason for such a decline comes from working hours and conditions.

Of the 450 she interviewed, 43% said that their well-being had been adversely affected by their working hours, with some 10% of respondents claiming they worked up to 56 hours a week.

Prescott put the low number of women in the industry down to some of these factors. She said that if the industry was more flexible in the working conditions and hours it set, then it could help retain more women, especially those who are considering having children. ”Flexible working practices would [...] improve the image of the industry as a family-friendly working environment,” said Prescott. She continued: ”Changing workplace structures, as well as improving childcare provisions would enable both genders to have active careers.”

As well this, the study found that 79% of the women asked did not have children, with 69% were under 35. The study also found that just 35% of female employees were university educated, a sharp fall on previous estimates.

In a separate article by Prescott, she said that only “28% had worked in the industry for more than 8 years”, with participants generally having a “negative view of the career progression of women within the industry and [a recognition that] barriers exist.” She did find that there were some positive aspects however. The women studied found themselves well motivated, satisfied with their jobs and the majority intended to remain in their work for the next five years.

While workplace demands might certainly be a factor for such a low number of women in game design, there’s also more social and cultural issues. This can be seen far down as education system, with TIGA last month highlighting how just 361 girls took computing at A-Level, with 3,704 boys taking the subject.

The UK’s Equalities Minister has recently spoken about attracting more women into videogame production. She said that “organisations filled with people who look the same, sound the same and have the same life experiences can all too easily end up thinking the same,” and that a lot of portrayals of women in games (often highly sexualised) comes from this male oriented workforce.

Image source.

For Now, 3.42 Update Brings End to PS3 Jailbreak

Sam Jordan — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 21:17:44 +0000

After ‘hackers’ managed to enable jailbreaking on the PS3, Sony has released an update today which patches the system and, for now at least, prevents any jailbreaking.

While Sony hasn’t officially confirmed that the update removes the jailbreaking, the BBC is reporting that it has in fact closed the hole, with Sony telling the BBC that “we will continue to take necessary actions to both hardware and software to protect the intellectual content provided on the PlayStation 3.”

A member of the PSGroove jailbreak team, Mathieu Hervais, told the BBC that it was “safer not to update” as users wanted to keep the unofficial software. This means however, that users will not be able to connect to the PlayStation Network, or use any online features.

The original tool was a paid-for dongle called PSJailbreak which enabled users to play pirated games from the console’s hard drives as well as install unofficial homebrew software. Shortly after that was put on sale, an open source version called PSGroove was released which enabled homebrew software to run in the system, but has since been altered to enable the use of pirated games.

Sony has already blocked the sale of the memory stick (PSJailbreak) in Australia, but as the BBC notes, a software block through an system update is more immediate. This will probably spark an arms race similar to one iPhone jailbreakers have with Apple.

We all knew this would happen eventually, the question is only how long it will take for the jailbreakers to fight back. I imagine that they’re already working out how Sony managed to block the jailbreak, although when talking to the BBC Hervais said he didn’t yet know.

South Korean Government Threatens Ban on Unrated Games

Sam Jordan — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 15:05:33 +0000

South Korean indie developers and some bigger fish such as Valve are facing a large crackdown on their games that don’t adhere to laws. The legislation requires all games to be rated before they can be supplied to the public, according to reports.

South Korea’s Game Rating Board (GRB) requires that every game is rated if it is publicly available, which the developer/publisher must pay for. While this isn’t so much an issue for large publishers, it’s becoming a serious problem for smaller devs, who often cannot afford to pay for a rating which could cost hundreds of US dollars. The GRB bases the cost on the game’s file size, apparently, as well as other features in the game, including network capability and genre.

This means that if a developer releases a game for free or online, he/she would still have to pay the GRB to rate their game.

According to reports, this had led the South Korean government issuing a warning to all sites hosting indie games to delete all offenders’ games. Valve’s Steam is also being apparently threatened, with the GRB suggesting that Valve would have to send each unrated game to them, and with 5GB+ file sizes for each game, that could be a pretty hefty amount of money.

Most of this comes from a post on Reddit by a fan who has translated several Korean news articles. There’s also a translation on Team Liquid, as well as reports on TIG Source and the two links below. I’ve emailed Valve for some official confirmation, but I’ve not heard back yet.

Earlier in the year the South Korean government threatened to ban Google’s Android Market, which features around 4,000 unrated titles. In a letter to Google, the Games Rating Board said that “if Google fails to make any corrective measures, we may have to completely shut down the Android marketplace in South Korea.”

