The Escapist reports that community members in the town of Southington, Connecticut have put a bulls eye on violent video games in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that saw 20 children and six adults murdered by a lone gunmen in mid-December.

Techie Buzz took a look at the top selling games in India for 2012, as tabulated by Game4u, Milestone’s retail unit for PC and video games.

University of Missouri Media Researcher Greg Perreault pens an enlightening article on violence and video games over at the Huffington Post, and while the entire article is definitely worth reading an excerpt from it really caught our attention. The excerpt is an exchange between Perreault and an unnamed journalist who contacted him looking to use him as an expert.

Remember that virtual showroom that linked Medal of Honor: Warfighter to real-life products from its gun maker marketing partners? Well Electronic Arts has decided that it needed to make some adjustments to that whole promotion/connection, according to this Polygon report..

You may remember that the development team behind the upcoming SimCity game held a Reddit AMA, and that the community there gave them a hard time for making the game use a DRM scheme that required players to be always connected to the Internet even when they are playing the single-player portion of the game.

Forget about the so-called "fiscal cliff" the country faces in January, the debate over gun control or any other important pressing issues that matter in the United States - what's important to Barbara Walters and ABC seems to be what the President of the United States and the First Lady do in their off time. During the most recent Barbara Walters special, she gets the First Couple to divulge... their favorite iOS app.

While there's a lot of people upset over a variety of things the National Rifle Association said today in its press conference, gamers are a bit annoyed with the gun lobby comparing violent video games to pornography. But as this The Escapist report points out, the NRA doesn't think that the medium is so horrible that it won't swim in the interactive entertainment pond.

Black Isle Studios, a label of publisher Interplay, is trying something a little different: it is asking the community to crowd-source a "proof of concept" prototype of its post apocalyptic strategy role-playing game, Project V13. Funding tiers include $10, $20 and a Top 20 contributor tier for anyone who pledges more.

In a segment that aired during Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto's show this week, Daniel Greenberg joined in to discuss Senator Jay Rockefeller's (D-WV) bill to study the effects of violent video games on children. Greenberg is the IGDA Anti-Censorship Committee Chairman and game developer at Washington D.C.-based Media Rez.

A recent study (dated Dec. 12) from researchers at the Ohio State University (link), equates prolonged exposure to violent games with an addiction to smoking tobacco. Research conducted at the Université Pierre-Mendès-France, and carried out by analysts at Ohio State University and the University of Hohenheim, comes to the conclusion that prolonged exposure to videogames increases aggression or aggressive behavior in players and causes them to view the world in a more violent light.

The news media, quick to find a cause for why a lone gunman would kill his mother, drive to a local elementary school, and kill 26 people (20 children) before killing himself, has turned to the usual scapegoat: video games. While it is understandable that people want answers, Fox News wastes no time in trying to connect TV, Facebook, and computer games to the horrific actions of Lanza. As transcribed by Kotaku, a Fox News segment hosted by Megyn Kelly with guest analyst Dr.

Andrew Eisen's latest video is probably not safe for work, school, or your local church group, but it raises an interesting point about who among the human race might be categorized as a$$h*les.

From DRM to piracy and attitudes about the holidays, Andrew lays it all down in the simplest terms and with the most colorful language he has used to date. You can check out his latest video on his YouTube channel or to your left.

Former Virginia Republican State Senate Candidate and online mass marketer Jason Flanary is asking the Federal Communications Commission to whitelist "political messaging" (or spam as many who receive it but don't want it call it) or declare bulk messaging and email as general protected free speech. He is doing this under the idea that limiting messaging is a violation of his free speech rights and net neutrality rules.

The madness surrounding the rights to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. video game franchise continues as GSC Game World weighs in on BitComposer's claim yesterday that it had locked down the rights to create games based on the franchise. Yesterday the company said that it had secured the rights to create games based on the book series Roadside Picnic - which S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is based on.

Confusion abounds on just who owns the right to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game franchise after BitComposer (who published the third title in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series Call of Pripyet), announced that it had acquired the license to the game franchise. The deal gives BitComposer exclusive worldwide rights to all video games carrying the STALKER name... or does it? There's some question as to whether the company actually owns the rights to the game, which was based loosely on the book series Roadside Picnic, or just the books.

