Another story that brings negativity to my beloved online gaming. Firstly you gotta be a complete retard to die while gaming.  But in China a man died from exhaustion after a 3 day gaming binge. The 30 year old man died in a cybercafe after gaming for 3 days straight.   Emergency medical personnel attempted to revive him but found they could not, he was declared dead at the internet cafe.

China has the second highest population of internet users. They are second only to the United States. This creates a fantastic market for online games, and anyone who plays warcraft knows what a Chinese gold farmer is.

Tens of millions of Chinese play MMO’s and many do so for long periods at cyber cafes.

Many cities have clinics set up to help treat “internet addiction”.
One of the “symptoms” of internet addiction is surfing the net or gaming for days at a time. “Pro” gamers in china wear diapers or have chemical toilets  so they dont have to get up to use the restroom.

For the record, I pwn, and I manage to get up to use the facilities too.

Xbox live went down for a lengthy period of time on the 25th of September. Players who pay for the service were unable to make use of it, on one of the biggest days for xbox live.

Halo 3, a very anticipated game was released on September 25,  as million of people loaded up their treasure and connected to the fee based Xbox Live, it stopped working. This has caused untold pain and anguish in the game fans.

But hey! Who makes Xbox Live? Thats right, Microsoft, the makers of a crappy operating system. Why should their gaming platform be any better?

I think its a terrible shame that people are paying for a service that when wanted most, fails. Get on the ball and get that fixed!

Well its got John Woo’s name so we know its gonna be good. The graphics look outstanding, the reviews make it sound worth the money. The story looks deep and twisting as is the norm for a John Woo story. I want to play it.

Whats the trouble? Well, Direct2Drive has it listed as a 50GB file.

I dont know about you, but thats a bit much for ONE game.

I think these guys are in with the crew from “Jackass”. Its apparent from the level of quality of the equipment that this is not some random stunt. I think its very amusing, but should not be tried at home.

The game “arm spirit” had to be removed from Japanese game rooms this past week after displaying inhuman strength, breaking the arms of 3 players.

The game is a version of arm wrestling, but your opponent is just an arm, connected to a box that beeps while snapping limbs on human players .

Atlus game distributor said their recall was just a precaution, implying that the Japanese should buck up and get tough!

An Atlus spokesperson says that their machine is only as strong as a muscular man, and that properly trained a woman can beat it.

I wonder how the spokesperson would do against the machine?

Your younger daughter a bit bored? Does she need a fun healthy activity that she care share with friends? I have the answer!

Cartoon Doll Emporium.

Its curiously addictive. Cartoon Doll Emporium is one of the fastest growing online communities for “tween” girls. They have fun online activities, like dressing some of their favorite stars in fashions they choose, and often times they can choose to change the colors of clothes, hairs, etc. Its YOUR style after all!

Cartoon Doll Emporium also has “webkinz”. These are hand drawn dolls that you take care of online, dress up and play with. Theres even tools that allow you to send the dolls and webkinz to your MySpace.

Another big thing alot of tweens enjoy is dressing up the Hannah Montana superdoll at Cartoon Doll Emporium. Yeah I tried it, its interesting because there was so many different combinations of clothes and accessories, plus I even got to pick my own pet.

  Microsoft announced officially that they will be dropping their price on the Xbox 360 gaming console.  In fact, all three versions will recieve a price cut. The elite will be 449, the 360 will be 349, and the 360 Core will be 279.

Microsoft feels that leading the console market in sales while maintaining their initial price says alot about their product. They also feel that with the Launch of the latest Madden game their numbers will hit record peaks.

Developer “All-in-One Game Software” now has BlackJack!! Black jack adds to the already addictive fun of games like backgammon, poker, and perudo.

Of all the sites I have gone to and enjoyed this is the only one that allows you to play free, in an animated client. It allows you to use 10 languages. (Spanish, Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew, French, Japanese, Danish, Greek and German, and English). This particular provider of interactive entertainment boasts thousands of players networked at any given time. And now that they have BlackJack on the menu you can expect the number to grow exponentially.

