Ten more stories for Wednesday including  - shotgun fetish, a terrific rant about a dumb games-based news report, and a serious game that just might save your life...

1) YouTube Game

Here's a clever game (also embedded below) that's been created using YouTube vids. What's smart about this is not so much the game itself (uh, can you spot the difference?) as the fact that 'copyrighthater' has been gifted with the creativity to just plain think of it.


Thanks to MTV.

2) You Have Been Warned

Develop columnist Simon Byron has been playing quad-racer Pure, and, after being presented with a pointless 'Warning - Don't Try This at Home Kids' message, got to thinking that more games ought to carry warnings. (Such are the ways of columnists.)

Like, "PES 09: WARNING – those expecting the Pro Evolution series to have moved with the times, or learnt from criticisms of previous versions will be incredibly disappointed; yes, you should have bought FIFA this year"

And, "Mercenaries 2: WARNING – bears no actual resemblance to the TV ad, so if you bought it because of that you’re likely to be sorely disappointed."

More meanness against defenseless games here.

3) Blow Me Away

Every now and again, I experience a moment of confusion, during which I am suddenly in the grip of a whirling illusion that there is some point to writing about games. Then I read a feature like 6 Best Shotguns in Videogames, and normalcy is resumed.

4) All in the Mind

Here's a feature on iHobo that's sprinkled with delicious words like neurotransmitter, endomorphin and dopamine. The article investigates how your brain actually creates sensations of pleasure while you play videogames. So far as I can tell, it's a bit like masturbating or snorting coke. Not that I do either of those things. Nor both of them. Especially not when the missus pops out on a Tuesday evening with her friend Gail, to go salsa dancing.

5) More Pleasure

If, like me, you enjoy soccer management games, the arrival of Sports Interactive's online RPGish version of the genre is to be greeted with the utmost curiosity. Here's a very decent review from IncGamers, which asks the right questions about leveling up sports teams, and then investigates the actual usefulness of social functionality in such a game.

6) How Colors Affect Performance

Researchers in Sweden have shown that gamers who play in worlds which are colored (or lighted) red enjoy a better performance than those who play in blue worlds. I want to say 'huh', in the way people do, when they hear something that's sort of interesting, but not actually, not really.

From the research - "It was shown that the players performed best and fastest in a game world lit with a warm (reddish) as compared to a cool (bluish) lighting. The former color of lighting also induced the highest level of pleasantness in game users. A regression analysis indicated tentatively that it was the level of pleasantness induced by the warm lighting that enhanced the players' better performance in that digital game world."

7) Bullshit World of Warcraft Report Dumped on From High

Below, is embedded a Bay Area news report in which a female reporter takes her viewers "inside" the world of World of Warcraft and discovers, via her WoW-fan boyfriend, what a strange place it is. I haven't watched it, having first read the brilliantly blistering scorn rained down on said report by Kotaku's Mike Fahey, which is way more entertaining.

8) Games Save World Again

Similar scorn should be poured on this 'serious game' based on Source Engine, which seeks to show people inside a building, via a 3D environment, what to do in case of a fire. Turns out, one ought to look for an Exit and head towards that Exit and leave the building. I feel safer already.

9) Consumers Making Magazine Ads for Games

Marketing treatments for Streetfighter IV, as created by forum-posters. Some of them are good. Think about this, next time the agency doofuses turn up with their blue-chip pitch for your precious budget.

10) Casual Games Price War

Finally, a thoughtful piece from Gameproducer.net on the price of casual games which, right now is the very definition of flux. I'd like to see the pleasure such games can offer quantified, per dollar so to speak, against a full-price game.