Well, this isn’t a shock anymore. 65% of American households contain at least one person who play video games for at least 3 hours a day, According to the ESA (Entertainment Software Association). Gaming is one of the most growing industries in the world. The top companies have quadrupled their value in the last 5 years and video games are becoming more and more expensive to make. These are all good news for us gamers. Games haven’t become more expensive to buy but DLC packages prices are skyrocketing.

Some people connect between video games and violence and claim that the raise in violence is because of the raise in video game usage. I have addressed these claims earlier and i reject them. However, the average american is sitting in front of the TV for 5 and half hours a day. Therefore, I don’t see a big difference between playing games or watching a TV show. Furthermore, I think that gaming is much better then just watching TV. When you play you are doing something active and when you just watch TV you aren’t.

Hence, it’s not surprising that so many households have a gaming console or a PC for gaming. In my opinion, these numbers are going to scale in the next few years. Virtual Reality is still very primal and lots of PC games haven’t transitioned well to mobile. Therefore, I think that the gaming industry is about to get bigger and the consumption of games will increase as well.

What do you think?

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If you have not played the original Star Craft made over a decade a go, you are probably too young. Fret not, young padawans. Way back in March, Blizzard announced that they will be remastering Star Craft. To celebrate the reintroduction of this brilliant RTS game, they also plan to give the base game and its expansion Brood War for free.

That has finally happened this week. All players can get both the base game and Brood War for free as a download right now. This game has so much nostalgia value not only for me, but everyone who grew up with the genre. Alongside games like Red Alert, C&C and Warcraft, there was not a whole lot of great RTS games.

Not only can we fire it up for multiple sessions of nostalgia fulfillment, but there are new features added too. For starters, the free version has been updated to include better compatibility with modern day computers. That means you can play it in both fullscreen and windowed modes. Players with higher end monitors running 4K or 144op might struggle, but at least the remastered version is around the corner.

Besides that, a new Observer mode is included too. This allows players to stream and watch matches being played live. It’s very much a modern feature that most competitive games have these days, so it’s a cool addition.

The post Play Starcraft And The Brood War Expansion Free Right Now appeared first on Mmos World.

One of the biggest events of 2016 was when Google’s A.I robot, Deepmind, beat the world champion at GO. If you haven’t heard, the London offices of Google have been developing a robot to play board games. GO is considered by some to be the most difficult board game to handle.

Therefore, when Lee Sedol, the world champion of GO, has lost a million dollar cash prize to google’s AlphaGO robot we have witnessed history. There were robots beating top competition players in chess and checkers, but at GO it didn’t happen yet. That makes you wonder, how far does A.I going to reach?

Recent reports indicate that Google Deepmind will team up with blizzard entertainment to open Starcraft II to A.I and machine learning researchers. The companies are working on API tools to enable Deepmind to participate in the game. The challenge is very different from board games. While Deepmind was participating solo in turn-based games, in Starcraft he is going to participate with other players playing simultaneously.

If this project is interesting for you, i recommend you to follow Demis Hassabis on Twitter. He shares his thoughts and updates frequently on the development of Deepmind. If Deepmind can dominate at Starcraft it will be a matter of time until NPC’s will be much better than human opposing players. Starcraft is a much more complex than GO. however, Google have proved over time that they can handle the most complex challenges. If you have cruised through Mountain View, California, you were sure to tackle one of their self driving cars.

I’m looking forward to see how this collaboration between google and blizzrd will turn out. One of the worst feelings in gaming is when a game is just to easy for you. Multiplayer has solved a part of that probelm because it matches humans together. But, if NPC’s are going to get a lot better, it is going to open a huge variety of gaming options.

What do you think? is A.I the future of gaming? are you afraid that robots will eliminate you?

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