Best of lists are so 1999.

While 2009 was a great year for gamers and an unbelievable quantity of great titles were released, there were some marketing tactics and campaigns that caused anger, dismay and head-scratching among consumers and the media alike.

Set on Stun, noting that these “are the ones that angried up our blood and became stains on the internet,” runs down the Top 5 Worst Videogame Marketing Campaigns of 2009.

Coming in at the top (the bottom?), was Evony, the online game with a litany of complaints against it, not the least of which is using advertising images featuring scantily clad females that have nothing to do with the actual game at all.

Set on Stun scathed:

…you sued people who reported on your gold-spamming and malware, you spammed blogs with comments, you ripped off image assets from other games, you and your sniveling CEO complained about people shining the light on your deceptive practices.

Dante’s Inferno from Electronic Arts came in at number 2 on the list. The marketing campaign generated controversy at every step, causing Set on Stun to write, “Dante’s Inferno & EA seemed to try to piss off anyone who came even close to caring about their game, a game by all accounts, should be pretty kick-ass.”

The marketing for Dante’s Inferno was fascinating to watch unfold. Gamers, and even the media, became so rattled after a while, that every time a bizarre story surfaced on the Internet, people immediately wondered if it was a plant/front for the game. Sometimes it was.

Professional and industry opinions on the campaign were split as well, as witnessed in a bipolar Ars Technica headline for an excellent overview of almost everything Dante’s Inferno threw at the press.

Shoot even went so far as to name Wieden +Kennedy, the firm behind the Dante’s Inferno marketing, as its Agency of the Year.

Head over to Set on Stun to see the rest of the list.

Any other campaigns you can think of that didn’t make the list?

As the sordid details of Tiger Woods’ personal life continue to unfold in the national media the question arises: will Electronic Arts stick by their videogame cover boy?

While EA issued a statement a week ago saying that it wouldn’t dump Woods, the media frenzy surrounding Tiger’s transgressions continues to grow and more information is revealed seemingly everyday, all of which could influence EA’s stance.

A Forbes column contains the opinion that Tiger’s days are numbered as an EA spokesman, going so far as to say that “Tiger is done as a corporate pitchman” overall, regardless of what companies sticking by him are currently saying now.

The columnist also believes that the Tiger scandal will force companies to do full diligence on a spokesperson before choosing them:

…companies that throw big money at athletes are going to do a lot of research on them to make sure they are not phony (or make risk-adverse decisions based on information they do have) and funnel their endorsement dough at popular athletes whose image will not blow up.

Some of these athletes may not even be among the best in their field, but they will typically be in global sports and not be ticking time bombs.

Forbes writes that no other golfers carry enough buzz among consumers to fill Tiger’s shoes. Certainly however, EA could find a new PGA pro to build its game around if events warranted. Phil Mickelson might be the perfect choice, though he may need to work on his fist pump to take it to Tiger’s level.

What do you think? Should EA keep Tiger on board?

A pair of Connecticut legislators were embarrassed when an Associated Press photographer snapped them playing Windows Solitaire during recent deliberations on the state budget.

The Hartford Courant reports that one of the game-playing pols, Rep. Jack Hennessy (D, left) has issued a rather profuse apology in a letter to constituents:

It was certainly bad judgment for me to play a computer game even for just a few minutes during the final House session on the budget. I am embarrassed, and I apologize to each and every person in the North End and to people across the state.

My actions were inexcusable. I do want my constituents to know that my poor judgment for a few moments on Monday in no way means I ignored your interests in representing you on this very serious matter...

I sincerely apologize to each of you. I look forward to having the continued privilege of representing you and your interests in Hartford. I thank you in advance for your understanding and have been humbled by those of you who have already expressed your understanding and forgiveness.

Hennessy maintains a photo gallery on his official website. The solitaire-playing picture is not included, however. The other Solitaire player was Rep. Barbara Lambert, also a Democrat.

Via: GameCulture

A 17 year old student detonated two pipe bombs in a San Mateo, California high school on Monday before being subdued by faculty members.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the boy was wearing a bulletproof vest and was armed with an additional eight pipe bombs, a two-foot long sword and a chainsaw. Police said that the student planned to set off the bombs and then attack survivors with the other weapons.

Gadget blog Gizmodo wonders whether there may have been a video game connection: 

If you're wondering why this is on Gizmodo—and you guys always do—it's because those weapons inherently remind me of movie and video game weapons. I'm not trying to say that video games cause violence or don't cause violence, but what I'm saying is that when a 17 year old man-child thinks he can corner his classmates while dual wielding a chainsaw and a sword probably played a lot of doom and zelda and didn't do very well in gym class, so would get tired very quickly.

