Amazon has a product page up for the hardcover edition of Ryan G. Van Cleave's newest book on game addiction, "You Know You're a Video Game Addict If..." You may remember Van Cleave from his first book, "Unplugged: My Journey into the Dark World of Video Game Addiction," which detailed has extreme addiction to World of Warcraft. It's a cautionary tale, for sure.

Entertainment Media Council founder Morgan Ramsay has released his new book, "Gamers at Work: Stories Behind the Games People Play." Gamers at Work features 18 interviews with legendary video game creators and entrepreneurs conducted by Ramsay. Through first-hand accounts with the industry's most famous people, the book explores how entertainment software companies are formed, and how they are kept running. Some have succeeded, some have walked away and other have failed abysmally.

English Novelist Christopher Fowler shares his curiosity with Computer & Videogames about why more books like his haven't been turned into video games. According to the author, games can be used to create more faithful adaptations of popular novels. He says that his latest project - an adaptation of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds proves it. Fowler is currently adapting the classic story to an XBLA and PSN title due for release in early autumn, with voice work by Patrick Stewart.

Mike Langlois psychotherapist, educator, and proprietor of the excellent blog "Gamer Therapist," criticizes the prevailing attitude of mental health professionals that video game usage is a root cause of bad behavior in his new book, "Reset: Video Games & Psychotherapy." Langlois, a Teaching Associate in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, discusses the disdain for gamers and the video games they love that many therapists and mental health professionals have.

The third edition of Jeannie Novak's textbook on game development, "Game Development Essentials: An Introduction," was released earlier this month and is available at most major book stores and online book resellers. The book series is a popular resource for real-world, college-level game design programs.

Gamification expert Gabe Zichermann will showcase his second book, Gamification By Design, at The Gamification Summit September 15-16 in New York City. The new release, which launched on Amazon.com today, will be on sale during the Summit. Zichermann will also host a concentrated design session filled with "revelations and profound insights" learned from his work with the world’s biggest brands, hottest startups and a range of non-profits.

A new book called "Video Gamers" by British Sociologist Garry Crawford hits book stores (both virtual and brick-and-mortar) this week. The book was published earlier this month by Routledge (London & New York) and is priced at £25.99.

Game journalist Harold Goldberg's new book of the history of video games is finally finished and ready for your perusal. Published by Three Rivers Press, ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture brings together three years of research and over 200 game industry interviews to weave a tale about how video games have risen to the top of all pop culture. Goldberg talks to everyone from PopCap's co-founder to the elusive and secretive Rockstar co-founder Sam Houser. The book also offers a deep look at the history of video games from the very first one - Tennis for Two to today's greatest hits and achievements.

Below are some obligatory quotes from various industry heavies:

"A love letter to gaming...filled with fascinating behind-the-scenes vignettes of game creation…perfectly encapsulates the passion and dedication of videogames’ creators and fans."—Abbie Heppe, senior producer, G4TV

Lionhead Studios founder and creative director at Microsoft Game Studios Peter Molyneux will write the foreword to the upcoming book Gamers at Work by Morgan Ramsay. Gamers at Work is the third book in the "At Work" book series published by Apress. Gamers at Work is being written by Morgan Ramsay, founder of Entertainment Media Council. Gamers At Work takes a closer look at the challenges startup game development studios face by way of dozens of interviews with the world’s most successful entrepreneurs in the video game industry, including Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins, Atari cofounder Nolan Bushnell, and Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin, among others.

At Lionhead Studios (acquired by Microsoft in 2006), Molyneux created the Black & White and Fable franchises. Prior to that, he co-founded Bullfrog Productions where he created Populous and Dungeon Keeper.

A Herald-Tribune article details the odd work situation that Ryan Van Cleave finds himself in since writing his book, "Unplugged: My Journey Into the Dark World of Video Game Addiction." The topic of his book, game addiction, does not sit well with some faculty and students at Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Fla., where he teaches English and writing, because the school has close ties with the field of video game development.

The article describes him as somewhat heretical, because the school teaches computer animation, comparing him to a Hershey employee warning consumers not to eat chocolate.

Author James Miller wants you to buy his new book and save your children. The cleverly titled book "Youth Violence An International Crisis: Fighting Violence by and Against Youth (Volume 2)," promises to help parents deal with the trials and tribulations facing children and teens today including school yard bullying, bullying by school staff and teachers, community violence and crime, human trafficking, gangs, video game addiction, assault, violence, bullying, rape, substance abuse, and much more.

