
If you'd like to read about the press event Microsoft held today to unveil their new Xbox, the Xbox One, you should visit The Verge. There are all kinds of tech improvements over the last console, including audio commands, a Blu-ray player, a Kinect sensor, vibrating controllers, Skype, a Halo TV series, live TV, and exclusive games.
If you'd like to read a good piece about what the Xbox One (and the disappointing Wii U and whatever Playstation is working on) might mean, news intern Ansel Herz directed my attention to Luke Plunkett's explanation of why these new video game consoles are "bumming" him "out."
...I've got an overbearing sense of melancholy. Maybe even ennui. Not at the machines themselves; the PS4 seems supremely capable, and I've no doubt the next Xbox will be similar. No, I'm sad about the fact that this feels like the last gasp. A final hurrah.
The end of console gaming as we know it.
Maybe I can't see gaming's forest for the trees. Maybe I'm just bleak. But I can't see another round of console launches after this. OK, perhaps Nintendo can squeeze one more in, if only out of necessity, but the prospect of Sony and/or Microsoft having the will - or the money - to make a PS5 or Xbox 1080 in 5-8 years seems remote.
I am not a gamer—I can be a gamer or I can be books editor at The Stranger; I cannot do both—but this feels true to me. The idea of a single device to serve a single function feels like something out of the last century, and as much as these devices may try to make themselves into multi-purpose entertainment center devices, I think the idea of a gaming console is not long for this world.
Did you know today is the 25th35th anniversary of Atari's classic Breakout? Google does!
Follow the link or type "Atari Breakout" into Google Image Search to play.

Thanks to Slog tipper Greg!
The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.
There are too many retro games to count, but only a few of them are fun on their own terms. This may result from the rapid evolution of gaming—any particular slice of nostalgia is only going to light up a few brains which were wrapped up in games during the month or year in question. ASCII games may have lasted longer than other tech, but they only touched a few of us who were so needy for dopamine that we chose to identify with @ symbols as they barreled through typographic mazes, questing for Amulets of Yondor and such. Candy Box takes ASCII graphics and, er, story, wraps it in some interesting mechanics and extremely silly candy themes, and offers something way more fun than it ought to be.
Part of the joy of the game is learning how to play—the dev should be making top dollar consulting with other devs on camouflaging tutorials—so we won't say much more than that your playful messing around will be rewarded. The game is more food-obsessed than Pac-Man, Burger Time, and Cooking Mama put together, and it is weird and challenging enough to keep us coming back.

Oh! Wait! This is important! Saving is messed-up, weird, and easy to forget. You've got to click a tiny button marked "Save" at the top of the main tab, and then either bookmark the link it gives you or note the five-character tag so you can retrieve your save later. You could also just leave your browser running indefinitely, of course. We failed to save several times early on, and the riddles of the swamp frog were only entertaining the first time through.
Please note: Candy Box is, as far as we can tell, in no way associated with Candy Land.
Thanks to Slog zoom-tipper Christine!
The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.
The Raygun Lounge opens at 5pm, and Slog Nerd Happy commences shortly thereafter. Come on down to 501 E Pine and play Legend of the Cipher, Thirteenth Age, or whatever your heart desires (some desires may not be available at this time, offer not valid in Delaware). Have a beer! Try an extra-tasty samosa! Mingle with your fellow nerd stars! It is impossible to regret any decisions made at Slog Nerd Happy. Just ask this fellow:
The last Friday of the month is upon us again! It's time for our board-and-card-game Nerdy Slog Happy Hour, from after work until 9 or 10 at Gamma Ray. Thankfully, the cripplingly bright daylight should abate by then, so you won't have to feel bad about gaming indoors (or, for some of you, risk any penalties to Dex and to-hit).
If you've never had the opportunity to sling battle raps—or if you just want to witness the spectacle that is "Table-top Hip Hop"—we've got special guest Gerald King, one of the developers behind Legend of the Cipher. What's that look like? We're as curious as you—but you can find some clues here as Penny Arcade's Jerry Holkins throws down a shanty rhyme at the Enforcer after-party at PAX East, about halfway through this video:
We'll also bring along the as-yet-unreleased ruleset for D&D variant 13th Age, which just got much love on BoardGameGeek. Check it out between games, or if you're as nerdy as us and just like to roll up characters, we'll be there for you.
What else do you guys want to play? If you want to bring a game, or want somebody else to bring something and teach, speak up in the comments.
The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.
Remember Anita Sarkeesian, the woman behind the pop culture blog Feminist Frequency who launched a successful $160,000 Kickstarter campaign last year to research and report on misogyny in video game culture, much to the howling rage of an internet's worth of misogynist gamers?
Sarkeesian's first part of the series was released last month and even if you're not a gamer, the way she tackles her topic—Damsels in Distress—is both approachable and fascinating. Sarkeesian methodically hits upon everything from etymology to Greek mythology to mustachio'd villains and railroad-strapped damsels, to Popeye and King Kong, eventually illustrating how women became popular objects to be stolen and rescued and stolen again in generations of modern video games with demeaning tags like, Willst thou get the girl... or play like one?
"The damsel in distress is not just a synonym for weak," she explains. "Instead, it works by ripping away the power from female characters... distilled down to its essence, the plot device works by trading the disempowerment of female character for the power of male characters."
If you've already seen this video, congrats! You won the internet! If you haven't, it's well worth your time.
Sadly, we've only got one review copy of BioShock Infinite—so that means one of us has had to slum it in mobile while waiting for the chance to revel in (and/or grump over) one of the apparently best games evar. (And where has the time gone? We're already in the midst of the BI backlash!)
Fortunately, in the meantime, we've had a couple of crazy good mobile games to suck on like a pair of aluminum-foil pipes:


