The International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) announced that it has received a grant of $500,000 from Excellus BlueCross BlueShield, which is headquartered in Rochester, New York.

The former director of the Grand Theft Auto series, Navid Khonsari, is working on a new game that will explore Iran's Islamic Revolution. The game is called 1979 and will be set in an open world where protagonists can make moral choices that affect what is going on around him. Khonsari, who worked on Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, and San Andreas, spoke to CNN about his plans for the game recently and why it is important to him.

According to a Gamasutra report, GameFly Media has acquired video game information and documentation site, MobyGames. Gamasutra points to new information on the footer, which now features a GameFly Media logo. GameFly stepped out of its comfort zone - game rentals via mail - to purchase ShackNews from site founder Steve Gibson in 2009. To its credit, the site has remained largely independent of its new owner.

MobyGames is an exhaustive collection of data about games; it contains 33,000 entries complete with trivia, developer credits, release dates, platforms, reviews, and more. For the researcher looking for obscure game information, MobyGames is often an invaluable resource. On a personal note, it is one of the few web sites in the world that gives me a personal credit in a game, even if it is not deserved.

Today the Computer Game Museum (Computerspielemuseum) opened Berlin, Germany, offering 50 handheld games, video consoles, and home computers organized and exhibited in chronological order from 1971 up to 2001. The museum was open for a few years in the late 1990's but was shut down in 2000. The new museum is located where "Cafe Warsaw" used to be in an East Berlin-era building.

The exhibition called "Computer Games: Evolution of a Medium" chronicles the development of computer and video games since 1951, and includes the first ever arcade game called "Computer Space," released in 1971.

The museum is supported by German-born American Ralph Baer, who invented the Magnavox Odyssey console. Baer says that the exhibition is an important way of chronicling the history of games:

Sonderkommando Revolt, the Wolfenstein mod that reimagined an 1944 Jewish uprising against the camp guards at Auschwitz, has been shelved. One of the key developers on the homebrew project, Maxim Genis, said that online criticism about the subject matter, and an abusive response from the internet community have made working on the project too difficult.

"I did a lot of research for the game," said Genis. "I wanted to show the Jews really did fight back against the Nazis. I wanted to honour them. My intentions were pure and pro-Jewish in every way."

In a response to a Kotaku inquiry about the game last week, the Anti-Defamation League had urged Genis to cancel the launch in January, calling it "a crude effort to depict Jewish resistance during this painful period." As we pointed out last week the ADL praised the film Inglorious Basterds for doing basically the same thing.

An Israeli modder is recreating a real-world uprising at Auschwitz that took place in October 1944 via a mod called Sonderkommando Revolt. The mod, built on top of the Wolfenstein 3D game port, Wolf4SDL, Sonderkommando Revolt sends players on a killing spree against Nazi officers in the infamous concentration camp.

Sonderkommando were groups of workers (prisoners) who helped dispose of those killed in the camp. They were never directly involved in the killing of other prisoners. The uprising referred to in the mod happened after the camp's resistance group successfully blew up one of the crematoriums. From Wikipedia:

1378 (km), the game based on the “death strip” separating East and West Berlin during the Cold War has seen its release delayed until December.

The game’s developer, a student at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design named Jens Stober, took to his blog to announce the postponement, which he said was partly due to criticism of the game. Comments about the title, such as the Director of the Berlin War Memorial stating “The seriousness of what once went on at the border can’t be portrayed in this way,” led Stober to claim that “an objective discussion of the game is presently impossible.”

Stober also offered a rather impassioned defense of games, specifically computer games, writing:

A large part of the criticism is a consequence of my chosen medium, the computer game. Computer games as a medium are often quick to be judged without being more closely examined, as was also the case with my art project. It was designed to enable a younger generation to access information on recent German history using a medium familiar to them.

The Russian government has drafted a commercially successful local game developer in order to create videogames that would promote patriotism and serve up the “historic truth” of the country’s past endeavors.

Russia’s Communications ministry and 1C, developer of games such as IL-2 Sturmovik and Red Orchestra, are already working on six flight simulator games, according to Russian website RiaNovosti. The main goal of the games would be to “to create low-cost educational and professional simulators for pilots, promote Russian information technology abroad, and increase Russia's hi-tech exports.”

A budget of 720.0 million rubles (approximately $24.0 million U.S.) would be required to back the full project, of which the government would contribute 500.0 million rubles (approximately $16.6 million U.S.) and 1C 200.0 million rubles (approximately $6.7 million U.S.). The remaining 20.0 million rubles would come from “the government of Russia's Khanty-Mansiysk region.”

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a $100,000 grant to a Norfolk University history professor to develop a video game which tells the tale of the Underground Railroad.

Prof. Cassandra Newby-Alexander said that the history of the Underground Railroad, a network which helped slaves escape from the South in pre-Civil War days, is not well understood:

The underground Railroad was a much more complex issue than it's been made out. When you push a person to a point where they have nothing to lose, that's when you create a formidable enemy. Ultimately, human beings are going to be free.

When you ask people to describe the Underground Railroad, they think of Harriet Tubman on foot, with a gun. Most slaves didn't escape that way. I don't want to dumb-down the game.

Newby-Alexander is working with a local playwright to create a script for the game, which is expected for PC in 2011.

Via: Kotaku