Libraries around the country, from the Library of Congress, to university and community libraries, are beginning to archive, collect and even check-out video games.

A 2007 study found that of the more than 400 libraries surveyed, a quarter of them said they had PC games available at their location to be checked out and nearly 20 percent said they checked out console games.

But why would a place of learning become a home to gaming?

Scott Nicholson, associate professor and library scientist at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies and the Library Game Lab of Syracuse, said there are three main goals libraries have for including video games in their collections.

They do so to provide a new service for those who aren't coming to the library, to help the library grow in its role as a community hub and to provide a service alongside existing library services like book clubs or story time.

Some libraries even have events where people can play the games inside the library, Nicholson added.

"Gaming in the library provides users with a chance to meet other people in their community who are not in their normal school or work life - people far outside their typical demographic boundaries," he said. "The library has become a place not just for taking materials home, but for engaging with others in the same physical community.

"Communities on the Web typically are from many different areas - communities in the library are people who all live and pay taxes in the same physical space."

And, Nicholson points out, games have been in libraries since the 1850s in one form or another.

"Video games are simply one current manifestation of an activity that has been in libraries for decades," he said. "Along with video games, some libraries support many other forms of gaming - board, card, (role-playing games), and big games."

The inclusion of games and video games aren't just limited to public, community libraries. Universities and research libraries have also started including them. Even the Library of Congress is in the midst of a video game archiving effort.

Recently the Universty of Colorado at Boulder announced they were considering adding playable video game consoles in their library as part of a commons area, which also houses a café.

CU outreach librarian Deborah Fink told the university paper that the center could provide a break to students.

"I think education is waking up to the fact that we are whole beings," she told the Colorado Daily. "We know it's important to take breaks and to refresh yourself."

Nicholson says the inclusion of a gaming area is no different than having a coffee shop in a university library.

"The cafe does not support the mission of the library, but draws people in and makes the library a more comfortable space for people to explore information and get to know each other," he said. "Gaming is a similar activity - if the goal of the library is to be a place for relaxation and socialization, then it fits into that goal."

The inclusion of video games in libraries isn't much different than earlier movements to include pieces of art, movies and music as items that could be checked out.

By opening the door to video games, libraries and communities nationwide are reflecting the growing importance of gaming not only as part of today's popular culture but as a medium that can confront serious issues and spur emotional and intellectual debate.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

The interview starts off with Wright showing off his new business cards, which he's had printed on replicas of foreign money. It then quickly drops into the topic, pulling this gem of a quote from the famed developer:

"If you look at what people are doing with this technology it is, or has been, mostly directed at 12-year-old boys. But it has the potential to do a whole lot more."

Wright, when asked about educational and serious games, says that he thinks sometimes these games are a bit too focused on the idea, hinting that maybe they're not so fun.

What they need to do, he says, is be a bit more abstract in how they deal with the idea.

Why should serious and educational game developers listen to Wright? He's made a career out of making educational games, people just don't realize it.

Wright says, as he told me, that the real power in gaming isn't in its ability to educate, but its ability to motivate. Motivate people to educate themselves.

Creator of 'The Sims' Talks Educational Gaming

Good thing, then, that the American Library Association is prepared with an answer for me and librarians nationwide.

This past November, nearly 600 libraries checked out more than 14,000 games on National Gaming Day. But why?

Adding games to the growing list of content that libraries check out helps establish the neighborhood library as a third place, a community gathering spot between home and work or school. That third place, according to the Librarian's Guide to Gaming, encourages play, socialization and cultural enrichment.

More interesting, though, is the association's take on the importance of gaming and play.

"Board games, card games, and videogames are, in essence, information, and the human act of telling stories, presented in new formats that involve the player. Games may fulfill a library's mission to provide cultural, recreational, and entertaining materials; to provide academic curriculum support; or to provide resources and support their industry or profession."

I would argue that gaming also helps children and teenagers prepare for life's challenges in a non-threatening way, allowing them to confront problems in a setting that allows for failure, and teaches through it.

The site is a fantastic jumping off point for lots of fascinating discussion, including a look at the connection between literacy and gaming, the cathartic effect of gaming, the health aspects of gaming and the importance and nature of fun play.

Jim Rettig, president of the association, sums up the values of gaming in libraries best:

"Games of every type play an important role in developing fundamental competencies for life. They require players to learn and follow complex sets of rules, make strategic and tactical decisions, and, increasingly, collaborate with teammates and others: all things they will have to do in college and in the workforce."

I'm convinced, hopefully this more formal roll-out of gaming through libraries will help to convince others as well.

