Hold the Phone: Despite the growing numbers playing games on mobile hardware, some people can’t seem to accept pretend buttons on a touchscreen can ever be good for anything. Matthew Lee thinks they might be wrong. Gosh, we just can’t make our mind up. For every baby step we take towards accepting that maybe smartphones and [...]

Blog: THE LAST STORY , the latest RPG from the man who created Final Fantasy, offers us much to love. But Matthew Lee thinks it also represents some worrying trends about videogames that we shouldn’t be ignoring. (Warning: potential major spoilers.) When I studied Creative Writing at university (okay, stop laughing at the back) one of the first [...]

Hold the Phone: ANGRY BIRDS is one of the best-known gaming franchises in the world today. Just how did a game about flinging birds at pigs become such a global phenomenon? Matthew Lee explores… Why is a game like Angry Birds so successful? Because it’s good? There are plenty of other mobile games which do things Rovio’s smash [...]

Hold the Phone: People say you can’t possibly compare smartphone games to ‘proper’ PC and console titles like Skyrim, but Matthew Lee thinks the best of them deserve to be taken just as seriously, no matter what genre they are or how much they cost. So there’s this game I like, you guys. As in,  really like. It’s [...]

Hold the Phone: Android is going through incredible growth, regularly announcing giant leaps in the number of phones sold and the power of the latest hardware. But Matthew Lee thinks Google still have some problems that people aren’t paying enough attention to. These days, insisting you’re not a fanboy (or fangirl) is tantamount to starting a [...]

Hold the Phone: Mobile gaming on smartphones and tablets is going from strength to strength, and yet the people who play on consoles or traditional handhelds insist this is just a fad that’s got nothing to offer them. Matthew Lee explains why they’re wrong to dismiss it. Have you noticed? Whenever any website reports on how gaming [...]

Blog: Naughty Dog say they want to change the games industry’s attitudes to storytelling with their new project THE LAST OF US , but Matthew Lee thinks they should try fixing their own writing first. Warning: This blog post may contain some spoilers of Uncharted 3. We’ve tried not to discuss anything huge in detail, but do be advised. [...]

What is it that makes some people devote hours of their free time to games they end up trying over and over to beat until they’re screaming at the screen? Features editor Matthew Lee looks at games from both ends of the perceived difficulty spectrum – Dark Souls and Fable III – and tries to discover [...]

UK gamers around the East Midlands can try out FROM Software’s eagerly awaited, brutal action RPG Dark Souls the weekend of release when it demos at Manchester’s upcoming Grimm Up North 2011 horror film festival. A heads up for BeefJack’s UK readers – are you as excited about FROM Software and Namco Bandai’s upcoming grim, terrifying [...]

Denis Dyack, the founder of developers Silicon Knights (behind Too Human and Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes among other titles), has rarely been short of a good soundbite, and when IndustryGamers asked him what he thought of the growing social gaming industry, he was happy to oblige. Turns out Dyack isn’t a fan. At all. While [...]

So Disney just cut a swathe of jobs from Brighton-based racing developer Black Rock – the studio who produced Pure and Split Second for the Mouse House’s games division. Boo! But the redundant staff might not need to look far for new employment. Yay! Develop report that browser gaming giant Jagex, the people behind the hugely [...]

So… Half-Life 2: Episode 3? Don’t hold your breath. While they’re not saying it’ll never happen, according to a lengthy interview for Develop’s magazine version, Valve seem to have largely admitted their experiments with episodic gaming are over and done with, and their current focus is on the ‘gaming as a service’ model driven by Team Fortress [...]

Okay then. If this was a month ago I’d assume it was some kind of late April Fools, but I guess not? Venturebeat (via IGN) report that social gaming giants Zynga have landed a fairly unusual teamup to arrange a Farmville-related cross-promotion – the all-conquering timewaster is set to star Lady Gaga . Seriously. The Singer Otherwise Known as [...]

Seems like Blizzard see a future that’s more Warcraft, all of the time, with new expansions out before you’ve even finished the old one. And I’m only half joking. Activision have just issued their latest round of financials – the same announcement that gave us confirmation (or as good as) there’s a new Call of [...]

The 3D engine Unity has picked up another heavyweight customer. Unity, popular for its portability across a huge range of platforms, from smartphones to consoles to web browsers, as well as its low barrier to entry (the basic version being free) has seen a fair bit of takeup in the last couple of years, with [...]

One of Nintendo’s latest community announcements must have executives nervously twiddling their thumbs right now, given what’s happening in the rest of the industry. Edge magazine report Club Nintendo have come up with a small but fairly significant change to their privacy policy, after the new 3DS handheld and its increased emphasis on wireless or online functionality [...]

One of Nintendo’s latest community announcements must have executives nervously twiddling their thumbs right now, given what’s happening in the rest of the industry. Edge magazine report Club Nintendo have come up with a small but fairly significant change to their privacy policy, after the new 3DS handheld and its increased emphasis on wireless or online functionality [...]

Oh, look, the establishment has decided whether games can be art – no, wait, come back: this is interesting, honest. You may remember reading the prestigious Smithsonian musem in Washington D.C. had decided it was going to run an exhibition on these crazy videogame things the kids are always going on about, even going so [...]

More and more of the big names in traditional PC and console development are starting to acknowledge the mobile and social gaming market is growing at an incredible rate, and they should maybe try and get themselves a spot alongside the countless indie studios working there before they’re squeezed out. Electronic Arts have just picked [...]