Bringing Sports Psychology to the Realm of Video Games It probably wasn’t coincidence that Shane Murphy returned my call just after I’d thrown my third interception in NCAA ‘09 and punched off the machine in full perfectionist disgust. Murphy, a professor and researcher of psychology at Western Connecticut State, would later explain that I exhibited classic high-ego, low-task gamer behavior. That is, I am fixated on being seen as a winner, and not the process of becoming one. Murphy approaches video gaming as a sports psychologist, with 30 years of experience in that field. The American Psychological Association’s annual convention this month already discussed research showing the benefits video games deliver in learning and problem solving. Also at the convention, Murphy gave a presentation advocating for the study of competitive and cooperative behavior in gamers. I had called him out of curiosity about my own approach to video games, whether it was shared in great numbers by others, and what that may say about the gaming community. We ended up talking more about competitive behavior and performance psychology, how it can help define gamers, and be deepened by studying them. MORE »

Audiophonic Commando To: Luke
From: Owen
Re: Nice Apocalyptic Flick I did all my posting today listening to the musical score for Bionic Commando: Rearmed. I ain't too proud to say, yes, I bought that — off iTunes — because it's a hell of a good soundtrack. If you took everything that was awesome about 1988, brought it 20 years forward to the future to 2008 and kept only the best parts of both, the CD would be Bionic Commando: Rearmed. So, no off-topic ramblings this week. Capcom, via Grin's excellence on this title exempts it, plus the Capcom Trader Joe's and the Ranty Rite Aid, plus anything in that shopping center — including the Circuit City where I bought my replacement Madden for the copy I borked. My attention is more focused on Redwood City, because thanks to some unclear instructions (I am totally dodging responsibility here) we had a hell of a clusterf**k with our Madden League, the KFC. But once that gets resolved, you can expect in future weekend notes I'll be posting about the doings of the league in this note. Here are some highlights from the weekend.

New Dead Space Hands-On Impressions
Left 4 Dead Box Art To Change? "Stay Tuned"
Possible Explanations for This Dumbass Sears Ad
Creating an Elitist Gaming Review Culture
Cosplay Runs Rampant At Games Convention
Sony: LittleBigPlanet *Not* Region-Locked
Games Convention's Most Ignored Games MORE »

Week in Games: Prison Tycoon?! Big week for new releases to take advantage of the Labor Day weekend shopping. Tuesday, Tiger Woods gets his Jesus on and Disgaea 3 comes out. Thursday, the highly anticipated Castle Crashers finally arrives on XBLA. And Friday, we have not only The Sims 2: Apartment Life, but also Prison Tycoon 4: Supermax. If you rent in San Mateo, don't buy both, one will cover your entire range of experience. Really, though, Prison Tycoon? Prison Tycoon FOUR?! How did I never hear of this? And Supermax? Supermax is administrative maximum, isn't everyone like in solitary there? (Fun fact: My landlords in Boulder did time in Florence, Colo. — scroll down to "A Trial With Teeth" — across the street at Supermax's little brother.) How is Prison Tycoon 4 any different from those sociopathic Sims videos where they box a guy in a tiny room and watch him go bonkers over the course of nine hours. Anyhow, here's the roster, let us know what you're gettin' and how many hours of pay that computes to and don't forget to unload your Prison Tycoon 4 shower jokes. Monday (Aug. 25)
Commando: Steel Disaster (DS)
MLB Power Pros 2008 (DS)
Mario Super Sluggers (Wii) Tuesday (Aug. 26)
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 (PS3, 360, PS2, PSP, Wii)
Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice (PS3)
Ferrari Challenge Trofeo Pirelli (PS3, PS2, Wii, DS)
DT Racer Refueled (PS2)
Vampire Rain: Altered Species (PS3)
PictoImage (DS)
Kidz Sports: Crazy Golf (Wii)
GTR Evolution (PC)
Pajama Sam in Don't Fear the Dark (Wii)
Freddi Fish in Kelp Seed Mystery (Wii)
Spy Fox in Dry Cereal (Wii)
Tales of Vesperia (360)
N+ (PSP, DS)
From The Abyss (DS)
Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness (DS)
Rebel Raiders: Operation Nighthawk (Wii)
Digimon World Championship (DS)
The Sims 2 Apartment Pets (DS)
Falling Stars (PS2) Wednesday (Aug. 27)
Penumbra: Requiem (PC)
Castle Crashers (XBLA) Friday (Aug. 29)
Prison Tycoon 4: SuperMax (PC)
The Sims 2 Apartment Life (DS, PC)
Infinite Undiscovery (360) fuckup, sorry
Garfield's Fun Fest (DS)
Sid Meier's Pirates! (Mac) Saturday (Aug. 30)
Ford Racing: Off Road (Wii)
Hacker Evolution - Reinsertion (PC)
Project Powder (PC)
James Pond - Codename Robocod (DS)
MindHabits (Mac)
FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage (PC)
OPERATION Mania (PC) MORE »

