• The average Super Smash Brother: Brawl owner in America has played the game more than 61 hours since the game's February release.

• The average Wii Fit consumer has played that exercise game more times than the average Okami fan has played Capcom’s wolf action-game.

Wii Fit seeing more action than Okami? Noooooooooooooooooooooo.

Wii Software Stats Update: October Edition Of ‘Smash Bros’ Domination [Multiplayer]

Finding include that only 1.3 percent of folks polled are currently playing it. That's not very many! 5.6 percent used to play. Hit the jump for the full number crunching.

Question: Do you know about the 3D online world Second Life? (Sample size=1,091)

Know about it in detail 4.7%
Know about the key features 27.1%
Heard about it in the media, but don't know the key features 32.2%
Don't know anything about it 36.0%

In the 10 months since the first survey in June 2007, awareness of Second Life has grown by 10 percentage points.

Question: Have you actually played Second Life? (Sample size-698)
Currently playing 1.3%
Used to play 5.6%
Visited the web site, but not played 18.9%
Not played it at all 74.2%

Question: Have you ever seen corporate advertising, promotional campaigns, etc within Second Life? (Sample size=48)
Frequently see/saw them 12.5%
Sometimes see/saw them 52.1%
Not seen them much 14.6%
Never seen them at all 20.8%

Second Life Poll [japan.internet via What Japan Thinks] [Pic]

Well, the situation is about to get worse, not better. As N'Gai Croal reports in my most recent Monday Morning Quarterbacking exchange with him at Newsweek's Level Up Blog, starting with the October data NPD will no longer release console hardware sales numbers. And to add insult to injury, only the top 5 selling games will be published as opposed to the current top 10. N'Gai points out we will probably (or should I say hopefully?) get the hardware numbers individually from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. Still, it baffles me that the public will now be getting less data, not more.

Level Up's Monday Morning Quarterbacking [Newsweek]

Despite his frequent misstatements and apparent ignorance on the subject, despite including gay porn in a legal filing, despite his legal harassment of numerous publications, lawyers, judges and anyone else who seems to disagree with him, Jack Thompson manages to get himself on television again this morning as an "expert."

During his appearance on The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet, Thompson discussed the evils of churches using Halo 3 to minister to a youth audience. And of course he couldn't help but get some facts wrong.

Hit the jump to watch the video and read the relevant Jack quotes, which I've dissected. It does do my heart good to see that he wasn't nearly as over the top this time around as the last time we watched him. Maybe he decided to be a little more careful now that he knows we're checking out what he's saying instead of just accepting his statements as 100 percent truth. Too bad TV talk shows haven't learned to do the same thing.

The Science on this is very settled.
APA in 2005 "found that as a class of people, adolescence and teens that play these violent games become more aggressive, some of them to the point of violence like we saw in Cleveland yesterday.

Let's break this down into two parts:

The science:
While members of the American Psychological Association did release a report in 2005 stating that video games can increase aggressive behavior in children and adolescents, it was actually based on a review of the past 20 years of research.

The Swedish Institute of Public Health did a similar study in 2005, reviewing 30 studies. Their findings? That video games are in fact good for you and that there is "limited evidence for video and computer game playing causing children to choose more aggressive toys - but no evidence for links between video and computer game playing and aggressive feelings, thoughts or behavior, despite these outcomes being well studied."

The Swedish study also points out that there have been six other similar reviews with half showing no connection and half showing a connection. But in those that found a connection "the authors do not distinguish between studies with different designs or between different outcomes, but deal with all the material together. This means that low quality studies influence the conclusions more than can be justified"

So there you have it despite Jack's claims the "science" of this has in no way been settled.

Cleavland shooting's connection to video games:
As shocking as it is that Jack would try to blame a school shooting on video games, there seems to be no evidence that this is true.

Accused shooter 14-year-old Asa H. Coon was described by a friend as someone who "worshiped the devil" and Fox News has reported that he had a criminal and domestic-violence history. No mention of gameplay though.

You Have a Legal Problem
"Clearly any church that has kids 11, 12, 13-years of age that come in and play a Mature rated game, that shouldn't be sold or played by anyone under 17, has created a liability problem."

Not so fast Jack. While the ESRB rating system does serve as a guide to help consumers make informed decisions about the appropriateness of video games for children and the family, like with the movie rating system there is no law to back it up.

Dissecting Jack's Lies [Kotaku]

Valve has published the first set of results from their data set for you, the lowly player, to hover over and study. Sadly, we may never know during which level thousands upon thousands of lonely first person shooter aficionados fall totally and completely in love with the dreamy Alyx. Michael McWhertor

Half-Life 2 Episode 1 Stats