Yes, my fingers and the cardboard box for EA Sports Active have been grinding through Sega and Prope's quirky mini-game compilation, perfecting my tapping skills and illustrating why I shouldn't have been so lazy about picking up Wii Remote jackets. Like a sturdy cardboard box, Wii Remote jackets are essential when playing Let's Tap. Hopefully the review will be up tomorrow, spicing up the weekend post count.

Heading to Blizzard on Monday to play some StarCraft II, but first I really need to sort out this Battle.net account. Other than that, probably getting in a few rounds of Rock Band Unplugged. Yourself?

Deus Ex 3 is a prequel to the other two Deus Ex games. In it, you're Adam Jensen, a private security officer working at a company that develops biomechanical augmentations for the human body, just one stepping stone towards the nanotech augmentations of the other games. Jensen witnesses an attack on his company, and has to investigate. Besides Shanghai, the game will take you to future versions of Detroit, Montreal and two other cities.

Here are some more bitchin images:

[EIDOS Forums]

Gentile used a modified version of the criteria for pathological gambling to formula questions to poll 1,178 children and teens. Those "pathological" gamers experienced spending more and more time gaming to achieve the same level of excitement, irritability when play time is reduced, ditching schoolwork to game and even lying about gaming or stealing games or money to buy them.

These pathological gamers were four times likely to be male, twice as likely to suffer from attention-deficit disorder or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and did worse in school.

"It's not that the games are bad," said Gentile. "It's not that the games are addictive. It's that some kids use them in a way that is out of balance and harms various other areas of their lives."

Other researchers agree that game addiction exists, but in smaller numbers as if there were truly 8.5 percent of kid truly addicted, there would be treatment clinics across the country.

Study Finds Some Youths 'Addicted' to Video Games [The Washington Post via GameBizBlog] [Pic]

The economy might be tanking, but we still need our stuff. Without our stuff, what would we be? Stuffless...and no one wants that. Forbes details 10 of the stuffs that people are still willing to hand over their precious, precious money for. Video games were the second item on their list, right after smart phones.

Consumers today desire affordable escapism, and video games fall into that category. Two top-selling games—"Madden NFL '09" and the "Wii Fit"—sold 5 million units combined in the third quarter of 2008, according to NPD.

Other items that made the list include toy building sets, car maintenance items, and personal hygiene items. I never thought I would see video games in the same list as personal hygiene items, but there you go.

Ten Things We're Still Buying [Forbes.com - Thanks Josh!]

Of course that little estimate is found at the bottom of a story that is headlined “Games to outsell music, video”. The story leads off by saying UK sales of games will outstrip music and video combined this year. Later on in the story someone points out that the video gaming sales figures include hardware while the video and music figures don’t.

The music and video market is not just suffering from a slowing of growth but a massive transfer of spend to online," says Malcolm Pinkerton of Verdict Research.

It is online sales of CDs and DVDs that have grown rapidly, rather than digital downloads, which still only account for around 4% of music and video sales.

In contrast, video games spending has enjoyed explosive growth, with the launch of major new titles such as Grand Theft Auto IV and FIFA 08, and the Nintendo Wii continuing to broaden the appeal of games.

The story wraps up by pointing out that major British retailers like HMV and Zavvi are changing their store layouts, cutting back on the space they give music and using it for MP3 players, books, clothing and, yes, even video games.

Games to Outsell Music, Video [BBC]

There are some great little nuggets here, from an early design for the Nintendo Powerglove — sorry, "Forearm mounted multi-axis remote control unit" — to a 'button presser' that lets you hit two buttons alternately by rolling the device back and forth. This sounds ridiculous, until you think about Track & Field.

There is even a slice of true console history in the form of a prototype for the first NES cartridge.

My favorite, though, has to be the SEGA racing controller/game pictured above that has an actual model car that moves left to right on a shelf in front of your TV. Come on SEGA, the time is right for this thing to see the light of day - bring it out on a current-gen console & you will clean up.

News: Old videogame patents [InsertCredit via Boing Boing Gadgets]

The decline, found in both the United States and Japan, appears to have begun in the 1980s and 1990s, the period of rapid growth of video games, they said.

The bad news is that many of these games are pretty much now loss leaders to get people to buy into the video game with little originality or creativity. Witness the large number of new and useless CCGs based on recent video games, included in the packaging or given away at conventions.