The Librarian's Guide to Gaming [ALA, via Joystiq]

The girl took her first steps in four years at a New York hospital late last year. Now, back in her home town of Wexford, Ireland, the gril uses Wii Fit to help strengthen her legs and regain her balance.

"The Wii Fit has really helped. It's great because there are so many balancing and stretching exercises on it," said the girl's mom. "The Wii has taken an awful lot of pressure off her as well."

What a neat story, maybe I should pull my Balance Board out from under the couch and give it another whirl.

Computer game helps girl walk again

Our visit to the touring Grossology show netted me not one, but two video games. Last week/year I pointed out that Grossology had a neat little pinball game designed to teach about gas, though really I didn't learn much.

The other game is called Urine, and while it wasn't as fun to play as Gas Attack, I found it a bit more educational.

In the game you use a trackball and a single button to grab bad things out of the red blood stream a drop them into the yellow urine stream. Four of the objects are bad, urea, potassium, sodium and water; while three are good, sugar, white blood cells and red blood cells. You start with points, but your score goes up when you remove the bad stuff and goes down when you remove the good stuff or let the bad stuff stay in the blood stream.

The game play was a bit simplistic but it actually taught you something about how the body works. It also rewards high scores with the sound of someone emptying their bladder.

Early on in the touring Grossology exhibit there are two Gas Attack Pinball machines. The game appears to be a standard pinball that's been stripped of decoratives and redesigned to help teach people about how gas is produced in the colon.

The pin balls represent bacteria and the bumpers represent different foods. As you play gas points are wracked up for hitting the different foods. The gassier the food, the higher the point count. If you manage to make it into the beans pockets on the table you're rewarded with a group of children singing a quick rendition of Beans, Beans, The Musical Fruit.

Sure the game isn't really that educational. In fact, all I really leaned is that beans are musical and that pigs can talk, but I love the fact that when someone thought educational game, they thought pinball.

Math Blaster in the Prime Adventure combines adventure gaming with mathematical puzzles that has you fighting off an army of robots... robots with math skillz. The game will put your addition, subtraction and multiplication skills to the test and includes four player battle mode and challenge and adventure modes.

I applaud this, seriously. Just the other day, while attending a dinner with Ken Levine and some other folks during PAX, I got into a discussion with a group of them about educational games for next gen consoles.

I think that the three platform owners should get behind bringing a few educational games to their various downloadable game systems.

They should do this for two reasons.

If you can load a few of these games, games like Reader Rabbit or Math Blaster, on your console you can convince schools that perhaps they're worthy learning devices. Don't laugh. The fact is that most schools currently use those games to train kids on computers. Tristan has Computer Lab one week a month at his school. For second graders, computer lab means getting on a computer and playing educational games. The local library has these same games set up on their public computers. So they're OK with the notion that gaming can be educational.

Now look at what Apple did in the 80s, donating computers to schools across the country (or selling them at absurdly low prices). Sure it was good for their image, but more importantly it won over a whole generation of computer users. The same could be true for console gamers. If you hook a 5-year-old, and more importantly their parents, on the Wii or the PS3 or the 360, then you've got them for life. Or at least a better chance of that, I think.

You also can't overlook the fact that these are three huge corporate entities making, at least in one case, obscene amounts of money off of the games they sell. Why does the notion of being a good corporate citizen in this industry always have to step outside the arena where these companies make their money? Why not give back to gamers in a way that we can all appreciate? Take a loss on a few educational games and watch as older, parent gamers glom onto the consoles that take that first step.

I can't tell you how many times I have parents ask me which system they should buy for their kids, which one has the opportunity not just to entertain, but educate. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent looking for those few and far between educational games for this generation of consoles.

More than $2 million in grants is being handed out to teams researching how video games can improve players' health.

While the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation doesn't plan to announce the dozen research teams who will be awarded the grant money until Thursday, they did say that the funded studies will explore topics ranging from how motion-based games may help stroke patients progress faster in physical therapy to how people in substance abuse treatment can practice skills and behaviors in the virtual world to prevent real-world relapses.

I'd like to think that at least one is looking at the WiiFit and how it does at raising awareness of BMI, but maybe it's too soon for it to have soaked into academia.

It's heartening to see that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the nation's largest philanthropy devoted to improving the health of Americans, has decided it's worth investing so much money to "explore how games can increase physical activity and enhance prevention, self-management of health conditions".

Hit the jump for the full release.

