Here's something you won't see every day: a video showing what a LEGO game version of AMC's hit series about making meth - Breaking Bad - might look like. The parody video created by animator Brian Anderson mixes the popular show's plot and characters with the humor of a LEGO video game with amusing results. On the YouTube page for his video, Anderson offers the following disclaimer:

In an interview on CBS This Morning Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said that a frank discussion on a myriad of issues will be the only way to seriously curb gun violence in America beyond a discussion about gun control. That discussion should include violence found in some video games, substance abuse, and mental illness.

Developer Slouch Couch (a one-man studio featuring the talents of indie developer Dave Homan) has created a game that he hopes will raise awareness about marijuana legalization. The game is called Drugbound. Drugbound is an HTML5 developed "endless runner" game where players run away from law enforcement while collecting "medicinal herbs" and avoiding bosses.

Homan wants to use his game to question the illegality of marijuana use in America. In a press release today he explained his position on the issue:

With all the talk of legalizing the use of marijuana at the state and federal level (for and against), it seems only appropriate that the 70's most iconic stoner comedy team should release an app on Android and iOS. Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong have teamed up with developer MEDL Mobile to create and deploy Cheech and Chong's The Fatty. The app is a mix of gags, gameplay and fun but useless utilities for the modern age stoner.

Our chuckle of the day is sponsored by the BBC, who reports the surprising and mildly amusing response of Judge Lucy Koh after reading Apple's Witness list. The judge in the high-stakes, high profile US patent trial between Apple and Samsung made her comments after Apple attorney William Lee named 22 people in a 73-page witness list he wanted to call to rebut the testimony of Samsung's witnesses.

After looking at the list, Judge Koh offered the following response:

A short story on Boston.com details yet another criminal using an Xbox 360 to smuggle drugs. According to Jamaican authorities, they have seized 24 pounds of cocaine concealed inside the shell of an Xbox. The seizure was conducted by the Jamaica Customs Department, who say that they discovered the cocaine at Kingston's airport shortly after a Guyanese traveler cleared customs with a laptop and a suitcase.

A traffic stop in El Paso, Texas led to the arrest of a local man who found an exciting new way to hide his drug. While his method for concealment was certainly current generation thinking, it wasn't clever enough to trick the El Paso County Sheriffs' office. During a routine traffic stop because the driver failed to use his turn signal, police discovered three bundles of cocaine - two of which were hidden inside an Xbox 360 console - in a bag on the passenger seat of his older Mercedes.

Xbox Live is a great place to meet new friends and - apparently - the perfect venue for scoring a pot deal. But today we offer you a cautionary tale on making such deals: don't use the postal service to deliver that package. Nineteen-year-old Garrett Bryant is learning that lesson first-hand. Lawrenceburg, Kentucky police and the postal inspector allege that Bryant had a pound of marijuana mailed to him under a fake name.

According to a report from New Zealand’s TVNZ, a high school boy bought Ritalin to stay awake and play Xbox 360 games, but ended up in the hospital. The report claims that the boy was brought into the hospital "White as a sheet and hyperventilating" after he used a "makeshift device" to snort Ritalin he scored from a classmate. The 15-year-old told his father that he obtained the drug through a classmate and had been using it for quite some time.

While professional video game players don't have the equivalent of performance enhancing drugs such as steroids, pro medical marijuana publication Culture Magazine thinks that many use Marijuana to enhance their abilities prior to tournament play. The publication cites a comment made by Alex Walker, the Australian World Cyber Games tournament director, to game publication GamePlayer.

"I’ve seen a number of players at national tournaments who came in ‘baked’ purely so they could play better," said Alex Walker, the Australian World Cyber Games tournament director, in a recent interview with Gameplayer.

A team of Swedish researchers have conducted a study about drugs, alcohol and the effects of video games on teens. The research (unearthed by C&VG) concluded that boys who play games tend not to get involved in drinking alcohol or taking drugs.

The team of researchers from the Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs (CAN) surveyed 46,000 teens in the country, asking them about their drug and alcohol usage. Researchers discovered that the percentage of Swedish 15-year-olds who drink alcohol has dropped to the lowest level in decades.

The level of 15 and 16-year-old boys who have at least tried alcohol in the past year also declined to 55 percent - the lowest since CAN began investigating teen habits in 1971. A decade ago, that figure stood at 77 percent. Figures for smoking and drug-usage also showed a decline.

