This developer is not working on Aliens Vs. Predator but asked to stay anonymous as it is not part of their job description to comment to Kotaku about upcoming games. I run this comment not because I agree with some or all of it but because I hope it furthers a conversation about violence in games in terms of aesthetics, an aspect of the gaming violence topic that is almost never explored. I''ve also contacted Sega and asked if developers at AvP studio Rebellion would be interested in offering their take on the game's violence.

The following is the note the developer sent me, within a couple of hours of the post of the decapitation screenshot:

As a video game developer, I can see how this gruesome piece of animation/modeling made it into the game. What baffles me is why there is a such a lack of integrity from the people who over saw this piece. It's very easy for something to get prototyped in a video game and ultimately left hidden within the bowels of data and code that is the final product. But this was a piece of animation that clearly had multiple passes and was signed off by more than one person. How did some of the developers let a group of people's blood lust put what looked like a great product into the realm of intolerable ultra violence?

I understand how the game developers wanted to provide an authentic experience by including all iconic actions that were dictated by director and camera. But the green lighting of this given piece takes all story telling, world development, characterization and cinematography of the original source material and gives it a big middle finger. Alien was an amazing horror flick that used great atmosphere and visuals to invoke viewers own interpretation of violence. Save for a few key scenes, copious amounts of blood was not this movie's prerogative. Aliens followed suit and so did Predator. Granted this might be due to the movies rating board at the time, but the directors got their point across in more tactful ways and together they all created a great mythos.

When I look at this screen shot, all I can think about is the lack of respect for great story telling that didn't include ultra violent visuals. Stepping over that border takes away from what could be great game play mechanics and ultimately a fun game. The focus will no longer be on the game as a whole, but if the developers can justify their visuals. I guess this is just another sign that video game developers need some more time to mature if this is the type of stuff that makes it into video games these days.

Otero had been drinking heavily when he started arguing with his wife about said video game. His son, Ignacio, joined the argument and then Otero loaded his gun. According to Houston Police Department authorities, Ignacio first tried to knock the gun away from his father and then ran from him.

Otero shot his son in the neck. He fled as his son died at the scene.

Three hours later, he surrendered to an HPD SWAT team after a standoff.

The Houston Chronicle reports:

Otero, who is facing a murder charge, has a prior criminal history in Harris County that includes a DWI conviction.

Police: Houston dad killed son over video game [Houston Chronicle]

Thanks for the tip, Roy Torres.

There are many awards for video games. There are almost as many rationales for the granting to game makers and their games various prizes, trophies and sentences — spoken and written — that conclude in exclamation points.

But gaming awards all miss certain kinds of greatness, as they likely will this year, when they will probably fail — with some justification — to recognize one great thing about the way Wolverine killed.

It is true that gaming award-giving is, like all things in gaming, a young process. Video game award-givers are not yet as thorough and sophisticated as those who hand moviemakers gold statues. The professional film-praising organizations celebrate best movies and best writing, best editing and best directing. They also commend the best acting that a man does, the best acting a woman does, then commend one more man and one more woman for acting well but not as much. They commend the people who make movie music, the folks who design movie clothes and the people who engineer movie explosions.

The clever non-accident of these movie awards is that they all go to people, as they almost all celebrate something that is the product of someone's particular cinematic job.

Video games sort of do this too, to a lesser extent. Most websites and academies of game creators — and the few TV networks that care about great video games — all recognize the Best Game of a Year. But they also recognize the best dialogue-writing, the finest drawing of graphics (But what about best supporting graphics?) and the most superb voice-acting recorded by a woman. I don't know if the person most responsible for the best lighting of the year gets an award, possibly because no one knows who that is. And I am certain no one gets a big-time award for Best Controls.

The lack of a Best Controls of the Year award is the biggest shame — bigger than the likely snubbing of this one deadly Wolverine attribute from X-Men Origins: Wolverine that I'm about to finally detail.

