Modern Warfare 2: Best in Class

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Hardened Edition) (X360) IGN’s Jessica Chobot is your guide to diving into Infinity Ward’s ultra-popular online experience.

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Modern Warfare 2: Best in Class

Modern Warfare 2: Best in Class

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Hardened Edition) (X360) IGN’s Jessica Chobot is your guide to diving into Infinity Ward’s ultra-popular online experience.

Read the original post:
Modern Warfare 2: Best in Class

Modern Warfare 2: Best in Class

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Hardened Edition) (X360) IGN’s Jessica Chobot is your guide to diving into Infinity Ward’s ultra-popular online experience.

Here is the original post:
Modern Warfare 2: Best in Class

Kotaku Originals: Insanity Ward [Original]

The onslaught of news this week was enough to send anyone to the nuthouse. Activision sacking Infinity Ward’s founders takes the gold, the PS3 clock error the silver, and Portal 2 a hard-fought bronze. The week in Kotaku’s original reporting: Activision vs. Infinity Ward Founders Ex-Infinity Ward Heads Claim “Orwellian” Moves By Activision Infinity Ward Founders Suing Activision Over Unpaid Royalties Video Games’ Team Coco Moment Where To Next For Call Of Duty? Infinity Ward Vs. Activision: The Battle For Creative Direction Guess Which Three Games Help Keep Activision Afloat Scandal Hits Call Of Duty Devs: What We Know Déjà Vu Surrounds Infinity Ward Rumors The Great PS3 Outrage PS3 Error 8001050F: The Nightmare May Be Over PS3s Suffering From Global Network Lockdown PS3 Failure, You Are Not Alone Portal 2 Portal Mysteriously Updated With Secret Radio Codes, New Achievement Portal 2 Adds Multiplayer Co-op, New & Familiar Characters An Insider’s Guide to Portal 2 Top Stories Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy Nixed on Xbox 360 Live NHL 2K Isn’t Dead, It’s Just Resting Valve Teases Upcoming Mac Announcement, Not So Subtly K Monthly – February 2010 Kotaku Talk Radio Bad Company 2 Devs Have Nothing But Love For The Modding Community News God Of War III’s First Big Boss Battle Is Unforgettable The Next Big Thing In Video Games Might Be Fear Of Embarrassment iPhone Chart Toppers: Final Fantasies It Would Be Like Call Of Duty, But You Would Only Control A Leg DSi XL Versus iPad: The Battle of the Bigger Versions Which Pokemon Song Do You Like Better? We Were Wrong About Nier Before … Or We Are Now When Does God of War Go Too Far? When Someone Laughs Mirror’s Edge On iPhone Doing The Canabalt Aion Patch 1.9: Changing Perceptions And Pleasing The Players Revisiting The Great Class Dash: TF2’s Side-Scroller A Number of Boom Blox Developers Let Go Ex-Team Ninja Boss Has A New Studio With A New Name Five Yakuza Movies You Must See… Play A Facebook Game To Help The War Effort On Your Xbox 360, Or Vice Versa NSFW: Heavy Rain Glitch Brings Playable, Accidental Nudity Rumor: Screens From Unannounced Justice League Video Game Reviews, Previews, Hands-On and Impressions Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Review: Judging A Book By Its Cover Works Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Review: Remaster System Mega Man 10 Micro-Review: Capcom Had Mercy Match Defense Toy Soldiers Micro-Review: Finally, Mom Can Help Toy Soldiers Micro-review: A Farewell To Arms? Max & The Magic Marker Preview: For Those With Imagination The Secret Armory of General Knoxx Micro-Review: Hot Coals Over a Cakewalk Movies Alice In Wonderland Movie Review: A Bitter Underland The Crazies Review: Left 4 Dead In a Small Town An Eyes-On Sneak Peek At Tron Legacy… In 3D!!! Columns Well Played: Collateral Damage In The War On Piracy Speak-Up On Kotaku: Team Ninja, Splitscreen’s Absence, Used Games, And The Birthday Lord Twitterati: Gears of War Designer Mentions Something About Doing Things In Threes Stick Jockey: More Than Money, Licenses Give a League Control Tim Rogers: Japan: It’s Not Funny Anymore The PS2 at 10 The PS2’s First Ten Years: A Timeline Show Us Your 10-Year-Old PlayStation 2 My 10 Years With The PlayStation 2 The Road to the IGF Mile Marker 7: Limbo Mile Marker 8: Heroes of Newerth Mile Marker 9: Joe Danger Mile Marker 10: Shatter Roundups This Week In Comics The Tester: Episode 3: The “There’s No Cry In Team” Liveblog: No Goof Deed Goes Unpunished A Week In Comments Dammit Red Dead Redemption Delayed To May Your Red Dead Redemption Survival Guide: Listen To This! Kotaku ‘Shop Contest Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Next-Gen Cereal System Edition Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Worst Sonic & Sega Cameos Edition Winners

