Pwn Or Die has posted this short but funny parody of the classic AYB... with a presidential campaign twist.

Today's Sydney Morning Herald reports on a viral YouTube fad involving mash-ups of 2004 Adolf Hitler bio-pic Downfall.

In one version the evil dictator gets banned from World of Warcraft (hit the video). In another der fuehrer is booted from Xbox Live. From the SMH:

In yet another case of an online parody taking on a life of its own, hundreds of internet jokers are dubbing over a scene from the film Downfall, in which Hitler explodes with anger when told he has lost World War II...

 

The narratives include Hitler fulminating about being kicked off Xbox Live, football star Cristiano Ronaldo leaving Manchester United to join Real Madrid, Barack Obama giving a speech in Berlin and being forced to see an Adam Sandler movie.

 

Other Downfall clips include Hitler reacting to having his car stolen, being banned from World of Warcraft, Hillary Clinton's nomination defeat, getting rejected from university and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's disastrous Glasgow byelection results.

Over at BlipTV we found this:

"Swift Kick Moms for Truth" is a one-minute “machinima” video featuring virtual versions of Obama’s grandma and McCain’s mother scolding the candidates for their deceptive ads. Lead-in by virtual Tom Brokaw.

 

Created in the Second Life virtual world by Machinima by Silver and Goldie, with voice artist Mark Winston.

The title, of course, harkens back to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group, which trashed John Kerry's 2004 presidential bid. The term "swiftboating" has since become part of the language, denoting a smear campaign.

This video, however, is both non-partisan and just for fun.

In this video Richard Garriott aka Lord British phones in an appearance - from Russia - with Stephen Colbert.

As GamePolitics has reported, Garriott's baggage for his trip to to the International Space Station includes a sample of Colbert's DNA.

Garriott, of course, is best known as the creator of the Ultima RPG series.

In the last of this week's three-part series on video games, the CBS Evening News offers an interview with Aerosmith's Joe Perry, who talks about how Guitar Hero is changing the music business.

CBS News correspondent Daniel Sieberg interviews Will Wright about Spore. It's a DRM-free conversation and the second installment of this week's three-parter, The Games Our Children Play.

Catch part one, detailing the landmark Teens, Video Games & Civics report issued by the Pew Internet & American Life Project here.

As GamePolitics noted yesterday, newsman Daniel Sieberg is reporting a three-part series, "The Games Our Children Play," this week on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.

The first installment ran last evening and featured Amanda Lenhart of the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Earlier yesterday Pew released Teens, Video Game & Civics, a comprehensive study on the role of games in the lives of modern American youth. Said Lenhart:

I think we have this image that people who play games are playing them alone in a dark basement and in fact what we found is that the majority of teens engage with other people most of the time... There's a real promise here to harness the enthusiasm of young people for games and to use that to help them learn things more effectively in the classroom.

GP: It is a significant moment for video gaming when a network news program begins to wonder if games are actually a positive force. Maybe especially when it's this network news program, since anchor Katie Couric has generally been dismissive of games in the past. 

Chalk the newfound respect up to the Pew study, which will go a long way toward establishing positive buzz for gaming among traditional media outlets as well as mainstream, non-gaming types in government and academia.

Click To Play

The Click Heard Round the World has a recap of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's Second Life appearance yesterday. Albright was streamed into SL by way of a live video feed:

The LBJ School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin hosted an address by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright. I got to watch and participate in this event at the GSD&M Idea City Island Amphitheatre in Second Life... It was a good crowd for a foreign policy talk, with 50-some avatars present in-world.

 

I asked Ms. Albright about her thoughts on the role of the United States in relation to the International Criminal Court... I loved Madeleine Albright's closing words: "This is exactly the kind of interchange, both in first life and Second Life, that will allow us to figure our way through the 21st century in a better way."

A new video trailer which shows off the cooperative mode in the upcoming Saints Row 2 features likenesses of presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama engaging in full-on gameplay.

And in Saints Row, of course, that means full-on violent gameplay...

A disgruntled former GameStop employee who goes by WhistleBlowerZero has posted a nine-part YouTube video series detailing his view of why gamers can do better elsewhere.

Done in the style of Zero Punctuation, The videos are very funny and somewhat NSFW - especially if you work at GameStop.

GP: And - just wondering here - is there such a thing as a "gruntled" former employee?

Via: Kotaku

Click To Play

On Saturday at PAX, Entertainment Consumers Association president Hal Halpin and Spike TV's Geoff Keighley veered from the typical panel format by offering a "casual conversation."

For the better part of an hour Hal and Geoff discussed a variety of topics of importance to gamers. Hal also took a number of questions from attendees.

