Here is an odd use for Guitar Hero: as a control device for an interactive, flaming sculpture. Artist Chris Marion has done just that using a Guitar Hero guitar controller. Marion connected a a microcontroller to a Guitar Hero guitar and programmed the buttons to control five propane jets. The result is a fiery interactive sculpture he calls "FireHero."

Marion says that "the player simply watches a video of the Guitar Hero chart and plays on the guitar accordingly." Watch the video to the left to see it in action.

chrismarion.net via Joystiq

WedBush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter says that the technical problems associated with the Windows PC and PS3 versions of Call of Duty: Black Ops will have "no impact" on the reputations of developer Treyarch or publisher Activision.

Pachter says that, despite the number of errors the game has had on the platforms and post-patch problems for some users, there will be no backlash from the community because Treyarch is responding quickly to the problems.

Treyarch released a patch this week to address the known issues with the game, but some users are complaining about connection issues still.

Yesterday Treyarch community manager Josh Olin issued a statement on the official site for the game, letting the community know that the company was aware of problems post-patch and working on a solution:

In addition to being censored in Germany, Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops will be receiving a few trims for its release in Japan as well.

A few weeks ago, Square-Enix, who is distributing the title in Japan, announce that in order to comply with standards set by the CERO ratings board, it would be removing “all scenes of dismemberment and ‘expressions of brutality.’”  These cuts would apply to the both the subtitled and the dubbed versions of the game but the publisher promised that the zombie mode would remain untouched.

Turns out, that’s not the case.

Say, did you hear about those Chilean miners that were trapped in a collapsed mine for over two months?  You know, the ones that didn’t have any video games to help pass the time?  Well, all 33 of them were successfully rescued yesterday and to celebrate the occasion, Namco Bandai released an image (seen at left) of characters from its Mr. Driller games superimposed over the Chilean flag with the phrase “Welcome Back!” and the date at the top.

Someone must have found this gesture to be in rather poor taste as Namco Bandai quickly pulled the image, saying on its Twitter that it “lacked consideration.”

"We would like to offer a profound apology to everyone. It was inexcusable."

It’s unknown at this time who raised a fuss.

Yet another new ailment threatens gamers, this one specifically targeting those who might use laptops to play games for hours a day.

“Toasted skin syndrome” is the layman’s term for erythema ab igne, described as a “reticular, pigmented, sometimes telangiectatic dermatosis” and it originates from prolonged exposure to a heat or an infrared source.

In a study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and reported on by AP, Swiss researchers discussed the condition appearing in a 12-year old boy who played computer games for a “few hours every day for several months.”

The man known best as Major Nelson in the Xbox Live community was the bearer of bad news today: Xbox Live subscription costs will be going up in November of this year. The news was met with a mixture of disdain, anger and apathy. Starting November 1, 2010, a 1 year subscription will cost $59.99, a $10 increase over what a 1 year subscription currently cost consumers. Price changes will take place in the United States, Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom. In addition to that, he issued the following short statement to multiple web sites:

"When originally launched in 2002, a Gold subscription cost the same as an AAA video game," he wrote in an email. "When taking into account for inflation… and the additional services available to Gold subscribers in 2010, such as ESPN, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Last.fm and Video Kinect, a $10 price increase still represents an incredible value to consumers."

A full breakdown of the numbers can be found below, but Major Nelson emphasized that those who renew before November can extend that yearly subscription at its current price. Breakdown below:

The wife of a Lake County, Florida police officer tried to push her husband’s buttons by taking away his PlayStation 3 and, unfortunately, succeeded all too well, with the end result that the sheriff’s deputy reportedly grabbed and choked her.

A WFTV.com story on the incident names the officer as 29-year old Gary French. His wife, a sheriff’s office dispatcher, came up with the ill-conceived plan to threaten to take away French’s PS3 following an argument. When she touched the console, he “grabbed her by the neck, put her in a choke hold and lifted her away from the PS3.”

Neighbor Joyce Roberson wasn’t impressed with French’s actions, stating, “Well him being a cop he ought to know better, that's not cool.”

