Earlier this week we reported that Foxconn - the company that helps build many of the products that are popular in the West from companies like Apple, Sony, Samsung, Microsoft and Nintendo - reported that it found underage interns working in one of its plants in Yantai, China. Today we have learned that that plant is responsible for assembling Nintendo products.

An editorial in the UK edition of Huffington Post penned by Andrew Cole-Bulgin, Joint-CEO of Komixx claims that video games are "stunting children's imagination and inhibiting their ability to play together." The head of the children's television company says that he comes to this conclusion based on research the company conducted related to Toby's Travelling Circus, a new television program for children under the age of five.

The experiment continues over at the Indie Game Stand, where every 96 hours a new indie game is highlighted and put up for sale at the cool price of "pay-whatever-you-want." This time out it's Digital Eel's excellently trippy first person real-time spatial navigation game Brainpipe.

The Associated Press (by way of syndication in the pages of Time's Techland) reports that China-based electronics manufacturer Foxconn has admitted that underage workers are part of its massive work force in the country. Foxconn, which has had a hard time this month keeping production flowing at its plants due to riots and labor disputes, assembles a variety of electronics for Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and others.

Not exactly the press you want, a new article at Gamasutra features Team Ninja director Yohei Shimbori talking about how fans wanted female characters in Dead or Alive 5 to have bigger breasts.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has launched an educational Facebook app contest today with 30 prizes worth a grand total of $2.5 million. The 'College Knowledge Challenge' kicks off this week with an "edtech hackathon" at Facebook’s headquarters at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo Park.

The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) has put up a form that interested parties can sign onto concerning some changes that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has planned for the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

A new video from members of Microsoft's Xbox Live team throws its support behind GaymerCon, the first GLBT friendly gaming event to take place in early 2013 in San Francisco, California. Obviously organizers of the event are glad to have the support of Xbox Live.

You can watch the video to your left. At the time of this writing the GaymerCon Kickstarter has managed to raise $75,000. The Kickstarter campaign ends Friday, August 31 at 11:43 pm EDT.

According to new research from NPD Group, hand-held consoles are still more popular than the iPad, despite Apple's popular tablet device making in-roads with children because of its ease-of-use and large library of games and apps. According to the data released by the retail research firm, children ages 4 - 14 still spend most of their gaming time with dedicated gaming machines. Tablet devices did have gains from 2012 usage though: according to NPD tablet usage was up 10 percent of 2011 numbers.

The Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) has revealed the winners of its 2012 scholarship program. The trade group that represents retailers in the United States (and was the lead in Brown v. EMA) has awarded five students $1,500 a year for up to four years who are entering college as freshmen.

Apparently the troubles are behind Sulake's Habbo Hotel, because the popular virtual hangout for teens is opening up to teens in Turkey. The new destination for Turkish teens is located at www.habbo.com.tr. The site, like every other region supported by Habbo Hotel, is free to play.

Australia New South Wales Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione is taking a lot heat for comments he made recently blaming the rise of teen knife-related crimes on playing violent video games. Scipione recently told The Daily Telegraph that teens were being desensitized to violence by playing violent video games that reward them for "killing and raping people." Obviously a tired trope related to Grand Theft Auto spewed by politicians.

GaymerCon the first-ever all-inclusive fan gaming event that promises a friendly and fun atmosphere for gamers and geeks to get together for two days in San Francisco (August of 2013), has managed to surpass its funding goal of $25,000 in just a few days via a Kickstarter campaign. With 25 more days to go, the GaymerCon Kickstarter has managed to generate $28,471 (as of this writing) in funding from 560 backers.

You may recall our interview with Matt Conn (Episode 5 of the Super Podcast Action Committee) of GaymerCon, the first-ever gaming event that caters to the GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) community set to take place in San Francisco in 2013.

While details are still a bit sketchy, an Oakley, California teen has been arrested for attempted murder after an altercation while playing a video game online turned to real-world violence. The incident occurred on Monday afternoon after two friends - an unnamed twenty-year-old man and a seventeen-year-old boy got into an altercation. According to Jimmy Lee from the Costa County Sheriff's Department, the two men were playing an unnamed video game online, which led to an argument about something.

In the wake of Sulake's problems with Habbo, Disney has decided to spend $4.7 million on an internet safety campaign for its popular massively-multiplayer online game for kids, Club Penguin. The announcement was made by the game's co-founder Lane Merrifield today. The internet safety campaign hopes to target more than 100 million children and parents around the world who use Club Penguin.

