Of course, one of the most interesting characters attached to the drama that was the Gizmondo is Swedish businessman Bo Stefan Eriksson. He's probably best known for destroying a Ferrari Enzo, one that was illegally imported, worth one million dollars. But he's also known for blowing through $300 million in Gizmondo capital with his hardware launching cohorts, being arrested on grand theft auto charges, and having an alleged organized crime past.

The Hollywood Reporter writes that writer-director Craig Zobel and producer Beau Flynn have optioned Eriksson and Gizmondo's story, hoping to put the tale of the failed handheld in front of a lens. They've optioned the 2006 Wired story "Gizmondo's Spectacular Crack-up" for a potential movie.

Yes, that's potential. Just because the rights to that Wired piece have been optioned doesn't mean that a movie will ultimately be made about Eriksson and crew.

Still, it could make for very interesting cinema, if done right. And that means not showing any Gizmondo in-game footage during the film.

Con man's story a real 'Crack-up' [The Hollywood Reporter via Gizmodo] [Image Credit]

The Jinsei Bank ("Life" Bank), Ikemen Bank ("Cool Guy" Bank) and BANKQUEST. The neat thing about doing the piece is that I actually "played" through all the banks. Had to get a huge stack of bills changed — "Jinsei Bank" can hold about a thousand bucks!

Be sure to click through the gallery to get the blow-by-blow gameplay account.

This Little Piggy Bank Became a Videogame [Wired]

It's one thing to adjust to life in Star City—but quite another to endure the confounding, confining, and sometimes just plain goofy training regimen. The first challenge is the language. Garriott is an autodidact wunderkind who persuaded his high school teachers that learning Basic code counted as fulfilling his foreign-language requirement. He won't be as fortunate at Star City. All of the instructions, instrumentation, and communications in space will be in Russian. So, for four hours a day, Garriott and Halik slave over fat, dusty language books in class, then tote them back to the Prophy to study more at night.

Great stuff. Click below to check out the full piece.

Going to Space? [Wired]

When asked about maintaining quality control at Nintendo, Miyamoto says the key is in avoiding Sega-style design. He tells Wired, "I'm always instructing my game designers on the history of the characters and worlds we've created. Often we're in development and I'll say, 'Oh, this looks like a Sega game. We need to make it look more like Mario.'" Ouch.

In Miyamoto's defense, he may have been talking about Sega's last decade or so of existence. And that's totally fair.

15th Anniversary: Revenge of the Wii [Wired via NeoGAF]

The three titles are called Rapid Onset, Sudden Thrust and Vital Passage, which is a Freudian trilogy if I've ever heard one. Seriously, the DIA's Bruce Bennet told Wired that the games are more effective than daylong powerpoint torture sessions at getting training and a message across. And I can dig that.

DIA aren't the only ones using video games to train analysts. The Army has a game training interrogators that is entitled "Intelligence and Electronic Warfare Tactical Proficiency Trainer Human Intelligence Control Cell," which is based on Far Cry's architecture.

Fascinating and enjoyable read, of course. And, ulterior motive, I know someone who also might kinda sorta do spooky intelligence shit and that person's monitored my Interwebs traffic before, so I'm wondering how soon after I post this that I'll get an email from ... oh Holy Jesus that was fast.

US Spies Use Custom Video Games to Learn How to Think [Wired]

Don't Be Overly Ambitious "We thought it wouldn't be too hard to design a realistic War of the Roses-era economy, complete with swords, armaments, horses, food, and clothing. You want to create a suit of armor? First you have to smelt brass to make the bolts and gather fibers to make string ... We soon learned why most designers don't do that level of realism."

Go Low Tech
"If you can't find a professional game studio to partner with, start small. There are lots of simple development platforms to experiment with. Look at Tribal Wars — it's an HTML-driven online game with hundreds of thousands of users. It can be played in a browser window."

Think About Your Audience
"We put Arden in front of Shakespeare experts and they loved it. We put it in front of play testers and they yawned. We'd get feedback like, 'I talked to that Falstaff guy for a while and got a quest to go repair something. I logged out and never came back.' Too much reading, not enough fighting. Arden II will be more of a hack-and-slash Dungeons and Dragons type of game."

Get a Full-Time Staff
"I love my students, but they just don't have the schedule to do this. I have a very able lead designer and an excellent lead artist, but they had to pause for midterms. You need a core group of 60-hour-a-week people."

