Idle Thumbs
Idle Thumbs is a video game culture website and podcast network founded in 2004. It features a weekly video game podcast of the same name hosted by former and current video game journalists and developers Chris Remo ( Campo Santo, formerly Double Fine Productions), Nick Breckon (Telltale Games), Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman ( Campo Santo, formerly Telltale Games), and James Spafford (Double Fine Productions, formerly Media Molecule). Other podcasts hosted by the site include Three Moves Ahead, a strategy game podcast hosted by Troy Goodfellow and Rob Zacny; the Idle Book Club, discussing a selection of modern and classic literature; Terminal7, a Netrunner podcast hosted by Nels Anderson and Jesse Turner; Tone Control, where former "Thumb" regular Steve Gaynor interviews notable video game developers; Idle Weekend, a sister podcast to Idle Thumbs hosted by Danielle Riendeau and Rob Zacny; Important if True where hosts Chris Remo, Jake Rodkin, and Nick Breckon discuss a variet ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Video Game Culture
Video game culture is a worldwide new media subculture formed by video gamers. As video games have exponentially increased in popularity over time, they have had a significant influence on popular culture. Video game culture has also evolved with Internet culture and the increasing popularity of mobile games. Many people who play video games identify as gamers, which can mean anything from someone who enjoys games to someone passionate about it. As video games become more social with multiplayer and online capability, gamers find themselves in growing social networks. Playing video games can both be entertainment as well as competition, as the trend known as electronic sports has become more widely accepted. Definition Video game culture is broadly considered a description of the subculture of those who play video games. This not only includes gamers, players that frequently dedicate time and effort to playing video games, but also those players that participate less frequently ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by crowdfunding. Although similar concepts can also be executed through mail-order subscriptions, benefit events, and other methods, the term crowdfunding refers to internet-mediated registries. This modern crowdfunding model is generally based on three types of actors – the project initiator who proposes the idea or project to be funded, individuals or groups who support the idea, and a moderating organization (the "platform") that brings the parties together to launch the idea. Crowdfunding has been used to fund a wide range of for-profit, entrepreneurial ventures such as artistic and creative projects, medical expenses, travel, and community-oriented social entrepreneurship projects. Although crowdfunding has been suggested to be highly li ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gravity Bone
''Gravity Bone'' is a 2008 freeware adventure game developed and published by Blendo Games. The game employs a modified version of id Software's id Tech 2 engine—originally used for ''Quake 2''—and incorporates music from films by director Wong Kar-wai, which were originally performed by Xavier Cugat. Four incarnations of the game were produced during its one-year development; the first featured more common first-person shooter elements than the released version. Subsequent versions shifted in a new direction, with the inclusion of more spy-oriented gameplay. The game was released for Microsoft Windows in August 2008. ''Gravity Bone'' received critical acclaim from video game journalists. It was called "a pleasure to experience" by Charles Onyett from ''IGN'', and received comparisons to games such as ''Team Fortress 2'' and ''Portal''. The game was praised for its cohesive story, atmosphere and its ability to catch the player's interest over a very short time span without fe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Blendo Games
Blendo Games is an American independent video game development company based in Culver City, California. It was founded by Brendon Chung in 2010 and is primarily a one-person effort. Blendo Games gained more widespread exposure with the short form stand alone title '' Gravity Bone''; the following games ''Flotilla'' and '' Atom Zombie Smasher'' were met with critical praise. The studio has also released several other games in several genres. Background Chung had done hobbyist programming, such as modding for games like '' Quake 2'' and ''Half-Life'', for about a decade before being hired as a designer at Pandemic Studios. While there, he worked on '' The Lord of the Rings: Conquest'' and '' Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers'', although he continued to work on personal projects including an episodic ''Citizen Abel'' series that toyed with traditional mechanics of first-person shooters. Chung considered his first officially released game to be the espionage game '' Gravity Bone'' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of California cities by population, fourth most populous in California and List of United States cities by population, 17th most populous in the United States, with 815,201 residents as of 2021. It covers a land area of , at the end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second most densely populated large U.S. city after New York City, and the County statistics of the United States, fifth most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. Among the 91 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco was ranked first by per capita income (at $160,749) and sixth by aggregate income as of 2021. Colloquial nicknames for San Francisco include ''SF'', ''San Fran'', ''The '', ''Frisco'', and '' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Penny Arcade Expo
PAX (originally known as Penny Arcade Expo) is a series of gaming culture festivals involving tabletop, arcade, and video gaming. PAX is held annually in Seattle, Boston and Philadelphia in the United States; and Melbourne in Australia. PAX was previously held annually in San Antonio in the United States. PAX was originally created in 2004 by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, the authors of the ''Penny Arcade'' webcomic, because they wanted to attend a show exclusively for gaming. Defining characteristics of the shows include an opening keynote speech from an industry insider, game-culture inspired concerts, panels on game topics, exhibitor booths from both independent and major game developers and publishers, a LAN party multiplayer, tabletop gaming tournaments, and video game freeplay areas. History The first PAX, known at the time as the ''Penny Arcade'' Expo, was held on August 28–29, 2004, in Bellevue, Washington, at the Meydenbauer Center, and was attended by appro ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Irrational Games