The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

It is also Tabletop Eve, the night before 3/30/13, which celebrity nerds Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day have announced will be International Tabletop Day*. Saturday is full of board game events, so check in with your favorite local game store to see what they've got on offer.
* Check out Tabletop, the web series hosted by Wil Wheaton. I cannot recommend it enough, it's turned me on to several games and it's fun to watch!
Another month has passed and we are that much closer to death, or summer, or whichever temporal milestone you like best. Celebrate nerd-style with booze and analog games this Friday from 5-10pm at Raygun Lounge for the next Slog Nerd Happy. We're sharing space-time with a Yelp Geek event, so you can expect 2d8 wandering nerds in attendance. Some of them, no doubt, will drop fat loot, but let's try to parley before taking our surprise round. Some of us have Chaotic Good reputations to maintain.
It is also Tabletop Eve, the night before 3/30/13, which celebrity nerds Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day have announced will be International Tabletop Day*. Saturday is full of board game events, so check in with your favorite local game store to see what they've got on offer. Or get down to Norwescon and party old-school. Whatever you do, roll some dice.
* Check out their nifty web series!
The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.
In case you missed this story over the weekend like I did, here's your morning dose of awesome parenting:
When Mike Mika saw the disappointment on his daughter's face when she realized Pauline wasn't a playable character in Donkey Kong, he felt a call to action. Thankfully Mika happens to be a competent developer, and after a few late-night hours spent hacking the NES version of Nintendo's classic, he accomplished the role reversal his daughter had wished for. Mario was now under Donkey Kong's control, and Pauline was tasked with rescuing the plumber in distress.
(WARNING: As is usually the case, if you want to continue feeling good about humanity, you shouldn't read the comments on The Verge post, as it has been hijacked by dipshit "men's rights" morons making dumbass false equivalency comments about replacing Lara Croft with Larry Croft for the sake of fairness and so on.)
We're big fans of the pay-what-you-want Humble Bundle game packages, and the latest release is a winner. The four games included are Beat Hazard Ultra, a sweet space shooter that uses your music tracks to generate enemies; Dynamite Jack, an adventure romp that mixes stealth with a-splosions; NightSky HD, a neat platformer by the folks behind the legendary Cave Story; and Solar 2, a space trip that's reminiscent of Osmos. They're available for Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, and even good old Android.