A gamer with good taste will tolerate a game that doesn't have the Best Graphics of 2008 or the Best Soundtrack of 2004. But no one who clasps a controller would consider a game with wretched controls worthy of a top award. (Right?) Yet when will a Best Controls plaque be handed out? (My nominations for 2009 so far include inFamous, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Flower and — the outlier! — Dragon Quest Wars on DSi).

A failure to celebrate the Best Controls of the year is an omission that will keep a paperweight off the mantle of a man or woman who made the best use of analog shoulder buttons.

It also risks stunting gamers' appreciation and developers' creation of ever-better game controls.

After all, what are awards good for beyond celebrating people and their achievements? They are good for designating something as wonderful, allowing it to be compared to something wonderful in the same category the year before (right, Nobel Peace Prize committee?) and they help set the standards to which the things in the same category will be held in the year to come.

We as gamers, I think, would want controls to be held in such regard.

If you're with me on that, let me stretch your agreeability, and see if you'd also back up the issuing of an award for Best Approach To In-Game Killing.

No?

Consider Wolverine in this spring's X-Men Origins: Wolverine. He is a video game action hero defined in the game's marketing by his well known uniform, claws and attitude. He is defined in his game, however, in the manner so many game characters are: By the way he beats up the bad guys. Simon Belmont was the whip guy. Mario was the guy who jumped on other guys. Kratos was the guy with the butcher knives that could yo-yo from his wrists. Wolverine is Kratos all over again, a buzzsaw of blades that can slice close and far, thanks to the reach of his arms. Wolverine has some added moves: A lunge that can shoot our hero across a room like a short-range, sharp-tipped rocket; a two-tiered regenerative health system. Wolverine's button-combo moves list is 41 techniques long.

If there was a Best Approach To In-Game Killing award I'm just not sure Wolverine would get beyond the nominations circle and into the winner's podium. But if he and the game did, I'd hope that the Reflex system — my favorite element of his arsenal, aside from that lunge — would be considered a valuable contributor to the accomplishment.

The Reflex system may not be new. I hadn't experienced it before, but it doesn't seem so exotic that it couldn't have appeared before. This Reflex system, I would judge, is good. It is a system that makes Wolverine a more effective combatant against enemies he has fought multiple times.

The game has five meters that track Wolverine's reflexes. These tabulate the number of times he has fought guys with machetes, guys with machine guns, jungle mutants, robots and specialized military units. If Wolverine kills enough of any of those enemy types, the meter fills and Wolverine gets a bonus: He will now inflict greater damage on that enemy type.

That system felt right to me — so right that I hoped it or all of Wolverine's combat arsenal could be up for some sort of award so that it could be recognized for taking action-gaming in a good direction.

I'm used to characters that gain experience points and generally become more powerful, the more they kill anything and everything in their world (Wolverine has this kind of system in his game, too). I also appreciate the Ratchet & Clank approach which makes any gun become more powerful the more times it is used against enemies. Fable has a smart system, too, which splits the difference between those other two and makes broad aspects of a character — brawn, shooting ability, magic-wielding — improve the more actions in those categories are committed.

But the Wolverine Reflex system — which, again, may have been in other games — feels natural to me. It feels like it operates within the physics of real life, where we get better at fighting ninjas the more we fight them, but not necessarily better at fighting pirates... where we become more comfortable talking to girls the more of them we find to talk to, but not necessarily better at talking to bosses or police officers just because we spoke to more girls.

The Reflex system also feels right to me because it feels like an apology for one of games' recurring limitations: A lack of enemy variety. We gamers are always orchestrating combat against a lot of repeated offenders. And while our heroes may become more effective against the whole lot of them as our skills improve and our characters level up, I must praise a game design team that explicitly rewards dealing with the repetition of a dozen more jungle mutants or 30 more killer robots. Wolverine should get better against the people and things he has fought so many times before.

I don't believe I have effectively argued the X-Men Origins: Wolverine deserves the academy's award for Best Approach To In-Game Killing, nor maybe even to Best Combat or Best Controls. I don't believe the game would be a shoe-in for any of those categories, though I would not protest if it was nominated.

