An attorney in Syracuse, New York is representing a four-year-old boy who suffered a seizure watching his brother play a videogame. The attorney is asking other victims to come forward to presumably set up a class action lawsuit.

The attorney, Michael P. Kenny, is taking Sony and Vivendi to court over Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly for the PlayStation 2, claiming that the game contains “seizure triggers” which harmed his client.

Kenny released the following statement:

“The video game companies know there is a problem, and they choose not to fix it. The video games seizures have a cause, and the manufacturers choose not to correct it.” Kenny asserts that the video game manufacturers knowingly place their financial gain ahead of people’s health. He added, “Without federal legislation to compel the video game companies to take action, we have no choice but to litigate on behalf of the victims.”

You can check out the website Kenny set up right here. What I want to know, and I’m sure I’m not the only one, is why that kid was playing a game with a metascore of 56.

Game Politics

I jump with joy any time that video games are brought up in a good light, and this is no exception. Deval Patrick, the Governor of Massachusetts, lobbied game publishers to relocate to his state in an effort to help his state’s economy. Now he’s brought the subject up again, this time bragging about it.

“This is not your father’s [Route] 128. You know that [There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.] ‘Guitar Hero’? That was invented here. It was built here.”

Harmonix is indeed based in Cambridge. And the Route 128 area is a massive technology hub in the state, with companies like Polaroid, Sun Microsystems, and Raytheon having branches there.

Game Politics

Liberal. Conservative. Fanboy.

These words have taken on new meanings in the age of internet and anonymous hate-spamming. And, just like pundits and politicos, gamers have their preferred warhorse.

But when you show your support for a system you instantly become “fanboy,” and are likely to get a face full of flamer comments within minutes. People get defensive. People get offensive. And most frequently, they degenerate into juvenile debates that go a lot like playground calls of “my dad can beat up your dad.” Sure, its never going to happen, its just that people really like to be assholes to each other.

But you already knew this, if you have any internet proficiency. So lets ask the question, what is a fanboy, and is it really so bad to be one?

Well, Brad Hilderbrand, at kombo, dared to ask that question, and his editorial inspired me to share my opinion with you, in a time when it’s not only gaming that’s full of name calling, and the side we chose has come to be a derogatory term.

I will admit, that for the better part of my years, I was a Nintendo fanboy. I owned mostly Nintendo systems and loved Nintendo games. Lately, I’ve become quite attached to the Xbox 360. I do not own a PS3, but that’s mostly because I’m fucking poor and can’t afford everything I want. That’s life. But it doesn’t mean I don’t like Sony. In fact, if I had the opportunity, I would buy a PS3 and some really great games to go with it, because all systems have their good and bad parts, and in the end, it comes down to having fun.

So lets put down the hate words and really come together as a nation, as a world, as a community of people with a shared interest, and maybe if we’re lucky, all the ‘responsible people’ who don’t play games will notice that we can get along without resorting to playground name-calling tactics.

Just as long as none of those dumbass PC douchebags who think their $2,000 system is hot shit come along. Seriously, fuck those guys.

That’s sarcasm. Put out your flaming torches, I own a PC too.

In a move that’s well beyond any lame Second Life appearances, the Obama campaign has bought ad space in Paradise City. EA confirmed the ad buy to website Gigaom today– check out their statement after the jump.

EA told Gigaom:

“I can confirm that the Obama campaign has paid for in-game advertising in Burnout,” Holly Rockwood, director of corporate communications at Electronic Arts, the game’s publisher, told me via email, noting that EA regularly allows ad placements in their online games. “Like most television, radio and print outlets, we accept advertising from credible political candidates,” she continued. “Like political spots on the television networks, these ads do not reflect the political policies of EA or the opinions of its development teams.”

However, the McCain-Palin ticket has been getting some in-game publicity of their own. Recent (unofficial) appearances by the GOP VP Candidate have popped up in games as diverse as Bayonetta, Rock Band 2, and Tomb Raider.

We’re also looking forward to Wednesday’s final debate, when the candidates will fight a duel in a lush outdoor garden. A preview of this can be found below.

Source: Gigaom

The lexicon of American politics includes many derogatory terms: carpetbagger, hatchet man, or flip-flopper. Now we can add “Halo player” to the list.

In the Maricopa County District 1 Supervisor race in Arizona, incumbent Republican Fulton Brock is slamming Democratic challenger Ed Hermes in his campaign literature as a “Halo gamer.”

The mail-out is a one page pamphlet which shows a side-by-side comparison of the two in an attempt to cast Hermes in a negative light as young and inexperienced.

This mail-out comes after Hermes continues to fundraise more successfully than Brock, who has committed a series of political faux pas during his tenure. In August, Brock was secretly taped while meeting with local activists that landed him in the proverbial aqua fervens.

Hermes, 24, is running on the platform of fiscal responsibility, public accountability, and “n0 c0nzol3 haxz0rz,”

Source: joystiq.com

This story starts with a young boy and a subscription to the MMO Final Fantasy XI. After a few months with the game, he grows tired of it and decides he’s going to cancel. Great, so how do you do that? What seems like should be a simple task ends up an exercise in frustration. Little did Square Enix know — they just messed with the wrong guy.