You determine both what you pay and who gets the money, splitting it between the developers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child's Play charities, and the Humble folks themselves. If you give more than the average buyer (currently $6.64), you get two bonus games: the subterranean tower defense game Dungeon Defenders (DD: Second Wave for Android) and the maddening twitch-fest Super Hexagon. Soundtracks and Steam codes are part of the package, too.
The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.
Take note, gentle gamers: once again, Emerald City Comicon has a whole nested world of gaming within it—with the return of personalities like Jennifer Hale (the storied voice of FemShep) and Felicia Day (i.e., Felicia Day) and gaming-flavored events like "How to Become as Fit as Your Avatar" and "The Critical Hit Show: A Live Dungeons and Dragons Comedy Experience."
Scheduled programming aside, there's a veritable mini-PAX of casual and organized play, too—just across Pike and down in the basement, open until midnight both Friday and Saturday. You can play not one, not two, but three kinds of D&D (13th Age, D&D Next, and Pathfinder), all available in not-too-long, novice-friendly demo form. Story Games Seattle is also running and teaching games, like Fiasco and Microscope (whose creator was even there today), and Munchkin has a couple tables going, too.
If you're just ducking out of the show floor for a bit, the Game Library is back, where you can borrow a game to play with friends—everything from Bananagrams to RoboRally, Cosmic Encounter, and the crazy Order of the Stick game (which we've never found a way to play in under 13 hours, so okay maybe that's not a good option this weekend). Serious players no doubt already know that there's a whole slew of HeroClix and Magic tournaments going on, too.
The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.
Expect some epic Geekiness
-Game Demos
-Beer/Booze
-Free mead
-Tunes by DJ PBear
-Raffling some great prizes as a fundraiser benefiting Lambert House for homeless gay youth
-More details coming soonWe will also have some special guests including:
Tony Akins (Wonder Woman DC 52 artist)
Chris Lange (capitol hillbillies)
More TBA
Sounds like a blast!

We have also somehow snagged yet another special guest this time around: Devin Low (former head developer for Magic) will be teaching his Marvel deck-building game Legendary. We've played the heck out of this game, and it's faithful to the IP while also being really fun (much better than the DC deck-builder, in our experience)—whether you're trying to tune your deck into a fast-playing Spider-Man card-flipper or a wound-chomping Hulk rage machine.
And as if all that weren't enough, Mary will even have some FaerieCon tickets to give away—presumably through some sort of contest involving displays of elven grace.
The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.
For those who are unfamiliar: on the last Friday of every month the nerds of Slog take over Raygun Lounge. Games are played, beer is drunk, fun times are had. Sometimes we have special guests!
Bring a game to share, or borrow from Raygun's collection! See you Friday!
I don't play console video games or MMORPGs—I simply don't have the time, what with all the books and movies—but the look of Bungie's new project, Destiny, has me drooling. Take a look at this promotional trailer:
Players will explore our solar system in Bungie's new first-person shooter, crafting personal stories as they travel Destiny's surreal, fantastic places.
As Guardians, players will battle alien species with exotic names like Sandeaters, War Rhinos and Spider Pirates. They'll wage war with time-traveling robots and evil space zombies. They'll have shared, social experiences that complement a crafted, mythic science-fiction universe.
The production art looks gorgeous, and I love the fact that this is a completely new science-fiction universe that seems to embrace any number of sci-fi concepts and feeds them into one huge storyline. If the actual game is anywhere near the pre-release hype, this looks like the kind of game that could completely ruin my life. But what do you think?
Sakes alive. So we posted yesterday about the great new traveling Smithsonian exhibit at EMP, "The Art of Video Games," and we offered up two free tickets to tonight's Game Nite opening party for "the best story about having an emotional response to a video game."
You guys really brought it, and now we can't decide. Time for a legally binding Slog poll! Go read the finalists' stories and cast your vote by 4pm....
And whether you win or not, the Game Nite party at EMP should be much fun tonight, from 7 to 11, with live gaming on the Skychurch mega-screen and some cool talks, including a keynote from Jeff Strain, one of the godfathers of WoW.
The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.
The Smithsonian's The Art of Video Games opens this Friday at EMP, and it's a visually striking first stab at figuring out where video games fit into the spectrum of creative work. There's a lot packed into a smallish space, including five playable games (The Secret of Monkey Island!), stills and clips from the 80 games on display, and a mesmerizing look at the faces of people immersed in games we call "What the Video Game Saw."
It's not possible to discuss this exhibit without taking a deep breath and mentioning the epic yes-it-is/no-it-isn't trolling that has passed itself off as argument on the subject over the past few years. To accept the legitimacy of this empty debate is an admission of defeat, and we won't dignify it with more than an acknowledgement of its existence.*

