As part of an attempt to clarify regulations relating to the upcoming Tennessee turkey hunting season, a local judge set aside some time in order to offer some advice to youngsters.

Hamilton County General Sessions Court Judge Bob Moon, as quoted in The Chattanoogan, stated:

If young people spent more time in the woods and on the water and away from malls, video games and televisions, our juvenile delinquency and crime numbers would drop.

Moon, who used a bow and arrow to bag two turkeys last season, added, “Very few drug addicts and dangerous criminals are outdoorsmen.”

The Marion Country turkey hunting rules are actually quite confusing; make sure to click through to The Chattanoogan for a full breakdown as detailed by Judge Moon.


Pic via

An excellent piece on the UK’s Telegraph website rips Defense Secretary Liam Fox for his prattle about EA’s upcoming Medal of Honor game, while also outlining the impact Fox’s comments will have on game sales and how such attacks by “outsiders” raise the cackles hackles of gamers.

Fox totally missed the boat in his condemnation of the game as he argued for its ban in the UK, claiming that the game was “un-British,” even though British forces do not factor into the game at all.

If Fox wanted to make a reasonable argument about the game, as Nick Cowen explains, he could have chosen a different tack: Read More

Yesterday we told you about a nasty rape and murder that occured in South Hill Puyallup, Washington, in which an 18-year old man raped and murdered a 16-year old disabled/developmentally challenged girl. The story mentioned that the man had returned home after the murder to play Dungeons and Dragons Online in order to try and “forget” the crime.

However in a new story published yesterday on The Seattle Post Intelligencer website, detectives in the case (or the author of the piece) appear to be playing up the videogame angle even more, as evidenced by the headline, “Murder Motive May Have Been Video Game Fantasy.”
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Piazza del Campo is a historic space in Siena, Italy, famous for being the scene of a biannual bareback horse race named the Palio di Siena. The use of the space as a cart track in the upcoming Gran Turismo 5 however, as illustrated in the accompanying video, has angered at least one Italian official.

Kotaku reports that Anna Carli, CEO of the Consortium for the Protection of the Palio is reaching out to Sony officials in order to resolve this dispute. Read More

Dr. Acharya Shree Yogeesh is a spiritualist and practitioner of Eastern philosophy with a Doctorate of Philosophy in “The Six Substances of Jainism: A Comparative Study with Buddhist Texts.” Acharya Shree is also founder of Yogeesh Ashram, a California-based non-profit whose sole purpose is “to uplift and awaken souls.” Read More

Musician and record producer Mike Stock lashed out against the current state of pop music, stating that the “industry has gone too far” as it serves up “soft pornography” to children.

Stock, perhaps best-known as one member of a trio of songwriters and producers known as Stock Aitken Waterman, which produced and wrote songs for an impressive list of musical acts ranging from Elton John to Judas Priest to Bananarama, saved some of his blame for videogames, stating:

Before children even step into school, they have all these images. The pop videos and computer games like Grand Theft Auto confronting them, and the parents can't control it. Talking to mothers' groups, they were saying that even they have lost faith in brands like Disney. Read More

Spencer Halpin’s Moral Kombat, the 2007 documentary that focuses on the subject of violence in videogames, is now available for free viewing on Hulu.

The documentary features a wide assortment of game industry luminaries, pundits and critics weighing in on the topic of violence in games, including Lorne Lanning, Dean Takahashi, American McGee, Doug Lowenstein, Jason Della Rocca, Jack Thompson, Hal Halpin and Henry Jenkins.

It can also still be viewed on Amazon’s OnDemand Service, Babelgum, iTunes and Netflix.

Halpin offered: Read More

UK therapist and sports psychologist Steve Pope, who earlier this year compared playing games for two hours to taking a line of cocaine (in terms of the high it produces), has resurfaced in a Daily Star article, in which he claims that videogame addiction is rampant among soccer players.

In its article, the Star claims that Joe Cole, David James, and Cesc Fabregas have all admitted to “spending hours glued to their consoles,” but notes that “there is no indication they are among those receiving help or that their game has suffered.”

This is where Pope pops in, alleging that players from Manchester United, Chelsea, Spurs and Arsenal have videogame addiction problems. Pope, who serves as sport psychologist for the soccer team Fleetwood Town, recounted: Read More

Not everyone, it seems, is a fan of the recently passed North Carolina tax incentives for videogame makers, film producers and other makers of interactive media.