Apparently, the South Korean government may be looking at alternative measures other than shutting such large providers of videogames down, but the threat is still there.

There’s a related post regarding this (and the general rating of all mobile/social games) on GamerLaw that’s worth a read, too.

Via: Kotaku, GamesIndustry.biz

Nukezilla Review: Imagine: Embittered Videogame Journalist (PC)

John Kershaw — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:01:34 +0000

Download the game here.

Develop Claims American Company Has Bought RTW’s Project: MyWorld

Sam Jordan — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 22:00:56 +0000

Industry site Develop is reporting that an anonymous American company has bought Project: My World, previously held by the now-defunct studio Realtime Worlds.

RTW went into administration at the start of the month after alleged mis-management from the company’s owners and its flagship title, All Points Bulletin, failing to win over both reviewers and consumers after a $100 million investment.

Develop notes that it has “yet to determine” if this sale includeds the 23 developers who were told they could remain and work on the virtual world game, which aims to re-create real-world places in digital form. Develop says it is “still a possibility” that the company has only bought the game’s code, which it says is close to completion. The website speculates that either the staff could be hired simply to finish development or that “a new spin off studio will rise from Realtime Worlds’ ashes under American ownership.”

The administrator currently overseeing the company, Ken Pattullo, said that “MyWorld is attracting considerable interest from potential buyers and 23 members of the team who had been working on the project clearly add value to it as a standalone business.”

This is all sourced without attribution to even anonymous sources, though Develop can usually be trusted. I’m going to wait until there’s anymore concrete information before I comment, but let’s hope it’s a little bit of hope for at least the 23 employees left.

PAX Prime ’10 [Audio]: Omega-Thanks

Hans Wuerflein — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 21:29:49 +0000

In the final update from PAX we learn about this year’s Omegathon, as well as who deserves to be thanked.

Atari Looking For Ideas For RollerCoaster Tycoon 4

Wesley Gaddis — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 20:04:40 +0000

RollerCoaster Tycoon was one of my favorite games growing up. I could spend a whole day building roller coasters, adjusting the prices of rides and food to make my patrons happy and whatever else tickled my fancy as the little blobs of pixels walked around my park. I never really played any of the sequels (I guess I lost the imaginative child-like passion for building roller coasters), but I’ve seen a friend of mine play the newer ones and they look pretty intuitive.

Which brings us to a recent forum post on the Atari website for the RCT series. Apparently, they’re thinking about making a 4th entry into the series, and they want some input from the community.

The community has already posted a bunch of great ideas, so if you’re interested in the series I’d recommend reading through a couple of the posts to get your flame for the game going again.

If Atari (or whoever will be actually developing RCT4) actually listens to these suggestions on their forum post I’m sure this will be a great game for fans of the series. Like I said before, I’m not familiar with the later games in the series, so the legacy/quality of the pedigree of the original is a little lost on me. I had heard the third game was a little janky due to the use of the grid system for the placement of rides having been carried over from the first two, so hopefully the developers decide to fix that and make it more free-form when it comes to object placement.

Hopefully for super-hardcore fanatics of the series’ sanity, we’ll hear or see something more official than a little blurb on a forum about how they want to know what features the fans would like to see to make them buy it immediately. I really hate when I see a forum post — granted, this is from an admin of the official forum, so hopefully he actually has some pull in the company — and nothing ever actually comes out of it.

Via: PC Gamer

PAX Prime ’10: Duke Nukem Forever Impressions

Hans Wuerflein — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 13:00:01 +0000

No really, they’re working on Duke Nukem Forever again.

I couldn’t believe it. I was meandering my way through the show floor, killing time between a couple of panels and there is was: the Duke Nukem Forever booth. Didn’t they kill that game a year and a half ago, I thought. And as I found out during yesterday’s preview, yes they did.

3D Realms was essentially dead and everyone was suing everyone else. After months of legal wrangling an negotiations, Nukem‘s fate now rests in the hands of Gearbox Software, creators of Borderlands and the Brothers in Arms series.

After the short history lesson in the closed door preview room, it became abundantly clear why they weren’t just playing the trailer on a TV facing the crowd. Gratuitous violence, nudity and swearing make up the majority of the video, to a level that’s at least a little surprising even today.

At the end of the trailer (and at the end of the first hands-on level I got to play shortly thereafter) the camera pans out from a screen and Duke is holding a 360 controller. One of his girlfriends asks him what he thinks of the game.

