Duke Nukem Forever is scheduled to launch next year and it’s bringing all the guns, violence, blood, baddies, babes, and boobs it can to make sure the decade-plus wait was worth it.

But what will the various ratings bodies such as the ESRB and PEGI think of Duke?  Will they slap him with a sales crippling rating?

Developer Gearbox Software’s big cheese Randy Pitchford revealed his thoughts to CVG:

An interesting opinion piece on The Atlantic Wire looks at race politics in video games, focusing on first-person shooters. Author Max Fisher talks about Resident Evil 5, Medal of Honor and Modern Warfare 2, inspired by an essay from Jim Gourley for ForeignPolicy.com.

The thrust of the opinion piece is about the painful transition from conflicts against zombies and fictionalized Nazis to real world conflicts involving real groups of people and how developers portray them. Here's a taste:

A piece appearing on the website of The Heights, Boston College’s student newspaper, says it’s “too soon” for Electronic Arts to base a game in Afghanistan and calls the setting of Medal of Honor “disrespectful.”

The article’s author pulls no punches, labeling game developers “desperate and unoriginal” and “moving in all the wrong directions to please their audiences.”

The ability to play as the Taliban in MOH’s multiplayer component, a component since renamed, was termed, “neither educational nor acceptable and goes against every ounce of American patriotism pumping through the veins of our country's citizens.”

The columnist continues:

In an opinion piece (which was originally published on GAMEbriefs), Nicholas Lovell takes the author of the recent SF Weekly expose on Zynga’s business practices (FarmVillains) to task for his tone. One passage in the article that really raised Lovell’s ire:

An interesting IGN Gear article lays out the pros and cons of jailbreaking your favorite mobile phone device, and points out that many of the things that were illegal to use before the Library of Congress ruling, remain just as unlawful. Last month the Library of Congress ruled that it was okay to jailbreak a mobile phone under "fair use." This ruling was a response to digital rights advocacy groups, who urged the Library of Congress to make a determination.

The whole point of this decision was to allow users to install legally obtained software on smartphones whose operating systems might otherwise prevent them from so doing (ahem - iPhone, Android, etc.). But a larger appeal might be with those that want to copy copyrighted materials - aps, music, moves, etc. - to phones. As the article points out, this is still very illegal.

Do you live in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Oklahoma, West Virginia or Mississippi? If you do, odds are you need to go on a diet and, according to one “expert,” cut back on playing videogames.

The population of the states listed above had obesity rates in excess of 30 percent, according to statistics released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

An article on Florida’s TCPalm.com, where the obesity rate clocked in at 25.2 percent, discussed the fattening trend with Dr. Jefferson Vaughan, a surgeon based in Jupiter, Florida. Vaughan on the obesity epidemic:

There has been a generational change. When I was a kid, there were three TV channels and they all played Watergate tapes.

Today it's much more convenient to go through the drive-through while your kid plays his Game Boy in the back seat.

The UK’s first Communication Champion for kids thinks that long car rides are the perfect chance for children to “double their vocabulary,” but that the proliferation of in-car entertainment devices like games and DVD players, if enacted during a trip, eliminate any chance for growth.

Jean Gross issued the warning, stating that kids from affluent families, who were more likely to be able to outfit their cars with the electronic devices in question, were more at risk.

Gross stated:

I remember [when my children were little] we did spotting games in the car, but with the Nintendo DS and other hand-held video games it's going to be more affluent parents whose children have problems learning to speak, not just those from poorer homes who have less exposure to a wide range of language.

Blogger Ebrahim Saifuddin used his medium to pen an interesting look into why he believes videogames are haram (forbidden) for Muslims.

In his article, posted late last year, the author uses passages from the Qur’an to guide his opinion on whether specific game components are haram or halal (permitted). Ebrahim begins with music in videogames, citing four spots in the Qur’an as indicating that music is haram. Among the passages cited was the following (though it seems a bit wide ranging):

There is a man among the people who buys discourses of distracting amusements, so that he may mislead (people) from the Way of Allah, and make a mockery of it. For such people there is a disgraceful punishment. [31:06]

Next up, the depiction of animate objects in games, such as humans and animals, which includes the author’s claim that, “Many a times the female characters in video games are highly inappropriately dressed.” The author concludes:

In his latest Pretenstion +1 column, Gus Mastrapa warns videogame fans and creators that, if they are not vigilant, they could suffer the same fate as comic books. Using Comic-Con as the backdrop, Mastrapa points out that the show has become an amalgamation of TV, movies, anime and videogames, with comics mostly taking a backseat. As videogames have made many fans ignore comics, something could come along to do the same to videogames.

