Gamertell

Title: Game Boys (aka Game Boys: Professional Videogaming’s Rise from the Basement to the Big Time)
Author: Michael Kane
Price: $24.95 (hardcover)
Release Date: June 23, 2008
Publisher: Viking (part of Penguin Putnam, Inc.)
Pros: Conveys the excitement, personality and seriousness of competitive gaming in a readable tone. A good book for gamers and pro gaming skeptics.
Cons: Starts a bit slow and has some overly simplified explanations of gaming and gaming terms.
Overall Score: Two thumbs up; 90/100; A-; * * * * out of five.

Kane’s Game Boys is so much better than the pop-catchy name implies. It is instead a well-formed, personal and serious look into select groups of pro gamers.

Click through for the full review…

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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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A documentary film christened “Molotov’s Dispatches in Search of the Creator: A Second Life Odyssey” that details the increasingly complex social interactions within the virtual world, Second Life, has been pounced upon by HBO. The machinisma, directed by Douglas Gayeton, follows the trail of a Second Life avatar, Molotov Alva, as he navigates through the virtual world and interacts with other avatars.

Not only does HBO have plans of airing the 35 min documentary next year but it also intends to forward the documentary for a shot at the Oscar in the animated short film category. The amount that HBO paid for the documentary hasn’t been intimated.

This virtual world continues to weave a complex web of social interactions that make for an interesting documentary theme, and there is no better way of observing Second life than from within. Even the harshest of Second Life critics wouldn’t want to miss it when it airs on HBO and, needless to mention, machinisma enthusiasts would be on the edge of their seats for this one.

It is still debated whether Second Life is a game, but, the virtual reality experience it provides is pretty similar to some of the MMORPG’s like World of Warcraft. So, most MMORPG gamers would be able connect with the documentary. Who knows that it might be to virtual reality what Easy Rider was to counter culture.

Read[Hollywood Reporter] via [kotaku]

• Comic Con 2008: International Independent Film Festival winners
• Gamertell Review: Game Boys by Michael Kane
• Couple divorces over Second Life affair

Trying to break arcade records is certainly nothing new. Since the earliest days of arcade games, millions of quarters have been plunked into those boxy behemoths for the chance to flick a joystick and get a triad of initials forever burned into the top of the screen. Very few, however, have been lucky enough to get their high scores in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Making way to select theaters on August 17, 2007, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is a documentary about two gamers competing for the highest score in the classic arcade game, Donkey Kong. The film’s site gives a quick synopsis of the movie, which follows…

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