Canadian internet service provider TekSavvy has found itself in the crosshairs of U.S.-based movie studio Voltage Pictures LLC. The ISP announced on Monday that it had received a request on behalf of the studio to provide subscriber information on "a couple thousand" of its users that the studio alleges have downloaded or shared such films as The Whistleblower, Balls to the Wall, Fire with Fire, and others.

According to the Long War Journal blog (by way of Gameranx), Syrian rebels have built an armored vehicle about the size of a car that uses a game controller that looks an awful lot like a PS3 controller. This homemade tank is equipped with a 7.62mm Russian PKM that is operated via a game controller and a small monitor.

When you develop a game without the permission of the copyright holder, chances are you will be in for some sort of legal action. Such is the fate of the My Little Pony MMO, which has been shut down after the developers of the game received a copyright and trademark infringement claim from Hasbro. The game was not approved by Hasbro. Fearing serious legal action the developers decided it would be prudent to just shut the game down.

If you have ever wondered (and believe me you are not alone in your imaginings) what a Grand Theft Auto game might look like if developer Traveler's Tales ever got the opportunity to create it, then you will want to check out this video from thefourmonkeys. The video is an entry in the Machina Interactive film festival, which you can vote for right here.

Sony Online Entertainment CEO John Smedley wants cheaters to know that he will hunt them down to the ends of the earth and ban them from the recently launched first-person sci-fi online shooter PlanetSide 2. Smedley took to Twitter to let the community know that he will not let cheaters ruin the game for everyone else.

Former Free Radical co-founder Steve Ellis issued a statement today trying to set the record straight on some comment he made recently about the failure of Star Wars Battlefront III and the eventual shut down of Free Radical. Last week in an interview with NowGamer, Ellis said that Star Wars: Battlefront III was "99 per cent finished" and blamed outside influences for the game's failures.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick told attendees at the Credit Suisse 2012 Technology Conference in Scottsdale Arizona that he expects some third-party publishers to die off as they attempt to make the jump to the next console generation.

In a weird, odd twist a Kickstarter campaign has been started to fund a donation to another Kickstarter campaign. While that is pretty much the length and breadth of British author Drew Wagar's appeal to the Kickstarter community, there's a little more to it than that.

After a few days of not being able to use the "@" character in passwords, Netflix has said this morning that the problem is now fixed. The problem relates to the new Netflix app that was launched this weekend alongside the Wii U's retail release in North America. Netflix subscribers that used the "@" character in passwords were forced to change them because the character was not allowed in the Wii U app. Now Netflix says that everything is fixed.

Over the weekend Joystiq reported about an interesting lawsuit filed against THQ by a tattoo artist named Chris Escobedo. Escobedo alleges in his lawsuit filed against THQ for using a tattoo he designed for MMA fighter Carlos Condit. Condit's likeness appeared - with the tattoo designed by Escobedo - in THQ's UFC Undisputed 2010 and UFC Undisputed 3.

Nintendo announced this weekend that it would have to delay deploying its entertainment channel on the Wii U, but the way the company is framing that delay is raising some eyebrows today.

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

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

Gen. David Petraeus, who resigned recently from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) due to a scandal related to an extra-marital affair (which continues to play out in the news this week) has apparently received a promotion in the latest chapter of the Call of Duty series. In the latest game - released this week - Black Ops II - Petraeus is the Secretary of Defense in the year 2025. He appears in part of the story, riding aboard the U.S.S. Barack Obama.

Microsoft is building its own 7-inch gaming tablet, according to "multiple sources familiar with plans within Redmond" who have confirmed the details to The Verge. According to that report, the initial hardware planning for the Xbox Surface device is underway. The Verge describes it as a mini Xbox platform.

Seizing on a new national survey in Australia, two "experts" have used it as an opportunity to warn parents of the dangers of video gaming. A survey conducted by the Interactive Games and Entertainment Association with the help of Bond University, found that right around 95 percent of boys between the ages of 6 and 15 described themselves as gamers. The survey of more than 1200 Australian households also found that the most popular genres among this age group were first-person shooters, action and fighting games and role-playing games.