The selection criteria were eccentric, and involved—not kidding—online voting, but it's hard to argue with the inclusion of any individual title or series in the exhibit. It's sweet to see some of the old gear on display; the ColecoVision controllers instantly Prousted us back to our childhoods. The notable absence of games for smartphones and other mobile devices speaks more to the development cycle of museum exhibits than anything else, most likely. The top-level taxonomy of game types (action, adventure, target, and tactics) posed by curator Chris Melissinos is a good starting point and could launch a few dozen masters' theses.
The EMP is hosting Game Nite this Friday from 7-11pm to celebrate The Art of Video Games, and it sounds like good fun. They'll have live tournament-style gaming broadcast on the Sky Church's alarmingly massive screen, a suite of indie game projects from DigiPen designers, speakers from Valve, Microsoft, and UW, and plenty more. Tickets are $15 for adults or $5 for kids aged 5-12. (Members get in free.) We've got two free passes to give away to the commenter who tells the best story about having an emotional response to a video game. To win, you MUST post your comment by midnight tonight and email std@thestranger.com with your Slog commenter name, so we know how to contact you.
* Though we would like to point out one commonality between video games and art: They both attract staggering numbers of hustlers and grifters.
The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.
FTL is a sweet little indie game that rode industry buzz to blow past its Kickstarter goal about a year ago, then launched last fall. It's sort of a dungeon crawl in space, with bright, clean graphics and a Choose Your Own Adventure-style interface that draws players in quickly. Ship-to-ship combat is a good chunk of the game, but that involves shuttling crew members to repair damage or focus efforts on shields or whatnot, rather than aiming, firing, evading, and other twitchy business. It's fun, it's easy to learn, it's hard to win, and it's compelling enough to play through many, many times.

It's also ten bucks. That stakes out some interesting psychological territory in the space of game prices in between classic one-or-two-buck apps like Angry Birds and $60 box game events like Halo 4, and it provokes a weird discomfort in the mind of the game consumer. It's certainly not the only game in its price range—there are plenty of $10-20 games on Steam, Xbox LIVE and PlayStation Network—but it still seems to transcend the spectrum of established game pricing.
That's a good thing! It ties the price of FTL more directly to its value than to simply what everyone else charges. We may not often think "Do I want to exchange ten dollars in exchange for several hours of challenging fun?" very often, but it's a worthwhile effort now and then. When we see the same old price for apps, box games, and DLC (not to mention books, movies, porn, and music), we tend to pull the trigger without thinking. More diverse pricing may lead to more discerning purchases, and maybe to a Utopia filled with unique little experiences like FTL.
The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.
I'm a couple days late to Surgeon Simulator 2013, but I think maybe this is the video game that Duncan Jones should adapt into a movie, not Warcraft. This is the most fun I've had playing a video game in forever.
There has never been a good movie based on a video game. Think about that for a second. For twenty years, Hollywood has been trying to adapt video games to film; Wikipedia lists 29 adaptations made in that time. They've never successfully made a good one. And so I am highly nervous about the news that Duncan Jones is going to make a World of Warcraft movie. Jones's first movie, Moon, was a home run. His second movie, Source Code, was not very good at all, although it was at least ambitious and demonstrated his craftsmanship. But this is going to require a lot of work. I mean, look at Badass Digest's description of Warcraft:
World of Warcraft is just the latest iteration of the Warcraft universe, which sees a Tolkien-esque fantasy land known as Azeroth divided in a massive, ongoing war between the Alliance and the Horde. The Alliance is a group of all the boring fantasy races - humans, gnomes, dwarves, lame elves - while the Horde is made up of totally awesome races like Orcs, Trolls, Undead, Blood Elves and minotaur-like Tauren*. Over the years the ever-expanding universe has grown to include multiple planes of existence, outer space, time travel, werewolves, a race of kung-fu pandas and more. Warcraft offers an embarrassment of fantasy riches; it's like every fantasy concept thrown into a blender.
Now, I expect that Jones will manage to keep the story fairly simple, since this is the first Warcraft movie. And you can't doubt Jones's dedication to Warcraft—Badass Digest discovered a previous interview of Jones raving about the idea of a Warcraft movie back in 2010. So there's a possibility that this might work out. But Jones is battling against twenty years of tradition, here, and there's a distinct possibility that his third movie could be his first truly bad movie.
This month's special guest is Fire Opal Media game producer Jay Schneider, whose work you may know from the original Duels of the Planeswalkers. Jay is producing the new deck-building game Shadowrun: Crossfire, and he's going to bring out an early version for a sneak preview and some playtesting.
And here's a bonus: Wizards of the Coast provided us with some complimentary copies of last month's featured game, Dungeon!, so the first three winners of Shadowrun: Crossfire will each receive a copy of their very own!
Slog Game Night will return the last Friday of every month, so mark your calendars, nerds.
Like everyone else, I* woke up with a hangover on January 1st. Shortly thereafter, though, a migraine struck from the shadows and crushed my hangover's windpipe, leaving me writhing in the clichés of agony. It would have been a great time for self-reflection, were I not so devoted to the experience of pure suffering, but in the depths of it all, some part of me that was still capable of reason decided to stop playing Marvel: Avengers Alliance.