I wish it could be, because if awards help set standard, I want standards set ever higher for controls, combat and killing — not just for graphics, handheld gaming and sound effects.

Giving an interview to The Times of India, Dorje doesn't find his interest in violent video games to be inconsistent with his philosophy or his stature within Buddhism.

I view video games as something of an emotional therapy, a mundane level of emotional therapy for me. We all have emotions whether we're Buddhist practitioners or not, all of us have emotions, happy emotions, sad emotions, displeased emotions and we need to figure out a way to deal with them when they arise.

So, for me sometimes it can be a relief, a kind of decompression to just play some video games. If I'm having some negative thoughts or negative feelings, video games are one way in which I can release that energy in the context of the illusion of the game. I feel better afterwards.

The aggression that comes out in the video game satiates whatever desire I might have to express that feeling. For me, that's very skilful because when I do that I don't have to go and hit anyone over the head.

The interviewer asks if his mediation should be taking care of such urges and he politely brushes her off. "No, video games are just a skillful method," he says.

You know, I have felt oddly ... serene ... after playing Left 4 Dead.

"Video War Games Satiate My Feelings of Aggression" [The Times of India]

As an interruption from a WiiWare line-up of bonsai barbering, beanbag-tossing and goo-fueled bridge-building we now can download Ronimo Games' Swords & Soldiers, a side-scrolling real-time strategy game for one player or two. It's like Patapon without the controllable drumbeats and with a lot more Aztec sacrifice.

But in the demo-free zone that is Nintendo's Wii download service, is it fun enough for your 10 bucks?

Loved
The Look And Feel: Side-scrolling RTS is a sketchy proposition. But thanks to bold and bright character design and a minimalist remote-only control scheme, it's quite easy and enjoyable to hire gold-miners and begin generating the Viking axe-men, corpse-resurrecting shamans, golden giants, old Chinese men and other warriors at your disposal. Depending on which of the three ethnic groups you control, you have a different tech trees' worth of characters to generate or spells to elicit. Those characters you generate go on a victory march to the right of your screen, usually to destroy a base about 20 screen lengths away… unless you're a bad strategist. Then it's just a sorry death march.

Boulders, Sacrifices And More Unexpected Stuff: The game's first campaign is deceptively simple. As the Vikings you learn the basics (and hunt down a killer chili pepper – the game's kind of a comedy). Ten missions and at least an hour later, you get to play as the Aztecs, and that's when Ronimo's originality begins to shine. Effective Aztec strategy involves sacrificing warriors, a tactic opposite to winning with brute Viking numbers. The Aztec and Asian campaigns reveal many surprising units, tactics and special attacks, including the unleashing of a player-controlled screen-tall bouncing boulder and others I won't spoil.

Hated
Aged Thinking Why must I play the three campaigns in only one order? Why must the default difficulty become so hard halfway through Aztec, but then not allow me to switch to the locked Asian campaign instead? And I hope the levels don't have as narrow an array of winning strategies as it sometimes seemed. The best strategy games should allow hard-thinking players multiple paths to victory. I suspect there are multiple methods for some of Swords & Soldiers' most vexing levels, but I found quite a few that seemed to have only one right way to win – as best as I could deduce.

At a time when the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3's downloadable services have hit a bit of a lull, WiiWare finally is coalescing into a platform with several varied and well-made games.

Swords & Soldiers could have easily sold for more than its list price, as its graphics and sound are top quality, and its 30-mission campaign, bonus missions and split-screen multiplayer present a generous package. For the team to not stumble while making a game in such an untested genre is quite an achievement. Plus, it has violence.

Swords & Solders was developed by Ronimo Gamesfor the Wii's downloadable game service WiiWare on June 8. Retails for 1000 Nintendo points ($10 USD) Played through all three campaigns over about six hours, dropping from the default difficulty halfway through. Played the bonus missions and sampled the game's split-screen multiplayer.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Almost ten years ago, I was on the grass at Clement Park adjacent Columbine High School covering what would become the world's most iconic school shooting.

