Statisticians have made it clear: games with achievements sell better, and Sony’s lackluster, developer-optional, often-retroactive trophy system isn’t helping the company’s PS3 get enough of the addictive miniature game goals to compete with the Xbox 360. In a September release, EEDAR analysts noted: …if a game title is released on the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox [...]
Continue reading...Friday, October 17, 2008
World of Goo is a strange animal: An innovative, two-dimensional, physics-based puzzler, possessed by both adorable, cute graphics, and delightfully macabre writing and themes. World of Goo isn’t the kind of game that specifically needs to be on WiiWare, but the Wii is certainly a good platform for it — while there may be no [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Earlier this month, GameCyte offered a psychological examination of in-game achievements. We spoke to respected researchers from within the field, who helped us explore the reasons why gamers are so drawn to shiny trophies and higher Gamerscores. Those reasons were many, but regardless of your particular reason of choice, the fact is that more and [...]
Continue reading...Monday, September 29, 2008
Valve’s Source game engine may be nearly four years old, but the price is right — anybody who buys a single Source-powered game can download the Source SDK for free, via Steam. (Didn’t know you had it? Check your “Tools” tab in Steam.) Valve has also used their online delivery system to keep their game [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Game achievements have come to affect our favorite pastime on many levels. Achievements are being added to a growing list of game genres, and their rise is leading to raging debates on both industry and enthusiast fronts: What in-game objectives ought to merit achievements? How can games best be designed with achievements in mind? What further rewards can be tied to achievements to enhance their effective use in games? How much worth do game achievements truly have? In order to better approach these and other questions, GameCyte consulted a professor of psychology and a game designer, whose research into defining player types and motivations in modern gaming may help us all understand why achievements have become such a massive phenomenon.
Continue reading...Monday, August 25, 2008
A few weeks ago, we reviewed Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2, a game centered around the strange satisfaction that only a truly high score can provide. Thus, when we found ourselves with an extra copy of the game to give away, we knew it had to go to the right person — a competitive, dedicated, [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, August 19, 2008
As prevalent as game achievements are lately, it’s only natural to see them being applied in new and intriguing ways. Sony is using them to stock your virtual house with shiny trophies. Valve is using them to unlock new ways to hurt people. And now, Kongregate is using them to give away actual material rewards. [...]
Continue reading...Monday, August 18, 2008
On Friday, Valve updated the post on their Heavy Update page which listed the new achievements for everyone’s favorite minigun-wielding Team Fortress 2 class. This new update replaced all of the “Coming Soon” placeholders with actual descriptions of what the achievements would entail, thus drawing our speculation contest to a close. All told, roughly 50 [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, August 13, 2008
UPDATE 8/15: Valve has published the full list of the Heavy’s Achievements, and our contest is now closed! Look for our analysis and winner announcement soon! Valve put up a list, this morning, of the 35 new achievements that will become available in next week’s Heavy Update. The official website lists only the names of the [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Valve’s Heavy Update site has revealed the first new unlockable weapon for Team Fortress 2’s big, cuddly Heavy Weapons Guy: The “Killing Gloves of Boxing,” a new melee weapon which will please pugilism patrons everywhere. That’d be pretty awesome by itself, but if you look carefully at the accompanying image pack that’s included with the new site, [...]
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Thursday, November 20, 2008
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