The new service is aimed at every facet of the PC gaming community, from pro-teams that want to show off their skills to publishers that wish to show off their wares. Even you, the solo PC gamer, can allow the world to watch you play World of Warcraft, garnering helpful comments from the community via Livestream's chat functionality. Helpful tips like "should have presured the pally abit more" and "lalalalalala." Helpful!

"The partnership expands Xfire's offering to our vibrant community. It keeps our users involved, engaged and active. For Livestream, the partnership adds compelling gaming content to the linear and on-demand video content already available to millions of viewers and reinforces the power of the Livestream Platform," says Chris Kirmse, Xfire's General Manager. "We integrated Livestream's Platform within two weeks using their Platform APIs providing our users a 1-click solution to start a live broadcast."

You can visit Livestream's Xfire Gaming Network page right now to watch other people playing video games, or download Xfire and show the world your mad skills.

Integrating a community website with Dragon Age: Origins and the upcoming Mass Effect 2 has paid off in spades for BioWare, bringing players online in droves to show off their Dragon Age prowess and prepare for the bragging that will come once the second entry in the epic space opera arrives. Between the existing BioWare community, more than 500K sign-ups at Social.BioWare.com, and the fans that will be flocking to the redesigned MassEffect.com, BioWare's community is only getting larger.

"We want to thank our fans for their enthusiasm and ongoing support. The passion within the community is not only helping drive momentum for Dragon Age referrals but our actively engaged fan base is eager for future content releases, which we are committed to deliver," said Dr. Ray Muzyka, co-founder, BioWare and Group General Manager of the RPG/MMO Group of EA. "We could not be more excited about the outstanding community growth. The connection we are fostering with our fans is direct and personal. This tremendous community will help set the stage for an incredible Mass Effect 2 launch on January 26th."

On top of the traditional web presence, the Dragon Age Facebook fan page has more than 30,000 fans, making it the fastest-growing EA property on Facebook.

So what makes BioWare's community so attractive? Is it the games? The people? You tell us.

If you had any doubts about the ever-growing importance of Facebook to the game industry, look no further than today's Activision announcement, heralding the impressive number of fans the Guitar Hero Facebook page has gathered. It's not about sales. It's not about review scores. It's about people clicking on a little button, and one million (1,084,288 as of this writing) people clicking a button is certainly impressive.

The page is used mainly to request feedback from the Guitar Hero community, asking the community which songs are the hardest to play, what bands they'd like to see, and generally gathering data that could be used to make future updates and versions of the game more tailored to community tastes.

That, or they could just be generating random conversations, though I'd like to think it was the gathering data thing.

So, are you one of the million fans?

The games will stay the same, but the way you experience them and share them with friends while not playing will change drastically once Nexon completes the rollout for BlockParty. In the works for several years, BlockParty will wrap Nexon's stable of free-to-play online games in a robust social networking website.

Players will be able to view a play feed of in-game accomplishments, share their thoughts and moods with friends, manage contacts, show off their avatars, and establish an online identity that is closely linked to the games they play.

"BlockParty will be one part games, one part portal with a twist of social networking. Nexon America's goal for BlockParty is to create the biggest online party with great games and awesome gamers," said Min Kim, Nexon America's vice president of marketing. "BlockParty will allow Nexon to better serve our players by extending the community experience to a central web-based communication hub. BlockParty will also make it easier for players to access Nexon's growing list of games, and at the same time, allow them to share their online gaming adventures with their friends."

Nexon is currently testing and tweaking BlockParty and will continue to do so through the remainder of the year. Those interested in a preview can visit www.Nexon.net and click on the little BlockParty critters at the top of the page.

Members of the Dark Void site get access to the usually goodies — developer diaries, screenshots, production blogs — but it seems like they're really pushing the "missions" and recruit-a-friend stuff. Completing missions nets you points to spend on swag, prizes and "exclusive Dark Void swag you can't get anywhere else." Recruiting enough friends either wins you an Xbox 360, or just an Xbox 360 game — it depends which part of the site you read.

