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Study finds game violence soothes the savage breast
Middlesex University has released their finding on a study conducted to explore the effects of game violence on players. At the British Psychological Society's Annual Conference in Dublin, the study claims that playing WoW actually helps players relax, rather than fuels anger or violent tendencies."There were actually higher levels of relaxation before and after playing the game as opposed to experiencing anger but this did very much depend on personality type," said researcher Jane Barnett, though the referring article does not elucidate what those types might be. However, with a sample size of 292 World of Warcraft players between the ages of 12 and 83, out of the millions of subscribers the game can boast, this would hardly seem to be a properly-evaluated submission. But it's little steps like these that help abolish long-held assumptions and biases, so we're all for it. Science, FTW!
Japanese hardware sales, Feb. 19 - Feb. 25: Angry ranting edition
You know, you know what? We've had it up to here with some of the things we have to deal with everyday, and dammit, we think it's time we let people know. This crap has to stop.Where to start? Let's talk about the freaking CPUs they stick us with here at the Fanboy offices. Intel Core 2 Duo's: pathetic. We mean, what the hell? It's like two normal Intel processors duct-taped together. Look, we need insane processing power to make these blog posts funny and interesting, you know? These conditions are unworkable. And let's not even mention roller coasters. Mechanical and electrical engineers just aren't taking these things seriously enough; they need to start using the medium for proper artistic expression. We need to tell a story full of meaning and character depth during these rides, or people are going to feel unfulfilled and pissed off, like us. And we're really pissed right now.Finally, to Maxis, developers of the best-selling PC game of all-time and the future title Spore, expected to perhaps exceed that mark set by the exemplary Sims some years back: make a game that doesn't suck ass, okay?Ugh, these numbers? Where is the emotion? Where is the meaning? Life is so meaningless ....- DS Lite: 111,814 24,314 (17.86%) - PSP: 66,156 34,054 (33.96%)- Wii: 57,972 20,534 (26.16%) - PS3: 44,000 24,685 (127.80%) - PS2: 15,364 310 (2.06%) - Xbox 360: 3,379 804 (19.22%) - Game Boy Micro: 805 102 (11.25%) - GBA SP: 738 297 (28.70%) - Gamecube: 303 20 (6.19%) - DS Phat: 112 20 (15.15%) - GBA: 25 34 (57.63%)[Source: Media Create]
Video Sandwich: October 30, 2006
Vroom, vroom! This Japanese ad for the Ape Escape racer is awesome because it's so over-the-top. Too bad the game is nowhere as sleek-looking as this commercial. At least the Japanese can pick up a free toy with the game, it appears. (Don't forget to try out the downloadable demo for yourself!)Finally, to end our daily series of sandwiches, we have one very... special boy that knows how to handle a situation... in a special way. Anger management isn't a bad thing, kid. Unless it's that really awful Adam Sandler movie from way back when.
Speech-to-whimsically-colored-text
Nintendo, attempting to maintain their family-oriented image, has taken great caution to avoid standard voice chat in their online offerings...at least between people not firmly established as friends. Services such as Xbox Live might embrace the liberal cursing of prepubescent punks, but in a purely audio-based communciation system, it's almost impossible for a system to filter out profanity in real-time. According to my mother's sister's friend's uncle an IGN Insider forum poster (who has some street cred, thanks to a previous accurate analysis of the internal Wiimote speaker) and a recent patent, Nintendo will be implementing a speech-to-text program to avoid such problems. In addition to standard word recognition, the program will also register the tone and volume of your voice to change the text into various sizes and colors. "STFU n00b" will be in red, presumably. By converting audio data to simple text, the Wii will very easily be able to filter and/or change any words that are flagged in the system. Hopefully, the system will allow parents and users to modify the filters, and perhaps just give an optional regular voice-to-voice setting as well. [via Joystiq]
Editorial: Behind the MacBook "Hack"
The web has been on fire the past few days with news of a presentation given at the BlackHat computer security conference featuring the compromising a MacBook Pro by executing very low-level code on the drivers of a wireless card. Whether or not the exploit presented actually counts as hacking of a Macintosh (they used a third party wireless card) is not at issue in this post. What I think is more important is the fact that these guys chose to demonstrate the vulnerability on a Mac, instead of a Windows or Linux machine, which are also vulnerable to the exploit. The presenters cited the "Mac userbase aura of smugness on security" as their reason for choosing a Mac as their guinea pig.Some readers might attribute this negative attitude toward Mac users as one held only by uninformed Windows users and malicious hackers, but that is far from the case. Many very intelligent and highly respected members of the tech community feel the same way. Some of them even used to love Macs. Before pointing any fingers and making any accusations about who lost their mind when, I think we need to take a step back and examine our behavior.
