Daily News Spin — July 23, 2001 (Monday)

Video games make kids smarter, honest!

Computer and Video Game News has an article about a study that shows that kids who play video games are smarter.

An article in yesterday�s edition of UK newspaper The Sunday Times, using the ESRC report by Jo Bryce and Jason Rutter as its basis, claimed there was now evidence that showed children who played videogames for no more than two hours a day reaped numerous benefits from the experience, including achieving better results at school, enjoying more varied social lives and possessing greater levels of co-ordination and concentration.

No word yet on the effects of games on adults. We're fearful of that study.

Create-a-game lures kids to class

The Olympian has an article about a computer science and physics class that's packed with kids. The lure? The kids get to create their own computer game.

Despite a high interest in the subject, the programming and animation classes are proving challenging, the students confess. In animation, students start out by drawing an image in the computer.

Last week they traced a military Humvee. From there, they were expected to make it move on the screen using software that allows them to determine the path the image will follow and how it will move.

We won't even go into the kinds of computer games we had available when we were in high school. Suffice it to say there was no animation.

Vivendi to distribute Dark Age of Camelot

Vivendi and Mythic Entertainment have signed a deal that will have the French game company that owns Sierra and Blizzard publish Dark Age of Camelot, a massively multiplayer game. From the press release:

Under terms of the agreement, VU Publishing has been granted the exclusive license to manufacture, market, and distribute Dark Age Of Camelot at retail locations throughout the United States and Canada. Mythic Entertainment will publish the online pay-for-play, massively multiplayer game for the PC CD- ROM platform.

What's not clear is who's footing the bill for the server farm and support costs. Our guess is that Mythic is still on the hook for that.

3am

A new website devoted to the MMOG Underlight has opened.

Simon & Schuster Interactive's Real War has slipped to September. War's are hard to schedule, apparently.

Max Payne is now shipping. Is this exciting? We have no idea. It seems a lot like any other action game and third-person shooters are sometimes difficult to pull off.

Talonsoft's Divided Ground: Middle East Conflict 1948-1973 is gold. Should be out soon.

Love the pop under ads? The New York Times takes a look at them.

The widely followed ranking of Web sites by Jupiter Media Metrix indicates that X10.com is now the fourth-most-visited site on the Internet, after America Online, Microsoft (news/quote) and Yahoo, and ahead of Terra Lycos.

Egad!

Allakhazam's Magical Realm does a point-by-point comparison of EverQuest and Anarchy Online. And the winner is? You'll have to read it. Just kidding. The writer prefers EverQuest. You may want to read it anyway, though.

Final Fantasy looks like it's tanking at the box office, doing only $3.5 million this past weekend. Square may take a bath on this one.

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