We've got the video, and it's worth checking out...

FULL DISCLOSURE DEPT: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics.

Recently, GamePolitics reported that Xbox and Rock the Vote would be teaming up on voter registration at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

Here's some brand-new video footage of Guitar Hero being played on a big screen at a Rock the Vote DNC booth. We presume the game is running on an Xbox 360.

Utah's KSL-5 reports that a 27-year-old man who led state police on a 100 MPH chase before causing a fiery accident said that such risky driving had always worked for him in video games.

Daniel Savino survived the crash with just a bad case of road rash but now faces a laundry list of criminal charges:

As for motive, Savino told troopers this was his own video game adventure.

 

"I don't know whether he was trying to act out a scene in a video game or what he was trying to do, but he said it always worked for him in video games," Roden said.

Tucson's News-4 has a report on a study being conducted by the American Library Association to see whether games can make kids smarter and more literate:

Pima County's library system is one of a dozen in the country participating in a study to find out if video games improve literacy... 

 

...Luis Aguilar, 11, helped organize a video game club.  In the process, he learned filmmaking skills to create a five minute movie about it. Luis believes the games are making him smarter, "Because it helps you with memory, memorizing stuff and hand eye coordination."

 

If national research verifies these kids' experiences, the American Library Association would like to create a video game curriculum for all libraries to use. 

The 2008 presidential campaign is getting ugly, what with a John McCain TV spot that paints Barack Obama as a celebrity lightweight in the grand tradition of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and the Obama campaign fighting back with sharp words about McCain.

Given the nasty political climate, Darren Gladstone of PC World (who clearly has too much time on his hands) decided to use Soul Calibur 4's custom character creator to let martial arts versions of the prez candidates go mano-a-mano:

Barack always struck me as a Jeet Kun Do master: nimble, deadly with his words--and with a pair of nunchucks. McCain? This guy's tough as nails. I don't know if I could've made it through half the stuff he did, so, of course, I have to equip him with the biggest mallet available.

 

Barack has youth on his side, so of course he's dancing rings around McCain... But stand still too long, and the cagey Vietnam vet is gonna deliver a haymaker: his mile-long service record.

Long Island's Regional News Network has a video report on New York's controversial video game law...

The much-anticipated Jace Hall Show segment with game-hatin' Florida attorney Jack Thompson is now live...

Clearly, as Thompson has suggested, the episode was scripted for laughs.

Want to show off your best GTA IV stunts?

You'd better post it on YouTube since video hosting site Vimeo has decided that it will no longer accept game play footage unless it is of the machinima variety. Currently hosted videos containing "game walk-throughs, game strategy videos, depictions of player vs player battles, raids, fraps," etc. will be deleted on September 1st.

A post on the service's staff blog explains the decision:

The Vimeo staff does not feel that videos which are direct captures of video game play truly constitute "creative expression". Further, such videos may expose Vimeo to liability from the game creator(s), as we have already seen action from popular video game companies against videos such as these... Gaming videos are by nature significantly larger and longer than any other genre on Vimeo...

 

This decision was not easy, and there was much debate internally; however, we feel this decision will benefit Vimeo in the long run and better benefit the video makers it was created for. Our resources are limited and they must be channeled towards maintaining our goals.

 

Negative reaction to the decision is beginning to trickle in. From Spinfocalypse:

The reasons cited seem to be a little contradictory and subjective... “Creative Expression” is not something I’d personally want to touch, because it gets into a social subjectivity issue. A game video for one person may not be ‘creative’ and a ‘lip-dub’ video may not be to another...

 

The second reason cited is the ‘processing time’... This part of Vimeo’s argument is rather weak– and as someone always looking for reliable video hosting– doesn’t give me much faith in the ability of their transcoders or stability of their bandwidth... Game videos can be one second or one hour, the same as traditional video...

 

What’s a bit disturbing about Vimeo’s decision is that a service is taking the role of editorial... Games, gamers, game videos– however you view them– will be forced into a box and segregated because of perceived notions about the space... I know I’ve personally exposed people to ideas and concepts, by way of games, that don’t require anyone to play or have an interest in games. That just won’t be happening on Vimeo anymore.

Just for Laughs serves up spoof video about a fictitious company engaged in making games with political themes...

With his remaining time as a licensed attorney likely numbered in days rather than decades, you might think that anti-game campaigner Jack Thompson would be in something of a funk.

However, Thompson has e-mailed GamePolitics with a YouTube link to a new G4TV parody called Jack Thompson Was Right. His subject line? "Very Funny, Really"...

However, when we jumped over to YouTube the video was gone, and the following notice posted: "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by g4 Media Inc."

No worries. G4TV still has the video...