At first glance one might think that Mr. Miller is anti-video game, but reading a few paragraphs from the book on Amazon reveals that he puts most of the blame on unengaged parents who are letting children be raised by video games and media. He says that parents need to take responsibility.

Of course, there is this excerpt from a press release promoting the book that did give me pause:

According to a new Harris Poll, over half of Americans (53 percent) say they are planning to purchase toys as gifts this year while two in five (40 percent) say they will not purchase toys and 7 percent are not sure. Three-quarters of those surveyed in a household with children (73 percent) say they will purchase toys as gifts this year. I feel sorry for the one-fourth of those kids who live in those other households. These are just some of the results of a special Harris Poll of 3,084 adults surveyed online between October 11 - 18, 2010.

Salman Rushdie's latest book, Luka and the Fire of Life, was inspired by the world of video games, according to the author. Rushdie is best known for the book, The Satanic Verses, which brought the author big trouble. He was forced into hiding in England for over a decade after Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a religious edict ordering Muslims to kill the him.

Rushdie's new book is a lot less controversial; he told the Associated Press that he wrote the book for his 13-year-old son. The book, which releases this week, is a magical adventure. Rushdie said that he is writing his memoirs and has no plans yet to write another novel.

Source: AP

A new book is in the works that will explore how to create a successful video game company, pulling on the expertise of some big names in the industry.

The book, tentatively titled Gamers at Work, is being written by Morgan Ramsey, CEO of the Media Entertainment Council, and will be published by Apress. The book is scheduled to hit shelves in February.

Some of the high-profile people interviewed for the book include Trip Hawkins, founder of Electronic Arts; Nolan Bushnell, cofounder of Atari; Tony Goodman, cofounder of Ensemble Studios; Christopher Weaver, founder of Bethesda Softworks; Ken Williams, cofounder of Sierra On-Line; Cory Ondrejka, cofounder of Linden Lab; Warren Spector, founder of Junction Point Studios; Doug and Gary Carlston, cofounders of Broderbund Software; Feargus Urquhart, cofounder of Obsidian Entertainment; David Perry, founder of Shiny Entertainment; Lorne Lanning, cofounder of Oddworld Inhabitants; and Raph Koster, cofounder of Metaplace.

Additional book details will be available through Apress at a later time.

Ryan G. Van Cleave's new book about his battle with game addiction is in stores today. The book is called "Unplugged: My Journey Into The Dark World Of Video Game Addiction," and it details what the author calls a battle with "very serious addiction" to playing videogames. His level of addiction? He claims he spent 50 hours a week playing videogames which led to self-imposed alienation from friends and family, job loss, and bad health.

A press release this morning in support of the book offers a particularly hard to belive quote on what he experienced when he gave gaming up:

We haven't read this one yet, but we plan to.

Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games, a new book by Prof. Nick Dyer-Witheford of the University of Western Ontario and Greig de Peuter, a PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University, digs into some territory that should prove fascinating to GamePolitics readers.

From the press release:

Games of Empire forcefully connects video games to real-world concerns about globalization, militarism, and exploitation, from the horrors of African mines and Indian e-waste sites that underlie the entire industry, the role of labor in commercial game development, and the synergy between military simulation software and the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan... the urban neoliberalism made playable in Grand Theft Auto, and the emergence of an alternative game culture through activist games and open-source game development.

Rejecting both moral panic and glib enthusiasm, Games of Empire demonstrates how virtual games crystallize the cultural, political, and economic forces of global capital, while also providing a means of resisting them.

The paperback edition is available for $19.95.

While we relentlessly track the intersection of video games and politics here on GP, we never realized that there are comic books detailing the careers of political figures.

For that tidbit of info we thank the ECA's Brett Schenker. Via Brett's Graphic Policy blog we learned about Bluewater Productions, which offers graphic novels detailing the political careers of, among others, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and others.

The publisher's Female Force series covers Sarah Palin, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and Caroline Kennedy. Even the Obama family dog, Bo, will be star of his own comic book next month.

If you're into graphic novels and/or politics, it's worth checking out.

FULL DISCLOSURE DEPT: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics.

The Obama administration's deputy chief technology officer for open government will pay a visit to Second Life at noon Eastern time, reports New World Notes.

Beth Simone Noveck, who is known as Lawlita Fassbinder on SL, has been a member of the virtual community since 2004. Noveck will speak about her new book, Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful.

Noveck talked about her job with the New York Times last month:

If [average] people are going to be asked to spend the time on contributing, you want to use the participation they give you...

Even something like having a blog with an open discussion about policy is so revolutionary in the way government works.

