One of the first actions we were given when the first pixelized version of a person was displayed in a video game was a jump. Jumping, a simple action, has probably been explored and expanded through video games over the decades more than any other human ability. Even the face of video games, Mario, was […]
Tag: play
Massive Facebook study on users’ doubt in vaccines finds a small group appears to play a big role in pushing the skepticism
Facebook is conducting a vast behind-the-scenes study of doubts expressed by U.S. users about vaccines, a major project that attempts to probe and teach software to identify the medical attitudes of millions of Americans, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. The research is a large-scale attempt to understand the spread of ideas that […]
A music video you can play: Indie rock inside the Unity engine
For nearly as long as video games have been around, they’ve enjoyed a tight relationship with pop music. As early as 1983, Bally-Midway collaborated with Journey to make a game full of licensed songs and the band members’ digitized faces (which followed more than a decade of pinball cabinets featuring megaton bands), and that says […]
Pigs can play video games with their snouts, scientists find
ESTON MARTZ / PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY Pigs can play video games, scientists have found, after putting four fun-loving swine to the test. Four pigs – Hamlet, Omelette, Ebony and Ivory – were trained to use an arcade-style joystick to steer an on-screen cursor into walls. Researchers said the fact that the pigs understood the connection […]
Google halts Play Store ‘review bombing’ by GameStop traders
Getty Images Google has removed a wave of negative reviews of popular stock-market trading apps targeted by furious investors. Platforms such as Robinhood have been hit after preventing independent traders buying GameStop and AMC shares. Users of a Reddit message board had managed to upset the market by buying the shares and inflating their value, […]
Google Play bans open-source Matrix client Element, citing “abusive content”
Enlarge The latest app to catch an illogical ban from the Google Play Store is Element, an open-source, end-to-end encrypted messaging client for the federated Matrix chat protocol. Google banned Element late Friday night, a ban which Element said “is due to abusive content somewhere on Matrix.” Matrix has millions of users, and as a […]
How to play Google Stadia in Safari on the iPhone and iPad
Stadia, Google’s cloud gaming service that streams games to web browsers and dedicated apps, opened its doors to the general public in April 2020 after a limited launch at the end of 2019. While PC and Android gamers could stream their favorites to compatible devices, iPhone and iPad owners were excluded from the Stadia cool […]
The best games to play with friends online
From visiting your friend’s island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons to teaming up with them to shoot down wasteland baddies in Borderlands 3, the best games to play with friends online offer hours of fun across PC, Xbox Series X, PS5, and more. Even miles apart, video games allow friends to play, compete, or even just hang […]
EA Play Live 2020 event: Live news and announcements
Electronic Arts’ EA Play Live 2020 event is part of the Summer Game Fest, and it showed off a number of its biggest upcoming games. Star Wars: Squadron was announced ahead of the event, though the presentation had more in store for viewers than that. Star Wars: Squadrons A clip from Star Wars: Squadrons gives […]
EA Play 2020 – What to expect from the upcoming Not E3 presentation
We don’t get a real Electronic Entertainment Expo this year. In its place, we’re getting a series of loosely affiliated “Not E3” events like the upcoming EA Play from publisher Electronic Arts. The Madden company is going to show off some of its upcoming and unannounced games during the presentation, which begins 4 p.m. Pacific […]
Steam Cloud Play enters beta with support for GeForce Now
Valve is expanding Steam’s integration with cloud-streaming services. The company released new Steamworks documentation for developers that details how Steam Cloud Play works. As part of this effort, Steam is natively supporting Nvidia’s GeForce Now. That doesn’t mean all of your Steam games work with that streaming service now. But it does mean that it’s […]
Steam can finally help you choose which of your games to ‘Play Next’
Valve has added yet another one of its Steam Labs experiments into Steam proper. The latest new feature to move from beta to the live product is “Experiment 008: Play Next.” This tool suggests games from your library using your habits and machine learning. Maybe now you can finally get through that pile of shame. […]
Google Play Music dies this year, YT Music library imports begin today
Enlarge / Please don’t hurt our music collections, Google. Google Play Music It has been two years since Google put Google Play Music on death row, and today Google finally announced the major step that will let it kill Google Music: YouTube Music library imports. People who were using Google Play Music as an online […]
Candy Crush sees more play than ever since Activision-Blizzard’s 2016 acquisition
Activision Blizzard announced today as part of its latest earnings report that King’s mobile games had 273 million monthly active users in Q1 2020. King is behind the hit mobile puzzle franchise Candy Crush, which debuted in 2012 with Candy Crush Saga. That free-to-play title still remains one of the most popular mobile games, and […]