Sims Creator Begins Tampering with Real Life

• Author: JesseLangley
• Filed under: iPhone
• Date: Nov 21,2011

Will Wright, creator of The Sims, is moving beyond mere pixels, and taking gamers with him. Instead of letting you play god and housing designer to a group of non-sentient AI, his newest game will actually play games with your life with a little help from GPS, cloud storage, and your friends.

If it sees that you go to car shows frequently, it will mold the game accordingly. The more the game finds out about you, the more it’s going to be customized to your life. If you share absolutely nothing with it, you’ll be left with what should be a very generic, but perhaps mildly entertaining game. Read the rest of this entry »

Gaming in the Cloud

• Author: JesseLangley
• Filed under: Game Center
• Date: Nov 2,2011

The Game Center has been dead almost since it was introduced in Sept. 2010, but some iOS 5 updates could breathe more life into the stale medium. The idea was supposed to be a cross between playing games on Facebook and the social capabilities of Xbox Live.

The execution fell fairly flat, as friends had no way to communicate or really even interact with their friends except to compete with them. The person on the other side might as well have been AI for all the contact you would have with them. Kudos to the person who remembered to brag about an awesome Ms. Pacman victory when they met up with their friend hours later. Read the rest of this entry »