VIDEO/ONLINE GAMES FOR HEALTH: 12 RESEARCH TEAMS FROM ACROSS U.S. RECEIVE MAJOR GRANTS

Awards go to researchers in CA, FL, IN, ME, NC, NY, SC, VT and WA; Studies explore how games can increase physical activity and enhance prevention, self-management of health conditions

PRINCETON, NJ. More than $2 million in grants will be awarded to 12 research teams to help strengthen the evidence base that supports the development and use of digital interactive games to improve players’ health behaviors and outcomes. The grantees will be announced during a live, phone-based news event (with full Q&A) at 1:30 p.m. EDT Thursday (May 29, 2008).

This is the first round of grants to be awarded from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through its Health Games Research national program, based at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Funded studies explore topics ranging from how motion-based games may help stroke patients progress faster in physical therapy to how people in substance abuse treatment can practice skills and behaviors in the virtual world to prevent real-world relapses.

News event speakers will be:

* Debra Lieberman, Ph.D., communication researcher, Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research, University of California at Santa Barbara; and

* Chinwe Onyekere, program officer, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio.

TO PARTICIPATE: Join this live, phone-based news conference (with full, two-way Q&A) at 1:30 p.m. EDT on May 29, 2008 by dialing 1 (800) 860-2442. Ask for the “health games grants” news event.

CAN’T PARTICIPATE?: A streaming audio replay of this news event will be available as of 6 p.m. EDT on May 29 at http://healthgamesresearch.org/.

About the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation focuses on the pressing health and health care issues facing our country. As the nation's largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to improving the health and health care of all Americans, the Foundation works with a diverse group of organizations and individuals to identify solutions and achieve comprehensive, meaningful and timely change. The Foundation's Pioneer Portfolio supports innovative ideas and projects that may trigger important breakthroughs in health and health care. Projects in the Pioneer Portfolio are future-oriented and look beyond conventional thinking to explore solutions at the cutting edge of health and health care. When it comes to helping Americans lead healthier lives and get the care they need, the Foundation expects to make a difference in your lifetime. For more information, visit www.rwjf.org/pioneer.

About the University of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) is one of 10 universities in the University of California system, and is one of only 62 research-intensive institutions elected to membership in the prestigious Association of American Universities. The distinguished 980-member faculty includes five Nobel Prize winners and scores of elected members or fellows of elite national academies and associations. The campus is also home to 12 national centers and institutes, eight of them sponsored by the National Science Foundation. U.S. News and World Report's guide, "America's Best Colleges," ranks UCSB number 13 among all public universities in the nation. For more information, visit www.ucsb.edu.

UCSB's Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research (ISBER) brings together researchers from many academic disciplines in order to foster collaboration and span the boundaries between the social and behavioral sciences, the humanities, and the physical and biological sciences. For more information, visit www.isber.ucsb.edu.

The Health Games Research national program office at UCSB conducts and supports research to enhance the quality and impact of interactive games used to improve health. For more information, visit www.healthgamesresearch.org or contact the program at healthgamesresearch@isber.ucsb.edu.

My brother just launched a Flash game design contest that I'll be one of the judges for. The object of the Life Love Game Design Challenge is for people to create a Flash game about teen dating violence prevention and to do so without violent content or a violent theme.

Quite a brain teaser, but having played innovative Flash games for years now, I'm pretty sure the design community is up to the challenge.

First prize is $1,000 and judges, besides myself, include Simon Carless, director of the Independent Games Festival; Stephen Totilo, of MTV and huge brain fame, and Dr. Elizabeth Richeson, a psychologist, Texas Psychological Association Board member, and my mom.

When my brother first contacted me about this, he said he wasn't sure that it was a good idea, he didn't know if a Flash game could deal with so serious an issue, but I pointed out that people like Ian Bogost do that for a living.

Life Love Game Design Challenge

Nick Yee had an unenviable task last week.

The Stanford research assistant and massively multiplayer online gaming expert was flown in to Denver to explain online gaming to a room full of criminal investigators, educators and internet safety experts from area district attorney offices, police departments and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Yee, whose landmark Daedalus Project continues to study behavior in MMOs, hoped to present to these members of Qwest Colorado Coalition for Online Safety a take on online gaming that they may not have heard before: That it can actually be good for you.

"I've had opportunities like this before to give talks like this to non-gamers," he told me last week. "My message isn't that it's all good, what I prefer to say is that there is so much that is missed when the media picks up on it, that there's also the positive side."

"It's not Qwest trying to be an alarmist, I'm not an alarmist," he said. "We're trying to put the full spectrum in front of people."

