Gamertell

During Comic Con 2008, many games and comics were featured. And who wouldn’t want to attend a special preview of today’s most talented directors and animators create independent film masterpieces. The Comic-Con International Independent Film Festival consisted of movies that fell into seven categories: action/adventure, animation, comics-oriented, documentary, humor/parody, horror and science fiction/fantasy. On July 27, 2008, the top films in each category were announced and awarded.

This year’s Comic-Con International: Independent Film Festival are…

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There seems to be a bit of confusion when it comes to guessing the ratio between male and female gamers. But with more and more women appearing in the gaming industry as well as the gaming scene its no wonder that Sony Online Entertainment, LLC hadn’t come out with this scholarship years ago.

SOE will be offering the G.I.R.L. Scholarships beginning April 1, 2008. Women who are currently attending one of The Art Institutes campuses are eligible to qualify. Female students interested in receiving the scholarship must submit an in-game design, concept art and two essays by…

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The 2008 Engineering & Technology Emmys were award this past Monday (January 7, 2008) at CES in Las Vegas, NV.

The big - and second consecutive year - winner was Nintendo with several nods for the Nintendo DS and a wink to the Wii. Linden Labs also won a pair for Second Life.

Other notable winners include the Atari Lynx for the screen development (so nice to see that system finally get some respect), Mattell’s Football handheld game (which helped maintain my sanity during many long bus rides in high school), and a couple big-name games including World of Warcraft, Havok and Quake.

As you may recall last year’s awards had a bit of extra excitement generated by Sony, though this year Sony doesn’t have an award to brag about.

Award presenters included Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, and Peter Price, president and CEO of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, Chairman of the Gaming Committee Seth Haberman and Variety’s Chief Marketing Officer Madelyn Hammond.  Peter Price, President and CEO of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. told press:

“For the first time in our 59 year history, not all winners will be presented with an Emmy statuette at this year’s ceremony due to litigation with the Hollywood-based Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. We are in court aggressively fighting for the right to recognize the talents and achievements of these companies and individuals without whom our industry would not be the world leader it is today. Once victorious, we plan to present each winner from tonight’s event with their own Emmy.”

Click through for the complete list of winners for Engineering & Technology for Creation and Implementation of Video Games and Platforms…

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Ken Kutaragi, creator of the SNES sound chip and the entire Playstation line of game systems, stands poised to be the latest recipient of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences’ (AIAS) Lifetime Achievement Award, which will be delivered at next year’s upcoming Design Innovate Communicate Entertain summit being held February 2008 in Las Vegas.

The press release for the award is appropriately glowing, with the following quote from AIAS president Joseph Olin.

Ken Kutaragi’s passion, innovative thinking and business savvy sparked a monumental movement that was unstoppable.  If it wasn’t for Ken and his concept of the original Playstation, there wouldn’t be the billion dollar industry there is today.  His contributions have clearly set new standards for developers, publishers and consumers worldwide.

To be fair, the reasoning is probably at least half-right.  The game and some of the innovations of the first two iterations of the Playstation were nothing short of revolutionary.  The PS1 made the concept of portable memory cards introduced by the Neo Geo a mainstream feature for a good number of years and fostered things, like making game cases the same size as traditional CD and DVD cases, that made gaming seem more in tune with bigger entertainment industries such as music or movies, if only superficially.

However, you could almost argue that he opened Pandora’s Box. The original Playstation was the first major entry a decade’s worth of shoddily-designed hardware, as anybody who has spent the worth of the console’s original street price on either repairs or replacements will tell you. With “Red Ring of Death” being a term of infamy among XBox 360 owners, the plague has spread beyond Sony’s walls now.

That’s to say nothing of Kutaragi’s efforts in recent years, which include a portable with a minimum of non-gimped, non-port, original software that, if the media at the time was any indication, made you look like a big, tough adult, and a console which costs about one month of the groom’s salary but has shown little to actually justify said price other than two upcoming single killer-app titles (assuming they stay exclusive, which is always subject to rumors).

But this is probably more about Kutaragi’s achievements prior to then, rather than his failures afterwards.

Read [DICE] Also Read [Kotaku]

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