THIS recent win proves again that Filipinos are at par with international players of video games.

Filipino players Carlo Racela and Daniel Chua both placed high among the players in the International Tekken 6 Championships held at the TriNoMa Mall in Quezon City last Saturday.

Racela beat Australia’s Andrew Kim in a race-to-five match for the championship round.

Incidentally, Kim had beaten Racela during the round-robin matches that pitted five of the other players. The equally matched Kim and Racela gained four wins and one lose each before facing off.

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GAMING publisher Level Up! is launching a new set of online shows as part of their LIVE! The Show online feature.

The Merry LU! Christmas! will air on December 15 to 19. It will highlight Level Up! game masters, prominent members of its gaming community, returning guests from the previously held Level Up!: The Live 2008 Experience.

Level Up! Multimedia Head Joey Alarilla said that the company is also scheduled to hold some online promotions during the Level Up! Christmas! online show, including an early bird promo where the first to post a morning greeting would win 1,000 Level Up! credits. The next five would also win another 500 Level Up! credits.

“We’ll also be announcing new content for the games we publish. This is our way of thanking our community of gamers who have continuously supported us,” Alarilla said.

By Agence France-Presse

SAN FRANCISCO — US videogame sales were a bright spot on November’s bleak economic landscape, climbing to nearly three billion dollars, according to market research firm NPD Thursday.

Videogame sales so far in 2008 topped 16 billion dollars at the end of November and are on pace to crest 22 billion dollars for all of 2008, according to the industry tracking group.

Sales in November were 10 percent higher than the same month last year, before a financial storm slammed the economy.

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“There’s only one good reason to get in [video game development] and that’s because you can’t imagine yourself doing anything else.”

This was what game development guru Chris Natsuume told hackenslash the first time he was asked what would be the primary reason for anyone to get into game development.

Natsuume, co-founder of casual game development firm Boomzap (www.boomzap.com), was in the Philippines to speak to game developers about the game development industry.

During his talk, Natsuume touched on some misconceptions about game development.

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THE Philippine video game development industry is expected to be worth $3 million by the end of the year and $7 million by 2010, an industry study conducted for a local game development organization showed.

In 2007, the study said the local game development was worth about $1 million, according to Cesar Tolentino, game development research consultant who presented the study during the Business Process Outsourcing Summit in Crowne Plaza Hotel.

Six outsourcing industries, including game development industry, showcased their services for the offshore market during the event.

Tolentino pointed out that the local game development industry employs about 500 people who now work in at least 10 Philippine-based companies.

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