A second report by the SF Chronicle describes the boy as a "techno wizard." His mother thought the bomb-making components were being used to build model rockets.

When more than half of what you're manufacturing fails, that's not a good way to win friends and influence customers.

But that appears to be the case with Microsoft's Xbox 360. A survey of 5,000 Game Informer readers indicates that the Xbox 360 dies at a 54.2% rate, compared to 10.6% for the PlayStation 3 and 6.8% for the Wii.

Game Informer also rated MS poorly on customer service, with turnarounds on repairs taking several weeks longer than for Sony and Nintendo.

GP: While those numbers may seem shocking, I actually find them surprisingly low. I've had three Xbox 360s go on me; two were Red Rings failures and the third was the very common disc-read failure. So, my failure rate is... 100%.

Via: The Consumerist

Evony, a browser-based MMO which debuted recently, has angered some bloggers by using a comment spam campaign.

Popehat writes:

Online pharmacies and questionable purveyors of herbal remedies advertise by comment spam... Porn sites advertise by comment spam... Fraudulent financial services advertise by comment spam...

Legitimate business, and legitimate sites, do not advertise by comment spam. I associate comment spam with the underbelly of the web, with fraud and crime and child porn... Maybe Evony’s site won’t inflict malware on my computer. But I won’t take that chance. Given the company Evony has chosen to keep, you shouldn’t either.

Bruce on Games expresses similar concerns in a post titled simply, "Don't Play Evony."

A New Jersey man filed a federal lawsuit this week against SCEA, SCEI and a number of individual attorneys. The suit, filed by Craig Thorner and his company, Virtual Reality Feedback, makes some very ugly allegations.

GamePolitics has obtained a copy of Thorner's complaint in which the inventor charges that SCEA, SCEI, PDP/Electro Source and several attorneys colluded to infringe on his controller feedback patents. In a 43-page complaint, Thorner spins a tale of high stakes corporate conniving and reveals a surprising degree of naivete on his part.

As alleged by Thorner, his misadventures with Sony began in 2002 during the famous Immersion vs. Sony patent trial. That case revolved around force feedback controller patents; Sony eventually wound up on the wrong end of an $82 million judgment. Thorner claims that during the lmmersion vs. Sony case he was approached first by Sony and then by Immersion. Acting without an attorney, he eventually licensed his patents to Immersion.

After winning the $82M against Sony, Immersion went after PDP/Electro Source with the same type of force feedback patent infringement claim. At this point, Thorner alleges, Sony was appealing the judgment against itself and PDP faced Immersion's new complaint. The two companies entered into "a joint defense agreement." 

Ultimately, Thorner blew off his deal with Immersion and licensed his patents to PDP for $150,000. It's unclear whether Sony and PDP were really interested in Thorner's tech, or whether he was merely a pawn in their legal defense against Immersion. In either case, Thorner alleges that Sony's partnership with PDP was hidden from him in order to keep him from demanding a sweeter deal. Once again, Thorner acted without the benefit of legal advice:

Thorner was uncertain about the fairness of the PDP/Electro Source proposal, but could not afford to discuss his concerns with an attorney...  Thorner replied to [PDP's attorney]... stating that he would accept PDP/Electro Source's terms if [PDP's attorney] agreed to assist Thorner with any differences he might have with Immersion and with a trademark cancellation proceeding.

Thorner alleges that, in an effort to conceal its involvement in the deal, SCEA surreptitiously wired PDP the $150,000 payment to pass along to him. A copy of the wire transfer placed into evidence appears to back up Thorner's version.

A secret shopper operation conducted recently in Dundee indicates that video game retailers in the Scottish city are not adequately enforcing content ratings.

As reported by the BBC, a 14-year-old volunteer was able to buy mature-themed games in 12 of 16 shops surveyed. Such violations could subject retailers to fines or even jail time.

City Councillor Jimmy Black (left) commented:

Do we really want shops selling children games based on gross acts of violence? Well done to the four retailers who got it right, but the others are breaking the law. They place themselves at serious risk of further investigations by our officers.

It has been only a day since the news broke of Konami's plan to publish Six Days in Fallujah, but the game is already sparking anger as well as calls for a ban.

To be sure, releasing a video game based on one of the bloodiest and most controversial actions of the Iraq War is a public relations gamble for Konami and developer Atomic Games - especially since the war is still going on.

Early negative reactions to Six Days in Fallujah have been both sharp and diverse, with a decorated British Army officer and a representative of a U.K. peace group both expressing outrage over the game.

The U.K.'s Daily Mail reports complaints about Six Days in Fallujah by the father of a Royal Marine who died in the Iraq War. Reg Keys, whose son Thomas was killed in 2003, said:

Considering the enormous loss of life in the Iraq War, glorifying it in a video game demonstrates very poor judgement and bad taste... These horrific events should be confined to the annals of history, not trivialised and rendered for thrill-seekers to play out...

