MTV's Multiplayer blog has a list of nine videogame concepts we should be 'leaving behind', left to rot in the now-passed year of 2007. From the countdown clocks to Halo 3, their snarky list leaves no stone unturned: "The Phrase 'Next-Gen' - Ladies and gentlemen, 'next-gen' is now. Everyone from PR firms to development studios are still using this phrase. Please, I beg of you, stop using "next-gen" until the PS4, Xbox 4000, and the Nintendo Super Wii are slated for release. Those consoles will officially be 'next-gen.' The PS3, Wii, and 360 are the current generation of games. Now is the time to accept it."

Last month's National Institute on Media and the Family 'report card' was pretty much more of the same from the reactionary group. Recently a real parent (Colleen Hannon from GamerDad) sat down with the report to offer up some comments. "They still can't seem to read the names of the games off the front of the box. What they have listed as 'Call to Duty 4' is actually Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. That may seem like a minor mistake, but if you type what's on their list into a search engine to get more information off the ESRB's website or Google, it won't return the real results on the game. And without that last bit at the end, you're going to get a list with all the games in the series which can be confusing and not all of them are M rated. For someone who thinks parents should pay more attention and research they aren't helping them out much." Via GamePolitics.

With FASA studios closed and the Shadowrun IP now under better care, what remains of the disastrous Shadowrun FPS is now being swept under the rug. Team Xbox notes that the official forums for the game are going to be closed. This news comes with hope for a better tomorrow from the ex-FASA folks: "We're going to be closing down the Shadowrun forums in about two weeks. As many of you know, the old FASA crew has mostly moved on to other roles within Microsoft, and that means we don't have enough people to monitor and respond to posts here for the coming year. We'll eventually close down www.shadowrun.com and transition it to the folks working on the next generation of Shadowrun products."

San Jose Mercury News reporter Dean Takahashi shared a small story over the holiday that will be music to the ears of RPG fans. BioWare is apparently already hard at work on a Jade Empire 2 . "I talked with someone who saw code for Jade Empire 2. It's coming for the Xbox 360, and it's real. It's not much as far as scoops go, but I'm on vacation. What do you expect? Jade Empire was BioWare's second big game for the Xbox, following the exclusive Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic title in 2003. It will be interesting to see if Jade Empire 2 will remain an exclusive for the Xbox 360, now that Electronic Arts has agreed to acquire BioWare/Pandemic."

In a New York Times article generally discussing Nintendo's gangbuster success with the Wii and DS, Reggie Fils-Aimie reveals that in the future the DS will more tightly integrate with the console. Full games will be downloadable to the Wii platform, and then transferable via wireless to the handheld. "In Japan, the DS's functionality extends beyond its game-playing ability. There the device is used to give information during museum tours, and to download content from the Wii. Some of those features will eventually be introduced into the North American market as well. 'To aggressively drive DS business we need to provide other forms of entertainment to excite the consumer,' said Mr. Fils-Amie."

eldavojohn writes "We're all well aware of the scams that sometimes happen in online games like Eve Online. But despite this looking primarily like a problem with Eve Online, the MIT Technology Review brings us stories from Second Life and the very real $700,000 (USD) in Linden Dollars that has recently disappeared in what is appearing to be a classic ponzi scheme by a company named Ginko Banking. Unbelievably high interest rates coupled with some shady withdrawal limits leads to classic epic losses to investors. Eve Online was merely virtual currency but Second Life has a real monetary value associated with Linden Dollars & therefore is certain to see more and more scams pop up like this. How can Linden Labs set up a safety net to catch things like this?"

crush writes "The Linux Game Tome notes that the final team to produce a fully Open Source 3D game using the CrystalSpace engine and Blender has been chosen. The project (known as Apricot) aims to produce a cross-platform, 3D game with completely Free (CCA) graphics, music and code. An important side-effect of the project is to improve open source tools for the professional game development industry."
I look forward to more 3D games on my desktop, even if this one won't be the first. (And where is the open-source bus-driving counterpart to the under-rated FlightGear?)

arbourp writes to mention that hackers Michael Steil and Felix Domke have demonstrated a way to hack the Wii that makes running homebrew code much easier. "The hack advances the possibility of running homebrew code with access to full system resources on the device, not just programs that Nintendo has sanctioned. Such games might be developed to run from a DVD drive, at least in theory. No such games are available as yet and Nintendo may respond by attempting to revoke compromised encryption keys. However history shows such countermeasures are likely to ultimately prove futile."

SEWilco writes "Xbox Live is not working, as mentioned 36 hours ago in an Xbox team blog. Even if you can get logged in, multiplayer matchmaking doesn't find enough players for games. For a while Zune Marketplace was also affected. At present Zune status claims 'Up and running' while Xbox Live status continues to say 'Users may experience intermittent issues logging onto Xbox Live. Our engineers are continuing to investigate and are working to resolve this issue. We apologize for any inconvenience.' This has been been going on for days." My assumption is that this is the result of lots of new XBLA users logging in with Christmas 360s.

Utoxin noted that Child's Play has raised the bar for their annual games for hospitals charity. They say "Not only did we break the million dollar mark, but we decimated it with our new total of $1,135,000! This significant achievement made this holiday season a happier, brighter one in our fifty partner hospitals. To everyone who has contributed to this amazing milestone, thank you! The hospital wish lists are still online, and some have seen new items added. While we try to get lots of new games and more to the children in time for the holidays, the hospitals have a need for equipment year-round. Likewise, we will continue to accept donations through Amazon, PayPal and the mail until next year's fundraiser kicks off."

