Dean Takahashi

Civilization V’s Brave New World expansion feels like a culture club (hands-on preview)

venturebeat.com — Under my leadership, Morocco had become the cultural center of the world. Culture flourished in my capital, Marrakesh, and it had become the top tourist destination in the world (thus spreading my ideology to other places).

How Smooth McGroove quit his day job to record a capella versions of classic gaming tunes (interview)

venturebeat.com — The video game industry is gigantic. It supports billion-dollar empires like Nintendo and Activision. But it also supports tons of cottage industries as well. Take Smooth McGroove, a singer. McGroove is famous for his YouTube page, where he covers classic video game tunes in an a cappella style.

The top 6 MMOs you should be playing this year

venturebeat.com — Massively multiplayer online games have long suffered from a nauseating lack of originality, smothered in an endless monotony of grinding away on dire rabbits for experience points and completing a never-ending strings of cookie-cutter, carrot-on-a-stick fetch quests. That trend continues even to this day, as unimaginative clones promise a revolution while blatantly clamoring to be the next World of Warcraft.

GamesBeat weekly roundup: Google’s game service, EA axes online passes, and a look at The Last of Us

venturebeat.com — If you follow VentureBeat but don't regularly check our GamesBeat site, here's a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

Consoles that won’t die: The Sega Dreamcast

venturebeat.com — Looking at the Dreamcast lineup for 2013, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Sega's 15-year-old home video game system had never gone away. Of all the supposedly dead consoles, the Dreamcast is surely the one that looks most alive. Despite the Dreamcast production lines shutting in 2001, the console's community is still fervently supporting new titles that continue to release.

EA’s ulterior motive behind killing the Online Pass

venturebeat.com — If you cheered Electronic Arts' decision to end its three-year-old Online Pass program, I've got some advice: Don't fly the victory flag quite yet. I'm on record calling the Online Pass a fairly smart way to cut in on the used-game market.

EA appoints New York Times digital-product expert to its board

venturebeat.com — Electronic Arts' board of directors is getting some extra expertise in digital distribution. The publisher revealed today that it appointed Denise Warren, the New York Times executive vice president of digital products, to its board. Warren managed NYTimes.com for the national newspaper company and oversaw development of its digital products.

Defiance developer cuts staff; MMO Rift unaffected

venturebeat.com — Trion Worlds recently launched online-shooter Defiance on PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. Now that the studio has that game out the door, it's laying off some of its development staff. Trion confirmed to GamesBeat that it is cutting jobs, as first reported by IGN.