So how does Mastrapa suggest that gamers and game creators do to keep the fire alive? Here's an excerpt:

Fourteen patients from the Huai’an Internet Addiction Treatment Centre in China decided they had enough and tied an instructor to a bed in order to make their escape from the facility.

The group, which ranged in age from 15 to 22, grabbed a taxi to a nearby town, but their similar garb, and lack of funds, raised the suspicion of their driver, who took them directly to a police station. All the escapees were then quickly returned to the treatment center, according to a story on the Telegraph.

One escapee’s mom broke down in tears at the police station, recounting a story in which her son played online games for 28 hours straight.

The facility makes its charges go to bed at 9:30 PM and requires them to partake in two hours of physical activity per day, as well as take mandatory courses in calligraphy and Chinese philosophy.

Could videogames be responsible for a widening education gap between U.S. men and women?

The author of a piece in the Wichita Eagle seems to think so. Citing a drop in the number of American males earning college degrees, the article claims that women are not forcing males out of the classroom; instead, “Women are taking empty seats as males fall by the wayside.”

While some groups have pinned the fall of man on recent education reforms or the “feminization of the classroom,” the piece’s author notes that, “Males are dropping out of academics in all developed countries,” and, “Whatever is depressing boys' school performance is cutting across cultural and political boundaries and widely disparate educational systems.”

The “whatever” mentioned above does not remain unnamed for long, as the author offers, “This decline in boys' scores coincides with the emergence of video games.”

A letter to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald argues that the lack of an R18+ rating category is not withholding anything other than “graphic gore” from Australian gamers.

The letter, written by Caleb Owens of Woollahra (thanks Kotaku) may invoke memories of the old videogames as art debate. The author writes, “There are no great works of video game art being held back [by a lack of an R18+ rating category].”

Owens continues, noting that when Australian gamers complain about edited games on Internet forums, they refer to the bloody body parts they might be missing, while when these same gamers complain about censorship to authorities, they tend to be less effusive, instead preferring  to couch their protests in a broad “right to enjoy content” context.

Owens finishes his letter with:

It takes a great work of art to advance a ratings scale. When the Lady Chatterley's Lover of video games arrives, all citizens will be rightly concerned if it is withheld. But that seems a long way off.

The full letter can be found about halfway down this page on the Sydney Morning Herald Website.

War-themed videogames are just one part of “the man’s” plan to promote the glory of war among today’s youth, helping to ensure that young minds are distracted so that the war machine may continue to keep filling the coiffeurs of big government.

This thought process is put forth in an editorial on the Orangeville Citizen website, in a column penned by Constance Scrafield- Danby, who hinges some of her argument on the current popularity of war games, such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (though the author refers to the older Call of Duty: World at War).

She writes:

Other really popular video games are about wars in space, wars in mediaeval times, killing dragons and monsters, killing aliens, killing scary animals, killing.

… the best, most loved, most played video games in the world are the ones about killing.

Scrafield- Danby argues that the U.S. economy cannot afford peace, and that “our leaders make a show of struggling among themselves with their own sticky determination not to change anything.” She expands her thoughts to additional areas were change is fought tooth and nail, concluding that changes biggest enemy is greed.

She asks:

But what if young people suddenly woke up to this? What if they suddenly realised what is actually happening to their world and to them? What if they suddenly started to care? What if they suddenly began to insist on change, on peace, on “going green” and finding other ways to make airplanes fly?

Scrafield- Danby then answers her own question:

The Old Dogs could never let that happen. So, what do they do? They see to it that even WWII is still relevant, that being part of that long nightmare is desirable. It is the most wide spread Machiavellian manipulation of youth in our history. This is not even the promotion of war as something noble, etc.

 

It is the promotion of war, using the full weight of technology, to present the horrors in glowing gore, from a totally unrealistic place of safety.

