error101/video games

"An online game operator has demanded that banned players donate blood to be allowed back into the game. Moliyo, which runs a 3D massively multiplayer online game in China, made the demand after banning 120,000 players who attempted to hack the game.

More than 100 players had already signed up to exchange half a litre (1 pint) of blood for game accounts. The company has also offered free accounts to ordinary players who give blood."

plug'n play keychains from atari. Pick Pong, Asteroids, or Centipede! Pong
also comes w/ Breakout & Warlords.

"Kids! Accept Jesus Christ as Your Lord and Savior and Get a Free PlayStation 2!"

yay for the catholic church...yay for jesus the bringer of ps the harbinger of official games...

"Game budgets are skyrocketing. Development teams are swelling almost to film studio's proportions. The only way out of this trap is to enlist players to help create their own worlds, a pair of top game creators said Thursday.

Speaking at The Entertainment Gathering conference here, "Sims" creator Will Wright and Microsoft Xbox team head J. Allard both cast a spotlight on the growing role that game players will have in creating content for the biggest games.

"(Gaming) is the only medium where we yield control of the protagonist. Let's yield control of the director--and the producer," said Allard, a vice president at Microsoft. "We're going to take on the Wikipedia model. We're going to take on...the open-source model, if you will, for gaming.""

"Brain Training is, basically, an application -- one you just happen to play on a handheld videogame system. In this case, the system is Nintendo's DS -- a quirky, two-screen-with-touchscreen handheld system that's technically creakier than Sony's PSP, but which has lived up to its intended purpose of generating innovative new styles of games for a new generation of gamers.



And what does Brain Training do? Well, you hold your Nintendo DS like a book (with left and right screens), and you basically use the touchscreen to undergo a wide variety of simple, cleanly-designed, interesting exercises intended to make you smarter. Or, at least, keep your brain sharp and fresh and delicious. At the end of your "fun", the game eventually calculates and reports your "mental age" -- often with painful/comedic effect -- and tracks your progress over the weeks and months of self-education. And that's about it.

It may sound painfully simple, but it's been unstoppable. From Dec 26th to January 1st, Brain Training 2 sold 414,556 copies. In one week. It has consistently been the number one videogame since its release, and -- this is important to remember -- it's not even a videogame.

Most importantly, though, Brain Training is doing what Nintendo said they would do but nobody really believed them on: opened gaming up to a whole new generation of players. Seeing grandmothers on the train holding their Nintendo DS like a book sends an instant signal -- "brain training in progress"."

"Sometimes the major companies involved don't know where their ads end up... and sometimes they just don't ask many questions. But even as the furor over spyware begins to die down (and better blocking tools become commonplace on users' PCs), the next battleground in the war between advertising dollars and ethics is already taking shape.

Advertising within video games, though generally a legitimate practice, does have its seedier side. This was illustrated this week with news that Subway ads had been popping up in the popular on-line game Counter-Strike without Valve's permission and in explicit violation of the game's EULA (end user license agreement). How did it happen? Who was involved? And who's liable? "