So, you want to work in the game industry. You want to live, breathe, think, screw and shit video games for the rest of your life. Unless you want to be a master of the custodial arts, game design is the last thing you’ll want to major in. As Frank Caron of Ars Technica points out, the game industry is a very brutal and competitive field. He offers some words of wisdom for those actively pursuing their dreams by suggesting more broad majors just so you have skills to fall back on in case the game industry’s doors were closed.

A few lucky souls may wind up producing art or doing programming for projects directly out of trade school, but for the vast majority, unemployment at the hands of a limited skill set will be the unfortunate reality.

Ouch. Thanks to Frank, if you want to get your foot in the door of the industry, you know what to do. Broaden your skills, whether it be computer graphics, programming or both. Last but not least, kiss as much ass as possible.  My advice? Become an indie developer.

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If you thought that you looked real when staring at yourself in a mirror, think again. Compared to the photo-realistic computer animation of Emily, you’re a closer to a plastic doll than real flesh and bone. Using new modeling technology that enables the most minute details of a facial expression to be captured, Image Metrics have created the first ever animation to overcome the longtime obstacle known as “uncanny valley”. This is the perception that animation looks less realistic as it attempts to approach realism.

“Ninety per cent of the work is convincing people that the eyes are real,” Mike Starkenburg, chief operating officer of Image Metrics, said.

A lot of precision and detail goes into calculating the most precise way that a human should look and I must say, Emily looks more real than those Beijing fireworks, or even the highly-detailed, corporeal robot. I can’t wait to see this kind of computer animation in movies and video games.  We’ve finally reached that point where we can’t differentiate between real life and computer graphics. This makes Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within look like Manos: The Hands of Fate.

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Hubba hubba! Take a look at this assortment of sexy and seductive animals that are worth drooling over. Warning, these pictures are not safe for work and will surely give you a hard on. That is, if the other artsy animals I’ve posted haven’t already done that.

No idea who made them, but I know where they came from and where they’re going. Out of the wild, into your spank bank. Hit the jump to see more mouth-watering ladies!

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Aye, papi! When we broke the news last November that NVIDIA was gearing up for release of their GeForce 9 series in Q1 of ‘08, we were unaware that the series would include TWO new product releases. Rumor has it that NVIDIA will be dropping word of their two new 9xxx series cards soon; the top-notch GeForce 9800GX2 on 18th March and their second best 9800GTX on 25th March.

So, what does NVIDIA have in store for the 9800GTX? The leaked specs show the card offering 128 processor cores, a 675MHz core clock, a 1688MHz shader clock, 1100MHz memory clock, not to mention 512MB GDDR3 memory. The card will retail for an estimated $300-$350. — Andrew Dobrow

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This is the Magma ExpressBox that lets all of your crazy gamers to have a PCI-E graphics card hook up to your laptop. If you are really seriouly excited right now, please stop and go buy a desktop. Gaming is nice, but hardcore gaming (HalfLife, FEAR, Oblivion…) needs more than a laptop. It just isn’t right! Those games deserve a real 5.1 sound system, a nice 20+ inch LCD, and other things that your notebook can’t (or shouldn’t) be delivering to you. If your laptop does, does it weigh as much as a desktop? Probably. Oh yeah, the prices for the ExpressBox start at $729. If you are considering buying this, that price won’t really daunt you as you probably spend 3x that much on the laptop itself. –Nik Gomez

Magma ExpressBox - PCI Express for your laptop [via The Red Ferret Journal]

flOw, it’s that game that Sony promised for the launch of the PS3, that looked so amazing, and wound up getting pushed back to the end of February. Now, it’s not like anyone was too suprised by this (sadly), but if this game is pushed back again, they had better give away a free movie with it when it comes out. If you are like every other person out there, you probably said “Wow” when you first saw the graphics and the simple design of the game. That’s not to say this will be a console winner, but it’s a nice addon to have. And here is a new video released by Sony to whet your appetite for flOw.  (more…)

The phrase “budget gaming” has become less of an oxymoron as of late, but it is still a stretch. It all really just depends on your definition of budget. With Vista at your local BestBuy, what is there for a PC builder to do but grab the latest hardware and make the next screamer? That’s when money becomes a problem. Don’t stress too much, although you splurged on that lightning fast 10,000RPM hard drive, you still can get a DirectX 10 card for under $200. You just have to wait until March. The new Nvidia GeForce 8600GT and 8600 Ultra cost $150 and $180 respectively. They both deliver on the promise of cheap DX10 when compared to the $400 8800 cards. Patience is a virtue! –Nik Gomez

DirectX 10 on a budget [via SlashGear]