When Frank Edwards wanted to cancel his son’s subscription, he had a hard time finding out how to go about it. The Final Fantasy XI community website supposedly had no link to cancel an account, and he was unable to locate a phone number until he checked his credit card statement. A call to this number resulted in an hour and 45 minutes of elevator music while he was on hold.

Rather than just put up with this bullshit, Frank Edwards calls up his good buddy Illinois State Representative Raymond Poe. You see, Frank Edwards just happens to be an alderman in Springfield, and he’s learned that having a friend with bill-writing abilities is a good thing to have.

Frank gets his pal, the Senator, to propose a law that fixes this horse-swaggle, and that law ended up just getting passed earlier this week. The law states:

So basically, it says: “That’s what you get for fucking with me, Square Enix.” It’s actually kind of funny how the law is written to specifically address Frank’s problem.  To put things into perspective, though, Frank Edwards previously had asked Senator Poe to help him pass a law that “package delivery trucks are not permitted to park along the curb next to a driveway because the exhaust from said package delivery truck is harmful to the homeowner’s tomato plants and totally makes the homeowner’s wife angry.”

Okay, I made that up.

Having had a similar issue after canceling my World of WarCraft subscription a few years ago, it’s cool to think that I could do something about it if I decided to become more politically involved and make friends with a Senator. I won’t, but it’s still nice to know I could.

It’s strange to see videogame legislation pop up in the news like this and have it not throw me into a geekified rage. This one, however, seems to to be a win on both sides of the camp. What’s next, legislation that makes licensed games not suck?

Source: Silicon Alley Insider

It’s been 17 months since Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton started to duke it out for the Democratic nomination, less than a month since the winner of that contest was settled, and four score and seven years since John McCain graduated from flight school, after learning how to ride a pterodactyl. It’s easy to get fatigued watching all this crap on cable news, but for a fun bit of counter-programming, we have this clever little strategy game, The Political Machine 2008.

At first glance this downloadable game looks a bit like Civilization, but on a scale of 41 weeks instead of 4,100 years. Also, instead of a whole world to explore, you are limited to the 50 United States (suck it, Guam!), and there is no “fog of war” obscuring your view of the nation. While there is no rolling blackness from your perspective, the nation’s voters are wallowing in ignorance, and it’s up to you to educate them with speeches, ads, and political trickery.

You play as a contemporary political contender, including some recent candidates and running mates, and can face off against historical figures in the campaign mode. Obama vs. Lincoln, for example, is a fun match-up because they both hail from Illinois, and Reagan is always a tough contender because he’s the only Republican with a steady shot at winning California.

If you’re any kind of fan of politics at all, have any sort of preference about political coverage in newspapers or TV, or have read any nonfiction book about the Bush Administration, you’ll undoubtedly get a huge kick out of the tactics in this game. You can hire smear merchants to pen vitriolic columns about your opponent, a fashion consultant to keep you looking spiffy, and a speechwriter to round out a few choice phrases.

The Political Machine is clever in its message—to succeed, candidates fly around from state to state constantly, delivering speeches on the same few inoffensive, noncontroversial topics, claiming bold stances on positions like “I’m for the environment” or “I’m against high gas prices”. It’s a little hard to get a read on the voters’ perception, as the polls mostly focus on individual states. But after a few campaigns you’ll get the hang of all the right things to say: just promise farm subsidies in Iowa and thump your chest about a strong military in Virginia.

The game lacks a bit of nuance, however. You can’t parse your positions down to the level of “meeting with enemies of America without preconditions but with preparation”. You can also slam your opponent and tell lies about their positions, regardless of where they actually stand. Like Twain said, a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.

A couple of tweaks and improvements are also needed. It’d be better if more stats about your opponent’s position were available at hand. On election night, it’d be great to see the name of the state and some detailed information about why you won or lost. Also, on-the-ground operatives like The Heckler or the Wealthy Patron are pretty cool, but they don’t hold nearly the evil appeal of a real life Karl Rove. If I want to spread a whisper campaign about my opponent’s alleged illegitimate children, this game should let me.

If anything, the game’s not nasty enough. Politics can get pretty rough and tumble, but the worst you can do in this game is distort your opponent’s stance on the issues. You can’t leak photos of them wearing a turban, or run a few out-of-context clips on Youtube until their negative rating is so high that you win by default. You actually have to campaign on the issues, which we all know is completely unrealistic.

Even with a few minor flaws, the Political Machine is a reasonably priced and enjoyable experience, and it’s also a great way to blow off some of the steam that builds up from watching stupid bullshit on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News. I can’t emphasize these points enough, because it says right there on my teleprompter to deliver these points with emphasis. And unlike my opponent, I for one am against higher gas prices, terrorists, and using the flag to wax your car. Thank you and God Bless America.

What does this score mean? Check out our review scoring breakdown.