Archive for January 16th, 2013

Remember when Vice President Joe Biden summoned various folks to Washington to consider options for the President’s response to the shooting in Newtown? As you may recall, representatives of the videogame industry were included in the group. Gamasutra spoke briefly with two of the people present at that summit, Cheryl Olsen, the co-author of Grand Theft Childhood, and Christopher Ferguson, a clinical psychologist at Texas A&M who studies violent behavior.

According to Olsen:

[Vice President Biden] said upfront that he didn’t think the evidence he’d seen showed a link between violent video games and real life violence. And he said even if the research were to show a link, it would be a tiny influence compared to the influence of the other factors he was looking at.

Is it any surprise that the Obama Administration had an entirely reasonable perspective on the issue from the get-go?

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It looks as if Deep Silver is going to remove a gory bikini bust that was part of the Dead Island: Riptide collector’s edition. Which is hardly unexpected, but disappointing. Not because I want one. I don’t. It’s pretty gross. I wouldn’t know what to do with it. I still don’t know what to do with my Connor statue, Bioshock 2 soundtrack LP, or pewter Half-Life 2 box. What am I going to do with some icky horror paraphernalia? I’m a horror fan — more on that in a moment — but not the type who wears it on his shelves. My Night of the Living Dead DVD sits inconspicuously between my Napoleon Dynamite DVD and O Brother Where Art Thou? DVD. Horror is just a genre. More on that in a moment, too.

But I find it disappointing that Deep Silver is caving on this issue for two important reasons. No, not those reasons. I’m going to be mostly serious.

After the jump, two important things. Not the ones you think I’m thinking of. Continue reading →

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