With so many voicing concerns about violent games, and infantilizing the medium while they do so, it's easy for those of us who actually play and defend videogames to forget that kids really do like them too. But then considering kids games often look like shoveled out, licensing grabs, it's amazing they do at all.

Being fair, as a whole kids' games aren't always bad, even when they seem licensed to a ridiculous degree. Just look at Traveller's Tales' Lego Star Wars games. Some how they've managed to make a kids' game, designed around two franchises, that even the most hardcore gamer can enjoy.

During his keynote at the Nordic Game Summit, the head of Traveller's Tales, Jonathan Smith, explained just how his company came to make a kids game any kid could be proud to own. It all came from this realization: “"We believed that children were very badly served by the games they were being given,” he said, adding, “"as parents at the time with children ourselves we knew that children were looking for things in games that they were rarely getting. We identified a market opportunity."

Smith even thinks kids make the best game testers, and Traveller's Tales uses them as such while developing their games. You can't always rely on adult's, because, according to Smith, adults' experience with bad games leaves them jaded and cynical about many new ideas. Kids though, they'll try anything, and tell you right away if they like it or not, Smith said. "We continue to find that by a thousand miles they are the best people to judge whether the work that we are putting into the game is the right work,"

[via GameIndustry]

SEGA was forced to take down a website promoting the upcoming release of Condemned 2: Bloodshot after Hasbro complained about a character bearing a striking resemblance to those in its 'My Little Pony' franchise. Mumble WTF to yourself and read on.

To promote the next episode in its popular dark fantasy franchise, SEGA created an animated Flash world populated with clowns, butterflies, candy throwing Oompa Loompa-like elves and, of course, Percy the Pony. Mashing up Saturday Morning culture with John Wayne Gacy, the site mocks the sanitized, infantilizing smarminess so prevalent in the product-driven cartoons of the 1980s and early 1990s. Clicking on the happy characters swinging from clouds and dancing in pastures triggers music videos where the saccharin-voiced toons sing about rusty razor blades, bums in dumpsters and the joy of spilling blood. Obviously, when it came to Percy the Pony, Hasbro was not amused.

Bloodied but unbowed, SEGA has since restored the site, now sporting a tombstone in the corner with today's date on it. Though you can no longer hear Percy and her friends sing about dismembered body parts under a rainbow sky, the rest of the cast remains intact.

The entire affair is a near-perfect microcosm of the issue of violence in games. Game publisher releases a product that is easily taken as marketed, you know, for kids but is actually only appropriate for adults. Said game publisher has blown it by not making this fact clearer, so now the adults in the audience are forced to fight over access to something they've every right to. Offsetthevil.com's creators have expertly satirized the tension between children, violence and videogames. And they've done so with an amazing grasp of bad taste.

If offsettheevil.com finds
its way into the mainstream, it's almost a guaranteed firestarter for
the industry, especially since there isn't even an age confirmation
dialog required to view the site.
Given the undeniable humor and chilling juxtaposition of candy ponies
and murderous footage from the game, we'll almost surely be hearing
more about this in the news.

Bottom line: At this point, two generations of gamers have now grown up into adults, and many of these adults are no longer interested in playing in the same worlds that entranced them as 10-year-olds. Some of them, in fact, are interested in some very dark themes, as is their prerogative. For them, we present the posthumous Percy video below. For the rest...well, Hasbro has a cute plastic pony to sell you.

[via Sydney Morning Herald]

Visual culture gets a treat this week with the opening of KRAZY! The Delerious World of Anime + Comics + Videogames + Art. The exhibit, hosted by the Vancouver Art Gallery, is curated by a crew of influential artists, including comic artist Seth, graphic novelist Art Spiegleman and filmmaker Tim Johnson (Antz, Over the Hedge). Will Wrightt will be curating the game front, and on June 4, the Spore genius will lead a panel discussion.

In an interview with The Province, organizer Bruce Grenville described the motivation for the show:

An exhibit like this attempts to give you a framework or language and a history for all of this stuff that you see and how to approach it with an eye to appreciating that there are some extraordinary artworks in that field that, if you haven't encountered them yet, you've really missed something.

We were interested in linking to the Asia-Pacific, to the large local video-game culture and to liase with the Centre for Digital Media and reflect the level of dialogue that occurs between visual artists, anime, manga, vide- game designers, cartoon artists

According to the press release:

KRAZY! will occupy two
entire floors of gallery space and is designed in collaboration with Tokyo-based
architectural firm Atelier Bow-Wow—a design team renowned for their understanding
of informal culture and ability to enhance communal visual experiences. Divided into
seven sections defined by medium, the exhibition takes viewers through ever-
changing gallery environments, which include a mini-theatre for viewing animated
cartoons and anime, immersive video spaces and innovative reading environments
for visitors to experience a deluge of manga, graphic novels and comics.

The list of artists represented at the show is absolutely amazing: Moyoco Anno,
Lynda Barry, Marcel Broodthaers, Chester Brown, Cao Fei, Milt Gross, Pierre Huyghe, Ichiro Itano, Tim
Johnson, Yoko Kanno, Satoshi Kon, Harvey Kurtzman, John Lasseter, Roy Lichtenstein, Christian
Marclay, Winsor McCay, Sid Meier, Shigeru Miyamoto, Junko Mizuno, Mamoru Nagano, Claes
Oldenburg, Mamoru Oshii, Katsuhiro Otomo, Nick Park, Raymond Pettibon, Seth, Iwatani Toru, Chris
Ware, Masaaki Yuasa and many more.

The exhibit is at the Vancouver Art Gallery today until September 7, and a companion book published by the University of California Press is also available. The exhibit's organizers plan to bring the show to an undisclosed New York gallery sometime in 2009.