Gamers are very familiar with BFG Tech and their graphics cards. But some owners of their most recent ones will find that the lifetime warranty the company promised in the box when they bought their cards is no longer being honored by the company in the face of a reorganization. Now you know that when a company says "lifetime guarantee" they don't mean the life of the product - they mean the life of the company's interest in the product.

Some consumers, looking for return merchandise authorization (RMA) codes from BFG Tech to return defective merchandise, are instead receiving denial letters. These letters - short, sweet and to the point, say the following:

A teacher arrested after making a threat to kill hundreds of people was acquitted by a jury after clarification emerged that his remark was meant to reference the taking of virtual lives in videogame play, so that he could relieve stress.

Jason Davis was a teacher at Knox Central High School in Barbourville, Kentucky, when a student, and fellow online gamer who Davis often played with, hid some of Davis’ markers. Davis, according to Kentucky.com, was apparently having a rough day and this bit of tom foolery caused him to issue utterances about killing people to relieve stress, which was apparently taken out of context by students and resulted in his arrest in May of 2009 for second-degree terroristic threatening.

A jury needed only 10 minutes to conclude that Davis was not guilty. Davis spent a month in jail before coming up with bond, and is now unemployed as the school, before the incident, informed him that he would not be rehired.

Develop is reporting that “one of the biggest game companies in the world" used strong arm tactics to help kill tax breaks for UK videogame developers.

The unnamed company in question reportedly “spoke to well-placed parliament allies to dissuade any legislative measures.” Why would one company lobby so tirelessly against a measure that would help the industry as a whole? Develop wrote:

This company had apparently viewed game tax relief as a measure that would have given the UK an unfair advantage over other nations.

An unfair advantage? That phrase doesn’t make much sense considering the UK has fallen into fourth place (by some accounts) in terms of number of game developers, trailing Japan, the U.S. and Canada.

Ever wonder why you might feel more immersed in a first-person perspective  videogame than in a similar third-person title? A study by European researchers might help to provide a little insight.

The study seemed to show that male subjects, outfitted with virtual reality goggles, reacted more strongly to their on-screen female avatar being slapped when in first-person mode than in a third-person view.

Live Science sums up the research, in which male subjects were simultaneously stroked on their shoulder in real life, while their on-screen avatar was being similarly stroked on-screen by a virtual mother. Suddenly the virtual mom slapped the on-screen avatar three times in the face, resulting in the male subjects experiencing “rapid deceleration of their heart rates as a normal bodily response to a threat, because they reacted to the virtual slap as if it were real.”

The male participants did not exhibit the same results when taking part in a setup that utilized a third-person perspective.

A report from The Queensland Legislative Assembly of Australia on Alcohol-Related Violence inexplicably suggests that expanding research into the effects of violent videogames on youth might somehow provide more insight into the impact drinking has on people.

The inquiry (PDF), released last month, was drafted by the Law, Justice and Safety Committee and focuses on “alcohol related violence around licensed premises.” The report begins by asking, “What has happened to Australia’s drinking culture?” and claims that “Vomiting, falling over, and creating a nuisance in public are not seen as shameful but to some are badges of honour.”

Guys looking for a female to game with are in luck, as long as they have a few bucks.

A new service called GameCrush is launching today and boasts a roster of around 1,200 available ladies to game with reports IGN. Guys, called Players, can browse online profiles of the girls, dubbed PlayDates, who can set their moods to “flirty” or dirty.” $8.25 will by you 500 credits, or enough—with tip—for a 10-minute Xbox Live session.

The same fee will buy you six minutes of play in a Flash-based casual game for the PC, which is embedded in the GameCrush website. The price is higher for the PC service because the girls will video chat with a Player while the game goes on, versus the audio only Xbox Live service.

Police responding to a report of a burglary inadvertently went to the wrong door and handcuffed a group of game developers.

Denver-based IllFonic was the recipient of the unwarranted armed visit, which GamePron details on their website. The developer’s studio is right next to a medical marijuana dispensary, which was where the alarm was triggered from (probably not the first time or the last either). GamePron also has an embedded YouTube video of the whole incident as captured by a surveillance camera. The developers were cuffed, but quickly released once their identities were verified.

The South Korean parents of a three-month old allegedly fed their gaming habits obsessively while neglecting their daughter, who effectively starved to death.

