GamesIndustry.biz and Eurogamer.net are teaming up with US website Gamasutra.com to host the London Game Career Fair, a two-day event that will run as part of this year's London Games Festival.
The Career Fair will give publishers, studios and game companies the chance to meet games industry professionals, recent graduates and people from the fields of computer graphics, animation and film.
It will be held between October 3rd - 4th at Caf้ Royal on Regent Street, and an estimated 1000 visitors are expected to attend. There are plenty of sponsorship opportunities available, including Career Pavilion booths and advertising at the event, on the website and in the program. Further information is available from GameCareerFair.com.
"The involvement of GamesIndustry.biz in the London Game Career Fair demonstrates our ongoing commitment to promoting the industry both within the UK and worldwide," said trade advertising manager Richard Sturgess.
"This event will offer an ideal platform for all sectors of the industry to build new relationships with companies and individuals, and will provide an excellent opportunity to seek out new talent."
The Career Fair is part of the London Games Festival, which will be held during the week of October 2nd - 6th. Other events planned for the festival include the Game Developers Conference London, which will focus on next-generation gaming, and the London Games Summit - an event that will bring publishers, developers, retailers and policy makers together to debate the major issues affecting the games industry today. The summit is being programmed by the CMP Game Group, and will be co-presented by ELSPA and TIGA.
For companies in the UK, more details about sponsorship opportunities at the London Game Career Fair can be obtained by contacting Richard Sturgess on +44 (0) 7920 061 984, or by emailing richard@gamesindustry.biz.
For companies in North America, please contact Aaron Murawski on +1 415 947 6227, or email amurawski@cmp.com.
A new update on the Tokyo Game Show Web site bills this year's event as the "largest ever." With 2006 marking the event's 10th year, the show will feature the biggest number of exhibits yet, with 134 companies signed up for a total of 1,702 booths. In comparison, last year's TGS featured 131 companies with 1,433 booths. The event is organized by the Computer Entertainment Suppliers' Association (CESA) and Nikkei BP and partly sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry.
Needless to say, the presence of next-generation hardware will loom large at the show this year. However, the TGS Web site also touts the current shift toward fiber-optic network connections, and the new expansion of online gaming this is bringing in Japan, as another trend to watch for at the show. In addition, workshops for game industry professionals will be held during the TGS Forum 2006. The sessions will cover five areas: online gaming, mobile-phone gaming, characters, developers, and the newly added finance & market category.
The Tokyo Game Show will be held September 22-24 at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan. Advance ticket sales will begin July 19 at select convenience stores, game shops, and Internet cafes around Japan.
Surely there are people out there who don't believe in or own spoons, right? Because besides being extremely lazy, spoonlessness is the only reason to own a gadget like this. This coffee mug, from Hammacher Schlemmer, features a miniature propeller at the bottom of the mug that will spin at 3000 rpms mixing whatever additives you like into a frothy morning beverage. The propeller is activated with a button on the handle and the entire unit is powered by a couple AA's. It is available for $30
With the game industry forming an increasingly large part of the UK entertainment market, the British government is organizing a census to track its growth. The survey, administrated by entertainment research group Skillset, will gather data that can be used to influence future parliamentary decisions.
Ian Livingstone, creative director of Eidos Interactive and chair of the Skillset Computer Games Skills Forum commented: "The census is a headcount of the industry. It helps Skillset influence government, policymakers, and public funds for the benefit and support of the industry."
The Skillset survey will be going out to company managing directors and human resource departments, or they can be filled out online. The official form was released today on the Skillset Web site, which will begin tallying results on Wednesday, July 12.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, wenches, harlots, ne'er-do-wells, reprobates, charlitans, drunks, cads, scoundrels, spooners, grunts and daisies! Welcome to this week's Chart Track all-format, all-price Top 20, coming in your eyes and leaving with a smile!
It's no change this week, with yet more stagnancy threatening to reek its stench of immobility across the big ten, with Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories reigning supreme with a snarl on its face and pistol in its pocket at number one. Meanwhile, Mario's fat buttocks spread like huge, unweildy plums across one of those green drain pipes in delirious resignation as New Super Mario Bros. hangs tight at number two.
Three however, sees a veritable burst of activity as Activision's Over the Hedge movie tie-in literally flies up from seven, leaving us wondering if the game's got beavers in, so we can make some kind of trite trimming joke. Down one to four, it seems like FIFA World Cup Germany's reign is finally over, while five sees a single place slippage for Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training - a game we've now stopped playing for fear of becoming omnipotent.
At six from five, Pro Evolution Soccer 5 puts on a brave face while Lara starts to sag at seven as Tomb Raider: Legend loses its lustre, down one as well. There's a - WAIT FOR IT! - new entry at eight for Buena Vista's Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man's Chest (no idea if the game's any good, but the movie's ace, fact fans).