South Korea's new "Shutdown Law" was supposed to keep teens from gaming during a six hour block every night to focus on "more important things" like studying, but two groups have already filed lawsuits that question the legality of the new nanny state law concocted by lawmakers in the country. A group of game makers doing business in the region including NCsoft, Neowiz, and Nexon, have filed a lawsuit claiming that the Shutdown Law is unjust and unfair to them.

In the aftermath of a Channel 4 investigation into pedophiles targeting young users of the virtual hangout Habbo, owner Sulake has begun a soft launch of chat services in select regions. Sulake CEO Paul Fontaine announced via the company's blog that a new and improved Habbo (with more security measures in place) has launched in Finland, Spain and Brazil - with more regions being relaunched in the next few weeks.

A new study disputes the claims that using exercise video games at home can change the sedentary lifestyles of children in any significant way. A study conducted by researchers at the Children’s Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas found that children overcompensated in "other areas" after playing active video games - basically making any calories burned a zero net gain.

Apparently Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian has turned his Brooklyn Heights, New York apartment into a set for an upcoming documentary on Dungeons & Dragons.

While Ohanian hasn't played D&D since high school, the Reddit co-creator tweeted that he will be interviewed for the documentary and will have his Brooklyn Heights apartment temporarily transformed into a D&D themed set.

Habbo owner Sulake has issued a statement today announcing its plan to reintroduce chat channels and instant messaging within the virtual world that offer better protections for teens that frequent it against pedophiles. A report from British TV's Channel 4 detailed how pedophiles were using the service to engage youngsters in lewd and suggestive conversations.

In an obvious bid to promote the new book he co-authored with Danya Braunstein, "Growing Up Fast And Furious: Reviewing The Impacts Of Violent And Sexualised Media On Children," Macquarie University Children and Families Research Centre (in Sydney, Australia) deputy director Dr. Wayne Warburton tells Adelaide Now that years of research from every corner of the globe show a definitive link between time watching violent media and the "likelihood" of aggressive behavior in kids.

Researchers at the University of Central Florida's Anxiety Disorders Clinic along with Atlanta-based company Virtually Better have created a virtual game world where children with social anxiety can practice to become more comfortable in social situations.

British TV station Channel 4 ran a damning story about pedophiles in the virtual world of Habbo earlier this week that caused two major investors in the Sulake - the owner and operator of it - to walk away from the company. Now Sulake is trying to recover from the bad press, even as loyal users held silent vigils in the game in a show of support this week.

The first thing that crossed my mind when Nintendo showed the Miiverse at its E3 press conference was "how long after the Wii U launch will the first user type out an expletive?" Well apparently Nintendo's solution for dealing with potty mouths is a system that uses actual humans to screen bad or inappropriate language.

Nintendo's chief executive Satoru Iwata says that the company plans to implement and use three separate systems. The first system is a traditional filtering system that checks for unpleasant words and replaces them with asterisks.

We hear a lot about the explicit language found in many video games but a new study by a Brigham Young University social sciences professor says that the level of strong language in many popular teen novels is substantially worse than what is found in most video games on the market. According to a new study by Brigham Young University social sciences professor Sarah Coyne, bestselling novel meant for teens are rife with cursing - they contain twice the rate of cursing of most video games.

UK video game industry trade group UKIE will sponsor the Games Britannia Festival, it announced today. Games Britannia is a week-long festival that brings British video game talent into the classroom, giving students a unique insight into the skills, techniques and qualifications required to have a successful career in the gaming industry. Over 1000 children, between the ages of 5 - 18 have already signed up to attend, according to UKIE. The event is scheduled to take place July 2 - 6.

A man from Greece, New York (a suburb of Rochester) has been sentenced to six months in jail, ten years of probation and registration as a sex offender in New York State. Twenty-year-old Richard "Ricky" Kretovic pled guilty to the crime of Criminal Sexual Act in March of this year as part of a plea deal and on Friday Monroe County Court Judge Victoria Argento delivered his sentence.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R-VA) and George Mason University President Alan Merten announced the creation of a series of interactive and educational computer and mobile phone game applications that teach youngsters about the risks and consequences of joining gangs. The goal of these programs is easy enough: to slow down gang recruitment levels in the state.

During the spring semester, GMU students used their programming skills and tapped into the attorney general’s office information of gangs to create several games and apps.

Casual game giants Dena and Gree have agreed to enforce a new policy that will restrict how much 16 - 17 year-old consumers can spend on in-app purchases, according to a news report from Japan Times. The new self-regulating policy, according to that report, is in response to reports that Japan's youth in that age range are spending ridiculous amounts of money on in-game purchases. The company's might also be trying to avoid national in-app spending laws in Japan.