Hello hello! This week Seattle saw the arrival of Super League Gaming. Super League is a gaming session that takes place…in a movie theatre. In Seattle, Super League put on a Minecraft tournament. Players brought their laptops and played side-by-side in the theatre seats, while the big screen showed an aerial view of the playing field. Super League Gaming is currently on tour and could be coming to a city near you. Check out their schedule and our write-up to get more details.
Speaking of Minecraft, that game has passed the 20 million copies sold mark on PC and Mac. Total sales are soaring above 70 million, which basically means we all have a copy of Minecraft even if we don’t know it.
Splatoon has a new gameplay mode for Ranked Battles, called Tower Control. It was released on July 1. In Tower Control, teams ride a mobile tower into enemy territory. It’s a battle to keep control of the tower and get it all the way to your enemy’s base. Splatoon is basically our favorite game of 2015, so do yourself a favor and check it out. Ranked Battle is only available to players over level 10, but getting there is half the fun.
An educational version of Plants vs. Zombies 2 is a thing that legitimately exists. It’s made by GlassLab, and it includes assessment tools for teachers to use in the classroom. They’ve renamed it Use Your Brainz EDU… brainz with a Z. So if you want some good old-fashioned problem solving with your pea-shooting, check it out.
If you’re invested in women and gaming, there’s a book out there for you. “Chicks Dig Gaming” was released last year, and it was just nominated for an ENnie Award. It’s a book of nonfiction essays about women and gaming—tabletop gaming as well as video gaming. And if you want to play games about women, check out this week’s Humble Bundle, Leading Ladies 2. It’s all about female characters, and it’ll be available till July 9. The charity it supports is Girls Make Games!
If screen time is one of your big concerns, we’ve got some good news for you. Linda Breneman and Amy Lang recently did a webinar about screen time. One of their conclusions might surprise you: screen time for kids is a necessity. Yep, there’s no escaping screens. We all know how hard it can be to manage that time, though, so they offer some advice for dealing with screen time. One suggestion we love is the Play Diet from Dr. Randy Kulman. If you take the same approach to recreation that you do with food, you can figure out how to portion your kids’ gaming time—just like everyone needs protein and carbs, we also all need screen time and face-to-face time. Fortunately, gaming is pretty good for the brain, all things considered. You can watch that whole webinar for free and read the write-up at Pixelkin.org.
Happy 4th of July weekend!
