Dr. Paul Dholakia writes "Drs. Richard Bagozzi, Paul Dholakia, and Rene Algesheimer are management and psychology faculty at Rice University and the University of Zurich. We are conducting an academic survey of online gamers and MUD players. This survey is specifically about interactions among friends who play online games and/or MUD together, and for this reason must be completed by groups of three friends. The survey takes approximately twenty minutes to complete, and the survey is available here. We are paying $10 to each participant provided they and two of their friends each complete the survey individually. We will pay participants the money upon completion of the survey by the group, either through Paypal, or by mailing them a personal check."

Megaphoneman writes "Apparently the new Star Wars Trilogy DVD set will automatically change your dashboard appearance if played on an XBox...without asking the user first!"

The Massive Gaming market continues to change. Wednesday marked the sunset of Earth and Beyond, a decision made by EA back in March due to a refocusing on future projects. While E&B heads out of the picture, the new French MMOG Saga of Ryzom opened its first US server this week after a lengthy beta period. Impressions of the game are available at Gamebunny and MMORPGDot. And looking towards the future, the Dungeons and Dragons Online website just went live yesterday.

Neophytus writes "Earlier today the 'Editor's Choice Edition' addon for Unreal Tournament 2004 was released to the public. The official bonus pack contains new maps, models and vehicles for UT2004. The ECE torrent is available, alongside direct downloads provided by BeyondUnreal. Rereleased alongside, the Game DVD bundles eleven of the best community-created mods alongside the new content."

eToychest writes "In a move that indicates the video game industry is embracing digital distribution as a vehicle to expand the market, more than 20 game publishers have signed on to supply titles for the Phantom Game Service." Their previously reported financial status is undoubtedly still an issue, though.

An anonymous reader writes "1UP has a story about the downloadable SOCOM II maps Sony's been talking about since the release of the game. They'll be available on the demo disc of the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine starting with the December issue. No word yet on whether the redesigned PS2 and its apparent lack of HDD support will affect Sony's future plans for downloadable content."

ivec writes "Immersion Corporation announced that the jury returned a verdict favorable to Immersion in its patent infringement suit against Sony Computer Entertainment. The jury found that Sony infringed all the asserted claims of U.S. Patent Nos. 6,275,213 and 6,424,333 and that those claims were valid. I was surprised how recent these filings were (2000 and 2001). The patents cover 'vibrating devices' such as joysticks."

Matt Clare writes "G4TechTV will play the regular NHL season via EA Sports NHL game. G4TechTV Canada subsriptions might get a bigger boost than when they picked up Leo Laport."

Brad writes "LinuxGames.com is reporting that the Doom 3 Linux Client has begun private testing. The Doom 3 Linux server has already been completed and will be released with the next win32 release."

An anonymous reader writes "Sony CEO Ken Kutaragi has today announced that Sony has finished work on the Playstation Portable hardware, and the handheld is scheduled to be released later this year. No details have emerged on the pricing of the PSP, but Kutaragi stated that plans for movies on the UMD - the disc format the PSP will use , are now in the final stages."

fenimor writes "Sony announced today that it had begun preparations to adopt Blu-ray Disc ROM (BD-ROM) format as a medium for the next generation PlayStation. Single side double layer Blu-Ray discs have a huge memory size of 54 GB, being an ideal medium to distribute next generation entertainment content from movies and music to computer applications. Next month Sony plans to announce a 200GB 8-layer version of BD-ROM according to MacWorld."

richie2000 writes "Valve asked Steam users for their hardware specs and more than half a million responded. Check out the survey results. Perhaps the most interesting tidbit is that OpenGL beats Direct3D by a healthy margin."

B1-66ER writes "Matrixfans.net has a report on the launch of TMO. 'Sega of America's new massively multi-player online game, Matrix Online, now has a ship date set. That date is January 18, 2005. The release date change from November is to coordinate the US launch with the European publisher.'"

wraggster writes "Building on his previous work, Chui has taken another step for the Dreamcast community by releasing the first Amiga 500 emulator for the Dreamcast."

JimLynch writes "Everybody's jazzed up about the DVD releases but Star Wars Battlefront came out today too. There are reviews at IGN and GameSpy."

RotJ writes "Some crafty Germans have created an electromechanical conversion of the game Pong: "Pongmechanik is an absolutely physical game. The game is realized electromechanically, and essentially consists of four elements: A relay computer, the mechanical movement with collision detection, the display and the acoustic components." Talk about analog retro chic." saccade.com adds "This amazing device faithfully re-creates the classic original video game with pulleys, wires, motors and a (pre-chip, pre-transistor, pre-tube) relay based computer. They were partly inspired by Konrad Zuse, who created some of the first electromechanical and electronic computers."

Saist (and several others) writes "WhereisPhantom.com is reporting that Infinium Labs will not release the Phantom until 2005. " While this doesn't appear to widely reported or verified yet, coming as it does on the heels of recent news it's not hard to imagine that this is true.

Hurricane Ivan's US landfall has affected gamers across the country. The World of Warcraft Beta is still down this week while the data center it's housed in is dried and brought back up. Star Wars Galaxies also experienced outage due to adverse weather conditions. And many thanks to Leon Kiriliuk for alerting us to the Pinball Association Notice that "two-hundred thirty two classic pinball machines and some rare video games were destroyed, including an extremely rare Tattoo Assassins prototype and a sit-down Omega Race!" Update: 09/21 02:33 EDT The World of Warcraft Beta is back up and running with a new patch.

Thanks to GamesIndustry.biz for their article regarding the manufacturing plans for the Xbox 2. "Speaking at a press conference, senior vice president Kenneth Kin said that ... manufacturing plans for Xbox 2 chips is 'proceeding according to plan,' scotching recent murmuring about a possible further delay to Microsoft's schedule for the system."

mcc writes "PlanetGamecube is reporting the upcoming Nintendo DS handheld has been given a launch date of November 21st and a price of $150 ! It is also being reported that the Nintendo DS will ship with PictoChat (a sort of chat/whiteboard software) and some form of the Metroid Prime Hunters multiplayer FPS bundled in. A fact sheet is also available."