A recent screening of Spencer Halpin’s Moral Kombat documentary featured a post-show panel of game experts discussing some of the topics presented in the film.

The screening took place on November 11th in San Francisco. Members of the roundtable included Wired’s Chris Kohler, Dean Takahashi from Venure Beat, Lorne Lanning of Oddworld Inhabitants and Spencer Halpin.

Perhaps the most interesting response was that of Lanning’s in response to the question of why violence and videogames is still such a hot topic:

They (media groups) want the sensationalism. They will broadcast anytime there’s a shooting; they will find people that have a very specific, loud, sensational, fearful opinion of it, and they will give them prime airtime. If you add up those minutes of airtime it’s actually a fair amount of penetration into the public mind.

But then, we look at the court cases and the Supreme Court decisions and court decisions in nine states, at the time I looked into it. And all of them, throughout all of these cases… they were sham cases. Those court cases, and the results of that, never get any airtime, because that’s not selling news. So we wind up with a very distorted opinion from the public perspective, those that rely on the corporate media. The results of the court case maybe be on page 9, probably on page 19 and take up a tenth of a page.

Meanwhile, when the sensationalism happens… the critics, with false claims that they are never held to, get a lot of exposure and that exposure compounds. We see this in so many things… in the lead up to the war, in healthcare… When it was a hot topic, we could count on the coverage being in a certain direction and I think we can continue to count on that because the media behavior isn’t changing for the better, if anything it can pretty much be proven it’s changing for the worse.

The full post-film discussion is available on YouTube in four segments: part one, part two, part three and part four.

Disclosure: Filmmaker Spencer Halpin is the brother of Entertainment Consumers Association president Hal Halpin. The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics.

Kotaku editor Mike Fahey has written a wonderfully detailed and candid first-person account of his addiction to EverQuest.

Fahey begins his story in late 2000, noting that he had a job, a car and a girlfriend. Shortly after, following the breakup of his relationship, he was enticed to join the online world of EverQuest at the behest of his roommate. Falling completely for the game he soon found himself unemployed, his car towed and his wallet empty. While he rebounded for a time, he apparently committed the long rumored, rarely admitted geek-sin of turning down relations for a chance to hit level 40 with his character.

Mike again rebounded, turning his addiction into a job, which helped, as he states, “I've managed to turn a habit that once interrupted my work into something I actively have to do for work. It's no longer escapism if I am doing my job.”

Fahey also admitted that the fault was mostly, if not all, his own:

I hid. I ran from my problems, hiding away in a virtual fantasy world instead of confronting the issues that might have been easily resolved if I had addressed them directly. As far as I am concerned, the only thing Sony Online Entertainment is guilty of is creating a damn good hiding place.

Thanks Andrew

It's a sad day when one of the web's most intelligent game-oriented sites rides off into the sunset.

And so it is with Water Cooler Games, operated since 2003 by Georgia Tech prof Ian Bogost and researcher Gonzalo Frasca. Both academics are also accomplished designers of provocative, issue-oriented games.

We note the following in the site's RSS feed this morning:

Water Cooler Games is now closed. Thanks for reading all these years. The site has been archived in full (with comments)... For my take on "videogames with an agenda," you might want to read Persuasive Games. I am now blogging at Bogost.com...

—Ian Bogost, August 2009

Because the issue-oriented focus of Water Cooler Games often intersected with that of GamePolitics, WCG was frequently cited here on GP. We will miss it, but it's good to know that it will live on in an archived version.

UPDATE: Ian Bogost has posted a lengthy commentary on the WCG closure:

From my perspective, the Water Cooler Games project was very much a success. The fact that so many venues now exist for discussing of what we coyly called "videogames with an agenda" speaks at least in part to the influence we exerted.

More so, the site had been immensely useful in helping me conduct research. My 2007 book Persuasive Games drew many examples from titles we covered on Water Cooler Games... 

 

Closing WCG opens up new opportunities for my writing, on this site and elsewhere... The truth is that I've said most of what I want to say about [political games, advertising and games, and other topics covered on WCG]...

GP: We wish Ian continued success and the best of luck going forward...

British publisher Imagine routinely includes ads for pornography and sex chat services in the back of their video game magazines, according to a report at Overclock3D.

There, a UK man writing under the name "mayhem" describes sending his 8-year-old daughter out on a secret shopper mission to see whether she could purchase video game magazines containing such ads:

My 8 year old daughter walked in... On the lower shelf she picked out several magazines including Play (a Sony PlayStation 3 Magazine) and 360 (a Microsoft Xbox 360 magazine) both of which are published by Imagine Publishing. Neither of these titles had an 18 or 15 certificate on them. She also picked up several Future Publishing magazines and Dennis Publishing magazines.
 