“Pretty good, but after 12 fucking years it better be!”

The two demo levels I was able to play show that whilst much has changed over the years, much of what set Duke Nukem 3D apart back in the mid-90s remains intact. The high level of interactivity with the environment is still here for starters. Whether it’s drawing up battle plans on a white board or taking a leek, the game lets you play around with just about anything you see.

There have been a few changes to the world of gaming during the last decade though, and Gearbox looks to be keeping up with them. For example, gone are the days of Duke carrying eight or nine weapons. Now we have the two-weapon swapping system popularized by the Halo series. At least it does away with the questions on where exactly he’s keeping all those guns.

Another big addition is vehicular gameplay. Duke fans who have been following the game’s long and arduous journey will remember 3D Realms had been working on incorporating driving into the game, so it’s not much of a surprise. There was only a short drive through a canyon in a monster truck in the demo, but the controls felt solid, so hopefully in the final game it turns out to be a fun change of pace more than an annoying mini-game.

It’s hard not to bring up analogies to abusive relationships with this game and its long and troubled history for Duke’s fans, but it looks they really mean it this time.

Look for Duke Nukem Forever next April on the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

PAX Prime ’10 [Gallery]: More Potential Evidence From The Show Floor

Hans Wuerflein — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 22:04:41 +0000

[Ed - Hans heads back out for another fun-filled day at Penny Arcade Expo 2010. Camera in hand, he sets out to document the depravity and debauchery that takes place when thousands of gamers gather in such a concentrated area. Continue onward, and weep at what humanity has become.]

PAX Prime ’10: Half Left’s Round-up of Day Two

Gavin Allmond — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 18:42:50 +0000

The second day of Penny Arcade Expo found me waking up fairly early due to the voice of reason in my head coupled with this nation’s archaic drinking laws preventing me from getting overly sloshed the night prior.

I headed out with my roommates to the Destructoid panel in which their staff members talked about their experiences within the site and community (which contains many people I hang around with), as well as their plans for future expansion. I followed the group down the stairs for the traditional group photo but a mean and nasty PAX Enforcer got his knickers and a twist and made a mess of it. Ruddy health and saftey.

High Fructose Cancer Syrup

After this I started shaking uncontrollably. I realised that I had not taken any sustenance in two and a half days, or consumed any liquid not laced with sugar, HFCS, or alcohol and was feeling the effects. Me and a group of friends wandered across the road to the Cheesecake Factory and set about falling into a food coma on copious American portions (I had the BBQ chicken pizza. Was all-right I suppose).

I went back to the hotel to try and recover from my mild illness and, I fear, impending conSARS (illness due to persistent proximity to unhygienic nerds) and unfortunately missed a panel or two I had planned to attend.

Once partially recovered I took to the show floor to absorb some more games. This time I was more able to grab bits and pieces of swag for you loverly readers. Bearing in mind I’m on a strict weight limit for baggage on international flights, I might end up wearing/carrying half of it on board the plane in a few days.

Included in this swag is a bunch of shirts and trinkets from Power Gig, which is in essence a band rhythm game using an actual six-string guitar and a non-physical set of infra-red drums. The technology alone had me interested and I shall certainly be keeping my eye on it.

Later as I queued for the “How to Podcast Like a Pirate” panel, presented by Rebel FM and The Geekbox, I made my first line-friend (in the sense that a nerd stranger turned out to be actually socially apt and not a weirdo) who was carrying about twice my own weight in swag and buttons. This restored my faith in the social aptitude of the gaming stereotype somewhat. But then I saw a 300lbs girl dressed as an unconvincing The Heavy from Team Fortress 2 and was disheartened. Yes I am that judgemental.

The panel itself was not bad, if a little underwhelming. They discussed their own entrance to the podcast world and some things that can help kick-off a new podcast. Beyond that it was mostly community in-jokes.

Lady Gag Gag

The day rounded-off in a similar fashion to the night before the first day of PAX, with a group of people slightly off their faces having ‘bro talks’ in the hotel room. Only this time I was dressed the most snazzy I’ve ever been. Also, wielding a gift-wrapped ‘Lady Gag Gag’ blow-up sex doll…

This is what happens when you make good friends on the Internet, people. Be careful.

One more day to go. Hopefully I will survive my ConSARS for a final round-up post tomorrow.

(Twitpic image used with permission from owner)

PAX Prime ’10 [Audio]: Last Night’s Concerts

Hans Wuerflein — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 17:36:30 +0000

This phone-in was done the morning after the night before. It also includes a very subtle name-drop, see if you can work out what it is.