Four United States Senators are not happy with an application that they say helps drunk drivers avoid checkpoints and they are demanding that a number of app stores yank it immediately. Sens. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Tom Udall (D-NM) have asked Apple iPhone head Scott Forstall, Google's CEO Eric Schmidt and Research in Motion's (RIM) co-CEOs, James Balsillie and Michael Lazaridis to pull an undisclosed number of apps.

"Giving drunk drivers a free tool to evade checkpoints, putting innocent families and children at risk, is a matter of public concern," the senators said in a letter to the executives of the three companies. "We hope that you will give our request to remove these applications from your store immediate consideration."

As part of a bid to educate its youth about the dangers of drugs, the Iranian government will turn toward a wide range of cultural solutions, including development of an anti-drug videogame.

Iran’s Fars News Agency reports on the initiative, which will see The Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, Iran's Drug Control Headquarters and the National Foundation for Computer Games collaborating on a solution.

Ahmad Esfandiari, head of Iran’s State Welfare Organization, stated, “When you intend to take something (drugs) away from children and young adults, you need to provide a substitute for them and nowadays video games are the best replacement.”

A UCLA student created a “meth house” in the virtual world of Second Life in order to assist a study into how environmental cues factor into addiction.

Chris Culbertson, a doctoral student at the school, was inspired by “reports of alcoholics and smokers developing cravings while visiting virtual worlds devised by addiction researchers” according to Scientific American, and created his own adaptation. Once built, he invited 17 meth addicts to UCLA to try it out, measuring their heart rates and having them fill out questionnaires as they navigated the 3D space.

The Chinese government is calling on the sizeable network of game operators within its borders for assistance with an anti-drug campaign.

Over 50 online game operators, including the likes of Shanda Entertainment and Giant Online, have said they will take part in a competition to create anti-drug public service advertisements at their own expense. The consortium was put together by Shanghai’s anti-drug commission, according to a story on China.org.cn.

The PSA’s judged to be best will eventually be shown on the city’s mobile TV network and in Internet cafes.

Of China’s 30 million online gamers, “most” were billed as being men, under the age of 35, which coincides with numbers estimating that 75 percent of all new drug users in Shanghai are people under 35. Xu Chuan, an “official” from the Shanghai anti-drug commission, noted, “Online gamers and drug users have similar demographic characteristics in most of the cases."

A young man with a promising future as a writer seemingly gave it all up to in order to give in to the unhealthy combination of Grand Theft Auto IV and cocaine.

The Observer has an article up written by Tom Bissell, the former essayist himself. Bissell begins by outlining the period from 2001-2006, which saw him author two books and a series of magazine articles. During this time he says he “rarely felt disciplined,” and his productivity seemed to happen in spite of itself.

The author's dive into gaming kicked off with GTA: Vice City, which he called, “the first video game I can recall having to force myself to stop playing,” before he moved on to GTA: San Andreas and eventually GTA IV. When the latter game came out, a friend introduced Bissell to cocaine and the pair played the game for 30 hours straight.

Bissell attempted to put a finger on the attractiveness of the game:

The top dog at U.K developer A-steroids, creator of Underworld: Sweet Deal for the iPhone, is worried that his company's game is going to be rejected by Apple over its drug-dealing theme.

As readers may recall, this is a bit of an ongoing saga. GamePolitics reported in December, 2008 that A-steroids had renamed the game, originally called DrugLords, in an effort to avoid an App Store ban. A few days later, an Englishwoman who lost her daughter to heroin abuse called upon Apple to ban the game, whatever its title.

Apparently the issue is still up in the air, based on an e-mail GamePolitics received today from Andrey Podoprigora, Head of Studio for A-steroids:

We have recently released our first game on the AppStore - Underworld: SweetDeal. The game was previously known as DrugLords, location-based MMO about dirty trade...

This week, we have submitted the game in it's original drug-trade setting to the AppStore. We were hoping that after the iPhone 3.0 came out with it's parental controls improved, there is a chance for the game to finally come through.

Now, we have got an update from Apple, saying they require "unexpected additional time for review". Which is sort of bad because we are already familiar with responses like that - in December, 2008 this led to months of silence and then ended up as a reject. Would be sad if it means nothing changes in Apple's app reviewing policy.

The British Board of Film Classification, which last week lost the battle for control of U.K. video game ratings to industry-favored rival PEGI, once investigated whether Grand Theft Auto IV contained a genuine recipe for manufacturing crystal meth.