As far as swag goes, if it's they're giving away this jet pack, sweet. If it's just a bunch of t-shirts and keychains, I'd just as soon way for another PAX — although, hopefully the game will be out before then.

Check it out here.

Cole used commenters' responses to his post, The Impact of Homophobia in Virtual Communities, to drive discussion among panelists Caryl Shaw (Senior Producer at EA's Maxis), Dan Hewitt (Senior Director of Communications & Industry Affairs for the Entertainment Software Association), Stephen Toulouse (Program Manager for Policy and Enforcement, Xbox Live), Cyn Skyberg (Vice President of Customer Relations at Linden Lab) and Flynn DeMarco (founder of GayGamer.net). Read on to see if you made the cut.

First up was McLuvin's comment about flaunting sexuality. Next was GameBuddy, continuing the discussion. Then came bLaZINcOdE3's comment about the "gay mafia" forcing companies to hold "token meetings." OrigamiNinja's comment about how harassment makes the game less fun made it in, as did Nnooo's about whether or not gamers can expect Mario to save a prince instead of a princess someday. User saulpimpson's comment steered talk toward developers refusing to make games based on gay or gay bashing content. Then DanoruX's tongue-in-cheek "this is so gay," statement got a discussion going on "innocent" slurs. Phydeaux's comment on "play to file" introduced the topic of abuse reporting in online communities. Lastly, ach77 made it in as part of a general statement that gay gamers just want to have fun like every other gamer – and to introduce the founder of gay-centric World of Warcraft guild, The Spreading Taint who happened to be in the audience.

Aside from being shamelessly proud of Kotaku commenters, I was interested to see how Kotaku alumnus DeMarco reacted to comments from his ex-audience. He did almost half the talking at the panel and demonstrated the most gaming expertise. Whenever an issue was raised, DeMarco could name at least two games in response whereas everyone else just fell back on their own games (like Shaw's Spore and Skyberg's Second Life) or defaulted to Halo.

The other big talker was Microsoft's Toulouse, but I think he was being targeted. At the beginning of the panel, Cole presented a video that outlined the issues facing gays and lesbians in online gaming. All of their in-game examples seemed to be from Xbox Live – most specifically, Halo multiplayer. To his credit, Toulouse responded to almost every issue raised by Kotaku comments and admitted that Xbox Live hasn't got it right quite yet – but they're committed to making their community a safe place to game for everybody.

The quietest panelist was Second Life's Skyberg. It takes all types to make a virtual world like Second Life and I know they've had issues that prompted developer Linden Lab to create an adults-only space. Skyberg did pipe up at one or two times to talk about anonymity making it easy for people to use gay slurs in online communities – and made an excellent point that as people invest in their online identities more, this anonymity goes away.

The only dull part of the panel was the Q&A. I'm not sure if it's because the two hour time limit was almost up and everybody wanted lunch, or because the audience was the choir being preached to – but nobody asked anything that hadn't been addressed. One lady asked if the "dehumanizing" aspect of violent games like Halo brought about gay bashing and DeMarco responded that the problem wasn't that the game that engendered homophobia, it was that the audience that the game tended to attract was immature and ignorant of gay issues.

In sum, this is what I took away from the panel: Don't hate the game, hate the player. Or better yet, don't hate anybody.

It's pretty simple to answer: Just drop in picture of yourself and pictures of which character you'd like to play you in a game, and which actually would.

No contest, just oodles of Internetz fame.

Here's one to get you started:

Reality: Fahey
Want: Kratos
Get: World of Warcraft Ogre
Reality: Crecente
Want: The Prince of Persia.
Get: Title art character from DS failure Homie Rollerz

When the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) sent a report through Facebook's built in reporting system and then urged its Facebook and Twitter followers to do the same, the user was suspended, and the group abandoned and commandeered by pro-gay users in the matter of hours.

It seems that real people in those virtual communities, as well as the massive companies that run the platforms, don't like when people form groups that advocate killing people or targeting groups.

