Family Friendly Game Reviews

Remember training your brain through games ? Since bursting onto the scene a few years ago in Nintendo’s hit Brain Training games , the concept of gaming our way to bigger, better cortexes has flamed out a bit, due largely to a flood of poorly-made, copycat titles and the dwindling of the belief that this sort of thing actually makes you smarter.But while consumers have shifted away from the pseudo-educational genre, scientists have dropped it under a microscope in the hope of gleaning so

No small issue on the agenda here at Aspen Ideas Festival — the future of education, technology, and how people learn — but the panel assembled is in fact up to the task. Connie Yowell (MacArthur Foundation, whose brainchild is the $50 million Digital Media and Learning initiative ), Howard Gardner (Harvard Graduate School of Education), and Will Wright (renowned game designer, of the Sims and Spore) are the stars at the front of the room, with lots of other experts in the “audience”: J

What are the best-selling games in America, Japan, and Europe (UK, France, Germany) this week? Thanks to Amazon online sales data here are the games that are the hottest right now. Think of it as a games weather report. Nintendo Wii North America: 1. Wii Fit (Nintendo), 2. EA Sports Active (Electronic Arts), 3. Mario Kart Wii (Nintendo), 4. Guitar Hero World Tour Band Kit (Activision), 5. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 Wii MotionPlus Bundle (Electronic Arts). Japan: 1. Wii Sports Resort in

The holy grail of ebook visionaries is the electronic textbook. Textbooks are huge, heavy and expensive and some poor school kids carry more weight on their backs than soldiers on a march. It’s as common to see backpack humps on college kids backs as seeing cell phones in their hands. Ebook promoters see dollar signs whenever they spot one of those humpback students lugging around all that printed matter. And those ebook promoters are right. Why carry forty pounds of paper when you can car

Alice and Kev is one of the most fascinating blogs I’ve read in a while. Robin Burkinshaw, a student of games design/development at Anglia Ruskin University, is playing the Sims 3 with two homeless characters. He moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes. Kev, the father, is mean-spirited, quick to anger, and inappropriate. He also dislikes ch