Massachusetts Institute of Technology has contributed another major scientific breakthrough to humanity. Researchers have designed a urinal video game to encourage male bar patrons that have had a few too many to call a cab.

The game, called The Piss-Screen (tagline: “not to be mistaken for the Wii”), simulates a high-speed car chase that ends with a car crash if players don’t have the reflexes to, ahem, drive properly. The end message: “Too pissed to drive? Take a taxi instead.”

The game plays like Need For Speed meets Hit the Cheerio. The Designers of this game with a wicked sense of humor are Hayes Raffle and Dan Maynes-Aminzade of the Tangible Media Group at MIT’s Media Lab. The game has been undergoing testing in bars, clubs and cafes around Frankfurt, Germany. Apparently The Piss-Screen won’t be welcome in Belgium. Police banned the game in the GamePower Expo in Gent for being indecent.

via Wired Campus

S. Shyam Sundar, an Indian-origin media researcher at Penn State, has completed a study which links video games and heightened creativity. The study involved 98 undergraduate and graduate students. Subjects were asked to play Dance Dance Revolution, on various levels of difficulty. The students took a standard creativity test, had their skin conductance measured for a physical response and were asked whether the experience left them feeling positive or negative.

Subjects that were energized by playing and put in a positive mood were most likely to have new ideas for problem solving. However the effect on creativity doesn’t end there. Players that were not highly energized, and had a negative mood tested even higher on creativity.

“You need defocused attention for being creative. When you have low arousal and are negative, you tend to focus on detail and become more analytical,” said Sundar, a professor of Film, Video and Media Studies at Penn State.

“When you are highly aroused, the energy itself acts as a catalyst, and the happy mood acts as an encouragement. It is like being in a zone where you cannot be thrown off your game,” said Sundar.

“We are not looking just at creative games, but what emotional elements of games can serve as an engine to spark creative thought and new problem solving skills,” said Sundar, who is also a founder of the Penn State Media Effects Research Laboratory.

The goal of the research is to find ways to use video games in education to stimulate creativity and in business to improve corporate decision-making.

“The key is to generate emotion. Ideally, a good teacher can energize the class and make them much more emotionally invested through presentations, guest lectures, and group discussions. Video games can help achieve that in an already simulated way,” said Sundar.

I guess one variable that might effect whether the players were left in a positive or negative move might be whether they had an audience or not.

via Thaindian News

The U.S. Army’s Future Combat System includes a robot that uses video game based controls. According to Wired, iRobot’s small unmanned ground vehicle (SUGV) is controlled using a monocle and a controller based on a Nintendo video game. Pentagon reporter Bettina Chavanne wrote about taking one of these SUGVs out for a test drive in the latest Aviation Week’s ARES blog entry.

The glasses… are all the equipment a soldier needs to operate the robot. The monocle sits over his right eye, and the controller is based on a Nintendo video game. I haven’t played Donkey Kong since high school, but I was able to work the controls very easily.

The buttons allow numerous configurations and steering options, along with one of the most important elements of all – a reset button. If you get into trouble – and that could mean needing to back the robot out of a small space or just back it out of a corner – one little button will return the SUGV to its regular configuration.

I drove the SUGV toward a truck with an improvised explosive device (or at least a prop that looks like one) parked under one of the wheels. After zipping toward the truck, I deployed the camera into a position where it lowered its viewfinder close to the ground to get a better view. Then I used the magnification tool to look closely at the IED before backing away and bringing the robot back toward where we were standing.

According to Aviation Week, the Army is so encouraged by progress with the SUGV, that it considering accelerating fielding the robot and other similar unmanned combat systems for the Future Combat System.

The ARES blog entry mentions Donkey Kong, but it’s not confirmed whether the controls for SUGV are based on that particular game. Still, I love to see video game technology applied to fields besides entertainment. Of course the medical field and the military seem to be getting the most out of video games; but other fields like education are using it as well. It just goes to prove that unlike the rhetoric my kids’ principal preaches; there are some good video games.

via Wired

Atari Founder Nolan Bushnell is confident that the end to software piracy is in sight. He made this prediction at the Wedbush Morgan Securities annual Management Access Conference this week.

“There is a stealth encryption chip called a TPM that is going on the motherboards of most of the computers that are coming out now,” he pointed out

“What that says is that in the games business we will be able to encrypt with an absolutely verifiable private key in the encryption world – which is uncrackable by people on the internet and by giving away passwords – which will allow for a huge market to develop in some of the areas where piracy has been a real problem.”

However, Bushnell’s not convinced that anything can be done to stop piracy of music and movies. He states that “if you can watch it and you can hear it, you can copy it.” He believes games are different because of the integration of the code.

“Games are a different thing, because games are so integrated with the code. The TPM will, in fact, absolutely stop piracy of gameplay.

“As soon as the installed base of the TPM hardware chip gets large enough, we will start to see revenues coming from Asia and India at a time when before it didn’t make sense.”

Personally, I have my doubts about the long term effectiveness of the chip. Hackers are known for their creative solutions. I’m sure some clever hacker out there will learn to circumvent or remove the chip entirely. Every time they build a better mouse trap, someone comes up with a smarter mouse.

via GamesIndustry.biz

Poor Nintendo, they will be broke after having to fork over $21 million dollars for patent infringement on gaming controllers. Yeah right, like $21 million would even snap their purse strings; plus, I am sure they will appeal this decision.

This lawsuit (which was filed in 2006) between the gaming giant and Anascape, a small gaming company in Texas, was won by Anascape and the court found Nintendo guilty of infringement over controllers for the Wii Classic, WaveBird and Gamecube although motion-sensing technology was not included in the patent case.

