A funny infographic we have here, and although some might call it a very bias one, it’s still a good read. Complex sat down with a number of recent shooters and plotted where on the map the game’s villains (or at least opposing force) came from. And, this may shock you, but they nearly all came from former communist states, communist states or the developing world. The only real exception to this was Germany, but that was including a game set in the Second World War, so that one doesn’t count.

To be fair, most of the games are developed in the US, and they’ll usually idolize themselves as the superhero or the good guys. Games being listed are those from 2001 to the latest 2011, which means about 10 years, but they’re more towards first person shooter games. Some of the games are not listed too, and to me the real bad guys in Modern Warfare 2 are Americans. So it’s not a very accurate portrait of the bad guys in video games.

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Apparently Blizzard had a huge portion of employees that came and go, and it appears that they are very influential at where they are now. PC Gamer put together a chart for its look at the 20th anniversary of Blizzard, and this chart shows where legions of ex-Blizzard employees have ended up.

While, understandably, you can see a lot of employees leaving to go work on other MMO games – at least after the release and success of Warcraft and World of Warcraft. Hellgate London might be quite famous for some of you to know, but some of the other games on the chart may actually surprise you.

Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, The Sims 3, Left 4 Dead, Mercenaries, Black & White 2 and Fallout 2 are just some of the games that have seen at least one ex-Blizzard employee make a contribution.

SOURCE via PC Gamer

The Sony Ericsson’s new Android phone that’s oriented for gamers will be arriving in stores on the first day of April for all UK operator partners except for O2. Apparently O2 is facing some software issue with the phone, but we’re not sure which phone, as O2 has exclusivity to the white version while the rest not. This is essentially a software glitch, as other partners don’t seem to face such problem except for O2.

SOURCE via O2

Apple Inc. has just let loose of iOS 4.3.1 update. This update fixes a few issues related to enterprise apps, AV-out, iPod touch graphics problems, and cellular network connections. According to jailbreak developers, Apple might also have changed the underlying structure of iOS 4.3.1 by a slight bit, so jailbreaking it might take longer than expected. But if you don’t care about jailbreak, go ahead and grab it now from iTunes.

Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs has announced the official final stats of the Firefox 4’s download for the first 24 hours. Firefox 4’s launch day seem quite successful, with 7.1 million downloads around the globe, inclusive of three million users which are already running the release candidate for Firefox 4. Of course, they are already updated to the final release. In contrast, Firefox 3 had eight million downloads on its first day of debut. Firefox 4 already had about 2 percent share of the browser market which is about double of what IE9 can claim thus far. Of course, Firefox 4 opens on a wider set of platforms whereas IE9 doesn’t even support XP.

SOURCE via Mozilla

We’ve heard the rumours, but now it’s official. RIM just announced that its forthcoming BlackBerry PlayBook will support both BlackBerry Java and Android apps. That includes native C/C++ development support, HTML5, Flash and AIR support, not to mention game engines from Ideaworks Labs (AirPlay) and Unity Technologies (Unity 3).

This means that the upcoming PlayBook from RIM will instantly have over 200,000 apps should developers choose to “quickly and easily” port them over, and assuming owners dive into one of two optional “app players” in order to do so.

Interestingly, RIM is focusing on Android 2.3 apps, and there’s no mention of Honeycomb apps, despite both being tablets and such apps would be tablet-optimized. Developers can look forward to an imminent release of the native PlayBook SDK, which will specifically enable C/C++ application development on the BlackBerry Tablet OS.

RIM’s PlayBook will be arriving on the 19th of April.

SOURCE via Engadget

When a certain anonym gets overused on the Internet, the severity is that it also influences our daily conversation “in real life”. The Oxford English Dictionary has added a few new words from the web’s favorite pronouncements into their dictionary. Among them are the standouts OMG, LOL and FYI, joining their compatriots IMHO and BFF among the proud number of officially sanctioned initialisms (abbreviations contracted to the initials of their words) used in the English language. Shockingly enough, the expression OMG has had its history tracked all the way back to 1917, while LOL used to mean “little old lady” back in the ’60s, and FYI first showed up in corporate lingo in 1941. The oddest thing? The actual ♥ graphic has also made it in, though the syndrome is not that severe that as they didn’t actually add in the <3 and XOXO emoticon into the dictionary.

SOURCE via OED Online

Everyone’s fighting the tablet war against Apple, but Asus is taking a slightly different route. The Taiwanese company has made available pre-order for their new Asus Eee Slate EP121. The tablet will retail for $1,630 (£999) for the 64GB version. Of course, this is no ordinary tablet like your dual-core Tegra 2 tablets with Honeycomb, as the 12-inch ASUS Eee Slate EP121 comes powered by a dual-core Intel i5 processor, and has 4GB of memory, with a choice of 32GB or 64GB of internal storage. Standard features are like WiFi, Bluetooth, and a 2-megapixel front facing camera, an HDMI output, stylus-input support and a card reader. Each purchase comes equipped with a Bluetooth keyboard and a carrying case. Of course, compared to Apple and Google’s offer, this is very much different, as it’s running Windows 7 instead of the usual Honeycomb OS by Google.

SOURCE via Amazon