Rockstar Games’ controversial Manhunt 2 is being released for the PC this week in an uncensored version that carries an Adults Only (AO) rating from the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB).

Originally released in 2007 for the Wii and PlayStation 2 platforms, the title drew fire over its content and a perception that using the Wii’s motion controls to enact virtual violence could carry over to real-world violence, despite evidence that eventually emerged to the contrary.

The BigDownload notes that Manhunt 2 will be offered via the digital delivery system of Direct2Drive for $29.95. Purchases are limited to those who live in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.  While Valve offers a full Rockstar Games collection through its Steam service, no mention of the pending availability of an AO-rated Manhunt 2 game can be found anywhere on their site or within Steam.

The ESRB content descriptor for the game states: “Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs.”

As part of a plan to bolster its digital distribution offerings, GameStop may look to acquire or invest in an established company or service already involved in the sector.

At a recent analyst meeting, the videogame retailer outlined three ways to accelerate its digital distribution plans reports IndustryGamers: Increase in-store sales of online point cards, expand GameStop’s current digital distribution platform and make a strategic investment in or acquire a current provider of online games.

In an opinion piece in its newsletter, GamesIndustry speculates which companies/services make sense for GameStop to acquire. Metaboli, which purchased GameTap last year, might be one logical answer, as the French-based company would provide double the pay off for GameStop, offering a way into the European market in addition to its digital catalog of games.

The other acquisition possibility? GamesIndustry writes:

Unconfirmed industry scuttlebutt suggests that Zenimax - the parent company of Bethesda, which made headlines back in June when it acquired legendary PC studio id Software - is still on the acquisition trail, and has been making eyes at Half-Life creators Valve across the bar. Whether Bethesda, a hybrid developer / publisher itself, would want to keep Steam on board, or spin it out to a third party, is unclear - as are many other aspects of a potential deal…

A study conducted by Singapore’s National Institute of Education reveals that its youth rack up an average of 27 hours a week playing videogames.

The group has polled over 3,000 students during the course of the three-year study, which The Straits Times reports is still ongoing. Lui Tuck Yew, acting Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts was reportedly “quite surprised and a little bit shocked” at the number of hours spent gaming.

Lawrence Lee, a 16-year old World of Warcraft player, called four hours of gaming a day “nothing,” and compared the game to fledgling love:

It is the novelty, like getting a new girlfriend. You want to spend every minute with her.

Singapore has formed an inter-ministry committee to address “cyber-wellness” issues.

Read the entire scanned article at the Education Soon blog.

Last December GamePolitics reported on Pamoja Mtaani, a PC game developed through a partnership with Warner Bros. Interactive, North Carolina-based Virtual Heroes (creators of America's Army) and The Partnership For an HIV-free Generation.

The game's title translates to "Together in the Hood," and Pamoja Mtaani aims to help players learn skills to negotiate difficult issues such as crime and HIV in some of East Africa's most impoverished areas.

GP reader Wai Yen Tang dropped us a line to say that a video report on the game and how it is being used is now available on YouTube.

Usually, it's the PC crowd that gets dissed by game publishers. But in the case at hand Valve is doing right by computer gamers while Microsoft seems intent upon squeezing the last nickel out of Xbox 360 owners.

At issue is Crash Course,  a bit of DLC for the popular zombie shooter Left 4 Dead. Valve, which doesn't charge for DLC, plans to give Crash Course away to PC players. Meanwhile MS will be nicking 360 gamers $7 for the download.

Not that he has any explaining to do (although MS does), but Valve's Chet Faliszek told Eurogamer why it's happening this way:

We own our platform, Steam. Microsoft owns their platform. They wanted to make sure there's an economy of value there...

Via: The Consumerist

Here's something you don't see very often.

An unusual, religious-themed mod to Rome: Total War adds themes from the Book of Mormon to the popular PC real-time strategy franchise, reports Mormon Game Design:

Darren, from the UK, is a video game "modder." And he did his thing on Total War a while ago. He added Book of Mormon names and places to the game, allowing players to enter the Promised Land and the battles that took place between the Nephites and Lamanites! ...

 

As it is a mod, you will need a copy of Total War with the Barbarian Invasion expansion, along with the mod file provided by Darren, via the Book of Mormon Battles website...

Via: Mormon Times

The popular, World War II-themed RTS Company of Heroes is shortly to enter the Chinese game market as Company of Heroes Online, reports Kotaku.

When it does, all references to Nazi Germany will have been purged. The German side will be renamed "The Federation," while iron cross symbols on German vehicles and buildings will also be changed.

As noted by Joystiq, the ESRB is currently listing the upcoming PC version of Manhunt 2 with an Adults Only (AO) rating.