GP: Obviously this editorial is a little bit out there, but an aversion to "in the box" thinking made it difficult to ignore. While she might be close to the truth on some fronts, it’s probably not the case that videogame publishers are churning out war games at the behest of the government.

In light of Ubisoft’s recent unveiling of its new digital rights management (DRM) technology, Savy Gamer asked a variety of game industry people for their take on the current state of DRM.

The responses were varied, and shockingly, seemed to be formulated based upon what role the person in question has within the game industry.

TIGA CEO Richard Wilson on DRM and game packaging:

I think that it should be made absolutely clear on the packaging if games require constant internet connection. In time, this will probably be the case.

The PC games market will probably come to depend on this type of technology. Most consumers will probably not find this to be a problem but clearly they should be properly informed before purchasing a game.

Wilson when asked if publishers should make some concessions to consumers regarding the fact that DRM makes games difficult or impossible to resell:

No. It is not the responsibility of publishers to sustain a secondary market in games. In fact, some game developers believe that their businesses have been damaged by the secondary market in games.

Direct2Drive UK Product Marketing Manager Nihal de Silva noted that his service is “DRM agnostic” and was “happy to work with publishers/developers whose products carry DRM as well as those with DRM free products.”

de Silva was asked if he thought customers would be happy with Ubisoft’s new DRM initiative. He replied, “no comment.”

Developer Cliff Harris of Positech Games, which releases DRM-free games, was asked if he thought a lack of DRM contributed to piracy of Positech games:

I don’t think it has made much difference at all. Maybe a few of the more honest people now buy the game rather than pirate it, but this sort of thing is impossible to measure.

It seems any game, even if its $0.99 has a five hour demo and is DRM-free and done by a nobel-peace prize winning game design legend, will be cracked and distributed on day one by some self righteous teenager anyway.

StarForce’s Deputy Marketing Director Dmitry Guseff was asked how long it typically takes a cracker to bypass StarForce’s DRM technology:

If we take huge titles like “STALKER Clear Sky”, it took them 3 weeks to bypass which is very good result for AAA class game. For example “Mount and Blade” is still holding since the beginning of December.

So, basically AAA titles hold around a month, less important titles much longer. I have to add that if we hadn’t implemented some consumer friendly features those titles would have been held much longer.

Atomicboy Software’s Brit Clousing takes the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to task in a post on the company’s blog.

Entitled “Why I Don’t Like the EFF,” Clousing’s post centers on The EFF’s support for net neutrality, which he views as that of a “pro-freeloader / anti-creator stance.”

Clousing's take on the topic comes from the view of a content creator and while he indicates that he does support net neutrality, he states that he does not support it when it involves copyright infringement:

To use a page from the EFF’s playbook, perhaps we could say that the EFF is attempting to hijack the Net Neutrality legislation to make the world safer for piracy.

Most of Clousing comments are in direct response to an action letter set up by The EFF for net neutrality backers to send to the Federal Communication Commission.

Clouosing continued:

The net-neutrality bill would allow ISPs to throttle the unlawful distribution of copyrighted works? Gee, it’s a good thing the EFF has stuck out their neck to fight against this. Based on the phrasing, it almost seems as if the EFF thinks that piracy should be permitted as a part of “free speech”. Personally, I actually find it “deeply problematic” that the EFF thinks throttling copyright-infringement is a problem.

The EFF really needs to straighten out their act and stop going out of their way to side with freeloaders.

Could videogames be causing the same reaction in older generations that Elvis did 50 years ago?

An opinion piece on Tek-9.org does a nice job of summing up a slew of recent
cringe-worthy anti-game remarks before surmising that  these attacks are, more often than not, done by older folks who may not realize all that the world of games has to offer:

The only people I can find making these ridiculous and uninformed remarks about gaming are either attention seeking whores, mp’s who have no real political agenda and plucked something out of their ass or daily mail writers, oh and porn stars.

They are all of an older generation who simply don’t understand the better side, the positive side of gaming and its influence both good and bad on young people today and instead of taking the time to find out, simply lash out with uninformed rhetoric that does nothing for them, save an Andy Warhol moment in the spotlight and certainly does nothing for the gaming industry.

