Posts Tagged games
Food Company Makes Online Music Mix for Kids
Posted by admin in news: music and games on June 29th, 2009
‘Marlow Foods, the manufacturers of the Quorn [www.quorn.co.uk] range, has launched an online music mixing
website [www.quornmix.co.uk], encouraging creativity amongst 11-18 year olds, to celebrate the product’s
health benefits.
The music mixing game helps to develop children’s music skills and enhance their creative thinking.
Available at www.quornmix.co.uk [www.quornmix.co.uk], the game enables kids to easily mix beats and rhythms
from different music genres, by clicking a selection of tabs to create their own music tracks. Each track
can then be played back and altered, allowing more sound effects to be added to enable the finished
creation to be shared online with friends. Anyone can log onto the game, listen to other tracks for
inspiration or experiment with their own sounds.
To help promote healthier eating within schools, LEAs and school meal providers are trying to encourage
children to try new, healthier options. The website features an exclusive competition, available to any
children at a partnering school. Pupils who choose a Quorn dish at lunchtime are able to visit the website
and enter their tracks to be in with a chance of winning an exclusive lesson with top DJ Filthy Rich,
iPods, and music downloads, plus a mini-bus for their school.
The Quornmix [www.quornmix.co.uk] game can be played by anyone at www.quornmix.co.uk [www.quornmix.co.uk].
Students at participating schools can enter the competition simply by logging onto the website and entering
the promotional code they receive with a school meal containing Quorn products. To find out if your school
is taking part in the competition, look out for details in your school canteen.’
Games: Activision threatens to drop PS3
Posted by admin in news: music and games on June 19th, 2009
Activision boss Bobby Kotick says development costs are too high and returns too low; Calls for price drop …
We won’t hold our breath.
Games: Create a DEFCON AI Bot
Posted by admin in news: music and games on June 17th, 2009
London: 16th June 2009
Introversion Software is joining forces with the event organisers of CIG
2009, to host the first ever DEFCON AI competition aimed at creating the
world’s deadliest bot.
The contest, scheduled for this September, is a part of an ongoing yearly
event that attempts to create bots from videogames that are realistic enough
into fooling an expert panel of judges that they are actually human players.
In what has been described as the Turing Test for Bots, the competition
has chosen DEFCON this year as the game for which bots will be created.
This competition follows on from work that the best brains of Imperial
College, London, have developed with a DEFCON API (Application Programmers
Interface), which enables anyone to create their own DEFCON bot, in true
Wargames fashion.
A group of talented programmers will pitch their DEFCON bot against enemy
bots in a series of one-on-one thermonuclear chess games. The winner is the
programmer whose bot successfully annihilates its opponents and racks up the
highest death count. IEEE is offering a $500 prize to the deadliest DEFCON
AI bot competition winner.
Lets just hope the technology developed at this year’s CIG doesnt fall
into the wrong hands.
Contact Details:
For technical enquiries about the API, please contact Robin Baumgarten:
robin.baumgarten06@doc.ic.ac.uk
For enquiries about DEFCON and Introversion Software, please contact Mark
Morris: mark@introversion.co.uk
For enquiries about using the API for student projects, please contact Simon
Colton: sgc@doc.ic.ac.uk
About DEFCON
DEFCON is an online, competitive, multiplayer strategy game simulating
global thermonuclear war. The game, inspired by the 1983 cult-classic film,
WarGames, superbly evokes the tension, paranoia and suspicion surrounding
the Cold War era. DEFCON was an instantaneous success, receiving an average
of 85%+ in game reviews and scores of praise. PC Gamer UK described it as
‘pure, deep, utterly unconscionable fun’, whilst IGN awarded DEFCON an
Editors Choice Award and praised it as ‘highly impressive’. DEFCON is
available to buy online via Steam and IntroversionÂ’s online store.
GTA on the DS: Chinatown Wars
Posted by admin in news: music and games on March 18th, 2009
‘…The amount of content on the DS cart is stunning. There are a ton of different cars, and they all handle differently and are good for certain jobs. There are local WiFi multiplayer modes that allow you to race against others or simply play deathmatch games. All of the different modes add a ton of replayability to the game, although there is no actual online play and you’ll need multiple copies of the game. You can jump online to chat with friends after exchanging friend codes, or trade cash and weapons. If you get bored with all of this, you can hijack certain cars for another set of missions, or simply grab a motorcycle or your favorite sports car and try to find all the stunt jumps hidden around the city.
You can tear apart the individual mechanics forever—including how well the PDA system is integrated into the game play—but the fact of the matter is Rockstar brought the feeling and quality of a console Grand Theft Auto title and made it work on the DS. This isn’t a cash-grab, and it’s certainly not a gimmick; this is a portable version of a big-name title and it’s pretty incredible. From the opening scenes, to cruising around the city, to ordering guns to be delivered to your door… you know what game you’re playing. The missions are all over relatively quickly, and the frequent auto-saves make this game a portable feast.
more at Arstechnica
Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution in the Best Strategy Game
Posted by admin in news: music and games on March 11th, 2009
‘2K Games is happy to announce today the success of Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution in the Best Strategy Game category at yesterday’s 2009 GAME British Academy Video Games Awards
ceremony in London. Producer Barry Caudill from Civilization Revolution developer Firaxis was present to accept the award.
Games make you Fat
Posted by admin in news: music and games on March 9th, 2009
You’d think, with their current unpopularity, that the government in the UK would pull their heads in to some extent especially with all the “Nanny state” business but the latest thing is a series of ads from a
government organisation called Change4life which has to do with health concerns. Its latest effort is an ad showing gamers as obese creatures with a limited life span. This looks like another “government by tabloid” thing as that section of the press have had their small and nasty brains excercised by gaming for a little while now.
Where is the research to back this up? Do you know any obese gamers that do nothing else but play video games? Needless to say, the expected parties are creating a fuss. We think more unexpected parties should also make a noise.
Actually, now we come to think about it, all the gamers we know are skinny as rakes. Ahem,yes, this bit got added later.