Via Joystiq, a post on the Lionhead website offers up a once-in-a-lifetime offer ... for charity! At this year's Child's Play Fundraiser, an annual black tie event scheduled for December 11th, the studio will auction off roles in their in-development title Fable 2 to help raise money for kid gamers. Roles include 'a Fable 2 Shopkeeper, a Farmer, an important Villager, a Monk, or a Quest character.' Other loot they're offering includes "Signed underwear by Peter Molyneux! The only known surviving Fable T-SHIRT signed by the Development Team in 2004. Limited edition, official Fable 2 team T-SHIRT. Limited edition, official Fable 2 sweater / hoodie. Exclusive Fable 2 printed and framed artwork. Limited edition, framed Black & White 2 poster, signed by the Development Team and Peter Molyneux. Framed copy of Fable, presented in recognition of your contribution to the making of Fable."

An anonymous reader writes "As part of a new marketing blitz to promote the Xbox 360 as a "family friendly" video game console, Microsoft on Wednesday rolled out a new feature called Family Timer, which will show up in the Family Settings Screen. The Timer will let parents limit the number of hours their kids can play the Xbox on a daily or weekly basis. When the time limit is reached, the console will automatically shut off, ostensibly after saving the game."

Next Generation has up a feature on the rising fortunes of Sony's PSP. Overlooked for quite some time now as the DS dominates the headlines, the article argues that the handheld console still has a lot to offer ... and people are starting to notice. "Sony has always commanded strong third-party support for its systems since the success of the original PlayStation, and [senior PSP marketing manager John Koller] believes that PSP developers are similarly finding ways to get creative and present fun titles. 'Upcoming launches such as God of War: Chains of Olympus from a first-party perspective, and Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron from LucasArts, are certainly good examples of fantastic franchises made unique on the PSP,' he says. 'It's clear that consumers do not want the same game on their PSP that they play on console.'"

Gamasutra is reporting on comments from Microsoft executive Mindy Mount, reacting to Nintendo's Satoru Iwata and his observations about the modern console life cycle. Mount indicated that the company is looking towards the PlayStation 2's success well into its lifespan for inspiration. "In comments very similar to those made by Iwata, Mount suggested that a rush to create a new generation of consoles was not necessary until there was a compelling hardware feature to justify it. 'At this point from the technological perspective, there are some real advances ... that make it worth having a next-generation console," said Mount. "Right now there aren't that many things on the horizon that you think, wow, that's going to be a game-changer.'"

Rock, Paper, Shotgun comments on the big news from late last night: NCsoft has announced that it has purchased City of Heroes/Villains from Cryptic Studios, the Massive game's original developer. Everyone on the team has been offered a new position with the newly formed NCsoft NorCal studio, and many of them have accepted. As far as the players are concerned, NCsoft only intends for them to see freebies as a result of this deal: "Now back to you, the players. You are the lifeblood of our game. In celebration of our new studio and our exciting plans, and in order to thank you for the fantastic community that you have built, we are pleased to announce the following: All players with City of Heroes retail accounts will now have access to City of Villains, and all City of Villains retail accounts will now have access to City of Heroes. Players that didn't previously have access to "the other side" will find that they do now. Just log in to check it out! After the launch of Issue 11: A Stitch in Time this Fall, we are removing Debt from all characters and giving you a fresh start ... Also after the launch of Issue 11, all Supergroups will receive an additional 20,000 Prestige per Supergroup member."

Gamespot is reporting big news in the God of War world today. Fans of the series will be happy to know that the company has confirmed the next game will be released on the PlayStation 3. At the same time, the company also announced that God of War II producer Cory Barlog is no longer with SCEA. "Barlog's departure remains shrouded in mystery. So far, he has shared no information about his future plans on his personal blog, where he last posted in mid-October. His exit comes just under four months after God of War series creative director, David Jaffe announced he was leaving SCEA's employ after 14 years."

Geoff Keighley, who is guest-editing Kotaku this week, has the official release from EA that their Chicago studio is closing. The 150 employees that used to work at the site are trying to be placed throughout the rest of the EA structure, while the games on tap for development there are currently on hold. The release is fairly terse when describing the reason the studio is being closed: "Each team is responsible for staying on a reasonable path to profitability. Sticking to that strategy is what gives us the financial resources and flexibility to take risks on new projects. Unfortunately, EA Chicago hasn't been able to meet that standard. The location has grown dramatically in the past three years while revenue from the games developed there has not. The number of employees has grown from 49 in 2004 to 146 people currently in the new facility in downtown Chicago. As it stands, EA Chicago has no expectation of hitting our profitability targets until FY2011 or later."