Irrational Games (known as 2K Boston between 2007 and 2009) was an American video game developer founded in 1997 by three former employees of Looking Glass Studios: Ken Levine, Jonathan Chey, and Robert Fermier. Take-Two Interactive acquired the studio in 2006. The studio was known for its games '' System Shock 2'', '' Freedom Force'', ''SWAT 4'', and most notably, two of the games in the ''BioShock'' series. In 2014, following the release of ''BioShock Infinite'', Levine opted to significantly restructure the studio from around 90 to 15 employees and focus more on narrative games. In February 2017, the studio announced that it had been rebranded as Ghost Story Games and considered a fresh start from the original Irrational name, though still operating at the same business subsidiary under Take-Two. History * 1997 – Irrational Games studio formed by former Looking Glass Studios employees Ken Levine, Jonathan Chey, and Robert Fermier. * 1999 – '' System Shock 2'', co-deve ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- most populous city in the country. The city boundaries encompass an area of about and a population of 675,647 as of 2020. It is the seat of Suffolk County (although the county government was disbanded on July 1, 1999). The city is the economic and cultural anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area known as Greater Boston, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) home to a census-estimated 4.8 million people in 2016 and ranking as the tenth-largest MSA in the country. A broader combined statistical area (CSA), generally corresponding to the commuting area and including Providence, Rhode Island, is home to approximately 8.2 million people, making it the sixth most populous in the United States. Boston is one of the oldest ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bethesda Softworks
Bethesda Softworks LLC is an American video game publisher based in Rockville, Maryland. The company was founded by Christopher Weaver in 1986 as a division of Media Technology Limited, and in 1999 became a subsidiary of ZeniMax Media. In its first fifteen years, it was a video game developer and self-published its titles. In 2001, Bethesda spun off its own in-house development team into Bethesda Game Studios, and Bethesda Softworks retained only its publishing function. In 2021, Microsoft purchased ZeniMax, maintaining that the company will continue to operate as a separate business. History 1986–1994: Early years Prior to founding Bethesda Softworks, Christopher Weaver was a technology forecaster and a communications engineer in the television and cable industries. After finishing grad school, he was hired by the American Broadcasting Company, where he wrote several memos about "the importance of alternative distribution systems and how satellites and broadband netw ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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2K Marin
K, or k, is the eleventh letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''kay'' (pronounced ), plural ''kays''. The letter K usually represents the voiceless velar plosive. History The letter K comes from the Greek letter Κ (kappa), which was taken from the Semitic kaph, the symbol for an open hand. This, in turn, was likely adapted by Semitic tribes who had lived in Egypt from the hieroglyph for "hand" representing /ḏ/ in the Egyptian word for hand, ⟨ ḏ-r-t⟩ (likely pronounced in Old Egyptian). The Semites evidently assigned it the sound value instead, because their word for hand started with that sound. K was brought into the Latin alphabet with the name ''ka'' /kaː/ to differentiate it from C, named ''ce'' (pronounced /keː/) and Q, named ''qu'' and pronounced /kuː/. In the earliest Latin inscriptions, the letters C, K and Q were all used t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Game Design
Game design is the art of applying design and aesthetics to create a game for entertainment or for educational, exercise, or experimental purposes. Increasingly, elements and principles of game design are also applied to other interactions, in the form of gamification. Game designer and developer Robert Zubek defines game design by breaking it down into its elements, which he says are the following: * Gameplay, which is the interaction between the player and the mechanics and systems * Game mechanics, Mechanics and systems, which are the rules and objects in the game * Player experience, which is how users feel when they're playing the game Games such as board games, card games, dice games, casino games, role-playing games, sports, video games, Wargame (video games), war games, or simulation games benefit from the principles of game design. Academically, game design is part of game studies, while game theory studies strategic decision making (primarily in non-game situations) ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Shacknews
''Shacknews'' (originally Quakeholio, then ShugaShack) is a website that hosts news, features, editorial content and forums relating to computer games and Video game console, console games. It is currently owned by a company called Gamerhub Content Network. Gamerhub Content Network purchased the site in January 2014. History ''Shacknews'' was founded in 1996 by Steve "Scary" Gibson, 20 years old at the time, as a website dedicated to following news about the then-upcoming game ''Quake (video game), Quake'' from id Software. The original name of the website was "''Quakeholio''". Through the years the website evolved to cover more than just Quake and the name was changed. "''Shugashack''" was chosen after a discussion with friends about the general direction of the page and content. After a few years of frequent spelling confusion and interpreting the name as that of a Pornography, pornographic website, the site was renamed "''Shacknews''". ''FileShack'', a site for game demos, pa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |