Raven Software Corporation is an American video game developer based in Wisconsin and founded in 1990. In 1997, Raven made an exclusive publishing deal with Activision and was subsequently acquired by them. After the acquisition, many of the studio's original developers, largely responsible for creating the Heretic and Hexen: Beyond Heretic games, left to form Human Head Studios.
A fighting game is a video game genre based around close combat between a limited number of characters, in a stage in which the boundaries are fixed. The characters fight each other until they defeat their opponents or the time expires. The matches typically consist of several rounds, in an arena, with each player character having different abilities but each is relatively viable to choose. Players must master techniques such as blocking, counter-attacking, and chaining attacks together into "combos". Starting in the early 1990s, most fighting games allowed the player to execute special attacks by performing specific input combinations. The fighting game genre is related to but distinct from beat 'em ups, which involve large numbers of enemies against the human player.
Resident Evil, also known as Biohazard, is a Japanese survival horror video game series and media franchise created by Capcom. The franchise follows stories about biological weapons and viral incidents. The game series consists of survival horror, third-person shooter, and first-person shooter games. The franchise has expanded into a live-action film series, animated films, television, comic books, novels, audio dramas, and other media and merchandise.
Konami Holdings Corporation is a Japanese entertainment, video game, and gambling conglomerate. It produces and distributes trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, slot machines, pachinko machines, and arcade cabinets, and is also a video game developer and publisher. Konami has casinos around the world and operates health and physical fitness clubs across Japan.
The golden age of arcade video games was the period of rapid growth, technological development and cultural influence of arcade video games, from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. The period began with the release of Space Invaders in 1979, which led to a wave of shoot 'em up games such as Galaxian and the vector graphics-based Asteroids in 1979, made possible by new computing technology that had greater power and lower costs. This led to the rise of video game arcades, where popular video game genres included space shooters and character action games. There was also a rise in the appearance of video games in other media including songs, cartoons and movies.
Silicon Knights was a Canadian video game developer. Founded in 1992 by Denis Dyack, the company was headquartered in St. Catharines, Ontario. They started developing for computers such as the Atari ST and IBM PC compatibles. After 1996, they moved to console titles.
PopCap Games, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Seattle, and a subsidiary of Electronic Arts. The company was founded in 2000 by John Vechey, Brian Fiete and Jason Kapalka.
Kotaku is a video game website and blog that was originally launched in 2004 as part of the Gawker Media network.
Denis Dyack is a Canadian video game developer and the CEO of Apocalypse Studios. He is also the former president of Silicon Knights, and is a video game designer, writer, director and producer. Dyack directed Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, and is directing Deadhaus Sonata. Dyack was inducted into the Canadian Gaming Hall of Fame by the Canadian Game Development Talent Awards in November 2011.
Alireza Haghighi is an Iranian professional goalkeeper who plays for Gol Gohar Sirjan.
The 2000s was the fourth decade in the industry's history. It was a decade that was primarily dominated by Sony, Nintendo, newcomer Microsoft, and their respective systems. Sega, being Nintendo's main rival in the 1980s and 1990s, left the console market in 2002 in favor of returning to third-party development, as they once were. Overall the decade saw the last of the low resolution three-dimensional polygons of the 1990s with the emergence of high definition games, and often focused on developing immersive and interactive environments, implementing realistic physics, and improving artificial intelligence.
PlayStation is a video game brand that consists of five home video game consoles, as well as a media center, an online service, a line of controllers, two handhelds and a phone, as well as multiple magazines. The brand is produced by Sony Interactive Entertainment, a division of Sony; the first PlayStation console was released in Japan in December 1994, and worldwide the following year.
Kratos is a title character and the protagonist of Santa Monica Studio's God of War series, which was based on Greek mythology. Kratos, also known as the "Ghost of Sparta", first appeared in the 2005 video game God of War, which led to the development of seven additional games featuring the character as the protagonist. Kratos also appears as the protagonist of the 2010 and 2018 comic series, as well as the franchise's three novels that retell the events of three of the games. The character was voiced by Terrence C. Carson from 2005 to 2013, with Christopher Judge taking over the role in 2018's continuation, also titled God of War. Antony Del Rio voiced the character as a child in God of War: Ghost of Sparta.
Brian Crecente is an American journalist and columnist. He founded Kotaku, co-founded Polygon, previously served as video games editor at Variety, and was in charge of game coverage at Rolling Stone.
Donya ye Bazi is an Iranian Persian-language computer games magazine and media.
Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) is a subgenre of strategy video games in which two teams of players compete against each other on a predefined battlefield. Each player controls a single character with a set of unique abilities that improve over the course of a game and which contribute to the team's overall strategy. The ultimate objective is for each team to destroy their opponents' main structure, located at the opposite corner of the battlefield. However, MOBA games can have other victory conditions, such as defeating every player on the enemy team. Players are assisted by computer-controlled units that periodically spawn in groups and march forward along set paths toward their enemy's base, which is heavily guarded by defensive structures. This type of multiplayer online video games originated as a subgenre of real-time strategy, though MOBA players usually do not construct buildings or units. Moreover, there are examples of MOBA games that are not considered real-time strategy games, such as Smite (2014), and Paragon. The genre is seen as a fusion of real-time strategy, role-playing and action games.
Video gaming in Japan is a major industry. Japanese game development is often identified with the golden age of video games, including Nintendo under Shigeru Miyamoto and Hiroshi Yamauchi, Sega during the same time period, Sony Computer Entertainment when it was based in Tokyo, and other companies such as Taito, Namco, Capcom, Square Enix, Konami, NEC, and SNK, among others.
Polygon is an American video game website that publishes blogs, reviews, guides, videos, and news. At its October 2012 launch as Vox Media's third property, Polygon sought to distinguish itself from competitors by focusing on the stories of the people behind the games instead of the games themselves. It also produced long-form magazine-style feature articles, invested in video content, and chose to let their review scores be updated as the game changed.