Last week, I was on the Internet reading about the Winnenden, Germany school shootings, and nothing had changed. The breaking news in the search for answers was a familiar brew of gun control, parenting, and violent video games. A tough Spiegel Online piece Monday brought them all together when a commentator wrote, "But we have debated about weapons laws and video games for long enough. Our biggest problem are parents who aren't doing their jobs."

I can't fully point the finger at the Winnenden parents, nor the Columbine parents. We still don't have enough information on either of them. (Although sadly, you might note, it's ten years after the April 20, 1999 Columbine shootings, and only about ten days after Winnenden.)

But I was surprised to see video games become the bogeyman again. Call me naive.

Tragedies can bring about positive change, and Columbine is no exception. Police have adopted "active shooter" policies to charge in rather than hang back and form a perimeter when facing school shooters. And there has been new scholarship into what makes school shooters tick.

I began a ten-year odyssey of book research because I felt there had to be some common denominators causing school shootings. Traditional theories of juvenile delinquency would not do; school shooters did not tend to be warped by drug abuse, physical abuse, or poverty.

It's wrong to say the video games played by Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had no effect on them. As I write in the book, previously excerpted here on Kotaku:

Video games may have given Eric and Dylan paths for their anger: Postal had details that previewed Columbine, and Doom's philosophy of the lone Marine against the rest of hell helped inform Eric and Dylan's us against them mentality. The game's tough as nails descriptions also seeped into their brains and influenced Eric's writings. Staring at the computer screen would keep Eric and Dylan from developing the social skills to merge with the rest of the world they so desperately wanted to connect with.

But Eric and Dylan were not the only ones exposed to the joysticks: In one week in 1997, sales of Postal hit 15,000 copies, according to the Wall Street Journal. The video games did not cause their anger. That came from elsewhere.

That elsewhere, I have found, is in America's seemingly picture-perfect backyard: Suburbs and small towns in the South and West. Virtually every Columbine-style shooting has occurred on those grid points. My forthcoming book Columbine: A True Crime Story, a victim, the killers and the nation's search for answers notes:

There is not just a psychological profile of school shooters, but an environmental one - one which fits both Eric and Dylan. School shootings overwhelmingly occur in suburbs and small towns, which may be rich in sports, shopping malls, and BMW's, but poor in diversity and tolerance. Deviation from the whitebread norm is punished, and the high school campus is often the sole arbiter of adolescent status. A loser at school feels like a loser through and through. School shooters have no escape hatch, and nowhere else to turn for self-esteem. Options outside of school off ered by a big city are not found in small towns and suburbs: There is no Hollywood Boulevard for the punk rockers.

The template for suburban school shootings may be the inner-city, youth violence epidemic from 1985 to 1995 that "seeped into pop culture" as one study put it. Columbine, along with Littleton and the other school shooting locales, are the exact opposite of crime-infested, poverty-ridden high schools in Detroit and Watts. But thousands of Columbines across the country are tough, in their own suburban and small town way. Status and cliques are as virulent as gang warfare, and the outcasts face stiff odds. After too many marginalizations, dating rejections, or bottles thrown at them white, middle-class, disaffected youth may have hijacked the violent, inner-city solution.

The homes to school shootings have different names but the same genetic makeup: Springfield, Oregon. West Paducah, Kentucky. Pearl, Mississippi. Santee, California. They form a violent crescent through the South and West. Here, the spiritual forefathers of school shooters are Western gunslingers and Southern duels. Simply put, the psychologist Richard Nisbett notes, "The U.S. South, and Western regions of the United States initially settled by Southerners, are more violent than the rest of the country."

Jeff Kass, a former reporter with the Los Angeles Times and more recently the Rocky Mountain News, is the author of Columbine: A True Crime Story - A Victim, the Killers and the Nation's Search for Answers

Excerpts from his upcoming book.

The incident occurred on Saturday night, and was prompted by the sister's refusal to allow her brother to play with her Nintendo DS. Upset over this, the boy took a kitchen knife and stabbed her in the chest. The children's mother was awakened by the girl's screams and she was rushed to hospital, where she remains (although her condition is not listed as critical).

