ahab_2001 writes "The computer game Spore has been marketed partly as an experience that makes evolutionary biology come alive in a game setting. But does that claim hold water? To find out, John Bohannon, a correspondent for Science Magazine (writing as 'The Gonzo Scientist'), sat four card-carrying scientists, ranging from evolutionary biologist Niles Eldredge to JPL astrophysicist Miles Smith, down in front of a terminal to play the game. The upshot, says Bohannon: Spore flunks basic science, getting 'most of biology badly, needlessly, and often bizarrely wrong.'"

tsa writes "Last week, the Dutch court subjected two kids of ages 15 and 14 to 160 hours of unpaid work or 80 days in jail, because they stole virtual property from a 13-year-old boy. The boy was kicked and beaten and threatened with a knife while forced to log into Runescape and giving his assets to the two perpetrators. This ruling is the first of its kind for the Netherlands. Ars Technica has some more background information." In Japan, meanwhile, a woman has been arrested for "illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data" after (virtually) killing her (virtual) husband.

Massively is running a story about bandwidth costs for MMOs and other virtual worlds. It's based on a post at the BBC on the same subject which references a traffic analysis (PDF) done for World of Warcraft. Quoting: "If you're an average user on capped access, the odds are you have roughly 20Gbytes per month to allocate among all of your Internet usage (it varies depending on just where you are). For you, sucking back (for example) a 2GB World of Warcraft patch isn't something you can just do. It's something you have to plan for — and quite often you have to plan for in the following month. Even a 500MB download has to be handled with caution. MMOGs as a rule don't use a whole lot of bandwidth in actual operation. However, the quantity definitely rises in busy areas with lots of players, where there are large numbers of mobs, or on raids, and takes quite a much larger jump if you're using voice as well."

Parz writes "Mods have been an important part of gaming for well over 15 years. Not only have they provided plenty of additional free gaming to players, but they've acted as a launch pad for independent and amateur programmers to show off their skills to potential employers. This Gameplayer article highlights the programmers who are doing it best, and what mods have made biggest and most enjoyable impact on gaming. The article not only provides details for each game, but also links to the downloads, and is a great resource for those interesting in getting up-to-date with this exciting scene." Obviously, this list will seem incomplete to anyone whose favorite mod was omitted. What mods contributed most to your enjoyment?

With the first add-on pack for Sins of a Solar Empire arriving in just under a month, publisher Kalypso Media has announced that three more add-ons are on their way as well. Gamespot has an early look at the first add-on, Entrenchment, and a couple of additional screenshots are available at Shacknews. The game's creative director, Craig Frazer, also explained their reasoning for making small expansions rather than large ones: "If PC gaming is to survive, the industry will need to be open to change. We went out on a limb with our anti-DRM stance and it paid off really well. We tried an unusually long beta period and that worked as well. Micro-expansions are just another experiment we are trying out to improve the market. These small expansions give us the opportunity to provide highly focused, high quality content within a reasonable time frame. Micro-expansions also reduce the development risk associated with 1-3 year cycles. With lower risk, we can be far more progressive in terms of gameplay and content."

LucasArts and Bioware held a press conference today to confirm what has been suspected for a long time: they're working on a Star Wars MMO. It will be called Star Wars: The Old Republic, and it will be a continuation of the Knights of the Old Republic franchise. Further coverage is available at Gamespot, and IGN has some of the concept art. An official website for the game was launched as well. "According to the game's official announcement, Star Wars: The Old Republic is set thousands of years before the rise of Darth Vader, with the galaxy divided by war between the Empire and the Sith. That's about 300 years after the events of KotOR, a time frame that, according to Zeschuk, 'is completely unexplored in the lore.' Players can take the role of either a Jedi, a Sith or other classic Star Wars characters -- and, as perhaps can be expected from BioWare, Muzyka says story will be a major component, underlying and driving all of the player's actions."

Massively points out that today marks the 30th anniversary of the first Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) going live at Essex University in the UK. The game, referred to as MUD1, was created by Roy Trubshaw. Richard Bartle, a man who also worked on the game as a student at Essex, has a post discussing the milestone and talking about how MUDs relate to modern MMOs. What MUDs did you play?

