The New York Times has an article on a first for pro gamers: network television coverage of a match. Sunday at noon EDT CBS Sports will be airing coverage of the World Series of Videogames. Events will include Guitar Hero II, Fight Night and World of Warcraft 3v3 Arena combat. The article explores some of the challenges of making gaming understandable on television: “The dollars are already quite mainstream. Americans bought about $13 billion worth of video game systems and software last year, more than they spent at the film box office (around $10 billion). Advertisers for Sunday’s broadcast include KFC, Intel and the Marines. But for gaming to make it as a major-network TV sport, the big hurdle will be translating a medium that is by its nature meant to be experienced firsthand into a compelling hands-off spectator experience. It is a task that in some ways is no less daunting than that of the early baseball television producers who eventually realized that a camera way out in center field would provide the best view of pitches.” Update: 07/28 23:19 GMT by Z : Fixed day of the weekend the show is on.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Can You Handle ‘THEY’?
In a refreshing turn, over at Newsweek’s LevelUp blog N’Gai has some suitably chastising commentary on the newly-announced FPS entitled simply THEY. This overly-simplistic name is accompanied by a nearly informationless press release, and reinforces the idea that whatever THEY is, it’s not worth looking into. “Generally, the role of a press release is to inform. But having read the THEY press release, all we’ve taken away from it is hyperbole and buzzwords, assembled Mad Libs-style for maximum unintended hilarity. What is THEY? Apparently, THEY is a ‘next generation mystery first person shooter for PC and next generation consoles.’ Who are THEY, you ask? ”THEY’ are huge–’THEY’ are different–’THEY’ are hostile!’ How good will THEY be? It’s ’so mysterious, so stunning and so amazing–that ‘THEY’ might become one of the most anticipated world premiere titles from this year’s Games Convention!’”Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Classic Gaming Expo 2007
This past weekend Game|Life went to Vegas, to attend the annual Classic Gaming Expo event. They came back with a bevy of tales about the show. The best include a short interview with Pitfall creator David Crane, a look at the classic games museum set up every year at the event, and (of course) glamour shots of dealer swag.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Completely Fair Scheduler’s Impact On Games
eldavojohn writes “We’ve heard a bit about the completely fair scheduler previously, but now Kernel Trap looks at the implications this new scheduler has for 3D games in Linux. Linus Torvalds noted, ‘I don’t think any scheduler is perfect, and almost all of the time, the RightAnswer(tm) ends up being not one or the other, but somewhere in between. But at the same time, no technical decision is ever written in stone. It’s all a balancing act. I’ve replaced the scheduler before, I’m 100% sure we’ll replace it again. Schedulers are actually not at all that important in the end: they are a very very small detail in the kernel.’ The posts that follow the brief article, reveal that Linus seems quite confident that he made the right choice in his decision to merge CFS with the Linux kernel. One thing’s for certain, gaming on Linux can’t suffer any more setbacks or it may be many years before we see FOSS games rival the commercial world.”Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SimplyBurns rev275
Burns CD/DVD media.

Recreational Vehicles & Trailers
Recreational RV’s and Trailer Camping and Traveling with Rangerrob.

DiskLibrary 1.51
fun and easy to use offline media cataloging application. Indispensable if you have a lot of volumes or optical media discs.

Wx 5.0
A weather app that downloads and processes weather information and forecasts for the United States.

PortAuthority 2.2
GUI for MacPorts package management system.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 1st, 2007 at 2:05 am and is filed under Game News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.