There are further reports from a follow-up story by Le Post of the boy citing "inspiration" from a Power Rangers game that involved throwing knives, and of the family suffering from a history of domestic violence at the hands of their estranged father.

A 5 ans, il poignarde sa soeur parce qu'elle ne veut pas lui prêter sa console de jeux [Le Post]

UPDATE - Oh dear. This gets worse. Surgeons have determined that after operating on the poor girl "a child of 5 could not have made a blow of such force". Turns out the mother is suspected of stabbing her own daughter, and has been remanded in custody. The boy/DS thing was just a cover-up story.

So sad.

I used to work with Jeff Kass, the author of the book, at the Rocky Mountain News and he was kind enough to send me some of the book's video-game related excerpts to reprint on Kotaku.

The excerpts unveil a more complex take on Harris and Klebold and their love of computers and gaming.

Both, Kass writes, enrolled in the school's computer programming class and Harris handled the web pages for the school's physics and science departments. They seemed drawn to computers and programming because of the total control over an environment it offered them, something highlighted in the famous 1986 manifesto The Conscience of a Hacker, later found Klebold's home.

The two would also, Kass writes, "embed themselves in violent video games." Harris enjoyed Postal, both, more famously, played Doom.

Harris even wrote a paper about Doom for school:

“Picture an Earth that has been obliterated by nuclear war and alien attacks leaving cities and military forces in ruins with only a lone marine as humanity’s last fighting force. Picture holographic walls, crushing ceilings, oceans of blood and lava, strange ancient artifacts, and horrible sour lemon and rotten meat stenches in the air. Imagine being trapped on an abandoned cold steel base floating in space for eternity, a leathery skinned monster roaming under a strobe light waiting for a fight, and astonishing weaponry designed to your special needs. All these places and ideas have been created and recreated many times by yours truly.

“To most people it may be just another silly computer game, but to me it is an outlet for my thoughts and dreams,” Eric wrote in his class paper. “I have mastered changing anything that is possible to change in that game, such as the speed of weapons, the strength and mass of monsters, the textures and colors used on the floors and walls, and greatest of all, the actual levels that are used. Several times I have dreamed of a place or area one night, then thought about it for days and days. Then, I would recreate it in Doom using everything from places in outer space with burned-out floor lights and dusty computers to the darkest depths of the infernal regions with minotaurs and demons running at me from every dark and threatening corner. I have also created settings such as eras of ancient abandoned military installations deep in monster-infested forests with blood stained trees and unidentifiable mangled bodies covered with dead vines and others that portray to futuristic military bases on Mars overrun with zombies that lurk in every corner. These places may seem a bit on the violent side and, I assure you, some of them are. However, many times I have made levels with absolutely no monsters or guns in them. I have created worlds with beautiful, breath taking scenery that looks like something out of a science fiction movie, a fantasy movie, or even some ‘eldritch’ from H.P. Lovecraft.”

Kass also talks a bit about Harris' mod of the game that used Brooks Brown's neighborhood as a Doom setting and Brown's house as the target. The mod, which took an estimated 100 hours to create, locked players in an invincible god mode and had dying characters yell out "Lord, why is this happening to me?"

Doom, Harris wrote, was the best way to show his creativity and intelligence.

Kass is clear to point out that while video games may have given the two "paths for their anger", with Postal providing potential inspiration and Doom a philosophy that helped inform Harris and Klebold's mentality, video games certainly weren't the cause.

"The video games did not cause their anger," Kass writes. "That came from elsewhere."

There were plenty of incidents leading up to Columbine that had nothing to do with video games. Among the first cracks in Eric’s psyche, Kass writes, was when Harris coated his head and neck in fake blood and lay on the ground next to a bloodied rock to try and shake up an ex-girlfriend.

The deeper issue, it seemed, was that the two failed to fit in, to be accepted as part of "team Columbine."

"Their computer skills were sharp, but could not vault them over the ruthless world of high school social popularity contests," Kass writes. "They didn’t have the right good looks, money or athletic prowess. Their social skills were hopeless."