David Perry's Keynote: Sony Will Never Make Money on the PS3 Dontcha just love it when top execs start commenting on someone else's financials? Opinionated Acclaim chief David Perry ain't above it, in fact he used his keynote address at the Games Convention Developer's Conference to declare that Sony will never make real dough off the PlayStation 3, 10-year plan or no.

"Because of the cost of making the PlayStation 3 and because they sold it at a loss, Sony basically has pretty much no chance of making money on the PS3, because it's lost more money than they made during the entire peak of the PlayStation 2 — it's not going to happen again for Sony."

He went on to say that a PlayStation 4 coming out in the next eight or so years would be a bad idea. "If they release the PlayStation 4 and have an even more expensive console and raise the cost of games by ten dollars, that would not be good." Thus, Perry said, this 10-year-plan for the PS3 is a long-term bid to wring out as much money to pay for the console's development, since the pricing and sales so far haven't done it. "This is going to force them to make the PS3 last longer and they're kind of positioning to do that," he said. Perry: "Sony has No Chance of Making Money on the PS3" [GamesIndustry.biz] MORE »

Madden KFC Update Everyone: Leave Kotaku Football Conference. The new league with a more reasonable schedule is KFC Kotaku Football. If you joined the first league, email me at owenATkotakuDOTcom with the subject header Changing Leagues and your gamertag so I can send you the password for the new league. And to EA: You could have done much, much better with the documentation on creating this league and what your choices mean. I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought 11 meant an 11 game season, plus playoffs. MORE »

Tell Us Dammit: Have You Ever Lied About Playing a Game? Whoops! Hey, we missed TUD on Friday because of all the hoorah with GC 2008, so looks like I am the temporary caretaker of the giraffe this weekend. I got a question you can answer one of two ways. Or two questions and you can answer one. Or both. Who cares, here it goes. So I'm hideous about staying current with popular culture. Lots of times people will ask me if I've seen a movie, or if I watch the latest HBO Original drama that everyone's raving about. (I never saw Borat. I don't watch Entourage.) And I'd rather avoid the horrified expressions and fulminating evangelism, so I make a non-committal statement in the affirmative and then dodge my way out of the conversation. But last week, I had to admit I've never played Halo 3. (Well, never played it in multiplayer. I played it a little in singleplayer mode.) I felt like I had no good reason for that, especially as a games blogger, but that was a choice made before I came to Kotaku. So that leads us to today's TUD: Have you ever bought and not played a video game because of peer pressure?
and/or
Have you ever told someone you played a game even when you hadn't, for any reason? I'm especially curious about the second one. And for the record, I do have Halo 3. I bought it late last year when I was too busy for gaming. I'm working on that one. MORE »

Rumor: $199 Xbox with Motion Controller on the Way Xbox 360 Fanboy, citing "a tip from a source close to Microsoft's marketing department," says the price cut to $199 for the Arcade system is meant to position that bundle against the Wii. So it'll get a huge family-friendly marketing push and title support. And in the fall, it gets a motion controller with some motion-controlled mini-games developed by Rare. Again, according to this rumor (by the time I'm repeating it to you, it's fourth-hand) the controller will be sold separately and will be compatible with all versions of the 360 console. Reading the story, it sounds like you would get the controller plus an even larger list of mini-games if you buy it separately. The new products are set to drop Holiday 2008, says Xbox 360 Fanboy. We shall see. Rumor: New $199 360 SKU With Motion Controller [Xbox 360 Fanboy] MORE »