Now what happens when you take that model and you turn it to online gaming virtual communities?

To illustrate my point, take a look at this video previously highlighted on Kotaku and GayGamer to get a sense of the problem just in online gaming communities.

Halo 3: Homophobia Evolved (NSFW)

This isn't to say that all gamers feel and think this way. As we know, there's a great diversity in who plays computer and video games and how they think. But similar to other forms of mass medium entertainment-like music, books, and movies-the new frontier created by advances in technology, especially Internet technology, has increased ability to transmit our voices, images, and ideas. But it has also come with a greater capacity to harass, bully, and spread prejudices - often times with little-to-no repercussions.  

The problem is widespread in these communities, with kids and adults alike throwing around virtual threats and threatening real world violence and death.

In 2006, a survey under supervision by the University of Illinois provided the first glimpse of "the social and behavioral demographics of gay video game players" as well as "the role of sexual orientation on gaming habits." Here are some highlights:

52.7% of those surveyed said the gaming community is "Somewhat Hostile" to gay and lesbian gamers, 14% said "Very Hostile."
When asked what forms of homophobia people have seen in the gaming community, here are some of what the surveyed said:

87.7% - Players use the phrase, "That's so gay."
83.4% - Players use the words "gay" or "queer" as derogatory names.
52.3% - Stereotypical representations of gay characters in games.
42.5% - Refusal of game designers to include well-developed gay characters.
49.4% - Invisibility of gaymers and/or the gaymer community.
When asked how frequently players experience homophobia, those surveyed who responded "Always" or "Frequently" equaled 42%. Add in "Sometimes" and it brings up that total to 74.5%.
When asked how often those players respond to the homophobia they witness – 50.9% total responded "Never" or "Rarely."

Keep in mind, that's a survey from 3 years ago. According to the Entertainment Software Association's 2009 Essential Facts, last year 68% of American households played video or computer games.  It's an industry that continues to grow - from 2.6 billion dollars in sales in 1996 to 11.7 billion last year.  And don't think it's child's play – the average player age is 35.

The problem is only getting worse and needs to be addressed with comprehensive and sustainable solutions. That's why GLAAD has announced an initiative to do just that – The Project on Homophobia & Virtual Communities – which kicks off with a groundbreaking panel discussion to be held on the Electronic Arts campus on July 18, 2009.

The panel discussion will include an assessment of the problem in these communities, policy solutions that have been developed to address homophobia – some that are working and those that are not - as well as looking to the future at the challenges and opportunities to combating homophobia in various sectors of the industry.

Confirmed panelists include representatives from XBox LIVE, Electronic Arts, Inc., Linden Lab, the Entertainment Software Association, and GayGamer.net.

There is no doubt that this is a complicated endeavor. While most companies do have some sort of policy in place that prohibits threats, advocating violence or death, and hate speech, there are major concerns with the effectiveness of those policies. Those concerns including the policies themselves, which in some cases ban self-identifying your orientation or using words like "gay" or "lesbian" altogether. They also include the mechanisms in place to report violations of the policies, many which don't allow you to submit evidence (i.e. recordings of in game audio/video). Then there is the lack of transparency once a user has been reported, leaving the harassed often feeling as if nothing has been done.

GLAAD's project has an established set of goals to address these concerns. To get companies to provide safe spaces for LGBT people in these virtual communities (which includes virtual worlds, online games, social networks, message boards, etc). To work with each of the companies to ensure they have solid policies in place that prevent anti-LGBT defamation where possible and mechanisms to report the defamation when it does occur. And what will be the most challenging in my eyes - to educate the user base about the real impact of their virtual homophobia.

However, what this comes down to is that this really is a company-by-company and a case-by-case project. For example, when a potentially anti-gay situation with the Old Republic message board arose, I reached out to Bioware about the situation and ended up getting a call back from a VP at Electronic Arts (EA), Bioware's parent company. After making sure the situation was corrected, he issued a statement through GLAAD, which we shared on our blog, and put me in touch with EA staff to continue conversations about the overall issue of homophobia in virtual communities.