Yee told the group many things that gamers might already know, that the average age of gamers is 26 to 30, that many online games have robust parental controls to limit both chat access and time playing. But he also went into some interesting discoveries he made over his years in researching the behavioral characteristics of online gamers and the boundary between the virtual and real worlds.

"These online spaces provided unique opportunities," he said. "Teenagers can lead a guild that consists mostly of adults and I don't think people realize how serious and complicated that is. It involves a lot of leadership, a lot of charisma."

"Parents who play these games with their children are given an opportunity to see their kids in a social setting they don't usually have access to. It's also a place where they can let their kids make mistakes in a safer environment."

Some of Yee's other beliefs include that:

• The demographics in typical MMOGs provide unique and potentially valuable social experiences for teenagers.
• It's better to interact with people around the world via MMOGs than to sit in the living room not talking to your family because everyone is watching TV.
• It's important to set reasonable guidelines and time limits regarding MMOGs.
• MMOG environments are a safer and more forgiving social space for making mistakes and learning social dynamics.
• It's possible to develop real-world leadership abilities as a result of playing MMOGs.
• Virtual environments such as "Second Life," are distinct from MMOGs in that they are not games because they do not pose an objective or end goal. Currently, online virtual worlds are unpopular with kids and, thus, not a risk to youth.
• MMOGs show how people respond to tense situations.
• Relationships may form that wouldn't have taken place if initiated face to face in real life.
• Certain demographics and people with existing stressors are more likely to develop problems via the game.
• People in a vulnerable state of mind may latch onto behaviors that provide a temporary sense of control or power.
• It's not about the amount of time people spend playing, but how gaming affects other facets of their life.

After he walked me through his presentation I pointed out to Yee that the crowd, this particularly law-enforcement heavy crowd, would likely have lots of questions about possible links between game playing and increased violence tendencies.

Yee said that while there haven't been a ton of studies done on that for MMO games, the ones that were conducted showed that the belief about crime, violence and games didn't pan out. He added that it is an issue that is quite hard to prove or disprove.

Yee said that last week's Denver talk could be the beginning of an initiative that spreads to the rest of the country. It was too early to tell what it could blossom into, he said, but they were talking about future plans with Qwest.

Sonny Jackson, Denver police spokesman, said the department has two people on the task force because they understand that "knowledge is power."

"It's beneficial to know how gaming works, how it can effect people, how it can effect our society and whether there are any potential dangers we should know about," he said. "And it's important for our crime analysis."

Reuters has an interesting story up about MindHabits Trainer, a game developed by researchers at McGill University in Montreal which is meant to cut down on your stress, increase your confidence and make you a happier person.

The very simple game get you to look at a series of pictures and click on the faces that are smiling, avoiding the frowners. By doing this five to ten minutes a day the game has shown to help people feel less stressed and have higher self esteem.

I played around with the game this morning and find it very interesting. There are actually four different games, all of which are about getting you to accentuate the positive in your mind. I could totally see something like this hitting the DS. It seems like a perfect fit.

Online game smiles seen vanquishing the blues [ZDnet, thanks to my big bro Drew]

It is heartening to see that the concept of corporate responsibility can, at time, ooze over into the gaming industry.

At today's 2007 Games for Change Festival Microsoft announced the Xbox 360 Games for Change Challenge, a year-long game design competition for college students around the world aimed at tackling important issues through gaming.

For this first competition student developer groups will work on creating a game based on global warming using Microsoft's XNA Game Studio Express software. The competition's three finalists will receive "financial compensation for education" and the winners of the competition will land an internship at Microsoft Game Studios, Jeff Bell, corporate vice president of global marketing for the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft, told me in a recent interview. He added that the final games could end up appearing on the Xbox 360 Live Arcade, Games for Windows Live Arcade or MSN Arcade, but that a final decision had yet to be made.

Bell said Microsoft officials had originally debating having several categories for this competition, ones that could explore such diverse topics as social conflict, world hunger and other global issues, but felt that the recent successes of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth had made the topic of global warming particularly timely and one that often spurs passionate debate.

"We have no forgone conclusions about the approach or conclusions (the games) will make," he said. "What we really want to do is to use the vehicle of games as a way to increase education and information and engagement on the part of all different constituents."

While the competition will include more than 100 universities worldwide, Bell said they did not yet know how many teams from each university would participate. The competition will kick off in August and run through next spring, with the winners being announced at an event in Paris in August, 2008, he said.

Bell said Microsoft decided to create this competition in part out of a sense of being a good corporate citizen.

"The gaming industry is clearly a large and profitable industry," he said. "We also want to try and promote the exploration of new genres and titles."