Wardrox’s Vlog 5th September: The Site is White. Okay.

John Kershaw — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 15:15:42 +0000

Just a short video this week as there’s is lots to get done. In this video I talk about guilt-ridden marketing, PAX and how white is great.

The Nukezilla Sunday Supplement – 5th September 2010

Sam Jordan — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 08:00:58 +0000

Every Sunday we’re going to post links to articles we think are interesting from the last week. Sundays are usually very quiet around here, so this seems like the best day to do it. We’re going to link to articles on range of subjects, including videogames, technology, movies, geek culture and much, much more.

If you’ve got cool links to share with fellow NZers, please do chuck them in the comments below!

Videogames

Videogames and the pursuit of harmless entertainment – Destructoid. Videogames are being ‘lobotomised’. That’s the (rather convincing) argument here, with the writer suggesting that we’re all part of the problem and that videogames need to challenge us beyond hard levels and create controversy out of more than including the Taliban in your shooting game.

Love, It’s Working – Meaning And Action In Games – Game Set Watch. A great article which looks at how videogames and reality often intertwine, and often don’t. The argument is that ”the more our games concentrate entirely on escapism, the more impossible it is to put any sense of reality into them.”

DuckTales Is Impossible And Reality As We Know It Is A Giant Fucking Lie – SydLexia. Our very own Jenny Rouse sent this link my way and it’s a bit of a strange one. I’m not sure how to describe it, so I’ll just give you this: “If I can beat DuckTales, then I am omnipotent. I can beat DuckTales, therefore I am omnipotent.”

Five-Players.com I’m just going to post this entire website as an interesting collection of articles. “Five Players is a website where five people who write about games for a living come to write about games and other things for fun.”

Movies & TV

The Many Iterations of William Shatner – The New York Times. A fantastic, laugh-out-loud piece on the Star Trek star which looks at his rise to fame and how through the internet, he’s become a character of himself, hilariously portrayed in one of my favourite shows Boston Legal. Utterly enrapturing article.

Graham Linehan on Writing Comedy – Channel 4. Graham Linehan, writer behind the IT Crowd and Black Books talks about how he writes and the persona steps he took to get where he is now. Very interesting and worth a watch. He’s also big user of Twitter if you’re into that sort of thing.

Music

The Dotted Line - What do record labels do now? – The New Yorker. This examines the fall of the major music labels and how they are no longer the gatekeepers of musical success. The internet has been the home the piracy, but also independent artists.

Science

Accepted Notion of Mars as Lifeless Is Challenged – The New York Times. Scientists are re-examining the idea that Mars is the dead, solitary planet we often assume it is. A lot of these assumptions are based on a 35 year-old mission by the Viking space craft, and some say our ideas need to be updated.

Stephen Hawking’s big bang gaps – The Guardian. The ideas of a multiverse, where universal laws exist but in different ways is something that Stephen Hawking has been arguing. This article looks at the theory and why it’s not quite yet a total definition of our existence

Cool Stuff

Tabloid Hack Attack on Royals, and Beyond – The New York Times. This article isn’t very much related to anything technology-based, but it’s worth a read as an example of some very good long form journalism. A fascinating tale of scandal inside the British tabloid press, and into the government.

PAX Prime ’10 [Gallery]: Concerts, Cosplays and Dinosaurs, Oh My!

Hans Wuerflein — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:00:26 +0000

[Ed - Our intrepid Hans Wuerflein is navigating through hordes of unbathed convention-goers this weekend to bring you news, opinions and pictures from the PAX Prime show floor. Venture deeper into this post for a collection of images captured on the first day of this unholy ceremony!]

PAX Prime ’10 [Audio]: Bit.Trip Fate

Jon Ruggiero — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 21:00:50 +0000

Gaijin Games have shown off their fifth Bit.Trip at today’s Destructoid panel: an on-rails, bullet-hell, side-scrolling shooter.

PAX Prime ’10 [Audio]: inFamous 2 Demo Thoughts

Jon Ruggiero — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 20:23:20 +0000

inFamous 2 is being demoed on the show floor, but does it impress?

PAX Prime ’10: Half Left’s Round-up of Day One

Gavin Allmond — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 10:22:50 +0000

As the first day of PAX Prime 2010 draws to a close on this gorgeous Friday afternoon, the nerds start to leave gaming geek mecca and scurry back to their dens. They untuck their t-shirts from their pants, empty their bum bags and fanny packs of swag and get out of those sweaty socks and sandals. I sit here on the bed of my hotel, from which I can see a strip club called ‘Little Darlings’ and the FareStart restaurant.