Through ongoing conversations with EA, they have offered to host our upcoming panel on their private campus in Redwood City, CA, and have provided a panelist - a senior producer from the Maxis Studio. While I'm out in California I'll also be meeting with EA staff to discuss the issue of homophobia, their policies and begin working on a comprehensive plan to address it.

Microsoft has also had recent and ongoing dust-ups regarding their XBox LIVE policies being "anti-gay." After opening up a dialogue with them about the problems, they invited GLAAD out to their campus in Washington State for two days of meetings with XBox LIVE managers to review their systems, protocols and policies and provide recommendation on way to address the problem. We now have quarterly conference calls to continue working towards solutions.

These companies aren't monoliths and are very much committed to providing a safe and fun environment for all their players - they're just not all there yet.

We all know it's not going to happen overnight and it's not going to be easy. We have an uphill battle of policy issues, system improvements and campaigns to educate users on the real dangers of homophobia. In my job as GLAAD Director of Digital Media, I've also seen the real impact unchecked homophobia has on people's lives and how it leads to a climate of intolerance, to bullying and harassment, and can ultimately lead to violence and death, especially among children.

While the average player age may be 35, 25% of all game players are under 18. These are impressionable kids who are witnessing and then participating in anti-gay slurs, normalizing homophobia for them. They then take that behavior from their virtual worlds into their real world.

According to a 2007 report by GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, "86.2% of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed, 44.1% reported being physically harassed and 22.1% reported being physically assaulted at school in the past year because of their sexual orientation."

In February of 2008, a 14-year-old took out a gun during class and killed a 15-year-old classmate because of the student's sexual orientation and gender identity. This past April, an 11-year-old boy in Massachusetts who didn't identify as gay hanged himself because of anti-gay bullying, as did another 11-year-old boy in Georgia. These are but a few examples.

Some may argue that these examples don't directly support the argument that unchecked homophobia in virtual communities leads to real world violence amongst kids. However, we can all agree that children learn what's appropriate and acceptable and how to treat others from their friends, families and from their communities. And that includes their virtual communities.

This is a problem we cannot leave unchecked.

For those who say this is bigger than just being about homophobia – that there are also issues like racism and sexism to be addressed - you are right. But keep in mind; while the work being done here is focused around fighting homophobia its implications will affect many other groups. If we work to help implement better reporting mechanisms, it helps everyone. If we work to provide better policies and safe spaces for LGBT people, those policies and spaces can be replicated for other groups as well.

If we are moving in a direction where so much of our communications and interactions occur in virtual communities, then maybe its about time we start considering how we can make the spaces civilized and safe, inviting millions more into the communities, and paving the way for the expansion of this technology into other areas of our real world.

We have an opportunity to learn from the lessons of our real-life society, to not repeat the same mistakes in our virtual ones.

We at GLAAD hope you'll join us in this effort.

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is dedicated to promoting and ensuring fair, accurate and inclusive representation of people and events in the media as a means of eliminating homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. Justin J. Cole is GLAAD's Director of Digital Media

It's that time of the year again. One of the world's oldest video game award programs seeks gamers to flock to its website, nominatting their favorite games in fifteen different categories. This is the preliminary voting from which a short list shall be compiled consisting of the titles with the most votes, so just about every game published between May 22nd 2008 and May 22nd 2009 are applicable. That means that you can vote for games that aren't even out yet, which I suppose is only fair.

Head over to the Golden Joystick website now to cast your reasoned, well though-out votes for the best games of 2008. The nominations will no doubt be dominated by LittleBigPlanet, Fallout 3, and Fable II, but voting will give you a brief feeling of empowerment, which is always nice.

That's right, in addition to the city your sim resides in, the town of Riverview will be available for download on launch day, adding a nice chunk of real estate to EA's latest fake people game. The Sims 3 Store will also be open for business, allowing players to purchase SimPoints to download fake things for their fake peoples, with $10 worth of points bundled with every copy of the game. First one's free.