Having finished Team of Rivals, a study of Abraham Lincoln's politicial genius, blogger Nate Janewit of Tech Industry Guerilla notes with despair that a Spielberg/Peter Jackson film adaptation may be in the works.

Expecting that the movie won't do justice to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Janewit, a program manager in Microsoft's Bing team, goes on to speculate about what a subsequent video game version of Team of Rivals might be like:

[CUE DEEP-VOICED ANNOUNCER AND IMAGES OF EXPLOSIONS]

ANNOUNCER: From the studios that brought you The Sims and Madden 2009 comes…LINCOLN!

[IMAGE OF LINCOLN SITTING IN A CHAIR THINKING]

ANNOUNCER: Balance the conservative and radical elements of your party…

[IMAGE OF LINCOLN WITH HAND IN THE AIR SURROUNDED BY CROWDS]

ANNOUNCER: Placate the masses with your oratorical skill…

[IMAGE OF SALMON CHASE, PLOTTING AGAINST YOU AS SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY]

ANNOUNCER: Navigate the dangerous waters of political intrigue within your own Cabinet!

I can already picture the crowds of enthusiastic gamers lining up or preordering weeks in advance. For some reason, real history just isn’t as interesting as video games.

America's Army, the first-person shooter freely distributed as a recruiting tool, has been supplemented with a graphic novel.

Written by M. Zachary Sherman and inked by Michael Penick and J. Brown, the work spins the tale of the Army's struggle to save innocents in the fictional Democratic Republic of the Ostregals.

The expansion from games to comic books is likely to rile critics who object to the Army's incursion into pop culture for recruitment purposes.

Via: Blue's News

Today's edition of the Dr. Phil show will re-air an episode on game addiction which features Brad D. (left) of ExGamer.net.

As GamePolitics reported in October, 2008 when the show initially aired, Brad speaks frankly about a suicide attempt.

Also appearing on the program is Wendy Kays, author of Game Widow.

While violent video games often come in for blame when school shootings occur, a new book maintains that such rampages occur because school shooters are mentally disturbed.

The Associated Press reports on Why Kids Kill: Inside the Minds of School Shooters, written by  Peter Langman. The child psychologist studied ten school shooters, including Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and Virginia Tech mass murderer Seung-Hui Cho. Of his research, Langman said:

The biggest eye-opener was the extent to which Dylan Klebold really was mentally disturbed. That was not in the literature, not in the media accounts. To realize that, you had to see his journal. His journal is very fascinating, a very disturbed piece of writing.

 

[Klebold and four other shooters] were suicidally depressed and full of rage at the inexplicable unfairness of life. In addition, they were not living in reality. They all believed that people or monsters conspired to do them harm. ... They were confused and desperate and lost in the mazes of their minds.

Langman speculated that Tim Kretschmer, who attacked his former school and killed 16 people yesterday in Germany might be psychotic, psychopathic or a victim of childhood trauma. But Langmant emphasized that it was too early to make such a call. The AP writes:

At first, Langman's conclusions might sound obvious: These kids would have to be crazy to go to their school and open fire. But the public and the media, especially in the immediate aftermath of a school shooting, have usually focused on other factors: the killers' fascination with violent movies and video games, their easy access to guns, even the side effects of psychiatric drugs.

Langman says some of these may have been factors but do not by themselves explain rampages in places like Littleton and West Paducah, Ky.; Jonesboro, Ark.; and Springfield, Ore. Millions of kids watch violent movies and live in households that harbor firearms. Yet only a few have ever gone on to become mass murderers.

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood has targeted Scholastic, Inc. over the bookseller's marketing of items such as video games, jewelry kits and toys to school children.

As reported by the Associated Press, CCFC director Susan Linn was highly critical of Scholastic. The company has been welcomed into schools for decades. Said Linn:

The opportunity to sell directly to children in schools is a privilege and not a right. Scholastic is abusing that privilege by flooding classrooms across the country with ads for toys, trinkets, and electronic media with little or no educational value.

The AP details some of the bookseller's marketing practices which prompted CCFC to act:

Items pitched to elementary school students in the last 14 months include M&M’s Kart Racing Wii video game, an American Idol event planner, the SpongeBob SquarePants Monopoly computer game, lip gloss rings, Nintendo’s Baby Pals video game, Hannah Montana posters and the Spy Master Voice Disguiser.

The campaign said about one-third of the items for sale in Scholastic’s elementary and middle school book clubs were either not books or were books packaged with other items such as jewelry, toys and makeup.

