This article at Wired is an amazing story. However, I am struck by how much attention is paid to violent videogames — by the writer, by the accused, by the courts who presumably discuss the briefs — when it seems pretty clear that everyone in the story is a deeply screwed up person to begin with.

Does “geek discrimination” exist? Sure, and I am sure that in the courts, the issue of whether Reiser played violent games with his 6 year old was a factor. But surely somewhere along the line the drugs, self-mutilation, adultery, and murders by the lover deserve a bit more weight in the deliberations? Yikes.

Society really needs to stop seeing interest in violent videogames as a motive cause, and instead start seeing extreme fascination with violence in general as a warning flag. I read this article the same day I first browsed an issue of Entertainment Weekly with the headline emblazoned on the cover “Top 25 Action Movies Of All Time!!” — Kill Bill, Die Hard, etc etc.

I am sure Reiser saw Kill Bill. It was a geek thing to do. I bet nobody in this case filed court papers with the title of a movie in them.

Adrian Crook has an interesting article titled “The Economics of a Free-To-Play Console Game,” which attempts to break down the revenues that you could expect to see from having an online game on XBLA that was free-to-play and then monetized via upsells or item sales. In other words, monetized via what is widely considered the “rising wave” business model.

His conclusion?

Consoles are always going to be a subset of the addressable market of PCs and for now should be considered a secondary or tertiary platform for all but the cheapest-to-produce or most daring F2P endeavors.

Read More “Analyzing console online revenues”

Bloxorz is a cool game, with some of the vibe of those puzzle games with aligning mirrors or setting up paths (like puzzle mode in Chu-Chu Rocket) and some of the vibe of the classic PS1 game Intelligent Qube. Nicely done…!

…and is saddened. Among the writer’s targets are Seriosity, whose Byron Reeves I have mentioned previously as doing really cool research into how games can help solve work problems; and Ian Bogost’s Persuasive Games, which has been getting press lately for the newsgames it’s building.

Read More “Slate surveys serious games”

RMT Taxation starts in Korea from 1 July 2007, says this translation of the original Korean article. It only applies to those who have a certain volume of transactions — folks doing more than 6m won every six months (around $6500) will have the mediating party (e.g., the RMT company) collect the tax, and folks over 12m won in a half year have to get a business license.

Apparently, this is a deal cut by the RMT companies…