Games

Over the last several years, the so-called "serious games" movement has picked up a lot of steam.

Among the many things this encompasses is the use of games in education, health care, and the military.

But perhaps nowhere are serious games having a greater impact than in the business world, an arena always searching for new tools to improve efficiency and keep employees and customers engaged.

With this phenomenon having gained a critical velocity, the time has come for a book chronicling it, and David Edery and Ethan Mollick have answered the call.

With their new book, Changing the Game, … Read more

National Amusements, a media and entertainment company controlled by Sumner Redstone, is expected to announce on Monday that it sold its majority stake in Midway Games, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Redstone reportedly sold the 87 percent stake to investor Mark Thomas, in exchange for $100,000 and the assumption of $70 million in secured and unsecured debt.

The transaction, while expected to result in a loss in excess of $800 million for Redstone, is expected to yield a substantial tax break for the media and entertainment investor, according to the Journal.

And for Redstone, that … Read more

It would be tempting for those in the video game business to take some recent news--for instance, that October sales were through the roof, or that the latest World of Warcraft expansion broke the all-time record for single-day PC game sales--as proof that their industry may be immune from the deep despair confronting the global economy.

And indeed, that seems to be exactly what many people in the industry are choosing to believe: that in rough times, people always spend money on entertainment, and that as entertainment goes, video game software and hardware offer much higher value than other options. … Read more

The Army is investing $50 million into video combat training games and gaming systems over the next five years, in a move to prepare soldiers for battle.

Soldiers, via the video games, will face ambushes and roadside bomb attacks while traveling in convoys, along with a host of other situations that mimic battle under a number of conditions and terrain, according to a report in Stars and Stripes.

The Army's Peo-Stri and gaming unit will monitor the industry, seeking out commercial games and systems it can use for low-cost training, the report noted.

Darwars Ambush is one of the … Read more

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion to the mega-popular online game, sold 2.8 million copies in its first 24 hours last week, setting what its publisher said is an all-time record for PC games.

According to Blizzard Entertainment, Wrath of the Lich King, broke the one-day PC game sales record of 2.4 million copies, which was set 22 months earlier by The Burning Crusade, the first WoW expansion.

The new expansion was launched simultaneously in North America, Europe, Chile, Argentina, and Russia.

And at $40 a copy, the game would have brought in $… Read more

Once thought to be its answer to virtual worlds like Second Life, Google's Lively launched this summer to much fanfare.

Lively was Web-based and allowed anyone to set up virtual spaces, such as rooms, that could be embedded onto blogs or Facebook pages.

But the project never picked up much steam.

Now, Google has decided to shut the project down.

"Despite all the virtual high fives and creative rooms everyone has enjoyed in the last four and a half months, we've decided to shut Lively down at the end of the year," Google said on its … Read more

For years, Boing Boing was one of the most popular blogs around, and with the rare exception of a guest writer or two, it was written entirely by a group of four accomplished co-editors.

If you were interested in the culture of technology, there was a pretty good chance that Cory Doctorow, Xeni Jardin, David Pescovitz, and Mark Frauenfelder were your heroes. Even as other blog networks, such as Gawker Media and Weblogs, sprouted up, Boing Boing stuck to its original, successful … Read more

Despite a slowing economy, sales of U.S. video games and hardware soared 18 percent from the same month a year ago, according to data released Thursday by market researcher NPD Group.

Hardware sales were up 5 percent to $494.7 million, led by Nintendo's Wii game console. Wii held onto the top spot by selling 803,000 units in October, up from 687,000 in September. The Wii, which has been plagued by shortages, has sold more than 13 million units since its release in November 2006.

Microsoft's Xbox 360 held onto the No. 2 spot by … Read more

For World of Warcraft players who over the years have grown accustomed to seeing busy in-world auction houses, the last few weeks may have seemed odd.

Normally bustling with players eager to buy or sell weapons, clothing, armor, or other goods, business at the auction houses has recently slowed to a crawl. But it's not because of the global economic crisis.

Rather, say WoW aficionados, players have been hoarding their gold in anticipation of the release Thursday of the game's latest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, and holding off on buying items that would soon be obsolete.

This is just one example of players of the hugely popular massively multiplayer online game behaving differently as Lich King's release approaches.

The game will go on sale nationwide after midnight (12 a.m.) Thursday, and retail stores expect lines across the country. … Read more