A study funded by the National Institute on Media and the Family (NIMF) has found that almost half of all games retailers are still selling 'M'-rated games to kids. "The two-month undercover survey, which covered 60 US retailers, found that underage teens were able to buy games rated M for Mature (17+) at 46 percent of stores, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune ... the findings of the survey still put the game industry ahead of many other entertainment sectors, including the movie and music industries."

a.d.venturer writes "Elite, the Metroid series, Dungeon Siege, God of War I and II, Half-Life (but not Half-Life 2), Shadow of the Colossus, the Grand Theft Auto series; some of the best games ever (and Dungeon Siege) have done away with the level mechanic and created uninterrupted game spaces devoid of loading screens and artificial breaks between periods of play. Much like cut scenes, level loads are anathema to enjoyment of game play, and a throwback to the era of the Vic-20 and Commodore 64 - when games were stored on cassette tapes, and memory was measured in kilobytes. So in this era of multi-megabyte and gigabyte memory and fast access storage devices why do we continue to have games that are dominated by the level structure, be they commercial (Portal), independent (Darwinia) and amateur (Angband)? Why do games still have levels?"

Valve's rekindling of the passions of PC gamers continues to get some attention today, as RPS writer John Walker sits down with Gabe Newell for a chat and Escapist author Yahtzee Croshaw (of Zero Punctuation fame) went a-visiting in their Bellvue offices. He has a travelogue from the trip up on the site, showing an interesting side of both the company and the commentator. "One of the things I've always wondered about in Valve games is the credits, in that very little seems to get credited, if you catch my drift. The names of all the people involved always simply roll past in alphabetical order with no job titles or details of any kind. The reason for this, as I'm learning, is that no one at Valve has any specific title. Part of that is because of something called the Cabal System. When a job needs done or a problem needs solving, or an issue has come up in one of the hundreds of play test sessions Valve games undergo, a group of bods with random assortments of skills from all over the spectrum of game design are brought together to bounce solutions off each other and argue their merit."

The little heard-of television adapter for the DS went on sale in Japan yesterday, retailing for ¥6,800 ($62.70). "The design is different from the prototype shown in 2004, as it features a simple aerial cartridge which plugs in the back of the handheld, and no base unit. The top screen is used for the TV picture, while the bottom screen can be used to do things such as change channels and take notes." The company has no current plans to bring the TV adapter to the US, or anywhere else.

What with Assassin's Creed being one of the best selling new IPs ever, Ubisoft probably didn't think much of having to push back the release of Haze until next year. They've also moved the next chapter in Sam Fisher's story, Conviction, to an unspecified date in the 2008-2009 fiscal calendar. "The announcement came as part of its official first half financial results, showing sales up 52 percent to 261 million ($372.86 million), and profits up nearly 12% to 30.6 million euros ($44.8 million) ... the company [also] announced Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas 2 due for release some time in the same quarter as Haze."

GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that Sony has opened up a new downloads store for the PlayStation Portable. Store.playstation.com interfaces with your existing PSN network id, and will allow purchase and download of games, trailers, and demos to your Sony handheld. The company is already clarifying that this 'won't kill the UMD format', and that this is just an alternative method to obtain content. Darren Carins, head of online marketing for SCEE, was quoted as saying "The UMD business is still good for us and our publishers. It's still a burgeoning market, and we're still selling a large number of PSPs on a weekly basis, so there are a large number of new people coming into the market. I don't think that this would give us any cause for concern over UMD, I think they sit very well together. When you talk about the more casual games, pick-up-and-play games, you would definitely want to put them through the Store rather than have disc production, in to retail, and so on."

eldavojohn writes "Some US Senate members sent a letter to the ESRB asking for 'your consideration of whether it is time to review the robustness, reliability and repeatability of your ratings process, particularly for this genre of 'ultraviolent' video games and the advances in game controllers,' the senators wrote. 'We have consistently urged parents to pay attention to the ESRB rating system. We must ensure that parents can rely on the consistency and accuracy of those ratings.' The group of lawmakers were concerned that Manhunt 2 was only given an 'M' rating and instead feel that it should have the 'AO' rating — a rating that only 23 other games have been given and a rating that would cause Sony & Nintendo to restrict it from being released on their consoles."