Yet another tumble at nine as Hitman: Blood Money gets one in the ass(assin), while - finally for now - there's our second new entry this week as Sega's Chromehounds stomps into the top ten, looks a bit menacing then has a nice sit down until the rest of them decide to bugger off.
Full top 20 for your delectation below and - below that - PC fans can rejoice in their very own custom-made top 20, with none of that bothersome console malarky to contend with. Bye for now!
ALL FORMATS TOP 20
1 GRAND THEFT AUTO: LIBERTY CITY STORIES
2 NEW SUPER MARIO BROS.
3 OVER THE HEDGE
4 FIFA WORLD CUP GERMANY 2006
5 DR KAWASHIMA'S BRAIN TRAINING
6 PRO EVOLUTION SOCCER 5
7 TOMB RAIDER: LEGEND
8 PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST
9 HITMAN: BLOOD MONEY
10 CHROMEHOUNDS
11 ANIMAL CROSSING: WILD WORLD
12 NINTENDOGS: DALMATIAN & FRIENDS
13 THE SIMS 2
14 CHAMPIONSHIP MANAGER 2006
15 NEED FOR SPEED: MOST WANTED
16 OVER G FIGHTERS
17 RISE & FALL: CIVILIZATIONS AT WAR
18 KING KONG: OFFICIAL GAME OF THE MOVIE
19 MICRO MACHINES V4
20 DAXTER
PC TOP 20
1 RISE & FALL: CIVILIZATIONS AT WAR
2 TITAN QUEST
3 HALF-LIFE 2: EPISODE ONE
4 THE SIMS 2
5 CHAMPIONSHIP MANAGER 2006
6 FOOTBALL MANAGER 2006
7 THE SIMS 2: OPEN FOR BUSINESS
8 WORLD OF WARCRAFT
9 GUILD WARS: FACTIONS
10 TOTAL WAR: ERAS
11 AGE OF EMPIRES III
12 THE ELDER SCROLLS IV: OBLIVION
13 INTERNATIONAL CRICKET CAPTAIN 2006
14 CIVILIZATION IV
15 LOTR: THE BATTLE FOR MIDDLE-EARTH II
16 HITMAN: BLOOD MONEY
17 BATTLEFIELD 2 DELUXE EDITION
18 THE SIMS 2: NIGHTLIFE
19 RISE OF NATIONS: RISE OF LEGENDS
20 ROLLERCOASTER TYCOON 3: GOLD
Police in Scotland have begun field-testing a pair of tactical gloves that sport built-in metal detectors for identifying sharp objects during routine pat-downs -- and should they fail to detect a hidden weapon, they're made out of Kevlar to protect the wearer during the ensuing knife fight. Although not specifically mentioned in the source article, it seems the Scottish cops are trying out seven pairs of the HF-1 from Adams Electronics, which are powered by regular 9-volt batteries and vibrate inconspicuously at the wrist to signify that an object has been detected. Available in either "passive active" or "dual active" configurations (depending on whether one or both of the gloves sport a detector), the HF-1s deployed for the trial cost about $370-a-pair, and are being used to supplement the 1,000 or so FriskerPRO-like handheld detectors that are already in use. Overall these seem like a good way for officers to protect themselves without getting too touchy-feely with suspects, but on the other hand, they may just encourage enterprising criminals to step up their game and begin carrying around undetectable weapons like ceramic knives and filed-down toothbrushes.
With all the great underwater nature documentaries available in high definition these days, we have no real interest in actually getting out of our chairs to go exploring among sharks, fish, and seaweed, but it's nice to know that there will soon be a non-self-powered personal submarine on the market in case we ever do decide to take the plunge. After three years of furious design, development, and testing, a Dutch company called U-Boat Worx is finally ready to release its battery-powered C-Quester 1 to aquatic enthusiasts worldwide, which will allow them to cruise down to depths of 50 meters at a maximum speed of 3 knots for up to two-and-a-half hours. The main advantage of this craft over traditional scuba diving is the fact that its cabin maintains a constant pressure of one atmosphere, meaning that you can surface immediately without having to sit through those boring decompression periods -- and if for some reason you can't surface, the on-board oxygen tanks and CO2 scrubbers will keep you alive for 36 hours or until help arrives, whichever comes first. Scheduled to ship sometime this month, the CQ1 is conspicuously missing a pricetag on the company's website; you have to call or write if you're interested, which probably means that pricing falls somewhere between a Sea-doo and a 7-series BMW.
It's amazing to see the lengths that people will go to snoop on their fellow man. These sunglasses promise to record exactly what you're looking at thanks to a built-in video camera. The camera, which uses MPEG4 to encode video, has a 92-degree field-of-view. In practical terms, that means you don't even have to look directly at your mark in order to record. It's just a matter of time until creeps from sea to shining sea begin using these sunglasses at the gym, beach or supermarket, furthering their own sick, morally reprehensible ends.