The North Carolina Institute for Constitutional Law (NCICL) bills itself as a “nonprofit, non-partisan organization devoted to educating the public, bar, and policymakers about constitutional issues,” but what really seems to raise its hackles is “the granting by governmental entities of so-called ‘incentives’ in the form of taxpayers’ money being used for corporate welfare.”

The Raleigh-based organization came out against the recently enacted tax breaks in the latest issue of its newsletter, entitled Corporate Welfare Weekly, writing: Read More

Only the Daily Star could make the New York Post look like the New York Times.

We’re a little late to this one, but last week that bastion of accurate reporting, the UK’s Daily Star, ran an article insinuating that Rockstar was making a Grand Theft Auto game based on the criminal actions committed earlier this month by ex-con Raoul Moat, who killed one and injured three across a six-day spree throughout the NorthEast UK. 

GTA Rothbury, as the game was called by Star writer Jerry Lawton, contained a series of animated quotes from relatives of the victims, outraged by the thought of a game, book or movie based on the criminal’s exploits, as reported up by CVG.

The story was eventually taken off the Star’s website entirely (since it was made up) and the newspaper issued an apology (thanks again CVG) stating: Read More

The office of California State Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) let us know that the state’s Attorney General Jerry Brown (D-Oakland) will submit California’s written argument to the Supreme Court, which voices the Golden State’s backing of a law that would make it illegal to rent or sell “excessively” violent videogames to children.

Yee is, of course, the original author of the law (AB 1179), which has made it all the way to the front of the Supreme Court in the form of Schwarzenegger v. EMA.

Citing a SCOTUS decision in United States v. Stevens, in which the Court declined to ban media depicting animal cruelty, Yee indicated that the law may have been constitutional if it was more focused, stating, “Clearly, the justices want to look specifically at our narrowly tailored law that simply limits sales of ultra-violent games to kids without prohibiting speech.”

Yee added: Read More

As one Guardian author wondered what happened to the ambition of boys, citing videogames as at least a contributing factor, another Guardian columnist fired back, defending games as part of the solution.

Will Hutton’s Sunday column examined the possible reasons why society is churning out “so many disaffected, troubled and disengaged young men.” Hutton argued that “the great male demotivator is the risk of loss of face.” He continued:

One of the reasons that boys do not try harder is that the penalties for disengagement are so low – indeed, there are even rewards, at least in the sense that if you don't try, you can't fail. Much better to smoke dope, hang out and obsessively play computer games all day. Read More

A Canadian researcher (and conspiracy theorist), who focuses on the “causative forces behind major changes in historical development” and believes that culture is “created and altered by those in control, always to lead the people like sheep into the next pasture,” believes that videogames, of course, are a part of this process.

Alan Watt has written a series of books on the subject and operates a website entitled Cutting Through the Matrix. In a YouTube video, Watts says about humanity, “The average person is so out of touch, so incredibly out of touch, with the only true reality there is, that it’s a different world all together. They cannot tell fact from fiction anymore.”

On entertainment in general he offers, “You cannot be entertained today and enjoy it. If you watch any of these movies… as soon as you’ve identified with these characters, you’ve lost it and you’ve been indoctrinated. They are downloading into you.”
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Speaking at a Best Buy shareholder meeting at the end of June, a Parents Television Council (PTC) Chapter Director urged the retailer to display M (Mature)-rated games on higher shelves.

Minnesota Chapter Director Phyllis Plum initially praised Best Buy’s efforts in enforcing videogame ratings, but then asked the company to “do more,” stating, “…speaking as one of your customers, a shareholder and most importantly, a grandmother, I’m asking why mature-rated video games cannot be placed on higher shelves.”

Plum cited PTC mystery shoppers as reporting that M-rated games were appearing on lower shelves, “accessible to children.”

She urged Best Buy to: Read More

It might be hard to believe that M.I.A., purveyor of such a violent (and politically charged) video for the song Born Free, would be worried about violence in videogames, but as a relatively new mom, she is.

The songstress, born Mathangi Arulpragasam in London, did spend time as a youth growing up in war-torn Sri Lanka, giving her a front row seat for violence in that country, before her family eventually moved back to the UK.

Speaking to Connect magazine, which CVG decoded, M.I.A. alluded to the fighting she witnessed growing up, saying that “My kid's gonna see it [violence], but he's gonna see it in computer games."

She continued:

I don't know which is worse. The fact that I saw it in my life has maybe given me lots of issues, but there's a whole generation of American kids seeing violence on their computer screens and then getting shipped off to Afghanistan. Read More

The use of a videogame in an afterschool program has at least one parent seeing red.

