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Following on the heels of Australia and New Zealand, where the game has already been banned, a Lancashire MP is calling for Reservoir Dogs to be banned from being sold in the United Kingdom, as well. MP Lindsay Hoyle, of Chorley, has “signed a House of Commons motion calling for the British Board of Classification to refuse… (the game) a certificate and ban it in the UK.” The game violence is extreme, allowing players to torture and brutalize police officers as well as members of the public. As more and more connections are being drawn between violence acted out in video games and the real-life episodes, politicians are calling out for curbs. The graphic nature of the Reservoir Dogs game has made it something of a political lightening rod.
Read More 
| Lancashire Evening Post
Gallery: More Trouble for Reservoir Dogs
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Terry Lavender, a resident of Vancouver’s West End, is Simon Fraser University (SFU) Surrey’s communications manager, and also studies in the SFU’s school of interactive arts and technology. Lavender has created a video game called, Homeless: It’s No Game, as part of his graduate studies. He hopes to determine “whether it’s possible to fuse computer games and social activism to make a difference.” Players of the video game walk in the tattered shoes of a homeless woman on the streets of Vancouver, with the object being “to survive 24 hours in the West End, scrounging for food, clothing, and shelter, while dodging hazards like the police, drug addicts, irate drivers, aggressive dogs, speeding cyclists, and surly tourists.” While the project is not finished, Lavender has already released the source code to the public as encouragement for others to adapt the idea. The game may be accessed online via his website: http://www.sfu.ca/~tlavende.
Read More | The Surrey Leader
Gallery: Homeless: The Video Game
Microsoft today announced that a director and an anticipated release date have been selected for the Halo movie. According to a report on Xbox.com, Neill Blomkamp will make his feature film debut with the movie, currently targeted for a release in Summer 2008. Peter Jackson had previously been announced as producer, and his effects studios, Weta Digital and Weta Workshop will provide the special effects for the movie. Blomkamp’s previous experience has been in commercial and short films, a couple of which gamers might be familiar with. Both Blomkamp’s Citroen transformer advertisement and the Tetra Vaal clip featuring a robotic law officer were popular viral videos. His short film, Alive in Joberg, shown above, takes his previous work to the next level. This type of effects integration and imagery should give gamers an idea of what to expect from the big budget Halo adaptation in 2008.
Read More | Xbox.com
Gallery: Halo Movie Gets Director, Release Date
A Shadowrun Retrospective
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Culture, PC, Retro, Role Playing Games, Xbox 360, Xbox Live,
One of Microsoft’s big initiatives for the upcoming year is the launch of the Live Anywhere service, which seeks to bring PC gamers and Xbox 360 gamers together across the Xbox Live service. One of the games that Microsoft is using to push the service is the new version of Shadowrun. The Shadowrun franchise has its console gaming roots in both Genesis and Super Nintendo versions of the game. Some of the iterations in the game’s history have been fairly faithful to the pen-and-paper roots of the role playing game, while others have been decidedly less so.
Unfortunately for fans of the original game, it looks like Microsoft’s effort is going to be the least accurate portrayal of the Shadowrun universe yet. Ryan McPherson at eToychest reviews the game’s historical console releases, and briefs gamers on why the Microsoft release may be Shadowrun in name only. The game deviates so far from the paper RPG gameplay that the licensee of the tabletop version, FanPro, issued a statement that the computer version “…is not in continuity with the tabletop RPG. It may be more accurately described as a game loosely based on Shadowrun.”
Microsoft hopes that Shadowrun will be one of the titles that will help Live Anywhere succeed, and the fact that the game doesn’t closely follow the Shadowrun universe doesn’t preclude it from being a good game. But one does have to question why they would bother licensing the original intellectual property if they were essentially going to disregard the gameplay and back story of the tabletop version in favor of their own revised continuity.
Read More | eToychest
Gallery: A Shadowrun Retrospective
A new limited edition set of Kubrick figures from Medicom Toy has been revealed on ToyTokyo.com. The new set features characters from Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, including:
- Tommy Vercetti
- Lance
- Crime lord Ricardo Diaz
- Adult film star Candi Suxx
- Ken Rosenberg, scruples-free attorney
The box set can be pre-ordered online for $34.99. Similar to last year’s Grand Theft Auto III figures, there will be only 3000 sets made available worldwide. Expect to see the figures popping up in cubicles around the world in Fall 2006.
Read More | ToyTokyo
Gallery: GTA: Vice City Kubrick Set Coming
Computer Gaming World Becomes Games For Windows
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Corporate News, Culture, PC,
Media company Ziff Davis today announced a partnership with Microsoft to collaborate on content for Microsoft’s Games for Windows initiative. Through the agreement, Ziff Davis will provide editorial content for a magazine titled “Games for Windows: The Official Magazine” along with web content hosted at 1up.com. Ziff Davis will be moving the editorial staff from Computer Gaming World to the new magazine, and will be effectively killing the Computer Gaming World periodical. This move retires one of the longest running computer and video game related publication; Computer Gaming World has been around for more than two decades. Former Computer Gaming World editor, and now editor of the new magazine Jeff Green stated that the agreement with Microsoft bars the company from interfering with editorial content. Still, the new magazine will probably have to prove their allegiance to gamers before the gaming public accepts this change. In the short term, the new magazine should be a guaranteed source for exclusive content from Microsoft and a platform to evangelize Windows gaming, but this may come at the cost of credibility in the long term.
