games

Editor's Note: This blog originally implied that Wowhead trafficked in the secondary market for World of Warcraft gold. But the company says it does not.

There's a lot of buzz in the World of Warcraft fan site universe this morning, with reports and rumors flying about fan sites being sold, about $1 million sale prices and even scuttlebutt about the uber company in the business of selling WoW gold, IGE, having been sold.

According to a report from the blog, TechSoapBox, the WoW site Wowhead has been sold for $1 million.

Another blog, meanwhile, claims that, in fact, … Read more

PALO ALTO, Calif.--Brock Pierce, the CEO of Affinity Media, which used to own IGE, one of the world's largest marketer of the virtual goods and currencies of games like World of Warcraft, EverQuest and others, is looking tired.

Earlier this year, Affinity sold IGE, but it still has a hand deep in the market for virtual weapons, currencies and the like.

For years, Brock's companies, which in many ways have created--or at least perfected--the booming secondary market for the virtual worlds of those games, have been seen as all-powerful entities that almost laugh in the face of … Read more

You know those gamers--they spend hours on end hulled in smelly dark rooms with controllers in hand, ignoring social norms like sitting down for meals and showering once in awhile. Perhaps they're a little too into gaming.

But if a group of prominent doctors has their way, those gamers might end up diagnosed with video game addiction, a psychiatric disorder the American Medical Association will consider for official classification at its annual policy meeting beginning this weekend, according to several press accounts.

Given the overlap between bloggers and gamers, it's no surprise that the blogosphere is up in … Read more

It's too bad us Cravers are spread all over the country, because if we were all in the same location and we had one of these Easy Dunks in our possession, it'd make Crave czar Mike Yamamoto's job a lot easier. You see, he's like our camp counselor, and we're all the naughty little kids from Cabin 14 who are always starting food fights in the mess hall, catching squirrels and dying their fur pink, making dirty pictures during arts-and-crafts, and refusing to stop singing "99 Bottles of Beer On the Wall."

In other words, Camp Crave is a handful. But imagine how much more obedient and productive we'd all be if there were a dunk tank on the premises. All Mikey would have to do is punish our unsavory habits by making us take a turn in the seat while our co-workers greedily swarm around us, baseballs in hand, eager to hurl them at the target and get us soaked.

Consider the possibilities:… Read more

Being old enough to have watched the original SNL--before it was called SNL--we've always had a special place in our hearts for bass. So we may well have a skewed perspective on the the "Bass Fishing Wii" game coming out of Japan (of course).

Kotaku says the game has six stages and takes place in locales around the world, including the Grand Canyon. (We had no idea that bass fishing was so big there.) It sounds pretty boring to us too, which is why Kotaku speculates that Chisato Morishita--a "former race queen model"--was hired … Read more

If you happen to be in New York today and are a fan of old video game memorabilia, then you'd better get down to Sotheby's pronto.

That's because the auction house is selling off a huge collection of vintage Atari marketing materials.

According to Gizmodo, there are "135 large file folders stuffed full of original sketches, early designs and proofs of games" like Dig Dug, Asteroids, Pong and others.

But apparently, the price is steep: somewhere in the $150,000 to $250,000 range.

Each Thursday here on The Digital Home, I will be discussing a current topic of interest that may have serious implications on your home in the coming days, months or years. The topics may range from groundbreaking new products to government legislation to adults only video games -- our topic of interest today.

In a setback for Take-Two Interactive, the company's Manhunt 2 video game has been banned from sale in the UK because of its ESRB Adults Only rating. Even worse for Take-Two, Best Buy and Wal-Mart -- two significant video game retailers -- have historically banned Adults … Read more

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--There's always one guy who seems a little too good at mowing down players in a Quake 3 session. Intel thinks future PC gamers might be interested in technology that helps level the playing field.

The company showed off a research project into "anti-cheat technology" during its Research@Intel Day at Intel headquarters. The idea is that Intel and the PC gaming industry would build technology into gaming rigs that could detect when common cheats--such as "aimbots" that handle targeting while the player just holds down the trigger--are used in an online … Read more

Intel has released an early version of drivers for its G965 integrated graphics chipset, and is on schedule for an August release of the final version.

The G965, released last year, was supposed to be a huge leap forward in integrated graphics performance for the company. But to this point it's been unable to write drivers that would unlock the performance built into that chipset.

The drivers spotted by The Inquirer are actually something called "pre-beta," which is not a formal beta, according to Intel (not alpha?). Pre-beta drivers aren't recommended for novices, and tech-savvy folks … Read more