FhnuZoag writes "Google Video is hosting the short film 'Fear of Girls', written and directed by Ryan Wood. The film is a hilarious 'documentary' dealing with a pair of self-declared elite table-top roleplayers. The film has already appeared at a variety of fringe events, but here's a chance to see it for free and online from a server that probably can survive a slashdotting." Allright, so it's not that funny, but since I'm off to play D&D this afternoon, it tickled me.

On news that Rockstar was being sued by the city of L.A., the aftermath of Hot Coffee, and the 'unhealthy relationship the board of directors has with its management' Take-Two Entertainment's shares dropped sharply on Friday. From the article: "Cooper said in a note that the company is burning cash at an 'alarming' rate and that he expects 'more title delays, a possible SEC investigation and key employee departures.' This comes immediately after the news that Audit Committee Chairwoman Barbara Kaczynski resigned from the board on January 19, because she felt that management had failed to keep the board informed of key issues."

GrandGranini writes "The New York Times has an interview with World Of Warcraft Lead Game Designer Jeff Kaplan (Tigole), in which he talks about the next raid dungeon after Ahn'Quiraj, the necropolis Naxxramas." From the article: "Naxxramas is going to be the most difficult thing in the game until the expansion pack comes out. It will be the pinnacle, and it's absolutely massive. You'll see this big necropolis floating above Eastern Plaguelands. It's a 40-man raid zone, and it's bigger than the Undercity [one of the main cities in the game]. Things could change, but we're up to something like 18 bosses in there, and they are really cool, too. But it's going to be hard. Really hard. We're hoping to release it in the spring." If you told me two years ago that I'd be reading about an upcoming instance in the sport section of the NYT, I'd have called you a damn dirty liar. May you live in interesting times, indeed.

The Guardian Gamesblog kicked off a great discussion on their site, talking about games that just keep pulling you back in. Games that, even if you've played through them once, you just have to pick them up again. eToyChest and Kotaku both have related threads. So, what about you? What are some videogames that, even years later, you just have to play through one more time?

Alice, over at the Wonderland blog, has an interesting post wondering about the state of Sony's finances when put in contrast with their view on second-hand game sales, and new title prices. From the article: "Yet it turns out that discounting new releases also results in higher sales. MCV continues: 'BVG's The Chronicles of Narnia jumped ten places up the ChartTrack top 40 last week, thanks to a 16 per cent sales increase, following its slashing to £19.99 at most High Street retailers.' My question: what the hell are they complaining about? Why curtail the perfectly reasonable and legal second-hand market if they're making money hand-over-fist with the current situation?"

Gamasutra reports on a Wheeling Jesuit University study that indicates gameplaying can allow those with great pain to live more fulfilling lives. From the article: "The Wheeling study compared several different genres of games in their effects on pain. Six types of games were used: action, puzzle, arcade, fighting, sports, and boxing, all varieties that encourage high attention and stimulus. (Games such as RPGs and graphical adventures were likely left out of the survey for their low-impact nature.) The game types most effective in distracting from pain, meted out by cold pressor tests after 10 minutes of each subject playing a particular game type, were the sports and fighting games."

The Guardian Gamesblog has a longish piece talking with Volatile Games, developers of the title Possession for the PS3, about what it's like to make a game for Sony's next-gen console. From the article: "At the end of the day it's just a multi-processor architecture. If you can get something running on eight threads of a PC CPU, you can get it running on eight processors on a PS3 - it's not massively different. There is a small 'gotcha' in there though. The main processor can access all the machine's video memory, but each of the seven SPE chips has access only to its own 256k of onboard memory - so if you have, say, a big mesh to process, it'll be necessary to stream it through a small amount of memory - you'd have to DMA it up to your cell chip and then process a little chunk, then DMA the next chunk, so you won't be able to jump around the memory as easily, which I guess you will be able to do on the Xbox 360."

The lexicon and gameplay in Massively Multiplayer games can be confusing and, for some people, counterintuitive. Just the same, the genre has grown by leaps and bounds over the last year. Everquest 2, City of Heroes/Villains, Guild Wars, and a little game called World of Warcraft have all grown the market beyond the wildest dreams of MMG commentators. As such, there are a lot of folks who are either playing these games for the first time, or want to play one of these games for the first time. Scott Jennings steps from the shadows of the internet past, filling the role of advisor to a whole generation of n00bs. His book, Massively Multiplayer Games for Dummies, is a straightforward text on what to and what not to do in any Massive game you're likely to play. Read on for my impressions of a massively multiplayer reference for the rest of us.

Fireball394 wrote with a link to an article on the site 'In Newsweekly'. The article, entitled "Blizzard of GLBT gaming policy questions", discusses the application of a harassment warning on a player who was recruiting for a GLBT guild. From the article: "In her follow-up letter to the company, Andrews explained that there was an obvious misunderstanding and that she was not insulting anyone, but merely recruiting for a 'GLBT friendly' guild. The response from Blizzard was, 'While we appreciate and understand your point of view, we do feel that the advertisement of a GLBT friendly guild is very likely to result in harassment for players that may not have existed otherwise. If you will look at our policy, you will notice the suggested penalty for violating the Sexual Orientation Harassment Policy is to be temporarily suspended from the game. However, as there was clearly no malicious intent on your part, this penalty was reduced to a warning.' Blizzard's stance was clear that recruiting for a guild using 'GLBT' was inappropriate as, the company said, it may 'incite certain responses in other players that will allow for discussion that we feel has no place in our game.'"

