We've contacted Idol Minds for comment but have not yet heard back.

The layoffs at the company, based in Louisville, Colorado between Boulder and Denver, have been coming in waves we're told, with the latest impacting 17 employees. Our sources tell us that in total, 26 of the staff of once 46 have been let go.

Over its 11-year history Idol Minds developed and published a number of games including My Street, Rally Cross 2 and the Coolboarders franchise. But they're perhaps best known for their pick-up-and-play, groan-inducing downloadable PS3 game PAIN.

In PAIN, gamers catapult a rag-doll avatar across a bustling setting, trying to rack up as much damage to both the landscape and the character as possible. Since it's release in 2007, PAIN has also received a number of new downloads that add characters and settings to the Playstation Network game.

In a September 2009 job listing for a producer, Idol Minds writes that PAIN "demonstrates the current evolution of our company and its goals."

"Our mission is to create a user-defined experience, build a community of users, develop on next generation hardware, and of course, have fun doing it!" according to the listing.

Our sources say the latest job cuts may be connected to "Sony budget cuts." Sony is currently Idol Minds' only source of funding, our sources tell us.

In-game advertising gets ridiculous with the introduction of Smooth Jarvis, whose "Double Pits to Chesty" special move mimics the actions involved in applying AXE brand deodorant products. Players who use PAIN's in-game video function to capture Jarvis combining the Double Pits move together with other pain moves between September 1st and 30th can enter to win fabulous prizes, like a 42" Sony HDTV, or a custom Smooth Jarvis action figure. Yay.

If you were going to be outraged over in-game advertising, now would be a good time.

PlayStation and AXE Introduce "Smooth Jarvis" and New Moves in PAIN [PlayStation Blog]

Sony have announced that the game will be out on disc in PAL regions next week. Continental Europe will see it on June 24, Australasia on June 25 and the British Isles will get it on June 26. And while it'll be including what looks like everything released for the game bar the Hasselhoff DLC, it'll still be priced lower than a standard retail game at €24.99/£19.99.

PAIN On Blu-Ray Disc [PlayStation.Blog.Europe]

The add-on will also come with a free download of a playable Daxter. The PAINalympics has two to four players competing in nine new events within the game:

Horseshoes – There are four giant horseshoes floating in front of the launcher, and your task is to snatch them and try for a ringer. You have four launches.Whatcha gon' do?

Bull Ride – Imagine a large group of mechanical bulls, each atop a large column. Launch, grab, and hold on to as many bulls as you can. Ready to ride, cowboys and cowgirls?

Rope Kick – Test your Ooching skills by launching and grabbing a rope that you have to hold onto and swing on, knocking down as many of the characters in the area as you can in 30 seconds.

Balloony Bin – You have 45 seconds to push, pull, drag, or otherwise force balloons into trash bins. Extra points for the red ones!

Stack Whacker – All you have to do here is knock down a wall of boxes in as few launches as possible. If you're good, you can probably use some exploding objects to help do the job more quickly.

Anvil Toss – Snatch an anvil out of the air and chuck it as far as you can. Watch out for the cherry bombs and exploding chemicals on the floor, though!

Relay Race – Keep your Pimp Slap Hand strong and smack, smack, smack your way to the finish line in the best time…and don't forget the baby powder!

Punt Ball – Knocking a ball through a goal is sometimes a lot harder than it seems. Extra points if you hit the characters who are dancing between the goal posts.

Swing N' Dunk – Grab the ring, swing, release…wait for it…wait for it…Oooch your character through the basketball hoop. Harder rings grant a higher reward.

The add-on is set to hit the Playstation Network on May 14 with a new character, Ded Baron, hitting the following week.

Dick blogs:

basically, i screamed for two hours. if you have ever had the urge to beat my scrawny, lily-white ass, now you can, literally… virtually. as for my stimulant use today, i do have to admit, i went overboard with green tea and coffee. it really jacked me up, and i loved it!

The funny man screamed things like "Launch your dick in the air" during the voice sessions. The behind-the-scenes clip Dick posted shows Sony developers talking about PAIN trophies like "Dick's Balls." Geddit?