However, Scholastic exec Judy Newman defended her company's offerings to the AP:

We’re losing kids’ interest (in reading). We have to keep them engaged. This (book club) model is 60 years old, and it has to stay relevant to do the work it does. To the extent we put in a few carefully selected non-book items, it’s to keep up the interest... some kids learn through video games.

A new online game serves as both a parody and a protest of a notorious free speech case in Thailand.

You Have To Defecate Upon King Bhumibol calls attention to the Thai government's imprisonment of Harry Nicolaides. As reported by the BBC, the Australian novelist was given a three-year sentence for defaming the monarchy.

Thai prosecutors charged that a passage detailing a fictional prince in a 2005 novel defamed King Bhumibol as well as the nation's Crown Prince. Only seven copies of the novel were sold.

The Australian government has asked Thailand to pardon Nicolaides.

Via: Water Cooler Games

Is your copy of Grand Theft Childhood getting a bit lonely up there on the bookshelf?

If so, new book by psychiatrist and gamer Dr. Kourosh Dini might make a great companion piece.

Video Game Play and Addiction: A Guide for Parents addresses the controversy over game addiction, examines the impact of video games on children, and provides advice for parents who are “overwhelmed and under informed about the games their children play.”

Of his book, Dini said:

Games have lots of benefits, which unfortunately, parents aren't always aware of when the only games they're exposed to are the controversial violent ones targeted to more mature players.  Age appropriate multi-player video games can allow children to learn how other people think - a key aspect of empathy. Games can also help a child become more comfortable with new and ever progressing technology...

To be sure, there are those who play problematically. Learning how to tell the difference can be critical toward promoting healthy development.

Other topics covered include:

• Improved learning and communications skills
• Emotional and mental health
• Aggression
• Motivational and withdrawal issues
• ESRB ratings

Via: PR Web

-Reporting from San Diego, GamePolitics Correspondent Andrew Eisen…

The always interesting Dr. Cheryl Olson made an appearance G4's X-Play program yesterday.

Olson is co-author of the popular Grand Theft Childhood.

While discussing game violence issues with host Adam Sessler, Olson touched on violent games and their relationship to topics like bullying and depression.

She also voiced concerns about California's contested video game law and explained why it can be difficult for non-academics to make sense of video game research.

Gamers and the video game industry were cheered earlier this year by the release of Grand Theft Childhood. The book, written by a pair of Harvard researchers, Cheryl Olson and Laurence Kutner, basically said that fears about the effects of games on children are largely overblown (see: Researchers's New Book Cuts Through the Negative Hype About Video Game Violence). In fact, the book was so well-received in the game community that the authors were invited to present at PAX 08 in Seattle.

Not everyone in the field agrees with Olson and Kutner, however. Dr. Jerald Block, an Oregon psychiatrist and professor, works with patients suffering from video game addiction. He also happens to be a longtime reader of GamePolitics. Block's review of Grand Theft Childhood appears in November's Psychiatric Times, where he criticizes Olson and Kutner's perspective on game addiction:

The authors report being consulted by the mother of a 22-year-old man who is “addicted” to video gaming. The authors conclude, “Clearly, the young man had some major problems. The obsessive video game play was much more likely a symptom than the root cause.” Kutner and Olson do not seem to understand that while the computer use can often be a symptom of other disorders, it can also be a serious, self-perpetuating problem in its own right. The computer use is often an early defense against despair, but it can also socially isolate, perpetuate false feelings of power, and socially de-skill people; it can become its own source of pain and isolation...

Block also touches on the Shawn Woolley case:

In another example, the authors discuss, by name, a man who shot and killed himself in front of his computer. They dismiss the event on the basis of a magazine article that reported on it. They write, “It’s much more likely that his obsessive video game playing was a reflection of his other, more profound problems... and not the root cause of his suicide.” Having discussed the suicide with the man’s mother at several conferences, I found Kutner and Olson’s synopsis disturbingly trite and inaccu-rate. Moreover, the ethical breach of publishing the man’s name and speculating as to his diagnosis from afar was disturbing...

A new report links violent video games to aggressive tendencies in children in both the United States and Japan.

According to the Washington Post, the report published in the journal Pediatrics examines research conducted by Dr. Craig Anderson (left) of Iowa State University as well as work by a pair of Japanese researchers. All three studies are of the longitudinal variety. From the WaPo:

Anderson said the collaboration with Japanese researchers was particularly telling because video games are popular there and crime and aggression are less prevalent. Some gamers have cited Japan's example as evidence that violent games are not harmful.

Yet the studies produced similar findings in both countries, Anderson said. "When you find consistent effects across two very different cultures, you're looking at a pretty powerful phenomenon," he said. "One can no longer claim this is somehow a uniquely American phenomenon. This is a general phenomenon that occurs across cultures..."

