[Does the release of Modern Warfare 2 mean "an army of women" is about to take up arms against losing their menfolk to the console? Columnist Lewis Denby finds himself refuting an unsettling argument.] It seems that I, and the entirety of the male gaming population, should be on-guard at the moment. According to Telegraph writer Hannah Betts, "an army of women" is about to argue with us. In a fascinating piece of writing - ...

Social gaming startup Ohai has announced its first project -- Facebook-enabled vampire MMO City of Eternals -- and here, its co-founders Susan Wu and Don Neufeld talk about the design, business, and technology of getting social gamers to engage with "frictionless MMOs that appeal to everyone in the world." Ohai is currently operating City of Eternals in an invite-only Alpha as it continues to develop the title -- says Wu, "Our game is built on ...

[IndieGames.com: The Weblog co-editor Tim W. rounds up the week's top free-to-download and commercial indie games on his sister 'state of indie' weblog.] This week on 'Best Of Indie Games', we take a look at some of the top independent PC Flash/downloadable titles released over this last week. The delights in this edition include an epic space battle sim from UK developer Positech Games, two epilepsy-inducing shooters, a freeware versus fighting game, a traffic management ...

Working with legendary Civilization designer Sid Meier and his relentlessly gameplay-driven development ethic has both advantages and challenges, according to Firaxis executive producer Barry Caudill -- but in the long run, mainly advantages. Speaking at the IGDA Leadership Forum in San Francisco, Caudill -- who was a professional saxophonist in the Glenn Miller Orchestra and then a golf pro before he ended up at Microprose, and later Firaxis -- reflected on the principles of the ...

Gamasutra's weekly column, "Saling The World", covers the top five sellers for every available platform in the United States, Japan, and Europe, providing an important update of sales patterns worldwide. This week's charts, with data taken from November 12th, 2009, find Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 leading across all platforms in North America and the UK, as J-League 6 and Persona 3 Portable head sales in Japan. Data for "Saling The World" comes courtesy ...

In a detailed Intel-sponsored technical article, veteran game programmer and architect Mike Abrash (Quake) goes in-depth on how Intel's upcoming Larrabee architecture pipeline deals intelligently with rasterization. In the article, which is part of Intel's Visual Computing section on Gamasutra, Abrash explains during the introduction: "In 'Look at the Larrabee New Instructions (LRBni)', I presented an overview of Larrabee, an upcoming multithreaded, vectorized, many core processor from Intel. It may not be entirely apparent from ...

Just a day after the social game developer announced its raising of $43 million in a Series A round of funding, social game firm Playdom (Mobsters, Sorority Life) has put that cash to use with the acquisitions of Facebook app company Green Patch Inc. and iPhone developer Trippert Labs. Playdom did not disclose how much it paid for the two studios. Green Patch Inc. is best known for its first release, (Lil) Green Patch, a ...

October 2009 marks another down month for the U.S. video game industry, according to retail tracking firm, NPD, with sales down 19% to $1.07 billion year on year. Thus, the month saw another disappointing slump for game retail, even as Nintendo Wii retook the top hardware spot from Sony's PlayStation 3, following the Wii's price drop. Notably, with hardware prices lower on all console platforms, volume is not making up for the decrease in cost. ...

Though U.S. retail console game software slumped 18% year-on-year in October 2009, Naughty Dog's PlayStation 3 exclusive Uncharted 2: Among Thieves nonetheless topped the NPD charts, with 537,000 units sold. Wii Fit Plus came in second for the month with 441,000 units sold. Roughly half the sales were generated by the bundled SKU of the Nintendo fitness game, which "points to a lot of newcomers to the franchise", according to NPD's Anita Frazier. Also notable ...

As October 2009's NPD U.S. charts debut, Microsoft claims "the only console showing year-to-date [hardware] growth" in the Xbox 360, up 7%, and 2 million simultaneous Xbox Live users after Modern Warfare 2's debut. The company's official statement, released just before NPD's debut, noted that Xbox 360 featured with a total of six titles - including two exclusives, Forza Motorsport 3 and Halo 3: ODST from Microsoft Game Studios - in the console top 10 ...