gaming

Shoot your favorite candidate?

An online game called Presidential Paintball from miniclip.com lets you assume the identity of a presidential candidate and train your rifle scope on one of your rivals. Your weapon makes a rat-a-tat sound as you fire away. Fortunately, there are no bullets or blood--just paintballs, and no one dies, they're just "eliminated." The setting for the game is the White House--moving to new locations in it if your candidate survives. The game is aimed at children and, needless to say, is creating some issues.

Read the full story on The Smoking Gun: Hey kids, shoot your favorite candidate!. … Read more

WhatTheyPlay.com gives parents the scoop on video games

There's a contradiction in our approach to kids and electronic media: we want parents to supervise their kids and guide their appropriate use of games and media, and at the same time we talk about kids being "digital natives" who understand the gaming world much better than many parents do.

Let's face it, kids can spend hours talking to each other about the latest gadget or video game, and it is a challenge for parents to catch up. Most video game reviews discuss a game from the player's point of view without giving parents the details they need to judge whether a particular game is appropriate for their child. (I frequently encounter the same problem with movie reviews for kids' films. I am usually not that concerned about how "good" a kids' movie is, but I want to know the details behind a movie's PG-13 rating. Yet that information is rarely provided.)

A new Web site called WhatTheyPlay.com fills in this information gap. The site launched in November and already features a well-populated catalog of game reviews. Now parents can get the details beyond ESRB ratings, with objective reviews and user comments, to decide for themselves whether they want to bring a game home for their family.… Read more

Virtual golf takes over cubicle life

In the News.com offices, people have been completely hooked on Guitar Hero. Really, we haven't heard The Scorpions this much since the late '80s. We hear that in some other businesses they play a game called "golf." There's even a rumor that careers are made and broken, and millions of dollars change hands, all based on relationships forged on the "golf course."

It sounds funny to us--a grassy hillside, some sticks, a teeny ball, and plaid trousers. Well, the plaid trousers did cross over to Guitar Hero. But I digress.

Apparently, unable to … Read more

'Scrabulous' debate may rewrite the rules of the game

"I'll go on a hunger strike!"

So said one adamant Facebook user in the wake of the news that game manufacturers Hasbro and Mattel were trying to do something about the wildly popular, unquestionably addictive online game known as Scrabulous.

The game, which rose to fame when its creators turned it into an embeddable Facebook application, is a word game that's a whole lot like the classic board game Scrabble. It uses a playing board with "bonus" spots just like Scrabble. In fact, the rules are identical to Scrabble's.

The companies in charge … Read more

The video game industry goes political (and it's about time)

A story in The New York Times yesterday reports that the video game industry has finally woken up and realized that in order to stay strong going forward, it can't rely on 13-year-old pimple-faced kids to promote its agenda.

According to the report, Michael D. Gallagher, chief executive of the Entertainment Software Association, the industry's lobbying arm in Washington, told the Times that its political action committee (PAC) will be up and running by the end of March and will represent Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo, among others.

We will be writing checks to campaigns by the end of this quarter," Mr. Gallagher said. "This is an important step in the political maturation process of the industry that we are ready to take now. This is about identifying and supporting champions for the game industry on Capitol Hill so that they support us."

Am I the only person who thinks it's about time this industry has woken up and realize that political payoffs are the only way to get somewhere in this country? If you want to finally destroy these idiots who think we should kill creativity in video games, look no further than your friendly congressman from the 10th district with his hat in hand.… Read more

Electronic Arts will bring 'Spore' to the Mac this year

This post has been updated to confirm when we should expect an official announcement from EA.

As has been anticipated, Electronic Arts is set to announce Tuesday that it will be bringing its highly anticipated game Spore to the Mac sometime in 2008. It's a big deal, because PC and Mac versions of a game are often released months apart, if at all--some major game manufacturers skip the Mac platform altogether because they simply don't see the market value. EA, however, plans to bring Spore to both platforms simultaneously.

The announcement has been timed in conjunction with--you guessed … Read more

Price drags down 'lightweight' flight simulator

These days, "lightweight" and "compact" aren't adjectives commonly used to describe game simulators, especially if you're shopping for one at FAO Schwarz with a budget in the neighborhood of $300,000. But those are ostensibly among the selling points for the "Dreamflyer," which is being marketed as a relatively uncomplicated system--a characteristic that certainly bucks current trends.

The simulator is supposedly more sensitive to player controls than other systems, responding to "pilot-induced roll and pitch oscillation" captured by sensors under the chair and displayed on the screen, according to Pocket-Lint. … Read more

SimCity goes open source under GPLv3

Whatever the proprietary Neanderthals may think, it's becoming clearer by the day that open source is, or will become, the natural state of software. "Nature" exerted her will yet again with the announcement that Electronic Art's SimCity has been released as open source under the GPLv3 license. The game was written back in 1983 (actually, before then) and so much of the code is too old to be useful except for research purposes.

But there's a lot of value in that, as Bill Simser notes:

There's still a lot of craptastic code in there, … Read more

Big surprise: Scrabble manufacturer targets 'Scrabulous' online game

That noise you just heard was the sound of several hundred thousand procrastination-happy Facebook users gasping in panic.

Josh Quittner at Fortune reports that Hasbro, manufacturer of the timeless board game Scrabble, is trying to shut down Scrabulous, an unauthorized electronic version of Scrabble that has gained a rabid following on Facebook. The reasons are obvious: licensing. Scrabulous profits from advertising revenue. Hasbro, citing infringement, wants to see it scrapped.

There's no online version of Scrabble, but as Quittner notes, electronic rights to the game belong to video game manufacturer Electronic Arts. One of Scrabulous' creators confirmed to Quittner … Read more