It's Been A While, But Here's Some Great Stuff

First of all, this video is pretty damn awesome. It answers the question that no one has asked, even though they should: "What if a Legend of Zelda movie was made in the vein of a teenage romantic comedy?" On top of the great gaming and 80's Teen movie references, they did a FANTASTIC job making this look like a home movie straight out of the 80's or early 90's. Great job!

Apparently a bunch of trolls started a flame war with psychiatrist Carole Lieberman on Amazon by rating her book with really low scores and leaving abusive messages. These responses blasted her for linking, without a doubt, that sexually-themed violence in video games is a major cause of sexual violence. Yet another entry into the "video games are a terrible influence" crusade. And guess what: Her comment was actually quoted by Fox News. Before reading more here, you might want to check out the official story. I found out about it here, but Wired did a real interview with her here. This is also her official press release.

First of all, these trolls need to find a better way of getting their point across. Seriously. These are the same people who yell, "FIRST!" and will state that they "don't care about this post." Get a life.

Second, Dr. Lieberman has stated that Fox News' quote was taken out of context. I'll give her that much. Well played. By the way, do you happen to be related to Joe?

Third, I would not be the least bit surprised that Fox News purposefully posted a quote from Dr. Lieberman out of context to claim another expert opinion against violent video games.

However, Dr. Lieberman has still made comments regarding gamers being violent. Yet, she still has not provided any hard evidence. I will also admit that there is yet to be any conclusive evidence that violent video games do or do not make people more or less violent.

Now, Jane McGonigal interests me, despite her wild mane. She fronts an organization named gameful.org which proposes that video games can actually be beneficial. To me, this is different than saying that video games do not affect people or affect them in specifically negative way. Gameful.org's focus is increasing gaming as a common activity and promoting it's possibly beneficial effects. The organization even goes as far as to challenge developers to design games with this in mind: Your games affect people, so make games while trying to increase the amount of positive influences your games have on people. You know what I say, Dr. McGonigal?

Challenge Accepted.

For more information about Gameful.org please visit their secret HQ at, er....gameful.org. Yeah.

Speaking of great gaming related organizations, check out Child's Play. They could always use more help!

That's it for now. I'll be back soon with some less political stuff soon.

Gnome Out.