Science fiction author John Scalzi once wrote that “In the role playing game known as The Real World, 'Straight White Male' is the lowest difficulty setting there is.” His words now appear to have influenced the developers of the latest video game based on TV show South Park. As the video below shows, during the game's …

Formula 1 has announced it's getting into “e-sports”, the preferred phrase for competitive computer gaming, with a new “Formula 1 Esports Series” that will see a virtual F1 champion crowned later this year. Many gamers think their pastime’s enormous following and facilitation of networked competitions makes a legitimate sport …

Playing a game of Tetris in the aftermath of a traumatic event can help alleviate the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. This according to a report from a team of university researchers in the UK, Germany, and Sweden, who say in their paper [PDF] for the journal Molecular Psychiatry that when given the computer game …

Gamers desperate to play on their new Nintendo Switches this weekend may have to wait a bit longer, with many reporting their preorders have been delayed. The device was due to be shipped today (March 3) priced at $299.99, £279.99 and ¥29,980. However, Twitter and internet forums are replete with disappointed thumb-twitchers …

Videos What do you get when you cross a 10-year-old game with a 40-year-old computer? The weekend at El Reg. Vince Weaver, an assistant professor of computer engineering at the University of Maine, used his winter holiday to write a port of the beloved puzzle-driven snarkfest Portal for the Apple II. "My wife got me the original …

DeepStack is the first AI computer programme to beat professional poker players in a game of hands-on no-limit Texas hold’em, a team of researchers claim in a research paper out this week. The use of games to train and test AI is prolific. Surpassing human-level performance in a game is considered an impressive feat, and a …

A former football player, professional wrestler, and motivational speaker is suing Microsoft, claiming an iconic character in Redmond's Gears of War game ripped off his likeness. Lenwood "Hard Rock" Hamilton claims that he provided photos and voice recordings in 2005 for the character who would become Augustus "Cole Train" …

A US man is facing felony wire fraud charges for allegedly stealing and reselling in-game currency for EA Sports' FIFA console games. Anthony Clark has been charged by the Northern Texas District Court with a count of Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud for his role in a scheme to automatically generate and then re-sell the …

Nvidia continued its run of solid financials Thursday by turning in a $2bn quarter. The graphics chip designer said the quarter, its fiscal year 2017 Q3, saw record revenues and earnings per share. Revenues of $2bn were up 53 per cent from $1.3bn in the year-ago quarter. Net income of $542m was up 108 per cent from $246m …

Something for the Weekend, Sir? I'd like you to consider my underwear. As we move inexorably towards another Christmas – for American readers, I understand you prefer the euphemism "Holiday Season" for its more generous syllable-count – close relatives have begun asking what gifts I might like to receive on the big day. What I want, of course, is toys. …

UK telecoms goliath BT is suing games developer and publisher Valve, alleging the Steam service infringes multiple patents. In a complaint [PDF] filed with the Delaware district court, BT accused Valve of ripping off four technologies it has patented related to the operation of cloud services (in this case, Steam). This is the …

The makers of the popular game League of Legends have filed suit against the operators of a site that helps players cheat. In a complaint filed to the Central California US District Court in Los Angeles (yes, the Central California court is in LA... we don't know why either), Riot Games says that 13 people who run the …

The Department of Justice in the Australian State of New South Wales has warned Pokemon hunters that if they hunt for digital critters inside courthouses they may find their next trip is to an actual jail. The Department took to Facebook to warn Pokemon Go addicts that “GOING TO COURT IS NOT A GAME: POKEMON GO TRAINERS SHOULD …

Completing a game of Super Mario Brothers is the mathematic equivalent of solving complex mathematical calculations, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The prestigious tech university said in a recent study [PDF] that navigating the world's most famous plumber through a single level can require the same …

Cisco's trying to get into the games business. A recent trademark application for ”Cisco Geek Factor” suggests the Borg wants to brand its own “Computer game programs; computer game software for use on mobile and cellular phones.” United States Patent and Trademark Office filings are very brief: the only other information we …

The average web page is now roughly the same size as the full install image for the classic DOS game Doom, apparently. This is according to Ronan Cremin, a lead engineer with Afilias Technologies and dotMobi's representative for the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). Cremin points to data from the HTTP Archive showing that, at …

A 16-year-old lad in Manchester, England, exploited flaws in Valve's developer site to publish on Steam an unapproved game about watching paint dry. Ruby Nealon, a computer science student at Salford uni, said a set of programming blunders in the Steamworks website let him sneak his Watch Paint Dry roleplaying game past Valve' …

Retro-gamers rejoice! Cautiously. The multi arcade machine emulator (MAME) is now open source. MAME makes it possible to emulate the hardware found in early arcade game cabinets. If one can also find ROMs of the games that ran on those cabinets, one can play classic arcade games. Last week, the MAME team announced that after …