It's entirely possible that Muslim families will buy the game, and for them it may prove particularly harrowing. Even worse, it could end up in the hands of a fanatical young Muslim and incite him to consider some form of retaliation or retribution...

I will be calling for this game to be banned, if not worldwide then certainly in the UK.

Meanwhile, former colonel Tim Collins OBE, a decorated Iraq War veteran, was equally aghast:

It's much too soon to start making video games about a war that's still going on, and an extremely flippant response to one of the most important events in modern history. It's particularly insensitive given what happened in Fallujah, and I will certainly oppose the release of this game.

Tech Radar offers withering comments from Tansy Hoskins of Stop The War Coalition, a U.K. peace group:

The massacre carried out by American and British forces in Fallujah in 2004 is amongst the worst of the war crimes carried out in an illegal and immoral war. It is estimated that up to 1,000 civilians died in the bombardment and house to house raids...

The American led assault on Fallujah pretended there were no civilians left in the city [but]  over 50,000 people remained in their homes and took the brunt of the violence and chemical weapons...

To make a game out of a war crime and to capitalise on the death and injury of thousands is sick... The massacre in Fallujah should be remembered with shame and horror not glamorised and glossed over for entertainment.

With Earth Day on this month's calendar, environmental group Greenpeace has issued its latest Guide to Greener Electronics. The report documents how well consumer electronics manufacturers perform in relation to the environment.

In Nintendo's case, nothing has changed; the Wii and DS maker remains dead last. Apparently, the phenomenal success of the Wii has contributed to an increase in Nintendo's CO2 emissions.

Among other console makers, Sony showed improvement, while Microsoft regressed, according to Greenpeace. The organization dinged MS for poor handling of e-waste.

From the report:

Nintendo remains in last place with a pitiful 0.8 points out of 10, scoring zero on all e-waste criteria. The company has banned phthalates and is monitoring use of antimony and beryllium and although it is endeavouring to eliminate the use of PVC, it has not set a timeline for its phase out.

 

Nintendo discloses carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from its own operations and commits to cutting CO2emissions and other greenhouse gases by 2% over each previous year. However, Nintendo admits that an increase in business led to a 6% rise in CO2 emissions in 2006.

Grab a PDF of the Greenpeace report here.

While the video game press appears to have reached a consensus that Resident Evil 5 is not racist in its portrayal of blacks, non-gaming media outlets do not seem quite so sure.

Lou Kesten, for example, who covers games for the Associated Press, straddles the line between games and the mainstream. In a syndicated column which will be reprinted across North America, Kesten clearly is uncomfortable with RE5's racial vibe:

Even longtime fans of the horror franchise may find themselves wondering: Is this game racist?...

 

Yes, the vast majority of monsters in "RE5" are infected black men. Does that make it racist? I believe producer Jun Takeuchi's claim that the story led naturally to Africa, and it's obvious that a zombie-creating virus unleashed there would lead to hordes of African zombies.

Still, there were plenty of moments where I felt uneasy after shotgunning a path through a crowd of feral Africans. Even though "RE5" makes some points about colonialism and capitalism... the racial imagery is more loaded than its creators probably realized.

Judged purely as a game, "RE5" is undeniably entertaining. But many players are going to find it disturbing for the wrong reasons.

At left-leaning political blog Huffington Post, commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson pulls no punches. For Hutchinson, RE5 is clearly an exercise in racism:

The well-worn script reads like this. A protest group blasts a video game manufacturer... for dumping a game on the market loaded with racially insulting and demeaning stereotypes. The video game team yelps that the game is pure entertainment, has some blacks or Latinos in on the design and production, and gets high marks from the industry...

So it was no surprise that Jun Takeuchi yanked out that script to defend his video game brainchild Resident Evil 5 from the charge that it's racist. But what else could one call it? It features a white male (modern day Bawana) mowing down a pack of poor, primitive disease challenged Africans... . The racist game reinforces the worst of the worst ancient stereotypes against and about Africans...

GP: When video game controversies flare, there is typically lag time between the gaming press's more immediate coverage and the issue's crossover to the mainstream media. Now that RE5 has been released, it's likely that the racism issue will be receiving a new round of attention from mainstream outlets in coming weeks.

At this point, British government health campaign Change4Life probably wishes it had gone in a different direction with its most recent ad campaign.

As has been widely reported, the ad, which visually links playing video games with an early death, has generated official complaints to the U.K.'s Advertising Standards Authority by British game development group Tiga and game business website MCV.