PAIN, the video game, recording session clips [sober andy Thanks, Carlos!]

Mr. Ashcraft passed this video to us a good week and a half ago, and upon watching it the first time I was determined never to watch it again. Then Bethesda had to go and post it on their blog. This is the sort of music video that D&D players used to dream of back before high-definition gaming existed, filled with gorgeous women, random explosions, out-of-place electric lights in the sinking boat stock footage, and plenty of dorks in armor.

This is nothing like Oblivion...though god help me I cannot tell if it is better or worse.

If Oblivion was a music video… [Bethesda Blog]

Hasselhoff — or "The Hoff" as he's keen to refer to himself — says he's not much of a gamer, but tells People that the idea of being the subject of virtual sadism "was just hysterical to me." Mr. Hasselhoff plans to inflict his own unique brand of suffering on PAIN players with an in-game cover of Culture Club's "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me." Truly, there are no winners here.

Video of Hasselhoff being bandied about one of PAIN's levels is at People.com.

FIRST LOOK: David Hasselhoff in New Video Game [People]

My personal favorite would have to be the Silver Trophy for scoring 50 strikes in Bowling with The Dude, which they have named "The Dude Abides". Indeed he does.

PAIN Trophies [Official PlayStation Blog]

This time you can invite your friends to join you. We have online multiplayer capability so you can finally pit your skills against other people on the PLAYSTATION NETWORK. We also support the new PlayStation Trophies. This might be useful to see how awesome your competition is before you challenge them to a PAIN game.

There's a trailer right up there which should illuminate further. Moving pictures always help, we find.

First Trailer and Preview [PlayStation.Blog]

The stats that help advertisers make their decisions—and scale pay rates—will be handled by the Nielsen Games group, well known for their ratings tracking services. Ominously, Nielsen was quoted as saying, "Currently we can tell you who is playing their PlayStation 3 and other consoles, when they're playing them and what they're playing. We can't get inside the game, at least not yet." Time to check that PlayStation Network user agreement more closely...

PlayStation's Game Plan: Scale Ad Rates for Videos [AdWeek via Game|Life]

Bring the PAIN - Thursday [PlayStation.blog]

By: Brian Crecente

The Xbox Live Arcade wasn't just what helped define the Xbox 360, the Xbox 360 defined what gamers and developers thought of downloadable titles.

They were, according to the 360, smaller, less fully featured games, sometimes retro titles, that sold for much less than a full game. And for the most part Nintendo followed suit when their Wii came to market.

But Sony had a different idea in mind, and now they have an uphill battle as they try to redefine what downloadable games mean to both the people who play the games and those who make them.

"The assumptions you laid out are correct," Peter Dille, Sony Computer Entertainment's Senior Vice President of Marketing, told me in a recent interview. "Because Live has been around for awhile people assumed that Sony would create a service that has checked the box in every case, if Microsoft is doing something we will too, but we are doing a lot of things differently. "

Chief among them is what sorts of games make it to the Playstation Store. While the store is already home to the sorts of demos and short-play experience games that you find on the 360's Arcade, soon it will also be home to a pair of titles that will be instrumental in Sony's battle to reshape how people think of downloadable games.

"Live Arcade offers something for people who want a certain thing," Dille said. "But a lot of the products you have seen on arcade are 'been there, done that', some feel like PC shareware practically. Our strategy was to develop games specifically for the PS3 that would show off our console."

"The games you play via Live Arcade, are those really next gen games? We are using an online distribution network in a very different way, we are not delivering yesterday's games. Online can be many things, but when it is used as a distribution vehicle it shouldn't change the game design."

While you could argue that games like Blast Factor, which plays in 1080p, and flOw, which supports the SIXAXIS motion controls, aren't really that different than games like Geometry Wars Retro Evolved, that argument starts to fall apart when you look at the Playstation Store's upcoming line-up which includes Warhawk, SOCOM: Confrontation and Pain.

