Slashdot Mirror

dotarray writes "Iranian gamers hoping to get their hands on Battlefield 3 will be sorely disappointed, as the country has officially banned EA's latest shooter. Why? The game features an American war force launching an assault on Iranian capital city Tehran."

dotarray writes "Despite stories suggesting that a change to the Australian ratings system may be as far as two years away, the Federal Minister for Home Affairs has announced that each Australian state and territory has signed off on the final guidelines required for the introduction of an adult R18+ classification Down Under."

dotarray writes "An American aquarium supplier obviously has a gamer on the payroll, after naming two new forms of Acanthastrea coral after Activision's shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops. From the article: 'The Facebook post announcing the two new forms openly admits to the video gaming influence – and it’s not the first time a video game has inspired the Quality Marine coral namer – One of Swords points out that earlier this month, The Master Chief made its glorious pink-and-purple debut.'"

dotarray writes "In what's believed to be an industry first, a developer has begun talks with the American Food and Drug Administration to get its game recognized as a therapeutic drug. 'Brain Plasticity has been fine-tuning a game to help people with schizophrenia improve the deficits in attention and memory that are often associated with the disorder. Early next year, they will conduct a study with 150 participants at 15 sites across the country. Participants will play the game for one hour, five times a week over a period of six months. If participants' quality of life improves at that "dosage," Brain Plasticity will push ahead with the FDA approval process.'"

dotarray writes "Diablo III really can't be that far off now. Blizzard has just announced that the closed beta test for the game has kicked off – meaning you can start checking your inboxes for an invitation now." The expanded Friends&Family test had been underway for a week or so, but now gaming sites are getting invitations. Of course, given the popularity of Diablo III, phishers are out in force with fake beta invites. For those who opted-in, the best way to check is to simply log in to your battle.net account. The beta is limited in terms of content — it only includes the first couple hours worth of play in Act 1 — but all five classes are available for play. There's no NDA, so plenty of commentary has sprung up already. Rock, Paper, Shotgun has early impressions of the Demon Hunter. Blizzard has also created a skill calculator for anyone who wants to play around with character builds ahead of time. The beta will be expanding in waves as they ramp up stability tests.

dotarray writes "Even though an adult rating for video games has been approved in theory for Australia, it's still a little ways off – and will not come soon enough for Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad. Alan Wilison, VP with the company producing the game, said, 'We are hoping that they will take the same view as PEGI/BBFC and not go all silly on us. However, until we're sure, we putting LV up to be safe.'"

dotarray writes "In Adelaide today, the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General was again unable to reach a unanimous decision on the topic of whether or not Australia should have an R18+ rating for video games." Nonetheless, the committee has reached a decision in principle to allow such a rating, with only one Attorney General having abstained from today's vote.

UgLyPuNk writes "Just a few hours after the Australian gaming public was confused by the stance taken by the South Australian Attorney-General, they're now getting angry over his New South Wales counterpart's decision. While the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General had planned on making a decision regarding the introduction of an R18+ rating for video games on Friday at a meeting in Adelaide, the NSW Attorney-General has announced he will not vote on the topic at this time."

An anonymous reader writes "Is Minecraft really changing the gaming industry fundamentally? This author certainly thinks so, and even goes so far as to consider Minecraft's world manipulation a paradigm shift along the lines of 3D-gaming during the early '90s. 'Every block in the game is available to pick up and reallocate. We can tear down and build up. The neat thing is that future games does not need to be as liberal, but they will need to consider how they can make the environment a hell of a lot more manipulable. Now, this is quite a bit too simplified and the vast majority of games must not feature a shovel worthy of digging to the center of the earth, but giving the user power over everyday things (still in game worlds) will be a worthy challenge to consider.'" Minecraft may give us power over everyday things in the real world, too.

dotarray writes with this piece on GamePron with a piece of game pr0n: "If you're big on nostalgia, but small on space, we might just have the solution for you. A clever gentleman has created a teeny-tiny '80s arcade cabinet that will fit happily on your desktop – and while it might look like a mere mock-up, this one actually works, playing Space Invaders on the miniature screen."

dotarray writes "If your parents tell you that playing video games will never get you anywhere, point them in the direction of Lucas Ordoñez. Three years ago, Lucas heard about a competition for racing game fans – the Nissan PlayStation GT Academy. Inspired, Lucas picked up a PlayStation 3 and a copy of Gran Turismo and practiced and practiced and practiced. This week, along with his teammates Franck Mailleux and Soheil Ayari, Lucas could not stop smiling as he stood on the Le Mans 24 Hours podium after taking second in class."

dotarray writes "Activision has denied it and denied it, but now it's been revealed – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 will feature an online service (that's what Call of Duty Elite is), complete with monthly subscription fees. 'Activision executives said they haven't yet figured out how much to charge for the service, but they expect the cost to be less than fees for comparable online-entertainment services, such as a $7.99-a-month Netflix Inc. movie subscription. Portions of the service will be free, including features inspired by Facebook Inc. that will let Call of Duty players meet for online gun battles with others who share various affiliations and interests. Another feature of the service will give Call of Duty players tools, modeled on those from stock-trading websites, to analyze their performance within the game, gauging factors such as which weapons have been most successful for them in killing enemies.'"

