IGN

AAA’s show big growth on the digital storefront

Leah Jackson

When I eventually forced myself to stop taking pictures of epic cosplayers and merch, I found my way to my seat and marveled at the 13,000 people filing in to watch one best of five series of League of Legends.

Is this a pitch for ESPNerd?

Alexa Ray Corriea, Polygon:

Rumors that the 13-year-old ban would be terminated were confirmed earlier today by China’s State Council. The Council published a set of regulations that will govern the “experimental” free trade zone to be set up in Shanghai. The rules put forth by the Council allow foreign companies that run production and sales in the zone to sell game consoles, once the hardware receives approval from China’s Ministry of Culture.

China’s prohibition on game consoles began in 2000, but despite the ban, sellers have been able to bring game systems to China through Japan and Hong Kong. Online and mobile games have been permitted in the country and have become popular, bringing in high revenue with “freemium” models.

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo handle this…

Chris Dahlen writing for Polygon:

Like most people who use an alarm clock, I have an unhealthy relationship with stress. It hits me in the chest, disrupts my digestion, and wakes me up at all hours of the night — but it’s also the reason I’m going to meet my deadline for this column. Life brings stress, but stress is also a self-inflicted wound, like we’re suffering a blow that may never come.

Not many people would call stress “fun,” and yet video games can be stressful. We sometimes willingly pay money to be more stressed. This year gave us a bumper crop of stressful games, and the other day as I was tossing and turning at 5:00 am., I decided to rank them on the inside wall of my cranium. Lucas Pope’s recent Papers, Please made it onto the list, and so did Richard Hofmeier’s Cart Life. But I started with Nintendo’s Pikmin 3.

A great piece on the arc of human development and stress as depicted by three games:

Taylor Soper, GeekWire:

SoundCon found that the number of composing jobs remained flat until 2009, when growth in the space took off. As the graph above shows, SoundCon found that the dramatic increase was largely due to the arrival of Apple’s App Store and the Facebook Application Developer.

I can’t help but feel Austin Wintory’s Grammy nomination for the Journey OST will help inspire others as well. However, a paycheck is nice too…