Now, reports MCV, Sony Europe is considering the filing of a lawsuit over the ad's unauthorized use of what appears to be a PlayStation controller:

A source close to Sony revealed to MCV that the agency behind the ad, The Gate, had not contacted the platform holder to ask about using a controller that bears a close likeness to PlayStation's pad.

The ad forms part of the Government’s Change4Life Campaign, and was created by agency The Gate in conjunction with the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK and Diabetes UK.

Omaha's Action News 3 is running an exposé on some Nebraska Library Commission employees who posted a video of themselves setting up and playing Rock Band on company time. But did the workers do anything wrong? From the Action News report:

Were some Nebraska state workers paid to play? A video that appeared on YouTube is creating a firestorm of reaction and suggests so...  Employees at the Nebraska Library Commission are accused of wasting [taxpayer money] and then posting video and pictures of the whole thing on line.

Nebraska State Auditor Mike Foley told Action News that a YouTube user spotted the video at left and made a complaint, leading to an investigation by Foley's office. However, Library Commission Director Rob Wagner has backed up his employees:

In a phone interview... Wagner says the workers did nothing wrong. He says the library system is branching out into video games to bring more young people into the libraries. 

GP: While library systems around the country are increasingly adopting video games in an effort to attract teens and stay culturally relevant, that word seems not to have filtered back to either Action News 3 or the Nebraska Auditor General's office.

If libraries are going to offer games like Rock Band, wouldn't it make sense for the employees to at least know how to set them up and be able to explain them to library users?

It's too bad that the local media and the state bureacracy is screwing them over for their efforts at innovation.

As GamePolitics reported this week, online retailer Amazon.com has blocked sales of RapeLay, a Japanese hentai game being offered on Amazon by an affiliated re-seller.

While many were upset by news of the game, some felt that Amazon's decision amounted to censorship.

What do you think?

Register your opinion in the GP poll at left.

Don't invite Ben Kuchera of Ars Technica and Activision Blizzard boss Bobby Kotick to the same party.

Yesterday, Kuchera penned a surprisingly personal criticism of the long-time CEO, including a photo of Kotick with devil's horns added (left). In the column, Kuchera refers to Kotick as "a carpetbagger," "the devil," "brazen," and possessed of a "cash lust."

At issue seems to be Kuchera's feeling that Kotick is all about the Benjamins, not the games:

That's why I find Bobby Kotick so distasteful—the man is a carpetbagger... usually, when you put the devil in charge, you have the good graces to at least keep a smooth-talking demon or two around to deal with the press. With Kotick, he's very brazen about his need to squeeze every last dollar he can out of every franchise under the Activision Blizzard label. He wants to exploit his games. He wants to make sure he has a sequel every year, and don't forget the Wii and DS ports. Why have one StarCraft game if you can have three?...

Kotick doesn't play his games, and it shows. He has a tin ear when it comes to speaking to investors or the press. This is a guy who looks at the balance sheets of World of Warcraft and wants more, more, more... and it's doubtful he even knows the name of Azeroth. Under his control, Activision Blizzard has started to look and feel like the Shire at the end of the Lord of the Rings (and by that, I mean the books' vision)...

World of Warcraft may look like it will go on forever, but the only thing greater than the loyalty of those players is Kotick's cash-lust. The only question is if the two will ever collide...

Whatever one might think of the man, Kotick clearly has business acumen. He was runner-up as Marketwatch's CEO of the Year for 2008 and is currently featured on the cover of Forbes. In fact, the business mag's profile of Kotick comes in for a mention by Kuchera. Some gamers are upset by a line penned by writer Peter Beller and not attributed to the Activision Blizzard CEO:

EA also teamed with MTV to sell Rock Band, a shameless knockoff of Guitar Hero that added drums, bass and a microphone to the world of make-believe rock stars.

It's not exactly a video game story, but...

Multiple reports are coming in that every 30GB Zune (Microsoft's mp3 player) failed this morning at 2 a.m.

College OTR has this:

Microsoft is just squeezing in under the wire to claim the rights to “weirdest tech story of the year.”Last night at approximately 2 AM, every 30GB Zune model on the planet crashed... The Zunes reset, powered up, then froze on the loading bar screen, and no conventional method of resetting them appears to work.

This is brought to you courtesy of Microsoft, who has been selling a video game console with a nearly 100% fail rate for three years. The Zune situation is all the more disasterous however seeing as all of them failed at the exact same moment, which people have taken to calling 2K9.

From Gizmodo:

Right, so this is a weird one: we're getting tons of reports—tons—about failing Zune 30s. Apparently, the players began freezing at about midnight last night, becoming totally unresponsive and practically useless.

The crisis has been dubbed by Zune users 'Y2K9', due to the apparently synchronized faceplantings across the country... This report is consistently corroborated by literally hundreds of others across the various Zune support and fan forums.