In Pain, gamers have to launch a character imbued with rag-doll physics into a cityscape where they inflict damage to both the environment and the person they've just launched from a giant slingshot. While the basic game seems to include enough features to give it quite a bit of life, developer Idol Minds plans to release periodic content for the game to expand both how and where you play the game.

"Pain shows off the Playstation 3 and lends itself to episodic content delivery," Dille said.

To me, Pain represents perhaps a half step forward in online distributed console games, but Warhawk and SOCOM, they represent a leap. Both games promise to feature robust online environments, large multiplayer gatherings and both the graphics and mechanics of a game you'd expect to find sitting on a store shelf, rather than available for download from an online store. But when news first hit that Warhawk was going to be a downloadable game, most gamers seemed to view that as a step down for the title.

"We didn't make any announcement about Warhawk, all of these expectations were based on rumor or innuendo," Dille said. "We clarified our strategy at Gamer's Day."

Not only did they confirm that Warhawk would be an online-only downloadable title, but they also unveiled another interesting twist on Sony's take on Playstation Store games, that the game would also be available in stores. The Blu-Ray version will be a sort of Director's Cut or Special Edition of the Warhawk purchased online. It will come with a slew of behind the scenes and making of videos as well as a Bluetooth headset. While not yet finalized, Dille said the same will likely be true for SOCOM: Confrontation when it comes out.

"We want to use the network store to offer choice, if you don't want to leave your couch or get in your car you can just download it," Dille said. "We give people a choice and give our retail partners a chance to participate in Warhawk."

While I still think Sony faces an uphill battle in changing the notion of what a downloadable game is, Dille believes they've already won over gamers and developers.

"I think gamers got it before (last month's) Gamers Day," he said. "Six months in we had about one million seven hundred thousand users online," Dille said. Six million pieces of content have been downloaded since the launch. "We feel like people got it. We think our 44 percent attach rate will ramp up very, very quickly, as more people understand what we are doing and with the coming of Home."

"Internally, people are very, very excited about developing for the network. We are seeing a ton of great products coming for the PSN," he said. "I think there has been an education process. Our third party partners had certain assumptions about what we would offer on the PSN. They probably didn't start imagining what they could do. Did any of them imagine we would be developing games like flOw or Pain? Now we're evangelizing a different type of experience."

One that is different from the 360, in part, because of differences in the two consoles' hardware, Dille says.

"We happen to have a hard disk drive in every Playstation 3.," he said. Microsoft "is selling to a fragmented user base. We can talk to the developers and say there are no limitations on what you make for us."

And changing gamers' and developers' preconceived notions of what makes a downloadable title is just the beginning for Sony, their next big nut to crack is true episodic content.

"I don't think anyone has done episodic content in gaming well," Dille said. "Currently episodic content means delivering content periodically. Whether or not it has that story line is the missing ingredient. When you contrast that to things like TV with Lost and the Sopranos. I think as an industry we haven't tapped (episodic content) yet. We want to get people to stand around the water cooler and talk about games they way they talk about TV, 'Did you install the latest content of this game that explained a plot or cliff hanger?'"

"You have to separate a distribution vehicle from a game experience."

Instead, you'll find Sony Online Entertainment's hi-def port of Midway's Rampage World Tour (five bucks), and a trailer for the arcade classic Joust. That's it.

Hey, Sony, we'd love to see some of this stuff show up on the Store. Really. Can you make that happen? Michael McWhertor

One of the big surprises of the show was when SCEA brought Idol Minds up to the stage to show off a Playstation Network game they were working on for the PS3. PAIN is essentially a physics game. You catapult a guy into a city setting trying to either inflict as much damage to the guy and his environment as possible, or complete a goal, like spanking a monkey or grabbing a mime while you are in flight.

The game is very pick-up and play and while the single player experience could probably get dull, the multiplayer is completely addictive. Pain was the only game that literally had crowds around it during the playtime at the show with people groaning and laughing as they watch it be played.

Controls are fairly simple, you can drift in flight, strike poses in air and try to grab things as you pass by them. Looks like tons of fun and it's due out this holiday.