Now, since these are supposed to be spy glasses, it can't look like you have a small SGI workstation on your person, lest you arouse suspicion. To that end, the small wire connecting the glasses runs through your shirt and into the included MP4 media device, which stores the video. There's no external battery source required for the sunglasses to function beyond plugging them into the MP4.
The Spy Camera Sunglasses are primarily being aimed at small business, so you may have a tough time buying just one. Here's hoping that the company doesn't mind my registering an obviously fake account (where would we be without lorem ipsum?) trying to obtain more information.
The UK electronics retailer Comet performed a study on 1000 customers to justify their new "Gadget Angels" teamthink Geek Squad in the Best Buys here. Their study concluded that 75% of women don't really know what they're doing when it comes to mobile gadgets.
The study says these women only know how to handle the basic functions of a phone, like making calls and using an address book. They also are confused by cameras and MP3 players, and 7/10 of them ask their partners or children to show them how to do stuff like download music to their devices.
The rest of the study focuses on the goals of their new Angels team, and said men cared about what the specs and features are, whereas women just wanted to know why a device is useful and what it could do for them. Men spend hours going over instructions and women just bust in and use stuff (and then get discouraged when things don't work).
Unless broads here in the US are of a different species than the UK, the study probably applies here as well. Maybe by offering more female-centric support in stores, women could become as gadget-obscessed as men.
The British government is fed up with standby mode; according to a recent energy review, devices left in standby account for 8% of their annual energy usage. In an attempt to curb waste, combat rising energy costs, and apparently annoy citizens, the government is set to outlaw switches that allow TVs, DVD players, and who knows what else to go on hiatus -- mandatory redesigns to remove sleep functions from numerous devices are supposedly on the docket. Whatever comes of this, keep a close eye on the next Windows Update: you might just reboot to find your precious "Stand By" option MIA.
A team of Chinese engineers say they have unraveled the protocol for Skype, and vow to release their own third-party Skype client before the end of August. VoIP guru Charlie Paglee says he talked with one of the members of the team which reverse-engineered the Skype protocol, and actually received a Skype call from that person who was able to prove that he was using the reverse engineered software by sending Paglee the IP address of his PC, information that's always encrypted during a conventional Skype call.
Meanwhile, Skype dismissed the claim, insisting this development would have no effect on Skype's cryptographic security or integrity. However, the engineers who claim to have cracked the code say that they can also block Skype voice traffic. This would be a welcome feature in China, which has already ruled Skype software illegal. Since Skype software currently hijacks its users' computers to propagate its voice calls, the capability of blocking that voice traffic could do some serious damage to the Skype business model. This could make it possible to send and receive Skype calls without having any calls going through your computer, resulting in lots of holes in the network.
Science has created all sorts of fascinating devices for us to enjoy, but now it's produced technology that could eliminate the biological need for the biggest whores for all that tech, males. English scientists figured out how to grow stem cells from a female embryo into sperm, and those she-cells are perfectly capable of doing the same thing guys do with some wood and a good splooge.
The good news, guys, is that this technique hasn't been perfected yet. Even though six out of seven of the baby mice produced using this experimental jism survived into adulthood, all of them suffered what the scientists called "adverse events," or what we here like to call "pussywhipped syndrome."
Well well well, the first major salvo for ages between 2 sites with crap reputations, both sites steal news, dont credit and are blatently in it for the money, ********** is ran by a person who wont link to any dcemu uk release period yet steals all the news he can from here, PSPupdates are better now but steal news from websites and say they were emailed the news :P
Charging forum users 3 dollars a week to remove ads is the biggest disgrace ever, but tonight the battle between the sites has taken a funnier turn, ********** posted a review of the PSP Modchip and lmao PSPUpdates copied the review and even watermarked the images.
It has to be the funniest and lamest thing ive seen for ages and also theres the n64/psx emu thing, PSPupdates posted a fake n64 emu newspost and the next day ********** posted the fake psx emu, what other fun will we see soon
Police use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras could 'break human rights law' according to some reports. Which, it would seem to us, is a novel way to categorise the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, the Act police procedures appear to break. This had not previously been thought to be a landmark of human rights legislation, but go on then, blame the Human Rights Act and move swiftly on to blaming Europe, why don't you?
ANPR's problem has been spotted by Chief Surveillance Commissioner Sir Andrew Leggatt, part guardian of liberty, part doormat, who notes in his annual report that RIPA requires authorisation for operations involving intrusive surveillance. This is usually granted for surveillance operations on named suspects, but clearly fixed ANPR cameras scanning for large numbers are suspects (e.g. those recorded as not having tax, insurance or MoT) don't readily fit into such a system. Police are also busily building a national 24x7 vehicle movement database intended to record all passing number plates, everywhere, at the rate of 50 million a day, records to be retained for two years. Or actually, six years, or forever - see Spy Blog for details.