All this negativity could cause a gamer to lash out with vitriol-laden comments against those who dare to talk badly about games.  The piece’s author notes that these types of responses do little to improve an outsider’s opinion of those who game:

What we should be doing is putting together smart, reasoned and logical replies and educating the older generation, as hard as that sounds and pointing out the positives of video games. Things like Childs Play which recently raised $1.7million from gamers and the gaming industry to help fight poverty in poor regions should be pointed out.

GP: While calling people "attention seeking whores" does not necessarily subscribe to the author's suggestion of playing nice, it’s still a thought-provoking piece and mostly spot-on.

TechDirt has a fascinating look into the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) courtesy of a panel discussion on the topic hosted by Google this week as a build up to World’s Fair Use Day, which is today.

The panel featured lawyer Steve Metalitz, who serves as counsel to the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), James Love of Knowledge Ecology International (KEI), lawyer Jonathan Band and Ryan Clough, a legislative staffer for Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA).

TechDirt notes that, after beginning with some standard talking points, things “got really interesting” when Love and Band offered their interpretations (i.e. read between the lines) of ACTA. In an ironic twist, while some of the participants had seen glimpses of actual ACTA documents—which they had to sign an NDA to view (and thus could not comment on publically)—they had to base their comments on leaked ACTA documents.

A few choice selections follow.

On the name of the agreement itself:

Furthermore, Band and Love took on the fact that it's being called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, since almost none of that is true. It's got little to do with counterfeiting and little to do with trade. As Love explained, it's like calling something "The Patriot Act." No politician wants to vote against something like that, no matter what the details are.

On the secrecy surrounding ACTA:

Love noted that the only reason to keep it secret is because the industry is "ashamed" of what's in the document, and won't come out and discuss it, knowing that the public would go nuts.

Love on what ACTA really is:

Love also pointed out that in what's been leaked in ACTA, what you basically have is all the stuff from previous agreements (WIPO and TRIPS) that the copyright industry liked -- but without the consumer protections that were built into both agreements.

Much, much more is in the full article at TechDirt.

In related news, Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA) is the latest politician to call for more transparency in the ACTA negotiations.

The next round of ACTA negotiations—the seventh so far— is due to kick off in Guadalajara, Mexico the week of January 25.

Using Lawrence Lessig’s book Free Culture as quasi- guide, the blog Press Start to Drink takes a look at the current state of copyright law and enforcement within the game community.

Cease and Desist: Games Culture and Copyright Laws begins with Lessig’s assertion that current copyright laws are nothing more than “protectionism to protect certain forms of business.”  This, the author writes, is what has led to, in some cases, “an immense tension between IP holders in the games industry and the IP fans who consider some games part of their personal culture.”

The author details a pair of incidents where game development companies stopped fans from infringing on their copyright: a Gears of War fan that modified a toy to resemble a character from the game and the quashing—by Square Enix—of a community-made Chrono Trigger add-on.

On the other side of the fence, one company (at least) appears to be demonstrating Lessig’s “free culture” ideal: Valve Software. Valve exercised restraint when a group of community members undertook Black Mesa: Source, a project that uses Half Life 2’s source code to reconstruct the original Half Life game.

While Valve did not “openly encouraged the mods development, they have not taken any legal action to stop it.”

Also touched on in the article is the more radical example of when a developer lifts content from a fan-developed project. The author cites the book Play Between Worlds, by T.L. Taylor, who wrote, “several astute MUD developers noticed early on that EQ (EverQuest) appeared strikingly similar to a type of MUD called DIKU.”

The blogger notes that, “…ironically, in the Everquest case, the DIKU developers thought of the situation as a compliment, not a copyright infringement.”

Closing with a quote from Lessig, “The opportunity to create and transform becomes weakened in a world in which creation requires permission and creativity must check with a lawyer,” the blogger adds:

…the more developers and publishers that take up Valve’s position, the more creativity and innovation will emerge out of video game fan communities, already known for their intense fandom and desire to add to, alter, and reimagine their favorite gaming universes.

Washington Times Culture Columnist Marybeth Hicks’ latest column calls on Americans to reject violent videogames.

“Tuesday was one of those days when the news can confuse us,” the columnist writes, imparting her take on the release date of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 falling on the same day that a memorial service for the victims of the Fort Hood tragedy aired on television.

MW2 is poised to become the largest media launch in entertainment history, to which Hicks says, “We ought not be surprised, but we ought to be concerned.” She calls the title, “Another immersive first-person game offering players the chance to vicariously participate in acts of violence for the sole purpose of ... entertainment.”

