United Gamer Online (UGO)

by Mike Smith
Traditional console and PC games usually cost anywhere between $40 and $60 -- but there's a whole other world out there, and it's considerably cheaper. Plenty of awesome games will set you back just a buck (or less, in some cases), and you don't even need to go to a store to buy them. Check out some of our wallet-friendly favorites.

Breath of Death VII .....Platform: Xbox Live Arcade
Already tipped by some commentators as the best role-playing game of the year, believe it or not, this satirical take on 16-bit RPGs like the older Legend of Zelda games boasts four to six hours of story, lots of fast-paced strategic battles, and plenty of in-jokes. And it can be yours for just a buck on Xbox Live's Indie Games section.


Angry Birds....Platforms: iPhone/iPad

These birds sure are angry -- but you can help them get revenge. Soaring up the charts with all the agiilty of its stars, Angry Birds combines a simple interface with a huge set of thirty-second physics puzzles that require lateral thinking, timing, precision, and other brain-surgery type skills. It's a hoot.

Beneath a Steel Sky........Platform: PC

Dave Gibbons, of Watchmen fame, was closely involved in the development of this dystopian adventure. Packed with puzzles, humor, snappy dialogue, and unforgettable characters, it's an outstanding example of its genre. Best of all? Not only is it under a buck, it's exactly $1.00 under a buck...which is to say, it's free, courtesy of the good folks at GOG.com.

Photo Dojo........Platform: DSi

Move fast, and you can snag this quirky DSi fighter for free from the DSi Ware store. Rather than pre-made characters, it lets you use the DSi's camera to snap pictures of your friends, then turns them into the game's stars. It's free -- but only until June 11.

Echoes.......Platform: PSP

At just 99 cents, Echoes is the cheapest of Sony's PSP Mini line. It's also one of its best. A simple maze puzzle game, the gem-collecting action is complicated by the way echoes of your past actions keep appearing -- and if you touch them, you'll lose. Destructoid called it "a good little game that demonstrates exactly what PSP Minis should have been doing from the outset."

Godfinger........Platform: iPhone/iPad

Fed up with pricey iPad games? Check out Godfinger, from the developer of iPhone hits We Rule and Rolando. Godfinger gives you your very own planet, letting you govern the shape of the world, the weather, and rule your followers. You can visit planets owned by your friends, too, leaving gifts or enchanting their followers. It's free, although (like some Facebook games) you can spend real money in the game if you choose.

Prince of Persia Retro..........Platform: iPhone/iPad

Want to see where the whole Prince of Persia story began? This port of the very first game in the series brings its platforming genius to your iPhone. Check out the character animations, too: groundbreaking in their time, the game's creator traced photographs of his brother running, jumping, and climbing to give the Prince his agile moves.

by Mike Smith


According to most experts, the result this year's FIFA World Cup will likely come down to a toss-up between closely matched favorites Spain and Brazil.

But ask EA's best-selling 2010 FIFA World Cup, and you'll get a more precise answer: the rivals will meet in a nailbiting final game that sees Brazil take a 30th minute 1-0 lead -- only to be beaten by their European adversaries 3-1.
According to the simulation, "Brazil put on a dazzling display of free-flowing samba style soccer early on against the Spaniards," said EA, "taking a 1-0 lead in the 30th minute with a Felipe Melo strike from just inside the box."

"It didn't take long for Spain to level the score after a goalie error that left striker David Villa in the clear. He tapped in his 6th goal of the tournament in the 42nd minute. The second half saw fortunes turn in favour of Spain, as their disciplined build up play and domination of possession paid off with a goal in the 61st minute when Villa connected for his second goal of the match, off of Andres Iniesta's driven cross. "

The coup de grace -- "a splendid counter attack goal from Cesc Fabregas" -- will come in the 88th minute. According to the game, of course.

England will take the third place trophy, EA predicts, after losing to Brazil in the semi-final on penalties and beating Argentina 2-1 in the third-place game. That'd be England's best World Cup result snce winning the tournament in 1966.

As for the USA, expect a second-place finish in Group C, and a dramatic exit in the Round of 16 at the hands of Germany, again on penalties. You can see the predicted results of every single game right here.

EA's sports games have a pretty credible record of calling major sporting events: earlier this year, Madden NFL correctly predicted the surprise outcome of this year's Super Bowl, making it the sixth time in the last seven years the game has got it right.

Will FIFA's predictions be on the money? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Via Shacknews.

JW Healy

Date: 5/28/2010

Unless you've been stuck on Pandora for too long or have been trapped inside the World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy video games, you know that we've been hit by a major recession. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the United States has been in a recession since December 2007, and our current economic plight is the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Since the recession began, we've lost 20 million jobs. Our country's unemployment rate more than doubled over the past two years, going from 4.9% unemployed to a whopping 10.1% unemployed (with my badly mismanaged state, California, even higher than that). It almost doesn't matter how this happened — was it due to reckless spending, unsustainable lending, governmental intervention? Who cares? We're in it; we've been in it and some analysts say we're going to continue to be in it until 2011. What does this mean, exactly? Forgetting the economic mumbo-jumbo that "experts" like to mutter, the simplified answer to this question is: we're all doing without...without jobs or careers, without new clothes and staple items and certainly without entertainment.