GamePolitics readers will likely recall that the console versions of Manhunt 2 generated a major controversy in the summer of 2007 when the game was banned in Britain and tagged with an AO here in the States. Rockstar subsequently released a toned-down version that earned an M (17+) rating for the U.S. market.

That was a critical milestone, because the Big Three console makers won't license AO-rated games for their systems, which makes it tough for a publisher to earn a return on its investment. That's why you don't see any AO-rated console games. While the open architecture of the PC negates licensing concerns, an AO-rated Manhunt 2 would still get thumbs-down from major retailers like GameStop and Wal-Mart.

That means that Rockstar is either planning a digital distribution campaign for Manhunt 2 or that it will edit the PC version - as it did with the console editions - to earn an M from the ESRB. Of course, there is a third scenario: Rockstar could ship an M-rated version to retailers while distributing an AO-rated version online.

We wonder how Valve might react to handling an AO game if its Steam service, which currently distributes Rockstar's GTA IV online, is under consideration as a potential digital distribution source for Manhunt 2.

The ranks of the PC Gaming Alliance have expanded with the addition of eight new member companies, reports gamesindustry.biz.

Leading retailer GameStop and famed designer Chris Taylor's Gas Powered Games studio are the biggest names among those joining the PCGA, which aims to foster PC gaming as a viable business. Others include GameTap, Howie's Game Shack and Bigfoot Networks.

GPG's Taylor (left) explained his decision to join:

I've spent most of my career fully immersed in the world of PC gaming. It's where many of the world's biggest gaming franchises were born and where much of the industry's innovation continues to this day.

 

By joining the PCGA, Gas Powered Games hopes to make contributions that keep PC gaming at the forefront of the industry, help it to overcome its challenges, and continue to fulfil its amazing potential.

GP: Gotta put this out there - Chris Taylor's late-90's RTS Total Annihilation is on my all-time Top 10 list of games...

The upcoming role-playing game Risen has become the latest victim of Australia's flawed game content rating system.

Refused Classification reports that Australia's classification board has declined to assign a rating to the game, which is being developed by Piranha Bytes. The board's action makes Risen the third game of 2009 to be RC'd Down Under; the others are 1C's first-person shooter Necrovision and something called Sexy Poker.

In the U.S. market, Risen has been rated M (17+) by the ESRB. Australia, however, has no rating higher than MA15+, which means that any title judged not suitable for a 15-year-old is effectively banned. Australian gamers have been lobbying their government unsuccessfully for an R18+ rating for several years.

The classification refusal might not be the final word, however. Risen could be edited by its creators enough to slip by Australian censors. This approach has worked for other games, most recently Necrovision.

Risen is scheduled for October release on Xbox 360 and PC. The website R18+ is a useful source for information about the ongoing Australian content rating debate.

Given the recent history of consumer-unfriendly DRM fiascos surrounding Spore and other high-profile PC titles, it's refreshing to hear from a vendor of copy protection software who is actively seeking gamer input.

While we will confess to knowing very little about a DRM product called Byteshield, we note that CEO Jan Samzelius posted in the GamePolitics/ECA forums last night:

We pride ourselves on listening to gamers and try to configure our solution accordingly... We are trying to convince game publishers and developers to put gamers first and organize everything else around it. I want to hear from everybody about what you do not like and then see if you like what our solution does.

Byteshield appears to have received positive reviews from the anti-DRM crowd at The Prism.

GP: This is certainly not an endorsement of Byteshield as I haven't tested it myself. But as a game consumer, I'm always pleased when company execs keep gamers in mind.

For today's geography lesson, we defer to Unterbahn, where Jeffrey Warren found a way to map London in Warcraft II style:

Take a look at this map of London with a Warcraft II theme; I used GSS/Geographic Stylesheets and Cartagen to create a custom map style that displays the entire world as if it were a Warcraft II level. This was done to showcase the abilities of the dynamic mapping framework Cartagen, which is open-source and runs in HTML5's Canvas element. No Java or Flash!

Via: boingboing

The video game industry continues to find new and creative ways to stick it to PC gamers.

In the latest example, EA has announced that the much-anticipated Command & Conquer 4 will require players to constantly be connected to the Internet, even for single-player campaigns.

That requirement, however, violates one of the basic tenets of the Gamer's Bill of Rights, a document released at PAX 08 by Stardock CEO Brad Wardell and Gas Powered Games CEO Chris Taylor. EA, however, is not a signatory to the Bill of Rights. No surprise there.

Specifically, the C&C4 requirement violates this point:

Gamers shall have the right to demand that a single-player game not force them to be connected to the Internet every time they wish to play.

Ars Technica reports comments on the connection requirement made by EA Community Leader "APOC":

As of right now, you need to be online all the time to play C&C 4. This is primarily due to our 'player progression' feature so everything can be tracked. C&C 4 is not an MMO in the sense of World of Warcraft, but conceptually it has similar principles for being online all the time.