The Sim Exchange returns for The Sims 3, allowing players to share their own creations, just like they did with the previous game. Both the store and the exchange will be accessible from the game's new launcher, which acts as a hub and provides news and updates about store promotions and new community content.

Community is a big focus with The Sims 3. EA heard you liked social networking, so upon the game's launch TheSims3.com will be replaced with a full community site for the game, allowing players to maintain their own page, sharing created stories and movies, make friends, and publish information across a variety of social networking sites.

One thing that's always impressed me about EA's handling of the Sims franchise is the fact that they know their customers so very well. I'm sure the new social features will be immensely popular among the game's fan base.

Check out the full list below, or visit TheSims3.com for more information.

Key Online Elements Include:

The Sims 3 Store: Included with purchase of the game is $10 worth of SimPoints, which players receive when they first register their game online at TheSims3.com. They can use their SimPoints towards downloading exclusive in-game items from The Sims 3 Store to customize their game. For additional items, players can purchase bundles of 500, 1000 and 2000 SimPoints in $USD, EUR, GBP and other major international currencies using a variety of payment methods including international and national credit cards, PayPal, and EA cash cards (in North America only). Whether it's the must-have new outfit or the latest style of plaid furniture, players have the opportunity to further customize and populate their Sims world with additional items.

Game Launcher: The Game Launcher is the key entry point for players into TheSims3.com community. This hub page connects players to both the Store and the Exchange, and provides them with news and information about game updates. Players can keep track of their downloads, uploads, installs, game updates and their media portfolio that includes the videos and photos they can capture while playing the game. The Game Launcher also alerts players to new content in the store, localized game and store promotions along with relevant updates to the Store and cool new content from the community.

TheSims3.com Site: With the launch of the game on June 2, the marketing website at TheSims3.com will be replaced with the full community and product site for the game. The site will not only connect players, encourage new ways to be creative in the game, and offer personally relevant information for each user, it also will serve as the hub site where players can share their content with other members, and embed them on social networking sites and blogs.

Key Site Features:
The Exchange: Building off of The Sims 2 Exchange's success of more than 100M downloads, The Sims 3 Exchange highlights featured items, most popular downloads, powerful search and browse capabilities, along with giving players the ability to see what other players are recommending.

Create a Movie and Create a Story: New easily accessible tools inspire creativity and allow players to create movies and stories and then show them off or share them with friends. Players can show off their Movies with the Create a Movie Tool by embedding them on external sites or with an email link back to their Movie on TheSims3.com.

My Page and My Studio: The Sims 3 product site will allow players to maintain their profile pages on their My Page section as well as offering them the new My Studio section to manage all their creations – Movies, Stories, Exchange objects. My Page is also a blog space where players can post news, customize it with a personal avatar, track favorites and more. Users can make friends with other The Sims 3 players and share their content across a number of social network sites.

Announced to the world back in February, Atlus Online is an online community for fans of Atlus games, role-playing, and anime, three passions that generally coincide quite closely to one another. The company has now completed phase one, which evidently involved plastering their mascot all over the front of the webpage and implementing a few new features, such as the Oekaki Wall, a forum featuring a java applet that allows users to create and share artwork on the fly. They've even got themselves a Twitter account, which means they've officially joined the internet now.

Head on over to AtlusOnline.com to join in the festivities.

GameAnswers is essentially the video game version of Yahoo! Answers. After a quick and painless sign up process, users can ask questions or answer questions to their hearts' content, climbing the ranks as other community members rate their answers in terms of overall helpfulness. Simple community functions allow you to follow other members or gain followers yourself, perhaps one day becoming to most informative gamer the world has ever seen.

GameFly founder Sean Spector explained to Kotaku why exactly they've created the GameAnswers website.

"Gamers want feedback from other gamers, but don't want to spend hours combing through message boards to find what they need. GameAnswers lets gamers get answers on their time line and not others'.

Spector hopes that rank system will help encourage good answers, rather than a page full of "First answer!" posts, and if that doesn't work there is always the report abuse button.