GP: Zune users, jump to comments and tell us what is happening with your player...

The sorry tale of a 16-year-old who shot his parents and then tried to frame his dad for the crime is currently playing out in an Ohio court room.

Rather undeservedly, Halo 3 seems to be playing a central role in the case. Ironically, the youthful accused killer never got  a chance to actually play the game.

As the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports, testimony at the trial of Daniel Petric indicates that the boy shot his parents and tried to make it look like a murder-suicide after he was blocked from playing Halo 3 by his father. The elder Petric had confiscated the game from his son as the teen brought it into the house. Mr. Petric then locked it in a box - right next to his 9mm pistol. His son somehow got into the box and recoved the game - and the gun.

From the newspaper's coverage of testimony:

Mark Petric... testified that before the shooting... [Daniel] came into the room with a question:

"Would you guys close your eyes... I have a surprise for you."

Mark Petric said he expected a pleasant surprise. The next thing he knew... He had been shot in the head...

He said the next thing he remembers is his son shoving the gun in his hand and saying, "Hey Dad, here's your gun. Take it."

In his defense Daniel's lawyers argued that the boy was under an emotional strain at the time of the shootings because an illness had kept him housebound for a year. During that time, his lawyers argued, he had little to do but watch TV and play video games.

Could there be additional video game testimony coming up?

Last week GamePolitics reported on a bizarre incident in which more than a dozen prominent game journalists were sent Animal Crossing: Wild World Nintendo DS cartridges which contained a racial slur.

MTV Multiplayer's Stephen Totilo, who broke the story, reports that he subsequently queried used game seller GameStop and the ESRB as to whether the Animal Crossing incident exposes a flaw in the system whereby embedded user-generated content might exceed the content rating.

Both GameStop and the ESRB view the Animal Crossing episode as an anomaly and deny a larger problem. MTV's Totilo writes:

ESRB spokesperson Eliot Mizrachi, told me... “Just as with online-enabled games that allow features like chat, ESRB ratings cannot anticipate and therefore consider user-generated content in the ratings we assign,” he wrote. “Besides, as you mentioned, saving content to the actual game medium is pretty uncommon in today’s games. Most games are read-only with the saved content being stored on the system and not on the game medium itself.”...

The ESRB may not have much reason to worry that questionable content will make it to consumers because gaming chain GameStop claims to be scrubbing the content from re-sold games. Chris Olivera, spokesman for GameStop, told me in a phone interview that his company has a “proprietary” process that wipes consoles and games clean before they are sold back to consumers...

GP: GameStop and the ESRB make a good case here. It's important to remember that the offending DS cart was not purchased through retail channels, but rather was mailed out by Nintendo's own PR department.

Last week, GamePolitics reported that a soon-to-be-released drug dealing game for the iPhone had been renamed in an apparent effort to win App Store approval. Drug Lords, developed by a-steroids, had its name changed to the less offensive Underworld.

Despite new title, the mother of a British heroin user wants the game banned, according to UK tabloid the Daily Star. Thelma Packard's daughter Amy has been in a coma for seven years after dabbling with heroin as a 17-year-old. Mrs. Packard told the newspaper:

My daughter’s life has been ruined by drugs. If this game is allowed to come out, impressionable kids will play it and Amy’s mistake will be repeated over and over again. Youngsters like Amy are exactly the people who download and play games like this on their mobiles.

 

I just want to help other families avoid the nightmare that’s wrecked mine.

It's so over-the-top awful that it almost sounds like a parody headline, but that's the report on AZfamily.com.

Apparently a pair of unsupervised boys, six and seven years-old, stoned a kitten and then strung it up following a Grand Theft Auto session. They reportedly used the controller cable in lieu of a rope.

The incident occurred in late October in Mesa, Arizona, but details are just beginning to emerge. Here's more from the AZfamily.com coverage:

The investigation began [when] deputies went to the neighborhood of one of the two boys... and found the kitten hanging by its neck from a backyard tree. The boys had apparently used a wire from the video game controller they were playing, Grand Theft Auto, to hoist up the kitten. The animal's head had been injured by blows from a rock.

[Maricopa County Sheriff Joe] Arpaio questions why these young children were allowed to play such a violent video game.

“This game allows players to kill cops and rape women,” Arpaio says. “It’s little wonder why they perpetrated such violence against that little animal.”

The boys are too young to prosecute under Arizona law and, for some reason, don't meet the guidelines for intervention by child protective services.

Nintendo is in damage control mode after a DS cart shipped to game reviewers was found to contain a commonly used racial slur.