Gamasutra is running a series of studies on what people from certain demographics want from games. Their most recent article takes a look at former gamers, from the age of 25 to 35, and how they view their old hobby. Many seem to have replaced games with social networking during their non-productive time, and they also tend to favor games they can play with friends in the same room, rather than anonymous online interaction. Previous parts of the study focused on family gamers and older gamers. "We had some of our test consoles rigged up to an internet connection to see how these Missing Gamers would respond to online play. But whilst they were initially impressed at the ability to play with other people all over the world, they soon picked up on the fact that many of the people they were playing with were either too good, or too immature to endure for any length of time. It wasn't long before the online games were abandoned in favor of the simpler split-screen local multiplayer offerings. The ability to nudge, rib, and cajole each other on the sofa (not to mention share snacks and drinks) was simply too much fun to resist."

Newsweek reports that next year's E3 will be expanding its attendance cap to 40,000 in an attempt to return as the premiere large-scale gaming expo. E3 scaled back its operations over the last few years, leading some to speculate that it was outliving its usefulness. This year, according to E3's organizers, we can "expect a boat load of press conferences on Monday during the day and on Tuesday morning." Newsweek also claims E3 will be opening to the public for the first time, allowing fans inside for the last two days of the event. However, G4's coverage says that while the vetting process for attendees will be eased, the event still won't be open to the public. An official announcement will be made tomorrow by the Entertainment Software Association.

VideoGamer sat down with Randy Stude, president of the PC Gaming Alliance, to talk about the state of piracy and DRM in today's gaming industry. He suggests that many game studios have themselves to blame for leaks and pre-launch piracy by not integrating their protection measures earlier in the development process. He mentions that some companies, such as Blizzard and Valve, have worked out anti-piracy schemes that generate much less of a backlash than occurred for Spore . Stude also has harsh words for companies who decline to create PC versions of their games, LucasArts in particular, saying, "LucasArts hasn't made a good PC game in a long time. That's my opinion. ... It's ridiculous to say that there's not enough audience for that game ... and that it falls into this enthusiast extreme category when ported over to the PC. That's an uneducated response." Finally, Stude discusses what the PCGA would like to see out of Vista and the next version of Windows.

CVG is running a piece discussing the current state of WiiWare, and where they expect it to go in the future. They point to the success of Mega Man 9 on WiiWare and other platforms, but worry that the perception will arise that certain games are "too good" to be featured on WiiWare. GameSetWatch has a related interview with independent developer Ninjabee discussing their recent games and comparing WiiWare with Xbox Live Arcade. Meanwhile, Microsoft has announced that the new Xbox Experience coming in November will included their Community Games initiative, which will allow amateur game developers to create and share games using the XNA development tools.

Incarnate-VO writes "Multi-platform space MMO Vendetta Online is now allowing users to create missions and submit other content for use in the game via their new 'Player Contribution Corps' system. Any game subscriber can join the PCC and gain access to a web-based mission editor, permitting them to build and test new missions on Vendetta's test-server. Once the player believes the mission is ready for prime-time, they submit it to the greater PCC community for testing and feedback. The community may then sign off on the mission and push it up to the developer staff for final oversight and propagation into the game."

With Guitar Hero: World Tour set to launch on October 26th, Activision has released a list of downloadable content that will be immediately available. Activision has also apparently included a trailer for Guitar Hero: Metallica (which will arrive sometime next year), and they recently trademarked the name 'Guitar Hero Modern Hits,' which may be part of their plan to increase the amount of Guitar Hero content they produce. Meanwhile, new Rock Band 2 DLC tracks are coming as well, and the release dates for the PS2, PS3, and Wii versions have been set. Early reports say the Wii version made the platform jump better than the original Rock Band, and that all currently existing DLC will be available for Rock Band 2. MTV's Multiplayer blog took a look at Wii Music, which creator Shigeru Miyamoto calls, "Not quite a game and not quite an instrument."

