By Aleks Krotoski
Last week, a so-called “older” gamer posted to /. about his anticipated decline in gaming skills as his years continue to advance, and requested that the community suggest games that he should play if he were to never play again. While the resulting commentary belied the average (mental?) age of the /. [...]

What is the mass market, and what do they want? What actually qualifies as mainstream? Those phrases – “mass market” and “mainstream” – have been tossed about very flippantly by the videogames industry over the last few years, and in retrospect, there’s been very little analysis of what those terms actually mean to this medium. [...]

Codeworks GameHorizon and Game Republic, the support agencies for game developers in the North, are joining forces for a new developers’ conference taking place in York on May 10th, 2007.
The Northern Games Conference is aimed at the entire UK games industry and seeks to explore the variety of opportunities in the games industry, from casual [...]

via developmagEA UK may be closing its NW studio, but Vivendi-owned Birmingham-based Swordfish could help those left in the region without a job as it opens a new office in Manchester, Develop magazine reveals.
The new studio has been devised to support the work done at Swordfish’s Birmingham HQ and will be managed by Mike Delves, [...]

Brighton event due to take place July 24th – 26th
Brighton will once again play host to The Develop Conference and Expo, due to take place 24th – 26th July 2007, GamesIndustry.biz can reveal.
Following the success of last years’ event we have confirmed the date for next years’ conference, which once again promises to feature an [...]

Via GI.biz
“It’s actually getting worse for the way our companies operate”
Frontier Developments founder David Braben has warned that the UK Government is not doing enough to support the games industry – and that the situation is getting worse.
Speaking in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz to be publisher later today, Braben said, “There have been changes [...]

French news agency AFP is reporting that European Union (EU) regulators are to open an investigation into whether proposed tax breaks for the French video games industry are illegal, according to EU rules.
The proposal would see French companies benefiting from a tax credit worth up to 20 percent of the cost of producing a video [...]

Online retailer Amazon UK opened to preorders for the Nintendo Wii this morning, 21 November — and sold out in just 10 minutes. When CNET.co.uk checked the site at 9.25am, preorders were not open. When we refreshed at 9.30am, the site was offering the Wii, with the Wii Sports games compilation, and Wiimote and Nunchuk [...]

The UK branch of Electronic Arts (EA) and graphics researchers at University College London (UCL) are working in collaboration to research visualisation techniques.
The partnership demonstrates how industry and academia can collaborate to develop computer games. Ian Shaw, CTO at EA, and Anthony Steed, a senior lecturer in computer graphics at UCL, have joined up to [...]

19:30, Nov 20th by Michael French at developmag.com
A gang of indie developers have bandied together for a multi-blog-spanning project that offers advice to aspiring games makers.
Introversion (Uplink, Darwinia, Defcon) and Cliff Harris (Democracy) are just two of those that have taken part in the ‘So you want to be an indie games developer?’ project, put [...]