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Kotaku Originals: Insanity Ward [Original]

Kotaku Originals: Insanity Ward [Original]

The onslaught of news this week was enough to send anyone to the nuthouse. Activision sacking Infinity Ward’s founders takes the gold, the PS3 clock error the silver, and Portal 2 a hard-fought bronze. The week in Kotaku’s original reporting: Activision vs. Infinity Ward Founders Ex-Infinity Ward Heads Claim “Orwellian” Moves By Activision Infinity Ward Founders Suing Activision Over Unpaid Royalties Video Games’ Team Coco Moment Where To Next For Call Of Duty? Infinity Ward Vs. Activision: The Battle For Creative Direction Guess Which Three Games Help Keep Activision Afloat Scandal Hits Call Of Duty Devs: What We Know Déjà Vu Surrounds Infinity Ward Rumors The Great PS3 Outrage PS3 Error 8001050F: The Nightmare May Be Over PS3s Suffering From Global Network Lockdown PS3 Failure, You Are Not Alone Portal 2 Portal Mysteriously Updated With Secret Radio Codes, New Achievement Portal 2 Adds Multiplayer Co-op, New & Familiar Characters An Insider’s Guide to Portal 2 Top Stories Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy Nixed on Xbox 360 Live NHL 2K Isn’t Dead, It’s Just Resting Valve Teases Upcoming Mac Announcement, Not So Subtly K Monthly – February 2010 Kotaku Talk Radio Bad Company 2 Devs Have Nothing But Love For The Modding Community News God Of War III’s First Big Boss Battle Is Unforgettable The Next Big Thing In Video Games Might Be Fear Of Embarrassment iPhone Chart Toppers: Final Fantasies It Would Be Like Call Of Duty, But You Would Only Control A Leg DSi XL Versus iPad: The Battle of the Bigger Versions Which Pokemon Song Do You Like Better? We Were Wrong About Nier Before … Or We Are Now When Does God of War Go Too Far? When Someone Laughs Mirror’s Edge On iPhone Doing The Canabalt Aion Patch 1.9: Changing Perceptions And Pleasing The Players Revisiting The Great Class Dash: TF2’s Side-Scroller A Number of Boom Blox Developers Let Go Ex-Team Ninja Boss Has A New Studio With A New Name Five Yakuza Movies You Must See… Play A Facebook Game To Help The War Effort On Your Xbox 360, Or Vice Versa NSFW: Heavy Rain Glitch Brings Playable, Accidental Nudity Rumor: Screens From Unannounced Justice League Video Game Reviews, Previews, Hands-On and Impressions Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Review: Judging A Book By Its Cover Works Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Review: Remaster System Mega Man 10 Micro-Review: Capcom Had Mercy Match Defense Toy Soldiers Micro-Review: Finally, Mom Can Help Toy Soldiers Micro-review: A Farewell To Arms? Max & The Magic Marker Preview: For Those With Imagination The Secret Armory of General Knoxx Micro-Review: Hot Coals Over a Cakewalk Movies Alice In Wonderland Movie Review: A Bitter Underland The Crazies Review: Left 4 Dead In a Small Town An Eyes-On Sneak Peek At Tron Legacy… In 3D!!! Columns Well Played: Collateral Damage In The War On Piracy Speak-Up On Kotaku: Team Ninja, Splitscreen’s Absence, Used Games, And The Birthday Lord Twitterati: Gears of War Designer Mentions Something About Doing Things In Threes Stick Jockey: More Than Money, Licenses Give a League Control Tim Rogers: Japan: It’s Not Funny Anymore The PS2 at 10 The PS2’s First Ten Years: A Timeline Show Us Your 10-Year-Old PlayStation 2 My 10 Years With The PlayStation 2 The Road to the IGF Mile Marker 7: Limbo Mile Marker 8: Heroes of Newerth Mile Marker 9: Joe Danger Mile Marker 10: Shatter Roundups This Week In Comics The Tester: Episode 3: The “There’s No Cry In Team” Liveblog: No Goof Deed Goes Unpunished A Week In Comments Dammit Red Dead Redemption Delayed To May Your Red Dead Redemption Survival Guide: Listen To This! Kotaku ‘Shop Contest Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Next-Gen Cereal System Edition Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Worst Sonic & Sega Cameos Edition Winners

