Late Night Consoling

You may have heard about the challenge issued by fanatical anti-game activisist Jack Thompson, who dared the games industry to create a game in which a raging vigilante goes on a killing spree, murdering the employees and management of the only slightly fictitious game publisher "Take This." Were a game company to develop, publish, and distribute such a game, Thompson claimed he would donate $10,000 to the favorite charity of the real company Take Two's real CEO Paul Eibeler. Well, when the Penny Arcade guys found out about this, PA's Mike Krahulik (Gabe) felt he should let Thompson know that the comic's Child's Play charity has already donated over $500,000 to benefit hospitalized children around the country. Thompson responded in turn: he called Krahulik on the phone and "screamed at me for a couple minutes."

Well, the situation reached new levels of hilarity today, as Dr. David Walsh of America's National Institute on Media and the Family has told Thompson to leave his organization alone and stop trying to claim false associations. In an open letter to the the games industry and to politicians, Walsh revealed that despite Thompson constantly claiming to be cooperating with the institute, the institute has no relationship with Thompson, and in fact is offended by his publically outrageous and offensive techniques. In addressing Thompson, Walsh's letter states:

"Over the past few months, I and members of my board have a growing concern that your use of our name, without our permission, has had a negative influence as we try to educate the public on this important issue. Your commentary has included extreme hyperbole and your tactics have included personally attacking individuals for whom I have a great deal of respect... Some of the people that you have publicly criticised are not only people of integrity, but are people who have worked to improve the lives of children."

Walsh continues to say that he and his organization do not "condone these tactics," and he demands that Thompson "cease using the institute's or my name in any way that would give the impression that we support your efforts." He even wants his organization's link off of Thompson's site.

Thompson just responded, with an accusatory and conspiratorial link that is tenuous at best and laughable otherwise:

"Dr. Walsh's efforts are funded by Target and by a foundation run by Best Buy lawyer and Best Buy Director Elliot Kaplan. This was revealed in a recent article about Dr. Walsh in the Pioneer Press... I am suing Target and Best Buy over [Rockstar's] Bully game, which both Target and Best Buy are pre-selling. You connect the dots."

Very incisive. Thompson goes on to accuse Walsh's open letter is an attempt to "protect his relationship with portions of the video game industry and its reckless retail network." After years of criticizing an entire industry for supposedly being overly violent, unreasonable, and petty, it's nice to see Thompson taking some of what he so routinely dishes out.

Microsoft announced today plans to more fully integrate Xbox 360 with Windows. The company's update, which will only be available for Windows XP Media Center Edition users, will give the console such features as the ability to stream media files from the PC, including HD content. The Windows software, helpfully titled Update Rollup 2 for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, will allow management of up to 200 movies, have new DVD burning functionality, and add support for external HDTV tuners. Media Center Edition users who wish to download the update may do so for free from Microsoft's Windows Update site.

Microsoft plans to ship Xbox 360 consoles compatible with the technology "later in the year," though it was not specified whether that implies that the first batch of machines will support it out of the box.

It looks like Neversoft's upcoming western GUN (PS2, Xbox, GCN, X360) has jumped on board the alternate reality game (ARG) craze, a tactic that is becoming more and more popular lately in the marketing of upcoming games and game industry announcements. Gamasutra reports that the recently-launched Last Call Poker may very well have been created for the purpose of promoting GUN. Last Call Poker, while at first glance appearing to be a fairly straightforward gambling site, is upon closer inspection riddled with hidden clues and puzzles suggesting that it is the launching point of an ARG. Of course, some clues are a little more obvious. The front page contains an inconspicious anonymous plea for players to help save his niece from being murdered. In addition, watching the static (at first) header on the page eventually reveals the flashed text, "If you're reading this, I'm already dead." So, probably not just a poker site then.

Microsoft has already announced that Alexey Pajitnov's puzzle game Hexic will ship on the Xbox 360 hard drive, and that GarageGames' Marble Blast Ultra will be available over the Xbox Live Arcade service for 360, but today they revealed a full list of the first wave of games that will be available the Live Arcade service. The list contains 21 games to be released in the "launch window" of the upcoming console, which is considered to be from the release date until the "holiday season." It lists several card games and puzzle games, including popular titles such as Popcap's Bejeweled 2, as well as classics like Midway's Joust and SmashTV. Each game will have a free downloadable demo available. Microsoft expects about 35 more games to launch by next summer.

Those of you who own an Xbox copy of The Behemoth's gloriously frenetic old-school throwback shooter Alien Hominid (PS2, Xbox, GCN) will have a few downloads available for the game through Xbox Live. The level packs are additions to the PDA-style minigames, rather than the main component proper, but extra content is extra content. The two new games are called "Chicken Pack" and "Ultra Hyper Load", each with 25 levels. Zoo Digital, the game's publisher in Europe, claims more content will be available early next year.

There's just one catch: the Xbox version of the game didn't make it to North America, which got the PS2 and GameCube verions, so this announcement should only affect our European friends.

Microsoft has Designer Diary #1 for Bizarre Creations' Project Gotham Racing 3 (X360).

Gamasutra has a video lecture from Game Developers Conference, entitled "Recreating the LAN Party Online: The Networking and Social Infrastructure of Halo 2." Bungie's Chris Butcher shares his experience. (free reg. required)