The book is a reminder that the cause of such shootings are rarely as black and white as they initially seem. Columbine and the slew of school shootings that followed it are not the product of a single problem, but something endemic of a far more complex issue. A by-product, perhaps, of a society so rife with cultural taboos and niches that not fitting in can become for some a problem larger than life, literally.

Check out the full, three-page excerpts, first published anywhere, from the book here. And if you find it as enthralling as I do make sure to pick up a copy of the book, published by Ghost Road Press.

Jeff Kass

In the study, published Friday in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers surveyed more than 2,500 "frequent game players" and conducted four experiments on more than 300 college undergraduates. "We found that, on average, violent content didn't add to motivation for play," said lead author Andrew Przybylski of the University of Rochester, which cooperated with Orlando-based think tank Immersyve on the project.

"The reason why children gravitate to something like 'Halo,' 'Halo 3' or 'World of Warcraft' or 'Team Fortress' isn't necessarily because they want to get at the blood or the acts of violence," he said.

Here's how they determined it. Using Half-Life 2, players were given either a shotgun weapon or a psychic power. Players with a shotgun were told they were in a kill-or-be-killed scenario, and deaths were rendered in a very bloody and violent way. The psychic power gamers "were essentially playing a game of tag," and when they were able to hit an opponent with the ability, "the person just floated up very serenely into the air before evaporating."

After playing, the study subjects were asked how fun the game was and if they'd like to play it again. There was not enough of a difference in the two groups' responses to determine that violence had any affect on its perceived fun.

Craig Anderson, the director of the Center for the Study of Violence at Iowa State University, lauded the studies' methodology and said they made a strong contribution to understanding video games, how they're designed, who plays them, and why.

Przybylski said the findings should encourage designers to make games that make players feel like they're competent, can act autonomously, and stay connected with other players

"That's probably a better place for them to put their efforts than being able to very realistically depict someone's arm falling off," he said.

Blood and Gore Don't Make Games More Enjoyable: Study [Canadian Press]

As reported previously, Petric had purchased a copy of Halo 3 following his parents' Mark and Susan had forbid him to do so. After having the game confiscated, Daniel broke into his father's lock box, which held the game and a 9mm handgun, entered the living room of his house, asked his parents to close their eyes, and shot both of them in the head, killing his mother and wounding his father.

Petric's lawyers argued that video game addiction had driven the teen to the crime, but Common Pleas Judge James Burge found otherwise. Petric now faces up a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole.

Once again my condolences go out to the Petric family for this horrible tragedy, though I sincerely hope Daniel doesn't see the outside of a prison for quite a long line.
Teen convicted of killing mother over video game [Associated Press]

Yes, GTA even kills kittens. That's according to Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio who, according to a local news report talked about the connection. “This game allows players to kill cops and rape women," Arpaio explained. "It’s little wonder why they perpetrated such violence against that little animal.”

The report states that the two boys, ages six and seven, strung up the kitten with what appears to be a PlayStation 2 controller after playing an unspecified entry in the Grand Theft Auto series. The boys will not be charged with animal cruelty due to their age. And I'm off to drink!

2 boys use video game controller wire to hang kitten [AZfamily via GamePolitics]

No. Not if one of us is Electronic Arts and the other is anti-games campaigner Regina Pfeiffer, sister of Criminologist and anti-games campaigner Christian Pfeiffer, previously responsible for getting Army of Two refused classification in Germany, among others.

Shouting from the audience at the Computer Game and Violence conference in Munich, Regina called EA “a pig of a company.” in protest at the company being outside the reach of her lawsuit-throwing powers. Rather than taking the high road and ignoring the comments, EA have decided to lock horns and have demanded a full apology.

“ I can only recommend that she apologises in full – at least, [she should] if she wishes to be taken seriously again in the future,” said Martin Lorber of EA Germany.

Oh, snap. etc.

