Dan Starkey

Stories By Dan Starkey

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  Gaming

  Gaming By Dan Starkey

  One-button Bayonetta: Disabled gamers fight for inclusion

  Last year, former games journalist Adam Sessler confessed that for the first time his age kept him from being able to play a game that he needed to complete for his job. It's a sobering reminder that we all have limits. Those often come in different forms, but nobody can do everything. Fundamentally, games are about challenge and require some form of conflict to be compelling. That challenge can come in a huge variety of forms, from puzzles to fighting game combos, but the player is always the core component to completing these assignments. Many challenges, however, can prove impossible for some players. In the past few years, video games have grown, trying to adapt themselves to suit larger and broader audiences. Despite this growth, a segment of would-be gamers continue to be effectively locked out by constraints like color blindness or physical ability. Some dedicated groups have been looking to change that, however; and the work they are doing might just open the floodgates for everyone else.

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  Technology

  Technology By Dan Starkey

  Hacktivists and Watch Dogs: How real-world threats inspired Ubisoft Montreal's new open-world

  Once relegated to campy and inaccurate parodies in Hollywood movies, hacking is increasingly becoming a part of our daily lives. With the PlayStation Network, LinkedIn, Twitter and, most recently, Target all being attacked, as well as the countless attacks fielded by various "hacktivist" groups, computer technology and security issues are becoming impossible to ignore. The group known as LulzSec, a disparate band of anarchists, managed to take down over a dozen websites and services, including the PSN, for months. As our world becomes increasingly interconnected, the potential vulnerabilities grow exponentially. Our lives, and especially the infrastructure on which they rely, have never been more vulnerable. If Watch Dogs – Ubisoft's recently delayed open-world, multiplatform title – could be said to have a point, that would be it. "People should question technology and their relationship to it," one of many on the Watch Dogs team that have decided to to 'take control of their digital lives,' tells me. "The more we put ourselves in the online world the easier it is to be exploited, and many people are completely blind to how fast their world is changing."

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  News

  News By Dan Starkey

  Europa Universalis 4 review: God, gold and glory

  Of all video game genres, strategy has historically been one of the least accessible. The most popular strategy games manage a delicate balance between complex, nuanced mechanics and keeping new players interested long enough to learn about everything the game has to offer. Europa Universalis 4, unlike most of its competitors, eschews hand-holding and focuses instead on letting its audience play with a ruthlessly accurate recreation of four centuries of European history. The real beauty of EU4 comes from the variety of options for play. There are a few basic rules. The Earth is divided into a few hundred "provinces," each holding resources and continually generating more cash and people for you to use for military, exploration, diplomatic influence, religious domination, etc. The complexity is a sort of emergent property of those restrictions, and their applications create a myriad of varied scenarios. It is entirely within your power, for example, to take the reins of Louis XIV, start a war with everyone, ride into battle with your foolishly out-of-touch leader as a general, get him killed in battle, convert your France into a more democratic society and avoid the French Revolution – or you could just take over the world. The possibilities aren't endless, but when you can play as a fledgling Ottoman Empire and conquer Britain by 1500, it can certainly seem like it.

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