Depictions of “senseless” violence can be found in many forms of American media, writes Hicks, including television and movies, but “worst of all” in videogames, which enable “a realistic experience of ‘the thrill of the kill.’”

She finishes:

It's not maturity that's needed to play these games. It's maturity that rejects them as barbaric and harmful to the psyche of anyone who would play them.

According to Hicks’ bio, she began her career as a writer of special correspondence and talking points for President Reagan. In addition to her columnist duties she is a motivational speaker and the author of several books, including Bringing Up Geeks: How to Protect Your Kid’s Childhood in a Grow-Up-Too-Fast World.

GP: Oops, Washington Times, not Washington Post. Thanks Jack!

Playing The Mines of Moria expansion for The Lord of the Rings Online has prompted a thoughtful article comparing the fictional battle over Middle-Earth territory to modern-day events taking place in the Middle East.

Is Moria the Promised Land? at The Angry Bear begins by outlining the factions fighting over the right to claim residence in Moria; Dwarves, the original occupiers,  Goblins, which moved in following the Dwarves departure and The Morroval, half-women, half-bat creatures.

Author Allen Rausch notes:

… there doesn’t seem to be any common ground between the three factions that could broker any sort of structured solution. It’s an endless cycle of violence where killing begets killing that merely begets more killing.

Hmm, that does sound familiar. Which group would Rausch side with?

In such a case, my sympathies must ultimately lie with the Dwarves not because of what the Morroval or the goblins do to them, but because of what goblins and Morroval do to each other and the kind of culture they create for themselves.

An article on The Escapist traces the origins of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) from an institution initially created in order to avoid government regulation to where it is today.

While noting that the ESRB has made huge advances in connecting with its primary clientele (parents) and has even won over The National Institute on Media and the Family (NIMF), the article begins to detail “unaddressed challenges” from today’s videogame market that “pose serious threats to the ESRB's newfound relevance.”

Among these challenges is the ESRB’s current disinclination to rate online interactions (i.e. Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB):

The organization is missing out on a great opportunity to provide parents and children with a resource that enables informed choices beyond the enforced restriction of filters, a noble cause given that children play more online games than any other format.

A shift from brick and mortar retail outlets to digital distribution also poses “an immediate threat to ESRB compliance rates” says the piece’s author, Sara Grimes, who worries that this means that “the ESRB must rely on console manufacturers and mobile service providers to act as the system's new wardens.”

In summation, Grimes writes that “it’s almost as if the Board is orchestrating its own obsolescence.” She continued:

It's abstaining from involvement in significant game trends, failing to provide guidance where it is arguably needed most and handing over key governance responsibilities to certain members of the game industry while leaving others to fend for themselves.

Responding to a recent Bitmob piece which asked whether games can deliver a political message, a blogger has penned a resounding answer.

Yes, Video Games Are Political, written by Lee Bradley, begins by noting that independent games such as Cutthroat Capitalism, Kabul Kaboom! and Super Columbine Massacre RPG! all delivered hearty political statements, regardless of their reach or palatability.

Bradley then meanders through history, using Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Gordon Gekko in an attempt to illustrate that videogames of the 80’s reflected current politics, much as games today do.

Videogames, as cultural artifacts, are unescapably political. Even the most vacuous of games, despite their ostensible mindlessness, cannot fail to reflect the politics of the culture in which they were produced.

If the 80’s equaled “greed and me,” and resulted in a slew of games featuring lone heroes, then, Bradley argues, today’s political “notions of society and community are once again on the agenda” and are reflected in current titles like Left 4 Dead:

Even in games where the co-operative element of co-op is less pronounced, the ideology is the same; you are not on your own anymore, you are part of a team. What’s more that team is more than likely multi-cultural and/or multi-gender.

At least partly in response to a story on game addiction that ran on GP last week, author Neils Clark has written a piece that looks at fluff addiction stories.

Using his blog to examine the original article GP covered, a Green Pixels story on game addiction by Nicole Tanner, Clark offers up a nifty Top 10 list of gaming addiction issues brought up in Green Pixels’ original article.

