Gamertell

I am a coward.

At sleepovers in my childhood, I’d close my eyes during particularly scary portions of Are You Afraid of the Dark?, I’m 25 years old and still can’t listen to Reagan’s “possessed” voice in The Exorcist and I only was able to watch about a half hour of the remake of The Omen. For a brief time after watching all of The Exorcism of Emily Rose, I would make a conscious decision to be in bed and asleep by 3am.

But I’d like to think I’m getting better, and its all because of Fatal Frame.

It all started around Halloween in 2002. I was in college, and taking a night Japanese class with my friends Shawna and Vivienne (not their real names). Often, when class would get out, we’d feel like actually doing something, rather than going home, studying and getting to bed. You know - productive stuff.

Shawna was, and still is, a horror game fan - and good at it too. She suggested we rent Fatal Frame from Blockbuster and return to Vivienne’s nearby home for a game-a-thon. Vivienne and I had never heard of the game, but Shawna made it sound interesting, so we instantly agreed. We figured it may help us get in the spirit of the season…

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I would like to touch on a topic that seems to be popping up constantly. I’m talking about game developers patching up games like there’s no tomorrow. Most recently, games such as LittleBigPlanet, SOCOM Confrontation, Fable 2,  and Castle Crashers have been victims of a crucial gameplay element being either broken or excluded from launch. The good thing about technology and consoles in this generation is the ability of adding or fixing content through the use of a simple patch. However, just because developers have this ability doesn’t mean they should abuse it.

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We all have bad habits we’re trying to free ourselves from. Whether its drinking, speeding, or in my case caffeine and chocolate. One of the more popular vices everyone would like to see vanish is smoking. Yep, down with the nicotine sticks, no more dancing with cancer these days. But if you have friends who smoke like I do, asking them to stop will result in their telling you to ‘butt’ out or blow that defiant puff in your face.

It’s a habit that people find difficult to shake, especially if they’ve been smoking for quite a long time, rendering the nicotine patches, gums and carrot sticks useless. But in Canada, members of the Allen Carr Team - founded by anti-smoking guru Allen Carr - found a way to help smokers break their habit with the help of a Nintendo DS.

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Last month the Australian Home Affairs Ministry declared that the country’s attorneys-general would mull over whether games with an R rating should be allowed in the country or not. The attorneys-general met recently in Barossa Valley in South Australia and reached a consensus that the final decision can only be reached after taking into account the public opinion.

Australia doesn’t have a R rating for video games which means that…

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As an active member of several women gamer sites, I know there are a lot of women who game online and offline both with computers and consoles. So where does Kate Muir of Times Online get the idea that console gamers are boys and that my console is merely a toy?

This has been the topic of the week in the forums of some women gaming sites and I couldn’t agree with them more as they question where the heck Muir got her information or if she even games or knows what she’s talking about. In her article, Muir writes “Xboxes were toys for very big boys indeed,“ and that men (at least in the UK) are “infantalised by night in a virtual world,“ clinching her stereotypical views with…

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I am sure we have all dreamt about the prospect of sitting around doing nothing, while getting paid. Well, aside from writing for game web sites, the next best thing has to be voice acting.

In the past, terrible voice acting was one of the benchmarks for the video game industry, right up there with music. In recent years, with titles such as Grand Theft Auto, Stranglehold and Rise of Honor, big-name actors and directors have turned to videogames for a little extra cash and to tell new stories that don’t necessarily have to seen on the big scene. While many actors might do voice work for video game tie-in’s for summer movies, some do it just for…

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With the California violent videogame law recently being stopped, it’s no surprise that an article (it most likely ran on the Opinion/Editorial page) titled “How to protect kids from violent video games” would run this week in the San Jose Mercury News.

The article, written by founder and president of the National Institute on Media and the Family, David Walsh, does a pretty good of putting things in context including mention of the ESRB and retail stores’ efforts to keep kids from buying games beyond their age ratings…

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