science
Riot Games sponsors design challenge centered on making online spaces safer
Riot Games is not a gaming company most folks in our industry would consider a paragon of community in or off the court. The...
US Department of Homeland Security issues a nearly $700K grant to research extremism in gaming
There are toxic people in games chat, and then there are people who use video gaming platforms as a ways to encourage extremism and...
Bloomberg’s Twitch report exposes a platform rife with children and predators
Bloomberg has a deeply disturbing exposé this week on Twitch that demonstrates how the streaming platform intended for video games is being used by...
The MOP Up: Valheim comes to Microsoft’s store this month
That kooky Norse survival sim Valheim is sending a raiding party to new shores -- in this case, to Microsoft itself. The company announced...
Star Stable launches new charity initiative to counter negative ‘horse girl’ stereotypes
A few weeks back I joked on the MOP podcast that I'm a secret horse girl, and it's true in real life and in...
Champions Online is reviving its streaming apparatus for its 13th birthday
Look up there in the sky! Is it a bird? A plane? No, it's a new streaming schedule for Champions Online!
That's right: Cryptic's underdog...
EVE Echoes launches a Project Discovery science initiative, EVE Online preps for next Alliance Tournament
Regular players of EVE Online are likely very familiar with the game's Project Discovery "citizen science" initiatives that let players help out scientific research,...
Axie Infinity CEO caught shuffling $3M in the game’s crypto tokens before announcing its $620M hack
No matter how decentralized cryptocurrencies claim to be, there's always going to be a paper trail to follow, and one such trail was left...
EVE Online’s Fanfest data dump shows a surprisingly wide range of player types
EVE Online is going full science fair mode with the release of a whole suite of fancy graphs and data collected and presented during...
Perfect Ten: Weirdly specific tropes found in every fantasy MMORPG
If you take some weird, outlandish, or out-of-the-ordinary item and then saturate your life with it, sooner or later the bizarre becomes the accepted...
Flameseeker Chronicles: What could Guild Wars 2’s fourth expansion be about?
Ever since ArenaNet's studio leadership came out early in the year and confirmed that planning has begun on a fourth expansion, players have no...
LOTRO Legendarium: Evaluating Lord of the Rings Online’s legendary servers, four years later
When Lord of the Rings Online released its first -- and, quickly thereafter, its second -- legendary server back in 2018, it was one...
No Man’s Sky will launch on the Nintendo Switch October 7
Earlier this month, Hello Games announced that it is bringing No Man's Sky to PlayStation's VR2 headset - and apparently, it isn't done porting....
For Science: New research affirms online friends provide emotional and informational support
You've probably seen the declaration that "online friends are real friends" somewhere on the internet a few times, and while that can seem pretty...
The Daily Grind: Should MMO PvP matchmaking focus on challenge or engagement?
MOP's Sam recently stumbled across an MSM article that quotes multiple streamers and esports players essentially complaining about matchmaking systems in competitive games. The...
Wisdom of Nym: Examining Final Fantasy XIV patch 6.15 in the wild
Sometimes it feels very weird when Final Fantasy XIV bribes me into doing content. Ameliance's custom deliveries are a prime example of this. You...
The Game Archaeologist: The ’90s BioWare MMORPG that almost was
These days, if you mention "BioWare" and "MMORPG" in the same sentence, it's most certainly going to be about Star Wars: The Old Republic....
The Daily Grind: Are you playing a ‘morally disengaged murder hobo’ in MMOs?
The Psychology of Video Games podcast recently did a bit on "murder hobos," and yes, Dr Jamie Madigan does point out that the term...
Dauntless developer Phoenix Labs says it has ‘close to’ 10 games currently in the works
Most people around these parts know Phoenix Labs as the studio behind the multiplayer monster slaying RPG Dauntless, but a new dev blog post...
Activision-Blizzard creeps out the internet with its ‘Diversity Space Tool’ as union-busting continues
Friday afternoon, Activision-Blizzard proudly trotted out a dev blog talking up the creation of a "Diversity Space Tool" that the company has apparently been...