She then proceeded to the check out were a young girl of about 19 years old had a quick look at the magazines and then scanned them in. My daughter then handed over the money and then walked out after saying thank you, and handed the magazines to me.
 
After a quick look through all the magazine I found that only Imagine Publishing had any sort of pornography contained within them...
 
So over all its been a interesting day finding out that such a major publisher (Imagine Publishing) has no morals when it comes to making money, even if it means serving up pornographic content to children that may read their magazines...
 

Via: fidgit

As GamePolitics has often noted, a large cross-section of U.S. military personnel are gamers.

A new website, StripesGAMER, hopes to cater to those gamers in uniform. The site, a partnership between Consumer Solutions Gaming, LLC and the military's famed Stars and Stripes newspaper, calls itself "the independent daily news source for the global U.S. military community."

Now, reinforcements have arrived for StripesGAMER with this morning's announcement that Scott Steinberg has been recruited as an ongoing guest columnist. Consumer Solutions Gaming CEO Terry Tognietti comments on StripesGAMER's new squad mate:

Scott’s expertise and knowledge in this realm is a major asset for StripesGAMER.com. Our goal is to be the go-to source for gamers in the armed forces who can’t access mainstream industry news and information as easily as normal consumers, or who don’t have the time to visit multiple gaming sites, so the insight and commentary he brings our audience is indisputably valuable to us and our site’s members.

A prominent school safety speaker has advocated the imposition of a 10-day moratorium on video game play and television viewing by students, reports the Grand Forks Herald.

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, author, retired military man and longtime critic of video game violence, made the remarks during a keynote presentation to North Dakota school officials yesterday.

As he typically does in his speeches, Grossman linked violent video games with school shootings:

[Grossman] described, in chilling detail, school massacres at Columbine High... the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota and Virginia Tech. Just as graphically, he conjured the brutality of video games such as “Grand Theft Auto” and “Manhunt.”

Grossman, an expert on school violence, went on to trace a connection between the two, complete with brain scans and a study of juvenile murderers. And he pitched a singular idea to gathered educators – a 10-day television, movie and video game “detox”... 

“This is not business as usual,” he said. “This is our world coming unglued. This is our society coming unhinged.”

In mid-July GamePolitics reported on Houston Chronicle game blogger Willie Jefferson's assertion that video games are increasingly possessed of "racist undertones."

In support of his claim Jefferson mentioned the much-debated Resident Evil 5 as well as the recently-released Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood. Jefferson also pointed to Valve's in-development Left 4 Dead 2 (screenshot at left):

I am disturbed by the growing trend of racist undertones that are cropping up in video games.

One of the games that comes to mind is "Left 4 Dead 2." ...Set in New Orleans, players will have to fight their way through hordes of zombies - with several of them who appear to be African-Americans. When I saw the first trailer for the game, all I could think about was Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath...

In the wake of Jefferson's charge, a writer for L4D2 has fired back, reports Destructoid:

While visiting Valve this past week, we asked how they felt about the [racism] accusations, and Left 4 Dead writer Chet Faliszek was quite frank with his response.

"Utter insanity," says Faliszek... "There are mixed races of zombies, there are all different races of zombies that you shoot, and since we placed it in New Orleans, that makes it racist? I honestly re-read the [Houston Chronicle] paragraph about five times ... but when two of the characters in your game are African-American, it's a weird thing to be accused of. We're like, 'how does this work'?

"... As far as Katrina goes, if you go down to New Orleans, Katrina's still going on. I mean, it's messed up, it is crazy that the city is still in the state it's in, and we treat that with the utmost respect... It's a place we love, it's dear to our hearts. We would not cheapen it. It's not a brick-for-brick representation of New Orleans; it's a fictional version, and I love that city."

In the latest edition of his Soapbox, G4's Adam Sessler expresses the view that video game censorship is pretty much gone, but that gamers should be watchful for its return.

GP: Here at GamePolitics, we're waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule in the California case later this year. At that point, we'll have a better handle on where the game censorship issue is heading.

A pair of video game websites weighed in on the controversy over used game trades this week.

Crispy Gamer serves up a well-reasoned two-parter by David Thomas:

The price of a game is, at the end of the day, exactly the balance point between what someone is willing to pay and what someone is willing to sell... The trouble is, the publisher wants back in on the deal, and goes out of its way to convince you that it still owns a piece of that junk you bought from it...