The 41-yeard old husband and his 25-year old wife, identified only as “the Kims,” spent up to 12 hours every night at Internet cafés playing games, according to a story on ABC. The couple came home one morning last September, after spending the whole night out, and alerted authorities upon finding their daughter deceased.

An autopsy revealed that the baby’s death came about from malnourishment. The Kims subsequently confessed that they had been feeding their daughter “rotten, powdered milk and had often spanked their crying baby.”

In a sinister bit of irony, officials reported that instead of taking care of their real child, who was born prematurely, the couple was infatuated with raising a virtual daughter in the massively multiplayer online game PRIUS.

The article also features a quote from Dr. Kim Sang Eun, of Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, who believes game addiction is a brain disease. She stated, “there's no certain clinical indicator to define 'game addiction' but our study shows that brain PET [scan] images of suspected online game addicts are very similar to that of a cocaine addict.”

The parents were arrested on Wednesday.

The University of Alabama professor who stands accused of killing three of her peers last Friday is now, of course, linked with a popular role-playing game.

The Boston Herald, citing a source, claims that suspected shooter Amy Bishop was a fan of Dungeons & Dragons and actually met her husband at Northeastern University through an on-campus D&D club. The source told the paper that “They [Bishop and her husband] even acted this crap out.”

Bishop’s husband, James Anderson, described the pair’s immersion in D&D as a “passing interest.” He added, “It was a social thing more than anything else. It’s not the crazy group people think they are.”

The Herald reached deep down to offer the following insight into the topic of D&D and its potential influence on players:

Some experts have cited the D&D backgrounds of people who were later involved in violent crimes, while others say it just a game.

Another Herald piece paints Bishop as slightly unhinged, detailing an incident in 2002 at an International House of Pancakes where Bishop allegedly punched another woman in the face for taking the restaurant’s last child booster seat.


Thanks E.Zachary Knight via the Shoutbox!

Erik Estavillo, the litigious gamer who has gone after Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony and Activision Blizzard (among others), has turned his sights on the gaming press.

In a complaint filed January 25th in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Estavillo listed GameSpot.com, IGN.com, G4TV.com, GameInformer.com, 1UP.com, Joystiq.com, Kotaku.com, GayGamer.com, QJ.net, SarcasticGamer.com, MMORPG.com, NBC, FOX and DepecheMode.com as defendants.

Plaintiff wishes to charge all previously listed entities with libel, as “many of the articles [on these websites] are full of intended insults to the plaintiff.” Additionally, Estavillo is charging QJ.net and SarcasticGamer.com with worker discrimination. Plaintiff claims that emails with these two sites will show that they agreed to hire him as an intern, or unpaid writer. After “a week of silence” from both sites, both indicated an unwillingness to employ Estavillo.

GamePolitics and The Escapist were two sites labeled by Estavillo as being “fair and neutral” to the plaintiff, resulting in the pair not being sued or charged with wrongdoing.

DepecheMode.com is also being charged with barring plaintiff from their forums, subsequently stopping him from “expressing himself in their forums via his First Amendment Right.”

Estavillo is seeking $10,000 per article written “ingenuously” against him and $5,000 per message board thread (specifically mentioned in this category are DepecheMode.com, MMORPG.com and IGN.com).

Estavillo is also seeking to be unbanned from the DepecheMode.com forums.

GP: While Mr. Estavillo continued to remain active in recent times, we sensed here at GamePolitics that it was time to cut down on, or eliminate, coverage of him.

Erik did indeed inquire about an internship here at GamePolitics as well. Digging though sent items, here is what we relayed to Estavillo exactly:

I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but one reason I was cautioning you against all these lawsuits is that your credibility has been somewhat compromised, even as your name becomes "famous." I guess it's a trade off of sorts.

What’s a little unnerving about the lawsuit is that Estavillo, in emailing us at least, continually insinuated that it was OK for us to make fun of his statements and he really seemed to enjoy being labeled a “serial suer” or “professional plaintiff,” whatever it took to get his name out there and to become more “famous.” I suppose we are just helping his cause at this point, but it was thought that perhaps we could provide a little insight into the situation.

A Buffalo Grove, Illinois boy called 911 after his parents took away his Xbox console as punishment.