The first issue Clark’s article—Big Trouble in Little Articles: Ten Game Addiction Fallacies—takes on is “Games Aren’t Drugs. While noting that drug analogies are inappropriate for videogames, Clark states:

While behavioral triggers don’t magically transfigure a game into an ingested substance, not all cravings, or even addictions, rely on ingested substances. So while straight drug analogies commit a logical fallacy, so also do presumptions that since games aren’t drugs, they cannot be the basis of an addiction.

Clark is the co-author of the book Game Addiction: The Experience and the Effects.

We’ve heard video games blamed for a lot of crazy things over the years but the “death of our planet”? 

Well, that’s a new one.

Yoshiyuki Tomino (left), creator of the long-running Mobile Suit Gundam series, delivered the keynote at Japan’s CEDEC 2009 game developers’ conference and offered a rather strong negative opinion on the subject of video games and how they affect our lives.

I think that video games are evil.  [Gaming] is not a type of activity that provides any support to our daily lives, and all these consoles are just consuming electricity! Let's say we have about three billion people on this planet wasting their time, bringing no productivity at all. Add 10 billion more people, and what would happen to our planet? Video games are assisting the death of our planet!

Those are some pretty surprising comments coming from a man whose franchise has spawned more than 100 video games over the last couple decades. Tomino, who thinks nothing’s bested Tetris since it came out over 20 years ago, offered the attending developers advice on how to proceed from here on out.

You have to find the median -- that games are not evil, perhaps not necessarily good either, but something that can be considered a pastime…

 

This is what I want to tell you: I want you to create a game that does not negatively affect our daily lives and is something that is considered more productive.

AE:  I can’t help but imagine a slack-jawed look of disbelief from the game developers in attendance.

Via: Gamasutra

-Reporting from San Diego, GamePolitics Senior Correspondent Andrew Eisen…

Xbox 360 maker Microsoft is playing defense against a lawsuit filed in a Wisconsin court by a disgruntled gamer who claims that his console scratched game discs.

The Madison Record reports that plaintiff Jason Johnson's suit is proceeding after Madison County Circuit Judge Daniel Stack denied Microsoft's motion to dismiss the case. Although Judge Stack threw out two counts, he ruled that two others may proceed. Johnson is seeking $50,000 plus costs. From the newspaper:

Johnson is suing the company for alleged defects in its X-Box 360 video game console. Johnson alleges the company sold the product knowing it scratched video games and made them unplayable...

 

Johnson is seeking damages from the Washington-based company's alleged violation of the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act, negligence, breach of implied warranty and strict product liability.

According to the newspaper account, Microsoft's attorney argued that the suit should be dismissed because Johnson didn't personally buy his 360; the system was a gift from his wife. That's a pretty silly argument and Judge Stack apparently thought so too.

Take-Two Interactive announced yesterday that it has reached a $20 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit filed over the 2005 Hot Coffee scandal.

Although T2's press release is regrettably light on details, securities are mentioned, indicating that  this case is related to loss of equity value caused by Hot Coffee and its fallout.

Venture Beat has dug up a link to the complaint, Feninger vs. Take-Two. Kotaku offers an explanation of the details:

The nut of the allegations contained in the 34-page suit, is that Take-Two was spending more than it was bringing in and couldn't survive until the next Grand Theft Auto. So, the suit alleges, the company pushed Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas out the door knowing that there was pornographic material in the game because delays would have cost the company too much. If the material was known to be in the, the suit continues, major retailers wouldn't have sold it.

The outcome, according to the suit, was inflated stock prices based on bad or uninformed information from the company and a plunge in stock values when the truth came out.

The suit also alleges that Take-Two lied about the included sex scenes, nicknamed Hot Coffee, when they first came to light, with the company the scenes were "the work of a determined group of hackers who have gone to significant trouble to alter scenes.'"

GP: We should point out that, as the record shows, the notion that Take-Two lied about the origin of the Hot Coffee scenes is a fact, not merely an allegation. In one the sleaziest moves ever seen in the game biz, Take-Two tried to pin the rap for the hidden sex scenes on its biggest fans, the GTA mod community. To be fair, there was a different management team in place back then.

Outspoken God of War designer David Jaffe posted a video rant against used game sales on Saturday, but apparently removed it from YouTube the following day.

We caught up to Jaffe's video yesterday morning while scanning our daily RSS intake (left). By late afternoon when we checked back to gather some quotes for this article, it was gone. In its place was a YouTube message reading, "This video has been removed by the user."