This is the subject matter that Turner tackles in her recent rant/article on The Times website. Although her article is titled "Xbox is crack for Kids" she mostly complains about general media and technology and how to (or not to) regulate "screen time" for her kids and how this is a seemingly impossible task. She saves her most venomous words for video games which she attacks with vehemence in the last paragraph:

Once, such kids would be the playground outcasts, but no longer. Mine are. Because, unlike the TV-hating parents, I refuse to buy them portable gaming consoles, Xboxes, GameCubes, PS2s. These are Satan's Sudoku, crack cocaine of the brain. Even the crappiest cartoon or lamest soap teaches a child about character, plot, drama, humour, life. Playing videogames, children are mentally imprisoned, wired into their evil creators' brains. And they play them - beepety-beep - on journeys, over family meals, any minute in which they find themselves unamused.

And their parents never seem to say, hey, this is the bit where you pick up a book. Or game over, kids: get an inner life.

Several Times readers were quick to come forward and refute Turner's claims and point out that within her article she even states that "I don't have the resolve for all this." How can someone complain of the negative effects of media on their children when they admit that they can't be bothered to make the effort to control it themselves? Times reader Marcus hit the nail right on the head with his comment:

Ahhh videogames. The source of all evil. Again. I'm guessing Janice you've never ever played one. I regulate my kids TV time very strictly - about 4 hours a week presently. But I let them play Super Mario Galaxy (as part of that time). It is a joyous, wondrous world of colour and fun and inspires them to draw pictures, write stories and play 'Mario' outside. So what exactly is the problem with that?

The problem you have by the sounds of it, is that you are laying blame at the door of the easiest scapegoat and not your own deficiencies as a parent.

It's the age old saga, parents complaining about something they just don't understand and heaven knows they aren't going to try. The whole piece just reeks of someone who discovered too late that if you are going to try and regiment your kid's media time, it has to be done from the beginning. You can't just decide this would be a good idea after eight to ten years and then only half heartedly try to enforce it. Just like the never ending debate over video game violence, the problem of too much media time for kids lies squarely on the doorstep of the parents. The onus, Miss Turner, is on you.

Xbox is crack for kids [The Times]
[Thanks, zany_ninja]

Giant Game Auction
http://videogames.neocurve.com/list.aspx

• "First you need to understand that there's boxes." (Referring to the consoles.)
• "The controller actually controls it."
• "Most games just use one or two buttons."
• "It's as easy as hooking up a CD player to your TV."

2004: The Federal Trade Commission publishes an undercover investigation where they found that 69% of UNDER-17-year-olds were able to purchase games rated M without adult consent. And then the PTA attacked the FTC for their perversion of statistics.

2007: TDIG hits its 365th day on Kotaku and enters early retirement. Because shuffleboard is the ultimate game.

2003: Playmore Corporation changes their name to SNK Playmore Corporation. We know you don't care, but it might be on the quiz. Do you care now? Good. Because we were just making that quiz stuff up. We would never do that to you. OK, we would, but it would involve large heads of industry "giants."

2000: Square Co. releases Final Fantasy 9 for PS in Japan. The game sells less than the previous two FF titles, even though it receives rave reviews and overall positive reception. I think it's an issue with cover art that alters the mass appeal of FF titles, because the die hards buy the game no matter what, and obviously the reviews have little to do with the success.

2000: The 3DO Company releases Vegas Games Midnight Madness: Table Games for PC in the US. Why is it "midnight madness"? Because you are up late. Because you are cool. That's why.

2001: Sony confirms the rumors of a hard drive system for the PS2. They were quoted as saying something along the lines of, "Yes, we are releasing a hard drive. It's one of those peripherals console manufacturers will hype up and then never do anything with. Needless to say, we're very excited about the possibilities for disappointment."

1998: The Big Network launches—it's an online gaming site that offers multiple family gaming channels. And it's a really Big Deal.

1999: Hasbro Interactive releases Mechwarrior 3 for PC in the US. It's a fantastic mech battle simulator, not that any of us would know if it wasn't like the real thing.

2003: Blizzard releases WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne expansion for PC in the US. Releasing expansions for strategy titles is a tough balance, but Blizzard did a good job of releasing more units and expanding the singleplayer storyline.

2005: Atlus releases Trauma Center: Under the Knife for DS in Japan. I seriously just looked at this game and thought, "That was released only last year?" Then I remembered, it's 2007 and half-way to 2008. And I'm never going to med school to please my parents.