dotarray writes "Ever wanted to fight Somali pirates without leaving the safety of your computer? Well, believe it or not, the United States Navy could use your help. MMOWGLI is a new video game project (that's Massive Multiplayer Online WarGame Leveraging the Internet, by the way) that is being used to crowdsource ideas on how to fight off maritime terrorists and hopefully secure the Horn of Africa."

dotarray writes "Osama bin Laden's final hiding spot in Abbottabad, Pakistan, has been made into a playable map for Counter-Strike: Source. Honestly, we're a little surprised that it took this long."

dotarray writes "The Australian classification debate has just gotten a little more interesting, with South Australian Attorney-General John Rau announcing that he wants to go one step further than merely introducing an R18+ rating for video games. His proposed plan would change the system to include G, PG, M and R18+ classifications (while still allowing for games to be Refused Classification or effectively banned), making a 'clear difference' between what adults can play and what is available to children."

UgLyPuNk writes "A few hours ago, Garry Newman – the creator of Garry's Mod – asked, quite innocently, whether anyone was unable to shade polygon normals. He received a few comments, mostly jokes, but a quick look at Google suggests that there are indeed a few people who are experiencing problems with their game. You can hear Newman's chuckling from here — not the normal response to a wide-spread bug report, but this is no normal bug. It seems that the developer has deliberately enabled an error in GMod, which will only affect people who have pirated the game."

dotarray writes "Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment have confirmed that they are appealing the Australian Classification Board's decision to effectively ban the reboot of Mortal Kombat in that country. The publisher has also confirmed that there is no intention to censor or modify the game – because then it 'wouldn't be Mortal Kombat.'"

dotarray writes "In case you still somehow didn't believe yesterday's news that Duke Nukem Forever had been given an MA15+ rating in Australia – effectively evading the notoriously strict censors, GamePron now has confirmation that the Duke has not been edited in any way for an Australian release. Hooray!"

UgLyPuNk writes "Of course it's not called the PSP2, because that would be too obvious and straightforward for the games industry. For the moment, at least, you'll be looking forward to news about the NGP – the Next Generation Portable." ARM® Cortex-A9 core (4 core), SGX543MP4+, Front and Rear camera. Rear touch pad, GPS.

TechieAlizay points out a post at Geekword.net about a man who hacked Microsoft's Kinect to play Max Payne. "This hack was possible due to FAAST (a toolkit for Kinect), OpenNi/Nite and GlovePIE. Here's how the hacker describes the different control gestures: 'As you can see, the leaning left and right stuff is all there – and moving your body forward and back moves you back and forward. The reload and interact gestures are becoming pretty standard for me now, and pain killers are popped with an upward motion of the left hand. What makes this special though is the leg movements that activate bullet time. The result is bullet time diving for real! When this game hit just after the Matrix film came out, it caused a big stir – with Kinect augmentation it gets even better. The one thing that needs fixing is weapon select; this will be handled by the +/- buttons on the mote in future, I think.'" Another video shows Kinect controlling Left 4 Dead 2. In addition to future PC support, Microsoft is reportedly working on an official SDK. Yet another recent hack of note allows a human to control a humanoid robot with an impressive level of accuracy. Just be careful if you play the Kinect boxing game; somebody might call the police.

dotarray writes "Online copyright lawsuits aren't all about music. Video game publisher Atari Europe recently became concerned that copies of its game Alone in the Dark were floating around one-click file-hosting service RapidShare, so it took the hosting company to court. While they won the initial case, the decision was overturned on appeal, finding that RapidShare is doing nothing wrong."

dotarray writes "From the article: 'Rockstar Games are no strangers to legal action, but it doesn't come stranger than this. An American model, Michael Washington (known as "Shagg") is suing the publisher — as well as parent company Take Two Interactive — because they based Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on his life.'" It's a good thing Washington never learned the infinite ammo cheat.

dotarray writes "Even with the news last week that an Australian Government study found no conclusive link between video games and violence, it's still a little surprising that the federal Labor government has announced today that they support the move for an adult R18+ rating for video games in that country."

UgLyPuNk writes "Takayuki Fukatsu, a Japanese coder who works under the name Art & Mobile, has done a bit of trickery with Kinect and openFrameworks. The peripheral will still track your movement and position, but turns your image nearly transparent. Take a look (it's particularly obvious at about 1:30):"

dotarray writes "Apple's Game Center has just made itself a few enemies through a simple change to their Terms of Service. Now, whenever you send a friend invitation, your real name will be attached as well as your Apple ID." Apparently they didn't learn from the poor reaction to Blizzard's similar idea.