The Times reports that the discovery prompted "crisis talks" with developer Rockstar. In testimony last year before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the House of Commons, BBFC head David Cooke discussed his organization's review of GTA IV:

We did examine [GTA IV] extremely thoroughly and we are the only regulator I know of who looked, for instance, at the particular issue where... there was a concern about whether you were being given instructional information about how to make the drug crystal meth.

 

We actually took independent advice on the point and eventually were able to satisfy ourselves that some of the crucial ingredients and techniques were missing so it was not a genuine cause for concern.

UPDATE: College News (leave it to those crazy college kids) explains where the so-called crystal meth recipe can be found in GTA IV:

The suspected recipe for crystal meth can be discovered in the video game as a posting on the fictional Web site Craplist --a parody of the popular real life Web site Craigslist.

While Second Life has many uses, law enforcement training has not historically been among them. But that may be changing.

New World Notes reports that consultant Fred Fuchs, who goes by Gus Plisskin in Second Life, designed a virtual meth lab to help cops recognize when they've stumbled upon the real thing. Such labs are not only illegal, they're extremegly dangerous as well.

Said Fuchs/Plisskin of his virtual meth lab project:

We hope to encourage use of SL for training law enforcement and social workers. We found that a walk-thru helped other types of clients think about ways they could use SL... Accuracy in simulations is 'my thing'.

TASER International, which manufactures the controversial electric stun guns that bear its name, has given a jolt to Linden Lab and a number of its corporate executives with a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Arizona.

TASER, which faces numerous lawsuits of its own filed by individuals who have been tased (or, in some cases, their survivors) is concerned that virtual TASER replica items are being sold in Second Life as gear for SL avatars (see pic at left).

TASER also alleges that its brand will be damaged via association with virtual sex and virtual drug use occuring within Second Life. From the 102-page complaint:

All of the defendants that sell virtual property like Plaintiff's real ones, under the mark TASER for use in Second Life programs and grids, also sell adult-only explicit images and scenes... thus attaching such content to the TASER mark... and also sell unlawful drug materials... thus attaching such content to the TASER mark...

TASER 's claims are primarily based on trademark considerations. The company seeks damages in excess of $75,000.

Via: Massively

UPDATE: New World Notes has more...

UPDATE 2: GamesLaw offers a legal analysis of the TASER suit.

UPDATE 3: New World Notes reports that Linden Lab, owner of SL, contacted an in-world vendor of virtual items and requested that "Taser" be replaced with "stun gun."

A British man who purchased a pair of used Grand Theft Auto games discovered what appeared to be ecstasy tablets wrapped in plastic and hidden in one of the game manuals.

The Telegraph reports that Richard Thornhill, 34, bought the second-hand games at a GameStation in Gloucestershire:

When I opened the box up, the cling film wrap fell out. I could not believe it. I have two children and my son plays Xbox all the time. He could easily have opened the box and found them.

I dread to think what the consequences would have been if he had. He is only 12. He could have died. It was a pre-used game, but that should not make a difference. My wife is beside herself over this because she keeps thinking about what could have happened and so do I.

The retailer and local police are investigating.

Baseball's back, but fans' lingering anger over steroid use by MLB players has cast a bit of a cloud on Opening Day.

Baseball *Juiced, a new online offering from Addicting Games, examines the steroid issue, although unfortunately without much depth. For example, if your player works out at the gym in the off-season instead of taing steroids he will hit well.

But if you choose to dope your player, he seems to hit a home run every time up. Eventually, however, he will flunk his random steroid test.

The message is: steroids may increase performance but at cost in reputation. Player who juice could be indicted, ala Barry Bonds, or banned from the Hall of Fame.

In the aftermath of last month's horrific school shooting rampage in Winnenden, criticism of violent video games by German government officials has been on the rise.

In the latest political attack, Bavarian Minister of the Interior Joachim Herrmann (left), a frequent critic of violent games, upped the ante by likening such games to illegal drugs and child pornography.

Herrmann made the charge in a Tuesday press release (Google translation) which was issued to coincide with the government-sponsored German Games Award as well as a video game conference in Munich.

German GamePolitics reader David Ziegler provides this translation:

The statement contains the usual accusations that "such games are one of the causes for youth violence and also for school shootings, where images from killer games become reality",and that "more and more children are getting mired in this virtual world of violence", so that "they have no time left for school or job training,  and are lost to our society".