I hope Nintendo and Sony take that as a challenge. Brian Crecente

It appears the news we broke last week of Slamdance removing the Columbine game from their lists of finalists and why has created quite the shitstorm, for lack of a better word.

Ian Bogost reports over on Water Cooler Games growing list of reactions to the decision:

Kelee Santiago pulled Slamdance finalist and future PS3 title flOw from the competition in protest.

To hear that the game had been pulled was deeply discouraging. As a group, our opinions on the quality of the game itself range, but we can all agree on one thing: it deserved to be there.

We also agree that the act of pulling SCMRPG is one we cannot condone. But how best to protest this action? Going to the festival, at which prizes are awarded, only to criticize its organizers seemed unfair at best, and hypocritical at worst. Therefore, we have decided to withdraw flOw from the competition. We agree with Jonathan Blow:

Jonathan Blow, creator of finalist Braid, has also pulled his game from the competition.

The game lacks compassion, and I find the Artist's Statement disingenuous. But despite this, the game does have redeeming value. It does provoke important thoughts, and it does push the boundaries of what games are about. It is composed with more of an eye toward art than most games. Clearly, it belongs at the festival.

So, in protest of game's expulsion, I have dropped Braid out of the competition as well.

Raph Koster has spoken up on the subject.

Dismissing the game "on moral grounds" essentially argues that it is exploitative; yet we do not necessarily consider clearly issue-driven films or books as exploitative. Rather, the sensitivity of the subject seems to be what is pushing the needle here. Can games, which some allege caused Columbine, then comment on Columbine without being regarded as exploitative?

SCMRPG is no great shakes as a game in its own right. It doesn't even try to do something new on that front. Instead, it's incurring controversy based on artwork, content, and most importantly, the medium that it happens to be in. Were its RPG plot excised and written out as a book, would anyone raise an eyebrow? Probably not.

As has Slamdance Game Fest sponsor Greg Costikyan, of Manifesto Games. Costikyan, while continuing to support the fest, has created a permanent place for the game on Manifesto's site.

As gamers, and those who love games, our reponse to this game, and to the criticism of it, should not be to hide, or run away, or hope that it goes away. Instead it should be to say: You do not understand, nor are you attempting to understand. This is not a glamorization of the murderers, nor yet a trivialization of the tragedy; it is a work of serious artistic intent and accomplishment, based on considerable research, that in fact illuminates and reflects the horror of that day. Just as there are novels of the Holocaust, there can be a game of Columbine, and neither need trivialize a tragedy.

Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas, winners of last year's Slamdance Grand Jury Prize, have written an open letter to the festival, asking for the reinstatement of the Super Columbine Massacre RPG.

We give no judgment here about how successfully "Super Columbine Massacre RPG!" addresses its topic. However we feel it is extremely important that the game community, including high-profile festivals such as Slamdance, support such experimentation. Games, as a medium, are as fully deserving and appropriate as film and other more established media forms, to deal with such subject matter.

And how can we forget Newsweek's N'Gai Croal.

This is a recipe for the continued infantilizing of a young medium whose potential, for all of the compelling works already released, still remains largely untapped. We haven't played Super Columbine Massacre RPG, but from what we've read, it strikes us as a fairly serious and well-intentioned attempt to grapple with the shootings and suicides through an interactive medium. And while we certainly recognize that many will see SCMRPG as ghoulish, offensive and trivializing of a horrific event, we reject the premise that it is inherently so—any more than Art Spiegelman's "Maus" or Pablo Picasso's "Guernica"—and any attempts to paint Ledonne's game as inherently so should be firmly and loudly repudiated. For those of us who care about the future of videogames, this is a time to stand up and be counted.

If you have any interest in gaming besides the playing of them, you must read all of these links. Seriously. Artistic expression in video games is the most important topic that will likely be faced by developers, perhaps ever. The fact that the game that seems to be bringing this topic to a head happens to be one that many find repugnant is incidental to the bigger issue here.

To be clear: This is not about SCMRPG. This is about whether video games will forever be relegated to the position of mindless entertainment and child's play or whether gaming as an industry can make that final leap into artistry, expression and tackle topics that evoke something more than fun.

This is why I finally decided to become a games journalist. I enjoy writing reviews, but what finally pushed me to make that leap from police reporting to features writing is the chance to be covering a medium at the cusp of becoming something so much greater. Brian Crecente

Update: Jan. 9
Three more finalists have dropped out of the festival. Bringing the the number of finalists no longer in the competition to five, six if you count SCMRPG, or nearly half.

Once Upon a Time withdraws from the finals.