LordDax writes "Sony just rolled out their new Terms of Service for the Playstation Network. The new ToS features additions about the Master & Subaccount relationship, specifically that you can only 'legally' create a sub account for your own child. No friends allowed. Where it really gets interesting is when you get to the additions to section 3.0 Community Code of Conduct. You now can't tell anyone your real name, where you live or basically anything besides your PSN ID. The new ToS also brings to light that SCEA is going to be monitoring every piece of communication and activitiy, and reserves the right to remove any content or communication they find objectionable without having to tell you in interests of SCEA, its users, or licensors. Another addition is: 'Some content may be provided automatically without notice when you sign into PSN. Such content may include automatic updates or upgrades which may change your current operating system, cause a loss of data or content or cause a loss of functionalities or utilities.'"

SlappingOysters writes "In an interview with Gameplayer, Tom Clancy's EndWar Lead AI Programmer Vinh-Dieu Lam spoke in detail about plans to tie all the different Clancy franchises together into one big game experience in the near future. Among other things, he had this to say: ' ... with EndWar, the meta-campaign side of it is a standalone server so you can feed things into this system so it can basically generate any sort of mission. So its missions generate for EndWar at the moment, but there is no reason why we cannot generate missions from the other franchises. This is where we are looking at tying together the different franchises. So maybe in the next EndWar you will need to attack Paris, but before you can, it may generate some sort of Splinter Cell recon mission, or a Ghost Recon mission or things like that. But that is the direction we are looking at.'"

Several readers have pointed out that Sony's much-awaited LittleBigPlanet has hit a snag and will be delayed worldwide. The delay came after it was discovered that a song licensed for use in the soundtrack contained audio samples from the Qur'an. All advanced copies sent to retailers for the target release of October 21 in North America, 22 in PAL territories, and 24 in the UK and Ireland, have been recalled. "The post, by user 'Solid08', indicates of the specific references in the composition: 'In the 18th second: "kollo nafsin tha'iqatol mawt", literally: "Every soul shall have the taste of death' ... almost immediately after, in the 27th second: "kollo man alaiha fan", literally: "All that is on earth will perish."'"

Earlier this year, we discussed the Gamer's Bill of Rights, a document put forth by Stardock CEO Brad Wardell to address what he felt were the unacceptable characteristics of the gaming industry. ShackNews reports that Wardell has taken feedback from gamers, developers, and publishers, and updated the document accordingly. One particular area on which he focused was DRM. Stardock also published a customer report that examines the issue in greater detail (PDF). MTV's Multiplayer Blog fans the flames of the debate by asking if anyone is embarrassed about pirating video games.

Kotaku recently ran a story questioning whether the survival-horror genre still exists, and how Dead Space may or may not fit into it. With reviews for the game starting to come in, Ars Technica reports that the game is, indeed, both scary and good. Gamespy wrote up a Dead Space survival guide, and Gamasutra has a lengthy interview with the game's senior producer. In the production of the game, the developers studied things like car wrecks and war scenes to increase the level of realism. They also want the game's sounds to terrify players, including appropriately timed silence. The launch trailer is also available, though it does contain spoilers.

GameSetWatch is running a piece discussing some of the ways in which gameplay can progress from simple to complex. The author talks about how acquiring items, new abilities, or just increasing the player's overall effectiveness can make it difficult for game designers to keep their content balanced and interesting. Quoting: "What do I mean by progression? There are at least two distinct types of progression in computer games, which I'll label player progression, and character progression (narrative progression is arguably a third). Player progression is the increasing aptitude of the player in mastering the game: whether through learning and understanding the technical rules of the game (surface play) or the implications of those rules (deep play). ... Character progression is the unlocking of additional rules of play, or altering the existing rules, by choices or actions within the game."

If your significant other complains that you play too much World of Warcraft, just show them this article about a user named "Prepared." He plays an amazing 36 World of Warcraft accounts on 11 different computers at the same time. He is his own raid group. "It costs me exactly $5711 in subscription costs per year with 36 accounts on the 6 month pay schedule," he writes. "Not bad considering I'm looking at it like it's a hobby and there are more expensive hobbies out there than World of Warcraft."