"24x7 vehicle movement database" is actually how the police describe it, and from the point of view of a Surveillance Commissioner you'd think that was a dead giveaway. The system doesn't just track named suspects, even hundreds of thousands or a few millions of named suspects, it tracks all vehicles, keeping the data so that it can be mined to discover the movements of people who at some point in the future become suspects. So effectively, everybody is a suspect.
Has Leggatt actually noticed this? He describes ANPR as "very effective in crime reduction", and "a prime example of intelligence-led policing", and urges Ministers in Scotland and the UK (RIPA covers both, although there are some devolved features in Scotland) to amend the law in order to avoid evidence being challenged in court.
Which we're sure is all very helpful of him. But we're not quite sure we can follow the reasoning. If it is the case that police use of ANPR is starting to constitute unauthorised surveillance under the terms of RIPA, would that not be what we'd understand as breaking the law? In that case, mightn't a Surveillance Commissioner be expected to suggest to them that they stop breaking the law, at least until the law is changed to their satisfaction? Or maybe he's just not sure whether or not they're breaking the law, or at what point the growing network is going to start breaking the law. Maybe he should ask an expert about this - the Surveillance Commissioner, maybe?
Not content with dragging the good old US of A straight down to Hell with its public displays of mass masturbatory degeneracy, the San Fran-based Centre for Sex and Culture - organiser of the legendary "Masturbate-a-thon" - will in August travel to London for a similar event in which Brits will be invited to tug the trouser snake and pet the beaver for the benefit of safe sex charities and Channel 4 viewers.
While the news that indie production company Zig Zag will be present in Clerkenwell on August 5 to capture the solo cumfest will come as great relief to C4 schedulers desperate - given the abject failure of Big Brother contestants to engage in live sexual activity for the gratification of the UK's viewing public - for footage of TV wannabes cracking one off for charity, we're pretty certain that Middle England is as we speak preparing to decry the utter collapse of British society to the highest authority: The Daily Mail.
Indeed, the Guardian - which incidentally fails, like the exponent of free love and sexual immorality that it is, to roundly condemn the Masturbate-a-thon - notes that the Mail once declared former Channel 4 top dog Michael Grade "pornographer in chief".
And not without reason. Those of you who can remember the early, heady days of Channel 4 will recall that the first signs of its eventual descent into the squalid mire were already evident. In 1983, some bright spark decided to commission Minipops - the highly-questionable showcase for kids dressed as adults flaunting themselves for the Gary Glitter demographic.
In 1985, the channel broadcast Derek Jarman's homoerotic martyrdom spectacular Sebastiane, whose male full-frontal nudity and comedy Latin dialogue provoked outrage in equal measure.
The rest, as we know, is history: Big Brother (social inadequates failing dismally to indulge in live sexual activity); "Penis week" (getting to grips with the penis, featuring lots and lots of peni); The Tube (remembered for its Jools Holland prime-time "groovy ****ers" scandal); and Jamie's Kitchen (unexpurgated Mockney geezer murdering the word "pukka").
The prosecution rests. The televised Masturbate-a-thon, meanwhile, will form part of a C4 "Wank week". Zig Zag declared in a press release: "This year it's time to bring the event across the pond to see if the great British public can embrace mass public masturbation. It's time to find out if the only things allowed to be stiff in Britain are upper lips."
No, there's another thing that can be stiff in Britain: a fine from the Broadcasting Standards Authority. And if those of you in the Home Counties who are right now writing to David Cameron demanding the return of the birch, the cat o'nine tails and the Tyburn Tree for transgressions of the UK's television guidelines consider this inadequate punishment, what about tying the C4 commissioning editor and Zig Zag producer to a couple of crosses and pumping them full of arrows while naked Roman soldiers pleasure themselves to raise cash for AIDS charities? Now that's what we call TV entertainment.
Skype ruffled some feathers in the internet telephony world earlier this year when they announced they'd be offering free SkypeOut calls to the US and Canada for the rest of 2006. We weren't too interested since it came off as little more than a promotion, and we typically skip over promos (for obvious reason). But we're kind of left wondering how Skype -- deep eBay pockets and all -- intends to compete with archrival Gizmo Project's latest tactic: free Gizmo-to-landline calls anywhere, anytime, any amount, forever. We'll probably be spending a while trying to make heads from tails of their business plan which pretty much totally gives away the shop, but who's really going to be reeling here is the rest of the VoIP telephony industry that's currently clawing desperately to monetize on landline phone replacements. Not everything's free with Gizmo Project, however; even though you can all over Europe, Asia, and the Americas (to 60 countries and counting), if you want your pals to call you on Gizmo from their landlines, you're going to have to buy a Call In number. (Fret not though, since those cost as little as $3 a month.) What started with Captain Crunch's 2600Hz whistle may now end with Gizmo Project's capture of the biggest voice trunk of all time; if this is any sign of things to come, we'd say the free voice revolution may finally have a proper flagbearer. So let the free phone wars begin.
