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Neda Gould at the US National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, MD has been experimenting with a variant video game, Duke Nukem, to detect depression in people. Apparently, as people become more depressed, their spatial memory worsens.
To test her theory, she created a game based on scenes from Duke Nukem. In it, players were to navigate through a virtual town, which they were already familiar with, and find various landmarks. [Read more...]
iTWire has some interesting thoughts on what the video game market will be like this holiday season. Like everyone else, they’re predicting a shortage and cite ridiculous prices on ebay for Playstation 3 presales. They mention final prices are going for as high as $2000 – BusinessWeek cites one that went for $3250 + shipping! Right now, the steady bidding seems to price the machines at between $1000-1400. Given the last minute bidding frenzy that seems to come with any eBay auction, it wouldn’t surprise me that they’re going for $2000… $3250 is a bit harder to imagine. [Read more...]
A US gamer has sued Linden Labs over a contract dispute in its online role-playing game (RPG), Second Life, in a first-of-a-kind lawsuit.
The suit was filed by Marc Bragg, a Pennsylvania attorney and apparently, avid Second Life player. The suit claims that Linden Labs deactivated Bragg’s account after he discovered a way to purchase virtual land cheaply though the game’s auction system. Specifically, Braggs was able to prevent other players from bidding on land by modifying the auction’s URL. Bragg claims he invested $32,000 in virtual land and is suing for financial restitution. [Read more...]
An interesting article in Wired Magazine (4/2006) discusses law in the world of massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft, Everquest, and Second Life.
The question it explores is how far will and should governments go to impose laws on the virtual world. For instance, last year in China, the government tried to limit the number of hours gamers could spend playing games online. Gamers protested online – with a mass suicide of virtual characters in World of Warcraft. [Read more...]
If you’ve ever spent time in online chat rooms, forums, or games, you’ve probably noticed the little pictures posters use to represent themselves. Sometimes, they’re real photos but often, they’re cartoons, movie characters, animals, or pretty much anything you can imagine.
For most sites, it’s pretty easy to change that picture (called an Avatar) – you just select which picture you want to represent you, upload it to the server with the click of a button, and presto – you’re someone completely different. [Read more...]
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