Meet George Weiss, the oldest app inventor in the world. The 84-year-old man helped create Dabble – The Fast Thinking Word Game, which was recently released for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. The $0.99 app charges users with spelling five words as quickly as possible using 20 letters stacked in the shape of a pyramid. But there are a few catches; those five words must include a two, three, four, five and six letter word.

Epic Games' popular shooter is now a board game. Gears of War: The Board Game will be released next month, transitioning from slick fast-paced action game to the calmer settings of a board game. Based loosely on the video games, the board game comes packed with over 30 plastic figures, 200 game cards, 35 Locust AI cards, 17 double-sided map tiles, 75 tokens and markers, 1 mission reference sheet, one line-of-sight ruler, five attack dice and 4 defense dice.

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.

The Christian conservative website WorldNetDaily has got its undies in a twist over an option that permits same-sex couples in Hasbro's The Game of Life.

The downloadable PC title is an update of the classic board game of the same name. WND writes:

The online version of a popular board game from many Americans' childhood includes an option for players to choose homosexual marriage and child-rearing as a way of life... even children can download and play a free trial version of The Game of Life, the first game ever created by Mr. Milton Bradley in 1860.

The player's first option in the online version is to choose a persona based on pictures that clearly depict men and women. Shortly thereafter, the game invites players to choose a spouse, regardless of the potential spouse's sex...

But, as WND notes, the modern version of the board game, created in 1960, allowed for gay unions as well:

The board game did not prevent players in any way from placing two pink or two blue pegs in the front seat [of the playing piece representing the family car], thus depicting a homosexual couple.

GP: Got this tip from none other than Jack Thompson during the course of seeking comment on last night's passage of the Utah video game bill.

A great deal of blood has been spilled in the name of religion over the centuries, and the maker of a new board game hopes that parodying religious violence will bring him Earthly rewards.

USA Today reports that Playing Gods: The Board Game of Divine Domination is billed as "the world's first satirical board game of religious warfare," and includes playing pieces such as Jesus wielding a cross and a chain gun-toting Buddha (see pic).

Playing Gods was launched at DragonCon in September. The game's creator, Ben Radford, told USA Today:

Much of the world's violence is rooted in religion... [I wanted to] make more social commentary... [and] pierce the pretensions of extremist religious zealotry with humor...

 

[The game is] not anti-religion. It's anti-zealot, anti-people who kill for their beliefs, whatever those are.

Not surprisingly, Playing Gods is not without its critics. Prof. Carl Raschke, who teaches religious studies at the
University of Denver commented:

[The game] has no basis in historical reality and doesn't actually represent any religion. It just appeals to people who hate religion to begin with — the hip subculture of militant popular atheists. These people are fanatics, for the most part, themselves. Their thinking is rigid and hostile and not much different from jihadists who don't use their minds or study what they are dealing with. They start from their own dogmatic perspective.

 

Of course it is [offensive]. But it sounds too stupid to go far.

In an FAQ on the Playing Gods website, designer Radford denies that the $39.99 game is anti-religious:

The game is not anti-anything, except anti-boredom. Players can inject as much – or as little – real religion into the game as they wish. Players may pit Zeus against Cthulhu and Eric Clapton for control over the world, or pit Jesus against a Muslim figurehead. It's all up to you. I hope the game is taken in the spirit in which it was offered.