Madison Middle School in Albuquerque, New Mexico uses an unnamed game (but which appears to be DimensionM from Tabula Digital) that teaches math amidst what one parent is calling excessive violence, reports the city’s ABC affiliate KOAT.

“We are feeding the addiction of these children to videogames,” said fist-shaking parent Marlene Perrotte, who added, “They were all excited, and they were excited because of the violence…”

“Anything we can do to meet the kids on their own ground and educate them is to our advantage,” said the school’s Gary Bodman, who called the game “just like a 21st century flash card really.”

Tabula’s website says schools that use DimensionM will see students “enjoy all the action and adventure of commercial-quality video games while practicing and reinforcing the skills they need to succeed in math.”

In what can only be categorized as "no great shock to our readership," Michigan State University law professor Kevin Saunders will help the state of California when the Supreme Court revisits Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association later this year. Saunders will help co-author an amicus brief to help California’s position when arguing its case before the U.S. Supreme Court during its 2010-11 session, which begins in October. As you probably already know, Saunders testified during the 2005 California State Assembly Judiciary Committee hearings on the issue at the invitation of Leland Yee. His arguments were obviously against the industry and for the law written by Yee.

Saunders' statements on the matter almost sound like the ECA's, EMA’s or the ESA's position:

"Parents need to play an active role in deciding what is appropriate for their children."

No disagreement there. But then he makes it sound as if the law helps to insure that universal truth: Read More

“Young addicts are skipping meals, playing truant from school and are even stealing money from their parents to buy the latest games.”

This sums up the current state of game addiction in the UK's county of  Lancashire, at least according to an article on the website of the Lancashire Evening Post.

Written with a sense of urgency that was perhaps designed to cast a chilling effect on the reader (but will instead provoke laughs or a disgusted shake of the head from most), the piece centers on the trials of a 15-year old gamer named Jack, who “discarded his friends, neglected his school studies and survived on junk food as he embarked on marathon gaming sessions of up to 48 hours.”

A few quotes from “Jack”: Read More

Perhaps violent game critics should refocus their energy on dangerous hardware instead of software.

Asylum has the story of a gamer—with the Xbox Live handle XxAdamWestxX09— who was playing a round of Modern Warfare 2 when his Xbox 360 decided to strike. The console, possibly in legion with a neighboring Apple laptop, coiled its headset chord around a chair, causing the gamer to smash his head into the nearby Mac when he tried to get to his feet.

The gamer received a forehead gash which required six stitches to close.

Be careful out there gamers!

Political cartoon site TobyToons offers the above illustration as a means to explain President Obama’s continued attacks on videogames and technology.

Just last week the President lamented the current state of technology, stating, “With iPods and iPads, Xboxes and PlayStations, information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment.”

This follows Obama taking a shot at the Xbox in a 2009 speech, where he stated, “I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.”


Thanks Rodrigo Ybáñez García!

The Los Angeles Times recently peppered State Senator Leland Yee with a few questions about the original legislation he penned making it all the way to the United States Supreme Court.

Perhaps the best question posed to Yee asked how he could introduce legislation that would make it illegal to sell violent games to minors when he is not very familiar with games at all.

Yee answered:

That is a fair criticism. I'm not a player. But I have seen individuals who play these games. I have seen individuals using a baseball bat and bludgeoning a hooker to death, or taking a gun and shooting a cop. Those are the direct result of someone pushing a button and making a conscious decision. I can see that that kind of connection between your action and the consequent behavior is dangerous.

With a movie you can sit there for two hours and see everything. In these violent games, parents may never fully understand what they contain because you have to be a very sophisticated player to trigger them. Read More

NPR’s Diane Rehm turned her focus to violent videogames yesterday in a radio show that featured California State Senator Leland Yee, Grand Theft Childhood co-author Dr. Cheryl Olson, the Entertainment Software Association’s (ESA) Richard Taylor, Eugene Volokh, Professor of 1st Amendment Law at the UCLA Law School and researcher Craig Anderson from Iowa State University.

The nearly hour-long show began by discussing the Supreme Court’s decision to review California’s violent videogame law with Yee, before moving on to Anderson, who mentioned his recent research. Rehm then indicated that she watched “a bit” of Grand Theft Auto in order to become familiar with the subject, before asking Taylor to explain how popular “these games” are, who is playing them and what the effects are.
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A segment on Anderson Cooper’s CNN show last night discussed pedestrians in New York City repeatedly ignoring a dying man on the street and somehow turned into a referendum on videogames.