While there are currently no plans to integrate GameAnswers with the GameFly video game rental-by-mail service, Spector didn't rule out some sort of shared features appearing in the future.

If reading the comments section on Kotaku is any indicator, gamers sure love to show other gamers how much they know. With that in mind, we should completely crash the website's servers in a matter of minutes. We can do it. I believe in us.

GameAnswers.com [Official Website]

Words are nice, but numbers speak volumes. Nearly 2 million users have joined the LittleBigPlanet community since the game was launched back in November of 2008. Of course many of those users aren't actively creating, with only around 725,000 user-generated accounted for, but they certainly are a talky bunch, having left over four million comments on game levels, many of which are requests for more. Mark Hardy, Sony's European Marketing Director for Content and platforms, is understandably jubilant.

"LittleBigPlanet is giving people from every walk of life the opportunity to express themselves creatively. The game is just the start. This is Creative Gaming; never ending experiences that take on lives of their own through their players.

Wow. And here I just wanted to make my Sackboy look like a space bunny. I didn't realize I was part of a movement!

All three versions of Far Cry 2 contain a robust set of level design tools, but there is a big difference between tossing down a few boulders onto a blank map and crafting a sublime multiplayer experience. Ubisoft now turns to the Far Cry 2 players themselves, accepting submissions on various topics for inclusion in "Designing Wargames: The Official Far Cry 2 Map Editing Guide", to be published this spring.

"This is the next milestone in gamer-generated content," says David Hutchison, Associate Professor at Brock University. "Far Cry 2 makes it easy for both PC and console gamers to create cool new multiplayer maps that they can then share with other gamers. We want to honour this effort by inviting the Far Cry 2 map-making community to contribute to this first-of-its-kind game design book."

While the backbone of the book will be authored and edited by Professor Hutchinson, the author of “Playing to Learn: Video Games in the Classroom," the meat will come directly from articles submitted at www.farcrybook.com. If you're interested in becoming a part of the project, just follow the link for the submission guidelines, but act fast - submissions close tomorrow.

It sounds to me like a collection of user-written FAQS and strategies you'd find online, only without having to worry about burning your thighs with your laptop while reading it in the restroom. I approve.

Ubisoft® Announces "The Official Far Cry® 2 Map Editing Guide"

A Book Written by Gamers for Gamers

LONDON, UK - January 27, 2008 - Today, Ubisoft announced a unique partnership with Charles River Media, one of North America's leading publishers of video game development books. Both companies are working together to create one of the first game design books written by gamers for gamers.

"Designing Wargames: The Official Far Cry® 2 Map Editing Guide" will be published in the spring of 2009. Written and edited by David Hutchison, author of “Playing to Learn: Video Games in the Classroom,” the book will comprise of map making techniques and advice contributed by Far Cry 2 map makers around the world.

"This is the next milestone in gamer-generated content," says David Hutchison, Associate Professor at Brock University. "Far Cry 2 makes it easy for both PC and console gamers to create cool new multiplayer maps that they can then share with other gamers. We want to honour this effort by inviting the Far Cry 2 map-making community to contribute to this first-of-its-kind game design book."

As underlined by Jessy-Gosselin Gant of the Far Cry2 development team:“Level design is a defining factor in how the player will experience a video game. It constitutes a key role in production by having the responsibility of presenting all the different game components such as art, animation, AI and gameplay mechanics at their best, so the player can enjoy them in a convincing and attractive environment.”

Far Cry 2 map-makers who are interested in contributing to the book can learn more at the book's website - www.farcrybook.com - where they can submit Far Cry 2 map reviews, map editing quick tips, tactical analyses, and feature articles.

It's basically "Am I Hot Or Not?" for the superhero set. Characters generated in the beta version of Champions Online appear in the special section of the website, where players can then assign one to five stars to the creations, with the top heroes highlighted on the page.

With ratings ranging from "Pretty Neat" to "Super Cool" make it more of a game of "am I awesome or more awesome?" than "am I hot or not?", the feature does manage to highlight some of the options available in the game at this early stage.