The boy hung up, reports The Chicago Tribune, but as a matter of routine, an officer was dispatched to the home just in case. The boy apparently admitted to making the call and asked a cop whether his parents were within their rights taking away his game system. A police officer assured him that they were.

A Police Commander told the paper that he did not know why the boy was being punished. Police further advised the boy to listen to his parents.

A trailer for a rather bizarre erotic Japanese game imagines an alien ship accidentally taking out the Prime Minister of Japan, aliens then substituting a girl for the PM and brainwashing all mankind in order to enable the ruse.

My Girlfriend is the President (thanks? Kotaku) is an entry in the eroge category of games, and appears to be on sale already in Japan, as a 10/30/2009 date is listed at the end of the trailer.

Perhaps even better than the trailer for the game is a mashup video that combines music from the game and interjects current heads of state. Click here to go to YouTube for that one.

Both videos are rather tame and should be safe for work viewing.

If you’ve been up nights wondering what Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima thought about U.S. President Barack Obama winning a Nobel Peace Prize, today’s your lucky day. Or not.

On his Konami blog, via Joystiq, Kojima put out some thoughts on the matter that may or may not have been lost in translation. He posed a few questions, “Has the era at last started shifting?” and “The start of the Peace Walker plan?” before adding that “Peace will not walk to you. You must both walk towards one another.”

In his possible defense, Kojima was blogging from the gym.

Tuesday afternoon, Jack Thompson sent me his press release announcing that he was suing Facebook “for posting “Jack Thompson Groups” that call for his death and physical harm.”

Thompson sent three faxes to Facebook’s CEO demanding the immediate removal of the offending groups but after five weeks had received no response and the groups remained where they were.

I asked Thompson if he had tried simply clicking on the Report Group link (found at the bottom of every Facebook group) or emailing abuse@facebook.com.  According to the Facebook Safety page, complaints submitted via these methods will be addressed within 24 hours and those who email will receive a response within 72 hours detailing what actions, if any, were taken.

He responded by calling me a “total moron.”

So, I browsed Facebook and found about 80 Jack Thompson groups.  Most were of the “I Hate Jack Thompson” or “Jack Thompson is a Douche” variety but I did find three that condoned violence towards the man.  I picked a group called “I will pay $50 to anyone who punches Jack Thompson in the face” and clicked the Report Group link.  Unsurprisingly, the group was removed less than a day later. (Old link to the now deleted group)

Incidentally, this particular group turned out to be the first of four cited in Thompson’s complaint. 

So, you’re welcome, Thompson. 

Glad I could help.
 
-Reporting from San Diego, GamePolitics Senior Correspondent Andrew Eisen...

A new, freeware game, based loosely on Space Invaders, serves up quirky game play that can result in files being deleted off a player’s computer permanently.

Aptly entitled Lose/Lose, the game generates alien sprites based on random files from a user’s computer. If aliens are shot at and destroyed, or make contact with the player’s ship, the corresponding file is deleted off the PC.

Users who don't want to risk cherished files can watch a video of game play on the title's website.

Zach Gage, the game’s developer, poses the question:

As technology grows, our understanding of it diminishes, yet, at the same time, it becomes increasingly important in our lives. At what point does our virtual data become as important to us as physical possessions? If we have reached that point already, what real objects do we value less than our data?

In response to a Federal Communications Commission Public Notice seeking comments on how the term “broadband” should be defined, AT&T labeled gaming as an “aspirational” online service.

While basic web-browsing capabilities and email were termed core services in the brief dated August 31, 2009, gaming was lumped in with streaming video and real-time voice services. AT&T noted:

…for Americans who today have no terrestrial broadband service at all, the pressing concern is not the ability to engage in real-time, two-way gaming, but obtaining meaningful access to the Internet’s resources and to reliable email communications and other basic tools that most of the country has come to expect as a given.

The Entertainment Software Association replied to the FCC on September 9, 2009, taking umbrage with AT&T’s comments. Kenneth L. Doroshow, The ESA’s Senior Vice President and General Counsel stated:

Online video games are a meaningful part of our participative culture. They remove geographic barriers, connecting people from across the country and around the world. They teach cooperation, cultivate leadership skills, and empower users to express their creativity. Increasingly, games are used for training purposes and to educate students about complex social issues. Entertaining does not mean trivial.

