Grand Theft Childhood Offers Unbiased Research on Game Violence

March 3, 2008 Industry News 2 Comments

Dr. Cheryl Olsen, co-author of Grand Theft Childhood, has some enlightening news to share everyone: video games are not as harmful as you think they are.

Olsen, who works as a researcher at the Massachusetts General Hospital, goes against conventional wisdom in her book by stating that much of the previous research on gaming has flaws because the researchers were focusing on teenagers and adults instead of children.

“The most-publicized studies,” said Olsen, “came from a small group of experimental psychologists studying college students playing nonviolent or violent games for 15 minutes. It’s debatable whether those studies are relevant to real children…”

Essentially, this confirms every gamer’s instinct: these are games! They’re not real, people!
Read the rest…

Morgan Webb on Girls in Gaming | Morgan Webb Talks about How She Ended up Where She Is

December 10, 2007 Industry News No Comments

There’s an interesting post over on MTV Multiplayer about Morgan Webb and her take on girls and their role in the video game industry.

She gets into how it is being one of the most noticeable faces of female gamers. (Many times during the interview, she states that she’s not the only female who plays games, she’s just one of the most visible because she has a TV show.)

Mostly, this interview focuses on the microcosm of female video game players, both inside and outside of the industry. This interview provides an interesting insight into one of the women who is at the forefront of the charge into a male-dominated profession. Though, as she tells it, it’s more happenstance than cunning, guile and scheming (I could easily imagine industry vets thinking that the way that women get in) that got her where she is today.

In fact, where she got her start, at the now defunct TechTV (I loved that station), she describes how she got her position, “I needed a job and so I go a job at TechTV.” As they like to say at Staples, “That was easy.”

It’s definitely a fun read and worth your time if you have it. Read the post.

Elder Scrolls Online a Go — Goodbye Outside World!

November 8, 2007 Industry News No Comments

Denying that you’re going online when you’ve registered ElderScrollsOnline.com is kinda silly, but what the heck, Bethesda did that. When their parent company, ZeniMax, swaggered online and procured that site, there was little doubt what was happening. And, after a paltry few days of denying the inevitable…wait for it…Bethesda’s Pete Hines confirmed that an MMORPG of Elder Scrolls is gonna happen!

Shocking, I know.

He says that they have already put $300 million into this project.

He also went on to say, “I don’t think that this funding changes our focus in terms of what we are about and are trying to accomplish. The additional resources will allow us to expand our publishing efforts-both our own titles and those of other studios-and to pursue development of more titles, working with internal and external development teams.”

What does it all mean? Well, it means that I might finally venture deeper in to the online gaming community. I mean…having lost many of my formative years playing the early Elder Scrolls games and then to see the big deal about Morrowind (finally, the general public caught on), I think that they’ve already got at least one person ready to roll and more than likely many people.

Let’s do this thang!

Atari Loses Money, Games, Will To Live

November 7, 2007 Industry News No Comments

Atari, one of the former giants of the video game world, might just be closing up shop…finally.

What’s the story with this 35-year-old company? Where did it all go so wrong? Well…where it started to go wrong is a a long tale indeed, but how they’re messing up in recent times is easy.

They have posted a $70 million loss for the last fiscal year, have fired most of their board, borrowed $10 million (I’d like to shake the hand of the person who thought it was a good idea to loan them the money) and now they’re reporting a $12 million loss for Q1.

Yup, Q1. As in, the one that ended on the last day of June. Apparently, they thought they could delay the inevitable.

They’ve already sold most of their popular franchises, such as Stuntman and Driver. Heck, they might even lose their Dragon Ball Z license.

Shock of shocks, in their quarterly report they state, “substantial doubt about [their] ability to continue as a going concern.”

And you know what? Coming from a guy who bought a Jaguar (I’m still bitter), why delay the inevitable? Fold up shop and go away.