Since the death of Michael Jackson last week, the internet has come alive with tributes for the late King of Pop. One of them is this mod of Left 4 Dead (PC, Xbox 360), where the game music is replaced by some of Jacko's most popular songs. And when it comes to the Left 4 Dead, it doesn't get any cooler than Thriller.

As if the opportunity to play Wrath of the Lich King and StarCraft 2 wasn't enough, Blizzard is giving us not one, but two more reasons to go to the 2008 Worldwide Invitiational: Video Games Live and Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain. Details in the full article.

The Game Developers Conference is gearing up not only for conferences and lectures but parties as well. We know that these game developers play hard and party even harder. General events are lined up for the whole week. Find out more on the events after the jump!

Pivotal Games and Eidos Interactive are confident that their February 2008 release Conflict: Denied Ops (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC) will carry explosive action and good graphics. Now they want to make sure that the musical score is just as intense. They've decided to get Richard Jacques for the job to do just that. Find out why in the full article.

Over at the 2K games The Cult of Rapture website, the orchestral score for BioShock (Xbox 360, PC) has just been released. The set contains 12 tracks from the award-winning composer Garry Schyman - a download that's only worth 21MB of your bandwidth time. Getting paranoid about seeing Little Sisters and Big Daddies everywhere you go is one thing. Hearing the music of Rapture while you're being paranoid is something else. Here's the tracklist:

1. BioShock Main Theme (The Ocean on His Shoulders)
2. Welcome to Rapture
3. Dr. Steinman
4. The Docks
5. The Dash
6. Step Into My Gardens
7. Dancers on a String
8. Cohens Masterpiece
9. The Engine City
10. Empty Houses
11. This is Where They Sleep
12. All Spiced Up

This musical score does nothing but relive the BioShock experience. If you're that masochistic enough (hey, that includes me), you might want to plug this into your mp3 player and invoke all those feelings you've experienced in the game: sinking below the depths and into the city, nuking it out with Big Daddy for the first time, and facing the decision of whether to harvest or save a Little Sister.

As video game music goes, this one's a keeper. As musical pieces in general go, this one's still a keeper (given that you're really masochistic and brave enough). Personally, it reminds me a bit of the Lost soundtrack (Michael Giacchino FTW!) coupled in with the chill factor of the first and second Silent Hill albums. If that's not your cup of plasmids, it won't hurt to give it a shot. Enjoy the music! Play it loud!

Download: BioShock Orchestral Score

Buy: [Bioshock (Games for Windows)]
Buy: [Bioshock (Xbox 360)]

There's nothing like videogame music, really. From the simple mono thumpings of Space Invaders, made specifically to sound like a rapidly-beating human heart, to the epic, mountain-shaking chorus of an orchestra as you slay your very first colossus - it evokes a level of emotion that no other music form can even hope to emulate. It's an experience that's meant to be shared, definitely.

Video Games Live, an immersive concert event currently taking the world by storm, hopes to do exactly that, performing at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Not for one, but for two performances (June 29 and 30) of nothing but classic and contemporary video game pieces any fan will surely recognize.

While the fact of VGL actually playing at a national monument alone is already big news, the even bigger breakthrough is that it's going to be the first time video game music to be performed at a live audience in Washington DC - and co-creators Jack Wall and Tommy Tallarico can't stop gushing about it. The latter even gave a hint as to who would be strutting down the red carpet at the event, saying:

We've already started inviting as many local politicians and their families as possible. It's important for us to show everyone how incredibly creative, artistic and significant video games and the culture surrounding them have become.

Politicians, you say? Here's hoping a particular someone actually made it into the guest list, so he sees (and hears) how games aren't as bad as he makes them out to be. It's a long shot, but there's no harm in dreaming, is there?

You can check out the read link for more info about this spectacular event.

 

In an age where casual gaming has become too big a market to ignore, web-based puzzle games and mini-games of the casual persuasion have lacked much of the deeper elements of the more serious games: the storyline. In order to introduce the appeal of games with depth, nDreams, a developer company encompassing StoryGamer and Parody Games labels, has officially announced their first title to achieve that single purpose: Venus Redemption.

The episodic title, backed by a storyline of novel proportions, will be authored by interactive fiction pioneer Kate Pullinger of "The Piano" fame, with additional help from BAFTA-nominated writer Gordon Rennie. The story will be directed by Jane Campion, while the musical direction and score will be handled by game music veteran Tim Wright of WipEout fame.