Kotaku reported yesterday that editor Brian Crecente received a pre-played copy of Animal Crossing: Wild World for the DS. The 2005 title, shipped with secrets unlocked, was intended to show reviewers how content could easily be migrated from the DS game to the recently-released Wii title, Animal Crossing: City Folk.

However, as Kotaku explains, things soon went awry:

When you come upon Baabara, the town's resident sheep, you're greeted with a racial epithet. The word is used repeatedly in your conversation with the sheep.

"I almost forgot about you, N—-a" "So got any juicy gossip for me, N—-a?" "Just thinking about it gets me all excited, N—-a."

Nintendo quickly issued a statement, blaming WiFi for the screwup:

Previously played copies of the were sent to 14 members of the media to demonstrate the ability of players to transfer items to the new Animal Crossing: City Folk for Wii. We regret that an offensive phrase was included without our knowledge via a wireless function that allows user-generated catchphrases to spread virally from one game to the next.

 

This version is limited to 14 copies created for media review purposes only and is not available at retailers. We sincerely apologize for the incident and are working with media who received the game cards to return them to Nintendo immediately.

Yesterday on GamePolitics I wrote that watchdog group the National Institute on Media and the Family has been co-opted by the video game industry.

It wasn't the first time I've taken NIMF to task for accepting a $50,000 grant from the Entertainment Software Association, the lobbying group which represents US game publishers. Not surprisingly, NIMF took umbrage at my comments. Spokesman Darin Broton told GameCyte:

We’re never going to stop putting the [video game] retailers or the [video game] industry’s feet to the fire... You can rest assured that we’ll be talking publicly in 2009 about the issue of gaming addiction.

 

[NIMF accepted the ESA grant because] we’re working on a project to create an online tool for parents to tackle the issues of online predators, cyberbullies, etcetera. It’s not a blank check. It’s for a specific spot on the website.

 

Yes, there was hesitation [about accepting the ESA grant], and if there wasn’t hesitation, I don’t think any of us would be doing our jobs. But I think the end result of giving a parent another useful thing for them to make better decisions at home with their kids is worthwhile.

 

I’ve actually laughed at GamePolitics, because before this, GamePolitics was a frequent critic of NIMF for being too harsh on the industry. It’s a case of wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

I look forward to seeing what GamePolitics has to say in early 2009, and see if they still think we’re in the back pocket of the industry.

GP: I'm glad to see that my comments struck a nerve - they were meant to.

That said, I should point out that I have a great deal of respect for Dr. David Walsh and his organization. But there are certain lines which a self-proclaimed watchdog group like NIMF just shouldn't cross. And accepting money from the very industry you claim to be watching is one of those lines - maybe the biggest, brightest one of all. It's the reason why you won't find any paid video game advertising on GamePolitics, which is owned by the ECA, a game consumer advocacy group.

And while I haven't always agreed with NIMF's conclusions or its methodology, I've always believed that the organization's heart was in the right place. Over the years, David Walsh has been unfailingly respectful in his treatment of the gamer community and gaming press. As we all know, not every game critic behaves with such decency.

Beyond that, it's not a bad thing to have rational game industry watchdogs at work. When operating appropriately, groups like NIMF provide a useful checks-and-balances function. Yes, we may chafe at some of their conclusions, but sparking a dialogue about games and their potential effects on young people can't hurt.

In taking GamePolitics to task, Darin Broton indicates that NIMF will have some watchdog-worthy comments early in the new year.

We'll be watching.

FULL DISCLOSURE DEPT: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics.

When last we looked in on Eidos, it was over a little episode that came to be known as GerstmannGate.

The UK game publisher's ham-handed attempt to manipulate GameSpot's Kane & Lynch review scores unfairly cost long time journo Jeff Gerstmann his editor position and nearly brought the site down as outraged veteran staffers bailed one after another.

Recent reports indicate that Eidos is up to its old tricks, this time in regard to Tomb Raider: Underworld. Naturally, the Penny Arcade crew can't resist making Eidos the star of its latest cartoon.

Hit the link for the full version of The Truth is the New Lie...

An online game which parodies the struggles of a deeply depressed musician faces severe criticism in the U.K.

The Sun reports that, in particular, Billy Suicide is outraging suicide prevention advocates. In the game players attempt to get Billy through his day with doses of caffeine, alcohol and anti-depressants. The character can also engage in activities such as playing his guitar or watching T.V. to elevate his mood. If Billy gets too depressed, however, he will take his own life.

A spokesperson for advocacy group The Samaritans told The Sun:

Certain types of suicide portrayal can act as a catalyst to influence the behaviour of people who are already vulnerable — particularly young people.

Paul Kelly, a representative of Papyrus, an anti-suicide organization, added:

This game is completely irresponsible. The people who made it should realise the damage that it can cause.