It's true... sales of video games have been fairly disastrous. Similar to all other segments of our lives, the economic recession that cast a pall over our country has not ignored the gaming industry. The past two years have seen flat sales, with sales down 11% this year.

However, there are key indications that the downward trend is about to change. A number of video game publishers have reported earnings over the last quarter or fiscal year. For example, Ubisoft announced higher-than expected revenue due to the release of new titles such as "Avatar" and "Just Dance." In addition, the French company is likely going to get an even bigger bump in sales when Disney releases "The Prince of Persia," the big-screen live-action special effects-laden version of its game. Meanwhile, Square Enix reported that its sales were up 42% (with profits up 50%) over its full fiscal year, thanks to five of its titles selling more than 1 million units, including Final Fantasy XIII (5.5 million units), Dragon Quest IX (4.2 million units), Batman: Arkham Asylum (3.4 million units), and Just Cause 2 (1.2 million units). Activision Blizzard's stalwart franchises "Call of Duty" and "World of Warcraft" saw sales improve by 33% to $1.3 billion. Even Electronic Arts, which has been on a three-year downward slide, posted a profit of $30 million in the fourth quarter of 2009 due to the sales success of games such as "Battlefield: Bad Company 2," "Mass Effect 2" and "Dante's Inferno."

In addition, the positive sales numbers of Rockstar's "Red Dead Redemption" are encouraging. It sold 550,000 units in its first day of release and analysts project a worldwide first week of 1.3 million games sold. My 18-year-old son and his buddies went directly from school to the store to buy this title on the day it was released, then each retired to his own home, inserted the game, got online and played each other — something he hasn't done in years. This is only one game but it shows that if there's a title out there that gamers want to play, they'll buy it.

Adding fuel to these projections is a recent report by Wedbush Morgan Securities. Analysts Michael Pachter and Edward Woo project that entertainment overall is going to grow 2% between 2009 and 2011, but the growth of video game software will be much higher - 9%. Pachter and Woo say that "games are the fastest growing entertainment market with a bright digital content future." Currently, video games represent 15% of overall entertainment spending of $75 billion (including movie box office, DVDs and entertainment-related books) and they expect this percentage to grow since games are the fastest-growing entertainment sector. This is because gamers continue to play when they get older. For example, in the 1980s, the average gamer was under 20; now, the average age of the gamer is 35. In addition, women continue to be pulled into the gaming world. According to Casual Games Association, more than 200 million people play casual games and the majority of them are over 30 and female. (And, that's just one segment of video games!)

Adding to the positive projection of video game sales are non-traditional sources, such as online games, casual games, mobile phone games, downloadable content and in-game advertising. These segments are all expected to grow in a major way. In fact, according to Pachter and Woo, by the year 2020, "digital content is expected to account for almost all of the game industry's growth."

It should be noted that some of these company profits were created not only from sales of games but from significant cost-cutting measures and restructuring. And, the recession is still making it uncomfortable for consumers to plunk down money on this kind of entertainment source. But, the Wedbush Morgan Stanley report also believes that once consoles begin a resurgence in sales, then downloadable games and in-game advertising will naturally grow. So, if analysts are correct, the gaming industry can start smiling again.

How do you feel about these projections? Are you thinking more positively about the economy or do you think the analysts at Wedbush Morgan Securities should go off to Pandora and never come back?

NEW YORK – Basketball superstar Michael Jordan will help develop the upcoming "NBA 2K11" video game and will be on its cover.

That's a departure from a typical cover deal with athletes, according to Jason Argent, vice president of marketing at Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.'s 2K Sports, which is publishing the game.

Typically, the game maker simply hands over a check. Argent said Jordan will work closely with the game's developers, right down to such details as whether a character's elbow in the game is at the correct angle for a shot. Players will be able to play Jordan's character to vicariously slam-dunk their way to victory from the comfort of their couch.

The company provided little information about how the game will look and would not disclose financial details about the deal with Jordan.

The game will go on sale Oct. 5.

The last basketball cover athlete for 2K's NBA game was Kobe Bryant.

Video game deals are lucrative for top athletes. Tiger Woods is among the best-known sports figures with an ongoing game deal with Take-Two rival Electronic Arts Inc.

EA is also launching an NBA game in the fall. The company said Wednesday the game will be called "NBA Elite 11," a name change for EA's long-running "NBA Live" franchise.

by Ben Silverman
A partnership between online gaming gurus Sony Online and Star Wars overseers LucasArts could yield one of the year's biggest hits -- and it won’t cost you a dime.

Based on the popular cartoon, Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures was officially unveiled Tuesday. It's a family-friendly, massively multiplayer and -- best of all - entirely free-to-play online game set in the universe popularized by the Clone Wars cartoon series.
"Clone Wars Adventures is the ultimate destination for fans of The Clone Wars series and will bring the action and excitement of the show to players online so they can experience The Clone Wars universe firsthand,” said John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment.