Newsweek's LevelUp blog has the big news of the day: the monthly releases of NPD sales information for the games industry have (for the time being) come to an end. N'Gai Croal and Geoff Keighly have a lengthy discussion about the withdrawal of that information from a reliable source. They also discuss the huge number of AAA games releasing this month, and which of those are likely to come out on top. N'Gai also notes that, as far as the NPD was concerned, we should have seen this coming. "NPD Group director David Riley contacted us with a statement to clarify his company's new position, which reads: At this time last year, it was made very clear that NPD will provide media with hardware sales figures, but that it would only be temporary. As you may recall, we never provided these numbers until Nov.'06, the first month when all three new consoles were on the market. It's been a year, so it's time to pull back. It's better to pull back and leave it up to our clients to release their numbers. Or, if manufacturers tell us it's okay to release their hardware sales numbers, then we'll go back to providing them, but that shouldn't be our call."

almostdead writes "CNET has just put up a story about what it thinks are the best online flash games of all time. These include titles like Line Rider, Bejeweled, Desktop Tower Defense and Portal, all of which I enjoy playing a lot. But my thirst for free games is peaking at the moment, probably due to an incredibly boring job and lack of imagination. Can you suggest any more good free games online?" Two words: Puzzle Pirates.

The site Consumerist has up a lengthy post from a former Gamestop manager, listing some of the sins, boons, pitfalls and promises perpetrated while he was on the job. Includes a discussion of the 'gutted' display game, pre-orders, the 'discount' card, trades, and lots of 'pro-tips' on how to get the most out of your Gamestopping experience. "19) Don't be afraid to sell things on your own! The going resell rates for any current games or accessories online is usually close to what we resell for. If its a much newer title and you don't mind listing and shipping it, you could make a small handful more selling it online yourself. Ebay and Amazon.com are obvious choices, but you may find other outlets that work for you."

The Escapist this week is themed around stories and storytelling. The article that resonates the most with me is a Tom Rhodes piece called Slouching Toward Black Mesa. It explores the connection between the journey of Gordon Freeman and literary explorations of similar end-of-the-world themes. "Freeman isn't slouching toward Black Mesa, he's converging on the great citadel in the middle of City 17, the Bethlehem of our story. Bethlehem is a holy place in Christian theology, which makes it the perfect location for the beast of Yeats' poem to encroach upon. In City 17, that ideal is flipped on its head, replaced with a center of darkness and powe ... In an even more direct rejection of Yeats, however, the forces in Half-Life 2 are non-supernatural. It continues the series' theme, man as a force in this world; whether for good or ill is his choice. It is this choice, this need to carve out our own destiny and define ourselves based on our own hopes, dreams and fears that makes us human. So what is slouching toward Bethlehem? We are." The issue also features an article entitled The Ending Has Not Yet Been Written, about the never-ending story of Massively Multiplayer Online Games.

Via Game|Life comes an interview with Tim Schafer of Psychonauts, Day of the Tentacle fame in which he states there will likely be no sequels in the near future for those of us who loved his past works. "I would love to go back and spend time with the characters from any game I've worked on, and I would love to make a sequel to any of them. But I also want to make something new. If there were five of me I might make sequels, but there's always some new idea I want to explore." The interview is a part of Playboy's Geniuses at Play feature. It features discussions with folks like David Jaffe, Phil Harrison, and Clive Barker, the whole of which is worth reading. The subsite for the interviews is safe for work as of this posting.

Ars Technica's Opposable Thumbs blog is reporting that retail giant Target may be pulling Rockstar's Manhunt 2 from store shelves and their online storefront. "This could be an interesting case: there is no content in Manhunt 2 that goes above and beyond what we've seen in other M-rated games without the extensive hacks needed to unlock the more graphic content. If Target wasn't seeing high sales of the game though, it wouldn't hurt the company financially to pull the game, and it gets to look family-friendly. From a public relations standpoint that's a win-win situation. My question remains: would Target be as quick to pull the game if it were a runaway success? " GamePoltics has up a discussion of the issues surrounding this move, with commentary from analyst Michael Pachter.

Next Generation has put together a lengthy list of landmark game design innovations that many of your favorite games probably wouldn't exist without. They break them out into self-contained units, though it's sometimes ambiguous how they're demarcating game design elements. Just the same, it's an interesting look at where game industry trends have led us: "23. Gestural interfaces. Many cultures imbue gestures with supernatural or symbolic power, from Catholics crossing themselves to the mudras of Hindu and Buddhist iconography. Magic is often invoked with gestures, too--that's part of what magic wands are for. The problem with a lot of videogame magic is that clicking icons and pushing buttons feels more technical than magical. The gestural interface is a comparatively recent invention that gives us a non-verbal, non-technical way to express ourselves. Best-known example: Wii controller. Probable first use: Black & White, 2001."

