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American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Recommends MK vs. DC For Families
Posted by Michael McWhertor at 1:00 PM on November 21, 2008
Some of our more jaded readers may poo-poo Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe's softer, more broad reaching one-on-one violence, but there's one organisation who has no qualms with the T-rated brawler. That would be the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry which has reviewed the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 game, finding that it "will likely facilitate an adult joining a teenager in video game play." Not a sexy box quote by any means, but maybe better than we were expecting.
The US' Natural Resources Defence Council have released a report detailing how much money it costs the average American to run a gaming console. And, by extension, how much money gamers could save by taking those consoles and throwing them in the closet/garbage. Were you to decomission a 360, for example, you'd save yourself $11 a year. $11! Binning a PS3 would save you $15, while packing the Wii away - provided you haven't already done so - will save you...$3 a year. Best keep it around then, in case Gran comes over and wants a swing at that "computer bowling".
Is PC gaming giving way to today's more versatile and powerful consoles? Not according to a market study recently conducted by research group JPR, which claims that more gaming PC's have been sold over the past three years than Xbox 360s, PlayStation 3s, and Wiis combined. The study, which tracks the sales of three different classes of gaming PCs over since Q3 2005, found that 196 million units have been sold between then and Q3 2008, compared to a worldwide total of 74.7 million consoles. As Edge points out, this of course doesn't take into effect handheld gaming systems like the DS and PSP, which sold a combined 125 million units during the same period. 
Fresh from the "Study finds violent video games do X to kids" pile, we now find -- shock -- playing them results in "a greater variation in Heart Rate Variability." This isn't straight out one's pulse quickening. HRV is "the oscillation in the interval between consecutive heartbeats" -- more or less, a measure of minute changes in heart rate.
Jim Reilly forwarded news of the UConn interdisciplinary and interinstitutional initiative called < a href="http://vghvinet.ning.com/">The Video Games and Human Values Initiative, and I noted it on the Brainy Gamer blog as well. Spearheaded by the occasionally baffling Roger Travis, professor of classics at the University of Connecticut, it's a pretty interesting idea — centering around discussion, courses, and bringing together a variety of us boring Ivory Tower types as well as any other interested parties to create a new forum for discussion:
Recently, some controversy has popped up regarding who owns the IP of student-created work; recent events with the award-winning creation of some graduates of DigiPen Institute of Technology have highlighted the problematic nature of what is somewhat par for the course in design programs. On the one hand, while I can see some of the arguments for schools retaining the IP (and certainly, the policies are clear to students from day one), I find some of the arguments downright laughable. With the recent kerfluffle, are policy changes on the horizon?:
Well, just fancy that. The results of the Xbox 360 Holiday Entertainment Survey are out and what do you know, this year we will be staying at home, wishing for video games, watching movies without going to the cinema and trying to 'bring the family together' with one reasonably priced gift.
A new survey of portable gamers has revealed that for the most part "portable" can be defined as "will work on the toilet or in bed". Around 79% of iPhone, DS and PSP owners surveyed by NPD Group said that they use their portable device in the home more than any other location.
Totally out of my academic purview, but it's a really neat sounding conference: The research group Ludiciné (University of Montreal), the Research Group on the Creation and Formation of Cinematographic and Theatrical Institutions (GRAFICS) (also from the University of Montreal) and the NT2 Laboratory on Hypermedia Art and Literature (University of Quebec) are hosting a conference next year (in — surprise! — Montréal) on horror games. Proposals are due by January 15, 2009, and the conference will be held from April 23 to 25, 2009. So if you're incubating a great paper topic on horror games, or are sitting on a paper that you haven't had an academic outlet for, here's your chance. Sounds pretty fun! More information can be found at 
A console's attach rate - or tie rate, whatever you want to call it - is an interesting statistic. It basically shows how many games, on average, are owned by each person that owns a particular console. That data can be interpreted any number of ways, but from where I'm sitting, it generally shows how much you're getting out of your console. If you're buying a ton of games, you're getting good use out of it. if you're not, it's probably sitting in a closet somewhere. So, let's take a look! Above is a chart, compiled by Gamasutra, showing not only each console's attach/tie rate, but also the break-down between first-party and third-party releases.