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Kotaku Originals: Insanity Ward [Original]

Five Pounds in One Day [Note]

To: Ash From: Crecente Every three or four years for most of my adult life I get hit with this bizarre, and very nasty, stomach bug. It usually hits me in the evening and has in the past always resulted in my being taken to the emergency room where a doctor declares that he has never seen anyone as dehydrated as me. I guess I can mark it off my leap year calendar now, because I spent yesterday in bed concentrating on trying not to expunge what little liquid I managed to sip between clenched teeth. The bug struck about 3 a.m. Thursday morning and didn’t leave until I’d say about the same time Friday. Today I woke up feeling rested but worn. I got on the scale to discover I had lost five pounds in one day. I know it was one day because I weighed myself two mornings before to see how my fitness program was going. I guess that’s what happens when your entire intake for 30 hours or so is a 20 ounce bottle of water… and you don’t finish it. What you missed: Retail Deathmatch: DSi XL and Apple iPad Hit the U.S. Within Days of Each Other Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Policy Nixed on Xbox 360 Live An Insider’s Guide to Portal 2 Video Games’ Team Coco Moment The First Ever Gloriously Big, Gloriously Detailed Shots of an iPad Game This Week In Comics Alice In Wonderland Movie Review: A Bitter Underland

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Five Pounds in One Day [Note]

K Monthly – February 2010 [K Magazine]

Welcome to the February 2010 edition of K Monthly, a look back at some of the best original coverage, including reviews, previews, features, weekly columns and more, from Kotaku. Don’t miss our reporting from this year’s DICE summit, where video game industry vets reveal secrets about their games and speak frankly about the industry. For some of February’s biggest announcements, make sure to read our X10 coverage for everything new on the Xbox 360 and the latest details from Nintendo’s Q1 media summit , packed with new games and new releases . Finally, don’t forget about our twin theme weeks. First came a week dedicated to Star Trek , and then came Love Week , our special Valentine’s Day-themed week long look at the romantic side of video games. —— TABLE OF CONTENTS February 2010 FEATURES 2010: A Video Gamer’s Guide Judging The Covers Of Games, And How To Make Them Better The Search For The Video Game Auteurs REVIEWS No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle Review: Repetitious Rebel MAG Review: World of Shadow Warcraft Glory of Heracles Review: A Forgetful Adventure Blood Bowl Review: No Fun League Starship Defense Micro-Review: The Most HD DS Game BioShock 2 Review: In Case Of Rapture White Knight Chronicles Review: Workin’ On Our Knight Moves Dante’s Inferno Review: Big Ideas, Small Problems Heavy Rain Review: No Wrong Conclusion Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars Review: FanFic Comes to Life SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals Fireteam Bravo 3 Review: Fire In The Hole! Chime Review: Tune In, Drop Out STALKER: Call Of Pripyat Review: Third Time’s A Charm? Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief Review: A Muddled Mess Aliens Vs. Predator Review: Too Human Endless Ocean: Blue World Review: The Wii Game You’re Wrong About Plants Vs. Zombies iPhone Micro-Review: Touch The Dead Resident Evil 5: Lost In Nightmares Micro-Review: Less Fighting, More Frightening Assassin’s Creed II: Bonfire Of The Vanities Micro-Review: Once More, With Fleeing The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom Micro-review: Snack Of The Clones Star Trek Online Review: A Piece Of The Action PREVIEWS & IMPRESSIONS An Eyes-On Sneak Peek At Tron Legacy… In 3D!!! Transformers: War For Cybertron DS Preview: Grimlock Goes Portable Transformers: War For Cybertron Preview: A World Without Michael Bay’s Robots FlingSmash: It’s All In the Elbow Disney’s Guilty Party: Family-Friendly and Fun…Really. The Wii’s Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands Is Not a Ported Prince Super Mario Galaxy 2: Yoshi’s Back…and He Brought a Drill! Metroid: Other M: A Change of Perspective Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight Hands On: A Less Cheesy Three-way Dip Just Cause 2: The Difference Between A Pinata Kill And A Hang Kill Hands-On, Sword Out With Red Steel 2 Alan Wake Preview: The First Full Episode Battlefield Bad Company 2 Impressions: The Tougher Battle Alpha Protocol Impressions: Looks Deceive Infinite Space Preview: Seems Vast And Charty Tournament of Legends Preview: Two-Fisted Combat Op-Ed Ron Jeremy: Sex, Not Violence, Is Beautiful and Natural COLUMNS WELL PLAYED by Brian Crecente The Once and Future Sim Love In Hell: Dante’s Inferno’s Take on Romance Motion Control in Gaming: Rationalizing a New Dissonance STICK JOCKEY by Owen Good Olbermann, Ripping Me Softly For This Column Stick Jockey’s Super Sim Spectacular Plenty of Contractions, and a Lower Birth Rate in Sports Gaming Imaginary Triumphs: Sports As A Role-Playing Game More Than Money, Licenses Give a League Control TIM ROGERS can videogames make us happy? LEIGH ALEXANDER Why We Play Games, And Why We Grumble About Them Romance With Disabled Girls: How (And Maybe Why) An Unusual Video Game Came To Be