 

The used market, it turns out, isn't screwing [game] publishers... Instead, the used market helps keeps people in the game by letting them play games that they wouldn't otherwise bother buying... Used games help make game fans out of game tourists...

Meanwhile, Destructoid's Jim Sterling has a bit of a rant on the topic:

Have you considered what happens to a publisher when you buy a secondhand game? They lose money! Oh, you might argue that publishers already make money off the original sale of the game, but they don't! In fact, whenever a secondhand game is bought, the original $60.00 transaction disappears from our corporeal plane of existence, erased from history as if it never happened...

The main issue with secondhand games is that no other industry ever has to deal with a similar problem. Think about it -- have you ever bought a used car, or even heard of a store selling used clothes or music? Of course you haven't! The very idea is preposterous...

Tonight's Penn & Teller: Bullshit! is the much-anticipated episode on video game violence.

The program airs at 10:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific on Showtime. From the P&T:BS! website:

In episode 703, the duo debunks the theory of politicians and other alarmists that playing video games leads to teen violence by handing over a real semiautomatic weapon to a nine-year-old video game player to see if he becomes a human killing machine.

The promo video at left features a guy who is apparently an anti-game violence campaigner named Chris Cooney. I'll 'fess up that - in nearly five years of editing GamePolitics - I can't remember hearing of the guy, so I'm curious to see what he's all about. This is also the episode in which disbarred attorney Jack Thompson makes an appearance.

If you miss tonight's show, the program will be repeated several times over the next few days.

Via Water Cooler Games comes word that a new academic journal dealing with video games and education is in the works.

The Computer Game Education Review will be edited by Stephen Jacobs (left), a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology (and, we're proud to say, a longtime GamePolitics reader). A blurb on the publisher's website describes what the new journal is all about:

CGER will be a peer-reviewed academic publication addressing issues that concern the teaching of game design and development including, but not limited to, curriculum organization, teaching techniques (e.g., conceptual vs. exemplary), game typology, societal impact, economic and commercial issues, legal aspects, and student evaluation that are of interest to faculty and institutions involved in the education and training of future game developers.

I just completed an interview on CBC's Q program. Also appearing was Mike Thomsen of IGN.

The show was styled as a debate on sexual violence in games, with a lot of attention paid to RapeLay. I've never held back my contempt for the game and didn't on today's program.

I believe that they archive the previous day's show into a podcast. If you're interested in listening, check out the Q show website.

UPDATE: If you missed the program, CBC has posted the podcast version.

Not to beat our own drum (well, maybe a little), but both GamePolitics and parent company the Entertainment Consumers Association drew some major print media attention this weekend.

GamePolitics was featured in the U.K.'s Times Online Weekend Playlist section which referred to GP as:

...an essential regular read for serious gamers, parents of gamers and (especially) politicians who don't know anything about the world's fastest-growing entertainment medium.

Meanwhile, USA Weekend, published by USA Today, gave props to the ECA for its discount programs available to members: 

Today's gamers always are looking to score a discount. It ain't easy... The non-profit advocacy organization[ECA] is offering a 10% discount on all games-related software and peripherals at Amazon. The membership fee is $19.99 ($14.99 for e-mails ending in .edu or .mil), which means if you buy just a few games a year, you've already earned your money back...

Members get discounts from retailers (Good Old Games) and video game rental services (GameFly), money off admission to events (the Penny Arcade Expo), not to mention room rate discounts at Hyatt hotels.

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

The unexpected gamer protest against Valve's E3 announcement of Left 4 Dead 2 has left more than a few obervers perplexed.

Add the name of G4's Adam Sessler to the list of those who don't get what the whining is about. On his latest Soapbox segment Sessler takes the L4D2 protesters to task:

We're going down that path again - this shocking, amazing sense of entitlement that always manifests itself in the gaming community... Valve does not have a habit of screwing people and if there was ever a developer out there I would just kind of give them the benefit of the doubt...

 

They don't owe you anything. It's a business... Where were you brought up and in what environment where you hugged so overwhelmingly that you feel that you need to be served as the only person that needs to be considered when other people are making commercial properties? It really is a little bit on the naive side and slightly embarrassing... It's kind of juvenile... The Internet, when it comes to games, can be such a nation of whiners...

Via: Gaming Today

Are you addicted to video games?

If so, MTV wants to hear from you. The network has put out a casting call for an episode of its documentary series, True Life:

Have video games totally taken over your life? Is your game play increasingly getting out of control? Have your friends or family confronted you about your gaming habit? How about your marriage or personal relationships – are they being affected?

