Posts Tagged ‘video games’
Ten Year Old Boy, Afraid Mom Will Hit Him (Again), Hides For Four Days
Via Kotaku, a story about a ten-year-old boy in China who spent four days at an Internet Cafe because he was afraid that if he went home his mother would hit him. Spoiler alert: they found him, he’s fine, and his mom says she won’t hit him anymore.
Why was she hitting him in the first place? Because she thought he was “addicted to video games” and his grades were less than stellar. So basically it was a case of bad parenting.
I’m unclear how a ten-year-old could spend four days in a public place and nobody called his parents. Also, the story was in the news (the article mentions that the boy read about it while he was hiding out). Wouldn’t someone have recognized him? Guess not. Happy ending though, at least as far as we know.
via Afraid of his Mom, Chinese Kid Hides at Net Cafe (Kotaku)
Photos From Unlicensed World of Warcraft Theme Park in China (Links)
Here is a link to photos of a totally unlicensed World of Warcraft theme park in China, courtesy of a Reddit user.
An article on IGN.com says the park is “called Joyland, and Forbes reports that it cost $48 million to build. And it is entirely, audaciously illegal, as a copyright violation.”
That’s kind of amazing if you think about it, Read more »
How To Stop Online Gaming From Being a Hellish Pit of Vicious Verbiage
This article about a video game called League of Legends (which I’ve never played or even heard of) intrigued me because the game maker, Riot Games, is attempting to address what is apparently a serious problem within the Legends community.
Apparently many of the players are dickheads.
And as lead game producer Travis George puts it in his interview with Gamasutra, “Nobody wants to play a game with somebody who’s mean.”
Amen to that.
Of course, mean people playing games online is not limited to League of Legends. Which is a problem once your kids want to get involved.
As a parent who grew up playing video games, I’m highly conflicted about the current “social” state of gaming. What used to be a niche element of the gaming world — online play with strangers — has become as ubiquitous as broadband Internet connections. Read more »
Video Games Suck, Part One
I like video games. I’ve been playing them for most of my life, which is also most of their lives. That is, I’ve been playing video games almost as long as video games have existed.
Games have become infinitely more complex as the years have marched on. There have always been games that flat out suck. But now they suck for different reasons. Here’s one. There are more. But we’ll start with this one.
Video Games Suck, Part One — Everything Must Be Online
What’s wrong with going online? Aren’t you blogging? You couldn’t do that offline. I mean, you could. But then nobody would read what you wrote. Hasn’t the Internet democratized everything, eliminated all strife in the world and made the planet a more wonderful place?
OK, now I’m just being obnoxious. Let’s stay with how the Internet has contributed to the suckification of gaming, especially for kids. Read more »
Tetris The Movie (DaddyTube)
A fan-imagined trailer for a movie based on the game Tetris. Because after all, “If Battleship gets its own movie, why not Tetris?” Why not indeed.
Based on this trailer, made by a YouTuber called Warialasky, the movie would be better than “Battleship”, which is admittedly like saying someone is shorter than Shaquille O’Neal. But still.
TETRIS – OFFICIAL TRAILER – YouTube.
Pre-Order New Spider-Man Video Game From Amazon To Play As Stan Lee
Click for full-size image. Excelsior!
If you pre-order the new The Amazing Spider-Man video game from Amazon, you get a special bonus level where you play as Stan Lee. With superpowers, ‘natch. How neat is that? Read more »
New York State Bans Online Gamers Who Are Sex Offenders
Via Kotaku, a story about New York State banning online gamers who are sex offenders. This kind of makes sense, since (I think—I’m not a lawyer) convicted sex offenders are required to stay a certain distance from kids, and obviously kids (in this case I mean humans under the age of 18) are frequently playing games online.
One could argue that this raises privacy issues. But with apps that allow paranoid parents to easily find nearby sex offenders via GPS, sex offenders don’t have an expectation of privacy.
For me, this is yet another argument to keep my kids off of XBox Live or Life With Playstation or OpenFeint or whatever. As I’ve said to them many times—I trust you. It’s other people I’m concerned about.
New York State Just Banned 3,580 Online Gamers Who Are All Sex Offenders (Kotaku)