Check Out the New "Rate My Champion" Feature on www.champions-online.com!

Los Gatos, Calif. – January 22, 2009 – Cryptic Studios™, a leading developer and publisher of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), announced a new “Rate My Champion” feature on the Champions Online website which will allow the public to view, and rate, characters created in the Beta version of their upcoming game, Champions Online (www.champions-online.com).

Well known for the extensive character creation options in their games, Cryptic Studios is now out-stripping their own prior accomplishments in the area of character customization. "The Champions Online character creator defines the new standard in avatar customization in MMOs," said Randy Mosiondz, Lead Designer for Champions Online. The new “Rate My Champion” feature on the website makes public for the first time the vast array of customization possible in the soon to be released game.

Visitors to the website are invited to vote on their favorite Champions using a ranking scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest (www.champions-online.com/rate_my_champion/).

Please visit www.champions-online.com today to learn more about exciting new developments in Champions Online!

Until now this XNA developing lark was confined to coders from the United States, Canada, England, France, Italy and Spain and the Nordic regions (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden & associated territories). All great, but all very northern hemisphere.

From December 15th, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand will be added to the roster, allowing independent developers from warmer climes to contribute their games to the network.

Microsoft to Offer Community Games in New Regions [Team Xbox]

*Ensure that the content you share with other users is suitable for all ages - everybody has access to your level if you publish it
*Please respect other people’s intellectual property rights. For example, don’t use images, brands or logos that you’re not entitled to use.
*If you come across any content that you feel the need to report, then please do it responsibly. Hoax reports will be considered inappropriate behaviour.

I particularly like the last one. If you are going to crush the dreams of someone who just wanted to pay homage to their favorite game within their other favorite game, please do so responsibly. Don't drink and report.

LittleBigPlanet community content update [Three Speech]

At least they've got the Blueprint Room, where you can spend all day at work planning and plotting out your newest creations, printing them out to use as reference later. The dogs and cats can't take that away from us.

LittleBigWorkshop [Official Site]

Update: The dog and cats video has been neutered. It went something like this.

New Xbox Experience: Community Games [Xbox Live's Major Nelson]

But as easy as it would be to point to a game like Cunt and say “golly gosh, anyone who plays this game certainly does have more than a few bound-for-your-personal-library issues with female sexuality,” (and holy shit, is it ever), we have to take a step back and survey the landscape, so to speak. Because this game is not unique, it’s not a one-off… it represents a very real and tangible culture of hatred of women that exists within the gaming community. After all, if the developers thought no-one would play the game, they wouldn’t have made it in the first place.

The Acid for Blood piece opines:

However, Edmund McMillen is not just some basement coder or armchair designer. McMillan had a hand in the early development of current Xbox 360 indie darling, Braid, and he co-created the critically praised indie game, Gish. He is a professional game designer (or he has professional aspirations) and he not only thought that Cunt was a good idea, but he thought gamers would play it. Though it is a basic shooting game, Cunt has polish. Not only did people play it, but McMillen was lauded for Cunt:

Were you happy with the response for the game?

I was honestly blown away by it. I really thought people would just write it off or get mad. Somehow it turned into something "punk", and was accepted by the "scene". Too bad the gameplay was lacking. If I knew it was going to get such a positive response I would have designed something more innovative and new for the gameplay.

The reception Cunt got amongst gamers shows how accepted, established, and insidious misogyny is in gaming culture. Cunt is not an isolated case.

Of course there are plenty of (male, heterosexual) gamers who aren't gynophobic misogynists, and there are plenty of misogynists running around who have never picked up a game (never mind Cunt in their life); but there is a pervasive bit of sexism that runs around the community that can be extremely off putting on a number of levels. The fact that so many conversations about issues like these devolve into name-calling and hateful bullshit almost immediately doesn't help matters.

C*nt (the Game): Gynophobia and Misogyny [Acid for Blood]; Gamers and the vagina — the final boss? [Feminist Gamers]