1up has up a piece on Handheld Heroes, portable games that have (despite their small size) make herculean changes in the face of gaming as a whole. From the article: "Tetris is, quite possibly, the most important portable game of all. While the drama surrounding its NES incarnation gets the most attention, the Game Boy version quietly sold millions and millions of handheld systems to people who were instantly addicted to its simple, intuitive, challenging gameplay. It's no exaggeration to say that Tetris single-handedly created the portable market, helped the Game Boy conquer its competition, and gave Nintendo an enduring source of income that's still going strong."

Kotaku Editor Brian Crecente has an article in the Rocky Mountain news discussing the seemingly unending wave of bad movies based on videogames being created by director Uwe Boll. From the article: "Gas Powered isn't concerned about his previous failures because his other movies were 'so low-budget,' he added. 'I think BloodRayne was his first budget over $10 million. The Dungeon Siege budget is over $60 million, so we have high hopes for the film.' Vince Desi has equally high hopes for Boll's upcoming film based on his game, Postal. Desi - outspoken founder of Running with Scissors, creator of what is considered the most violent mainstream game in history - contends things will be different when Boll creates a movie based on his game."

Next Generation reports that the L.A. city attorney has filed suit against Rockstar, for a misleading ad campaign and 'unfair competition'. The suit was prompted because of the much publicized 'Hot Cofee' mod discovered last year. From the article: "'Businesses have an obligation to truthfully disclose the content of their products - whether in the food we eat or the entertainment we consume,' Delgadillo said. The lawsuit is actually part of a wider effort to investigate the marketing of videogames."

beastiecube wrote to mention a GameDaily article going into detail about some accomplished European game developers. American and Japanese companies seem to get most of the press, but there are several development houses in the EU that are producing solid work. From the article: "Criterion is certainly no stranger to never before seen products. Its critically acclaimed Burnout series introduced us to the most terrifyingly amazing crashes ever seen in videogames, and it's looking to spice up the shooting genre with Black, a highly intense FPS where the guns are the stars. Most of them are nothing new, because after all, you see one AK-47, you've seen them all, but unlike in most games, Black's weapons are extremely loud and in your face. But what's even cooler than the hot assortment of deadly toys is the environmental interaction."

An anonymous reader writes "FiringSquad has just posted an article going into 5 problems with videogame journalism. The author says that since it wouldn't be polite to point the finger at other journalists, he wrote this racing-game shootout and this DOA4 review to provide the evidence. Great article made even better because the writer is using his own work as evidence for why things have gone terribly wrong."

Spad writes "The Register is reporting that the Xbox360 is likely to remain scarce well into the spring, citing component shortages and a lack of manufacturing capacity. In an interview with USA Today, Circuit City said that due to the shortages they won't be promoting the console, as there's no point throwing resources at a product it can't sell. Microsoft had hoped to ship 2.75m consoles in the first three months, but are currently well short of that mark, having shipped a mere 600,000 units since its launch two months ago." Supply issues continue to harm the system's sales, moving back the Australia launch of the console until late March. Update: 01/27 15:19 GMT by Z : Despite these setbacks, Next Generation reports that Microsoft expects to ship their goal by the end of their fiscal year.

Sony Online Entertainment CEO John Smedley has posted an open letter to the Star Wars Galaxies Community, trying to start a constructive dialogue with the players. He discusses, honestly I think, many of the reasons behind the still much-maligned New Game Enhancements. From the post: "One last thing I'd like to discuss in this explanation is the business end of things. Many of you question the logic of the decision to do this NGE.. stating that many of the existing players will quit because we're changing the game so much. From our standpoint we have to look at the game for the long haul. EverQuest is will be 7 years old on March 16th. We HAVE to think that long-term. With the game the way it was we knew we would never be able to attract enough people to really keep SWG viable as a business." The players, they do not seem to be in the spirit of cooperation. Here's hoping something good comes out of it.

Gamasutra reports on Microsoft's announcement that their revenues are up, but the games division has seen a sharp decrease in profitability. From the article: "Microsoft's Home and Entertainment division, which overall includes the Microsoft Xbox video game console system, PC games, the Home Products Division, and TV platform products for the interactive television industry, saw revenue of $1.56 billion in the 3 months to the end of December and a significant loss of $293 million, compared to $1.37 billion revenues and a small profit of $55 million in the same period last year."

Via Next Generation a list of 2005's Dumbest Business Moments, which rightly lists the Hot Coffee debacle as one of those ignoble icons. From the article: "In June a Dutch programmer releases software that lets players of Take-Two Interactive's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas access sexually explicit content left in the game's source code by its developers. Already marked 'Mature' for 'blood and gore, intense violence, strong language, strong sexual content, and use of drugs,' the game gets rerated 'Adults Only,' causing Target and Wal-Mart to pull it from stores. Take-Two's quarterly revenues fall $40 million short of projections."

Just a reminder that you can still place a submission for February's Carnival of Gamers. Slashdot Games is hosting next month's moving blog event, which features some of the most interesting gaming commentary in the gaming blogosphere. We've discussed the Carnival several times in the past, with the most recent carnival hosted on the blog 'Kill Ten Rats'. If you're interested, send in your link to (carniegrue (at) gmail.com).

Game Revolutions has a project running to collect together some of the finest game endings from the 16- and 8-bit eras. Some of the examples they have for viewing via Flash include Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past, Flashback, Secret of Mana, and Starfox.