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As I searched for something to talk about today, I came across this article from Joystiq featuring a discussion by Will Wright about Spore and the gaming industry.

For those of you who don't know Will Wright, he's not only the creator of Spore, but he's also the creator of the Sims franchise, and arguably one of the greatest game developers of all time.

And yet, I'd venture to say that at least some of you reading this have never heard of Will Wright before. I'll bet you've played the Sims and may even know about Spore, but you had no idea who Will Wright is.

If that's true, the blame shouldn't be placed on you and you certainly shouldn't be expected to perform research just to find out who develops a specific game. Instead, the blame should be placed squarely on the video game industry, and more specifically, major companies like Take-Two and Electronic Arts, for creating an environment where anonymity is not only accepted, but expected as well.

And if you ask me, that's just wrong.

When I was a kid, I usually found myself doing one of two things: playing video games at home or trying as best as I could to attract every girl I saw. Was I a video game addict? Probably. Was a socialite? Yep. And you know what? I wasn't alone.

According to a report from Reuters, Daniel Loton, an Australian graduate student found that "15 percent of 621 adult respondents to an online survey were identified as "problem gamers" who spend more than 50 hours a week playing games."

But only 1 percent of those respondents had poor social skills and shyness, suggesting the cheerleaders in school were wrong: video game addicts are cool too.

Sweet, sweet justice.

The beauty of this new study isn't that it tells us something we didn't already know--I was known as the cool dude on campus for a reason, you know--but it helps us combat the fools who insist that video games are bad for children and hinder their ability to interact in the real world.

An interesting article from Kotaku today, discusses Ubisoft's intention to get into the film business and try to expand its offerings beyond video games.

"Our goal is to create a studio that will be very high quality, our goal is to try to get to the level of quality of Peter Jackson's Weta studio," Ubisoft's CEO Yves Guillemot said in an interview. "We have been working to train people, to recruit highly talented people and we are in test mode at the moment. We are going to make sure that we get to the level of Weta. We have a long way to go but in getting to that level will help us to actually be one of the studios where everybody has to go."

Peter Jackson, best known for The Lord of the Rings trilogy and as director of King Kong, is currently working in collaboration with Bungie to create a new game set in the Halo universe. The game is currently titled Halo: Chronicles, but no release date has been given.

Guillemot sounds ambitious and I applaud him for trying to do more with his business, I can't help but wonder if video game developers have any place in other forms of entertainment. Can they really create a stellar sitcom or a blockbuster hit at the theaters? Are they capable of publishing sci-fi novels?

With the way things are going in all of those industries, I don't think it's too far-fetched at all.

Computer companies are pushing to swap the violence in video games with messages of social change.

Next week, Advanced Micro Devices plans to announce a project designed to teach kids how to build video games that promote social causes such as fighting poverty or protecting the environment. Called Changing the Game, the project will fund nonprofit organizations that inspire kids with video games, and it will develop curriculum for youth to build their own software for games. Changing the Game is the first initiative funded by the chipmaker's newly formed AMD Foundation, a grant-making organization.

At the same time next week, Microsoft will show off the first of the environmental education games developed by high school and college kids participating in Microsoft's Imagine Cup, a global competition around software for social change. (The Imagine Cup winners will be announced in Paris in July.)

Why the coincidence? The two companies are participating in the fifth annual Games for Change Festival next week at the Parsons The New School for Design. The 4-year-old nonprofit Games for Change gets support for its conference from Microsoft and AMD.

Of course, both companies have a stake in the video game business. AMD's technology powers high-definition game consoles, and Microsoft sells the Xbox 360 and related games. As part of its competition, for example, Microsoft asked students to use the company's XNA Games Studio Software to develop a socially minded computer or Xbox game.

Still, it's for a worthy cause. "We have a tremendous opportunity to harness the passion that kids have for gaming while teaching the skills they need to be successful in our 21st century digital economy," AMD president Dirk Meyer said in a statement.

As part of its initiative, the AMD Foundation plans to grant money to Girlstart, an Austin-based nonprofit focused on girls; Global Kids, a New York-based nonprofit; the D.C.-based Institute for Urban Game Design; and Science Buddies, a Silicon Valley-based group for kids in science.

Grand Theft Auto: Atlanta, anyone?

That title may not be far off, if the state of Georgia gets its way. Its latest goal, in the name of economic development, is to become the video game production capital of the United States.