EA gets into war of words with woman

We want to believe females not capable of such acts. We do the same with serial killers as I'm seeing occurring with our females' foes, often painting them in mystic tones and making them less than human—no human could do this, erego inhuman. At the same time, the draw of a female protagonist is also to play the market in a heteronormative fashion: appeal to the male libido and assure females they can play as someone of their own sex. The female gaming market is growing, especially in the cases of The Sims, Harvest Moon, and other such titles. These are generally non-violent games (give a tool to anyone and they'll manage to play around its original intent), which grows the expectation we've been given in general society: females are not violent.

Which is a lie. Reading bell hooks's Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, I was reminded of a fact we often overlook: just as many cases of domestic violence are perpetrated by women against their own children. These are often either ignored or not reported, so it becomes difficult to navigate that terrain, especially when children are not given the tools or rights to speak up on their own behalf; to believe females are generally pacifist and have little capability of violence or prefer such is very likely just a fallacy in which we like to believe. We just prefer the idea of a father who is abusive physically and a mother who may be more critical with her words—this makes sense to us.

Anyways, well worth a read — a really thoughtful piece on some gender issues that crop up in games, and issues that go far beyond gaming.

Gendered Violence [Vorpal Bunny Ranch]

Jolie tells Harper’s Bazaar “My kids play video games. I let them play with toy soldiers. We don’t take war and violence lightly, but we don’t hide it from anybody."

How does the big screen Lara Croft explain all that fictional violence to Maddox, Pax, Zahara, Shiloh, and eventually Knox and Vivienne? “We say, ‘Mommy and daddy have movies where we play these characters, but there’s real death and violence in the world.’” Talking to your kids, eh? Helping to define the difference between reality and fantasy is an interesting concept that might just be crazy enough to work.

Reader and tipster Jason says "I thought that this is quite an interesting read considering that Ms. Jolie frequently travels to war torn nations for the UN and [has] seen what war does to people. That and how she makes an effort to talk to her kids about real world violence. It's very much a different perspective about gaming in the media that people [should] definitely hear more of in my own opinion."

We couldn't have said it better ourselves, so we didn't even try. Thanks, Jason.

Jolie says she’s ‘just a punk kid with tattoos’ [MSNBC]

Videogame developers view guns through a profoundly two-dimensional lens. The gun is still a power-up, too practical in its uses to be the object of much emotional tension. When games were confined to two dimensions and only a handful of pixels, it was difficult to portray a firearm in any convincing way other than a fantastic ray of light spewing from the barrel. Players went through games amassing guns like so many mushrooms and fire flowers. Little has changed in this regard, as players run through any first person shooter scooping up weapon after weapon, discarding one in favor of another.

For many, this is the purpose of games - to provide a concrete experience grounded in gameplay mechanics, as opposed to an exercise in symbolism and iconography. But in putting this goal before all else, videogames concede their ability to produce images of consequence. In a vain attempt to tack meaning onto an otherwise meaningless image, developers have placed an inordinate emphasis on technical details.

We can probably extend this idea to gaming weaponry in general: I'm not much for FPS and the like for a variety of reasons, but I do have a soft spot for samurai-themed hack 'n slashes as well as RPGs of various stripes. Do those shiny, shiny swords mean much beyond a means to a gameplay end and upgraded stats? And should they?

From the Barrel of a Gun [The Escapist]

"We won't be able to make the same game for all territories," Goichi Suda told Eurogamer, "For Europe, we're going to release two versions. One extreme version, and one with less violence."

This could be a smart move - Germany in particular would welcome a less bloody version of the game and just the publicity value of being seen to need a watered-down edition of the Wii title might be worth the effort. Be interesting to see the comparative sales figures, though.

No More Heroes 2 to get two versions

GP immediately contacted EA, with distinctly unsatisfactory results. The top PR dog didn't respond to our e-mail. Later in the day we tracked down the EA guy who is handling Dead Space PR, and put the question to him in two e-mails and a live phone call. Never got an answer one way or the other. EA doesn't know if one of their high profile titles managed to get banned in three countries? Sorry, not buying that. Or, they know but aren't saying? Unacceptable.