This is a round-up of my day thus far enjoying what one of the largest gaming events of the year has to offer. I’ve been absorbing the videogame culture, bumping into ‘e-celebrities’ and learning about the industry from educated professionals hosting panels.

I awoke at about 8am, still off-balance and covered in marker pen and Mexican chocolate from the drinking session the night before. It can only be described as ‘heroic’ to find that I was in the bed of a hotel room that was not my own. After spending an hour and a half looking for my phone, only to find it was in my back pocket, and noticing that my wallet had merely been pilfered from me in my sleep, not stolen, I set about heading towards my own hotel.

Having been in the city for two days prior to the start of PAX the steady increase of nerds has been very observable. Beyond a Scott Pilgrim shirt on the plane from Texas, or wherever I flew from, I’d seen none for a while. Today you can’t walk a single block without seeing a Fruit Fucker or Mega 64 shirt adorning a clinically obese chestline.

After reaching my hotel and reacquainting myself with sobriety and freshness, I emptied out a backpack to make room for swag, threw in my super-chic pink and white polka-dot notepad and was off to the convention centre; off to rejoin the ocean of nerds once more.

The show floor, lacking in swag and odour

I had a short while before my first of two panels of the day so did a quick circuit of the show floor to take in the atmosphere. Almost instantly I realised that the atmosphere was not as toxic as it seemed last year. Perhaps the ConSARS epidemic of ‘09 thinned out the herd enough to remove some of the more nasally offensive.

Another rather jarring difference is that the exhibitors are being a lot tighter in terms of swag and marketing materials this year. I watched as a booth pretty much unloaded its entire day’s worth of shirts in one go onto the rabble that happened to be around them at the time. No tables full of Rockstar Grant Theft Auto stickers this year, nor even is there a man with a depressed look on his face handing out arm-fulls of Hello Kitty Online demo discs.

One thing that PAX has this year that I’m certain I remember reading about somewhere is booth-babes. I wonder about ‘partial nudity’ and how it applies to a girl in a skin-tight bodysuit that leaves little to the imagination. But then I stop wondering about that because dirty thoughts are naughty!

The queues for booths this year also seem longer. This is likely due to the fact that there’s no super-high profile exhibitors to attract all the line fans, thus leaving better general spread throughout the whole show. Though saying that, it was revealed today that everyone’s favourite one liner-spewing Duke is back. Nothing can kill Duke Nukem, evidently. He has officially run out of gum.

After walking the floor and having a go on some kiosks and booths for various games (not particularly ‘important’ ones) I walked down the road to the Sheraton Hotel’s function hall for my first panel.

Panel time

Booms, Headshots, and Scathing Comments: The Magical World of Web Video covered entertainment web video in the online environment. The panellists included some well known names from the web serious world including Alex Albrecht of The Totally Rad Show and Diggnation, Kim Evey of The Guild, and Garrett Hunter who is an important part of Mega64. I would have found these names more impressive if I actually watched any of these series, but regardless their discussions of how they themselves got into the businesses they’re currently in was very interesting indeed. The technological and human elements of video on the web were also discussed, and hearing them talk about the trials and tribulations of making a good web video series made a good hour long panel.

Later on that day I attend a panel titled ‘Movin’ on Up: How to Make It (Or Not) in Videogames Journalism’ and found it most entertaining and interesting. The panel was hosted by some professionals within the industry who spend the entire hour answering questions from the audience. Most questions covered certain tropes of the trade, such as how a smaller blog can maintain PR assets and still be critical of games, or how unpaid hobbyists can take the next step to try and turn their writing into a career.

Most of them agreed that the majority of panellists at PAX won’t have a typical story of how they got into their jobs and that more often than not a good amount of hustle is required for those kinds of positions. A very articulate man stood to ask a question and begun with a small speech on his own experiences, winning me over when he looked about the room and said “If anyone here thinks they are or want to be a games writer, and you aren’t tweeting this or don’t have a notepad out right now, you are doing it wrong”. I was most smug after that and the panellists jokingly said all those with notepads out were smiling and nodding at each other from around the room.

Doubtless I will delve into these panels in much more detail on the next NZCast and talk about the more enjoyable and interesting ones, so keep an eye out for the show next week.

