"Outpaces," is the word the FTC's report uses in describing the games industry's conduct among its peers, noting the 80 percent prevention rate in keeping M-rated content from minors, and keeping ads for M-rated games off the television prior to 10 pm.

Further: "The Commission commends the ESRB for its new online ratings summaries, which provide a more detailed explanation of the content that factored into a game's rating. This tool should enhance parental understanding of the ratings and the ratings process."

Entertainment Software Association President Michael Gallagher called the report "a strong acknowledgement and validation that industry-led self-regulation efforts are the best way to provide parents and retailers with the resources and support they need to keep our kids' entertainment experiences suitable."

The report evaluates the marketing and adevertising practices across the entertainment industries. It's the FTC's seventh such report since 2000.

Games Industry Best Regulated of All Entertainment Sectors [GamesIndustry.biz]

The study, entitled "The Priming Effects of Avatars in Virtual Settings," more or less says that people don't have to self-select antisocial depictions of themselves to engage in antisocial behaviors. Just being told to play on the Dark Side in Jedi Knight II, or as a Klanketeer in another setting, encourages them to be a-holes. So you can imagine what that says about a person who creates the skeleton-faced, top-hatted all-black avatar with a tag like xXx_ScAbIEsDeM0n_XxX.

Before you get huffy, the study's author isn't singling out video games or avatars; they just comprise one environment that can also "prime" people to be louts and douchebags. Let me submit another: The 101 from the 87 to Mountain View at 8:25 a.m. on a weekday.

But yeah, as "no shit" findings go, it does sound rather obvious. You can read up on the rest of the study if you like.

What Does Your Video Game Avatar Say About You? [Daily Comet via Destructoid] [Pic via Something Awful]

The study, "Playing By the Rules" was undertaken by Pro Juventute, a Swiss children's rights group, and Track Impunity Always (TRIAL), which is concerned with international criminal justice. Their report provides a legal analysis of the conduct enabled by the games.

Rather than play the games themselves, the two groups sent expert observers to watch serious gamers play through and then note the egregious acts they saw. Here's what they had to say about Battlefield: Bad Company.

In the scenes, there seems to be no assessment of proportionality in the attacks realized in civilian areas and we do not know, whether precautionary measures were taken to minimize civilian casualties and damage to civilian objects. However, in a real life situation, one is often confronted with similar circumstances: regular armed forces and irregular armed groups are very unlikely to give any information about the planning of the preparation of military operations to international organisations or human rights bodies. Without such information, it is difficult to establish that a military operation was not proportional, in particular whether the attacker took all the precautionary measures necessary to avoid, and in any event to minimize incidental loss or civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects."

In addition to the extensive destruction, some of the scenes portray the members of "Bad Company" taking gold and "treasures" found in the civilian houses they have just destroyed. Upon obtaining them, the players get points. These actions amount to pillage, which is strictly prohibited under IHL and thus have also been labeled as "strong". This illegal action is confirmed in one of the scenes where you can hear a member saying that "Pillaging is an old war tradition." Pillage is considered as a war crime both in international and non- international armed conflicts.

I'm thinking that asking the goons of Bad Company to take precautionary measures for anything would be a little like talking to a cardboard box. It's also amusing to me that a basic, nonviolent scavenging mechanic rates a "strong" violation of international law (which it would be, if it occurred in real life) and is called out as a war crime.

Anyway, the study had a number of recommendations. Among them is a call for clearly defined rules of engagement.

It would be very useful if developers would incorporate more specific rules on how to conduct an operation in their games, in terms of the weapons allowed, the behaviour allowed, the military targets sought, the degree of collateral damage permitted, etc. The message of the scenes should never be that everything is allowed, or that it is up to the player to decide what is right and what is wrong. In real life, this is not the way it works.

If you want to dive into more killjoy gasbaggery about Modern Warfare, World at War and - Jesus, True Crime Streets of L.A. is in here? Who did they find to play that? Anyway, you can grab your copy of the report here [pdf.]