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K Monthly – February 2010 [K Magazine]

Bobby Kotick, Warm and Fuzzy, Defends Notorious No-Fun Statements [Dice 2010]

Bobby Kotick, head of Activision, thought he was Luke, not Vader. And he didn’t mean that thing about wanting to make game-making no fun. “I don’t know how this happened, but all my life I was the rebel flying the Millennium Falcon or the X-Wing fighter and suddenly I wake up and I’m on board the Death Star.” That’s the second quip Activision’s oft-vilified CEO said to start his talk at the DICE gaming convention today. His first was a joke about the height of his microphone, set not for his height (he’s short) but for former EA chief Larry Probst. Mistakes, Kotick has made a few and he was ready to admit them today. Most notorious was a late 2009 comment he made that seemed to cement his position as more Vader thank Luke. No, he said today, he didn’t mean to sound like, his words, “a dick.” In September he had told a group of investors : “The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games.” Today, he said, after describing Activision as a company striving for greatness, “Sometimes that commitment to excellence, well, you can come across as being like a dick. And when I say things like ‘taking the fun out of making video games,’ it was a line that has been often-quoted lately, but it was a line I used for investors. It was mainly because i wanted to somehow come across in a humorous way that we were responsible, in the way we made our games in that it wasn’t some wild west, lack of process exercise and that we really did give some thought to the capital being used to provide a return of investment to shareholders. So I say things like ‘taking the fun out of video games’ knowing full well that all we’re actually trying to do is keep the fun in the process because, as most of you know, when you’re getting into crunch time it becomes really difficult to meet those milestones or get things polished the way you would like, that isn’t a lot of fun. That is not what I meant by it.” The Kotick speech today was one of of putting on the good face of Activision and the man at the podium here at the Red Rock Casino. Kotick admitted that he’s sometimes been so much the businessman that he’s cost his shareholders money by not remembering to get close to game creators. “Sometime what winds up happening when you are 50,000 feet above is you can get insulated from that creative passion.” Blizzard? He should have bought them sooner. He had thought that a subscription version of World of Warcraft was “the silliest thing” he’d ever heard of. Maxis? “When Maxis was getting sold everyone was being sold on Sim City 2000 being this fantastic product that was incredibly late and wasn’t coming out.” Kotick went to visit some executives at the company. In another office, Will Wright was working on a game called Jefferson. Kotick didn’t meet with Wright. No one could explain the game to him. What Kotick missed was the game that would become the Sims. For a CEO who has been vilified as a business-first enemy of video game creativity, Kotick wanted to reveal that he has made mistakes staying too distant from passionate game creators. The most vivid example he gave was how he handled the purchase of the Guitar Hero brand and blew off the talented studio, Harmonix, that had built them, prioritizing the Guitar Hero franchise owner Red Octane and handing the development of the series to Activision-run Neversoft. “When we were buying Guitar Hero, or buying Red Octane, the makers of Guitar Hero, we knew about Harmonix,” Kotick said. “We had always known them as sort of somewhat a failed developer of music games.” Activision decided that their own studio, Neversoft, made good games, so they would make Guitar Hero from now on, not the Boston-based Harmonix. He said that had Activision met with Harmonix, things would have been very different. That’s Bobby Kotick saying sorry. Note that Harmonix, now owned by MTV Games and creating the Rock Band games, has been distributed by Activision rival EA since then. That distribution deal is set to expire next month. Kotick was warm and fuzzy, zip-up sweater over polo shirt, no suit and not much business talk. He was reminiscing in his 20s, the ex history of art major spending about $400,000 for a stake in Activision, a company he was worried was losing its soul. He wanted to explain that he was a gamer originally, then a businessman, one with apologies for some of the creators he may have ignored or insulted — and of course a company to brag about now. “I loved Zork,” he said of his gaming days. “I loved Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I loved the whole idea behind Activision.” That idea was that it was the anti-Atari, the company that rebelled against the corporate attitude of Atari and would champion creators. He recalled scheming in the late 80s with his friend who had started a hedge fund to try to buy Commodore. “I tried for a bout a year to acquire control of Commodore,” he said. He thought it could be turned into a great 16-bit console. The Commodore console could be better than the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System being sold in Japan at the time, he recalled himself thinking. Kotick went from gamer to game maker to businessman. Kotick said he’s not playing many games anymore. He’s a single dad with three daughters and is wary of the kind of developer he would become, knowing his addictive personality (He confessed he is “addicted to food”). Did he used to be an avid gamer? “I still have callouses from Defender. I still wake up in the middle of the night and see the words ‘Use key to open door.’” Does he play now? Not much: “If I was regularly playing Modern Warfare 2 I would not be able to stop and it would be at the expense of all my other responsibilities.” Kotick said that Activision is a company that supports creators and champions vision. He took barely-veiled shots at EA, comparing his interest and efforts in the past to help start companies such as Jamdat and Pandemic with the eventual fates of those companies now folded into EA and, in the case of Pandemic, shut down as an independent entity. “If you have a company and you want to protect your creative freedom and the integrity of the creative process, if you want to retain your identity and culture, if you want the support of the mothership and the resources of the mothership, we’re a really great mothership. But if you want to sell out and move on, there are definitely other companies to talk to.” Kotick made no mention of the deep cuts Activision announced earlier this week nor of the couple of hundred developers who were let go. He focused on projecting a game developer-friendly image and announced the start of a $500,000 independent games development contest.

