Esurance Pass It On Sweepstakes goes into overtime with grand prize giveaway of $250,000.

Brad Hiranga, General Mills Business Unit Director, Pizza and Tacos Business Unit discusses the Bucking Couch and Bucking Couch Bowl.

Broll

People all over the world can play on their smartphone or tablet a new game where five-time FIFA World Player Award winner Lionel Messi should overcome various missions. Messi jumps over rocks, bridges and other obstacles, makes somersaults, stoops to drive through tunnels and is dodging rockets and monsters. Of course he is allowed to shoot balls to get a free passage.

The famous Budweiser Clydesdales kick-off Big Game weekend in Las Vegas by posing with show girls, trotting down Las Vegas Strip and a visit to the South Point sports book. Photo credit: Las Vegas News Bureau

ESPN College Basketball Analyst and LG Color Commentator Jay Bilas shares his tips on how to do game day right.

STOUFFER’S®, FIT KITCHEN™ headed to Tempe, Arizona to host Fit City Event featuring a competitive softball game with a twist coached by two of baseball’s biggest stars encouraging fans to find their fit

ESPN College Basketball Analyst and LG Color Commentator Jay Bilas shares his tips on how to do game day right.

STOUFFER’S®, FIT KITCHEN™ headed to Tempe, Arizona to host Fit City Event featuring a competitive softball game with a twist coached by two of baseball’s biggest stars encouraging fans to find their fit

STOUFFER’S®, FIT KITCHEN™ headed to Tempe, Arizona to host Fit City Event featuring a competitive softball game with a twist coached by two of baseball’s biggest stars encouraging fans to find their fit

As government authorities and airlines think about coronavirus health screenings, it isn't clear who's in charge of carrying out new policies.

The National Football League Players Association has approved terms of a new 10-year collective bargaining agreement with NFL team owners.

Despite the strong demand for Nintendo's Switch console and the breakout success of its "Animal Crossing: New Horizons" title, Kazunori Ito of Morningstar Investment Management Asia says he does not see a strong game pipeline for the company this year.

Consumers stocked up on board games, not Barbie dolls, amid the coronavirus pandemic, sending Mattel's sales in the first quarter tumbling.

The Trump Administration has attacked China over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Vasu Menon of OCBC warns tensions between Washington and Beijing could pick up even further, heading into the 2020 election.

Nintendo said "Animal Crossing: New Horizons" sold over 13 million copies in the first six weeks, making it the fast-selling Switch game.

As Congress considers ideas in the coming weeks seeking to help America recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, the Insured Retirement Institute has proposed a five-point plan to help American retirement savers enhance their ability to save for retirement today and ways to strengthen their financial security for tomorrow.

First the asylum seekers were used to further Turkey’s regional ambitions, now they are made to suffer in quarantine camps

• Coronavirus – latest updates
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At the beginning of March, thousands of refugees gathered in the shadow of the Pazarkule border gate in Turkey after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said he would “open the gate” to Europe.

The move was a reaction to the killing of 33 Turkish soldiers in Idlib province on 28 February and designed to exert pressure on the EU and Nato to support its military operation in northern Syria.

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From being a goose on the loose to controlling whole galaxies, here’s a world of experiences for all the family

• Modern Toss on video games ...

The cinemas may be shut, the gig venues closed, but there is one place you can still meet your friends and be entertained without leaving your house: the world of gaming. For many of us, it has been years since we could really justify spending all day in our pyjamas slaying virtual dragons – now that way of life, for some at least, is a little less frowned-upon. But if you’re returning to serious gaming after a few years away, where exactly should you be spending your valuable money and time? Here are no less than 100 highly recommended titles, from family favourites to epic sci-fi sagas – all available on current platforms, be it PC, smartphones or consoles. Whether you want to be moved, terrified, relaxed or intellectually challenged, alone or with pals, we’ve got more than enough here to keep you occupied until you’re out and about again …

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Pay-monthly service sees huge surge in players and gaming time due to Coronavirus lockdown

Microsoft has announced that its Xbox Game Pass subscription service has passed 10 million members. The initiative, which adopts a similar model to Netflix and other streaming platforms, gives subscribers unlimited access to more than 100 Xbox and PC games for a monthly fee.

