PAX 2012 Gallery

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“As an industry, we have been undersold this event”- Hideo Kojima

To be honest, I almost didn’t make it this year. There were projects that need finishing at a job that gave me real money. My 3-day badge would have made triple the purchase price on eBay. My wife wasn’t going with me, because there was no way I was going to make her stand in line like that while she was 6 months pregnant. Still, had been a long, hard, and almost getaway free summer, and my friends had a hotel room for me to crash in, so off I went.

PAX is the biggest convention Seattle has ever seen, and it is the ultimate test of fandom resolve. Pre-release Triple-A games are everywhere but you could stand in line up to six hours to try them out. Every venue, restaurant, and parking line looks like the crowd bulldozer scene from Soylent Green. After having to park 6 stories in the air, I was done. The only panel I went to was the Extra Credits community event (Which was a blast!), and I only lined up for about 4 demos. It turns out that this is the way to go at a place like PAX. It’s PAX, people! There is always something new to see and do. Even if you’re stuck in a corner people-watching, it’s still a better show than what you can see at home. There’s always a Cosplay group, some free swag, or even invitations to special developer parties just floating around the convention hall. Go with the flow, and you shall find what you seek. You can see more pics of the convention after the jump.

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Valve Introduces Steam Greenlight

Greenligh SOON

So many video game projects are started through Crowdsourcing. Kickstarter and IndieGogo have been a godsend to many (increasingly numerous) unemployed game creators.  Unfortunately, not much oversight exists for these websites, and there is little to stop fund recipients from pocketing the donations and walking away.

So Valve says to itself, we’ve got money, the games will be released through OUR platform, why don’t we let our community choose which games get released? This August, Valve will be releasing Steam Greenlight, a platform where game developers can submit their concepts and have them voted on by the Steam community. The winning projects will be distributed on the Steam Store, at which time the burgeoning community that the developers have built will buy the game with real shiny money! It’s democratic, it’s meritocratic, and it’s free for gamers!

 

Source: Steam Community

Paul McCartney Writing Music for Bungie


In a move expected by absolutely no one, Paul McCartney has started making music for the former Halo developer Bungie. Sir Paul probably isn’t there because of his love of video games. He is a Beatle, after all. He still explains the situation to the German gaming site Zeit online in handy google translated english:

A new computer game is selling these days so much better than a new CD. And you reach a different audience. Probably in this way many young people for the first time my music will be heard in a video game. 

As for the project Paul will be working on, signs point to Destiny, a series of Massively Multiplayer Sci-fi Fantasy shooters. Details are scant, but we all know if Paul McCartney and Bungie are involved, only good can come ot it.

Source: Examiner.com

Concept Art from Half-Life 2: Ep. 3 Stirs the Rumour Mill

 

After years of speculation and frustration, Valvetime.net uncovered a cache of concept art from Half-life 2: ep. 3 and posted the whole shebang on their facebook page! The images feature Alyx Vance’s winter wardrobe, new Combine buildings, and a possible HD return to the border world of Xen from the first Half-life. The images are around four years old, and it’s probably no accident that they’ve surfaced only now. What could Valve be up to?

Source: Gamespot

Source Film Maker Beta Now Available from Valve

Over the past little while, Valve Software has been releasing very charming and disturbing series of “Meet the Team” videos from the hit free-to-play shooter Team Fortress 2. They’ve produced the shorts using a super secret form of middleware called the Source Film Maker, and now they’re releasing Beta Keys to see what the community can come up with. So far, they’ve turned this:

Into this:

and this:

You can sign up for a beta key of your very own at the Source Filmmaker website.

The Geeky Hostess Covers EMP’s Icons of Science Fiction Exhibit

 

Tara the Geeky Hostess has been kind enough to give us all a glimpse into the Experience Music Project’s Icons of Science Fiction exhibit. Artifacts from Star Trek, The Terminator, an even Buffy the Vampire Slayer can be seen on display now. You can see the rest of the gallery here and buy tickets to see the exhibit yourself here.

Source: The Geeky Hostess.

Valve Software Hires an Economist-in-residence

Gabe Newell is trying to find a way to create a burgeoning economy between the free-to-play games in Valve’s library, such as Team Fortress 2 and DOTA 2. To that end, Valve has hired internationally renowned economist Yanis Varoufakis to:

…forge narratives and empirical knowledge that (a) transcend the border separating the ‘real’ from the digital economies, and (b) bring together lessons from the political economy of our gamers’ economies and from studying Valve’s very special (and fascinating) internal management structure.

Whatever that means. Varoufakis expects to publish his findings, providing new insight in how free-to-play works (or should work). Hats for everyone!

Source: Boing Boing

Sandra Rivas Toons it Up With Portal

What would happen if you gave a Portal Gun to a classic cartoon character? When not animating for Ren and Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi, Sandra Rivas has created these awesome sketches of Portal characters as Saturday Morning Cartoons. Check out the rest of the sketches here.

Source: io9

Halo 4: Goodbye “Teabagging”, Hello “Victory Crouch”

The GuyDudeBro’s of FPS gaming can rest easy after 343’s announcement that it will not be removing the “Teabagging” mechanic from Halo 4. However, it has been renamed the “Victory Crouch” in order fool absolutely no one. Players in online multiplayer can simply press X to respawn and spare their corpses the shame of the “Victory Crouch”, but in split-screen multiplayer a delay can be added so that “Victory Crouch” fans can victimize or be victimized to their heart’s content.

Source: Gameranx.com.

Half-life Barnacle Ceiling Lamp

From the “Fine, I wasn’t going to sleep here anyway” school of interior decorating, some enterprising soul has created a Half-life Barnacle creature and stuck a lamp at the end of its horrible capturing tentacle. I hope there’s a wall switch. You might lose an arm trying to turn it on otherwise.

Source: So Geek Chic