Fighting Fair: International Humanitarian Law As Applied to Games [Game Politics]

Owens' built his"Avatar Machine" costume to "[replicate]the aesthetics and visuals of third person gaming, allowing the user to view themselves as a virtual character in real space via a head mounted interface."

Which means...yeah, you guessed it. "The system potentially allows for a diminished sense of social responsibility, and could lead the user to demonstrate behaviors normally reserved for the gaming environment."

That's all well and good, but we just want to know one thing: can you make us one, Marc?

Avatar Machine [Marc Owens, via GameSetWatch]

The Nintendo-funded study, led by the National Institute of Health and Nutrition in Tokyo, measured the metabolic equivalent values, or METs, generated by participating in Wii Fit and Wii Sports activities. METs are a standard way of measuring energy expenditure, with moderate intensity exercise defined as any activity with METs of 3.0 or above.

By far the most effective exercise in the study was Wii Fit's single-arm stand, which at 5.6 EMTs was just under the AHA's definition of vigorous activity, which kicks in at 6.0.

The loser? Wii Sports Golf didn't make the cut, falling in at 2.0 METs, which isn't really surprising when you consider that most of your exercise in golf comes from walking and drinking.

Here are the results as they stand:

Wii Fit Single-Arm Stand: 5.6 METs
Wii Sports Boxing: 4.5 METs
Wii Sports Tennis: 3.0 METs
Wii Sports Baseball: 3.0 METs
Wii Sports Golf: 2.0 METs

So aside from single-arm standing, the study proves that hitting imaginary people is a healthy way to spend your day. Good to know!

Nintendo Wii may provide actual exercise: study [Reuters]

Writes the Los Angeles Times:

Military researchers have found that two groups of personnel are particularly good at spotting anomalies: those with hunting backgrounds, who traipsed through the woods as youths looking to bag a deer or turkey; and those who grew up in tough urban neighborhoods, where it is often important to know what gang controls which block.

Personnel who fit neither category, often young men who grew up in the suburbs and developed a liking for video games, do not seem to have the depth perception and peripheral vision of the others, even if their eyesight is 20/20.

Note, this isn't explosive ordnance disposal, they're talking about riding in a humvee and picking up details that someone might have buried explosives in the road. This is important because, of bombs discovered before they went off, like 90 percent of them were found because someone's spidey-sense went off.

The story quotes a sergeant major who finds the research fits with his own observations. "The gamers are very focused on the screen rather than the whole surrounding," he said. Country boys and hood rats have a more finely-tuned radar - that head on a swivel mentality when you're potentially in a dangerous situation.

Some Troops Have a Sixth Sense for Bombs [Los Angeles Times via Game Politics]

Deniz Ince, 11, is the lead author on the study, to be presented Monday in Philadelphia at the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology. Ince, who enjoys playing the Wii, found his fingers ached when he squeezed oranges. He set about researching the matter to determine if video games were linked to it.

The study surveyed 171 of Ince's schoolmates, aged 7 to 12 years old. Eighty percent said they played consoles or handhelds, and half of those said they played less than an hour a day. A third said they played one to two hours daily, and 7 and 6 percent said they played 2 to 3 or 3 or more hours a day, respectively.

The study found that each additional hour of use increased the likelihood of experiencing pain by 50 percent. It also found a higher pain incidence in younger children than older.

The study's senior author, Dr. Yasuf Yazici of New York University, said "the younger the kids, the more significant the pain." Why exactly couldn't be proven by the research, although the researchers believe it might be because muscles and tendons in younger kids are still developing.

The survey respondents said the pain they felt was "generally mild," although some 22 percent found it enough to limit how much they played. Interestingly, playing a Wii exclusively resulted in more self-reported pain, regardless of the player's age or how much he or she played per day.

Video Games Can Play Havoc With Kids' Joints [HealthDay on U.S. News & World Report]

The ESA's study said 54 were added since 2008, a 27 percent rise in the number of video game-related degree programs in the U.S. Among states, California quite expectedly offers the most video game-related degrees, at 46 institutions, with the University of California-Irvine recently establishing a center for games and virtual worlds research. New York, Texas and Florida are the other leading states, in that order.

