Games
Hearthstone Ranked Ladder gets a March update!
If you've been tired of the long, slow road to the middle of the table, there's good news afoot. In a blog post - complete with Ben Brode video update -

Matt Wyble on how to train smarter to chase Hearthstone glory
Matt Wyble is one of the leaders behind the scenes of Hearthstone esports. A man who has pursued serious sport himself at the highest levels (trialling for

Hearthstone's Dean Ayala on his game design journey and the critical value of QA work
Dean Ayala. Restaurant Consultant. In that other, darker timeline, we don't have the Dean Ayala we know from the Hearthstone Game Design team. Thankfully, Ayala found his way into Blizzard, and we thought we'd explore a little of his heroic journey into game design and what

Gfinity building a path toward making grassroots esports get real
How do you build an esports empire that builds a good business AND creates the chance for everyone to have a shot at a pro contract?

Interview: Gfinity Australia CEO Dom Redmond and COO Sam Harris
With Gfinity Challenger Series underway, we spoke to the leaders of this new esports operation. Hit the link for our full conversation with the leadership

Interview: Blizzard's Overwatch Commissioner, Nate Nanzer
I recently interviewed Nate Nanzer, Blizzard's Overwatch Commissioner for all things Overwatch League, for this story in the Australian Financial Review.

StarCraft is astronaut Daniel Barry's favourite game. So he took it to the ISS with him.
Boy loves space. Boy loves space game. Boy becomes astronaut and flies to space, taking copy of space game with him.

Blizzard vows tougher action against toxic players in Overwatch
Nasty, aggro, rude players love to ruin games for everyone. They make good people stop playing, which tips the scales toward only those willing to fight

The Olympics don't want violent esports, just virtual sport esports
As backward as you'd expect from the IOC. President Thomas Bach (a former Olympic fencer) has said he's not against esports, as long as they're mostly

Microsoft's Mixed Reality platform will support SteamVR games
Big announcements this week as Microsoft's long hyped world of 'HoloLens' (which has been all hype, not much else) finally gets its shift into an ecosystem of

Where did Apple TV gaming go wrong?
A good piece about a very good question. I had such hopes for the Apple TV platform as a gaming space. iOS had all the best mobile games. It should have been

Should Minecraft be in the classroom?
Samuel Horti looks at the question of using Minecraft as an educational tool. Does it really help? Or is it a gimmick that gets in the way of real learning?

10 years of Bioshock: The genius of Rapture
A lot of 10th anniversary talk around Bioshock, a game worthy of such reflection. There's good Remastered edition options out there. If you haven't played it,

The grand ambition of Dreams, led by Siobhan Reddy
A fab Rolling Stone Glixel interview with Media Molecule's Studio Director (and Australian) Siobhan Reddy. The maker of Little Big Planet is taking on one of

Blizzard built StarCraft: Remastered from scratch. From. Scratch.
Interesting to learn that Blizzard had lost most of the old code and assets for StarCraft, so when it decided to create a 'Remastered' edition they had to go

Event business launching Australian esports league
Is this an esports league or a marketing exercise?

Buy a custom romantic game for the one you love
Kotaku reports that a new division of an established Australian studio is offering custom games to offer up a very special message of love.

PVP pinball
Great carving machine work to create a modern-yet-old-school take on 2-player pinball. Literally PVP pinball as you aim to knock the ball over the top into

Pokemon Go cracks $1.2 billion in a year
Pffft... that flash in the pan augmented reality Pokemon game only made a little more than a billion in a year. And by 'a little' more I mean around $200

Ethereum mining hurts gamers right in the wallet
Graphics card prices are getting pushed higher because of folks looking for a piece of the cryptocurrency mining action.
