Remember the story from a day or three ago about the kid who murdered his friend with a hammer? The media claimed it was because he was obsessed with the videogame Manhunt.

Well here’s a fun twist. MCV is claiming that it was the victim who owned the game, not the killer. Oopsie! Maybe the kid begged his friend to bludgeon him with a hammer because he wanted to be just like a Manhunt victim. Or not…

New twist in Manhunt controversy

But it gets jucier (thanks to Slashdot for spreading this link around):
Florida Attorney on Manhunt for Rockstar

This Jack Thompson comes across as a nut-job in this interview:

GD: You are going to target Rockstar North?

Thompson: Not just Rockstar, another target will be Sony. The tie-in between Rockstar and Sony is rather firmly established.

GD: What is the ultimate goal here?

Thompson: To destroy Rockstar.

GD: What does that mean in terms of…

Thompson: (cutting in) So they don’t exist anymore.

and

GD: You don’t see any other way, such as the ESRB jacking up their ratings?

Thompson: They are a joke. They are a deceptive joke. Doug Lowenstein makes Saddam Hussein look like a post-reformed Pinocchio. [emphasis mine -dc] He will say anything to protect the industry and his annual salary. It doesn’t matter what they say or do anymore. So, you destroy people and their institutions who have such a track record of not caring about human life and who will lie through their teeth to protect their P&L statement.

GD: Thanks for your time Mr. Thompson and good luck in your struggle.

Thompson: Thanks. We don’t need luck. The vectors are locked in, these people are dead meat.

Sounds like Mr. Anderson has been staying up late playing Doom 3 to me…

CNN.com – Video game ‘sparked hammer murder’

Here we go again. The old “Videogames turn kids into killers” saw. You knew it was coming when Manhunt was published.

And honestly, while I certainly don’t think that this kid went apeshit on his friend because of playing Manhunt, I also don’t see the need for games that are this violent.

I’m not saying the company doesn’t have a legal right to make and sell them. I’m just not seeing the need for this much glorification of violence, personally.

Yes, it was rated for mature audiences but the facts are, at this stage of the game, its still too easy for kids to get ahold of mature-rated games to push things this far. It shouldn’t be that way, but we don’t live in a perfect world.

Tech giants go for the games

Interesting piece, but in some ways these guys still don’t get it.

“Sharding” is a commonly accepted technology limitation now, he said, but “I’m not so sure consumers are going to be willing to put up with that in the next generation of online games.”

Sojourn’s Cerra agreed that improvements in server and networking technology will change what consumers expect from online games, with larger online worlds and faster responses becoming key. “Things like having a no-sharded world will be real differentiation factors for a successful multiplayer game,” he said.

I’d love to know what they’re basing this ‘wisdom’ on. Among my friends, I can’t recall ever hearing “Gee, if only all the players were on the same server.” In fact, I hear quite the opposite. Some people want to play on a designated RolePlay server, others want to play on a Player-vs-Player server, for instance.

People complain a lot about crowding now. This isn’t just about the network connectivity. If you have an audience of 10,000 users spread over 5 servers, your gameworld only has to support 2000 people; I’m talking content here. You need quests to keep 2000 people happy. You need enough geography for 2000 people to fit on. On the other hand, if all 10,000 of your users are on one server, you need to build 5 times the quests and supply a world that has 5 times as much geography, or else you’re going to be crowding players.

And crowded players are unhappy players.

PC: Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth

Check out the screenshot on the first page and tell me you don’t have any interest in playing this!

And in our ‘awkward sentence of the week’ award category, we get:

Once you have become accustomed to the way the game handles, the gameplay is where the game begins to shine.

🙂

Xbox: Xbox 2 – Everything we know!

This is an old-ish (June 29th) article from Gamespy, but I’m a bit behind in my email reading. 🙂

ESPN football takes a new approach to beat EA’s Madden

I didn’t realize ESPN NFL 2K5 released at a $20 price point. I might pick it up.

LinuxDevCenter.com: Stratagus: Open Source Strategy Games

This is about the open source game once known at FreeCraft before Blizzard’s legal department went after them.

Tech Biz: EA takes it slow and steady

I have to admit, I’d love to see EA get a bloody nose this year. EA is the Evil Empire of Gaming.