1up is reporting on comments from Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, who has offered up the opinion that the four-year console cycle is a thing of the past. Instead, he says, companies should look to iterate on their hardware when an opportunity presents itself. "Launches should depend on when it can signify a major shift in entertainment, or when they have done everything possible with the current hardware. He also says that scheduling the successor to current hardware on a 4-year life cycle without paying attention to changes in the market 'appears to be too inflexible an approach to us.' This isn't to say that the company doesn't have eyes on the future. 'We need to forecast what the future will be like with the expected evolution of new technologies which are available at any given time, and try to identify the so-called 'sweet spot' of technology over the next few years,' he said."

MTV's Multiplayer Blog has a chat with Dorian Hart, the designer at 2K Boston that gave us the pipes-like hacking mini-game in Bioshock. The two of them discuss the reason we direct blue liquid to win, the fan reaction to the game, and the value mini-games bring to their 'parent' titles. "I suppose it certainly gives the game an extra dimension: something else to do other than shoot. In a shooter, even a shooter that has small variance in how the game plays out, the number of verbs that you actually use in a given 10 minutes, half an hour, an hour of gameplay is pretty limited: you have a gun; you shoot it. Having a mini-game just gives the player a different thing to do, a way to break the player out of a rut they may be in, in how they're thinking about what they're playing. It engages a different part of their brain. As long as it's not too onerous or forced upon the player too commonly. They say, "Variety is the spice of life," and I think that applies in this case. As long as you don't make it an essential, unavoidable, too-important part of the game, because people are expecting a shooter."

Of all the titles in the Legend of Zelda series, some of the most-respected have been for handheld consoles. Link's Awakening, the Oracle duo, and Minish Cap all manage to combine on-the-road gaming with a certain purity of Zelda-ness. Link's most recent adventure on the small screen, Phantom Hourglass, generally continues this tradition and introduces a number of new elements to the property. Unique controls, a true sequel, and cel-shaded graphics all make Hourglass stand out from 'traditional' Zelda games, and together the whole hangs together fairly well. Read on for my impressions of this pint-sized return to Hyrule.

This past weekend Lorne Lanning (of Oddworld fame) and notorious anti-games lawyer Jack Thompson took the stage at the Philadelphia Convention Center to debate the issue of videogame violence. Joystiq has a blow-by-blow liveblog of the event, while Wired offers up a considered synopsis of the event. From that piece: "Lanning laid into Thompson for having a 'business plan' that cashed in on the grief of victim's families, a point he would make throughout the rest of the debate. Thompson seemed both offended and confused by the suggestion, asking how exactly he was making money off his efforts, a point Lanning never really did answer. At one point, Thompson said 'no one in their right mind would say that a videogame by itself would turn an angel into a demon,' but seemed to be splitting his message."

Via Destructoid, an article at the personal site of Douglas Crockford, a gent who worked with LucasArts during the NES days. He takes a look at the silly amount of content censored to get the game Maniac Mansion acceptable for Nintendo and the Nintendo Entertainment System. "'Well, Mommy, I'm worried! He hasn't eaten in 5 years. / YEAH, SO!!! / and he's been bringing those bodies, and he carries those bodies to the basement at night.' [sic] This was from Weird Ed's dialogue with his mother, Nurse Edna, in which Ed tries to get his mother to recognize the terrible things that have happened to his father over the past 20 years. What was Nintendo's problem with the dialogue? ... In fact, Nintendo's interpretation of the speech was that Dr. Fred was a cannibal, that he was eating the bodies. That was never our intention, so we changed Ed's speech to 'He hasn't slept in 5 years,' which helps to explain why Dr. Fred is never seen in his bedroom. But even if we had intended that Dr. Fred was a cannibal, what's the harm? He would have been one under the influence of the evil purple meteor. The game recognizes that it is bad, and your mission is to rescue him from this unhappy state. Who would be offended?"

The official EVE Online site has details of upcoming patch 'Revelations 2.3'. Along with a number of bug-fixes to the PvP-focused Massively Multiplayer Online Game, this game fix will offer up compatibility with Mac OS X and Linux. Though the Mac client is a native port, Linux will require the used of Cedega. The post suggests that if you'd like a preview of what the game will be like on your rig, you can download the client and tool around the test server. System requirements are also listed, as are the distributions of Linux they are specifically supporting: Ubuntu 7+, Suse 10+, and Linspire 6. Update: 11/04 14:32 GMT by Z : Fixed implication of native Linux client.