Sonny Purdue, governor, Georgia

(Credit: Georgia Governor's Office)

Earlier this week, the state's Republican governor, Sonny Purdue, signed into law a proposal to offer greater tax incentives not only to game producers, but also to music video, movie, and TV production projects.

"The new incentives will put Georgia among the top five states in the U.S., in terms of financial competitiveness for entertainment projects," Ken Stewart, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Economic Development, said in a statement. "We expect to see an increase in the number of industry jobs and overall economic impact for the state in the coming years."

Under the 2008 Entertainment Industry Investment Act, eligible companies that spent at least $500,000 on production costs in the state would be eligible for a 20 percent tax credit on that investment, up from the 9 percent that was previously on the books.

The companies can qualify for an extra 10 percent tax credit, too, but only if they agree to embed promotional ads and animated Georgia logos in their content.

According to a statement from Peach State, the entertainment industry has contributed more than $1.17 billion to Georgia's economy since 2005, when the first wave of tax credits took effect. Georgia, of course, is home to Turner Broadcasting System, the high-power media empire that includes CNN, Cartoon Network, and game network GameTap.

(Credit: Simon & Schuster)

Two Harvard researchers have concluded that there's no data to support the notion that violent video games cause the kids who play them to act out violence in real life, contrary to the vast majority of media outlets that would have the public thinking otherwise. The $1.5 million study, which began in 2004, closely examined 1,200 children after bouts with violent games like Grand Theft Auto and not-so-violent titles like The Sims.

Psychologists Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson found that for most kids, playing these games was nothing more than a stress reliever. Sure, some children displayed a playful aggressiveness after hours spent with a violent game, but this was no different than what children experience after seeing a martial arts action movie.

Some researchers, including the Harvard psychologists, even suggest that video games have a positive effect on the brain. Steven Johnson explores this concept in his book Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter.

Kutner and Olson have documented their findings in Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games, where they stress the importance of parental education and awareness. In a society where children who don't play games are considered to be socially inept, it is important for parents to understand what their kids are playing. In addition, they need to be able to block out the seemingly endless attacks on the video game industry and use the scientific evidence available to make judgments for themselves and their family.

(Source: TG Daily)

It looks like EA has made a turn-around in response to fan outrage at its plans for a complicated DRM scheme in two high-profile PC games due out later this year.

Word came out yesterday that Spore (from Sims-meister Will Wright) and the PC version of Xbox 360 hit Mass Effect would implement a new version of the Securom DRM middleware, which not only requires you to keep a game's DVD in the drive to play it, but would need to perform an authenticity check every 10 days, which would have required your computer to be online during that time.

Electronic Arts has high expectations for its forthcoming, PC-only Spore from Sims creator Will Wright. Irritating DRM won't help.

(Credit: CNET)

Amid much fan outrage and negative publicity, it appears EA and each game's respective developer has relented and will instead implement a more benign DRM strategy. Gamer's Hell reported that Mass Effect will now require a one-time online authentication, and it will reauthenticate each time you connect to the game's download servers, but that it will no longer require constant reauthentication. Kotaku reported the same decision has been made for Spore.

On the Mass Effect user forum, the community manager from developer BioWare cited its its "many friends in the armed services and internationally who expressed concerns that they would not be able reauthenticate as often as required," as one of the reasons for the change. Considering that the forum topic in which Bioware announced its original plan generated 115 pages of comments, it's probably fair to say that fan opinion had something to do with it as well.

Copy protection remains a huge issue for PC game developers and publishers. Just a few weeks ago, Cevat Yerli, the president of Crysis developer CryTek told Hungary's PC Play that his company was abandoning PC exclusives because of rampant piracy. We certainly understand that issue, but clunky DRM is not the answer if publishers want to encourage PC gamers to buy their products.

Editor's note: Updated at 11:35 a.m. PST to include additional information from Matheson's office about the bill.

A new congressional proposal seeks to make it harder for kids to buy or rent games like the runaway sales hit "Grand Theft Auto IV" (scene pictured here), which bears a "Mature" rating, meaning it's considered unsuitable for kids younger than 17.

(Credit: Rockstar Games)

A new bill in the U.S. Congress would force retailers to card kids attempting to buy video games bearing "mature" or "adults only" ratings.

