Left 4 Dead 2 does the sequel thing right. It takes the pseudo-random design that made the first game so replayable, expands it, and does so without sacrificing the original game’s feel. Add that to the franchise’s multiplayer excellence and a new narrative emphasis, and the only thing deeper than the smart FPS gameplay is the pool of zombie gore.

Reggie Fils-Aime gave a presentation earlier this week at the BMO Capital Markets meeting where he claimed that the Wii accounts for 80% of female “primary players.” Put another way, Nintendo just laid claim to 80% of female console owners (though the stats don’t include PCs or portables). The president of Nintendo of America went [...]

Hey all! It’s Thanksgiving, and I just want everyone to know that I’m thankful that the government funded this.

This game of Tetris was brought you by glass microspheres and optical tweezers.

There’s been a gradual upsurge in oldschool 2D gaming recently, albeit on the sly. The burgeoning casual and portable markets have converged with increasing visibility for indie developers and digital distribution. Set it all against the recession as a backdrop, and suddenly the cheap simple games of yesteryear start looking pretty good. Nintendo can smell these things coming like sharks smell blood in water, and so we have New Super Mario Bros. Wii, the first AAA 2D console platformer in ages.

The National Institute on Media and the Family is closing its doors on December 29 after 14 years (via Gamasutra). The organization plans to hand off its operations and initiatives to other nonprofits.

The self-proclaimed watchdog group has been a vocal critic of gaming in general, and the ESRB’s regulatory performance in particular. During its lifespan, the NIMF was behind research suggesting that nearly ten percent of gamers are clinically addicted to the hobby. It threw gasoline on the hot coffee scandal. It tried to blacklist Stubbs the Zombie for featuring cannibalism. The institute even tried to establish killographic (a violent alternative to the word pornographic) into common language to describe certain games.

Not all of NIMF’s actions followed this apparent agenda, however. The institute was responsible for research that showed games can facilitate surgical performance. They publicly hamstrung Jack Thompson‘s credibility. Perhaps most tellingly, the NIMF has always advocated parental responsibility when it comes to selecting child-appropriate gaming content.

The NIMF has probably been more trouble than good to gaming and gamer rights over the years. Just remember that they weren’t completely evil when you wear your party hat to the funeral.

Pinch Media is claiming that an average of 34% of iPhone app installs are pirated and that the piracy affects 60% of apps in general. A few months ago, the developer modified their analytic software so that apps could identify and report pirate installs. Using the accumulated data, they’ve just posted a slideshow of piracy [...]

Video game manuals are hardly sexy, which is why nobody ever talks about them. Press like myself tend to be so familiar with control schemes that there’s rarely much to gain from reading those monochrome pages. In-game tutorials and tooltips are usually enough to get you up to speed anyway, so manuals are pretty redundant. However, accessibility is a mainstay of modern gaming culture, and if you want a game that’s more complex than Mario Party, you’ll probably want a little documentation.

It’s hardly ready for mass production, but New Scientist is reporting (via Evil Avatar) that scientists are working on embedding microscopic LED technology into contact lenses. Babak Parviz, who developed the idea, hopes to, “create images that effectively float in front of the user perhaps 50 cm to 1 m away.” Despite the diode’s small [...]

Penny Arcade’s annual charity is beginning it’s seventh year with a bang. According to Tycho, corporate sponsors and The Mario Marathon have already donated $260,000 toward this year’s $1,000,000 goal. To further raise awareness, the charity is also adding a Twitter Feed. Child’s Play was founded in part to raise awareness about the lives of [...]

Torchlight looks so much like Diablo II that you might worry it will feel derivative, but only if you have no idea who designed it. Developer Runic Games is populated by veterans of the Diablo series, Fate, and the nearly released Mythos. So instead of a knockoff, Torchlight turns out to be more of a successor. It’s a refined example of the Roguelike action RPG.