The game heading to the PC, Nintendo DS, and Nintendo Wii will target female gamers aged 30+, and further details on the game will be revealed on July 5 (after Independence Day), pegged by nDreams' founder Patrick O'Luanaigh as "Redemption Day".

O'Luanaigh was formerly creative director of SCi and Eidos. He also concluded the announcement as saying:

We can’t wait to present Venus Redemption to the world. After many months of development and exhaustive gameplay focus testing, we believe that it will prove a breath of fresh air for the casual game sector, and in particular for female casual gamers. With the technology behind Venus Redemption, we can now rapidly develop immersive and visually impressive story-based casual games that will run on almost any PC.

 

After a successful musical finale at this year's Game Developers Conference, it appears Video Games Live is shooting for a worldwide tour as they book an appearance this time around for IDG World Expo's E for All. According to IDG World Expo, the Video Games Live Concert will take place on October 19, 2007 - a Friday.

Also having recently revealed that Video Games Live will be heading for Seoul, Korea, for Blizzard's World Wide Invitational, the concert will head back to California to perform at the new Nokia Theater in Los Angeles - with a whopping 7,000 seating capacity. The venue is just across the road from the Los Angeles Convention Center.

 

The concert will be featuring over three decades of video game music across various genres, performed by orchestra, especially catered to avid gamers - most especially to the first gaming guests to the open ex-E3. Mary Dolaher, CEO of IDG World Expo, concluded the announcement, saying:

We're thrilled to offer Video Games Live at E for All. Our show is about bringing people together in one place to experience for themselves all the elements - business and creative - that goes into games. Video Games Live showcases all the complexity of the game as an artistic medium. It's more than just playing games; it's about how the games touch us on so many levels - both visual and audio.

PLAYXPERT announced in an official press release that their new line of in-game "widgets," uncannily named PLAYXPERT (oh the horror!), for the avid PC LAN and MMO gamer. These little management tools sit inside your game, offering a semi-transparent feature so that they don't obscure your field of view, but still allow you to view content streamed right through.

 

The universal instant messaging and chat system (with VoIP support) is compatible with Xfire, Yahoo!, AOL, ICQ, and MSN engines for IMing or chatting. But the PLAYXPERT platform is especially helpful for World of Warcraft players, since the initial release will come with special features for the successful Blizzard MMORPG. Future support for other popular games will soon be supported through add-on releases to the platform.

Other widgets include the Armory widget, Thottbot Widget, WoWWiki widget, and a WoWhead widget. A Google widget will also be provided so that any game can find key information online without having to ALT-TAB out of the game and launch a browser. Utilizing an in-game overlay technology, the widgets actually are rendered through DirectX (with OpenGL support coming soon) and not through the Windows GUI.

Aimed specifically for the techie, geeky and even hardware enthusiast gamers, other future widgets will include real-time hardware diagnostics. Game stat tracking, clan and team management, in-game music access along with other additional community features are also slated to come soon.

And of course, budding coders can even add their own widgets to the platform without having to tackle the difficulties in coding overlay engines. PLAYXPERT has already published a full application programming interface (API) for the platform so widget coders can get started on their own custom additions to their gameplay experiences.

Dedicating to the avid gamers' world of game music devotion, the GCDC 2007 to start this coming August will also be seeing a live performance by the FILMharmonic Orchestra Prague on popular game soundtracks from Starcraft, Final Fantasy IX, Ragnarok 2, Stranglehold, Metal Gear Solid 2: Snake Eater, Secret of Mana and The Abbey Turrican 2.

Conducted by Andy Brick, the orchestra will also perform popular classics in medley form in salute to the Commodore 64 and Commodore Amiga as pioneering game platforms for the game industry, as stated by an official press release.

The performance will be held at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig on August 22, 8 p.m. and won't be an official part of the GCDC 2007 opening ceremony. Also to appear at the concert is Japanese star opera singer Izumi Masuda, singer Conny Kollet from Germany fame, and Konami-sponsored percussionist Rony Barrak.

Kollet is popular for her performances at the Symphonic Game Music Concert, of which this concert will be the fifth of the series, although many will know her for her rendering of the title song for SpellForce: The Breath of Winter.

Rony Barrak will be performing his version of Metal Gear Solid 2: Snake Eater together with the FILMharmonic Orchestra. Masuda, despite being an opera singer, is more inclined to pop-opera pieces, and could be identified as the same one who rendered the song "Distant Worlds" from Final Fantasy at the concert "VOICES: music from Final Fantasy." Tickets are already being sold as of this moment.