PAX is off to a wonderful start and I intend to make the most of this brilliant city, with its spacey needles, over the next few days. Check back tomorrow for the second round-up post!

More details of the panels and panellists can be found here on the Penny Arcade Expo website.

PAX Prime ’10 [Audio]: Mega64 And Protomen Related Late-Night Update

Hans Wuerflein — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 09:30:19 +0000

What does the Mega64 panel have to do with Scribblenauts and just how good are The Protomen?

Mega64 Panel:

Evening Concerts (this is your bonus late-night update):

PAX Prime ’10 [Audio]: Lego Universe

Jon Ruggiero — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 08:35:59 +0000

Could we have a WoW-killer on our hands?

Communicast 2.07: Always Bet on Techincal Difficulties

Aaron "Wheaty" — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 08:00:30 +0000

The usual crew records this week, albeit with slight technical difficulties in the middle of the podcast, where Zack’s internet (It’s always his fault anyways) cut out for a few minutes, but fret not! I have supplemented the gap with Duke Nukem’s theme song in celebration of the return of the king. Our sincerest apologies for having this podcast up late, all three of us have resumed classes and were caught off guard, we’ll try to make sure it doesn’t happen in the future. To make it up for you, we’ll have an all Duke cast next week. Some of the topics for this week include:

Company of Heroes
Starcraft II (again, yes again)
Microsoft coming out with a game for “Core PC Gamers,” we couldn’t care less
Borderlands being completely broken
Steam’s software survey

You can get the RSS feed here, and the MP3 here.

No related posts.

PAX Prime ’10 [Audio]: Sonic 4 Hands On

Jon Ruggiero — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 20:09:35 +0000

How fast does Sonic go? Will Sonic’s fans ever like another Sonic game?

Angry Birds Beta for Android Released, Device Fragmentation Rears its Ugly Head [Update]

Sam Jordan — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:30:57 +0000

The hit iPhone game Angry Birds has been released as a beta on the Android Market by developer Rovio today. The game sees you catapulting your birds at structures, trying to pop little green pig things and is one of the more popular games on the App Store.

Update: It appears at least some devices with Android 1.6 and beyond will work with Angry Birds, according to this support page. Except of course if you have a HTC Hero. Not that I’m bitter.

There seems to be some confusion as to what devices the game will run on though. The Rovio website says any devices that are “second generation” will work, but it’s unclear as to what that actually means. I’ve contacted Rovio (who haven’t responded yet) to find out, ~~but I’m assuming it means any phone with Android 2.0 or higher will work~~.

Looks like it’s not supposed to be on HTC Heros (my phone, typically) with the Rovio Twitter account saying: “The frame rates on Hero are really bad, so can’t support it. Looking into it, but not likely to be a good enough experience.”

Either way, here’s the direct download link, so if you check “Install from unknown sources” in your settings you can try and get it working. I’ve got it on mine and it’s a bit choppy, with the buttons overlapping and other weirdness but it’s playable nonetheless. See if your handset can manage it.

Nice to finally have one of the best games on the iPhone on Android, even if device fragmentation has made a little more difficult than it really should be.

Gaa! Too Many PAX Posts! Let Me Help You.

John Kershaw — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:30:30 +0000

There are currently thousands of very lucky and happy gamers in Seattle enjoying PAX. I’m not one of them. But far from sitting in a corner crying and trying to make small voodoo dolls of my fellow Nukezillians who are in attendance, I though I’d do something constructive. So, I’ve built PAX.Wire.vg, a way to get all your PAX news easily and simply.

It’s built on Wire.vg, which if you’ve been reading this blog for more than a few hours you’re probably more than familiar with. However, if you’re new here, then Wire.vg is essentially a fancy-pants RSS manager, built specifically for gaming. The special PAX page takes all the gaming news being published right now, and filters out any non-PAX news (because really, who cares if it’s not in Seattle?) It then adds a smattering of style and serves.

Chances are it’ll break as the weekend goes on and it gets more popular, but down-time aside it should make for a fantastic PAX-watching tool.

PAX Prime ’10 [Audio]: Rock Band 3 Design Q&A Free-for-all!

Hans Wuerflein — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 19:00:21 +0000

Want more Muse? Will old songs be patched to have harmonies and keyboard support? Have a listen to what came out of the Rock Band 3 Q&A.

PAX Prime ’10 [Audio]: Portal 2 Demo

Jon Ruggiero — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 18:26:22 +0000

Direct from the show floor, here’s what you’re missing from the Portal 2 demo.