The World's most Profane Video Game ever

The video game called "House of the Dead: Overkill" has now become the world's most profane ever, according to a Guinness World Records spokesman. It drops the F-bomb an amazing 189 times, accounting for a 3% of the game's overall dialogue, at a rate of about one use per minute.


Published by Sega, and the game's author, Jonathan Burroughs, said, "It is a dubious honour to receive such an accolade working in an industry where so often the fruits of your labours are derided and dismissed for being puerile or irresponsible. But in the case of 'The House Of The Dead: Overkill', a little puerility was the order of business. Parodying the profane excess of grindhouse cinema was [our] objective and I am flattered that this record acknowledges that we not only rose to that challenge, but entirely exceeded it."

Survey indicates gaming has beneficial effects

ne of the major obstacles for us young kids and gamers are our Parents.

Not that they don’t want us to play games, but they want us to put more focus on our studies and perhaps do some little responsibilities around the house, which is fine with me at least.

We often hear parents saying "During our time, we don’t play those games. We study, we help clean the house, we help do the laundry, we help do a lot of things." My answer is simple "Mom / Dad, you don’t have xBox 360 before, you don’t PSP, PS3, Wii, DS before, so why complain?"

But no amount of explanation will convince them otherwise. Fortunately I came across a survey indicating that games that simulate aspects of civic and political life may well promote civic skills and civic engagement. Youth, parents, teachers, and others who work with youth should know about the wide diversity of video games – so they can take full advantage of games and their civic potential.

The survey was conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Project, an initiative of the Pew Research Center and was supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

The primary findings in the survey of 1,102 youth ages 12-17 include:

- Game playing is universal, with almost all teens playing games and at least half playing games on a given day.

- 97% of American teens ages 12-17 play some kind of video game.

- 99% of boys say they are gamers and 94% of girls report that they play games.

Game playing is social:

- 76% of gaming teens play games with others at least some of the time.

- 82% play games alone at least occasionally, though 71% of this group also plays games with others.

- 65% of gaming teens play with others in the same room.

Game playing can incorporate many aspects of civic and political life:

- 76% of youth report helping others while gaming.

- 44% report playing games where they learn about a problem in society.

Game playing sometimes involves exposure to mature content, with almost a third of teens playing games that are listed as appropriate only for people older than they are:

- 32% of youth 12-16 in this sample play games that are listed as appropriate only for people older than they are.

- 32% of gaming teens report that at least one of their favorite games is rated Mature or Adults Only.

- 12-14 year olds are equally as likely to play Mature and Adults Only rated games as their 15-17 year old counterparts.

Not only do many teens help others or learn about a problem in society during their game playing, they also encounter other social and civic experiences:

- 52% of gamers report playing games where they think about moral and ethical issues.

- 43% report playing games where they help make decisions about how a community, city or nation should be run.

- 40% report playing games where they learn about a social issue.

Even if the survey was conducted with American kids, I am pretty certain the result will somehow be the same if the same survey will be conducted here in the Philippines.

I hope this study will convince our parents that playing games is not that bad and has good benefits for us gamers. So have a heart, extend our playing time for three hours? Two hours? An hour? Please... No matter what, I love you so much Dad and Mom.

EA needs creative guru's gaming spore to click

Jet-powered cars, aliens, moon colonies and robots.

To many, this is the stuff of science fiction. But for Electronic Arts Inc creative guru Will Wright, they represent some of his most obsessive pursuits and the seeds of inspiration for his hotly anticipated video game, Spore.

Launching Sept. 7, Spore allows players to create empires and civilisations across galaxies, populated by creatures, buildings and spaceships.

Atlanta-born Wright, a bespectacled, mop-haired alien obsessive who builds robots for research purposes, said Spore was inspired by the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) program.

"I believe there are other intelligences out there, and the closest is several galaxies away," said Wright, 48, who grew up building model cars and dreaming of space travel.

The launch of Spore comes at a critical time for loss-making EA, which is battling Activision Blizzard Inc for preeminence in the fast-growing $28 billion-a-year video games market.

Evan Wilson, analyst with Pacific Crest Securities, describes 2009 as a "do-or-die year" for EA.

Though the consequences of Spore's failure for EA are uppermost in analysts' minds, Wright is widely seen as up to the task.

A seminal figure in the games industry, observers tend to reach for superlatives when they assess his importance to the company.

"Will is the Albert Einstein of the gaming business -- no one else is pushing boundaries like he is," said Geoff Keighley, the host of GameTrailers TV, a specialist web-based video games review.

"He is right up there with Shigeru Miyamoto in terms of his contributions to the gaming industry," Keighley added, referring to Nintendo Co Ltd's legendary games designer who created many of the firm's smash hits like Donkey Kong.

Wright developed his blockbuster game The Sims while at Maxis, the company he co-founded and sold to EA in 1997.

The Sims, where players create home environments in which characters did mundane tasks like cooking and moving furniture, surpassed expectations and went on to sell over 100 million copies.

Version 3 is in the pipeline and it, along with Spore, is among a raft of new games seen as critical to EA's future as it struggles with tepid sales and flagging interest from gamers.