 

"We now have conclusive evidence that playing violent video games has harmful effects on children and adolescents," Anderson said.

Anderson also told the WaPo that video games are only one of a number of influences on a child's behavior:

A healthy, normal, nonviolent child or adolescent who has no other risk factors for high aggression or violence is not going to become a school shooter simply because they play five hours or 10 hours a week of these violent video games... [Extreme forms of violence] almost always occur when there is a convergence of multiple risk factors.

The Des Moines Register has additional comments from Anderson:

The [Japanese] culture is so different, and their overall violence rate is so much lower than in the U.S. The argument has been made - it's not a very good argument, but it's been made by the video game industry - that all our research on violent video game effects must be wrong because Japanese kids play a lot of violent video games and Japan has a low violence rate.

By gathering data from Japan, we can test that hypothesis directly and ask, 'Is it the case that Japanese kids are totally unaffected by playing violent video games?' And of course, they aren't. They're affected pretty much the same way American kids are.

Anderson's study was previously detailed in his 2007 book Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents: Theory, Research and Public Policy.

Full report available here.

While video games generally catch more heat for violence than sex, there have been a fair number of lust-fueled controversies in game land. Now, Playboy tech writer Damon Brown documents them in his new book, Porn & Pong: How 'Grand Theft Auto,' 'Tomb Raider' and other Sexy Games Changed Our Culture.

Salon has a lengthy interview with Brown who starts with Custer's Revenge and touches (appropriately, we might add) on everything from Leisure Suit Larry to Hot Coffee and beyond. Not one to leave out the online crowd, Brown includes a section on game-related cybersex:

One of the things I write about is the first documented cyberspace rape in a text-only environment called LambdaMOO. A user found a loophole that allowed him to control the actions of other players. He could make one player hurt or have sex with another player and so on. The malicious user went rampant through the game universe, forcing players into sexual acts, and was repeatedly kicked off the game, but he always managed to come back under a different user name.

The Playboy writer also explains his theory of why most protagonists in sexually-oriented games are male:

Most of the creators of these games are straight, most are white and a portion of them are Asian. [Game designers] want to have a protagonist the player can identify with and, on a different level, the designer himself can identify with. People identify with Larry, because everyone's been desperate and had those moments where they can't pick up anyone, or they want to be Niko Bellic, this awesome tough guy who can maintain five girlfriends across the city of New York.

In the future, Brown sees erotically-charged games becoming much more, um... interactive:

Our grandchildren are going to have amazing sex lives -- I can't think of a better way to say it. Connecting vibrators and other types of tools to the computer and getting pleasured by a professional or a long-distance lover is a brilliant idea. It will connect people in a much deeper way than the Internet or a webcam that's going 15 frames per second...

 

From talking to people at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Vegas in January, I understand the basic idea is that teledildonics will take off in a mainstream way any moment now. I'd say within five years it's going to become standard equipment for a lot of people.

UPDATE: Over at Edge Online, editor Colin Campbell has an entertaining whinge at the entire subject of sex in games. Best line:

Words like teledildonics leave me dizzy with nausea.
 

A controversial new book fingers video games, television, and digital communications as culprits in the author's indictment of modern youth culture.

The book is The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30) by Emory University professor Mark Bauerlein. Canada.com has a lengthy interview with the author:

Something insidious is happening inside their heads. Young Americans today are no more learned or skilful than their predecessors, no more knowledgeable, fluent, up-to-date, or inquisitive, except in the materials of youth culture.

What then, Canada.com asks, does Bauerlein make of the widespread involvement of young people in the Barack Obama campaign?

...if it turns out that we have 75 per cent of young people voting in this election, then I will be happy to say that my comments about civic apathy were wrong. But if inspiration proves to be their only motive and their participation falls in later elections when an Obama is absent, then my initial suspicion will be correct. We need a diligent citizenry, and not merely a momentarily inspired one.

The book's description on Amazon says, in part:

The Internet, e-mail, blogs, and interactive and hyper-realistic video games promised to yield a generation of sharper, more aware, and intellectually sophisticated children... we assumed that teens would use their knowledge and understanding of technology to set themselves apart as the vanguards of this new digital era.

That was the promise. But the enlightenment didn’t happen. The technology that was supposed to make young adults more astute, diversify their tastes, and improve their verbal skills has had the opposite effect. According to recent reports, most young people in the United States do not read literature, visit museums, or vote. They cannot explain basic scientific methods, recount basic American history, name their local political representatives, or locate Iraq or Israel on a map...