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In summary: This bill is nothing to worry about (for people who play by the rules :-))

91.14. Prohibited sales of video or computer games to minors

-- whereas we want to protect kids, etc.etc dross omitted --

9 A. An interactive video or computer game shall not be sold, leased, or rented
10 to a minor if the trier of fact determines all of the following:
11 (1) The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would
12 find that the video or computer game, taken as a whole, appeals to the minor's
13 morbid interest in violence.
14 (2) The game depicts violence in a manner patently offensive to prevailing
15 standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable for minors.
16 (3) The game, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or
17 scientific value for minors.

-- the rest of it is just definitions, like what a computer game is etc. etc. --

Let's parse this thing, shall we?

First of all it says that all three conditions must be met at once:

It says in A: ... IF the trier of fact determines ***ALL*** of the following: [(1) (2) (3)]. That's a logical AND.

Conditions (1)(2) I wont discuss here because they will usually oscillate between true and false depending on ambient conditions such as experience-points of the lawyers involved, bribes and special phone calls.

Condition (3) is the really interesting condition. Since ALL conditions are true so that a game can be banned any game that does not satisfy this banning conditions can be given to kids even in Lousiana.

Condition (3) reads "The game, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or
17 scientific value for minors."

Basically all the game has to have is serious political value and then it can be sold, lent or otherwise given to
a minor. I would posit that the US after all the torture, murder and mayhem it enacts on its own citizens and the
rest of humanity bringing up a fresh generation of young Abu Ghraib guards with educational software such as
Half-life etc. is of sound political value, wouldn't you agree?

After all, it's the Department of Defense itself that makes and distributes such educational software such as America's Army (Get it FREE at http://www.americasarmy.com/) etc.

I think the only games that would really be banned with such a bill would be the games I would like to play like: Point blank: Taxevasion 2006. Ambush Journalist. Question Authority (Lightgun Version). Copkiller I - VII. CFR/Trilateral Commission/IMF Monopoly etc. etc.

Send a letter to your congressman and ask them why they don't support our troops.

Violent video games even permeate the highest levels of government: http://americasarmy.com/

Seriously, how accurate do you want a first shooter video game to be? While playing www.americasarmy.com should you be able to: desert while in a campaign, start a family, dig irrigation ditches for your farm, build your own mud brick house from materials found in the "map", convert to Islam, buy a lamb every year to be slaughtered for your neighbors?

I can understand some frustrations with gamers over "inaccurate physics" as they put it; namely, the indestructible door, the kevlar walking plank, but you should ignore those in favor of having:

• an inexhaustible amount of energy for movement
• an ability to carry multiple weapons unimpeded
• a lack of shoulder wear due to firing recoil
• a lack of sunburn damage and related skin cancer in outdoor "maps"
• a heads-up display (do you want to count bullet firing sounds?)
• a non-existant gastro-intestinal system
• a lack of dehydration and pathogens

Would you really want to play a game so "accurate" that you could die from diseases?

Suspension of disbelief works for movies, why shouldn't it work for games too? I would personally like to be able to blow up every standing building in every game, but, from a programming perspective that would require way too much of hardware and development time.

produce a propaganda videogame to indoctrinate impressionable kids with jingoistic bullshit, right?

http://www.americasarmy.com/

Yeah, cause countries like the United States never make propaganda games, right? Man, china's such a fucked up country! How dare they do this?!

Not only that, but in NetHack I can't kill anymore @'s.

Guess this means these guys can't peddle their wares in the volunteer state anymore. Pity.

Videogames are indirectly teaching young people "violent" behaviour?!?!?

The primary activity of the Army is train young people to kill. Give them lots of hard experience with and remove all reservations about killing.

Not to mention torture, nay, "interrogate".

http://www.goarmy.com/JobDetail.do?id=152
Human Intelligence Collector (97E)
Some of your duties as a Human Intelligence Collector may include:

Conducting debriefings and interrogations of HUMINT sources in English and -foreign languages-
Performing difficult interrogations

Do the millions of ex-military people suddenly forget all their violence when coming back home? Doesn't look like it.

http://www.courttv.com/news/2005/0210/armydoctor_a p.html
Army doctor who killed wife and daughters delays parole hearing

http://www.courttv.com/news/2005/0805/soldier_ap.h tml
A soldier who returned from Iraq nine days earlier apparently shot and killed his wife and then himself

http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,89236, 00.html Army officials have recommended a court-martial for a Purple Heart recipient accused of stabbing his young wife 71 times with knives and a meat cleaver.