Anascape also sued Microsoft, but instead going to court, Bill Gates & Co. opted for the “settle out of court” approach and whipped out the checkbook.

While stating that they will appeal this decision (see, I told ya!), Nintendo expects the damages to be reduced – which means one of two things: a) they will loose the appeal and fork over $21 million, or b) Anascape will get much less – maybe even half. We will keep you updated on these proceedings.

Via: GamesIndustry.biz

While reading Shacknews this morning, I came across this interesting little tidbit from Massively regarding the unheard of idea of putting your MMO experience on a resume. Incredulous as it may sound to you, the author of the piece, Cameron Sorden, makes some very good points and even the Harvard Business Review states that games allow people to “hone the same leadership skills necessary to lead tomorrow’s workforce in an increasingly global and digital business environment”.

According to Sorden:

“Businesses want employees who are punctual, intelligent, analytical, and driven — problem solvers and team players. What’s funny, however, is that those are exactly the same qualities which a guild looks for in its raiders. Good luck trying to explain that to a non-gamer, though.

As an officer in a raiding guild, you’re performing many activities on a daily basis which are directly applicable to a business environment: conflict resolution, organizational tasks, data tracking, long-term planning, and managerial decision-making in a fast-paced and dynamic environment. You might not even think of it that way, but it’s true. In case you’re not seeing the parallels, I just described the following activities: settling an argument between two guild members, planning the group composition for a raid, maintaining the DKP spreadsheet, making class recruitment decisions, and giving out orders that require a change in strategy when something goes wrong during a boss fight.

It’s not just the officers who are honing their business skills, either. Every active member of a raiding guild routinely practices time management skills, conducts personal research outside of the game environment, self-manages to optimize their contribution to the group effort, learns effective communication skills, demonstrates patience and persistence in the face of adversity, and proves that they’re willing to be a team player to advance the goals of the guild. These are exactly the same attributes required of business professionals in a structured work environment.”

It never states whether it would be a good idea to include this information on a college application or not, but when I apply to Veterinary School in the Fall, I may just consider adding my LotRO experience to the list of my wonderful extracurricular activities.

I will let you know if they escort me out of the admissions office by an armed guard.

VVia: Shacknews, Massively

As promised late last year, DivX, Inc. has announced that DivX encoding is now available to developers for use in creating high quality DivX video for PS3 games. The PS3 will be the first console to support DivX video playback.

“We are excited to work with Sony Computer Entertainment to offer DivX video encoding to PS3 game developers,” said Kevin Hell, CEO of DivX, Inc. “PS3 users can already use their PS3s to watch their own DivX videos, and now they’ll also be able to enjoy the quality of DivX in the games.”

DivX expects to certify the PS3 for DivX video in the near future in order to provide a superior digital media experience to PS3 consumers. Of course PC gamers have enjoyed DivX video for quite some time.
via Business Week 

After Windows XP Service Pack 3 update some PC gamers have had problems with crashes during boot. Most of these crashes are linked to very specific PC builds. An article by Jesper Johansson, an internet security specialist and a Microsoft MVP in Windows Security, attempts help these crash victims out.

Jesper leads off with a comforting “Don’t Panic” notice:

There are several issues that can cause a Windows XP computer to not reboot properly after installing Service Pack 3. Most of them affect relatively specific configurations, and most appear to have relatively simple work-arounds. Please: do not do anything rash. I have seen a lot of reports of people who reformat and reinstall when they run into this problem, losing all their data in the process. There is often no need to do anything that drastic. First read this post, and see if anything here helps you. If not, call Microsoft’s technical support line and see if they can’t help you.

From there, the author talks about solutions to problems with SP3 not playing nice with AMD-based PCs. Some of the solutions are a little technical, but are still pretty straight forward.

More paranoid XP users might suggest that all the problems with SP3 are a ploy of Microsoft to get those users still clinging to the old XP OS to finally make the jump to Vista. However, that couldn’t possibly be true as it would damage MS’s relationship with the home user and drive them away not promote Vista.

via Jesper’s Blog

Although DDR3 RAM has been out for almost a year, it remains largely unappreciated. The games industry may be practically recession proof, but the rest of us have been feeling the effects for a while now. Unfortunately, this makes it harder for people to justify trying new things. Benchmark Reviews explains why DDR3 memory is well worth the investment for PC gamers.

Many PC gamers are under the misconception that the difference between DDR2 and DDR3 is mere speed.

The worst piece of misinformation I see spread in enthusiast forums is how DDR3 simply picks up speed where DDR2 left off… which is as accurate as saying an airplane picks up where a kite left off. DDR3 does improve upon the previous generation in certain shared areas, and the refined fabrication process has allowed for a more efficient integrated circuit (IC) module. Although DDR3 doesn’t share the same pin connections or key placements, it does still share the DIMM profile and overall appearance. From a technical perspective however, this is where the similarities end.

The article is very technical. To sum up; DDR3 is faster, more energy efficient (conserving up to 32% energy used on system memory) and ideal for overclocking systems. It also comes in chip sets of 512 megs to 8 G. For all the details as well as disadvantages and potential concerns on using DDR3 RAM read the full article on Benchmark Reviews.

TalentRaspel, current keeper of the Torque MMORPG engine has released the latest version as an open-source MMO engine kit. Torque was originally published by Prairie Games and GarageGames last year. The German developer TalentRaspel has completely revised Torque and has recently released version 1.1 SP3 of the engine.

The Torque engine kit gives small teams the ability to develop cross-platform massively-multiplayer online games. The engine was used in the indie Minions of Mirth MMO which supports 70,000 users. The price is reasonable and the patches are free although the latest service pack came for a small fee.

via Develop