This Spawnkill editorial hits the nail on the head: game manuals were often cooler than video games themselves. Like record covers, and even CD liners now, game manuals have become a dead art. For those of us who grew up in the Nintendo era, but who lacked the resources to actually get a Nintendo, game manuals borrowed from friends were the next best thing, like a way to pretend you were playing the game. I remember long hours spent in the back of school buses imagining what video games must be like from the manuals other kids showed me, which were invariably more interesting than the actual experience…

Throughout those shining years of my childhood, purchasing a new game often meant thumbing through the pages of a mammoth tome detailing impending gameplay down to the letter. If I were stuck on a long car trip with a recently-purchased title, digging into that precious parcel and retrieving the manual was the first thing on my mind.  It was a way to game vicariously through a few simple, innocent pages, and one of the first ties I established to any game I had my heart set on playing through. Unfortunately, it’s also a familiar constant that gamers new and old can kiss goodbye with the decision to downsize the distribution of manuals entirely, spearheaded by Ubisoft, and perhaps many more companies to follow.

Call me old-fashioned, but the feeling of thumbing through the crisp (sometimes colored) pages rife with back story, notes from the designers, and detailed instructions on how to play gave me a real sense of anticipation. It was genuinely difficult to wait those few short hours until the final journey home at the end of the day to eagerly devour the content on the disk (or cartridge) inside. In some cases, being treated with some delicious fiction related to the title was something to look forward to as well, especially if you needed a little extra hype to fully enjoy the adventure about to unfold.

And let’s not forget the lovely serial numbers or copy protection that would require you to find a certain line or word in the manual to be able to install the thing. Good luck if you threw it away! But even now, as illogical as it would be to require a simple word or pass phrase as DRM, it was part of the charm that came with buying a new game.

(Spawnkill: Lamenting the loss of manuals)

This is just stone cold. I can barely watch it.

This girl, whose gamer boyfriend apparently cheated on her, HACKS HIS EMAIL and SHREDS HIS STARCRAFT 2 BETA PASSWORD. Holy FKK THAT’S COLD. And as if that wasn’t enough, she then goes to his house and BREAKS HIS WINDOW WITH A BRICK. GOOD DEAR GOD LORD. I’m not sure which one is worse!

To paraphrase Al Pacino in “Heat”: “You might break a man’s window with a brick but YOU DO NOT GET TO FK WITH HIS STARCRAFT 2 BETA CODES.”

I hope this wasn’t one of OUR Brads. I’m gonna go hide in a corner now!!!

(Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty)

Thanks again to Matt Musick at Motherboard.tv for sending me this segment they did on Sid Meier—the acknowledged greatest game designer of all time (he’s most famous for the game “Civilization”—“Pirates” and “Alpha Centauri” are two other favorites). The video follows Meier as he judges a contest to create a video game in 48 hours, apparently the video game equivalent of the 3-day novel and 24-hour comic book.

The master behind Civilization I through IV, Pirates!, Railroad Tycoon, and dozens of other titles, Sid Meier is one of the most acclaimed game designers of all time. Always a true believer in the idea that games will someday rule the world, Meier wants to inspire a new generation of game designers. Namely, the ones from his alma mater at Michigan, where he returns in this episode of Motherboard, in order to judge and of course participate in the “7th Annual Wolverine Soft 48 Hour Game Design Contest,” which pits coders and designers against each other in a race to create a game in two days.

Sid first used a computer as an undergrad at Michigan, when punch cards and time-sharing meant that one mistake cost hours of time. It was on that early IBM mainframe that Sid designed the first tic-tac‐toe game, a use for which he was chastised and nearly kicked out.

(Motherboard.tv: Sid Meier and the 48 Hour Game)

(Sid Meier’s Civilization V)

Shocking news—professional StarCraft, the biggest national sport in South Korea, has apparently been rigged by the mob for years. Infected Hive! INFECTED HIVE!

We all know South Korea takes their StarCraft seriously, but here’s a new window into just how seriously: Reports of widespread match-fixing and illegal betting is rocking the pro-gamer StarCraft community in the country, literally shaming some of the most popular professional StarCraft players into retiring.

As Gamepron reports, “various pro gamers” were involved in rigging their matches in coordination with illegal gambling groups, having some players intentionally lose their matches as well as leak replay files of their matches to said gambling groups. But it wasn’t just a few current players involved in the deceit—evidently the widespread match-fixing involved retired players and coaches who helped the gambling rings get in contact with the current players in the first place.

And what’s more, reports state that the e-sports organizers in South Korea knew about the match-fixing (although for how long isn’t clear), and attempted to resolve the issue themselves before actually discussing “the possibility of co-existing with the illegal betting sites.”

(1up: Starcraft Rigged!)

(Previously on Dangerous Minds: The Odd World of Professional Starcraft Players)

(Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty)

Legend of Zelda remixed Old Testament style!

(Via Encyclopedia Dramatica)

(Via Copyranter)

“Chess Set” by Jack Jake and Dinos Chapman
 
(via Design Boom)

“Magic: The Gathering” was a popular teenage contraceptive device in the 1990s. Unfortunately, despite its pronounced effect in curbing premarital sex, it led its frustrated users directly to the occult. This edit of an instructional video demonstrates its use.

(Everything is Terrible: Magic)

 
Interesting essay on how the work of late science fiction author Philip K. Dick can be seen to have prefigured today’s role playing video games over at the mighty Pop Matters blog.

The thesis of author “L.B. Jefferies” is straightforward enough: “Philip K. Dick?

 

 
Here’s a replica Big Daddy costume shot at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. The designer of the 60lbs costume says,

This costume is a replica of the Bouncer-type Big Daddy from the videogame Bioshock by 2K. This piece was completed in 7 weeks for its debut at DragonCon 2009, where it won 2 awards for “Best Journeyman” and “Best Professional Design.” After initial press after DragonCon, I was contacted by Ken Levine of 2K games who said, “You are the Big Daddy.”

This Bioshock Big Daddy costume is currently up for bid on Ebay.
 
See more of the photoshoot here.
 
(via Nerdcore)