I found an interesting article today I thought I should blog. Everyone knows I'm a Sonic fan and will always be one but my faith in Sega has waned over the years and after seeing Sonic's dissapointing stand on GameFAQs' "Best series battle" I started looking for something to read about the his downfall. This is what i found and I think the author hit the nail on the head here.
I wrote a while ago that there's maybe one good Sonic game for every two flops. At the time I was halfway kidding, setting up the premise for a silly "top ten" list. Where I wasn't kidding, I was speaking from a historical perspective rather than a contemporary one. As much as I have loved the guy, I'm aware that Sega hasn't done too well by Sonic for a long time to the point where he's now the butt of dumb jokes on semi-respectable business websites. Since the Genesis we've seen, what, one truly great Sonic game?
When Sonic and Sega came back with the Dreamcast, they did it with a collective bang. Everyone cheered at his return, and at Sega's. Then came a less interesting sequel. Then Segawent out of the console business, and suddenly there didn't seem much point to Sonic anymore. More games kept coming out, each worse than the last, each building on the least compelling parts of Sonic Adventure. People stopped caring about the character, then started mocking him. Sega tried to address the problem with Shadow: a grittier, cooler answer to Sonic. Without even playing the game, people immediately wrote off the character, Sega, and everybody involved with the franchise.
The problem wasn't really Shadow, or his game even the concept behind it, for what it was worth. Heck, people didn't even have to play it to dismiss it. The problem was that it didn't seem like Sega knew what the hell it was doing anymore. The most fascinating thing about Shadow the Hedgehog is that Sega had once seemed so in touch with... everything, really: with itself, with its audience, with the market. Back when Tom Kalinske was in charge, Sega could practically dictate what was cool.
With Shadow Sega seemed to show right or wrong that the only trick it had left was to cling to its old icons, and try to spin them according to perceived market trends. It brought up images of Donald Duck wearing gold chains, speaking like Dr. Dre, and flashing a piece
around. Just, what?
The thing that modern Sega seems not to entirely grasp is that Sonic is not simply a piece of choice IP a popular character who can be plopped into a game to drive up sales. He's a mascot, through and through. At his peak, he behaved as one. When everyone loved Sonic, the reason he was popular was that he represented an appealing and unique set of options qualities that happened to correspond with all the things going on at that time, in the industry and in the broader world.
Now: if these elements give a mascot his power, they are also his greatest weakness. Like all icons, a mascot remains relevant only as long as the cause that it trumpets. With no console to herald, with no amazing and exclusive new style of gameplay to proselytize, Sonic becomes just one more Mickey Mouse knockoff with a snarky voice; a relic like Betty Boop or Rosie the Riveter, taken out of his time, place, and anything that ever made him important.
Mascot, Mask Off
The difference between a mascot and a simple character is the difference between a copyright and a trademark. Although the actual content of a registered trademark can also be copyrighted, the primary role of a trademark is as a symbol for its given enterprise. Whereas the Heinz logo and pickle that "57 Varieties" gobbledygook might have some art to their design and layout, their real power and purpose is an associative one: when you see them, you think "Heinz!" without even reading the words. The pickle tells you these are preserved products, mostly condiments; the "57", though literally meaningless, suggests that Heinz makes a lot of this stuff and therefore clearly knows its business. The label is bezeled and old-fashioned, giving the impression that Heinz has been around for a long time (which it has), and is thus an enduring and timeless brand. The importance of this symbolism goes way beyond a nice, snappy package.
Although mascots can be characters in their own right have personalities, have lives, worlds of their own their primary role is as a symbol for their associated enterprise. When Sonic started off, he was one of the most well-conceived mascots probably in the history of mascotdom. Sega's console was faster than the competition's, so Sonic was super fast. Sega was the scrappy underdog, effortlessly showing up the "big guys", so Sonic was full of attitude. Sega's logo was blue, so Sonic was blue. The Genesis was targeted toward kids who were growing out of the NES, so Sonic was a sleek teenager (compared to the fuddy uncle Nintendo had going, who by comparison seemed to represent the "past generation"). Beyond that, Sonic tied into the environmentalism craze of the early '90s: the enemy was a big fat mustached Mario-like figure who polluted (trendy, modern graphic design-styled) Nature and turned its wildlife into hideous creatures. Unlike most videogame heroes, Sonic's impact on his world was only positive and his motive was almost entirely selfless. When he smashed a robot, he freed the animal inside it. His ultimate goal was simply to protect the sanctity of nature.