The utility of these programs extends beyond game creation; the ESA also said a poll found that 70 percent of "major employers" use some form of interactive software, including games, in employee training. Of those, three-fourths expect to expand their usage of such methods in the next three to five years.

Like any popular and growing field, graduates can certainly expect to find a competitive jobs environment. But the growth and the mainstreaming of programs built specifically for game design show the industry's deepening acceptance by and impact to big business in America.

More Colleges than Ever Offering Gaming Degrees [CNET]

The study's results imply that video games draw on physiological mechanisms in ways similar to warfare, where testosterone-fueled aggression provides a strong advantage. Researchers had tried studying it on subjects in sports, but the natural production of testosterone by physical exertion clouded the results of the study.

In this one, researchers pitted 14 three-player teams against one another in Unreal Tournament 2004's Onslaught - a capture-the-flag mode - and laid a $45 bounty for winning team players vs. $15 for losers. To make sure they knew what they were doing, they let the teams practice for a week.

Afterward, they found that winning teams' testosterone levels spiked immediately after the tournament, especially in those who contributed most to the win. When team members played one another, in death matches with similar cash incentives, the best performing males typically produced less testosterone than those they defeated.

"In a serious out-group competition you can kill all your rivals and you're better for it," said David Geary, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Missouri. But when competing against others in order establish a social hierarchy, annihilation doesn't make sense. "You can't alienate your in-group partners, because you need them," he said.

Gamers Are More Aggressive to Strangers [New Scientist]

The mission of the Center for Computer Games & Virtual Worlds, according to a university statement, will be to "expand campuswide research activities that draw upon UCI's strengths spanning the social and technological aspects of games and virtual worlds." It will likely be the site of national and international research workshops, and will host visiting research scholars on the subject.

The statement also points out that UC-Irvine was one of the first major research universities to establish teaching and research programs for computer game culture and technology. Its Game Culture & Technology Lab has pulled in nearly $5 million in external funding since its establishment in 2001.

The Center for Computer Games is a part of Irvine's Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences; it's led by the school's associate dean, Magda El Zarki, and senior research scientist Walt Scacchi, of the UCI Institute for Software Research.

"We now realize that scientific and cultural achievements go beyond the current concepts of what games and virtual worlds are good for, or how they may be developed or applied," Scacchi said. "The center will support our research in demonstrating the sustained ability to invent and reinvent the future of computer games and virtual worlds."

The statement adds that: "UCI has a growing number of game-related research projects, including game-based virtual worlds where students 'play to learn' via interactive simulations, open community-based development of games and synthetic worlds, and gamelike synthetic worlds where autonomous characters display emotional responses and emergent behaviors."

UC Irvine establishes Center for Computer Games & Virtual Worlds [UC-Irvine Today, thanks Elizabeth L.]

A team of U.S. and European researchers found that, even though players spent less time looking at them, ads associated with violence were more memorable than ones not. The test subjects played a racing game (named AdRacer, pictured above) in which the goal was to run over targets on a road course. Ads were displayed as billboards on the roadside. When the targets became pedestrians, running over them spattered blood all over the screen.

Now, the utility of this memory association has its own costs. Namely, what happens to a Dr. Scholl's or a Betty Crocker when they're the hit ad in Manhunt 5. Certainly an advertiser could expect some controversy if not only their brand was associated with a nasty-violent game, but was deliberately (warning: corporate word alert) leveraging the violence for extra (incoming buzzword alert) mindshare.

An Advert for In-Game Violence [MIT Technology Review via Game Politics]

Or at least the brains of adolescent girls, who were the subject of the study, funded by Tetris marketer Blue Planet Software. Adolescent girls' brains are still developing, as any adolescent boy can tell you, so their brains are more susceptible to the sort of change Haier was looking for, and change he indeed found. The girls were given MRI scans before and after three months of Tetris, and after the testing period it was found that certain areas (in blue above) showed greater efficiency, while others (in red) showed thicker cortexes, indicating more brain matter.

