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The Daily Grind: Would you play a motion sensor-controlled MMO?
As great as MMOs can be, they are still limited to a mere two senses -- sight and sound -- and have their interfaces strapped to either controllers or a mouse-and-keyboard setup. It doesn't take much to spark the imagination for possibilities to expand beyond these limitations, such as using your entire body to control an avatar instead of just your hands and fingers. Lately we've been seeing a few studios and enterprising hobbyists experimenting with Kinect-like controls as a way to interact in a whole-new way with MMOs. It's not hard to see the potential for increased immersion (and increased silliness, perhaps) as you wave your hands to cast spells or chop the head off an innocent villager. Er, I mean "rampaging Orc." Yeah. So if this technology advanced to the point that your favorite MMO was using it, would you play a motion sensor-controlled game? Does it seem as if it would suck you more into the game or just frustrate you? Would this be an excellent way to both exercise and level up? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Man charged with manslaughter in "exploding battery" case
In one of the more bizarre turns we've seen stories take, new information has come to light in the recent exploding battery death we reported on. It turns out that the LG battery which had initially been blamed for the "accident" wasn't the cause at all, rather, a co-worker of the victim has admitted to hitting the man with a 15-ton hydraulic rig while driving in reverse, and has been charged with manslaughter. Kwon Young-sup, who had originally reported that he had heard an explosion and discovered the man's body, has now told police that he invented the story as a cover-up for an accident. So, you can now return to placing calls on your LG without fear -- but watch your back on the job-site. [Via Sky News, thanks Barry T, image courtesy of Yonhap News]
Schizophrenic man kills, says GTA told him to do it
Ezekiel Maxwell, a 17-year-old paranoid schizophrenic on "skunk cannabis," stabbed a woman to death because the "gangster voices" from Grand Theft Auto told him to do it. Although this incident is just being reported now as part of Britain's supposed "skunk cannabis" epidemic, the murder actually occurred last September. Maxwell believed he was Carl Johnson from GTA: San Andreas when he committed the murder and believed the game was telling him to "stab a woman for seven days, it had to be a black Afro-Caribbean woman." The voices took over his thoughts and "made him do things." According to reports he was playing GTA and smoking skunk cannabis for months to the exclusion of everything else before the killing. Maxwell has since been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Yesterday he was detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act after pleading guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