 

While some may be taken aback by this, we've been testing this feature internally with all of our world-wide markets. We wanted to make sure it wouldn't take away any significant market or territory from playing the game. We have not found or seen any results that have made us think otherwise...

GP: This smells like backdoor DRM from here. Even if it's not, what if you're on a laptop? What if you're on an airplane? What if your Internet connection is down?

As a longtime PC gamer who has owned every version of the C&C and Red Alert games, this just sucks.

There is perhaps a glimmer of hope in APOC's comments. We note that he starts off with "As of right now..." Does that mean that this gamer-unfriendly policy is subject to change? 

It's time for PC gamers to make some noise about this nonsense.

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

Does game downloading on P2P networks have a negative impact on sales?

If so, you'd never prove it by looking at the case of The Sims 3. A late May report by Bloomberg indicated that The Sims 3 had been leaked and downloaded 180,000 times between May 18 to May 21. At that rate the not-yet-released PC game was on pace to eclipse Spore's record as most downloaded.

Despite the piracy, the DRM-less Sims 3 is experiencing the best-selling PC launch in EA's long history of publishing games. Says who? EA. The publisher issued a press release yesterday trumpeting 1.4 million legit units sold during the game's first week of availability.

At $50 a pop, that's $70 million in sales. In a week. And yet industry types like EA's own Peter Moore still maintain that piracy is killing the PC games market and use that mantra to justify saddling consumers with unwanted DRM or worse, not releasing PC versions of popular games.

A British Muslim who spent three years in the controversial Guantanamo Bay detention facility is serving as a consultant on the upcoming Xbox 360 and PC game Rendition: Guantanamo, according to Deadline Scotland.

As GamePolitics reported in March, Rendition: Guantanamo centers around a near-future version of the controversial prison in which mercenaries are in control and scientists conduct experiments on detainees.

Moazzam Begg (left), who was picked up as a suspected Al Qaeda member by Coalition forces in Pakistan, is assisting Glasgow-based game developer T-Enterprise. Begg claims to have been tortured during his stay at Guantanamo. T-Enterprise exec Zarrar Chishti commented on Begg's participation in the project:

We approached Moazzam because it’s very hard for us to know how to design the layout of the prison and he helped. He came up two weeks ago to give his input on what we were working on...

Due to the controversial subject matter, T-Enterprise appears eager not to step on any official toes. Deadline Scotlan reports that the developer had sought advice and permissions from law enforcement and political officials. Chisti explained:

There are certain rules we can’t break after meeting politicians so we are not making the game too extreme. We have had a lot of hate mail about this, mainly from America...

 

But no US or British soldiers get killed in [the game]. The only ones being killed are mercenaries. We have set it in January 2010 because that’s when we think the camp will be closed. We are making a statement. We did not want Guantanamo to be forgotten.

Begg, who wrote a book about his time at Guantanamo, has a financial stake in the project. He spoke of his time detention:

I was put in solitary confinement with no access to the outside world and no explanation as to why I was being detained. My wife gave birth to my son six months after I was arrested and I saw him for the first time when he was three years old. It would be wrong to say I’m not angry but I’m willing to forgive 1000 times over...

The only thing I am concerned about it making sure the game does not misrepresent the prisoners. This will not demean the reality of Guantanamo but it could bring those issues to people who would not usually think about it.

Stopping by your local Dairy Queen over the holiday weekend? If so, here's something to consider:

Ice cream-centric PC game DQ Tycoon has come in for some freezer burn, courtesy of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood.

The Boston-based CCFC turned its attention to DQ Tycoon as part of its ongoing campaign to lobby Scholastic, Inc. to drop non-books items such as toys, make-up and video games from its school flyers. In a press release issued earlier this week, CCFC termed the game "egregious":

CCFC plans to continue to track Scholastic Book club offerings. One of the more egregious recent findings was the Dairy Queen video game, DQ Tycoon, which appears in Scholastic’s June 2009 Arrow flyer.

The Orlando Sentinel's education blog picked up on the theme:

Some might suggest that  DQ Tycoon isn't in the same league with a Newbery Medal winner for children's literature, such as Joseph Krumgold's And Now Miguel, my personal favorite.  But it apparently gets equal of better billing in the book club fliers. That coming of age book about a Hispanic boy in New Mexico, which won the Newbery in 1954, has been "thinker" literature for kids for 55 years. Will DQ Tycoon meet that test??

While it's true that DQ Tycoon is probably not going to change anyone's life, GamePolitics just had to ask: What's so bad about a game based on ice cream? CCFC spokesman Josh Golin responded.