In designing Sonic, Naoto Ohshima did everything right. In programming Sonic's game, Yuji Naka did pretty much everything right, giving Sega a vehicle to show off Sonic's trademark qualities. And his... trademark qualities. Sonic and his game were designed as the embodiment of Sega, so as to give Sega an popular identity (or rather, to advertise the identity Sega saw in itself). In knowing Sonic an identifiable character a person would metaphorically know and identify with Sega (and its console), therefore form a personal attachment and loyalty to the company and its line of consumer goods.
Next: A spine in time
I know this sounds cynical, that Sonic's whole purpose in life is to be a shill for Sega's stuff. It isn't, really; it's a hard job, and done well it forms a symbiosis of sorts between mascot and parent company. The problem arises when the company and the mascot begin to drift apart; the mascot starts doing its own stuff that has nothing directly to do with its parent company, and the parent company goes off in weird directions that have nothing to do with either the qualities the mascot was supposed to represent or what it's currently up to, in its own little world. When the metaphor no longer holds up, your mascot is functionally dead in the water. It holds no purpose, except perhaps as a neutered piece of IP. The solution to this problem is simple enough: either retire your mascot and find a new one that represents what you're trying to do now, or somehow re-jig your old mascot to the same end.
Sega kind of did this in 1999 with Sonic Adventure; Sonic was redesigned, placed in a new kind of game, given a new context, and was resurrected at the same time Sega returned to the world stage with its attempt at a neo-Genesis. Both Sonic and Sega were framed as legendary heroes, stepping back into the player's life for the first time in an eon cocky as ever, maybe even cooler than you remember from your youth. The player was put in the role of Tails, looking up in awe and striving to prove his worthiness in the face of his hero or maybe of Amy Rose, Sonic groupie of old, fawning after Sonic (and by extension Sega), willing to chase him to the end of the Earth. Sonic's world was stripped down to a handful of important characters, each with his or her own perspective, all of which added up to a bigger picture of self-growth and wonder, all inspired by Sonic returning to their lives. And at the end, just like that, Sonic slips away again, leaving everyone just a little better off for his having stopped by. And you just knew Sonic would always come back, he'd always be there when you needed him.
Then, well. Circumstances didn't really live up to that new vision. And none of Sonic's further games did much with that message or even bothered much with a message. They just built on the engine of the first game, and... existed, mechanically, for the sake of there being more Sonic games in the world (throwing in more and more random characters, while they were at it, in favor of focusing on what they had) all while Sega was going nuts as a business venture, essentially doing all it could to destroy any public confidence or interest in the company.
Today, who knows what Sega stands for. They're refocusing on outsourced Western games, and downplaying the designers that made them famous. They got bought out, after several near misses, and who knows who runs what now. Most of Sega's real talent has either fled or vanished into the hedges. Even Yuji Naka's splitting. I guess Sega can't afford another Ferrari. So clearly what people want to see is Grand Theft Hedgehog.
The Star Wars franchise and video games are BFF to the extreme, so it's no surprise that we should all be treated with some next-gen geeked-out love from the LucasArts crew. There's a nice little tech demo up on YouTube showcasing just what we can expect come this generation of Star Wars games. Check out the kick ass force powers and destruction. Makes you tingle inside, doesn't it? If it doesn't, check your pulse.
At last, the real reason Brazil was knocked out of the 2006 World Cup has been revealed - well, providing you believe anything that's printed in The Sun, anyway.
The British tabloid has published an interview with French model Alexandra Paressant - the girlfriend of Brazil's best hope for victory, Ronaldinho. She claims that during the tournament, the international footballing superstar would creep into her hotel room of an evening, despite the coach's orders.
There the pair would "make love all night" - well, not quite all night, since it seems Ron likes to enjoy a bit of post-coital PS2 action.
"He likes to relax afterwards by playing his games. He was playing the FIFA 2006 football game during the World Cup," Paressant told The Sun. And apparently, that's what made him too tired to score any goals.
By an amazing coincidence, Ronaldinho appeared on the box of EA's FIFA '06 last year. But he probably didn't accept any money for it on account of how much he likes EA's FIFA games and all.
Tetsuya Mizuguchi has revealed that the Rez trance vibrator was his idea, but that he didn't create it with any particular "sexual meaning" in mind.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz during the recent Develop Conference, Mizuguchi also explained his role on Xbox 360 exclusive Ninety-Nine Nights, which he worked on with Korean developer Phantagram.
But let's deal with the USB trance vibrator first. Released alongside the synaesthetic Dreamcast and PS2 shooter, it achieved infamy after a female gamer wrote a rather provocative account of how she and her boyfriend had enjoyed the game together.