Commenting on the figure, Xbox chief Phil Spencer said that use of Game Pass, as well as the company’s online multiplayer gaming service Xbox Live, had increased substantially in recent weeks due to Covid-19. “Since March, Xbox Game Pass members have added over 23 million friends on Xbox Live, which is a 70% growth in friendship rate,” he said. “Game Pass members are also playing twice as much and engaging in more multiplayer gaming, which has increased by 130%.”

We saw record engagement in gaming this quarter:
• Xbox Live has nearly 90 million monthly active users
• Xbox Game Pass has more than 10 million subscribers
• Project xCloud has 100s of thousands of active users in preview across 7 countries, with more coming

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Xbox livestream showcases new titles designed to support the advanced features of the forthcoming console

Microsoft has revealed 13 games coming to its Xbox Series X console when the machine launches this winter. In an hour-long presentation, streamed live on Thursday, the company announced that well-known titles such as the recently announced Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, as well as Madden NFL 21 and Yakuza: Like a Dragon, will all be on Xbox Series X.

Also featured was Paradox Interactive’s vampire adventure, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. Codemasters presented its racer DiRT 5 complete with impressive lighting and mud splatter effects, and an option to run it in 4K at 60 frames-per-second or in a lower resolution at 120fps. Namco Bandai showed a new anime-style sci-fi thriller named Scarlet Nexus, about a group of psychic law enforcers.

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The Nevada Gaming Commission has just set guidelines for casino reopenings. Jay Snowden, Penn National Gaming CEO, joins 'Power Lunch' to discuss their guidelines for reopening and partnership with Barstool.

Before the 1986 World Cup my brother and I had nearly 100 stickers of the Hungarian and we wanted him to lose, badly

Before the internet ruined the World Cup there was wonder in ignorance. You could look forward to discovering great players and teams about whom you knew next to nothing. In 1986 my brother and I hoped the tournament would be all about some Hungarian called Zoltan Peter. Our reason was bad.

All we knew about Peter was his name and his face because he seemed to be in every pack of Panini stickers we bought. Every time we removed that shiny wrapper there he was, seemingly mocking us with his Lego-man hairdo and the haunting expression of someone who knew there is no problem so grim it cannot be made worse.

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In the latest in our series on how Covid-19 will change football, we look at its impact at grassroots and non-league level

This could be the end of grassroots football. The impact is going to be horrendous. The main problem now is we’re not getting money we would usually receive from training-session fees or fundraising, because they’re not taking place. That money goes towards subsidising teams for the next season, helping them with pitch fees, league fees, trophy presentations, etc.

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A trip to Devon meant updates were via a classmate’s radio but it gave me my first real glimpse of the power of football

It seems a little odd pitching a game I’ve not seen for this series. I wasn’t at Wembley, I didn’t watch on TV and I didn’t listen to it on the radio. How, then, I hear you say, can the 1998 FA Cup final between Arsenal and Newcastle possibly be my favourite game?

I had always been an Arsenal fan, I didn’t have a choice. I grew up in a council flat in Hackney where if you left the windows open on matchdays you could faintly hear the Highbury goal celebrations. I went to a primary school in Islington. My dad supported Arsenal, so did my grandad.

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Today Kevin’s game, Starcom: Nexus, releases in Early Access on Steam. It’s a thing of beauty, and also a lot of fun. If you like games that take you into outer space where you get to explore mysterious worlds, build a powerful ship, and explode bad guys, you should buy it, and play it, and let your gamer friends know about it. Yes, I’m biased, but reviewers and streamers  - who are not his spouse  - also love it :o). (FYI those last two links go to youtube streaming vids.)

***

Conversation at the dinner table:

Kevin: How was your day?

Me: Okay, I guess. I still can’t figure out how to get this girl to accidentally set her house on fire, then cause an explosion and get stuck in a window grille.

Kevin: I believe in you.

Me: Thank you. How was your day?