 

Is it difficult to balance work and gaming time? Do you sometimes skip doing homework or household responsibilities to play? Have you played video games as a way of escaping your problems? Has your game playing habit become so encompassing that you may need to go to rehab to kick it?

Does this sound like you?  God, we hope not but if it does, send your info MTV’s way and maybe we’ll see you on the tube. That is, if you can bear to pull yourself away from Ghostbusters: The Video Game for a few minutes.

Via: Siliconera

-Reporting from San Diego, GamePolitics Correspondent Andrew Eisen...

We've been mentioning (warning?) GamePolitics readers that last night's episode of Mental included a plot element about a violent, 8-year-old gamer.

Fidgit's Tom Chick caught the show and serves up a detailed report [SPOILER ALERT]:

If you're watching [Mental], you probably caught last night's episode in which a kid is deprived of videogames, and therefore invents one in his head.

But the problem is that the videogame he invents in his head sucks... the kid ends up freaking out, hurting his mother with a knife, and then going catatonic. I know how he feels. I've played some bad videogames in my time, too. The kid's hands keep twitching as if he were playing a videogame. With a console controller, of course...

 

The situation is resolved when the sensitive physician with a lot of time on his hands guides his misunderstood patient through how to play the imaginary videogame...

Once he's beat the game in his head, he reconciles with his neglectful father and starts on his medication.

You can catch the full episode yourself at the Mental website. But you'll have to install Fox's video player; I'm not crazy about that...

GP: So, I watched the episode this morning and didn't find that it especially sensationalized games. Don't want to spoil it for anyone who may decide to check it out, so I won't say more about that for now. Overall, the show offers a sensitive treatment of mental health issues.

Reason Online has posted a fascinating look at what it calls The Top 10 Most Absurd Time Covers of The Past 40 Years.

While TIME's investigations into the occult, dirty words and obesity are among the topics making RO's list, we took note of the November 22, 1999 cover which addressed what some parents and teachers saw as a scourge at the time: Pokemon. Reason Online explains:

This Time cover story breathlessly warns that children are printing counterfeit cards, cheating friends and classmates, and even stabbing one another over Pokemon trading disputes. Time doesn’t dwell too long on any substantive data (there isn't any) that might show what sort of sustained violence and mayhem would make Pokemon an “addiction" (Time's word). Instead, it quickly cuts to what the authors see as the real dark heart of the Pokemon phenomenon: crass capitalism! ...

GP: Ten years on, the frenzy over Pokemon seems so silly...

When  televised cop and medical dramas tackle video game themes, there's usually a large dollop of sensationalism attached.

That being the case, we'll be cautiously Tivoing Fox's June 16th episode of Mental. A preview describes the episode:

JACK TREATS A YOUNG BOY WHO IS CONSUMED WITH A VIDEO GAME THAT EXISTS ONLY IN HIS HEAD ON AN ALL-NEW “MENTAL” TUESDAY, JUNE 16, ON FOX

An 8-year-old bipolar boy whose life is consumed by a video game he plays in his head is admitted to Wharton Memorial for an accident involving a knife. When it turns out the accident was really a suicide attempt, Jack must try to get inside the little boy’s head to find out what is triggering his life-threatening rages. But when the boy bolts from the psych ward, Jack must try to save him by engaging him in his own mind game.

Here's a preview clip...

Today's edition of the Dr. Phil show will re-air an episode on game addiction which features Brad D. (left) of ExGamer.net.

As GamePolitics reported in October, 2008 when the show initially aired, Brad speaks frankly about a suicide attempt.

Also appearing on the program is Wendy Kays, author of Game Widow.

Iconic video game magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly, which was folded by Ziff-Davis Media early in 2009, is making a comeback.

A press release issued yesterday by Steve Harris, who founded EGM in 1988, indicates that the beloved gamer magazine will experience a rebirth later this year:

The re-launch of Electronic Gaming Monthly represents a welcome opportunity to continue delivering quality content to gaming enthusiasts. I feel honored to once again be associated with this respected magazine. The talented writers and designers who built upon EGM’s original vision have left behind a publication that is uniquely positioned to be successful.

 

We have exciting plans for the evolution of what will once again be a leading independent voice for the gaming community. The twenty year success of the EGM brand has always been built upon a commitment to its readers who I believe will enthusiastically embrace the changes we are planning to introduce.

Not surprisingly, EGM fans have responded enthusiastically to the news. An EGM Twitter feed set up yesteday has garnered over 1600 followers in less than 24 hours.

GP: We're big admirers of EGM and wish Harris and his new venture success. That said, it's a tough time to be in the print business...