Mizuguchi clearly knows about that, too. "That was my idea," he says, grinning, when asked about it. "That was kind of a joke, but a very serious joke. No sexual meaning," he continues. "We always listen to music by ear, and you can watch the visuals moving, the dynamics in Rez, so it's kind of a cross-sensation feeling."
But where's it meant to go when you're playing? "I like to feel the vibration by the foot. So I think it's the feet and the hands. It's a good balance. Some people bite them! I think that's really dangerous, actually..." We're still not sure we believe him.
Mizuguchi also revealed that his role on Phantagram's Ninety-Nine Nights was largely in the conceptual stage.
"My role was the first basic concept - not only the one good guy beats the evil side, but the concept was a vice versa, so you can play both sides, and this is the real war. War is a very difficult thing, it's too real, but I needed to do something to draw the human aspect into my games, but I had no confidence before," he said.
"Finally we had a very high-res, high-definition technology, so I thought maybe we can do it [convincingly]. So I made the first basic concept, and I worked on the basic storyline, and I directed the non-interactive part - the movies - and this is how the collaboration worked with Phantagram."
Mizuguchi doesn't see himself moving wholesale into action-oriented games, though, as he's still devoted to this idea of manipulating "media aesthetics" and music to create "very global" forms of entertainment.
"I want to find challenging new directions, but I feel the same always - what is the base, and what is the human being and the lovely charming point of your game, and worldwide? The human being itself. Games should be very global entertainment, with no border, and no technology limit - a borderless medium."
Elsewhere in the full interview, to be published later this week, Mizuguchi spoke of how he got into games in the first place and the lessons he learned working on early SEGA projects like SEGA Rally, and offered some of his views on next-generation consoles.
The world famous board-game, Monopoly, seems to be looking to the future to increase its sales. The game no longer features bank notes as a whole new system has been put in place. Instead of the paper money we all previously knew, a new electronic card from Visa, similar to a debit card, has been put in its place. The player inserts their card into a card reader/writer to play. The new version of the board game also includes updated property prices (the most expensive being Kensington Palace Gardens which is priced at ฃ4 million). The game has also reached Germany and France but there is no news on a US version.
A screenshot of the game is available in the comments.
It's summertime, folks, which means funtime summery stuff like blankets, beach balls -- even bikinis -- get upgrades. Though not the first of its kind, the $190 Solestrom UV-metering bikini, which happens to look like something straight out of a Bond film, tells you where the sun's at on the UV scale from 0 to 20 and when you're done crisping -- which for pale n' pasty pushovers such as ourselves is pretty much as soon as we walk outside. And do deposit that wagging tongue, gentlemen; titillating though this post may be, we aim keep it clean 'round these parts.
Smith & Jones, the Dutch addiction clinic that opened a gaming treatment program earlier this month, has been inundated with calls from pleading parents leading clinic director Keith Bakker to exclaim, "Computer game addiction is obviously an even greater problem than we imagined." Whoa there buddy, let's slow it down a bit. Is it possible for someone to actually be addicted to video games? And can you really claim that your anticipated call volume is directly proportional to the size of the perceived problem? How scientific.
Bakker concedes that video game addiction "is not a chemical dependency, but it's got everything of an obsessive-compulsive disorder and all of the other stuff that comes with chemical dependency." Like the physical effects of heroin withdrawal, eh? Do gamers exhibit those? What about any other compulsive addiction, like picking one's nose or watching TV incessantly? Are those treatable? Certainly some of the "patients" that Smith & Jones will treat will have serious issues with compulsive behavior and the facility may help them overcome such behavior, but to brand it as being the fault of video games is misleading. It's intended to drum up publicity as much as it is to define their mandate.
Now it won't be possible for a man to pee in peace, as urinals across the country will be equipped to broadcast public messages. Urinals have been fitted with the Wizmark Urinal Communicator, a waterproof, disposable drain cover embedded with electronics that senses a visitor and then relays an audio message. The proximity sensor detects someone approaching within about 30 to 60 centimetres. A few seconds later, the detection lights flash, and a pre-recorded audio announcement starts playing. The device has a nine-centimetre diameter display area containing a lenticular screen that features multiple images or text that, and as the person moves toward the urinal, they appear to change from one graphic to the other.
First the simple question: Can you die from testing a 9V battery on your tongue? I have read newspaper reports (around 1990) of a woman dying after her boyfriend used a 9V battery as sexual stimulation.
A brief look on the internet brings up a number of comments.
Apparently there was a US sailor being trained as an electrician who killed himself by sticking the probes of an Ohmmeter through his skin to measure his internal resistance.
There are also claims of eight people a year dying in Australia (why just Australia?) from testing batteries.
Now, the explanation I have heard as to why this is, is that in certain freak cases, the battery can make an almost direct connection to the nervous system where the nerves are close to the surface and the skin is wet, thus ionising the nerves so that they will not work correctly. Result is death.