The game will sell for around the same ballpark as Calling All Cars and Idol Minds plans to later release new areas and flingable characters as downloadable content you purchase down the line.

Second vid after the jump. Brian Crecente

PAIN
FACT SHEET

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment America
Developer: Idol Minds, Inc.
Platform: PLAYSTATION 3 (PS3 ) computer entertainment system
Genre: Action / Comedy
Players: 1-2 players
Rating: "RP" for Rating Pending

OVERVIEW
The concept of PAIN was derived from an extensive teen market research report. The findings of the report indicated that comedy, random chaos, creativity, community and competition were the central figures driving entertainment choices for the teen audience.

PAIN is much more than a game, it's actually a creative, user-driven comedic experience that presents players with the unique opportunity to control and capture the irreverent style of humor found in television shows such as Jackass or Viva La Bam. The game boldly tackles a rarely explored area of video-gaming... comedy. Many games and products have allowed players to experience scripted, comedic scenes, but none have successfully allowed the end-user to actually be the architect of these situations... until now.

One thing is certain; gamers have never seen anything quite like PAIN...

The core, unique mechanic of the game allows the player to load a character into an extreme launching device, such as a human-sized, ultra-powerful slingshot, and fire the character into an active, physics-controlled environment, filled with precarious and humorous situations. The player receives points by stringing together painful collisions and inducing chaos in the environment. The player must achieve a wide variety of goals and / or reach various scoring milestones in each of the different modes of play.

Available exclusively via download on the PLAYSTATION Network for the
PLAYSTATION 3 (PS3 ) computer entertainment system, PAIN will feature a robust online community where players will be able to upload and share their comedic experiences; while other users can rank and comment on the content shared within the community.

Based on a teen research report indicating that chaos, comedy, creativity, and community are central themes to their entertainment choices, PAIN is the first game of its kind that allows the gamer to be the architect of theses comedic episodes.

Multiple playable characters each with a very unique personality and attributes as well as character specific in-flight poses.

Dozens of ways to play - over 9 different ways to play single player alone, including modes like Spank the Monkey and Mime Toss. With multiplayer modes like HORSE and online competition, PAIN provides both the challenges and the replayability gamers are searching for.

Completely Interactive Gameplay Environment - regardless of what the player does within the PAIN thematic, the overall environment remains completely dynamic and fully destructible, waiting for the player to find new ways to create chaos, comedy or simply wait to see what happens next.

Each time a player launches into the PAINful environment, the physics and animation data is stored on PS3's HDD allowing the player to view a replay instantly. With control over various camera angles and the replay speed - slow motion and fast forward - users can edit and re-record each bruising launch.

Unique physics model created on Havok powered events, allow for amazing ragdoll animations, while insuring that duplicating incidents is almost impossible. Keeping gameplay fresh over and over no matter how many times a player is launched into the same environment.

Available exclusively via the PLAYSTATION Network, PAIN will have a robust online community feature set that will include: head-to- head and cooperative gameplay, leaderboards, the ability to upload and download user generated replays, and contests.

With PAIN's modular backbone, the game is made to expand. More characters, more themes, more gameplay modes and most importantly more PAINful fun!

I woke up Saturday morning after a Friday filled with at least 10 hours of playing Dragon Ball Z and Raving Rabbids on my Nintendo Wii, and my shoulders hurt like hell. I was sure I had slept wrong or something, since the pain felt similar to a stiff neck. It wasn't until later when I pulled out the Wiimote for some more crazy-haired fighting action that I realized where the pain was coming from. A day of holding my arms out and swinging them around had taken its toll on my poor, neglected muscles. Apparently I am not alone. Wall Street Journal, world renowned for its video game coverage, posted an article on Saturday related to the Wii-pain phenomenon, in which Nintendo's Perrin Kaplan addresses the issue.

"It was not meant to be a Jenny Craig supplement," she says. "If people are finding themselves sore, they may need to exercise more."

A Wii Workout: When Videogames Hurt [Wall Street Journal Online]