It seems somehow appropriate, given the day, to link over to a historical perspective on the developer BioWare. Eurogamer took a look back at the house the doctors built to give us some insight on where the company came from, and where it's going. "The modding community had always rallied around Baldur's Gate, so Neverwinter Nights wisely shipped with the game's toolset available and ready for use by fans. Improved quests were soon blooming all over the internet, like so much role-playing lichen. BioWare also supported the game with their own official expansion packs, and later through smaller downloadable modules, while the game brushed seductively alongside the world of the MMORPG with a hefty multiplayer component that enabled players to join up across the internet to tackle the main story."

Today Newsweek's N'Gai Croal and MTV's Stephen Totilo conclude another of their fascinating email correspondences, this time surrounding Valve's recently released Portal . In part one, the two journalists explored the power of minimalism in gaming, and why that 'less is more' attitude worked so well. Part two saw the pair wrestling with some fundamental disagreements about the nature of character in the game. In today's finale, the twosome addresses the game's brief length, and how that made the game all the better. "What's great about Portal's approach is that suggestive spareness of the plot and the absence of characterization leaves us plenty of room to fill in the blanks with our imagination, which, when supported by a framework as precisely and elegantly thought out as it is here, delivers a more powerful final product than many other games that give us plenty of characterization and story but precious little genuine mystery ... Portal goes one step further and questions the very nature of the person thing giving us those orders; like you said, Valve's puppeteering of its players."

Gamepolitics and the site Physorg have an in-depth look at a study (pdf) done on the educational nature of violent games. While the implications of the study reinforce the old 'games lead to violent kids' saw, the authors of the research stress that they're more interested in talking up the benefits of games in education. "When considered in the light of what is known to be the "best practices" of education, violent video games appear to be exemplary teachers of aggression ... It should therefore be no surprise that video games are excellent teachers, both of educational content and of violent content... The fact that learning occurs regardless of whether the effects are intentional or unintentional is irrelevant, and should make us more thoughtful about designing games and choosing games for children and adolescents to play."

To go along with its recent hardware survey, Valve has released stats from Half-Life 2: Episode Two . The page notes the most common achievements, as well as the deadliest places in the game. Ars Technica's Opposable Thumbs blog spells out a few of the results for us: "The median completion time hits at exactly five hours, with some noteworthy variance between four and seven hours. Average play session time logged was 27 minutes. The average number of deaths spikes significantly at two specific maps during the final two levels with an average of 11 deaths per section, as well; and looking at the topographical maps at some very specific locations on the maps as well. 73.1 percent of users playing were doing so with Direct X 9.0 SM3, and 72.6 percent played the game on medium."

caffeinemessiah writes "The New York Times has a story about a Korean kids' camp for 'curing' Internet addiction. 'Seventeen hours a day online is fine,' said one such kid at the camp. From the article: 'Drill instructors drive young men through military-style obstacle courses, counselors lead group sessions, and there are even therapeutic workshops on pottery and drumming ... this year, the camp held its first two 12-day sessions, with 16 to 18 male participants each time. (South Korean researchers say an overwhelming majority of compulsive computer users are male.)'"

An anonymous reader writes "Saul Hansell from the New York Times spoke with Microsoft's J. Allard, formerly of the Xbox games division and now in charge of their push on Apple's captive audience with the Zune. Allard lays out Microsoft's media battle plan, highlighting their longterm goals for expanding beyond games and software. 'This service will at some point add more options for video and mobile phones, Mr. Allard said, without offering details. Actually, Microsoft has been quite successful selling video downloads and online movie rentals through the Xbox Live service already. This seems a bit too much like the initial plan for MSN. This new network would be the switchboard through which all entertainment content and communication flows. Pretty much everything else in the technology world now is revolving around open systems where the Internet, and some simple standards, are in the middle.'"

