Sent via Flipboard, your social magazine for iPad and iPhone.

StevieD613-797-6222
steve

–Sent telepathically from my iPhone 4S

Sent via Flipboard, your social magazine for iPad and iPhone.

StevieD613-797-6222
steve

–Sent telepathically from my iPhone 4S

From Wired | Gamelife, By Guest Blogger, April 24, 2012

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When did cleverness become passé?

When did innuendo become unnecessary?

When did thinking become superfluous?

The joy of humor is in getting the joke. It’s more satisfying when you are mentally involved, when you must think before you laugh. If you don’t know where a joke is going, getting there is fun.

But the opposite is also true: When the journey is obvious, the reward is slight.

…read the complete article here

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Let me describe a scenario that I think we’ve all been in. You pick up a game like Gears of War 3 or Starcraft II or the deck-building iOS gameAscension.

You jam through the single-player campaign or do a little comp’-stomping in skirmish mode — maybe even on the second-to-hardest difficulty ’cause you’re totally hardcore like that. And you’re better at the game than anyone on your friends list, judging by the local leaderboards and the way nobody will play with you anymore. You’ve got this game figured out, man, and you think you’re pretty good.

So you decide to venture online and try your hand at ranked ladder matches, a tournament, or maybe even just some pickup games via online matchmaking. You get creamed. Murdered. Owned.

…complete article here

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More than 100 million consumers in the U.S. are playing games on their smartphones, tablets, and iPod Touches, according to a new study published by market research firm Newzoo.

That amount has grown by more than a third compared to the number of mobile American gamers last year. Europe’s population of smartphone and tablet gamers (across seven key territories) has also increased to 70 million, a 15 percent year-over-year jump.

…read complete article here

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How many times have you had the disheartening realisation that something you once thought was awesome just isn’t very good anymore? Gamers have to contend with this all the time – from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater to the peaks and troughs of Sonic the Hedgehog – when series’ that they love fall from grace.

Even attempts to re-invent a series can fail spectacularly.

Why does this happen? Why don’t developers pull the plug before the rot sets in? The simple answer is that games are a business, and businesses exist to make money. In an ideal world, developers would be free to come up with an original franchise that takes the world by storm, to release a handful of sequels (each more impressive than the last) until the series has run its course, then make a clean break and start the cycle all over again. Easy. Simple. Logical. Everybody’s happy and creative integrity comes out on top.

…complete article here

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Next up is Draw Along Pip, an iPad-only app that costs £1.49, and is based on a story by author and illustrator Leslie McGuirk starring Pip the Penguin.

Published by Skyreader Media, it features characterful cartoon visuals and interactivity, but also a feature called ‘Draw Along’.

The idea: whenever you see a dotted line on one of the book’s digital pages, your child can trace the shape with their fingers to draw it in and continue the story. Neat and nifty.

…complete article here

Today I have FIVE codes for a ridiculously cute app. Draw Along Pip features one of my favourite animals, a penguin, who is very busy cleaning the house. A penguin with a feather duster…just perfect.

What makes this app even more fun is the interactive feature that allows your child to complete each page by drawing Pip and his friends. They can even draw little Pip’s slippers. The music, the colours and the narration in this app are all quirky and bright and infectious. Tot has given this the prestigious ‘awesome’ accolade.

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As with any high-profile product release, Apple’s new iPad device has been peppered with complaints since reaching consumers’ hands on March 16. Among them: that magazines look terrible on the iPad 3′s high-resolution display.

The complaints were first brought to light by Tumblr blogger Jamie Billett. He pointed out that in the New Yorker’s iPad app, the text on some pages is rendered as HTML, and the text on other pages is rendered as an image (.png) file.

The latter pages now appear “badly aliased”…

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…complete article here

Game Developer magazine editor-in-chief Brandon Sheffield discusses a growing trend in game direction, where content is parceled out instead of released as a whole. This editorial was originally written forGame Developer’s January issue

There was a time when the backs of game boxes had a slew of bullet points printed on them, illustrating numbers of enemies, features, and hours of gameplay. We decried this, at the time. “Games are more than a series of features!” we said. “Games are interactive experiences, and can’t be reduced to a simple list of numbers of items and maps!”

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…read complete article here