South Carolina State Senator Robert Ford (D) has introduced a bill that, essentially, seeks to outlaw profanity.

S.56 would prohibit the public utterance or publication of printed material containing profanity. It would also make it illegal to "exhibit or otherwise make available material containing words, language, or actions of a profane, vulgar, lewd, lascivious, or indecent nature."

On the video game front, presumably, this might encompass the F-bombs included not only in Grand Theft Auto IV's dialogue but in Band of Brothers: Hell's Highway and various other M-rated games. Movies, books, websites, magazines, music and cable TV, of course, would also be threatened.

The proposal would make the dissemination of such profanity a felony, punishable by five years in jail or a $5,000 fine. Or both.

Via: Slashdot

How awesome is your gaming rig’s sound system?
 
Hopefully it’s a little quieter than that of an unlucky 21-year-old Copenhagen man and his friend.
 
According to a report on QJ.net, the two gamer buddies were playing an unspecified PlayStation 3 title with the sound cranked up to 11.

A concerned neighbor called the local gendarmes in the belief that the sound of gunfire coming from next door was the real deal.  Perhaps thinking that a full-scale war had broken out, a Danish SWAT team was activated. The cops used a megaphone to order the men to come out and surrender.
 
The noisy gamers wisely put their controllers down without a fight and were arrested on suspicion of mayhem. They were soon released after a search of their apartment uncovered no firearms.
 
Thanks to: GP regular Shadow D. Darkman
 
-Reporting from San Diego, GamePolitics Correspondent Andrew Eisen isn’t sure what game his neighbors are playing but it’s definitely rated AO…

 

A report in the Beijing Morning Post describes the plight of Xiao Cai, a 23-year-old man whose alleged addiction to online games caused him to attempt suicide four times.

At least one of those tries involved swallowing steel blades (in-game sword imagery?)

Chinese media site Danwei translates:

Xiao Cai was so addicted to the Internet that his mental well-being was affected. He wanted to kill himself, so he ingested saw blades... Currently his condition is stable...

 

After his mother finished feeding him, Xiao Cai became a little restless and started to fidget... He was mouthing phrases from online games, and would occasionally laugh...

Xiao Cai began playing online games in junior high school. A while after this a female netizen betrayed him, and he was so hurt that he put the majority of his time into playing online games. Xiao Cai became more and more addicted to the Internet, even to the point of being affected mentally... Before he ingested saw blades, he had also ingested sleeping pills and pesticides...

Critics have blamed violent video games for a number of egregious behaviors over the years, from school shootings to attacks on homeless people to garden variety aggressiveness.

But an article on the American Spectator posits a new - and baffling - theory of game blame. Writing for the conservative website, author Bill Croke blames violent game fans for the illegal slaughtering of animals.

By way of makinghis case, Croke mentions a couple of research studies linking violent games to negative behavior and, in an impressive leap of faith, draws a link between games and the wanton killing of wildlife:

It's a sickeningly familiar story. Two moose shot and left to rot... Two yearling grizzly bears killed... An increasing wasted antelope body count... Senselessly murdered mule deer left on the ground... All this has nothing to do with the legal autumn hunting seasons... it's "thrill killing," as wildlife managers call it... It's actually a national problem.

According to studies extant, these wildlife atrocities are committed mostly by young men aged 15 to 22, the video game generation. Much has been written about the nihilistic violence that kids are exposed to when they play some of these games...

I think it might be an easy jump to get up from a computer game, go out and pull the trigger on an elk or a deer, and then walk away with a laugh. After all, it's only a game... Yet, I think our four-legged friends will get a break soon, as the video game-thrill killing trend graduates to a higher plane: human beings.

Video games are mindless, as are the parents who let their kids play them.

UPDATE: Following up on GP's coverage, What They Play made a call to the Salmon, Idaho Public Library (Croke mentions watching teens play shoot-em-up games there in a portion of his column not cited by GP):

Interestingly, a call to the Salmon, Idaho Public Library revealed that they do not, in fact, carry video games which obviously casts some doubt over how thorough Croke has really been in his "research" for this piece. "We do not carry games, just books, DVDs, CDs, and books on tape," said the nice lady who answered the phone.

