The International Olympic Committee has given the 2016 Summer games to Rio de Janeiro, sending Chicago, Tokyo and Madrid home looking toward 2020. Our shoutbox has been atwitter with the news, so for this item only, we have become Olympic GamePolitics. And in a not-so-stunning assumption, Sega is probably booking flights for Mario and Sonic to Brazil in 2016.

The plumber and hedgehog challenged each other in Beijing in 2008, and plan to go head-to-head again in Vancouver in 2010. Sega even has a web page for the official video games of the Olympics. It stands to reason that this dynamic duo will take their competition to London in the summer of 2012 and to Sochi, Russia, in the winter of 2014.

While many game sites rated the Beijing game average at best, sales for the game were still strong worldwide, according to the game's Wikipedia entry. So despite the criticism, Sega decided to continue with the tie-in and if their jaunt to Vancouver is a fiscal success, I suspect we'll see them galavanting around the world every two years with the rest of the Olympic athletes.

There was no official word from Sega.

New World Notes reports that a ceremony was held in Second Life last week to honor protesters killed by security forces during the post-election unrest in Iran:

Lasting longer than 90 minutes... about forty people ultimately showed up for the vigil. No one there was reportedly from Iran, but some have family members who are. It wasn't only a time for mourning, but coordinating and growing the nascent "Support Iran" group which organized the event.

 

What we're seeing here, then, is an immersive offshoot of the informal Internet community that has sprung up in the last couple weeks...

Current TV's Ben Hoffman has some fun with gamers who lined up to donate blood and steal a pre-release peek at Resident Evil 5.

The Capcom-sponsored event took place in Los Angeles last week.

Via: Joystiq

As GamePolitics has reported, the U.S. Army has taken a fair amount of heat in recent times over its use of video games and game-related events for recruitment.

Over at ripten, Chad Lakkis notes with a disapproving eye the Army's presence at a Best Buy midnight launch event for the recently-released Resident Evil 5:

I couldn’t help but notice the “GO ARMY” recruitment tent mixed into the Best Buy Resident Evil 5 launch party video... I don’t mind the idea of recruiters but what I do mind is the methods by which they often recruit.

This isn’t the first time the U.S. Army has been accused of blurring the lines between gaming and recruiting. Promoting an official U.S. Army videogame and lacing their official army game website to contain soldier bios designed to look like videogame stat cards is youth marketing at its finest. Look at all the stats you can wrack up kids - assuming you don’t die first.