The Army is needs of lots of violent, nay, "energetic", young people to kill people overseas, nay, "defend america". They pay salaries, promise bonuses, honors, and train assassins.

http://www.goarmy.com/

And they have their own videogame - America's Army. http://www.americasarmy.com/

I love americas army http://www.americasarmy.com/ ..
very role based, strategic shooting game...& above all its free ;-)

897MB compressed.

I love americas army http://www.americasarmy.com/ ..
very role based, strategic shooting game...& above all its free ;-)
$$ profit

If they do it well enough, they may even create games that are entertaining enough to play them for fun, even if they teach you something as a side effect.
Like, say, this one:
www.americasarmy.com
or these: www.sheppardsoftware.com

but it's an interesting scat on the seemingly pervasive branded advergames that have taken over.

For perspective, I wonder if the submitter believes that America's Army is an "advergame".

The common understanding seemes to be that such games are of low quality and value, but does that necessarily have to be the case?

It's very cool. And very real. If you do well in the game, you might get a call from a U. S. Army recruiter. "Hey, kid, how'd you like to do some real fragging?".

and am I correct to say that the U.S. army actually helped make it or am I mistaken?

The only video game I know of that the US Army (or any DoD agency) helped to create was "America's Army". Given what I have seen of many games out there, this one is quite tame in comparison.

i wonder how this legislation would affect america's army -- the game that is promoted by the u.s. army for recruitment and training . . .

http://www.americasarmy.com/

mr c.

Play the latest version of America's Army, then. They frown on it too because it isn't a real-world combat tactic so they've limited the set of actions you can combine with a jump to basically nothing.

However, contrary to your claims, from what I can tell, the Linux version is 0.1 (i.e. one revision) behind the Windows version (2.3 and 2.4, respectively). Thus far, I've not experienced problems, but I've not played it for a bit either.

However, contrary to your claims, from what I can tell, the Linux version is 0.1 (i.e. one revision) behind the Windows version (2.3 and 2.4, respectively). Thus far, I've not experienced problems, but I've not played it for a bit either.

There is always "Americas Army" ;) If you can ignore propaganda, its a good game though.

http://www.americasarmy.com/

For the love of god won't someone please mod America's Army.

A taxpayer funded game that shows nudity and sex. What would happen? Would they shutdown the game servers? Stop distributing the games?

And the most important question of all: How hard would this make me laugh?

So this might well be A Good Thing(tm), as it brings a fresh infusion of programming talent into the educational software arena, but it's not exactly shocking news.

• MacSoft
  
• Aspry (Scroll Down to find list)
  
• Feral Interactive
  
• Freeverse
  
• Ambrosia
  
• Pangea
  
• Blizzard
  
• United States Army

• MacGameFiles
  
• Apple: Games

"Why are we here?" "You have been chosen to defend the starleague against Zur and the Codan Armada". "Oh, NO!" -- The Last Starfighter

Shoot-em ups are fun, if you keep yourself saying they are not for real. They become disgusting and dangerous if they are a replacement and/or training for real life.

It's called US-Soldier. What a wild game! You don't have to buy it

...because players in the USA can download it for no charge.

That's pretty vital to most governments and large organizations, too.

I assume that you meant that as sarcasm, but at least one agency of the U.S. Government uses a game based on the Unreal engine as a recruiting tool.

I think it would be interesting to see what the results of this would be. Consider that the average soldier/sailor is in the prime target age for MMOGs.

If nothing else it would help the DOD better understand how soldiers/sailors spend their time and if there was anything to be gained by creating something like America's Army. I think it is interesting that the DOD is looking to use games for more than just entertainment. Full Spectrum Warrior was pretty fun. I would think that two competive privates would have fun going head to head with a realistic game like Full Spectrum Warrior.