GP seems suspicious about the China news, too, asking "does EA even distribute console games in China?" (they do in theory) — but considering the government made Blizzard and The9 change the look of skeletons and dead bodies in WoW, it's not a huge logical leap to nixing sales of a game like Dead Space. Still, GP seems most disturbed EA's lack of knowledge — or unwillingness to share it — when it comes to the status of their game in at least three locales: "It's time for EA to put an end to this nonsense. If there is a multi-country ban, gamers deserve to know about it. If there's not, gamers deserve to stop having their chains yanked..."

Dead Space Ban in Three Countries? We're Not Buying It [GamePolitics]

Proving that parents haven't gone completely crazy, the vast majority - 49% - were worried that their child would smoke a little chronic with their pals and then...I dunno, giggle for 8 hours straight, like we did back when i was a teenager. That's the real danger folks.

What They Play™ Finds Parents More Concerned About Video Games Than Alcohol and Pornography; Violence More Acceptable Than Sexual Content
Polls Reveal Parents Have Attitudes Toward Video Games and Social Issues That May Surprise

SAN FRANCISCO—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Parents are more concerned about their children’s exposure to video games than alcohol, violence and pornography, according to recent polls conducted by What They Play (www.whattheyplay.com), the parents guide to video games. Nearly 3,000 respondents in two separate What They Play polls concluded that drinking beer and watching pornography were less objectionable activities for children than playing certain video games. Further, viewing violence was more acceptable than seeing content involving sex and sexuality within games.

“These poll results demonstrate that parents are as apprehensive about their children’s media diets as they are about traditional social issues such as alcohol, drugs, violence and sex,” says John Davison, president of What They Like, Inc. “When it comes to video games, parents should know that What They Play is a resource that helps demystify one of the most popular – and challenging – forms of entertainment their kids are into.”

“Although these findings seem surprising at first, they hint at fears parents have about video games,” says Cheryl K. Olson, Sc.D., co-author of Grand Theft Childhood. “To some parents, video games are full of unknowable dangers. While researching for Grand Theft Childhood, parents we spoke with in focus groups often bemoaned the fact that they didn’t know how to use game controls - and felt unequipped to supervise or limit video game play. Of course, parents don’t want their children drinking alcohol, but that’s a more familiar risk.”

The results of the initial What They Play online poll, conducted April 4-10, 2008, found that the 1,266 participants were most offended by the following in a video game: a man and woman having sex (37%); two men kissing (27%); a graphically severed head (25%); and multiple use of the F-word (9%).

The second poll, which ran August 1-6, 2008, queried parents on what they’d be most concerned about their 17-year-old child indulging in while at a sleepover. More than 1,600 respondents revealed they’re more apprehensive about their child smoking marijuana (49%) and playing the video game Grand Theft Auto (19%), than watching pornography (16%) and drinking beer (14%).

Additional What They Play poll results and insight into parents’ attitudes toward video games and other forms of entertainment in which their children engage can be found at www.whattheyplay.com/polls/

Yes, game violence. On Facebook.

If you're already a Facebook user, then you already might know about SuperPoke. If you don't, it works like this: you basically send a greeting message and icon to your friends — "give flowers to," "party with," generally nice things like that. They have "pokes" that are themed around holidays or events like popular movies, too. Some of them are a little bit offensive or silly. It's game-like, in that the more pokes you send your friends, the more you unlock, and it really doesn't get much more complicated than that.

So what's to rail against?

MarketWeek reports that Urban Concepts, a group of "anti-knife" campaigners, dislike that one of the pokes that has apparently become available invites you to "shank" your friends. You know, knife 'em prison yard-style. According to MarketWeek, the group believes the app is "targeting" teenagers with violent themes.

The knife poke seems to have since been removed from the app. You can still spank, fling a thong at, or give restraining orders to your friends, though. You can also "go Chuck Norris" on them, leaving little doubt that Urban Concepts is correct about the target audience, at the very least.

Facebook slammed for "knife" game [MarketWeek via GamePolitics]

Roberts' trial has not yet been set, but Trujillo will testify against him as part of her plea agreement.

Teen avoids prison time in sister's 'Mortal Kombat' death [9 News]