gaming

This weekend, Mojang, the development team behind the indie hit, Minecraft, will be live streaming the development of their new game.

They will be creating a brand new game in 60 hours. Insane right? Not only that, but you can vote for the game genre and the game theme as well.

To top it all off, they are teaming up with Humble Bundle, everyone's favourite "pay-what-you-want" games retailer, with another pay-what-you-want special. Pay what you want for Mojang's brand new, yet to be decided game, and they will give it to you at the end of the 60 hour development deadline.

All the money will go to charity. How awesome is that?

Not sure I can look at a bunch of guys creating code for 60 hours though...

Check out their video as well as the source link below for more information.

The Diablo 3 Beta has been going for a while and a lot of players have been playing on the public test realm (excluding myself... *sigh*) and most importantly, Blizzard has been receiving feedback from the players.

Based on the feedback, Blizzard is going to make quite a few Systems changes, ranging from character attributes being dropped to items being removed.

I'm sure there are a lot of players who will be complaining about the changes, while many more will be supporting it. You just can't keep everyone happy.

What will make more people unhappy though, is that these changes will definitely push the rumoured March 2012 release date back even further. This is where Blizzard shines through of course. Never one to be pressured into releasing a buggy game and patching later (like other game companies), they prefer the game to be perfect when released.

As Jay Wilson, Blizzard's Game Director for Diablo 3 stated:

Our job isn't just to put out a game, it's to release the next Diablo game. No one will remember if the game is late, only if it's great.

And that is why Blizzard is the great games company they are.

Check the source link for a full list of systems that Blizzard are planning on changing.

Looks like Microsoft is starting to look after their independent game developers.

A few of the good things that have been announced:

• Maximum size limit has been increased to 500MB (up from the previous 150MB limit)
• Developers are now able to apply a price point of 80 MS Points ($1) to games smaller than 150MB. Previously, you could only apply the $1 price tag to games smaller than 50MB
• Also, the maximum number of titles than can be on the market at any given time, per developer, has been raised to 20, up from the previous 10

I got curious about other available resources for parents with gaming kids to follow on my post from earlier this week. Surely I couldn't be the only person with this kind of hangup?

Turns out I'm not the only person.

While I agree that the rating system is an excellent starting point for most parents, there are times when I don't even agree with the rating system myself.

I've played Colin Mcrae: DiRT, a rally racing game, almost to completion and never once have I encountered the 'language' that earned the game it's PEGI-12 rating. So what are parents (and children who want to convince their parents otherwise) to do?

Well, apparently, not much.

There used to be a website called What They Play, that listed videos and reviews about games and their ratings from a parenting system. What They Play was acquired by News Corporation in 2009. As of September 2011 though, the website no longer appears functional, instead redirecting users to IGN. Which is kind of sad.

I did find a few websites with more guidelines for parents, which I'm sharing below.