Tag Archives: Jim Rossignol

RPS has posted two gameplay videos of Big Robot’s Sir, You Are Being Hunted. The videos depict running, gunning and scavenging across the game’s procedurally generated islands. Check them out below.

Big Robot is three-person indie dev team headed-up by veteran RPS writer, Jim Rossignol. The crowd-funded title is available for pre-order via the Humble store. The game will also be playable at Eurogamer and RPS’ PC-centric show, Rezzed, which is taking place in Birmingham in June.

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Start-up Big Robot’s released its first game, musical puzzler AVSEQ for PC and Mac. There’s a demo, too.

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RPS writer Jim Rossignol has posted a video of upcoming Big Robot puzzler Avseq, as you’ll see below. It shows the game’s hardest stage, according to Rossignol. He noted it’ll be released for PC and Mac “in the next couple of weeks, with demo.”

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Games journalist Jim Rossignol’s book, This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities, is now available online for free in lovely digital format.

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In a recent report just released, via the BBC, two human rights organisations has accused videogames of letting you commit “violations of international law.

The groups Trial and Pro Juventute carried out the study, and played games like Call of Duty 4, 24: The Game, Far Cry 2 and Metal Gear Solid, to name a few.

The list of games were played to know if “whether certain scenes and acts committed by players would constitute violations of international law if they were real, rather than virtual.”

However, Rock Paper Shotgun writer John Walker has come out and defend the role videogames have, citing the airport level in Modern Warfare 2 as an example of the mature content in gaming.

“For all those who mowed down citizens in Modern Warfare 2′s controversial airport level, I have the sneaking suspicion that not a great deal of them think this is lawful, nor appropriate, behaviour.”

“Whether or not the rules of war are included in the game should be based entirely on whether that improves the experience for the player,” said Jim Rossignol of RPS.

Find more through the link.

Thanks, freedoms_stain.

There’s a very interesting article over at RPS, where co-owner Jim Rossignol looks at the “State of Game Audio” by interviewing sound designers “Marty ‘Halo’ O’Donnell, CryTek’s Florian Füsslin, Introversion’s Chris Delay and the legendary George Sanger.”

The piece looks in-depth at why videogame audio is so often overlooked, whilst arguing that it’s integral to gameplay:

“Perhaps it’s fair that sound takes a back seat because that’s how we’re wired, but those of us who are sound designers know how much influence we actually have,” says O’Donnell.

Everything’s explained through the link.

Go read.

By Mike Bowden

RPS’s Jim Rossignol’s book, This Gaming Life, is now on sale. This means you have to buy it. From here:

This Gaming Life, published by The University of Michigan Press, is about gamers and their relationship to games. It’s a ripe barrel of essays on gaming, as filtered through the lens of my own international travels and videogaming obsessions. Reporting from London, Reykjavik and Seoul, I investigate all kinds of gaming, especially that pesky PC gaming that I keep banging on about via the interweb. I muse on Nintendo-trained surgeons, Quake III zealots, military propaganda, Will Wright, Eve Online, cute girls in pink dresses, Starcraft in Korea, Chinese online riots, prosthetic reality, science fiction, Henry Jenkins, unemployment, boredom, obsession, our enemy Boris Johnson, and Okami. I’ve never worked so hard in my entire life.

Get it from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.

RPS co-owner Jim Rossignol done a good interview with Kotaku on his upcoming book, This Gaming Life, which we told you about at the end of April.

“I hope it helps people to figure out what they really think about video games,” Rossignol told the site. “I don’t want to lecture anyone, just offer some descriptions and examples that might be useful in making up your mind. One of the key tensions in the book is whether video games are fundamentally a waste of time, and what that even means. I’d like to think that both people who don’t play games, and the gamers themselves, will find that they’re able to discuss the pros and cons of being a habitual gamer a little more fluently once they’ve read it.”

Jim’s a good egg and a great writer, so do yourself a favour and give him some money. You really may as well.

Jim Rossignol’s first book, This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities, is now available for pre-order here. Synopsis:

This book offers an insider’s view of online games and how they change us. “In May 2000 I was fired from my job as a reporter on a finance newsletter because of an obsession with a videogame. It was the best thing that ever happened to me.” So begins this story of personal redemption through the unlikely medium of electronic games. Quake, World of Warcraft, Eve Online and other online games not only offered author Jim Rossignol an excellent escape from the tedium of office life. They also provided him with a diverse global community and a job – as a gaming journalist. Part personal history, part travel narrative, part philosophical reflection on the meaning of games, “This Gaming Life” describes Rossignol’s encounters with gamers in three unique gaming cities: London, Seoul, and Reyjkavik.From his days as a Quake genius in London’s increasingly corporate gaming culture, to his encounters with Korea’s high stakes, televised professional gaming culture to his adventures in Iceland, the national home of his ultimate obsession, the idiosyncratic and beguiling Eve Online, Rossignol introduces us to a still emerging and largely undocumented world of gaming lives.

Torn between unabashed enthusiasm and optimism about the future of gaming and lingering doubts about whether games are just a waste of time, “This Gaming Life” also raises important questions about this new and vital cultural form.Should we celebrate the “serious” educational, social, and cultural value games, as academics and journalists are beginning to do? Or do these high-minded justifications simply perpetuate the stereotype of games as a lesser form of fun? Could it be that the true value of games lies in their ability to stave off boredom? In this beautifully written, richly detailed, and inspiring book, Rossignol brings these abstract questions to life, immersing us in a vibrant landscape of gaming experiences.

Jim – one of the RPS quartet – covered GDC for VG247, and is generally a non-twat who’s prepared to offer free life-counseling in the middle of the night from Moscow, so do him a favour and buy it. You may well enjoy it.