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Bobby Kotick, Warm and Fuzzy, Defends Notorious No-Fun Statements [Dice 2010]

Kotaku, Your Complete Reader Guide [Announcement]

Commenting. Regular features. Kotaku culture. If you are new to the site, there’s a lot to absorb. It would be great if somebody condensed everything into one easy to follow guide. Somebody did. Reader deanbmmv did. His guide explains the star system, profile pages, the hashtag system and even how to view a NSFW-free Kotaku. There are nuts and bolts things like how to do things in comments like embed images, put HTML and link to other comments. There are also housekeeping bits like how to submit Comments of the Week, a breakdown of special posts and a refresher on general etiquette. This is the guide that we should have made, but never did. Like we said, Deanbmmv did. And for that, you should thank him. We also thank reader bakagaijin for nominating deanbmmv’s comment for Comment of the Week — we just did one better and decided to give the comment its own post. Read the manual here .

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Kotaku, Your Complete Reader Guide [Announcement]

Sometimes The Addicting Game Is Portable [Drop 7]

We know all about people who sit at home, hooked on a game they don’t want to stop playing. We know some of these folks well . But what if the game you’re hooked on can travel with you? The iPhone game Drop 7 has its hooks on Ariane Sherine, author of The Atheist’s Guide To Christmas, as well as an article in the U.K.’s Guardian about portable gaming… addiction? Fixation? When an acquaintance met me off the train and asked what I’d like to do before dinner, I lied and said: “Have a sleep” – aware that saying “play a computer game on my phone” would sound weird and antisocial. He duly left me in my bedroom, where I proceeded to manoeuvre numbers around a bleeping screen. Each time I started a game, I promised myself it would be the last; each time, I broke my promise. During dinner, in a break between courses, I did the unforgiveable: I began playing the game under the table. Seconds later, I was discovered. “I’m sorry our conversation isn’t interesting enough for you!” my host snapped, only to be met with an eloquent “Mmph?” Drop 7 is pretty tough to stop playing. Best of luck to Sherine for quitting it, but I doubt it’ll be easy, not when you can take it with you. I’m trapped in the drop zone [The Guardian]

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Sometimes The Addicting Game Is Portable [Drop 7]

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