It's a Facebook game that launched last March¬—and as far as Facebook games goes, it's pretty good. It won X-Play's Social Game of the Year, and it's splashy and sometimes well written and fun enough to keep playing for at least a few days or weeks. But! After joyously making Hulk smash and Spider-Man sling webs and dashing Magneto's plans for a while, it became a different kind of experience entirely: It turned into a job.
Hyperallergic has a story from yesterday about a researcher smuggling discussions of feminism into WoW. Videos are at World of Warcraft Explains Feminism.
Has Slog already discussed gender and Minecraft? Is there even gender in Minecraft?
As has been well documented, Slog Nerd Happy Hour was much fun last time around—with people playing everything from Settlers and Dixit to Dungeon! and a crunchy-looking game that simulated the McCain-Obama campaign.
By popular demand, we've hammered out plans to make it A Thing—the last Friday of every month, starting THIS FRIDAY from 5 to 9, at Raygun Lounge, through 2026 or however long we can maintain a Slog nerd quorum for playing board and card games.
We're also going to keep trying to bring in game design-y guests each month, and we've got a great one for this Friday: Fire Opal Media game producer Jay Schneider, whose work you may know from the original Duels of the Planeswalkers. Jay is producing the new deck-building game Shadowrun: Crossfire, and he's going to bring out an early version for a sneak preview and some playtesting. Cyber-elves plus deck-building plus an absurdly good design team? Yes, please.

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

This just arrived in my Stranger mailbox, sent to me out of the blue by an old colleague and friend from The News Tribune (bless you, Sean R.). I'm recruiting people in the office to play it with me today when Mudede strolls right up and announces he used to play it all the time as a child. He also used to play Monopoly.
"I just played to win," he announced.
Who will win when we play it here? I shall report back. As for me, I've never seen the game before. The description on the box says:
Your favorite Rembrandt is on the block and you are bidding for it against a dazzling array of eccentric art speculators. Should you go even higher? What if it's a worthless forgery? You'll find out when you play Masterpiece, an exciting, suspenseful trip into the elite world of the international art auction.
What other Stranger writers should be in this lineup of eccentric art speculators? The game is for 3 to 6 players. So far, it's Mudede, Paul, and me.
If you want more celebrity bullshit posts, post 'em. And please note that the two Seahawks posts were by regular actual employees of The Stranger, and one of them was so disdainful as to actually constitute a Golden Globes post.
And the Seahawks game was more important: There's a Golden Globes every year. The Seahawks do not make the post-season every year.
Game night at Raygun Lounge was tons of fun!
While we haven't nailed down details, this event is sure to happen again (and again) so if you missed out you'll have another chance to come and play. Thanks to Raygun Lounge for the space, thanks to Chris Dupuis and Rodney Thompson from Wizards of the Coast for coming to demo Dungeon! for us, thanks to everyone who came out and made the night a success, and thanks to Mr. Herriman for these photos!

Slog nerds, saddle up: come on out tonight to the Raygun Lounge for some beer/wine/mead and gaming (board games, card games, minis gaming...? who knows!) with Slog nerds Paul Constant, Mary Traverse, and the two of us—although Rob is feeling under the weather and doesn't want to accidentally LARP Pandemic. (If you get that, your attendance is expected.)
Feel free to bring any game you want to play or teach. E.g., Paul Constant has never played either Small World or that new game everybody is talking about, Settlers of Catan. So that ignorance of canon needs to be remedied quickly and discreetly.
And a bonus for tonight: Wizards of the Coast is loaning us Tabletop Games Developer Chris Dupuis, to demo the rerelease of "Dungeon!"—a quick-playing game for 1 to 8 players that's the much-improved evolutionary offspring of a 1975 classic.

Also, FYI, we're sharing the space tonight with the nice folks at QueerGeek! and their Ladies Gaming Night (think of it as QueerGeek!SlogCon!), so anyone looking for a measure of dudelessness should also find some tables to their liking.
The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.