A NYC man was stabbed after apparently attempting to help a female fend off an attacker and then collapsed on the street as people kept passing by, eventually dying of his wounds. In discussing the story, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, filling in for Cooper, brought on board psychologist Dr. Michael Bradley (pictured) to talk about what might make people ignore a mortally wounded person lying on a sidewalk.

A transcript of the discussion follows (in video on the CNN website, the segment with Gupta and Bradley begins around the 17.25 mark)
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No doubt motivated by CNN’s sensationalistic coverage of the game, an Argentinean politician has taken the bait and warned that the controversial game RapeLay violates the country's criminal codes.

Argentina's Ministry of Justice called RapeLay (translated) a “clear vindication of the crimes of sexual abuse, violation, against sexual integrity and discrimination against the women,” and warned the populace that the sale or commercialization of games featuring explicit sexual activities is in direct opposition to article 128 of Argentina’s penal code. Those who break such laws are subject to prison terms ranging from six months to four years.
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A report from The Queensland Legislative Assembly of Australia on Alcohol-Related Violence inexplicably suggests that expanding research into the effects of violent videogames on youth might somehow provide more insight into the impact drinking has on people.

The inquiry (PDF), released last month, was drafted by the Law, Justice and Safety Committee and focuses on “alcohol related violence around licensed premises.” The report begins by asking, “What has happened to Australia’s drinking culture?” and claims that “Vomiting, falling over, and creating a nuisance in public are not seen as shameful but to some are badges of honour.”
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Jack White, of the White Stripes, the Raconteurs and the Dead Weather, has advice for new musical artists, and it does not involve playing videogames.

Asked “The three things every new artist starting out today needs” by NME, White responded, “They need to quit playing video games, throw away their Auto-Tune program and cut three strings off their guitar.”

White was also asked “Who or what is the enemy of music right now?” He responded, “The internet. The internet. Your mom, and the internet.”

CVG rightly notes that White has profited off of videogames, from the use of the White Stripes song Blue Orchid in Guitar Hero 5, to a Raconteurs Track Pack in Guitar Hero: World Tour to Dead Weather songs being available in the Rock Band store.
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Could videogames be responsible for a widening education gap between U.S. men and women?

The author of a piece in the Wichita Eagle seems to think so. Citing a drop in the number of American males earning college degrees, the article claims that women are not forcing males out of the classroom; instead, “Women are taking empty seats as males fall by the wayside.”

While some groups have pinned the fall of man on recent education reforms or the “feminization of the classroom,” the piece’s author notes that, “Males are dropping out of academics in all developed countries,” and, “Whatever is depressing boys' school performance is cutting across cultural and political boundaries and widely disparate educational systems.”

The “whatever” mentioned above does not remain unnamed for long, as the author offers, “This decline in boys' scores coincides with the emergence of video games.”
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A spokesperson from Mothers Against Violence (MAV) recently appeared on BBC Radio for a debate about violent videogames.

As recounted by EuroGamer, the MAV representative put the onus on parents to control what games their children are playing, saying, “I'm not directly blaming games, I'm blaming parents.” The spokesperson also suggested that parents band together and educate their peers on the issue of violence in games, stating, “It just takes one of us to spread the word, to plant the seed.”

The spokesperson then expressed “fears that violent games were ‘desensitising’ children who are ‘becoming complacent and think they're invincible.’”

Eurogamer wrote: “A broader point made was that many parents, despite age-ratings on packaging, don't pay attention to the games their children are playing, not (sic) are they aware of the negative effects they could have.”


Thanks Andrew and Mdo!

The tide of youthful anarchy will no longer besmirch and shame the UK.

A wonderful lampoon video released as part of Namco’s media blitz for the upcoming Dead to Rights: Retribution.

Good dog.


Via BrandflakesforBreakfast

In response to CNN’s RapeLay coverage, a Japanese artist has penned an open letter to the network decrying its reporting of the matter.

Nogami Takeshi wrote that his career began drawing hentai manga (sexually explicit anime comic), though most of his current work was described as non-hentai manga. As such, Nogami calls himself “well qualified to object to the views you present.”

After noting that, “... we Japanese enjoy one of the most safe and peaceful societies on Earth,” Nogami admits that Japanese society does have its problems, but that, “I frankly do not think that you are the ones to tell us [about the problems]."

He continued: Read More