"We are very saddened by the news of Super Columbine Massacre RPG being pulled from the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemakers competition due to loss of financial backing.
Regardless of the merit of SCMRPG being a finalist in the SGG competition, having chosen the game and then only removing it when pressured by outside influences brings the impartiality of the competition as a whole into question. Who is truly judging these games: the Slamdance judges or their financial backers?
We unfortunately feel that we cannot be part of a competition that does not rank artistic expression and free speech as priorities and would therefore like to withdraw our entry of Once Upon A Time from the competition.
We thank you for your support of our game and wish you continued success."

Finalist Toblo withdraws from festival.

We cannot condone removing Super Columbine Massacre RPG! from the Slamdance Festival on moral grounds. Along with the developers of Braid and flOw, we are pulling our game from the Slamdance Festival. In the unlikely event that Super Columbine Massacre RPG! is re-admitted to the festival, we would be happy to participate.

Fest finalist Everyday Shooter withdraws

As you may have heard, Peter Baxter, the president of Slamdance, decided to pull Super Columbine Masscare RPG! from the competition.

I do not agree with his decision. His action is part of a the ball and chain that continuously represses the games medium from advancing beyond superficial entertainment. Because the Slamdance games competition now carries the sharp undertones of this sad repression, I am withdrawing Everyday Shooter from the competition.

Grand Text Auto Publishes Letter of Protest from Finalists

We object to this decision and strongly urge the festival organizers to reinstate the game in the festival. It is legitimate for games to take on difficult topics and to challenge conventional ideas about what video games can do. No game should be rejected for moral or other reasons after a panel of judges has found the game to be of artistic merit and worthy of inclusion in the festival. We find it very unlikely that a similar decision would have been made about a jury-selected film, and see this decision as hurting the legitimacy of games as a form of expression, exploration, and experience.

Grumpy Gamer Calls for Finalists to Put Up or Shut Up

Apparently some people in the game industry are pretty upset by this, but my question is: Why haven't the other finalist pulled out in protest?

Seems like it's for one of two reasons:

#1 - They agree the game should have been pulled.
#2 - They don't want to lose the chance of winning the award to stand up for something they believe in.

Lastly, but not leastly, our formerly very own John Brownlee breaks down the argument for both sides and asks for help writing his Wired piece on the subject. Go... help.

It's bleak just to look at those questions: perhaps I'm too cynical, but for me, it's clear that the progression there signifies the complete death of art as a medium of deep personal expression.

I need your help. I'd like you guys to help me brainstorm and bring alternate perspectives to the table. Questions and viewpoints I haven't considered. Maybe you can try to answer some of the questions and give me a better idea on what people besides me think the logical progression is. The intention is that you guys will help me think about this n a wider and more three-dimensional complex, which will hopefully make my story at Wired News richer and better thought through.

What do you guys think? Hit our comments and let us know.

The BBC has an interesting story up on the furor surrounding the release of Christian video game Left Behind: Eternal Forces. An alliance of liberal groups is trying to get Wal-Mart, among other retailers, to stop selling the game.

The story includes quotes Talk2Action, the Left Behind folks and me. I managed to stay above the finger-pointing, or at least tried to, and concentrated on pointing out that this is proof that games can deal with meaningful messages without trivializing them.

Mr Crecente, the games writer, has not seen Quest for Bush (also known as Night of Bush Hunting, the literal translation of its Arabic title).

But he says both it and Left Behind: Eternal Forces are part of an effort in the gaming world to deal with important issues.

"Whenever games take on something important, they are accused of trivialising the subject," he says.

"This shows that video games have gotten past the birthing pains. They are no longer just about amusing people, but about trying to send a message."

It's a short, though interesting read, if you have a second. Brian Crecente

Christian video game draws anger [BBC]

I admit it, I have a bit of a man-crush on Clive Thompson. But who wouldn't? He gets to write about video games for the likes of Wired Magazine and the Grey Lady and also churns out thoughtful introspective gaming pieces on his personal blog. He's like the Lester Bangs of video gaming.

His latest piece looks at the state of "serious games", aka persuasive games, aka agenda games. In it he touches on a number of our favorite thinking titles like Peacemaker, Madrid and Super Columbine Massacre RPG!
While the story does an excellent job of framing the questions (Can video games be art? Can they grapple with disturbing issues, or does the act of playing a game inherently trivialize things?) it doesn't really get around to answering them.

It's still worth a read, especially because it quotes Kotaku. Clive, who loves ya baby? Brian Crecente

Saving the World, One Video Game at a Time

Back in February, Watercooler Games reported on the Centers for Disease Control's anti-ad campaign titled "Give Your Thumbs a Rest, Play for Real."