CCFC: The game is egregious because it's an ad for Dairy Queen masquerading as a video game and ads for Dairy Queen have no place in schools. It is particularly galling that Scholastic is enlisting teachers as a sales force for the game because, at a time of heightened concerns about childhood obesity, many schools are limiting the types of foods that can be sold and marketed on their premises.  I think it's safe to say that without Scholastic, DQ would be unable to promote Blizzards (as many as 1,200 calories) in elementary schools.

GP: In my experience the "tycoon" game genre generally would seem to have at least some educational value, forcing players to plan, strategize, allocate resources, etc. Not exactly Manhunt 2. I noticed that the game next to DQ Tycoon in the ad is "1701," which I've played and which also brings a lot of historical flavor as well as the previously mentioned elements to the mix.

CCFC: I don't dispute for a second that some video games can have educational value. Our concerns are a) the highly commercialized nature of so many of Scholastic's offerings  (not just the games) and b) the fact that Scholastic sells so many things that are not books in its "book clubs".

The fact of the matter is that books clearly play a special role in schools which is why Scholastic is allowed into classrooms and given the unique opportunity to sell directly to students.  Scholastic is exploiting that access by selling so many things that aren't books.  I'm sure Game Stop or Toys R' Us would love to have teachers hand out circulars for them every month.

GP: So, why does CCFC hate ice cream? Just kidding...

In a refreshing break from the standard video game industry propaganda, a pair of maverick PC developers offer some straight talk on DRM to Gamasutra's Paul Hyman.

Ron Carmel of 2D Boy (World of Goo) believes that the major publishers are beginning to back off on the use of DRM following consumer outrage over its use in games like Spore:

I definitely believe this is all the result of a change in the public perception of DRM, a sort of grass roots uprising. Gamers are much more vocal about it than they used to be, perhaps because they are so accustomed to downloading music without too many restrictions.

But Carmel also relates DRM to the battle over used game sales currently being waged between video game publishers and retailers:

Publishers aren't stupid. They know that DRM doesn't work against piracy. What they're trying to do is stop people from going to GameStop to buy $50 games for $35, none of which goes into the publishers' pockets. If DRM permits only a few installs, that minimizes the number of times a game can be resold.

Although, to be fair, there doesn't appear to be much of a secondary market for PC games among retailers. Consumer-to-consumer channels like Ebay may be a different story. Brad Wardell of Stardock added:

Spore was the final straw that broke the camel's back. Someone who buys software does not want to be made to feel like a chump for buying it.

Not surprisingly, the Entertainment Software Association, which lobbies on behalf of publishers, argued in support of DRM. VP Ric Hirsch told Gamasutra:

DRM is a reasonable response to high piracy rates... There is little doubt that piracy would be far more widespread without game publishers' use of DRM.

Seems like a bad trade from here.

Activision Blizzard has bailed from the PC Gaming Alliance, the trade group devoted to promoting the PC side of the video game biz.

Joining the organization, however, is Sony DADC. You might know them better by their widely-reviled SecuROM software, the DRM that famously sullied last year's Spore launch.

GP: As a longtime PC gamer who has been frustrated by the game industry's shabby treatment of computer players in recent years, I've been enthused by the concept of the PCGA. But the decidely consumer-unfriendly SecuROM is a major part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Via: Blue's News

UPDATE: Game Biz Blog spoke with PCGA Program Manager John Ehrig, who offered the organization's view on SecuROM's Sony DADC's participation:

PCGA doesn’t have any ability at all to limit its membership. Anyone that’s in the PC gaming arena who’s willing to pay their dues and sign a member agreement can become members. We’re not in a position to prevent people from joining our group.

 

We get [complaints] a lot, people saying ‘oh why are they a member, they shouldn’t be a member, they don’t really believe in PC gaming’. It’s not unusual at all... The impression that somebody in the general public might have in [a member’s] commitment to PC gaming can be completely biased by some rumour or false impressions they’ve picked up.

Aside from the use of two politically-loaded buzz words in its title, we don't know much about Rendition: Guantanamo.

There's only the trailer at left as well as a teaser e-mail from developer T-Enterprise:

This week we are happy to present the teaser trailer for our 3D console game Rendition: Guantanamo.

The release date for the game will be October 2009. The game is being programmed for XBox 360 and Game for Windows format.

 

Without giving too much away at this stage - the game is set in the year 2020. The detention facility Guantanamo Bay has been sold to Mercenaries who now charge Scientists to conduct their un-ethical experiments on living human beings.

 

You play someone who was "renditioned" to Guantanamo by the Mercenaries and is now being subjected to these experiments. No one knows you are here and no one cares. Until now! Someone has managed to slip you a message. You have a son...

UPDATE: T-Enterprise, based in Scotland, is on Twitter, if you're interested in watching for updated info on Rendition: Guantanamo.