John Oliver Calls Trolls to Arms to Save Net Neutrality

One of the important parts of my post Game of Thrones ritual is staying up to watch Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on HBO. (I don’t stick around between 10:00 PM and 11:00 PM because that’s when I watch Cutthroat Kitchen on the Food Network.)

This week, John covered the death of Net Neutrality at the hands of money-grubbing corporations. He also touched on the fallacy of competition in the regional monopoly system but that’s a different matter. In his look at cable and internet providers and what they’re doing to kill the internet, he had an epic call to arms for the denizens of the internet to save net neutrality from the abyss made dark by corporate interests.

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Comic Book Pull List for June 4, 2014

Jun 3

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batman-66-meets-the-green-hornet-1This week, there’s only one comic that matters for me this week. Kevin Smith’s The Green Hornet series crosses over with DC Comics’ Batman ’66 series in a moment that should bring back memories of the original TV series. Back in 1967, The Green Hornet and Kato joined forces with Batman and Robin in one of the original TV crossovers. This week, it happens again as the four crimefighters reunite in Batman ’66 Meets The Green Hornet #1.

Elsewhere, Boom adapts the cult hit Big Trouble in Little China for print complete with input from director John Carpenter for Big Trouble in Little China #1. And Judge Dredd completes his five-issue west coast adventure in Judge Dredd: Mega City Two #5.

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2K Marin Takes Over BioShock Franchise

Jun 3

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Just because Irrational Games has effective shut down as it restructures to become the world’s highest-profile indie-sized game developer, that doesn’t mean that their epic BioShock franchise is gone with them.

2K Marin, the studio that helped Irrational with BioShock and developed BioShock 2, has been tapped by Take-Two Interactive, 2K Games’ parent company, to once again take over BioShock and make the next game in the series.

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Game of Thrones: The Mountain and The Viper Review

Jun 3

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game-of-thrones-prince-oberyn-martell-season-four-headerNormally, I try to wedge in a little bit of an intro for these posts before I put in the jump from the home page to the full post. Today, I don’t feel up to doing it. If you watched this episode, you’ll understand why. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch it and come back.

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Game Trailers Roundup for June 2, 2014

Jun 2

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It seems as though this week’s game trailers roundup has less to do with trailers that were released over the last seven days but more to do with trailers that were leaked.

Publishers are so beholden to major events like E3, Gamescom and PAX that they don’t bother trying to break free from the busy convention news cycle to their own waves and get a ton of buzz as the only major headline at a point of time. This week, the cops and robbers edition of Battlefield and PS4’s Project Beast both had trailers leaked. If they let these run during E3, they might have gotten lost in the shuffle. Getting out ahead of the conventions got them headlines.

Elsewhere, we have teaser trailers for BattleCry, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel and Quantum Break.

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The Evolution of Racing Video Games (Infographic)

If there are two passions of mine that I write about far too frequently, it’s motorsports and video games. Naturally, I love writing about and playing motorsport video games, especially proper racing sims.

Today, I have an infographic that combines both of my passions into one. Our friends at Team Sport have a look back at the history and evolution of racing video games. It even includes two games from Papyrus Racing Games who are my favourite racing sim devs of all time.

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EA Finalizes Settlement in NCAA Video Game Lawsuit

Jun 2

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ea-sports-bannerElectronic Arts and the Collegiate Licencing Company have settled a multi-million dollar class action lawsuit over the use of the likenesses of NCAA Division I (and FBS) football and basketball players in EA Sports video games without compensation.

After agreeing to a settlement in principle back in September 2013, the three parties agreed to a settlement worth $40 million for the estimated up to 200,000 players who appeared in the EA Sports NCAA Football and NCAA Basketball / March Madness games since 2003.

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Geek Links of the Week

May 30

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LeVar Burton is trying to bring Reading Rainbow back to the masses and right into the schools. Just like the good old days, he’s doing so with the aid of donations from generous people like you. But instead of going through PBS, he’s going through Kickstarter to relaunch the iconic and award-winning literacy and educational series. [Jezebel]

There are plenty of ways that you can make money thanks to video games. One way is through selling items through Steam. However, even that is a risky endeavor. [Polygon]

Speaking of ways to make money through games, The Economist explains how to make money from playing video games. [The Economist]

I shouldn’t have to be reporting on game journalists’ ethics but Siliconera has been accused of stealing someone’s translated news articles and using them verbatim without properly citing the work he’s done. I’d say that they should be better than that but clearly they’re not. [Dime a Dozen]

Now that he’s left Rev3, Adam Sessler has left the gaming press. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t still love gaming. [Kotaku]

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The Science of Game of Thrones

The Science of Game of Thrones

May 30

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Sometimes real science and unreal fiction don’t always work together but that doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy the internal science of fiction. Take, for example, Game of Thrones. Well, it is Friday of Ice and Fire so you had to know that this was likely to be a GoT post.

PBS’ It’s Okay To Be Smart takes a look at some of the various bits of science unique to the Song of Ice and Fire franchise to see if it could work in our reality. Today’s video looks at the science of GoT’s seasons, the geography and geology of Westeros and Essos, forging Valyrian steel and more.

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Critics Corner: Watch Dogs

Critics Corner: Watch Dogs

May 30

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watch_dogs-headerI’m not a fan hyperbolic hashtags but since it was announced, Watch Dogs has had enough #hype that it easily trumps the amount of hype that Titanfall had behind it. This game had a solid two years of hype from the initial announcement to buzz over next-gen level graphics, the release date announcement and subsequent delays. For these last two years, Watch Dogs has been held up as the gold standard for next-gen gaming. It was hyped as the first must-own game of this generation of consoles. Well, it might have been if it hadn’t been pushed back six months.

Watch Dogs is the second of this month’s releases that I saw in action at Fan Expo. Trust me when I say that Watch Dogs needed the time to fix it. There were clipping issues with bridges. The framerate was a bit wobbly. And the controls looked a little sluggish. Of course, that was just one tiny vertical slice that I saw nine months ago.

Did the extra six months of polish time make Watch Dogs worth the #hype? Let’s see what the critics think.

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