901am

New Media News Every Morning

Man Marries Videogame Character

By

The interactivity of new media allows levels of deeply personal engagement unimaginable in old media. In the case of one avid Japanese gamer, that engagement actually led to marriage.

…a man named Sal9000 married the love of his life. Her name is Nene Anegasaki, and she lives inside of a Nintendo DS video game called Love Plus. The wedding took place during a Make: Japan meet-up held at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. In attendance were a live audience, an MC, the bride’s virtual video game girlfriend — who made a speech — and a real human priest.

Don’t laugh, guys. If gaming rigs keep getting more and more powerful in accordance with Moore’s Law, someday videogame characters will attain humanlike artificial intelligence. By then, ever-improving Japanese gynoids could provide realistic bodies for such artificial intelligences.

Then they’d be able to nag you like only a real wife could.

(Via Lisa Katayama.)

Originally posted on November 25, 2009 @ 9:57 am

Nokia Pirates Nintendo Games in N900 Demo?

By

Nokia N900 SNES EmulationOh Nokia, how far you’ve fallen from your once-lofty mobile gaming ambitions. The Nokia Mosh repository carried so many wild and wacky games — until you threw away your entire developer community in favor of your clean and shiny Ovi app store. Now you can barely give away top-tier titles for free. N-Gage held so much promise as a mobile online gaming service, boasting such big titles as Tomb Raider and The Sims and Metal Gear Solid — until you unceremoniously killed the whole thing.

Now, to demonstrate the gaming capabilities of your new N900 smartphone, you’ve resorted to running classic games on retro console emulators. Never mind the sheer absurdity of using software emulation to sell the native capabilities of a piece of hardware. Sure, emulators are legal, and hardcore mobile gaming aficionados love emulators, but the game ROMs in your promo video are of questionable legality.

Now Nintendo’s thinking of taking you to court for copyright infringement. Considering that you’re the world’s largest cellphone manufacturer, that’s pretty frickin’ embarrassing.

Originally posted on November 29, 2009 @ 2:51 pm

Sims 3 New Moon Machinima Parody

By

Leave it to new media remix culture to expose the stupidity of old media manufactured culture. The inanity of The Twilight Saga: New Moon gets suitably butchered through the hilarity of The Sims 3: World Adventures, with this machinima parody featuring more drama and more lipstick.

This is why games outpace movies.

Originally posted on November 21, 2009 @ 12:01 am

AOL launches gaming resource for parents

By

AOL announced the launch of PlaySavvy.com, a site that targets parents of children ages 5-17 and helps them decipher the world of games, both PC and console. PlaySavvy also helps parents stay aware of their kids’ entertainment choices including assisting them in making informed decisions about buying games for their children.

The PlaySavvy.com launch is a continuation of AOL’s overall programming goal to offer consumers interactive and engaging experiences with relevant sites that target people’s passion points. This year, AOL launched several targeted sites including ParentDish.com, Lemondrop.com, WalletPop.com, and Holidash.com.

“Playing video games is one of the top pastimes for children these days, almost more than watching TV. We created AOL PlaySavvy to help parents navigate through all the gaming information out there in order to decide what’s appropriate for their children,” said Libe Goad, Editor-in-Chief, AOL PlaySavvy. “In addition, PlaySavvy provides advertisers the opportunity to reach this targeted user base by creating appealing campaigns around the content.”

Originally posted on December 1, 2008 @ 1:56 pm