The October NPD numbers are out, and (now that we know we'll keep getting the information) it's time once again for analysis and reaction from media and businesses alike. GameDaily has a one year later look at the fight that began last holiday season. As for the numbers themselves, with Halo 3 now a known quantity in the market the 360 is down to 366,000 from 527,800 in September. Microsoft is still quite happy with software sales, though. The PS3 only saw 121,000 units sold last month, but early news from November has Sony very excited. And all the while, somehow, the Wii manages to sell even more units. The system is up to 519,000 from 501,000 in September, with the DS slight down to 458,000 from 495,800. As the GameDaily analysis article concludes: "the race for console dominance is still anyone's to win. The 2007 holiday buying season will be crucial to setting all three players' market positions going into next year. Which is all nice to know, of course, but not that important to actually enjoying your system of choice well into the future."

The Metagame event, held this past GDC in San Francisco, garnered a good deal of buzz ... even if not that many people had a chance to see it. The folks behind GameLab set up another session of the inventive game-knowledge gameshow, and pitted two pairs of journalists against each other to see who could better argue their (randomly determined) cases. The results are not only hilarious, but viewable on the MTV website.

Gamasutra is reporting that, along with Vivendi's ever-increasing earnings, recent information has been released updating the current player stats for World of Warcraft. Despite suspicions of falling numbers due to the long wait between now and Rise of the Lich King, Blizzard's Massive title is larger than ever, with some 9.3 million players. "Vivendi has chalked up the increase not only to its WoW subscriber base, but the release of its The Burning Crusade expansion, which saw release in China in the latter part of the third quarter ... The company also noted that its subscriber base has continued to grow from the 9 million mark it celebrated in July to more than 9.3 million, which it says is up more than one million subscribers since December 31 of last year."

Captain Kirk writes "We all know that World of Warcraft has checked for hacks to ensure a safe game environment for all players. The latest version of these checks goes beyond anything seen so far in that what is being checked is now completely encrypted. Obviously this hits bot writers as can be seen from these complaints, But it also strikes at the privacy of all users. Now Blizzard has a tool that is encrypted and can run any type of scan, transfer any file or edit any document on your computer. That can't be right."

The first quarterly report from EVE Online's very own economist has been released at the game's official site. GamesIndustry.biz has some comments from Dr. Guðmundsson on this first batch of numbers, exploring a bit of his methodology and the joys of working in EVE's closed environment: "Since life in Eve evolves at a faster pace than real life, we must use a so-called 'chained price index' rather than a representative basket. In real life, representative baskets are always used and in many cases the surveys for these baskets are done with very long time intervals. By looking at our results it is obvious how the fixed basket approach can overestimate the impact of price changes, just as predicted by theory. With consumer preferences changing faster now in real life than ever before (consumer electronics is a good example), this might be a lesson that could help us understand better changes in price levels and how we measure that outside virtual worlds."

Via Rock Paper Shotgun and Primotech, the latest in Valve's ongoing PC hardware survey via the Steam service. Some very interesting stuff in there, though probably nothing too surprising. From RPS's analysis: "Vista has shown a small increase in representation, but clearly nowhere near where Microsoft would have desperately hoped. Previously 7.99% of gamers were using the latest operating system. Now it's 16.91%, with a vast 81.13% sticking with XP. Rather confirming Valve's position on DX10, and what a massive waste of time it is developing for Vista only."

vuo writes "A story on the BBC website reports that Dutch police have arrested a teenager for robbery of virtual furniture worth roughly $5900. The crime took place in the virtual world/social network Habbo Hotel, a website run by Sulake Corporation. Sulake has 80 million registered users of its sites in 31 countries. ' Habbo users can create their own characters, decorate their own rooms and play a number of games, paying with Habbo Credits, which they have to buy with real cash. "It is a theft because the furniture is paid for with real money. But the only way to be a thief in Habbo is to get people's usernames and passwords and then log in and take the furniture. We got involved because of an increasing number of sites which are pretending to be Habbo. People might then try and log in and get their details stolen."'"