Well, Ian Bogost just got back from talking about games for health at the CDC in Atlanta, and they're saying they had nothing to do with the ad campaign that had their logo slapped on it.

Despite the denial, Bogost points out that the campaign can be traced back to ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi, who did run a $125 million publicity campaign for the CDC back in 2002. Odd. Brian Crecente

CDC doesn't villify games, gamers? [Watercooler Games]

I just finished up a story for the Rocky about upcoming computer game Left Behind: Eternal Forces and how it fits into the whole Agenda Gaming movement.

Essentially, the game sort of falls in the grey area between game for fun and games that are designed to push an agenda. That's because while it does profess to have an ideology that it is pushing, it doesn't really go far enough to push it. For instance, the prayer in the game, which revive units' flagging "spirit", is essentially generic. Georgia Tech Prof. Ian Bogost explains it best:

"It could be Islamic or Judaic," he said. "Why didn't they make a game where you live that life (of an unbeliever) and then you discover at the Rapture what side you end up on? "The fear that I have is that they are confused about whether they are making a game about this perspective or if it's a game with a Christian skin." ... "My guess is that they didn't want to go over the top with the religion for fear people would reject the game," he said. "If there is an agenda piece inside the game it's the idea of spirit and the power of prayer. The mechanics of the game are trying to make an argument about the way the world works."

To make matters more complicated, the people behind the game are sort of backing away from classifying the game as a true agenda title.

"Do we have a full-blown political agenda? No. What we are really trying to do is make a fun game," said Left Behind Games associate producer Greg Bauman. "We are a for-profit company, but we have a ministry heart."

But no matter how you slice it, the game will likely be one of the first major computer or video game designed to push a specific agenda and whether you agree with the agenda or not, it can't help but lend some credibility to computer and video games as legitimate means of communicating about important issues. Brian Crecente

Video Game Evangalism [Rocky Mountain News]

A week after writing about Super Columbine Massacre RPG in the Rocky Mountain News, the game's creator was unmasked by a friend of one of the Columbine survivors.

Yesterday, I spent about an hour talking with Danny Ledonne, 24, of Alamosa, about his life and how the things that happened to him while growing up lead him to create the game.

There are two things that are interesting about this profile. First is the fact that Ledonne said he was headed down the same road as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold when their rampage at Columbine snapped him out of a downward spiral. The other is his reasoning for using a video game to explore his reaction to Columbine and the realization he came to that video gaming is not a proper medium for provocation.

"I have inside me the same interest everyone does in understanding the shooting, because it is one of the darkest days in American history," he said. "I just choose to confront it in a unconventional manner and that's hard for people to deal with, but it is important because I am reaching people my age and younger who do understand the world through video games." ... "I understood outright that if I wanted to write a book it would be pretty evenly accepted even if it contained some critical points, people would still regard it as an acceptable form of communication," he said. "But saying the same or similar things in a game is both so new and so outside of the context of what people are used to looking at a video game for.

"This is a medium in which people use to drown out a few hours of their life after they get home from work or something. This is not the place you turn to for a challenging, moral program."

I say with all humility that the profile is worth a read. —Brian Crecente

Gamers was on a deadly road [Rocky Mountain News]

Richard Castaldo, who was last paralyzed from the chest down after being shot in the arm, chest, back and abdomen by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold during their attack on Columbine High School, emailed me recently about our post on the Super Columbine Massacre RPG.

Castaldo, who hopes to one day work in the gaming industry as a sound designer, is a regular reader of Kotaku and wanted to let me know that he had downloaded the game and played it.

He was kind enough to agree to a short Q&A about his thoughts on the game.

What made you decide to download and play the game?
I saw it through Kotaku actually, and at first it just surprised me that someone would make a game like that. And I know most peoples knee-jerk reactions would probably be that it is horrible and disgusting and stuff like that. But, I just thought I should play it to see what it actually was. I didn't think it was necessarily bad, if i was done the right way, which at least part of it seemed to be.

What did you think of it?
It probably sounds a bit odd for someone like me to say, but I appreciate the fact at least to some degree that something like this was made. I think that at least it gets people talikng about Columbine in a unique perspective, which is probably a good thing. But that being said there are a lot of things that are har to play or watch. And it seems to partially glamorize what happened. It shows a stark-contrast between fantasy and real life in an interesting way.

I like the part in the game where if you go up to the water fountain theres a thing that comes up that explains that the water in denver is a little bit hard because it contains calcium and magnesium but is harmless. Answering the hypothetical question of "Was there something in the water, that caused this?" Clearly not, and the causes for this are not easily apparent.