Concede Screwups
"You face a moment where you can admit something isn't working or you can lie about it. It's like in Shakespeare's plays: The tragic heroes keep making new mistakes that compound their original mistakes. The comic heroes muddle around and find themselves in ridiculous circumstances, but in the end they accept their own humanity, and the audience respects them for it."

I hang out with other gamers all the time, but it's mostly in multiplayer online play, using headsets. It's social, sure. But as any psychologist will tell you, hanging out in real life allows for even richer styles of communication to emerge. In face-to-face mode, we're better at picking up the little nuances — frustration, glee, sarcasm, subvocalized ranting, body language — that build team cohesion, and allow us to game with a positively Vulcan level of mind meld.

All completely true. The most fun I've had gaming over the past few years have been on those rare occasions that I have someone else playing with or against me at my side. Hearing a voice on the headset is one thing. Being able to turn to your side and punch someone in the arm when they screw up is another thing entirely.

Gaming with your friends is something that should be encouraged more. Oddly enough, this is one area where the PC gamers - connected to the internet years before consoles - excel. Look at LAN parties. Everyone lugs a computer out to a centralized location, complete with monitors, mice, keyboards, power supplies, etc., just for a chance to see the look on their opponent's face when they shoot it off. We need console game gettogethers, where a few folks bring their televisions, consoles, and controllers and people just chill and play together.

Mind you, if I ever seriously refer to such get togethers as play dates you have my full permission to punch me in the neck.

Frag With a Friend for Ultimate Fun [Wired]

Mad Catz just announced they signed a multi-year deal with Harmonix and MTV to start cranking out peripherals and "other products" for Rock Band worldwide.

The company has the rights to manufacture, market and sell game accessories including wired and wireless bass guitars, drum percussions sets and a wired microphone. They expect their first controllers to hit by the first half of the year.

"This agreement with MTV Games represents a natural opportunity for Mad Catz to combine our core competencies of producing and distributing high-quality accessories with the entertaining experience of Rock Band's interactive controllers," said Darren Richardson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Mad Catz. "Mad Catz will produce premium instruments, allowing gamers and music fans to experience music in an entirely new light while taking on the personality of their favorite music idols."

"The addition of the Rock Band license is consistent with Mad Catz' stated goal to align ourselves with the most attractive brands and highly-anticipated software releases while seeking additional accessory opportunities to further diversify and grow our revenue base. With the ability to appeal to both hardcore and casual gamers alike, Rock Band is one of the most highly acclaimed releases of the 2007 holiday season and beyond."

I have very mixed feelings right now, VERY MIXED.

• Former Microsoft exec Peter Moore on Red Rings of Death:
"You know, things break."

• Nintendo president Satoru Iwata in May 2004:
"Customers do not want online games."

• SCEA boss Jack Tretton on post-launch PS3 availability:
"If you can find a PS3 anywhere in North America that's been on store shelves for more than five minutes, I'll give you 1,200 bucks for it."

• Nintendo's Perrin Kaplan on Wii owners running out of memory space:
"But if your refrigerator's full, you've got to pull something out and put something else back in. I mean, really, are you using everything thing there?"

• PlayStation Father Ken Kutaragi on the PS3's intial price tag:
"It's probably too cheap... We want consumers to think to themselves, 'I will work more hours to buy one.'"

Hey, at least most game execs are not boring!
Crazy Executive Quote Award [Game|Life] [Image]

It doesn't matter whether you've seen the Japanese reality show on which Game Center CX: Arino's Challenge is based. This new Nintendo DS game will deliver a dose of humorous and all-too-true retro game nostalgia to anyone who remembers the 80's.

Hey, remember the 80's? Remember poring over game magazines for cheat codes to help you get past the impossible sections of the short, difficult NES games of the era? Remember sitting around with your friends on lazy summer days trying to be the first one to get past that tricky part? So do the people who designed Game Center CX, an homage to 1985's game culture.

I don't throw a fit and smash my controller... Since the staff cheers me on, I hate it when I mess up. Like when I die, I can sense the mood in the room change, and I feel awful... When I get home, I just kinda sit there, zone out and wonder why I couldn't beat that game.

Wii. A motion-sensing controller, simple games, and a low price make this the top 7th-genner.

