I ran across this flash game portal in my travels. It has a unique interface (flash) so give it a try if you like flash games.

Soundrangers is a great site to go to when you need inexpensive sounds for your applications. Mouseover the arrows and delight in the sound effects.

Thanks to DOSBOX the realm of old DOS games is reviving on new machines. Even Macs can partake now thanks to the DOSBOX folks. Give this site a view and revive old memories or make new ones.

Jacob Seidelin has done the world of DHTML gaming a great service and created a tutorial for building a Wolfenstein-like engine via canvas and the DOM. I fully intend to suck up this information and use it for IBRPG :)

12 Tails Online looks to be an amazing MMO using the Unity3D engine. I don't know yet if it will be accessible via the web plugin but since it's in Unity it should be able to run in your web browser! This looks to be a fantastic new MMO that won't require a huge initial download, as well as being runnable on Macs as well! I hope you other MMO builders learn from this and stop making windows-only clients...

Satyen Desai talks about what's coming on the horizon for YUI 3. I think this updated library is going to be a serious competitor to jQuery when it finally comes out. It has a lot of great ideas as well as some amazing features.

This is an interesting video of Tim Brown talking about the connection between creativity and play.

From the site:

At the 2008 Serious Play conference, designer Tim Brown talks about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play -- with many examples you can try at home (and one that maybe you shouldn't).

I want to start this out by saying I (used to) read many many game reviews, and I believe they serve a valuable function by guiding folks into not wasting hard earned money on games that stink, or games that aren't the kind of game for the purchaser.

That being said, I find more often than not that reading a game review poisons me to a game. I read the analysis of the poor storyline, or cheap graphics, or the history of the delays of a game and I can't help but think of those things when I sit down to play. I recall one review in particular about an RPG called Grandia Xtreme. It was rated a measly 6.5 or something like that, and the reviewer found all kinds of reasons to dislike the game.

I picked it up in a bargain basement bin at a local game store and tried it out. My expectations were pretty low and I almost didn't buy the game at all. I was suprised to find the game really fun and pretty much a perfect game for me at the time. Something I could pick up and play without alot of issues remembering what the game was about, while also providing a depth and challenge in the boss fights that kept me playing for many hours into the night longer than I had anticipated.

What bugs me is that if I had followed the reviewer's idea of a great game I would totally have missed out.

Even for games that are "highly" rated, the reviewer often feels the need to point out all the flaws, shortcomings, and issues with framerate or comment on the lack of depth in the backgrounds or something.

To me, this often has the effect of spoiling what fun you might actually gather from a game. I have yet to play more than 2 or 3 games ever that I would consider completely unworthy of my time. I believe this is partially due to the fact that I really like to explore games and find all the nooks and crannies - to get inside the head of the developers and see what they were trying to do.

I believe one of the fundamental flaws of "game review" sites are that these reviews are written by folks who basically do nothing but write reviews for a living. They are like restaurant reviewers in that they spend all their time picking apart their chosen field of interest and presenting you with the broken pieces - in the hope that you will reward their efforts by making good choices with buying games or eating food. While this is a great goal, I feel like reviewers end up being too "close" to their subject. They often feel that they need to present a balanced view of all of the aspects of a various game and have to find at least something wrong with everything they review.

To me this ends up causing me to enjoy a game less so than if I had started playing it "cold". Imagine if you worked at Pixar and spent your time every day working on the tiny nitty gritty details of a movie. How then can you enjoy watching a movie yourself? You end up spotting flaws here and there or say things like "I could have made that better" or "they cut corners there" in the movie. You never get to enjoy the movie for the "storytelling" aspect. You can never "suspend disbelief" long enough to have fun!

I get that same feeling when I play a game that I've read several reviews about. I end up disengaging from the game and start analyzing the flaws in the English translation, or stare at the improper 3D clipping of the character on a stairwell.

So, the solution for me has been to cut back on reading game reviews. I wish there was a site that has game reviews from just average players who take joy in having fun with a game, as opposed to hard core game reviewers who have to meet a deadline. This has been kinda hard because when you close off that avenue of information, you run the risk of buying a game that is a real stinker. But, in a way, I've found that to be kinda fun. Instead of having someone give me a handful of reasons why I should dislike this game, I get to find out for myself.

Game Girl Advance talks about the "Futures of Entertainment" which boil down to a few ideas that seem to be transforming the gaming landscape. I believe the person or persons who really tap into these ideas is going to have a real "killer app" for the web.

From Indiegames comes a link to an interesting short game that experiments with a dynamic narrative during gameplay. You play a hapless guy out in the forest fighting floating squidlike things while the narrator guides you along. Try out the video to get a sense of how things work.