my.bicycle

"The fundamental design of the game became 'Here's a stop sign in your gameplay, you can stop now and come back in a day, or you can keep on playing and it will cost you three bucks, or a buck, or ten bucks, or whatever it is," he said. "Not just because it seems unsavoury and I think people will burn out on it, but once you go down that road and start designing the game mechanics around that you can't help but design the whole game around that," he added. "I mean, I could be wrong about that, and I hope I am, because that would be a lame future for games." Stewart Butterfield, CEO, Tiny Speck Glitch dev warns against social "scorched earth policy"

Gamespot gave us an Editor's Choice Award for UFC 2009: Undisputed!

Punch, punch lines make Rampage a star - MMA - Yahoo! Sports : Regardless of its origin, Rampage will wear his chain – a new one, he’s not sure what happen to that old one – Saturday when he enters the octagon to defend his title against Forrest Griffin at a sold out Mandalay Bay Events Center. The sports books have him as the heavy favorite. He may even wind up wearing the chain in Hollywood if, as rumor has it, he takes the role of another famous chain-wearing badass in succeeding Mr. T as B.A. Baracus in a remake of “The A-Team.” Whether he gets the part or not – “After this fight, I find out” – America should see a great deal of Rampage in the months to come. He’s the ultimate combination of devastating fighter and oversized fun, perhaps the only man in the world capable of headlining a UFC pay-per-view card and a Vegas comedy show." “I spent about $8,000 on extra tickets because everybody watched me on ‘Ultimate Fighter,’–” he said. “I’ve got uncles and aunts like 80 years ol...

On the verge of meta-ing myself into oblivion: geek wageslave -turned- geek minstrel , Jonathan Coulton , recently created a song for game developer Valve, which is used in The Best Game Ending Ever for their highly original game, Portal . If an internet-based, Creative Commons-friendly singer songwriter isn't futurismic enough for you, how about hearing said song as covered by a Japanese virtual idol in nearly unintelligible, katakana-accented English ?

I'm about 12 hours in on Saints Row , THQ's entry into the Action/Driving genre. It's really good; if you've got a 360 and are jonesing for a Grand Theft Auto fix because GTA IV has been pushed to next year, it's a must-have. In short, it's got a lot that's a direct lift from its inspiration, but there are numerous additions to gameplay, more personalization of your character, and ability to customize and keep your cars, and many of the missions are actually pretty damned challenging. Oh, and it's got online multiplayer.

An armed gang of four kidnapped one of the world's top RPG gamers after one criminal's girlfriend lured him into a fake date using Orkut, Google's social network. After sequestering him in Sao Paulo, they held a gun against the victim's head for five hours to get his password, which they wanted to sell for $8,000. And yes, the story gets even better. ( full story at Gizmodo ; thanks, Kev!)

DM of the Rings I: The Copious Backstory Lord of the Rings is more or less the foundation of modern D&D. The latter rose from the former, although the two are now so estranged that to reunite them would be an act of savage madness. Imagine a gaggle of modern hack-n-slash roleplayers who had somehow never been exposed to the original Tolkien mythos, and then imagine taking those players and trying to introduce them to Tolkien via a D&D campaign. (apologies; I can't recall where I first saw this)

Get your Rube Goldberg on with Goldburgers-To-Go , a simple-machine simulator game. ( Geekdad )

The funny thing is, I've been wanting to make a game or novel about this for some time now. The parallels between samurai movies and westerns is not only a source of historic cinematic greatness, it's heaps of fun. I look at the way Yojimbo was turned into Fist Full of Dollars , Seven Samurai into The Magnificent Seven ... I wonder what happens when Takashi Miike of all people takes it in mind to drag some back. ( synaesthesiaJP )

Cory Doctorow’s craphound.com ~ Sam Kieth cover for Anda’s Game comic My favorite short story by Cory Doctorow, and one of my favorite short stories ever, is Anda’s Game . A comic book adaptation is planned, along with several other of his stories. Mine is on order already through Atlantis Fantasyworld in Santa Cruz, California! As with Cory’s other works, it is available for free, online. There is also a fantastic reading of the work available through his podcast, and at the story’s official page, here .

In case you want to read large amounts of text on your TV screen, the already slick as hell Google Reader has a Nintendo Wii-specific interface . ( 4 Color Rebellion )

Can you imagine a world without oil? It's likely to happen at some point, but what if it happened tomorrow? What would you do? That's the question central to the ARG, World Without Oil : WORLD WITHOUT OIL is an alternate reality event, a serious game for the public good. It invites everyone to help simulate a global oil shock. People participate by contributing original online stories, created as though the oil shock were really happening. The game's masters rank the participants (“players”) according to their contributions to our realistic portrayal of the oil shock. The game also places value on player-created communities, collaborative stories, and collective efforts. Each contribution helps the game arrive at a larger truth. No team of experts knows better than a given individual what effect an oil shock would have upon that individual's life, or what action he or she will take to cope. Personal reactions to our simulated oil shock, placed in context with many other...

Some exceptionally cool videogame related art at 2007 Into the Pixel , notification via the ConceptArt.org . Make sure to check luscious examples of previous years’ offerings under the VIEW ART category. Potential participants are here reminded: Art Submission Deadline: May 4, 2007

Regarding Magic: The Gathering : Richard Garfield prefers the name 'Trading Card Game' as opposed to 'Collectable Card Game.' 'I feel it emphasizes the playing aspect rather than the speculation aspect of the game,' he's said. He added: 'Good games last forever -- collectables come and go.' Of course, the collectable nature of the game drove up prices early on, which had the designers worried. It wasn't until the 'Fallen Empires' Magic expansion that enough cards were produced that the speculative market collapsed. FilePlanet Spotlight: Ten Things You Never Knew About Magic: The Gathering

Kotaku’s got several articles up that cover the anime-styled characters that are the personification of gaming hardware, and the epitome of fanboy lust. There’s PSP-tan , above. Also Xbox-tan , Wii-tan, and PS3-tan (not for the feint of heart ), and even a chubby little DS-tan (maybe based on the non-Lite model?). Now they can join the ranks of the Mac girl and Win-tan . Moe-moe .

If you’ve got an Xbox 360 and a Mac, check out maclive @ Google Code , which allows you to see who’s online among your XBL Friends and what they’ve been playing. ( znf via google alerts)

Special weapons, waves of creeps, research new weapons technology and use them against an unrelenting horde of creeps, all in one flash game . It’s reminiscent of when you turtle long enough to get a good base built in Warcraft or Starcraft , but without all that whining from your opponents. (thanks, TimK!)

(thanks, timK )

A new MMOArrrrPG : Wiz Kids’ Pirates Constructible game has been recreated as an online game , by Sony Online Entertainment. There's a free demo available, as well. (via Penny Arcade )