[via The Province]

Microsoft plans to make a $147 million investment in South Korean technology and education, with a big part of that sum targeting the video game industry. According to Gamasutra, Microsoft has slated $23 million to help train South Korean game designers, artists and programmers. Including the Korean government's contribution, a total of $313 million will be spent to boost the pool of qualified game makers. In partnership with the Korea Game Industry Agency (KOGIA), the program hopes to graduate 1,000 developers over the next three years.

Also part of the deal is a collaboration with Hyundai to develop a new in-dash music and "entertainment system" for automobiles. According to AFP, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates told reporters that "another new development is a games development center to take some unique work here and adopt it to the [Xbox] 360 global market."

[via Gamasutra]

As if you won't see this posted by every other blogger who knows how to push 'copy code,' we offer you Zero Punctuation's take on Grand Theft Auto IV. Shockingly, this battle royale between two of gaming's shiniest obsessions is oddly dull. Croshaw's usual capering about in the gutters of tedious gameplay and his normally charming stick figure slapstick comes off a bit leaden.

It's not because the snipes are unfounded, because they're not--GTA IV can be a very boring ride, indeed, depending on who's at the wheel. Instead, it's that, for the first time ever, the usually impeccable, manic ranting with the Monty Python accent seems forced and, worse, uninspired. No matter, the video review still demands attention, if for no other reason than the voyeuristic delight of watching two gaming rockstars square off.

[via The Escapist]

It wouldn't be of much note to post a video of Missile Command played on a wall-sized screen. Large video screens ceased being much of a marvel sometime shortly after the advent of the pixelate-everything Jumbotron in the 1980s. What is worth noting is when said wall-sized screen is a massive multi-touch surface that asks players to sweep their hands across the playing field in order to stop threads of retro nuclear warheads from destroying their cities.

We're sorry to see the venerable trackball supplanted, but this "hands on" approach to stemming the tide of nuclear armageddon looks like too much fun not to share.

[via The Bits, Bytes, Pixels, Sprites]

Videogames Live has championed the majesty of game scores (the musical kind, not the points) around the world, and now it looks like the fever is spreading to college campuses. The University of Maryland Gamer Symphony Orchestra is the first ensemble of college fanboys and girls to take their passion to the recital stage.  Founded in 2005 at the University of Maryland, the GSO has grown from a handful to more than 50 musicians, and their alma mater is finally taking notice.

According to the University of Maryland's daily paper, Diamondback, the gamer orchestra has put on several shows at the college campus but only recently got permission to give a performance in one of its theaters. Robert Garner, the group's president, is ecstatic:

The GSO is two-and-a-half years old, and being able to play in a venue like CSPAC, it gives us visibility and it gives us the quality," Garner, an information studies graduate student, said. "There is no way to compare playing in CSPAC with some of the other venues that we have played in the past. So we're really looking forward to playing in essentially a professional environment.

This is music that you all grew up listening to, but it's being played in an almost entirely different way," he said. "When people get there, they're going to hear so much more than just the melody they might have heard when they were playing their [Super Nintendo] ten years ago.

When not playing their instruments in service of the greater game cultural good, the GSO hold an annual DeathMatch For Charity tournament. This year's contest hosts Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart Double Dash and of course, Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band. Hmmm. Those last two sound a bit unfair.

[via Diamondback]

Sometimes great ideas flop for no better reason than they aren't marketed well. That can't be said of PMOG, a new kind of online game that just went public today. PMOG stands for, and here's the great marketing bit, passively multiplayer online game. It's a cross between an MMO and an alternate reality game.

In PMOG, each player racks up points while surfing the web with a Firefox browser plug in. You spend those points on things like mines, which work as traps, exploding in the face of the next player who visits that site. Buying armor mitigates the damage caused by mines and you can also spend points to attach devices to mine-loving players, making their next mine drop ineffective. In addition to leaving a trail of virtual ordinance behind you wherever you roam online, you can set up missions that require other players to visit certain sites. You can also leave loot for friends, who can then thank you via IM.

PMOG already claims more than 15,000 users, and the site has a video tour up, so you can check out the game before you commit to playing. The game's free though, so there's no reason not to jump straight in. Just watch where you tread.

[via TechCrunch]

If you've ever thought about making movies in virtual worlds, you may want to swing by Mixin Pixel's new blog at Six Billion Stories. Each week Pixel will shoot a new movie as she explores different facets of machinima production.

From her debut post:

Machinima is basically filmmaking using a real time 3D platform. I use Second Life for the purposes of my documentary filmmaking because what interests me is the choices people make for their virtual lives when they have complete freedom. Even though the graphics are far inferior to many other gaming environments, there are tricks to making it work for you.

There are plenty of resources to show you the basics of machinima. The best place to start is the Second Life Machinima wiki. There you will find plenty of tutorials and useful resources.

This blog will be more appropriate for people looking for more advanced advice on machinima creation and will cover topics such as composition, lighting, camera movement, legal issues, and more general technical issues such as lag reduction to create more visually sumptuous machinima.

[via Six Billion Stories]

PC gamers rejoice. Your platform's not dead yet, now that Jonathan Mak's Everyday Shooter has arrived. The beautifully dizzying geometric shooter with the auto-harmonizing guitar riffs that so rocked the indie game scene last year is now available on Valve's Steam service. How do we know? Kokorami Collective!

jon: can you play PC games now?

me: theoretically, yes. why?

jon: do you want a key for everyday shooter on steam?

me: oh shit

really?

that’s happening?

hells yes i want one

jon: yea it just came out an hour ago

me: woah

how come no one is talking about it?

jon: dunno

nobody cares? or it’s too early

spread the news

me: fo sho i will.

FO SHO.

Pick it up for a paltry $8.99. NOW.