GP: We should note that Billy Suicide is an amateur game, not the product of the commercial video game industry.

The Daily Mail reports that 19-year-old Ryan Chinnery (displaying bling at left) has been sentenced to an indefinite period of incarceration after pleading guilty to a series of sexual assaults in Kent. GamePolitics previously covered the start of Chinnery's trial in September.

As it does so often these days, Grand Theft Auto gets the blame:

[Chinnery] prowled streets in his car targeting innocent women he thought were prostitutes - imitating scenes from the controversial [Grand Theft Auto] game in which a man drives around and attacks call girls...  Officers found a copy of the 18-certificate Grand Theft Auto during a swoop on the home Chinnery shared with his girlfriend - and he initially insisted to detectives that he had been playing on his computer at the time of the attacks.

Prosecutor Eleanor Laws told a jury last month how Chinnery's obsession with Grand Theft Auto, which has sold some 35million copies, 'may go some way to explaining his attitude towards women'. Miss Laws added: 'Prostitutes in it can be exposed to violence. There may be some connection with the defendant admitting spending a lot of time playing that game.'

The judge, on the other hand, seemed to relate Chinnery's crimes to an obsession with porn, but did give GTA a mention. The Kentish Express reports:

Judge Philip Statman said: "What most troubles me is the mirror conduct between pornography and that which he later does. It is as if spurring on comes from the pornographic material.

"I know part of this case referred to something called Grand Theft Auto. While it appears the defendant does not accept it influenced his conduct on that particular evening, it could not have helped him, I would have thought, in all the circumstances of the case."

A British video game industry official recently credited Labour MP Keith Vaz's public criticism of Manhunt with helping to drive sales of Rockstar's bloody game.

Vaz is seemingly at it again.

The Daily Mail reports that Vaz has expressed outrage over Kaboom: The Suicide Bombing Game. As GamePolitics reported recently, the amateur game is freely available online, although not from commercial video game industry sources.

In fact, we hadn't heard of the game until recent coverage by British tabloids. However, comments made by Vaz are helping to spread the word:

Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee, said the game contained an ‘unnecessary’ level of violence and offended relatives of those killed by suicide bombers...

 

He also said he was ‘deeply concerned’ that vulnerable users under the age of 18 are able to play the game...

The Israeli Embassy in London is also understood to have complained. Scores of Israeli citizens have been killed by suicide bombers in recent years.

Vaz has called for a ban on the game. However, as a non-commercial product it is not subject to the U.K.'s game rating process. In any case, because it is hosted on at least one U.S. site, it would seemingly be beyond the reach of British law.

GP: While the previously-obscure game is certainly in bad taste, we thought Conservative MP John Whittingdale took a more sensible approach:

I find this game tasteless but I don’t think it will necessarily start turning people into suicide bombers. But those whose lives have been affected by suicide bombings I imagine would find it upsetting.

UPDATE: Dvorak Uncensored notes that a website operated by racist fringe group the Aryan Nation now links to the game.

UPDATE 2: The game has come in for a mention in the Arab press.

Maclean's, a weekly news magazine in Canada, has published a lengthy article on the Brandon Crisp disappearance.

What Happened to Brandon? zeroes on Brandon's supposed addiction to Call of Duty 4:

The police are still searching the nearby fields, but the large-scale volunteer search that has been going on in recent weeks is over. Hopes that Brandon might be comfortably hiding out in one of the expensive summer homes on Lake Simcoe are all but dead. The question hangs heavier than ever: what happened to Brandon Crisp? His parents have ideas and they all centre on the video game and the growing fear that Brandon's addiction might prove fatal...

 

But what confounds everyone involved in this case, from the police to his parents, is that beyond his devotion to Call of Duty, he showed no outward signs of trouble. "He was a teenager who had a problem, but he wasn't a problem teenager," says Sgt. Dave Goodbrand of the Barrie police...

Among others, Maclean's also spoke with Dr. David Walsh of the National Institute on Media and the Family:

I don't think [video game companies] want to touch addiction with a 10-foot pole. It raises all sorts of liability issues for them. And my interpretation is that their strategy is to ignore it and hope it will go away. If you talk to front-line counsellors in places like universities they'll tell you that this is a huge issue. The way people are viewing this is changing quickly.

ECA president Hal Halpin is quoted from a prior interview with the Washington Times:

What we're really talking about here is media addiction, but unfortunately we're not even talking about that. The issue has been politicized down to games, to the exclusion of all other media, including movies, music and television. It seems disingenuous on its face.