The detractors who attempt to answer this question invariably end up quoting figures for levels of current which kill then stating that a batter cannot generate these levels of current. This basically just dodges the issue since we have a fairly specific set of circumstances and it is not claimed that the current actually kills, rather the effect of a DC potential connected directly to the nervous system.
Besides, the figures quoted are guidelines for safety and not intended to be an absolute guarantee of safety. It is also my understanding, having spoken to a number of older electrical engineers, that there were different figures quoted for lethality for DC voltages and AC voltages, with the level of DC being significantly lower than for AC. Hope you can find some information on this issue! Thank you very much for your time!
Dr Xheng Hu of the School of Electrical and Information Engineering at the University of Sydney confirms that a 9V battery does not have enough voltage to kill a person by testing it on the tongue.
He adds: "It cannot be entirely excluded however. If a person is very ill, for example, has heart problems, or has a heart pacemaker that could be disrupted, and so on, they could possibly die from testing the battery in this way. But normally it wouldn't happen."
The US has passed legislation which controls what website operators are allowed to put in their site meta tags. The law bans the use of words which might lead anyone to obscene content.
The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act is named after a six-year-old who was abducted in 1981 and killed. His parents have since dedicated their lives to protecting children from child predators.
The law contains meta tag controls which were rejected when proposed as part of another law, the Stop Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Youth (SAFETY) Act. The SAFETY Act was not passed by legislators.
The law is designed to stop sites with potentially offensive material using meta tags to attract viewers under false pretences. It refers to the labels and meta tags which are seen by many search engines but not by users of sites.
The bill is particularly targeted at those who use words that would attract children such as the names of famous toys in the labelling of websites containing pornography or other material deemed unsuitable for children.
"Whoever knowingly embeds words or digital images into the source code of a website with the intent to deceive a person into viewing material constituting obscenity shall be fined under this title and imprisoned for not more than 10 years," says the bill.
It carries a stiffer penalty for activity aimed at children: "Whoever knowingly embeds words or digital images into the source code of a website with the intent to deceive a minor into viewing material harmful to minors on the internet shall be fined under this title and imprisoned for not more than 20 years."
"At home, we put the security of our children first," said house Speaker J Dennis Hastert. "We've all seen the disturbing headlines about sex offenders and crimes against children. These crimes cannot persist."
In 2000, brand protection specialists Envisional searched against the names of that year's 26 most popular children's characters, including Pok้mon, My Little Pony, Toy Story and Furby. Its study found several thousand links to pornographic sites. However, the significance of meta data for search engine optimisation has reduced in recent years.
Most websites contain a meta description tag and a meta keywords tag. The description tag is used by several search engines, although Google is a notable exception. The keywords tag, however, is respected by very few search engines, due to the historical abuse of meta tags.
The new bill deals more broadly with the registration and treatment of sex offenders and outlaws the sale of date rape drugs. It establishes a national sex offenders' register and pilot tagging programmes for sex offenders. Only a small part of the legislation deals with website meta tags.
US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that "America's children will be better protected from every parent's worst nightmare-sexual predators," thanks to the law's passage. It has been passed by both houses and awaits the US President's signature before it becomes law.
Eidos Interactive's Reservoir Dogs is set for release this October but not down under in Australia. The game has been banned by the Aussie ratings board because it has been deemed "ultra-violent."
"Yes, I wish to register a complaint about one of these confounded 'video games.'"
Now the game is causing another ruckus, this time across a different pond. Like the well-dressed bank robbers in the game, Reservoir Dogs is coming under attack by the police. The Yorkshire Post is reporting that several British police chiefs have condemned the game because of its violence toward police officers.
"Players can take police officers hostage and go on to burn out their eyes with a lit cigar, chop off their fingers with a cigar cutter, and hack off their ears using a scalpel, while [the police officers] plead for their lives and scream in pain," says the Post.
West Yorkshire Police Federation chairman Tom McGhie called the game a "sickening glorification of violence against police officers," according to the Post. "It's impossible to see how such a game can have anything other than a highly damaging effect on how people perceive and react to police officers."
Nevertheless, the Post says that the British Board of Film Classification has OK'd the game's release in the UK, and copies of the game are expected to hit store shelves in late August. Reservoir Dogs is scheduled for a US release on the PC, Xbox, and PlayStation 2 in October.
It seems that only Nazis and aliens are free to be blasted away in games these days. Another Eidos game, 25 to Life, was lambasted by politicians and peace officers for being antipolice, and a group of sex workers called for a ban on the Grand Theft Auto games, claiming gamers were rewarded for the "rape and murder of prostitutes."
The University of Leicester have created an interactive map showing the countries and their happiness. The UK is ranked 41 and the US is ranked higher, at 23, with Ireland ranked even higher at 11. You can check out the interactive map here.