Future benefits of this study, says co-investigator Dr. Richard Haier, might be to "demonstrate that a player of Tetris does see lasting effects that generalize to other activity," showing for example that engaging in activities like playing some games might help fight off the mental decline that occurs with aging.

The full study is being published in Thursday's BMC Research Notes, but we get the general gist. Adolescent girls who play Tetris on a regular basis grow up to be completely awesome.

How Tetris Changes Your Brain [Wired]

Paul Delfabbro of the University of Adelaide led a team studying more than 2,500 Australian teens, more than half of whom admitted to gambling in the past year. OK, fine. Delfabbro then brings out his broad brush.

If you look at those young people who are classified as pathological gamblers you will find that they do have a higher frequency of involvement with many different types of videogame. They're much more likely to play games on Xboxes and similar consoles. They are also more likely to play arcade games ... Those sort of young people who've had this need for more sort of unstructured activities probably also drift into gambling a bit more because it's another activity which you can do if you're out on the street.

This is, honestly, a serious question - are arcades in Australia as dead as they are in the U.S.? (It's 6:30 a.m. there, I'm not waking Luke up to ask that.) Because if so, it's an incredible - as in, not believable - assumption that arcades, practically made obsolete by consoles, play a role in conditioning or desensitizing young people to gambling in a casino.

If it seems like too easy a connection, don't worry, a guy with a diploma bigger than yours or mine thinks so too. Alex Blaszczynski, a psychology professor at the University of Sydney, more or less states what folks learn in Psych 101, or any form of science, really - correlation is not causation.

Does an interest in gambling lead to people becoming involved in video games or do video games lead to people becoming involved in gambling? Or is there a third factor which accounts for both gambling and videogames? There's also the possibility that some people with certain characteristics would then tend to engage in both video and technology type gaming activity and gambling as well. And that may well be linked to things like risk taking or impulsivity or other factors.

Does Video Game Play Lead to Gambling Addiction? [Game Politics]

The Centers for Disease Control examined 500 adults across all majority ages (18 and up) in Seattle, because its Internet usage is highest in the United States and it's one of the largest media markets. Forty-five percent of respondents reported playing video games. Of them, CDC found that gamers' average age has gone up to a what-am-I-doing-with-my-life 35, and body condition, health and emotional state have followed suit.

All is not lost; girl gamers my age have it worse. CDC found they reported "greater depression and lower health status than female non players." Unsurprisingly, "male gamers reported a higher BMI and a greater reliance on the Internet than non-gamers.

"Health risk factors, specifically a higher BMI and a larger number of poor mental-health days, differentiated adult video game players from non-gamers," he said.

"Video game players also reported lower extraversion, consistent with research on adolescents that linked video-game playing to a sedentary lifestyle and overweight status."

Feel like crap yet? You should, according to this study.

Video Gamers 'Older Than Thought' [BBC]

The result is inside NPD's 2009 Gamer Segmentation Report, and is based on a January survey of nearly 21,000 people. NPD breaks the population down into seven segments, the largest being Secondary Gamers, at 33.6 million. These are mostly female gamers who play less than four hours a week, none of it on a console.

Console gamers, mostly male, are the next largest and fastest-growing segment, at 32.9 million. Then comes Heavy Portable Gamers, heavy describing the amount of play, not their weight. Which is a good thing, most of their 30 million are kids. (Their average age is 19. Ni-ni-ni-ni-nineteen.)

GameSpot broke down the report further. But you get the idea. Video games are everywhere - even someone who doesn't consider himself or herself a gamer, but plays a flash game at work, is a gamer for purposes of this study. So, yay us.

U.S. Gamer Population: 170 Million [GameSpot via Blue's News]

And we're not talking music or ringtones or other non-gaming stuff, here. We're talking items "purchased and exchanged online in games, virtual worlds, and social networks". So that's everything from gamerpics to themes to MMO items to tweens buying crap for their Habbo's room.

The survey polled 1,927 people, both men and women, across a range of ethnicities and ages (12-64). Of those 1.927, 51% couldn't remember how much they spent, and those who could said, on average, they spent around $30.