Did the idea that you were playing as Klebold and Harris upset you?

It's all third person, so your kind of looking down on this thing as all of this horrible stuff is going on. It reminded me of the movie 'Elephant", because it showed a lot of stuff in cutscenes that they were doing that led up to that fateful day. It showed them doing a lot of stuff that supposedly influenced thei actions. TherLike it showed them being bullied, and how much they hated it. But, then the people they actually killed had nothing to do with that.

Do you think it glamorizes what happened at Columbine?

There is a part where after the character's representing the killers in the game die, and then the game shows an extenended real-life montage of what happened that day. And it shows their blood-soaked corpses, and isn't pretty. Which to me deglamorizes what they did. I've heard of some stories where some students try to make folk heroes out of these killers, which is very disgusting to me. I think people who have that mindset and then play this game and see that part it would make it real for them. As opposed to having this sort-of romanticized version that some people have.

But, at the same time there are some dialogue in the game that comes up after you kill the students that refers to you as being "brave boys", which i would hope was supposed to be ironic, because clearly what they did was not brave or heroic in anyway, it was quite the opposite. It has you killing students with absolutley no protection whatsoever. Which is what actually happened. So if the killers (or anyone else for that matter) thought that what they were doing was heroic in any way they were deeply fooling themselves. People ask me all the time, "Did you know them?" And my answer is of course no, i didn't. And, I didn't do a damn thing to either one of them. So, I think the game kinda highlights that. That there was no real rhyme or reason why specific people got killed.

Do you think the fact that it's a game trivializes the attack on the school?
I think that ultimatley a videogame is just another medium for artistic expression. But, you do end up killing literally hundres of representations of high- schoolers. But 'm not sure the ulitimate intention was to trivialize it. It seemed like the purpose was to expose people to what happened in a unique perspective. There are probably a lot of people that would find it and play it out of curiosity. And find out more about Columbine than they usually would have were it not in game form. And in this process learn that what they did was not glamorous in any way. There is a weird part after the school where you die, and then go to hell, which I suppose is appropriate. And it looks like that part kind of does make heroes out of them to some degree, because you're killing demons and such. Which is kind of an odd digreesion. I think its supposed to resemble the fact that they played violent games and such. Which is the primary audience of this game, people that like violent games. Which is why I like this game in a weird way, because if you are going to play games why not learn something important in the process? And in that process I think it might become apparent that what they did was not heroic in any way and shouln't be glamorized. But it is a mixed- message at best.

Does the game's use of low-res, 16-bit-era graphics make it easier to deal with?
That's the weirdest thing about it, that the graphics are so primitive by today's standards, but the subject matter is very serious. You play as these cartoonish little characters doing horrible things but the impact gets sort of lost afterawhile. Untill of course, you actually see what really happened, and it becomes real. Which I suppose was the point in making the game, to make people remember and also that if you were to glamorize this, you don't really understand what happened. I would be so bold as to say that the effect is very post-modern.

I understand you want to get into the video game business, what are you hoping to do?

Well, I know a quite a bit about sound and music. I have recorded and produced some bands, as well as my own stuff at my place And obviously I'm very interested in video games. So. I Have been trying to get an internship within the industry. I have a resume, and experience and all of that. I really enjoy the sound effects in games. And have made my own sound effects and incorporate them into some of my own music. When my old band was recording a demo here, I tweaked one of the guitar effects, and the guitarist said that it, "sounded like a videogame" so I guess that statement turned out to be prophetic.

How can people looking to talk to you about a job reach you?

I have a resume posted online at the blogger.com site.
I believe I could be a good addition to a team, and I'd be willing to start at the bottom.

Super genius, chess grandmaster and all-around hottie Susan Polgar broke a number of records (and hearts) this week when she played more than 1,100 chess games in more than 17 hours in Florida.

Polgar, who was raised to be a genius by her Hungarian dad, broke a total of four international chess records during the event:

Most games played at once. Polgar, 36, had 326 simultaneous games going on Monday afternoon. Of those, she won 309, drew 14 and lost three.

Consecutive games played. When the chess marathon ended at 3 a.m. Tuesday, Polgar had played 1,131 consecutive games, said Barbara DeMaro, managing director of U.S. Chess Trust, an event sponsor.

Highest number of wins in a marathon of this sort.

Highest percentage of wins — 96.93 percent.

She walked nine miles in the process.

Be still my chess heart.

Check it out: 1,131 chess games in 17 hours [AP]