The full press release follows below.
Click to continue reading Computer Gaming World Becomes Games For Windows
Read More | Jeff Green's Statement
Gallery: Computer Gaming World Becomes Games For Windows
Mova: Next Generation Motion Capture?
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Culture, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360,
Motion capture has long been a method for computer animators to realistically portray action in a game or movie. Movies like the Lord of the Rings and The Polar Express have used the technique to try and bring life to their animated characters. At the same time, one of the challenges of computer animation has been avoiding the “uncanny valley.” The phenomenon posited by Masahori Mori defines the feelings of revulsion that occur when artificial entities approach, but don’t precisely mirror real life. Gamers who have seen the Heavy Rain trailer can attest to this problem in the gaming world.
Dean Takahashi of the Mercury News talked with Steve Perlman about a new technology that might help reduce the uncanny valley from games and movies. The company, Mova, is pursuing a new technology they call Contour, that allows for better resolution capture of facial animation. According to Perlman, the technology promises to be faster and more accurate, requiring less touch-up work. The company hopes to have a finished product available by this fall. The article also links to an example of the results of a motion capture session; the resolution does seem good, but it is hard to judge the effectiveness of the technology without an in-game context.
Read More | Mercury News
Gallery: Mova: Next Generation Motion Capture?
Reports have hit the Internet from both Next Generation and Gamespot that the future of the gaming expo hosted by the Entertainment Software Association is in doubt. Next Generation reports this more strongly, with the headline “E3 Finished.” Next Generation also reports that a number of high profile exhibitors were leaving the exhibition, and that without that support, there would be no point in continuing the event.
Gamespot reports that the ESA plans to downsize the event greatly. Industry sources reported to Gamespot that the show would move out of the Los Angeles Convention Center to “a location that would support exhibitors in meeting room space only, with with companies showing their wares to a select group of attendees…” The rising costs of attending the conference for diminishing returns was identified as the largest reason for exhibitors leaving E3, and moving to a smaller format might help give companies a better return on their money. Beyond the monetary cost of attending, there is also an associated loss in man-hours for the companies trying to get stable game builds ready for the show; witness the massive effort that Epic made in getting Gears of War playable for the expo.
This does leave smaller exhibitors in a bit of a tight spot. While it may have been hard to garner attention at E3, there was at least a chance that a particularly good game could receive notice at the exhibition. Larger companies like Microsoft and EA already host their own private gaming events, and this should continue. Gamers could possibly see the writing on the wall, with the three big hardware companies choosing to host events before E3 to highlight their upcoming offerings, rather than make presentations from the show floor. Still, if reports are true, this would mark a large change in the way the industry communicates its intentions for the year.
Read More 
| Gamespot
Read More | Next Generation
Gallery: Reports: Future of E3 In Doubt
GigaOM delves into the success of Valve Software’s online game service Steam. Through some speculation and an interview with Valve’s Marketing Director Doug Lombardi, the article seeks to trace the growth of the service and try to expose the statistics that drive its success.
Some of the interesting numbers in the article include the 8 million users on the service, 5 million that connected within the last 30 days. Of the four million units of Half-Life 2 sold, one million of those are estimated to have been downloaded via the Steam service. Gamers that chose online distribution paid full price for their game, meaning that approximately 50 dollars per download would go directly to Valve.
Steam has also help act as a hit-maker; independent games that suffer on store shelves can blossom on the service. Apparently, this can work the other way as well, with online offers driving retail sales. Utilizing Steam to offer an ever growing catalog of game experiences would seem to allow Valve Software to leverage the “long tail” business model.
Read More | GigaOM
Gallery: Steam In The Spotlight
What Does British “Anti-Standby” Law Mean for WiiConnect 24?
Posted by Michael Cardiff Categories: Culture, Nintendo, Rumors, Wii,
Clubskill has pointed out an interesting kink in Nintendo’s next-gen plans. Recently, the British government passed a bill outlawing “standby” mode for appliances, after a government report found that roughly 8% of Britain’s energy use was accounted for by devices sitting around doing nothing. The problem for Nintendo is that the bill would appear to be directly at odds with the WiiConnect-24 service, which is supposed to be able to download new content to the Wii (among other things) while you’re not playing.
Obviously, UK gamers are currently going to be the only ones having to deal with this restriction for the time being (and we’re not even sure how it will play out yet… perhaps Nintendo can strike some sort of deal?). Still, with energy usage becoming an ever-greater concern, maybe this is a harbinger of things to come?
Read More | ClubSkill.com
Gallery: What Does British “Anti-Standby” Law Mean for WiiConnect 24?
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