Few Heroines In Video Games

Over the years, the video game industry has seen a rise in female gamers and in many cases they have tried to take advantage of this boom by trying to lure and keep these women players. However Pantagraph has asked the question. With so many female video game players, why are there so few heroines in video games?

While there are a few tough chicks such as Lara Croft the majority of women in video games are dull or just plain sex objects for young teenage boys. There are a few games coming up that I assume are aimed at women but three out of hundreds is still a very small step.

GRAW2 Banned in Chihuahua, Mexico?

Although that title might sound like some sort of video game sequel, it is actual a news story about the video game “Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 (GWAR2). In Chihuahua, Mexico some residents are offended and officials want to ban the video game.

Mexican officials say that GWAR2 is portraying there city as a terrorist spot and they strongly deny the message that the video game is relaying.

“The issues facing the U.S.-Mexico border are serious, and anything unnecessarily portraying the border region as violent or lawless is extremely concerning and counterproductive to what I’m trying to do in Congress,” Reyes said in a prepared statement. “We must, however, keep this in perspective. Our servicemen and women are actually risking life and limb everyday in Iraq.”

Producer of 300 Starts Video Game Franchise With $150M

Thomas Tull is the executive producer of the hit epic movie “300″ and he isn’t resting on that success alone. Tull is now going in to the video game business and has managed to raise $150 million dollars to open a gaming studio.

Tull plans to create Brash Entertainment LLC that will be selling video games from top movies, books and music media. In the next few years the company plans to put out up to 100 video games from some of the top and hottest movie titles in recent years.

While the video game market already has a lot of titles and gaming systems, there is always room for more. Even people lucky enough to have hundreds of video games will still run out to buy more if its a great game. Least surprising is that Brash Entertainment hopes to create a “300″ video game.

I do hope that the creators and others behind the scene will do a good job of making some great video games and will not simply rely on the fact that the video games are spinoffs of hit movies.

Google Ads will soon be invading your gaming world.

The rumor that Google will be buying out Adscape, an in-game marketing company, is now official. Google has now officially entered the in-game ad marketplace, but they wont release any future plans to the public. Maybe they should give everyone free games, downloaded for free from the marketplace, and make their money back of in-game advertisements. As good as it sounds, it will probably never happen. But hopefully we can expect game prices to drop because of the extra revenue generated off of the in-game ad market. It will be interesting too see how the advertisements are integrated into the game.

The Black Xbox “Elite” Is Coming

The rumored black Xbox has now been confirmed. It will be called the elite and it will be limited edition. It will sport a few performance upgrades like all black casing for the case, live headset, and controller, and will have brand new packaging. After the Elite sells out, it will still be produced, but it will be produced and sold as the Xbox Premium. The Elite will run cooler than the normal Xbox 360. It will sport a 120gb Hard Drive, and unfortunately it wont have an internal or bundled HD DVD drive. Microsoft doesn’t currently have plans to do this to any edition of the Xbox 360. The Elite will be at a price point of US $479.

Gears of War to become a movie.

The magazine “Variety” has reported that New Line Cinema has purchased the rights to a Gears of War film. Supposedly Stuart Beattie (Collateral, Pirates of the Caribbean I & II) will be writing the script. It will be produced by Wyck Godfrey (I,Robot, Eragon) and Marty Bowen (The Nativity Story).  No word yet on who will be taking the lead role.

Has your XBox Live account been hacked?

There are reports going around that Xbox live accounts linked to Microsoft Live IDs have been hijacked by hackers. Supposedly Bungie.net’s database was breached and hackers had access to a portion of Xbox live and it’s IDs. Some people have had they’re Microsoft points stolen or points used from their account. Xbox.com is being swarmed with user reports and complaints of stolen accounts. A Microsoft tech support operator has been quoted saying, “”Hackers have control of Xbox live and there is nothing we can do about it.”

Bungie.net redesigns

It looks like bungie.net has a fresh new design up. It is now looking a lot cleaner, more organized, and more practical. They have integrated windows live IDs since the acquisition. Everything is new,  Perhaps they have done this in preparation of Halo 3? Regardless it looks 10x better, so check it out. I don’t think there is anyone that can wait for Halo 3.

What Not To Say…

Frag Doll Valkyrie  has blogged about Top Ten Least Original Things To Say To A Girl Gamer. Female gamers are subject to harassment every single day, every single minute, while playing online games. Although voice communication is a wonderful thing in online gaming, some girls would rather choose not to talk or use a name that would not identify them as females simply to have a little peace.

I don’t know if I would call it “harassment” because most games have a /ignore (if only real life had a /ignore function, too), but it does get annoying to hear the same “witty” lines over and over. In fact, I can sum up everything in a Top Two Stupid Things To Say To A Girl Gamer.

1) You sound hot… and you should send me naked pictures / give me your phone number / set up a webcam / give your your AIM (MSN, whatever) / cyber right now

2) You’re not really a girl.

Valkyrie’s list of ten includes:

 3. Get back into the kitchen and make me a … (sandwich, turkey pot pie, etc.)
We know you’re lazy-ass gamers, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t the same. Go make your own damn food.

I know I could just pick a boy’s name and a male ‘toon to avoid all that, but I don’t think I should give up my femme avatar because of a few obnoxious preteens. Girl gamers shouldn’t have to hide! I love getting on a new WoW server and seeing other girls, especially if their chat channel behavior proves they’re real girls.

Oh, and I like having pretty hair and girly armor. Is that a problem?

Fatal Internet Addiction

I just saw this story about a Chinese man who spent all of Lunar New Year holiday playing online… and died from it.

An obese 26-year-old man in northeastern China died after a “marathon” online gaming session over the Lunar New Year holiday, state media said on Wednesday.The 150-kilogram (330-pound) man from Jinzhou, in Liaoning province, collapsed on Saturday, the last day of the holiday, after spending “almost all” of the seven-day break playing online games, the China Daily said, citing his parents.

China has 137 million internet users, and 20.8 million bloggers. (These seem like respectable sources, but I also saw 5 million and 60 million bloggers… as with most Chinese statistics, the margin of error is +/- 50%)

No word on what game he was playing, but I’m going to have to guess CounterStrike.