Over at The Escapist, Andy Chalk has a rant about the Maclean's piece:

The most recent example of the "games made him do it" coverage appeared in this week's edition of Maclean's magazine... What the hell? ...The boy's father has proclaimed his belief for some time now that Brandon's gaming habits had something to do with his disappearance, although actual evidence to that effect - beyond the fact that he ran away from home after a fight over the Xbox - is scant...

 

Brandon Crisp's disappearance highlights one of the biggest problems facing the gaming industry today: Not that videogames are or aren't the greatest scourge faced by civilization since Elvis, but that they're consistently presented as such, to one degree or another, by the mainstream media...

GP: Meanwhile, Brandon remains missing. He has been gone for 23 days. CanWest is now reporting comments from Barrie Police spokesman Sgt. Dave Goodbrand which seem to indicate that the investigation may be moving away from Brandon's gaming:

[Brandon's Xbox 360 is] still being analyzed a little further, but at this point we have no reason to believe there is any connection to date between the Xbox and his disappearance.

FULL DISCLOSURE DEPT: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics.

British tabloid the Daily Star gets itself worked into a tizzy over an amateur online offering, The Suicide Bomber Game.

The free online game, which can easily be accessed by children, shows graphic images of body parts being splattered across the town. Yesterday, it was branded “sick, callous and upsetting” by the Bali Bombing Victims Group, who want it removed from the internet.

One member, Susanna Miller, who lost her brother Dan in the 2002 attacks which killed 202 people, said: “It’s callous, inappropriate, irresponsible and deeply offensive. I find it disturbing... I appeal to any sites featuring this game to remove it. It’s completely sick."

While Ms. Miller's sentiments are completely understandable, it's cheap journalism to call up someone who lost a relative to a suicide bomb and then ask them how they feel about a suicide bombing game. Apparently, that's how the Daily Star rolls.

Kudos to Conservative MP John Whitting­dale (left) who keeps things in perspective. It would have been very easy for Whittingdale to turn the Daily Sun's question about this obscure little title into a highly-publicized whinge encompassing video games in general. Whittingdale told the tabloid:

I find this game tasteless but I don’t think it will necessarily start turning people into suicide bombers. But those whose lives have been affected by suicide bombings I imagine would find it upsetting.

A new report links violent video games to aggressive tendencies in children in both the United States and Japan.

According to the Washington Post, the report published in the journal Pediatrics examines research conducted by Dr. Craig Anderson (left) of Iowa State University as well as work by a pair of Japanese researchers. All three studies are of the longitudinal variety. From the WaPo:

Anderson said the collaboration with Japanese researchers was particularly telling because video games are popular there and crime and aggression are less prevalent. Some gamers have cited Japan's example as evidence that violent games are not harmful.

Yet the studies produced similar findings in both countries, Anderson said. "When you find consistent effects across two very different cultures, you're looking at a pretty powerful phenomenon," he said. "One can no longer claim this is somehow a uniquely American phenomenon. This is a general phenomenon that occurs across cultures..."

 

"We now have conclusive evidence that playing violent video games has harmful effects on children and adolescents," Anderson said.

Anderson also told the WaPo that video games are only one of a number of influences on a child's behavior:

A healthy, normal, nonviolent child or adolescent who has no other risk factors for high aggression or violence is not going to become a school shooter simply because they play five hours or 10 hours a week of these violent video games... [Extreme forms of violence] almost always occur when there is a convergence of multiple risk factors.

The Des Moines Register has additional comments from Anderson:

The [Japanese] culture is so different, and their overall violence rate is so much lower than in the U.S. The argument has been made - it's not a very good argument, but it's been made by the video game industry - that all our research on violent video game effects must be wrong because Japanese kids play a lot of violent video games and Japan has a low violence rate.

By gathering data from Japan, we can test that hypothesis directly and ask, 'Is it the case that Japanese kids are totally unaffected by playing violent video games?' And of course, they aren't. They're affected pretty much the same way American kids are.

Anderson's study was previously detailed in his 2007 book Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents: Theory, Research and Public Policy.

Full report available here.

Wired reports that the McCain campaign bailed on a technology debate scheduled for Thursday just hours before it was to begin.

According to Wired's Nicholas Thompson, a debate on tech issues had been arranged between an Obama rep and McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin. Tickets to the event sold out quickly. Thompson writes:

Then, oops, yesterday morning, a couple hours before the event began, the McCain camp emailed to say that, actually, no, sorry, Holtz-Eakin can't make it for the 12:30 debate. Apparently he had very important meetings to attend. Right. Apparently, though, he stepped out in the middle. At 1pm he was on MSNBC attacking Obama, trying to tie him to George Bush's economic policies...

 

In short: the McCain camp chickened out. Spinning is easy; debating is hard. And defending John McCain’s record on broadband deployment, spectrum issues, and net neutrality is particularly hard...