So murder is only 'good clean fun' for children when its funded/promoted by the US government: http://www.americasarmy.com/

When video game bashing starts why does no one mention the one game that was specifically designed to turn young people into killing machines? The one that was built with tax dollars.

kill bot factory = not a problem
art = real threat

goverment sponsored no less
clicky

unless you are saying they have wasted 200+ million dollars and games do not influence you at all

Fallacious thinking on behalf of Israel military people. I wonder if a county whose identity is rooted so strongly in a state-sponsored faith can see outside of the box as the United States has in accepting almost any religion, yet taking no direct preference in any one.

(This isn't a jab at the Jewish faith at all. I'm about to join the Catholic faith myself, but the question is there, as I'll explain.)

There are a few studies that show positives with game playing. At heart, a proper game based on reality or fantasy settings in an Earth-like setting is a simulation. Sims teach with low costs and reduce or eliminate the expenses needed in live training. Twitch games aid in dexterity and coordination, of course.

And the US Army believes that a good sim of their work is also not only a fun game, but a great recruiting tool.

While board games like D&D itself may not show an immediate dividend to fighting a war, consider that any game helps plot strategy, conserve resources, and deal consequence.

Game playing may help a soldier think "outside of the box" in a combat situation where unusual solutions with conventional weapons and tactics may prove worthwhile. It seems that the Israeli Army may decide to stick to convention.

Which FPSs are military sponsored?

There you go

For all those interested in free online FPS's, there is a free game similar to Counter-Strike called "Americas Army: Special Forces" which is put out as a srecruiting tool by the US military, and can be downloaded here: http://www.americasarmy.com/

AA:SF is great fun, and Linux and Mac clients are on the official site as well. The graphical quality on most missions is not as good as HL2, but still decent nonetheless.

Player and Army Privacy

"Finally privacy is a big concern for us. Players register under a userid and gameplay information cannot be traced to an individual's real identity."

Obviously, anything online can track all sorts of information about a user (duh), I guess I just find it funny they offer the warm and fuzzy privacy gurantees on one page, and then threaten(?) "naughty" users elsewhere on the site, after they get a mad-on.

While I don't think it's Open Source, I do think that America's Army is good example of what a free game can be. Many of my friends prefer it to their store-bought games. (And there's a Linux version.)

While I don't think it's Open Source, I do think that America's Army is good example of what a free game can be. Many of my friends prefer it to their store-bought games. (And there's a Linux version.)

With edonkey network (as well as KaZaA and Gnutella) you can distribute small links to content without requiring either torrent hosts or trackers.

Tell me, has Gnutella become 9000% more efficient in the past year? (Ratio of overhead byte to file data) I haven't looked at it lately, but that's what it would need to become competitive with Bit Torrent.

Torrents suck. There is nothing good about torrents. They are huge, they require gobs of bandwidth and you can't distribute them without setting a server.

Lies. A largish torrent is 30kb. That's not huge. And you don't "need a server" anymore than you do with Kazaa or edonkey (which is to say, you do need a program capable of handling the service, something a modern bittorrent client does transparently) There are many dedicated edonkey servers out there, you know...

Torrents are excellent because the follow the Unix software-design philosophy about separation of functionality ("Do one thing, and do it well"). P2p file transfer and file searching are wholely different tasks, and should be cleanly separated as much as possible.

One useful benefit (amoung many) is that Bit Torrent is legal, while edonkey is often (and unpredictably) illegal... I can join a bittorrent for a free videogame and be 100% certain that 0% of my bandwidth is supporting traffic in handicam movies and child porn.

If the ed2k-style file search feature was actually better enough to be attractive, then it could be easily used in conjunction with bittorrent as an entirely separate application.

PS. ed2k links are fatally flawed. The hash algorithm they use is trivally vulnerable to poisoning: an attacker can easily corrupt everyone's downloads, and the network has no defense mechanism.

And yet they have blogs.

America's Army is sponsored by Uncle Sam, and is therefore patriotic and American and all that (apologies if the poster is not in the US).

Failing that, there's always Lords of Conquest or Master of Orion 2 if you want to kick it old school.

Hey, if a parent wants to train their child to become a better killer, what right does the government have to interfere in that natural order?

I am not familiar with that game, but I can comment about the whole on-line thing.