The game itself offers high speed play, coupled with stunning visual graphics, each table holding up to 5 players. Each player can choose to create his own avatar which i had a bit of fun with. You can chat with fellow players, and even more interesting, the games possess a “view” mode, which allows other players to sit out and just watch the action!

Backgammon

Backgammon is a board game for two people in which pieces are moved based on the roll of dice. The first player to remove all of one’s own pieces from the board is said to be the winner. It is a part of the tables family, one of the oldest classes of games in the world.

Perudo

Perudo is popular dice game played in Peru, Chile, Bolivia and other South American countries. This game may be played by two or more people and, basically, is made up of guessing how many dice, under cups, there are on the table showing a certain number. The player who loses a round loses one of their dice. The last player having a die is the winner.

Blackjack

Blackjack is one of the most popular casino card games in the world. Blackjack’s popularity is due to the mix of chance with elements of skill, and the publicity that surrounds card counting . Blackjack’s precursor was vingt-et-un (”twenty-one”), which originated in French casinos around 1700, and did not offer the 3:2 bonus for a two-card 21.

Poker

Poker is a popular type of card game in which players gamble on having the better card combination (”hand”), by placing a bet into a central pot. The winner is the one who holds the hand with the highest value according to an established hand rankings hierarchy, or otherwise the player who remains “in the hand” after all others have folded (the player who makes an un-called bet.

Enjoy playing Backgammon, Perudo, Poker, and Blackjack.

Video game creation is difficult. Developers must make a quality, function product, it has to be enjoyable to play, they must dance around the ESRB so they can reach their target market, then the publishers have to liek the game as well. And hopefully the creators will still be proud of it when this is all said and done.

The creation of games is chaotic, you throw things about, shift it in and out, like pieces of a puzzle, finding things that fit and things that do not, what works and what wont. After a few weeks of that, the process really begins.

Often things areleft out of the game, but the code remains intact and within that game. Thats odd you think. But if ti were removed then it may create other bugs in the code.

Example: A dev creates a jumprope minigame and he decides it should be a rhythm type excercise, he goes on to develop the system for the rhythm(algorhtyhms and such), he adds some things like related graphics, and gets it approved and ready to go

Now,the other developers will review this work and see what of it they can build upon, the graphics people will add good graphics to the original devs stuff. These graphics might be exclusive to the jump rope sequence, and they may also be found elsewhere in the game.

In a few months time, the original coders work is used by several other devs in their code, and the art is spread around as well. Then suddenly some higher up cuts the jump rope sequence.

How can you remove such an embedded portion of development? It is present, and functional. Other portions of the development are built upon it, dependant even, the praphics are there as well. What now? Simple, you simply never have the jump rope sequence called by the game, essentially the main program never calls for that function. It doesnt alter any of the code, the sequence is just never seen by consumers.

Most games have “easter eggs”. We see this all the time, and the example above is likely what happened in GTA:SA. Most hidden code is not sexual, but then again GTA:SA is a “mature” rating.

Do we blame the ESRB? Of course not! The hot coffee minigame is only there if you hack it. Sure, its just a single bit, but its a modification to the game files, to play the game in a manner not intended by the publisher/developer.

1. Video games lead to violence in youth.

Citing national crime statistics, youth violent crime hasnt been lower in 30 years. 99% of gamers dont commit antisocial acts. In fact, studies have shown that mental stability and home life are the contributors to violence and not games. How can the guy at home pwning his friends be out and commiting crimes?

2. Video games are marketed at children.

While most kids do play video games, the market is shifting to adults. In fact, 62% of platforms, and 66% of pc gamers is over 18. The original gamers have hit adulthood and are now the focus of developers.

3. Girls arent gamers.

Once that was an accurate statement. The female population of gamers has increased steadily for years. Females out number males on web based games. World of Warcraft is also played heavily by the female market.
4. Video game play is isolating.

On the contrary, much video game play is social. 60 percent of gamers play with their friends. 33% percent play with their brothers and sisters.
5. Video game play will desensitize the masses.

Animal studies show that primates differentiate between play fighting, and that of true violence. Sometimes they seem to be quite amused wrestling each other. Other events see them ripping each other to shreds. Are we not smarter than the apes?