 

However, this time, he's taking it a bit further. The last sentence states: "In regards to their harmful effects, [violent video games] are on the same level as child pornography and illegal drugs, the ban on which rightly is unquestioned"

However, a second German official, Commissioner for the New Media Thomas Jarzombek, criticized Herrmann's remarks:

The comparison is completely inappropriate... anyone making such statements is unqualified to participate in any further debate [regarding the] protection of minors from harmful media.

GamePolitics reader tibuka, also German, adds:

[Herrmann's] statement was released on the same day as the first German Videogame Awards ceremony took place in Munich. In return, all important German game-associations (G.A.M.E., BIU, ESB) released statments of their own, demanding an apology.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson downplayed the influence of violent media yesterday in testimony before the British Parliament's Home Affairs Committee. The committee, which has been investigating knife crime, is chaired by longtime video game critic Keith Vaz.

While Jackson said that violent video games, music and movies could have some influence on behavior, he placed far greater emphasis on poverty, drugs, domestic violence and inequality as factors which lead to increased violence.

For the benefit of our readers, GamePolitics has transcribed the portions of Jackson's testimony which relate to media violence issues:

Labour MP Martin Salter: Rev. Jackson, we've been taking evidence on the effects or the increasing effect of violent media images on young people, whether it's in video games, whether it's on TV, whether it’s the cinema. It seems the evidence were hearing, that there's a general danger that young people can be desensitized to the concept of violence by the images that they see, but there's a greater predisposition to violence if those young people are brought up in families and households and communities where actual violence is the norm. Do you have any lessons from America for us on this issue?

Rev. Jesse Jackson: For a long time we challenged music artists and movie makers to be sensitive to the impact that their music and their movies have on children and they have some force... But those who grow drugs in Afghanistan and poppy seeds – they don't listen to music. This thing is not about music and movies. It’s about a form of economy... we’ve lost more lives from [the drug] war than the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we seem to see it as something marginal but it is in the center of our security and it’s getting worse in my judgment... the structural crisis of poverty and drugs and guns is more real than just movies and music.

Labour MP Keith Vaz: Do you accept that there is a link between violent video games and violence that is perpetrated by individuals? Do you think that those images do have an effect on young people?

Rev. Jesse Jackson: There may be some link of imitation. The question, Mr. Chairman, is art imitating life? Is life reflecting art?  There’s always a big debate there. What we do know in these troubled times… there’s increased domestic violence in the home. [Children are] more likely to imitate parents fighting physically. Domestic violence is maybe even a bigger factor on violent behavior than the movies and the worst games that are played. So, yes, we urge artists to not use their considerable skills to desensitize people to violence. Sure, these games that think that killing is a game must be challenged. But the economic impact of life options determines whether one is headed up towards university or down toward prison.

VIDEO LINK: Rev. Jesse Jackson Testifies

A 16-year old New York youth has confessed to the stabbing murder of a veteran New York City radio newscaster, according to a report in the New York Daily News.

The suspect is an avid video gamer who lists Rockstar's controversial Grand Theft Auto IV as his favorite title.

The NYPD has charged John Katehis (left) with repeatedly stabbing George Weber, 47, last Friday. The pair met after Weber posted a Craigslist ad offering to pay for violent sex. Katehis was to earn $60 for the sleazy encounter at which alcohol and cocaine were reportedly used. Weber, apparently as part of his sado-masochistic fantasy, supplied the knife with which Katehis eventually killed him.

That's not to say that Katehis was a stranger to edged weapons. The New York Daily News, which refers to Katehis as "emotionally disturbed," displays a picture of the teen posing with his exotic knife and sword collection.

Gawker has posted Katehis's MySpace profile, in which says the suspect wrotes:

I enjoy long conversations, drinking, bike riding, hanging out, roof hopping, hanging off trains, any type of Parkour exercise. Extreme violence (chaos, anarchy, etc.) Video Games, Violent Movies and listening to my ipod...

 

I like to do crazy and wild things. I am like an adrenaline junkie. I'm a big risk taker and like to live life on the edge...

The MySpace profile references an account on ibeatyou.com. At that site, Katehis lists Grand Theft Auto IV as the "Hottest PS3 or Xbox 360 Game You've Ever Played" and includes a picture of himself holding a copy of the PlayStation 3 version. Katehis holds up Far Cry 2 in a separate photo.