Study: 12% Of Americans Purchasing Virtual Goods [Gamasutra]

The authors of the study found that there were 74 cases of car-surfing between 1999 and 20008 in Iowa, Michigan, Ohio and Texas. They also found more than 350 videos showing children car surfing on YouTube between 2006 and 2008.

The group says that while car surfing started out as a byproduct of the hyphy movement, it "has since swept the US, propelled by depictions in movies, video games, and in song lyrics detailing every step of the activity."

The big three to blame, according to the group, is Jackass, YouTube and Grand Theft Auto.

According to the study, and this handy-dandy graph, spikes in the number of car-surfing related injuries have spiked around the time of Grand Theft Auto games hitting. Though by around, I mean within a year or so.

When Jackass no longer airs and no new GTA's release, those injuries drop.

"During the years in which no new edition of Grand Theft Auto was released and Jackass was not aired, there was a coincident drop in car-surfing fatalities."

Seems like a weak link at best. Me? I blame Teen Wolf.

Neurological injuries from car surfing [The Journal of Neurosurgery, thanks Jeremy]

What's more, the study's authors were surprised to find the Wii Sports games, which rely almost solely on upper-body motion, still provided a good enough calorie burn. I guess they hadn't played the home run derby, which still whips my ass every time.

Researchers at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center conducted the study, looking at 23 boys and girls ages 10 to 13. They examined the kids' energy expenditure at rest and while watching TV, then playing Dance Dance Revolution at two skill levels, then Wii Sports bowling and boxing, and then walking at various speeds on a treadmill.

Unsurprisingly, kids burned three times more calories playing the games than watching TV. The researchers were impressed enough to recommend "active games such as DDR or Wii" as "a complement to activities such as walking or cycling."

Of course, anyone who's gone 3 rounds in Wii boxing and ended up heaving and sweating already knew this. But it's a top-flight university study in a leading research journal, and the mainstream media's picking up the ball. So for those keeping score on whether we gamers are getting slapped upside the head or patted on it, today I'd say the latter.

Let the Kids Play Video Games - They're Burning Calories [Los Angeles Times]

The grant to the universities - N.C. State and Georgia Tech - is part of the federal stimulus package and will span four years of research. Phase one of this study will seek to identify the qualities a game must have to improve cognition - memory, problem-solving, critical thinking and the like."

"We want to determine the components an effective game should have," said Dr. Anne McLaughlin, an assistant professor of psychology at N.C. State, and the study's principal investigator.

After determining which game qualities deliver the greatest improvement in cognitive function, phase two will seek to develop guidelines for "a new class of video game for older adults," and also develop a prototype game that follows those guidelines. State seems to be supplying the analysis, with Tech coming in to create the game. The study will last from September this year to August 2013.

Boom Blox was chosen as the study game because its "novelty, attentional demand and social interaction may be manipulated by the researchers."

I think it's significant for a number of reasons: They're moving the Wii-as-therapy fad beyond the examination of physical benefits. They're starting with a reasonably current and commercially successful title. And they're trying to spur games development. (And I went to N.C. State, but no one should really care about that.)

Study to See if Video Games Can Boost Thinking Skills in Elderly [Eurekalert.org thanks Jason]

Game Changer: Investing in Digital Play to Advance Children's Learning and Health admonishes health officials, educators, philanthropists, universities, policymakers, the games industry and the federal government to get off their butts and start shelling out money for research.

"Despite their reputation as promoters of violence and mayhem, digital games have in fact been shown to help children gain content and vital foundational and 21st-century skills," the study reads. "Digital games are here to stay and offer the country a rare opportunity to leverage children's already established enthusiasm in order to reform education and promote healthy development."

Game Changer proposes research and development funding for video games as well as partnerships between game makers and the government. Dance Dance Revolution and the Wii both get a hearty shout-out as does the Serious Games Initiative and Games for Change. But the biggest point the study seems to make is the need for grownups — particularly parents — to get involved early and often when their kids encounter games.

You can check out the text of the study here and if you missed today's two-hour webcast discussing the study, keep your eyes on this space for the video upload.

Noon Webcast: Using Games to Advance Learning & Health in Kids [GamePolitics]