Kevin: Okay. When my enemy ships get within a certain distance of each other, they spontaneously explode.

Me: Oh!

Kevin: It’s not supposed to happen. It’s a bug.

Me: Oh.

Kevin: I can’t figure it out.

Me: I believe in you!

***


There are a lot of similarities between the work Kevin and I do. We both create complicated worlds with characters and plots. We’re both entertainers.

Meet your commander.

We have some processes in common: for example, we both study the books/games we love, then try to learn from them. We both think about the things we don’t like in other books/games, then try to come up with alternatives we prefer. We both know how to wear the creator hat; then switch to the reader/gamer hat, reading/playing our own project with a critical eye; then go back to the creator hat to fix what isn’t working. We’re both extremely familiar with the phenomenon wherein you change one little thing, then a ripple effect passes through the entire work, complicating/breaking things in ways you didn’t anticipate.

Meet the Ulooquo, an underwater alien race.

We can also get similarly overwhelmed by our own projects. I’ve talked a lot on the blog about how a book has many parts, and writing a book involves many jobs. Well, a game has SO many parts. It has music and art, visual effects, numerous interfaces, plot and character, mysteries and rewards. It must be able to support and absorb the choices of individual gamers, over which the creator has no control. It has SO many (literally) moving parts!



We also both work by ourselves for years on self-directed projects… then put our creations out into the world, hoping they’ll find the people who will love them.

These similarities are deep. They help us to understand each other’s frustrations and joys, and support each other meaningfully. This is awesome. However, I want to talk a little bit about the differences, which are many.

For example, in my writing career, I have an agent. She connects me to an editor who helps me craft the right words. Then, my editor works with my publisher to create a beautiful physical book, publicize and market that book, and sell that book for me.

An indie game developer, on the other hand, does everything himself, in an extremely saturated market with a lot of roadblocks. He can hire other people to help. Kevin hired a composer and an artist, to help him with his music and his characters (like the Commander and the Ulooquo above). He hired a marketing consultant to do a few things too. But he worked closely with those people, because he knew exactly what he wanted. And everything else has been the work of his own hands. He’s done SO much marketing and publicity work on his own that’s made me appreciate my own marketing and publicity departments even more than I did before. Self-promotion in a saturated market is really, really hard. It’s also stressful for a guy who happens to be humble and was raised with the good-old New England ethos of not bragging about himself :o).

Here’s another big difference: Kevin can release his game while it’s still in production, then use the feedback from early players to shape it and make it better. He can write code into the game that allows him to see how long players play; where they decide to drop out of the game; which options are being chosen more often than others. (He receives this information anonymously, in case you’re starting to worry that he can actually tell what you’re doing inside his game!) As a writer, I definitely don’t know where someone decides to abandon my book. Nor do I want to know, because once people are reading my book, it’s final! If everyone is bailing at a certain point, there’s nothing I can do about it. The words in my book are not going to change. Kevin’s game is more of a living, growing creature, even after it releases, and based on player reactions.

Another big difference is that while I am a wordsmith, Kevin is a programmer. A lot of the time, when I step into his office, he’s working with programming language on his many screens, and I don’t understand the smallest bit of it. My readers read my actual words. His gamers play a game built on a framework of programming that looks and feels very different from the actual game. He also works with a lot of complicated software (like, for 3D modeling) and does a lot of math. He uses trigonometry to [I just asked him to explain it and he said something about spaceships shooting at each other, vectors, and cosines. ???]. I can come home and tell him practically everything I struggled with at work that day. A lot of what he does is too technical for me to understand—though he is really good at creating analogies and explaining things to me when I ask (and when I'm not rushing to finish a blog post!).

Another difference is that he is a visual artist. For example, he created Entarq's Citadel below, which is one of the worlds his gamers get to explore.


Here's another.


Another difference:  I can do my work anywhere. All I need is my notebook and a pen. Kevin needs his fancy computer and his big monitors. So he works from home. Home office and self-employed means he’s working most of the time. Most mornings, he’s working by the time I get out of bed. By the time I leave for my office, he’s put hours in. I come home and he’s making me dinner; after dinner, he works for a few more hours. I go away on trips without him; he works while I’m gone! I always thought I worked really hard. I have a new standard now.

