Video Games

The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) is now accepting applications for their 2006 Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) Scholarship Program. To be considered for the scholarship, students first need to join the IGDA as a student member at the cost of $30 a year. Once you’ve become a member, simply fill out a basic form and write a few short essays (100 words or less) on several questions–it could earn you a fully paid ticket to the Conference beginning March 20th, 2006.

This is a must-do for any serious gamer whose prospects in life are in the gaming industry. The conference is one of the most prestigious in the world, boasting educational lectures and hordes of fun on the side.

However, there is another way to attend the conference for free. Even though this alternative will most assuredly demand that you work to the sweat, I can assure you that it does not in fact involve prostituting yourself. First of all, apply to be one of the hundred or so Conference Associates (CAs). As a CA, it is your duty to spend 20 hours during the entire conference doing grunt work (think guarding doors, managing lines, stuffing goodie bags, entering information into databases, and other menial tasks). And what do you get for all this work? Quite a bundle:

+ The program’s managers (Tim Brengle and Ian MacKenzie) run a really tight ship. You’ll learn a lot from them.

+ Lunch and breakfast Monday through Friday are included

+ CAs receive full Giga pass privileges ($1325 value) when not on-duty

+ Access to all events and parties including the IGF and Game Developers Choice Awards (part of the Giga pass)

+ Reduced hotel costs by sharing rooms with other CAs

[via Joystiq]

How would you like to win a free WoW Guest Subscription Card? It offers 10 days in WoW 100% free! And as the proud recipient of a new World of Warcraft boxed game, I offer you, loyal VGB readers, a chance to win. Just link to this promotion and leave a URL to your blog post in the comments, and we’ll enter you in the drawing. That’s it–no catch!

When the winner is chosen randomly, we’ll email them the Guest code, and request a physical mailing address if they want to receive the physical game card.

Update:

When I get 50 comments here, I’ll pick one at random (literally, I’ll use a random number generator), and send you a congrats email!

Update 2:

A winner has been chosen, and it’s number 11! Number 41 was initially chosen and then disqualified for entering himself multiple times. Thanks for playing!!

It seems that Blizzard is using a bit-torrent like technology to power its update software. When you download your massive ~300MB WoW update, you’re really getting it from peers. Smart way to scale!

Having trouble with your xBox 360 blue screening, locking up, crashing, or just generally freezing? Voodoo Extreme presents the likely hypothesis that this is caused by power supply overheating. If so, it’s a design flaw that Microsoft will have to fix in their next hardware iteration, but for now, you just want your black-friday cheap xbox 360 to work as planned. The solution is to lift your power supply off the flow to give it air circulation on all 6 sides. Voodoo reports over 7 hours of gaming time in this configuration.

If anyone wants to send me an xBox 360 for scientific testing, I would be more than happy to write up a protocol, conduct the experiments, and write a lab report on the crashes, resplendant with statistical significance tests…

CNN writes that “Sony could slash the price of the PS2, currently $150, perhaps to $100, making the $400 Xbox 360 seem less attractive. Sony says it has no immediate plans to lower pricing for either the PS2 or the PSP, but after the holidays, who knows?”

Will Sony make the Holiday price cut? If they choose to do so, will it succeed in slowing the Xbox 360’s enormous momentum? The assumption of this article is that gamers will be more willing to forgo $100 for a dated console than plunk down the $400 for a next-gen console. I doubt consumers will be that stingy over the Christmas shopping season.