GamerchiX Unite!

By: Kelly Adams
GiN Editorials Correspondent

I'm 33 years old, married for 12 years, and a female gamer. As a woman, I put up with the occasional idiot male in public, but they are rare. As a female gamer, I've put up with the idiot males since I first went onto Xbox Live with my own screen name. It seems to never end. Thankfully good guys are out there but the bad ones are really starting to ruin the experience of matchmaking on Live. Allow me to walk you through what a female gamer is subjected to. You may hear one of the following comments:

by Geek Woman of WomenGamers.com

Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean Online doesn't have the sharpest looking graphics or the most interesting missions you'll ever play. What they are going for with this title is as casual interest MMO. With the millions of fans of the movie IP and the millions of DVD's sold it was a pretty sure thing for Disney to poop out this game and expect to make a bundle. Even with its offered free-to-play mode, you can be sure that there is revenue coming in or they wouldn't have made a business model like this one.

Highest honor in marketing bestowed to Leo Burnett's Nintendo Wii ads
- written by Les Thomas

The 40th Annual Effie Awards were presented this week in New York City. Nintendo's "Wii Would Like to Play" campaign won the highest honor. Agencies Leo Burnett, Starcom Worldwide, and Golin Harris led the marketing campaign and won the Grand Effie for the "most effective" marketing of the year.

Remember when father and son bonding meant playing catch, shooting hoops and fishing? In today’s digital world there’s a new addition to traditional father/son activities-playing video games. Dads who grew up playing classic videogames from the ‘80s are passing their love of gaming onto their offspring, resulting in shared fun and the opportunity for fathers to be positive role models.

Posted by: Kenji Hall

Shigeru Miyamoto, the Nintendo exec whose obsession over his own weight led him to create Wii Fit, isn’t the only Dr. Gamer in town. Just last week, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (through its Health Games Research program at the University of California, Santa Barbara) split $2 million in grants among a dozen university programs that are studying ways to merge medicine and video game interactivity.

By Clive Thompson

Something quite interesting happens in the first few minutes of Ninja Gaiden II: The dead people don't vanish.

About five minutes into the game, I finished my first battle, and it was a grisly spectacle of carnage. I'd killed about seven guys, and their corpses lay scattered about. Then I went around the corner to save my progress at the "sacred statue."

ORLANDO, FL, May 18, 2008 - When the group leaders of the largest and arguably most successful Division of the popular Girl-Gaming Clan “PMS” decided to leave the clan and form their own group of like-minded gamers, few knew it would develop into what it has. Virtually the entire Delta Division of PMS chose to leave with their long-standing division leaders. The exodus inspired the name of the new clan: Delta Special Ops (DSO). Although currently the clan is comprised of mostly female members, the founders have elected that DSO be a co-ed gaming clan and the male participant numbers are steadily rising.

By Ross von Metzke | 5/19/2008

Xbox LIVE has the ability to connect players all over the world in one-on-one and group gaming, but for one gamer, the response to his screenname has been less than inviting.

Posted on Game Pro

Unveiled at the Konami Gamer's Night on Wednesday, Rock Revolution was confirmed for release on Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, and DS. The rhythm game will feature 40 cover songs on the disc (sorry purists, no master tracks here), promises "the most realistic drum peripheral on the market," and support both bass and guitar in addition to drums but exclude vocals.

Straight From PC Gamer US: Last week, Gears of War 2's Lead Designer, Cliff Bleszinski, debuted GOW2 gameplay to a completely unsurprised public. We paid attention, but only because we had nothing better to do - after all, what do we want with your sloppy seconds? Here's our six snotty comments about your stupid 360 exclusive.

By Marilyn Tennissen

LUFKIN -- A small East Texas gaming company has won a $21 million jury verdict in a patent infringement case against Nintendo.

After deliberating for a full day, federal jurors found in favor of Anascape Ltd. of Tyler on Wednesday, May 14. The original lawsuit, filed July 31, 2006, in the Lufkin Division of the Eastern District of Texas, alleged that the giant game maker infringed on Anascape patents when designing controllers for the Nintendo Wii and GameCube systems. U.S. District Judge Ron Clark presided over the trial.

The father of gaming shares his thoughts on social gaming, and where it all went wrong.
May 14, 2008 8:49 AM

Sadly, we didn't manage to catch Nolan Bushnell for the games special edition of the Tech Weekly podcast, but I subsequently managed to track down the man who brought us, well, videogaming, and asked him a few questions. Keep reading for his thoughts on GTAIV and how it all went wrong in 1983.

An Australian gamer has built a huge fully-functioning Nintendo controller which doubles up as a coffee table and storage unit.

The giant NES controller has the retro feel of the hugely popular 1980s games console – just a whole lot bigger.

by Chris Leyton

Following leaked screenshots and information, Microsoft decides its finally time to unveil its cards...

Microsoft's Gamer's Day event might have had more leaks than a rusty bucket, but it seems the conference is finally underway with confirmation of the 2008 line-up being exhibited at the show.