And now his work has created this beautiful, fun game that’s getting really positive attention from gamers and streamers :o). Today, you can buy it in Early Access, and become one of the players who contributes to what it will ultimately become.

And that's my little explanation of what it's like to live with an indie game developer. Check out the links if you’re interested! The trailer is below.

The game has also reached 10 million unique players since launch

The post EA Confirms Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Is the First Game in New Franchise appeared first on ComingSoon.net.

Many, many local game stores are closed and struggling. Some of those retailers are offering curbside pickup, delivery, or online orders. Please see this list of game stores that GAMA has assembled and, if possible and one is near you, place an order today! Let's make sure that we keep these stores alive and there for us to enjoy once each is able to open their doors again.

From GAMA:

During these changing times, stores have begun offering alternate shopping experiences such as curbside pick-up or local delivery for purchased items. Some stores are also offering gift cards as another outlet for customer support. Search for your nearby store(s) and support the gaming community!

Check out the store list today!

– Phil Reed

Warehouse 23 News: Best Beasts In The West

Sometimes not even your trusty six-shooter will help you against the horrors of the Weird West. GURPS Classic: Deadlands – Varmints includes an assortment of monsters, both classic Deadlands critters converted to GURPS Deadlands and new creatures with stats for both systems. Download your own batch of trouble today from Warehouse 23!

Munchkin Legends takes the classic game of dungeon-looting and monster-bashing into the original source of many of those monsters, the myths and legends of the world. From ancient foes such as Grendel and Baba Yaga to more modern monsters such as Slender Man and the Sewer Gator, you'll have fights the bards will sing of for generations!

(Can't shut bards up, apparently. We've tried.)

Pick up the original game or our fancy Deluxe version, and maybe grab the expansion, Faun and Games, while you're at it! All are available right now at Warehouse 23!

– Andrew Hackard

Warehouse 23 News: Quirk Smarter, Not Harder!

Give your GURPS heroes some extra character, extra personality, and a few extra points for goodies with GURPS Power-Ups 6: Quirks. This collection of minor flaws – including many that are new or expanded – is perfect for making your heroes stand out. It's just a download away from Warehouse 23!

Would you like to receive information on new games, special events, and important news? Subscribe to our newsletter and you will start receiving a few emails every month where we highlight the latest games and expansions, and (at times) direct you to our crowdfunding campaigns.

The newsletter is just one way to stay in touch with us. For other options, including links to our various social-media channels, visit this page on our site.

Subscribe to the newsletter today!



Warehouse 23 News: Keep Watching The Skies!

The truth is revealed; UFOs are real! And they may have plans! GURPS Monster Hunters 5: Applied Xenology is your guide to bringing a new threat to GURPS Monster Hunters heroes: the terrors of science! Fight aliens, unleash technomagic, become a different kind of champion, and more. Danger is just a download away from Warehouse 23!

Ask each customer if they have Covid-19. If they say no, ask if they would like to pre-order Covid-19. Explain the benefits of pre-ordering. Upsell them on Covid-19 insurance (to protect their Covid-19) and a subscription to Game Informer.

Interview with Rani Baker, Goon Lurker and Internet Hero.

OH THe games! FINAL FANCY VII: REMARK, JOHN MADEIT FOOTBALL 2021, and THE LEGEND OF ZACHA: BRAFF OH HE WILD all on one cart plus 98 more!

Hey, Gamers: Do you like Super Mario, Doom, Animal Crossing, Forza, Civilization, Slay the Spire, and sandwiches? Then you’ll LOVE the hot new release: Maximum Outer Space

Chinese and US trade representatives agreed Friday to "create favourable conditions" for the phase one trade deal signed in January, Beijing officials said, despite recent tensions over the coronavirus pandemic.

I NEED YOUR HELP: Please chip in $1 or more on Patreon and I can keep Toothpaste For Dinner updating daily, PLUS you'll get to see bonus comics & writing!