Let's. Find. Out. As part of a survey commissioned by IGN - dubbed "Are You Game?" - market research firm Ipsos MediaCT asked a whole bunch of American gamers where they shop when looking for games. The answers, while not shocking, are still interesting (the percentages flying waaay over 100% because, obviously, most people buy games from more than one store). Wal-Mart comes out on top, while Best Buy and GameStop/EB come in tied for second place. As for Blockbuster, well...thanks for trying.
It's been a while since we've had a really good "video games make our children violent" study, and I was beginning to fear we've given up on the idea, but then the story "Violent video games linked to child aggression" showed up on CNN.com this morning and my fears were completely assuaged. The story is about a study conducted by Dr. Craig A. Anderson, Ph.D., of Iowa State University, who studied three groups of children in both the United States and Japan to gage their violence levels three to six months after playing violent video games, versus children who did not play violent video games. The results may not surprise you at all. 
And you thought you played games to have fun — Steven Poole has a lengthy essay trying to prove you wrong. We're working — working for the (video game) man, man. I must confess that even if we're on a literal or figurative rat race when it comes to 'working' in games (I am, after all, a passionate fan of the Harvest Moon series, which is unabashedly obvious about the necessity of work), I still find much of it fun. Still, despite the wet blanket overtones, Poole's essay is thoughtful and makes some interesting point. Is it really just about following orders?:
There's an interesting essay over at the Vorpal Bunny Ranch (a blog worth visiting for the name alone) on the issue of the dandy in video games, a character known for a few different things: 'his impeccable sense of fashion, his wit, and his distaste for rough physical activity.' They're also exceedingly untrustworthy, giving rise to an interesting stereotype of 'the dandy' as crafty (and with suspect morals) or an outright villain (e.g., Kefka):
We treat them like a rare species, but really, women who game are not that uncommon. Recent polls have put the figure between 35 and 40 percent of women, a minority but not a scarcity. Negative Gamer's Chelsea -- aka Nintendoll -- spotted something elsewhere that set her teeth on edge, and she wants to set the record straight about the reasons women and girls game. Because in her view the experience risks getting cliquey and catty, like high school.
Before we go any further, know that this information isn't scientific. It doesn't even come from Capcom. But it's still interesting, so, on we go! Event Hubs have posted a chart outlining - based on the Japanese arcade release of the game - which Street Fighter IV characters they feel are better than other Street Fighter Characters. Their methodology? If two players of equal skill play each other ten times, how many wins would each character rack up?
A recent study commissioned by the Content Delivery and Storage Association (CDSA) and the Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) indicates that gamers are much more likely to save the DVD cases rather than store their disc somewhere else and throw the packaging away. They could have determined this by looking in any gamer's living room, but I suppose The NPD Group, who conducted the study, gets paid for hard numbers, so here they are. 88 percent of game owners store their games in their original packaging, with 8 percent claiming to save the discs in sleeves while storing the packaging, and a minuscule 5 percent saying that they throw the cases away. More interesting than those stats though is the reasoning behind them - 54 percent of gamers polled stated that they trade or sell their titles when they are done with them. No wonder GameStop is doing so well. 
Gamasutra's been publishing an interesting series on what the non-target audience gamers want out of their gaming experience; this week's is on the 'missing gamers,' the ones who played when they were younger and have 'grown out of' the habit (or have they really?). After sitting down with a few play sessions with these gamers (age 25 to 35), the Gamasutra team came to a couple of conclusions about what these gamers really want and what would drive them to get back into gaming in a meaningful, non-Facebook attached way; they also established why this is a segment that developers and marketers should be taking note of this demographic:
The Village Voice's Chris Ward sat down to play Lego Batman for a review this week, and this happened:
In June, Yahoo's 'lifestyle' site Shine hosted a Sony Online Entertainment survey into the gaming habits of US families.
Numbers time! Japanese game site Dengeki Online is running results of a poll that was composed of 86.3 percent men and 13.7 percent women with an average age of 25.46 years old. Questions included things like "Have you cried during gaming?" or "What game are you looking forward to?" In the poll, three of the games that made Japanese gamers cry are "adult visual novels" — two of them are erotic game ports and one is a straight up PC erotic game. That's not that surprising as many Japanese gamers do play erotic games for the story. No, really.
Over at MTV's Multiplayer blog, they've gone a little Nintendo number crunching crazy. Based on data pulled from the Wii's Nintendo Channel, there's Wii software usages (as of October 5, 2008) for Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, Wii Sports, Mario Kart Wii, Rock Band and many more! Interesting factoids: 