Additional coverage: Gawker

GP: There are just so many dysfunctional pieces to this story, but video games will certainly be blamed in some quarters.

By way of What They Play comes this bit of gaming/TV/war on drugs nostalgia:

Depending on how old you are, you might recall the Super Mario Bros. Super Show. It was a television show that aired on the cusp of the '90s, featuring wrestler Captain Lou Albano as Mario...

America's airwaves in the '80s and '90s were also thick with anti-drug Public Service Announcements. These were usually doled out by celebrities or cartoon characters. It so happens "Mario" warned kids away from drugs, too--in a manner that was a little harsher than the norm...

Above The Influence, the youth-oriented, anti-drug media campaign run by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, has a new, avatar-based ad campaign which warns gamers that their skills will be negatively impacted by smoking pot.

From the Huffington Post:

To dramatize how bad a stoner can be at video games, the site interviews a computer-generated character who laments the demise of a gamer friend of hers. "I used to have a good time with Lyle. We made a good team. He had skill. He had swiftness," she says. "Well, he used to, anyway. Then our last fight, Lyle decided to get high. And it was simply: sayonara skill, sayonara swiftness."

The Above the Influence campaign points out that perception, memory and eye-hand coordination are all reduced by marijuana use.

Via: Kotaku

A youth advocate in Sweden has likened World of Warcraft to crack cocaine in terms of its supposed addictiveness and the Swedish National Institute of Public Health has endorsed that view.

As reported by the UK's Daily Mail, Sven Rollenhagen of Sweden's Youth Care Foundation has authored a report describing WoW in ominous terms:

The most dangerous game on the market... There is not a single case of game addiction that we have worked with in which World of Warcraft has not played a part...

It is the crack cocaine of the computer game world. Some will play it till they drop.

A Japanese finance minister who appeared to be drunk and sleepy during a G7 press conference earlier this month is the subject a new parody game for mobile phones.

As reported by the Telegraph, Shoichi Nakagawa delivered the less-than-stellar performance at left during G7 in Rome:

Now [Nakagawa] has become the latest target of Japan's mischievous game industry. Players are invited to wake a likeness of Mr Nakagawa as he fields questions at a press conference and then let him nap to increase his energy reserves.

Players gain points in "Drowsy Presser by Drugged Minister" if they boost Mr Nakagawa's "support rating" by having him answer journalists' questions. But if the minister is caught sleeping by journalists, he falls off his chair and the game is over.

Late last week GamePolitics reported on a Brigham Young University research study which linked video game play to a variety of negative behaviors in college students (see: BYU Study: Video Games Are Bad For You in So Many Ways).

The research, which appears in the current issue of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, found gamers more likely to drink and use drugs and to have poor family and friend relationships. Among women, game play was linked to reduced self-esteem.

While Edge Online and Kotaku are reporting somewhat conciliatory comments by the study's authors, their research findings remain unchanged. For example, Edge spoke with BYU's Dr. Larry Nelson, who stressed that the study found correlation between gaming and negative behaviors, not causation:

The study absolutely does not find that videogames cause this behavior. We've repeatedly tried to emphasize that in the study itself. It was all correlation...

 

One factor [of increased substance use] could be the experimentation that goes on with [drugs and alcohol]... If we had done a study specifically on videogaming ... I'm sure [benefits] are there. There's no doubt they're there. We're not saying there is nothing at all positive about videogames.

Nuclear Geek details an exchange with BYU's Laura Walker. The professor, who previously told the Deseret News, "Everything we found associated with video games came out negative," attempted to clarify her remarks and indulged in a bit of the media blame game:

One study does not claim to be representative of all gamers, and we were in no way making that claim. We are not even claiming generalizability to the 18-25 age group, this is just what we found in our sample.

 

Media has a way of really spinning these stories that are not always accurate. However, in our study, we did find that video game use was related to only negative behaviors for students this age. Does that mean this applies to all gamers? No. Does that mean video game use causes these outcomes? Certainly not. It is possible that video game use could be positive in a number of ways, but given the variables we measured in our study, it was related to only negative outcomes...

GP: To be perfectly honest, I don't see the BYU authors backpedaling, as Kotaku reported. Nor do Dr. Nelson's comments to Edge explaining that the research team found correlation vs. causation change anything.