I think you're missing the point. It's not about the downloading. America's Army is a propaganda game produced by the US Army to encourage kids to enlist, and to promote a positive image of the Army. It features combat against 'terrorists' and 'insurgents' (no innocent civillians killed in this version of warfare!).

What a great example of consensus morality. Here's a stunning thought: what if more people (and video games companies) did what they thought was right, rather than what most other people thought was right?

I don't see that being a 'historical event' is much of a mitigating factor. So was 9/11, and I think most people would be quite offended if someone were to make a 'hit the twin towers flight simulator'-type game out of it

Again with the "most people" morality. What are you, afraid of being disliked?

Personally I think America's Army is one of the scariest developments on the market and was unshocked (perhaps even intrigued) when Under Ash presented an alternate viewpoint (not that I support that viewpoint, me being a loony extreme pacifist and all that).

As for games like Hitman and GTA, the actions of the character are clearly immoral: that's the whole vicarious fun of it. You really have to shed this tepid Puritan morality and recognize that art can and does depict dark stuff. Mod me flamebait, but I'd bet hard money that a 9/11 game is not long in coming.

Just my two cents, of course, but with videogames like this, maybe the outrage at the lack of decency should be directed a little more broadly...

The answer to the first question, taken literally, is "yes, obviously". Presuming you really mean "anyone" as a casual way of saying for "a very large portion of the general market" then the answer right now is "no". But...

Does *nix really think it a chance in the desktop sector considering how entrenched Windows is?

This is a different question altogether, and the answer is "yes".

See, most people really DON'T care what OS brand name they use so much as they care about being able to play well with others - whether the "others" are other computer environments that the user is already familiar with, or other people playing the user's favorite game, or websites on the internet and email clients on their friend's computer, or being able to look at the slideshows that someone else produced and uploaded, or whatever...

Most people also don't want to blow wads of money on licensing if they don't have to.

The "typical" computer user these days seems to be interested almost entirely in email, web browsing, and "Mahjong" games. These basic functions are already well supported in *nix environments and ready to be sold as "appliances" running *nix to anyone who is satisfied with those basic requirements. Related to email and web, though, people also want to be able to watch all those little internet videos that their friends email to them, which are often in proprietary formats. Now, MPlayer already supports all of the major formats pretty well, and plugins are available to use it to play internet videos in Microsoft(r)'s formats, Apple(r) Quicktime(tm), and so forth, not to mention the existence of the Helix media player as well. So, that's possible to take care of.

The slideshows (I refuse to call it a "presentation" when there is nobody actually presenting...), word-processor documents, and spreadsheets can all be handled pretty well by OpenOffice. There are still a few formatting differences that come up sometimes when loading a file produced by a Microsoft(r) program, but I'd call it "good enough for typical home use". Plus, the ability to generate .pdf's natively built in means if someone is USING OpenOffice they can generate documents that look correct on everyone's computers. So, for ordinary home users, this is also at a "good enough" stage.

That's not all of the market, or I think even a majority, but it's a pretty big chunk. What's really missing, as the Slashdot discussion boards echo loudly with every time this subject comes up, is video games. Right now, most are written exclusively for the purpose of being installed on a Microsoft(r) Windows(tm) general-purpose operating system, and this does create a genuine speedbump in the path of *nix desktop marketshare.

However, the concept of having a dedicated "boot disk" for running a video game has been around for a very long time. Tech support people tend to love them, because when used, the video game in question ends up running on a known, well-characterized environment without other processes interfering. Because providing tech support costs money, software company tend to love anything that reduces the need for tech support.

Since it seems like most people who are playing anything more intensive than "Mahjong" or "Solitaire" usually play full-screen and dedicating all of their attention to the game (and generally want as little running in the background reducing their framerates as possible), the possibility of distributing videogames on self-contained boot CD's is very real. The boot disk might be a no-license-fee-paid-by-the-software-company Linux disk, as they've talked about doing (have already done?) with America's Army. I think the only technical capability lacking to make this really feasible is full write support for NTFS (since

Live in your world. Get pwned in mine.

"When Gaming Trains You For Work"

The US Army has been doing this for a while.

Ever hear of America's Army?