A short time later, when we looked again, we couldn't even access his blog. A system message from Blogger read: "This blog is open to invited readers only."

It's unclear why Jaffe's video was taken offline or why he locked his blog. While Jaffe's video argument against used game sales was punctuated by occasional f-bombs, that's not unusual for his freewheeling commentaries. Prior to being locked, readers of Jaffe's blog were engaged in a lively response to his video, both pro and con.

The used game issue is a passionate one indeed, and Jaffe has addressed it previously on his blog. For his part, Jaffe takes the standard industry line that games are bad for developers and publishers. In the deleted video, he said (we're paraphrasing from memory here) that he didn't begrudge consumers the right to buy used games, but that game creators deserved a cut of used game sales. He said that some have defended used game sales by comparing buying a used game to buying a used car. However, Jaffe said that was a bad analogy because while playing a used game is the same experience as playing a new game, driving a used car is a different experience from driving a new one.

GP: Hmmm... We tried to reach Jaffe via Twitter to ask him about the missing video, but it appears that his Twitter account is no longer active. We hope that Jaffe has not decided to stop interacting with gamers. While we don't always agree with his rants, they are provocative and entertaining.

The debate over graphic Japanese sex games such as the disgusting and controversial RapeLay continues with word that the United Nations is stepping in.

At a meeting earlier this month, the U.N.'s Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women called for a ban on explicit video games and anime. As reported by Anime News Network, the committee urged Japan to ban "the sale of video games or cartoons involving rape and sexual violence against women which normalize and promote sexual violence against women and girls."

The committee also expressed concern "at the normalization of sexual violence in the State party as reflected by the prevalence of pornographic video games and cartoons featuring rape, gang rape, stalking and the sexual molestation of woman and girls."

Via: Kotaku

Recently, GamePolitics reported on a million dollar Ebay listing for an Xbox 360 supposedly autographed by former Alasksa Governor Sarah Palin.

Canadian David Morrill told the Anchorage Daily News that he obtained the signature from Palin at a picnic event earlier in the summer. The auction was quickly removed by Ebay, however, with no explanation forthcoming.

Not long after, a second auction which advertised a "replica" of the original Palin 360 appeared. That listing, clearly a parody, also has been removed.

Now, David Sheets, who blogs about games for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, has a theory as to why the original listing was taken down. Sheets believes that Palin's first name is misspelled:

Game Guy thinks he knows why the bid was yanked. If you look closely at the signature, former Gov. Palin’s first name appears to lack the final “h.” Last he heard, she spelled her first name “Sarah,” not “Sara.” Even Alaska’s official website spells it with an “h.”

And hey, you can’t ask for a cool $1.1 million for a signed Xbox if the signee can’t spell her name correctly.

GP: I'm no handwriting expert, but I'm not so sure that I buy into Sheets's theory. For one thing, the ex-Guv's purported autograph tails off after the "r" in "Sarah," as if she (or whoever wrote it) was signing hastily. So the missing "h" is not all that farfetched. Beyond that, the authenticity of high-priced autographs is always an issue, which may have prompted the Ebay removal.

Video game publisher SouthPeak Interactive announced late yesterday that former Take-Two CEO Paul Eibeler (left) is joining its board of directors.

Judging from the language of its press release, SouthPeak appears to regard the addition of Eibeler, named Worst CEO of 2005 by MarketWatch, as good news:

“As one of the most respected executives in the interactive games industry, we welcome Paul to the Board of Directors,” said Terry Phillips, Chairman of SouthPeak. “His depth of experience will certainly be an asset to SouthPeak growth as a major publisher.”

Paul Eibeler is best known for his leadership at Take-Two Interactive...

Eibeler is indeed best known for his days at Take-Two. It was under his watch that the Hot Coffee scandal rocked the video game industry, with the Grand Theft Auto publisher inexcusably blaming the now well-known sex scenes on the GTA mod community before ultimately 'fessing up that it was original content.

Eibeler's reign was also plagued by securities investigations which led to charges against several past employees (although not against Eibeler). The former CEO was ousted by a 2007 shareholder revolt led by current T2 chairman Strauss Zelnick. Eibeler exited with a $2.5 million golden parachute.