An anonymous reader writes "Linux-gamers.net has posted a thorough, although harsh, comparison of free software shooters. It compares seven open source shooter games in a lengthy discussion. Few have gone to the trouble of comparing and carefully examining the genre before. The author ranks the games in the following order (best to worst): Warsow, Tremulous, World of Padman, Nexuiz, Alien Arena, OpenArena, and Sauerbraten. In making these choices, it claims to use gameplay, design, innovation and presentation as criteria and includes a short history of free software shooters in the introduction."

mytrip brings us a Wired blog about Jack Thompson's recent press release, which claims an "unholy alliance" exists between the gaming industry and the U.S. Department of Defense. Game Politics also has a discussion of Thompson's main points. From Wired: "Jim Blank, the head of the modeling and simulation division of the U.S. Joint Forces Command, says that commercial games don't meet the demand of the military, adding, 'first-person shooter games really don't apply in this environment.' Blank's point is that game-like simulations are a valuable tool for training soldiers in situations that would be too expensive to simulate in reality."

A 1up feature looks at the influence that Ridley Scott's amazing cyberpunk film Blade Runner has had on gaming. In addition to outlining the (underappreciated) late 90's direct game adaptation, the article discusses the film's subtler touch on tone, music, and content in other titles. "Try as William Gibson might to distance himself from Blade Runner's influence, the game adaptation of his seminal novel ironically takes a lot of its visual cues from Blade Runner, particularly in its realization of the urban sprawl. Even better, we got a little proto-cyberpunk musical influence in the soundtrack. Neuromancer boasted a technically impressive, if scratchy, Commodore-synth rendition of Devo's "Some Things Never Change" playing over the title. Truth be told, the song is actually much improved by the necessary excision of all the lyrics except for the chorus."

indecks writes "This tutorial shows an easy way to convert NSF (NES Sound Format) files to mp3s so they can be played in normal media players, or even used as ringtones. Now I have the Super Mario Bros '1Up' sound for my text message notification, and I have Mega Man 3's 'Snakeman' stage music as my ringer. Sah-weet!" (The method demonstrated does require Windows, note.)

The WTO's recent ruling on Antigua's complaint against the US over the banning of online gambling resulted in a payment to the island nation much less than they asked for. It appears, though, that this payment was just part of the WTO's compensation package for Antigua/Barbuda. Via Kotaku, the Hollywood Reporter notes that the Caribbean country can now freely ignore US copyright laws - legally. This dispensation is apparently limited to some $21 million a year. "The WTO often takes decisions awarding trade compensation in cases where one nation's policies are found to break its rules. But this is only the second time the compensation lets one country violate intellectual property laws. In this case, Antigua will -- in theory -- be allowed to distribute copies of American DVDs, CDs and games and software with impunity. 'That has only been done once before and is, I believe, a very potent weapon,' Antigua's lawyer Mark Mendel said. 'I hope that the United States government will now see the wisdom in reaching some accommodation with Antigua over this dispute.'"

mlimber writes "Slate has an article up on the best free web games. Just what is needed for testing out that new laptop you got for Christmas." These games are considerably more fun than I thought they'd be -- most of them seem to work well with Firefox on Linux (though some require a Windows-only download). And when Salon says "Ayiti: The Cost Of Life makes the Oregon Trail look like Candy Land," they mean it -- most games don't need to caution you that "if the whole family is dead, you lose."

Folks at the Gamasutra network had a quick sitdown with the Q-Games team, the people behind the PlayStation 3's new Gaia music visualizer. They discuss the origins of the project, as well as some possible plans for the future. "McLaren explains: 'This representation of the earth is a 3D model with some shaders and SPU trickery going on. We tried to accurately model the earth's atmosphere and have all the correct highlights on the oceans, etc. The texture data is sourced from the NASA Blue Marble project.'"

Game|Life offers up an anti-top-ten list, noting the three blog authors' biggest disappointments from 2007. Chris Kohler's biggest letdown echoes my own feelings on this topic: "No LittleBigPlanet. PlayStation 3's software library got significantly better this holiday, but there's no killer app. I honestly don't know if LittleBigPlanet would have been one. But I think it's going to be mine. It's going to be the thing that glues me to PlayStation 3... when it ships. I was all ready to start building worlds and sharing them with my friends and generally start being a jackass by now, but it won't happen until next year -- late next year, if you believe the rumors. I hope they're not true. And I do hope LittleBigPlanet sets the planet on fire when it releases." Any gaming 'event' this year an epic fail for you?

For the time being, mod creators have to jump through an official 'hoop' with Epic games to see their content made available to Unreal Tournament III PS3 players (something Tycho lambasts Epic for at Penny Arcade). Just the same, content is beginning to trickle out, and Eurogamer has the word that DM-Shrine is now available for download for holiday-bored PS3 owners. "Epic didn't make this map. Thomas did and he already released it for PC users of UT3. We didn't do any editing or changes to it. All we did was bring it into the editor and "cook" it into the proper format for the PlayStation 3 and tested it to make sure it ran properly and was good fun. We're waiting on some paperwork from Sony that will allow us to release an editor update so mod creators can do this cook process for themselves. We expect to have that very soon."

When Gamecock rushed the stage at the SpikeTV VGAs this year, BioShock creator Ken Levine was denied his chance for an acceptance speech. In a recent discussion with 1up, Levine had the chance to finally get across his thoughts on working with 2K. "I had a tireless, amazing team who was on a mission to make BioShock great. We didn't have 300 people or five years. We had an insane amount of passion. I'd like to thank the people who made it with me, the families that patiently waited while we did our thing, the publisher with the guts not to make us change it, and the fans who showed that gamers have a much broader range of interest and intellect than anybody in certain parts of the media or the political space is comfortable giving them credit for."