UgLyPuNk writes "After many, many delays, Gran Turismo 5 has finally gotten a solid release date: November 24th. ('Tis the season for vaporware titles to emerge into the real world, it seems.)" Eurogamer posted a preview of the game back in August, saying, "It's been a whirlwind of features and car chatter, beneath which the game still looks fantastic. It may have been in development for the whole of this console generation, but the technical arms race has slowed down and GT5 still looks as good as any other racing game we've seen, and it is, to say the least, comprehensive." Joystiq has a video of the course maker and a collection of screenshots.

dotarray writes with news that Amazon's Kindle will now play text-based adventure games, such as Zork. From the article: "... And it makes a ridiculous amount of sense: text is gorgeous and easily-readable on the e-ink screens, the lack of color isn’t a problem, and – let’s face it – the sort of people who are likely to buy an e-reader are exactly the sort of people who are likely to love vintage games. ... The developers have also integrated a save-game feature so you can pick up where you left off, using Amazon’s Whispernet feature – and promise that they are looking to put more modern Z-machine games into the system, too. (Squee!) Unfortunately, it’s not perfect. The Zork family of games are notoriously frustrating (even when you’re not eaten by a Grue), and the Kindle’s text entry system doesn’t help with that, especially when entering numbers. A full keyboard would make things more fluid, but – really – if you want that, why not just play on your PC?"

dotarray writes "An Australian man who took Sony to court over the company's decision to remove Linux functionality from the PS3 console has now lost his claim, with the court clearing the manufacturer of any wrongdoing regarding the upgrade."

dotarray writes "Hope may be at hand for the poor souls addicted to video games. Recent research from South Korea has shown that a common anti-depressant, Bupropion (sold as Welbutrin, Zyban and Voxra) can 'decrease craving for Internet game play' as well as the brain activity triggered by video game cues. This is a drug often used to help quit smoking, to lose weight or to recover from drug addiction, in addition to typical anti-depressant and anti-anxiety uses. And, with Korean scientists already on-board, how better to test this theory than to gather up a bunch of StarCraft players?"

dotarray writes "Everybody knows that there's a certain risk one takes when playing addictive, engrossing games can be trouble when you're meant to be doing something else. The prevalence of awesome games on the iPhone hasn't helped that risk. A Plants Vs. Zombies loving police officer has learned this the hard way after an escape."

UgLyPuNk writes with news of a report that Blizzard has spent over $100 million developing StarCraft II. Initial development on the game began in 2003, and it's due to be released on July 27th. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick "described StarCraft as one of the company’s seven 'pillars of opportunity' (where each pillar has the potential to deliver operating profit between $500 million and $1 billion over its life span)." The finalized system requirements for the game have been released, and players planning to buy the digitally distributed version can download it now, though it won't be playable until the 27th.

UgLyPuNk writes "A group of inmates at the Huai'an Internet Addiction Treatment Centre decided they'd had enough of the 'monotonous work and intensive training.' Working together, they tied their duty supervisor to his bed and made a run for it. The 14 patients, aged from 15 to 22, hailed a taxi to take them to a nearby town — but were uncovered when the driver took them to the police station instead, suspicious of the identically dressed young men who were unable to pay the fare."

UgLyPuNk writes with an excerpt from Gamepron.com: "Freeware games can actually cost you more money than their pay-to-play cousins, as mobile gamers in the UK have learned. A 'booby-trapped' version of a popular Windows Mobile game has been sneakily spending their money while they sleep – by dialing phone numbers in the Antarctic behind their backs."

UgLyPuNk writes "This could be a good thing or a bad thing: EA has just confirmed that it's making Mass Effect into a movie. The franchise has been acquired by Legendary Pictures, which is best known for its co-productions of The Dark Knight, Clash of the Titans, 300, Watchmen, and, um, The Hangover, as part of a co-financing agreement with Warner Bros."

Dexter Herbivore writes "Australian gamers are yet again left disappointed by their government's response to a lack of an R18+ rating for games. Gamespot reports that Home Affairs Minister Brendan O'Connor has blamed 'interest groups' for swamping the public consultation with pro-R18+ submissions. From the article: 'A strong response from gamer groups in the Australian Federal Government's R18+ public consultation has led Censorship Ministers to claim that more views from the community are needed before a decision into the introduction of an R18+ classification for video games can be reached.'" Reader UgLyPuNk adds that support for the new rating is coming from unexpected places.

UgLyPuNk writes "In amongst all the lawsuits and signings, Activision and Treyarch have found the time to announce the latest in one of the world's best-selling video game franchises: Call of Duty: Black Ops is due to hit shelves November 9." The official site has a trailer, which has been dissected for details by the folks at GameTrailers.

dotarray writes with this snippet: "The largest scandal in e-sports history is currently unfolding in Korea, with revelations that a number of current pro gamers are involved with match setups and illegal betting. While the gamers are unnamed at this point, the story is said to touch many A-list StarCraft celebrities, including sAviOr, Ja Mae Yoon, one of the best-known and most successful players of all time."