Gamertell

Even if you didn’t get up at the crack of dawn this morning to participate in the mass hysteria that is Black Friday, you can still get some amazing buys all day online. For Mac gamers (and yes, we exist) the Apple store is offering some kick-ass buys on popular games - today only.

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Halloween just passed us by without a hitch, handed out treats to the goblins and fairies and the occasional witch. But soon Thanksgiving day will be here. So while my other stories are forming and interviews are completed I wondered what I could possibly be thank for this year aside from the usual family, friends and fine wines and elegant turkey dinners.

So what do I have to be thankful for this year? Well here goes, and remember this is just my opinion and do feel free to add what you’re thankful for in the comments below as we celebrate them together.

1. That Uwe Boll has NOT made a movie about my current favorite video game.
2. That my friend (and founder of Gamers Outreach Foundation) Zachary Wigal has finally lived his dream.
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On August 22, 2008, a new game store opened in the Chicago, IL (USA), area. The store, Black Sun Games, is run by gamers and focuses on table-top role-playing games (RPGs), miniatures and collectible card gaming…

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Just when you thought the world was turning an evil eye towards video games, accusing it of converting children into violent thugs, rotting their brains and making them fat. Consoles like the Nintendo Wii have opened up a new way for the medical field to use the games to their advantage. With games being integrated into physical therapies that can not only improve a person’s hand-eye-coordination it may just help shed some pounds in childhood obesity.

According to an article published by the UK Press Association video games that engage children in any form of physical activity “may be an effective answer to childhood obesity…“

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So you wanna work with video games, eh? Well, then don’t get a degree in computer games, at least not in England.

Britain’s huge gaming industry has put universities under major attack for failing to equip students for work while handing out their gaming degrees. According to The Daily Mail UK, several of the country’s top firms go so far as to say that the schools are offering “mouse degrees with little job relevance.“  Ouch. Hope the students didn’t…

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The average gamer age is higher than it was when most of us started gaming. Content is much more mature than when the older gamers started as well. Parents, who are often gamers as well, still want to insure that their kids play age-appropriate games.

If you don’t want your kids to have exposure to inappropriate content, the only place you can really limit their exposure is in the home. Even then your control over inappropriate content in your house is still lacking to an extent. Unless your child is home schooled, has no friends, doesn’t watch TV, never goes online and doesn’t flip through magazines or the newspaper; sooner or later there’s going to be exposure to content deemed inappropriate for a child.

So with the general availability of information there’s a couple of ways to deal with the rise in mature content…

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It’s difficult for the parents of a child diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) to find ways to control their child’s disorder and help him or her live a normal childhood.

PopCap Games recently contracted Information Solutions Group to conduct a unique survey in April 2008 in which 2,728 respondents (of the 13,296 casual gamers surveyed) indicated they or someone they are caring for has a disability…

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FROM APPLETELL - Even before the iPhone, the iPod never stood a chance as a legitimate gaming device. This saddens me somewhat, too, because I really wanted it to be…
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In Japan, video game art and design is celebrated. People relish game design and respect the effort that went into creating them, resulting in the plentiful publication of books filled with various designs and extra images from games. In fact, nearly every major video game release has an art book devoted to it.

These art books aren’t the flimsy pubs found roaming wild in North America. You know what I’m talking about - 16~20 page pamphlets that some companies try to pass off as limited edition, sacred, preorder items. The art books in Japan are of extremely high quality with dust covers, or even hard cover compilations. They are to be treasured.

Click through to find out more and for the “Nearly Complete Alphabet of Artbooks…“

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A new poll conducted at whattheyplay.com (a site oriented towards educating parents about videogame content) shows that people are more offended by sex than violence in games. Keep in mind that this is a thoroughly unscientific study of a very skewed portion of the population (read: parents who care what their kids are playing), but the results are still surprising. According to the poll, the most offensive thing in a videogame is a depiction of a man and a woman having sex (37%) followed by two men kissing (27%), then a graphically severed human head (26%), and lastly, multiple use of the F-word (10%).

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