Xbox 360. Brilliantly conceived online-community features give this box sizzle.

PS3. Stellar specs can't make up for the high price and late release — a missed opportunity.

One time in high school, someone broke into my locker and stole my stuff, so I had to wear gym clothes for the rest of the day. I developed humor as a defense mechanism. Now I drive a fucking Mercedes.

Wired:...you want people to accept that this is what you're doing with this movie, that you're going to take taboo subjects and satirize them, but when I sort of take a subject like your movie and end up making a satirical or a funny article about that, I don't have the right to do that? Only you have the right...

UB: No, you have the right to do that, absolutely, but your article was not funny. Your article was only an ongoing insult against the untalented, bad director...You should admire that nobody else did what I did in the last ten years. Nobody else on the whole planet, not one filmmaker out of Germany was able to raise money. All the German money went to the Hollywood studios, I was the only guy doing it.

Maybe reviewers should be approaching Boll differently, like by asking why the one guy in Germany getting money to make movies is doing such a lousy job.

Uwe Boll Interview: 'I'm Not The New Ed Wood', 'You're Not A Good Journalist' [gamelife]

Uwe Boll, it seems was not as taken with Wired's Chris Kohler's take on Postal as we were. In fact the German-born director emailed Chris to, among other things, suggest he go have sex with his own mother.

chris your review shows me only that you dont understand anything about movies and that you are a untalented wanna bee filmmaker with no balls and no understanding what POSTAL is. you dont see courage because you are nothing. and no go to your mum and fuck her ...because she cooks for you now since 30 years ..so she deserves it. people like you are the reason that independent movies have no chance anymore. uwe boll PS: POSTAL is R RATED . The MPAA understood the satire — you not — you dumb fuck

The back and forth that stems from this first email is a bit funny, though taking Uwe on in a battle of wits is sorta like Uwe taking his detractors on in a boxing match.

I actually interviewed Boll back in 2006 and was impressed with his charm, something that likely speaks more to his ability to get financing and land actors than actually pull together a watchable movie. Boll is not the game-hating troll people think he is, but he also isn't the film-maker he thinks he is and all around, that's kinda sad.

'You Dumb F*ck': Uwe Boll Responds To Our Postal Review [Update 2] [Game Life]

Every time you fire up a new title, you've got to learn how to look around, run, and fire an Uzi all over again... Each game world is like a foreign country, full of unfamiliar sights and sounds and seemingly arbitrary rules. How do gamers survive in these strange lands? Clichés. Loads and loads of clichés.

Flipping through the latest issue of Wired Magazine, the Martha Stewart edition, I noticed that E3 made the Wired-Expired list... but not in a good way.

The info box lists E3 as Expired, Comicon as Tired and PAX as Wired. Wired has spoken: E3 is dead, long live PAX... not really, but it has to be a bit disheartening for the ESA to see Wired putting a bullet in the head of their baby.

Chronicle Books sent along a copy of Japan Schoolgirl Inferno for me to peruse. Really enjoyed the book and do recommend picking it up. Besides covering gaming, I'm been writing about Japanese schoolgirls for something like the past three years for Wired Mag, contributing to its "Japanese Schoolgirl Watch." Anyone who's lived in Japan for an extended period of time will tell you that the styles, tastes and even make-up of teenage girls are always changing. A few years back, girls started wearing Pooh Bear, Hamtaro, and Pikachu costumes in public. Called "Kigurumin" ("ethnic mascot" in Japanese), the trend died out by 2004 when gals realized there were better things to wear than Pikachu costumes. Thank gawd! Brian Ashcraft

I've got a shorty in the June issue of Wired mag on the recent spate of girl's games like My Happy Manner Book, DS Therapy, Female Power Emergency Up! and Yoga Anywhere. I spent some time playing those games, which reminded me of brain games. They are geared towards females, but didn't seem to pander anymore than Japanese female magazines do. Wired's Chris Kohler also has a look at the phenomenon that's definitely worth a read and has this from Elite Beat Agents designer Keiichi Yano:

When we come up with new project ideas, we take into consideration what the female gamer community is interested in and what DS games are selling for female users.

In a nutshell: Japanese devs are female-casual-gamer attack mode. How much longer till Western companies follow suit? Brian Ashcraft

Gamer Girls Take Over Japan [Wired]