Intended for younger gamers, Clone Wars Adventures will feature hordes of Star Wars themed mini-games, including customized lightsaber battles, speeder bike racing and even a collectible card game, alongside typical online gaming staples like chatting and leaderboards. Players will be able to interact with the likes of Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Yoda. Smedley calls it a "true extension of the show."
While it can be enjoyed free of charge, Sony Online will offer premium content to those who opt to pay a subscription fee. The game will also accept Sony Station 'cash' for special items or gear, though again, none of that is required.

Sony Online is certainly no stranger to the free-to-play model. The company's recent hit Free Realms has enjoyed massive success, currently boasting over 10 million registered players.

Clone Wars Adventures is due out on PC this fall.

By Edutopia
6/1/10
If you've ever tried to pry a child away from some video game that seems to exert more influence over him than you could ever hope to, you might have asked yourself: Why can't we get a force this captivating in schools?

After two days at the Games for Change festival at New York University last week, I'm encouraged to say the answer is: we're working on it. This was a conference of, by and for game designers and researchers, so it was heavy on complex charts about research methods and far removed from how you might engage students in your classroom Monday morning. But the fruits of this conversation could be incredibly pertinent on a Monday morning just a few years from now.
These game designers and researchers, a couple hundred strong, are passionate about tapping the power of games to deliver learning -- and perhaps even to transform schools. And the U.S. Department of Education, in the person of Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement James Shelton, wants to use its power (and purse) to nourish a flowering of just this sort of innovation. We need it.

"We may have the perfect storm to help us break loose from the status quo," Shelton told the conference-goers. He was speaking about an education upheaval much bigger than games -- a new focus on building creativity and critical thinking, not just drilling basic content knowledge -- but games could be one potent part of it.

Whipping up this storm, he said, is a "consensus in Congress that something big needs to happen," along with economic strains that will force us to consider "radical solutions," and "the reality that people are becoming more aware that we're fooling ourselves. We've lulled ourselves, because of the status of our county and our achievements, into a false sense of security. That security has been disrupted, and people are more open to the notion that we need to do something very different." (Wait a sec -- I think that was just a high-ranking federal official saying that America isn't doing everything right, and we need to take a hard, humble look in the mirror and change our ways.)
The Power of Games

No doubt assessment will be key to this mission. And games could transform assessment. Scratch that: games could be assessment. One powerful form of it, at least. Instead of slaying pixel-painted dragons, for instance, I discovered that you could navigate a mid-air obstacle course using the laws of physics in a quest of save the world (that's a game in the works at Vanderbilt University) or try out different ways to save the real-life lake that is dying in your real-life town (a game being developed in Madison, Wisconsin, starring local Lake Mendota).

OK, these scenarios might sound less sexy than dragon-slaying, but the designers believe they can solve that. There's evidence that strong narratives will motivate kids to solve hard puzzles, said Jan Plass, co-director of the Games for Learning Institute. In one study, he said, a child pursued one problem for 45 minutes -- and this was a problem that the girl wasn't particularly interested in to begin with. Is that music to anyone's ears?

Games could also be a powerful means of differentiating instruction (by, say, adapting the quest to the learner's abilities) and personalizing -- putting the learner directly into the content they're studying. Richard Wainess of UCLA explained that something as simple as using the words "I" and "you" in a lesson -- saying "You look up and see clouds" vs. "There are clouds in the sky" -- yields significantly better learning outcomes. Learning through games is, almost by definition, learning by doing.

There's even some evidence that games, if designed right, can encourage kids to use more positive social behavior (cool!).

Designers at the conference envision taking this quest far beyond schools as we know them. Kurt Squire of the University of Wisconsin-Madison said: "Plugging this back into schools to get a few points higher on a standardized test misses the point. The whole point is that there's an opportunity for something much more revolutionary, letting kids build games, run their own guilds, direct their own learning."
What Teachers Want

Now for a dose of reality: we've got a ways to go, and the education sector isn't known for the speed of its innovation. Try out this stat from Shelton: 3 to 4 percent of spending in a mature industry typically goes to research and development. In education, it's 0.1 percent.

Shelton wants to change that by building a reform-minded R & D agenda and jumpstarting it with public investment (and, he hopes, private capital as well). At Games for Change, that vision was not a hard sell.

One important thing missing from the conversation in New York, though, was the strong voice of everyday educators (not to mention students). As we launch this surge of innovation, we need to explore not only what groundbreaking new things the designers can dream up, but also what real folks in schools want and need.

So let's start here. If you could pick anything, what kinds of new materials (video games or otherwise) would you want in your classroom? How would they engage kids -- individually, competitively or collaboratively? What kinds of lessons would they teach -- basic content, critical thinking skills or good social behavior? All of the above?

Think big. These could be tools that suit the kinds of schools we have now -- or they could radically transform those schools.

I'm eager to hear how you all want these seeds of progress to grow. Tell me, and I'll pass it on to the folks with the fertilizer.

-- Grace Rubenstein, is a senior producer at Edutopia