There are no guarantees, as Wright knows to his cost. His most striking flop was The Sims Online, a multi-player version of The Sims that never caught on and was shut earlier this month.

"He clearly didn't understand what makes those kinds of games work well, so The Sims Online was a pretty serious failure," said Timothy Burke, a cultural historian at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.

Spore itself has not been without its share of challenges. First announced in 2005, it was originally slated for launch in 2007.

Spore's strong pedigree bodes well for sales, says Colin Sebastian, analyst at Lazard Capital Markets in San Francisco, though he acknowledges it is not yet clear if Spore will see Wright reproducing his best form.

"It's too early to say if Wright is a one-hit wonder," he added.

Bangu-Bang Mania 1st Filipino Online Casual Game

Over five years in development and with only about a dozen people to develop it, Bangu-Bang Mania has finally been shown to gaming journalists in a simple ceremony at GameFrog at Metrowalk, Ortigas Center.

Bangu-Bang Mania, developed by VITAS, is considered as the first fully Filipino made online casual game. It is primarily a two-dimensional beat 'em up game similar to the popular Nintendo game Smash Brothers and can be played by up to six players on three-against-three matches.

The game's characters are all robots whose body parts can be upgraded with different weapons. These include upgrades for the head, torso, arms, legs, primary and secondary weapons and backpack weapons.

VITAS President Rainier Umali said the open beta test of the game will start before the end of August while the commercial launch will happen by mid-October.

Instead of following the commonly used free-to-play scheme in other casual games, VITAS decided that Bangu-Bang Mania will be pay-to-play wherein players will top up their gaming cards with 50 pesos for one week play time, 100 pesos for 2 weeks, and 200 pesos for one month play time. He said they are in talks with ePLDT's Get Loaded payment system as well as Load Central for the top-up card loading service.

"The pay-to-play model helps balance out the game because users will start out with just the same amount of money to play, instead of buying more expensive items. Of course, if they want to continue playing they have to get the higher amount," Umali said.

Umali added that they are not hoping to be the most played casual fighting game but they are aiming for just "one percent" of the online gamer market, which would sustain the game.

For the next few weeks, Umali said the company will be having in-game promos that would include awarding prizes to the top scorer in the game for the open beta test as well as the person who reports the most bugs in the game.

'The Sims' creator focuses on world-building

The creator of the worlwide gaming phenomenon "The Sims" is shifting his sights from city-building to world-building.
Game designer Will Wright recently talked to media at the Singapore Zoological Gardens last week to talk about his latest game "Spore", which is set to launch this September. The game allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its beginnings as a unicellular organism, through development as an intelligent and social creature, to interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture.
Below are excerpts of an interview with Wright:

What is Spore all about?

Spore is your own personal universe in a box. In this universe you can create and evolve life, establish tribes, build civilizations and even sculpt entire worlds. In Spore you have a variety of creation tools at your disposal that allow you to customize nearly every aspect of your universe: creatures, vehicles, buildings, and even spaceships. While Spore is a single player game, your creations and other players’ creations are automatically shared between your galaxy and theirs, providing a limitless number of worlds to explore and play.

How is it played, and why is it unique?

Unlike most other games, Spore is focused on developing and nurturing your creations. Players are given the creative control to make their imagination tangible. The Spore Creators tools can be used to make cells, creatures, buildings, vehicles, spaceships, and ultimately shape and sculpt planets. In terms of game play, the Spore universe is made up of five phases with different challenges and goals. You may choose to start with the cell phase and nurture one species from its humble aquatic origins to its evolution as a sentient species. Or you may decide to start building tribes or civilizations on multiple planets. There is much more freedom in the decisions you make, that translate directly to your creations. What you do with your universe is up to you.

How can Spore connect people?

Spore is a unique blend of single-player and massively multiplayer online games. Although simultaneous multiplayer gaming is not a feature of Spore, a single-player’s content can be uploaded to the internet to be shared with the millions of other Spore players in the world. Your creations and other players’ creations are automatically shared between your galaxy and theirs, providing a limitless number of worlds to explore and play within. Currently on Sporepedia, we have almost three million creatures being shared online. Players will also be able to upload YouTube videos of their creations’ activities.

So who is Will Wright as a designer?

I tend to look at games slightly different from most other designers. For example, I enjoy taking a real world system, dismantling it and putting it back together in a way that makes it this amazing toy-like interactive game. I’ve been heavily influenced by how players of my previous games had interacted and with the tools that we created for those games. I always like to have games that enabled player creativity and giving players the tools to create their own stories. In terms of Spore, it is a leap in evolution from some of the tools that we have created for games like SimCity, with the Building Architect Tool, or The Sims, with the Transmogrifier or Body Shop.

What were his inspirations and vision for Spore?

Well, my inspirations are quite varied and I like to draw from all different sources. For Spore, the original idea came from my love for space and discovery. The Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI), books such as the Drake Equation, and a film by Ray and Charles Eames called The Power of Ten, all of which seek to answer one simple question: “Is there somebody out there?” But my vision for Spore is a game is on a more human-level, where player creativity and the sharing of player made content is fundamental. From the microscopic to the macroscopic, it is about bringing people together through their own imagination.