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SketchSynth Lets You Draw Your Own Synth on Paper
For those who regularly (or even no so regularly) like to mess around with noise, you know that the equipment that comes with it is sometimes cumbersome and often comes with annoying fixed interfaces. That’s one of the things SketchSynth, a new project...
NATO Just Spent $1.7 Billion On Five Giant Spy Drones
Well, the joke’s on you if recent "video":http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QzrS0BVJynM of an unmanned aircraft allegedly spotted 40 miles outside Chicago had you fooled. The clip shows something resembling a Predator drone...
What Were Middle Eastern Generals Buying at the World's Largest Weapons Expo?
VICE is no stranger to the Special Operations Force Exhibition, the annual meeting of military brass and weapons slingsmen in Jordan. Correspondent Shane Smith checked out SOFEX 2010 and saw firsthand all the insanity of the business of war. But that...
In a Field of '90s Barbieland Wreckage, Chop Suey Got Gaming for Girls Totally Right
Developed in 1994 and published the following year, Chop Suey was a cunning piece of multimedia edutainment, suited just as well to grown-ups -- smirking hipsters and punk rockers, probably -- as it was to the prescribed "girls 7 to 12" crowd...
Sorry Zynga, Draw Something Is a Disaster
A month after Zynga plopped $200 million down for gaming startup Omgpop so it could swallow up overnight sensation Draw Something, the pictionary game is already bleeding users, down 5 million from its peak, confirming many of the critics that figured...
"Dark Warrior Epilepsy": The Greatest Video Game Research Paper Ever
That mix of researchers striving to find the source of youngsters' seizures while simultaneously navigating the blooming world of video games resulted in perhaps the greatest medical paper title of all time: "Dark Warrior epilepsy," published in 1982.
Fun Fact: Killing Zombie Nazis Is Good For Your Brain
A new study out of the University of Toronto shows that first-person-shooter (FPS) action video games can actually help your brain by improving a range of perceptual skills.
Adventures in Shit Games: 'Cho Aniki: Bakuretsu Rantou Hen'
Earlier this month, New York University’s Game Center presented Bad is Beautiful, a playable exhibit of some of video games’ most brilliantly aberrant atrocities. At least one game was missing. “This is the crap avant-garde,” the exhibit’s website...
Ditch the Electrical Umbilical
For those of you keeping track at home, this is apparently the sort of electro-intestinal carnage that one can expect from a years-long Royal Rumble starring, in no particular order, one high-definition television, one Nintendo Wii, one Blu-ray player...
Why is Minecraft Full of Penises?
Ever since the first tunnel was carved block-by-block, Minecraft has been a roaring success. For just as long, people have question why. That's understandable, considering Minecraft lacks all of the typical tricks of the regular video game titans...
How Super Mario Brothers Turned the World Surreal
Our pal Mike Rugnetta at PBS' new "Idea Channel":http://www.youtube.com/user/pbsideachannel sent along this video a couple days ago, wherein it is argued that the present-day rush of pop culture surrealism and wanton non sequitur traces to said video...
The Best Thing About GDC: Everyone is Making Something
Early Wednesday morning, on the second day of the 2012 Game Developers Conference, a row of news vans lined the street outside the Moscone Center in San Francisco.