Culturally confident
GameCity’s director, Iain Simons, said he was “delighted” by the choice.

His festival is now in its sixth year. Over that time he says he has seen a rise in the average age of gamers, and more women attracted to the activity.

“There is a much broader constituency of people playing games,” he said.

“They have become more normalised, they have been more culturally confident and this prize, and the festival, is very much about exploring that confidence.”

Part of the phenomenon is linked to the rise of smartphones. Today’s handsets helped popularise the kind of sophisticated games that used to be restricted to dedicated mobile games machines, and larger home consoles.

The GameCity festival was created to give the public a chance to meet the talent behind computer games
Advances in computer processors and graphics chips undoubtedly offer developers a bigger palette to choose from. However, Mr Simon does not think the developments make any difference to the designers’ status as artists.

“I think that technology is a real red herring. What technology is driving forward is the ability for games to look more real. To look like what a triple-A blockbuster would look like,” he said.

“I don’t think that is in itself something that makes them art. Otherwise we wouldn’t cry at Bambi. It’s not about photorealism.”

Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern (the home of the Large Hadron Collider) in Geneva toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away in Italy seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second earlier than light would have.

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It’s like sending a series of loud and isolated clicks instead of a long blast on a horn”

Prof Matt Strassler
Rutgers University
The speed of light is widely regarded as the Universe’s ultimate velocity limit. Outlined first by James Clerk Maxwell and then by Albert Einstein in his theory of special relativity, much of modern physics relies on the idea that nothing can travel faster than light.

For many, the most comforting explanation is that some repeated “systematic error” has so far eluded the experimenters.

Since September, more than 80 scientific papers about the finding have been posted to the arXiv pre-print server. Most propose theoretical solutions for the observation; a few claim to find problems.

Hands-On Version of the Touchscreen Hit

The Angry Birds: Knock on Wood Game brings all the fun of the touchscreen app to a new, tactile playing field for two to four players. This game follows the same goals as the online version: launch the Angry Birds toward the egg-stealing pigs’ wooden castles to destroy them and advance to the next level. With three Angry Birds, four pigs, a variety of “wooden” pieces, and a bird launcher, you can now bring the same action to your living room.

Build, Launch, and Destroy to Win

Play consists of drawing cards from any of four levels, building a structure on the card, and then knocking it down. To play, you draw a card–the higher the card the more points possible to earn. Give it to the next player to build that card’s castle. Then, use the bird launcher to shoot it down with the birds indicated on the Mission card.

Go Crazy with Wild Cards

Our testers enjoyed the challenge of playing within the game’s rules, including the ways the structures can be built and the birds that can be used during particular launches. They also had fun with the special fourth-level mission cards that allow for freestyle building for more creative play. They enjoyed experimenting with the distances from which they could shoot the birds toward castles. With so many possibilities for hands-on play, this game will keep you and your family and friends occupied for hours!

What’s in the Box

3 Angry Birds, 4 pigs, 1 bonus points star, 1 bonus points egg, 1 bird launcher, 14 building blocks, 40 mission cards, 16 points cards, and instructions.