In addition to the identification-checking requirement, Reps. Jim Matheson (D-Utah) and Lee Terry (R-Neb.)'s Video Game Ratings Enforcement Act, introduced on Wednesday, would also require stores to post explanations of what the ratings, devised by the industry-backed Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB), actually mean, according to a press release. A copy of the bill's text was not immediately available on Thursday.

Rep. Jim Matheson

(Credit: U.S. Congress)

"As a parent, I know that I'm the first line of defense against my kids playing Mature-rated video games," Matheson said in a statement. "But parents can't be everywhere monitoring everything and some reasonable, common sense rules ought to be in place to back parents up."

For the record, games with an M-rating, by the ESRB's description, are considered suitable for people age 17 and older and "may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language." Those with an AO or Adults Only rating "may include prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity" and are recommended only for people age 18 or older.

Whether the new rules are necessary may be up for debate. Some stores already attempt to verify the age of game purchasers. Wal-Mart, for example, says on its Web site that it already posts information about the ESRB ratings and has programmed its cash registers to automatically prompt sales clerks to check the age of the customer when M-rated games are scanned. GameStop also checks IDs before selling M-rated games.

And interestingly, just after the bill was introduced, the Federal Trade Commission on Thursday released the results of a new "undercover" shopper study, which found the number of incidents of stores selling M-rated video games to teens has plummeted since 2000.

On average, only 20 percent of the 13-to-16-year-old shoppers were able to purchase the games from stores like Game Stop/EB Games, Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, and Toys R Us, down from an average of 42 percent in 2006 and 85 percent in 2000. (Some stores recorded a far lower percentage--only 6 percent of those shoppers were successful in purchasing M-rated games from Game Stop, for instance.)

The Parents Television Council, a group whose mission is to shield children from sex, violence and profanity in television and other media, applauded the bill's introduction, pointing to its concerns about the Mature-rated Grand Theft Auto IV, which has already broken sales records within the first week of its release.

"Video game ratings supposedly exist to protect children from material that is created for adults, but there is no consequence for irresponsible retailers who repeatedly sell these games to children," PTC president Tim Winter said in a statement. "The importance of this issue cannot be overstated when considering the array of games that include content too deplorable and disgusting to describe in detail."

Previous legislative attempts to limit childrens' access to violent or sexually-themed video games, however, have not met with much success in the courts. Earlier this year, a federal appeals court upheld a lower court's decision to block a Minnesota law that would have imposed up to a $25 fine on minors younger than 17 caught buying or renting video games rated "M" for mature or "AO" for adults-only, citing, among other things, First Amendment concerns. Similar rulings have come down in other federal courts with regard to laws in Louisiana, Michigan, and California.

The Entertainment Software Association, which represents the video game industry, said it shares the politicians' goal of ensuring children have parental approval before playing certain titles but disagreed with their proposed method of doing so.

"Empowering parents, not enacting unconstitutional legislation, is the best way to control the games children play," said ESA President Michael Gallagher.

A Matheson aide told CNET News.com that her boss believes his bill is crafted narrowly enough to survive any constitutional challenge that may arise.

The new bill joins a handful of other proposals related to video games that have surfaced in this session of Congress, including new attempts to outlaw "deceptive" video game ratings. That legislation was a reaction primarily to the "Hot Coffee" scandal a few years ago, in which a readily downloadable modification to the best-selling game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas could unlock sexually explicit scenes.

Once again, Nintendo released a quarterly earnings report that not only solidifies the company as a major player going into the next generation, but shows that it's certainly onto something with both the Wii and the DS. But according to that same report, not everything is perfect with the company's handheld system.

According to Nintendo, it's only forecasting 9 percent growth going forward as sales of the DS continue to slide and expectations of higher sales continue to dwindle. Nintendo contends that DS sales could fall to 28 million units from 30.3 million units sold.

Mario is coming in a big way to the DS.

(Credit: Nintendo)

And while some market analysts are disappointed with the news of the DS slowing and the company itself not growing as fast as they would like, they fail to fully understand the nature of the beast they're trying to gauge.

If analysts were worried about the Wii, I would probably agree. But why would anyone be worried about Nintendo's plans for the DS? Will it sell fewer units this year? Maybe. But if nothing else, I think that we'll soon find that Nintendo has something up its sleeve that will jump-start sales and send those same, misguided analysts into a frenzy.