The Timothy Plan, a Florida investment firm which bills itself as "conservative Christian," is warning holiday-shopping parents away from what it calls the 30 "most offensive" video games.

While the usual suspects (GTA IV, Saints Row 2, Blitz the League II) make the list, there are some surprises as well, including the T-rated Bully: Scholarship Edition and World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.

In its game rankings, the organization displays an obvious anti-gay bias. While it evaluates titles for sex and nudity, a gay/lesbian rating is also included, meaning that a game with a gay sexual encounter might get a double whammy when compared to a game where the sex is of the straight variety. This effect, for instance, pushes Fable II onto the group's most offensive list. Along that line a report prepared by the Timothy Plan contains this rather bizarre comment:

Army of Two: Homosexual Encounters: ...Somewhat homo-erotic undertones between the two main characters are present.

WoW made it onto the dirty thirty, thanks to a high "addiction" rating as well as a high rating for alcohol use (curse you, Noggenfogger elixir!).

How the group determined the addiction rank is really quite unfathomable. WoW received a 3, for example, the worst possible rating, while Lord of the Rings Online got a 1 and Age of Conan a 2. In fact, all of the MMOs were tagged for addiction as well as some multiplayer games like Halo 3. A few games (The Darkness, Devil May Cry 4) were punished for "demonic" references.

Timothy Plan president Art Ally (left) comments:

Many, if not most, parents who buy their kids video games really don't know the extent of sex and violence imbedded in them. From drug use, prostitution, murder and mayhem to vulgar profanity and blasphemy these games have become a powerfully negative influence on our kids...

 

I believe, if parents would take a moment to look at the report we've created, their game selections would be quite different.

The group maintains a corporate "hall of shame" which includes game publishers EA, Take-Two and Microsoft. The Timothy Plan also offers to screen your portfolio to see if any of your mutual funds have investments in shameful companies.

So helpful!

Document Dump: Get the Timothy Plan's game score card here. The group's press release with holiday shopping warnings is here.

You may or may not buy into the idea that game addiction exists, but doctors at southern Italy's Lecce Hospital (note to self: don't get sick in Lecce) recently diagnosed a 13-year-old boy with "PlayStation addiction."

Then again, the news is coming through the filter of a politician. As reported by Ananova:

At first doctors... thought Lorenzo Amato was suffering from a stroke or a severe brain disorder.

The teenager couldn't speak and didn't seem to understand anything going on around him. Then doctors discovered he'd just finished a marathon session on his new Playstation.

Local politician Antonio Buccoliero, who spoke to the doctors, said: "They eventually managed to take care of him once they understood that this was a strange kind of mental detachment connected to his Playstation."

The boy supposedly told his father to get rid of the PlayStation, saying, "If I even think about it I want to throw up."

If comments by the head of the Copyright Alliance are any indication of things to come, it's going to be difficult, indeed, for video game consumers to have an intelligent and productive dialogue on IP issues with the video game industry. The ESA, which represents U.S. video game publishers, is a member of the copyright lobbying group.

A portion of a recent blog entry by Copyright Alliance executive director Patrick Ross seeks to marginalize those who would question or criticize the current state of IP law. Ross displays a discouraging mentality reminiscent of the Bush administration's efforts to paint Iraq War critics as soft on national defense.

With elected officials, consumer interest groups and gamers asking legitimate questions about issues like SecuROM DRM, the DMCA, ACTA, PRO-IP, and ownership of user-created content, we were disheartened to read these words from Ross:

Copyright truly is a consensus issue, with people and policymakers of all stripes recognizing its value. A few vocal blogs and a few sympathetic media outlets tend to create this notion of a war between creative industries and, well, I suppose consumers, but such a war doesn’t really exist.

The Copyright Alliance head implies that if one does not get behind IP protection as the content industry sees it, then one is either on the fringe, supportive of piracy, or both. In other words, If you're not with us, you're against us.

That's nonsense.

Honest people don't support piracy. But neither do honest people wish - or deserve - to live in an IP police state where tech-challenged elected officials accept IP industry campaign donations and proceed to pass laws that are heavily, if not completely, slanted toward big business.

Get a clue, Mr. Ross.