Kotaku Football Conference Now Awarding Franchises Alright, if you bought Madden '09 for Xbox 360 and want to participate in the new Online League feature with me and your fellow Kotaku-ites, here's your chance. I've set up a 32-team league on Xbox Live, and I'm taking one of the slots, plus we have three others I've invited to the league on board too. That means there are 28 first-come first-served slots available. The password for getting membership into the league is on the jump, followed by some house rules. MORE »

The Seattle Times' Pre-PAX Profile of Penny Arcade Penny Arcade's 5th annual PAX, beginning Friday, is the newspeg for a 1,500 word feature in this morning's Seattle Times. The paper chronicles the 10-year history of the webcomic, from creators Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins meeting in a high school journalism class, up to its present-day gargantuan commercial impact. It's a success story that seems equal parts happenstance and just making the correct decision when the opportunity arose. MORE »

Wii Roomba: Surf Your Way to Cleaner Floors
This gentleman, "Ron" Tajima has managed a Balance Board hack that manages to defeat the basic purpose of a Roomba's existence. But, it's awesome. He's used the Wii Balance Board's Bluetooth capability to link it with the poky-slow vacuum-cleaning robot. He steers the Roomba by the direction he leans. The things that are balls-to-the-wall awesome about this video:
• Sped up assembly footage. See? It's simple.
• Crappy kung-fu movie audio — with mismatched soundtrack.
• The beep-beep-beep "Surfin' USA" tone. Please tell me that's coming from the Roomba itself. I won't be able to get that out of my head the rest of the day. A jorb well done, "Ron" Tajima!

Wii Balance Board Roomba Hack Cleans Up [Balance Board Blog] MORE »

Video Games Blamed in Fiery Motorcycle Crash Some idiot in Utah wrecked his so-called "bullet bike" into an SUV carrying a family of four. Everyone's alive, including the no-shirt, no-helmet cyclist, but of course vidja games are the cause. I swear, there must be a check-block for it on police investigation forms:

As for motive, Savino told troopers this was his own video game adventure. "I don't know whether he was trying to act out a scene in a video game or what he was trying to do, but he said it always worked for him in video games," Roden said.

OK, gang, so what exactly was he trying to emulate? And since this dumbass seems hellbent on removing himself from the gene pool, what's the next thing he should try? High-Speed Chase and Crash Caught on Tape [KSL-TV] MORE »

UK Game-Sharers Being Sued; Peter Moore Says Bad Idea In the United Kingdom, Atari, Codemasters and three other game companies are going to court to demand GBP300 from 25,000 file-sharers, reports The Times of London. Apparently, file-sharing got really obnoxious recently — 691,000 downloads of Operation Flashpoint by Codemasters in one week alone. So the five have asked the court to demand internet service providers turn over information on all 25,000 accused of breaking the law. Those users will get notices inviting them to pay up or face prosecution, and the first 500 to ignore it get sued. Asked about it in an interview with Eurogamer, EA Sports boss Peter Moore called that practice a bad idea. "I'm not a huge fan of trying to punish your consumer," he said. "Albeit these people have clearly stolen intellectual property, I think there are better ways of resolving this within our power as developers and publishers." MORE »

That Xbox 360 Phone? Sh*t's Fake, Yo MORE »

A Most Bold Approach to Oregon Trail I usually try to wrap up Saturdays with some laughs so, here's this and two other funny pics I found through the week. On their own, maybe not worth a post but together, hey, it's the weekend, so here's a funnies page for you to spread on the living room floor. Remember, if you're a Madden gamer and want in on the KFC (Kotaku Football Conference), that announcement will be at 1 pm MDT (3 pm Eastern, noon Pacific) MORE »

Download Eight Hours of Arcade Cacophony The classic sound of a room full of arcade games all going at once started to vanish before the coin-op arcade started its slide to extinction. Game audio and speech got more sophisticated and music evolved into soundtracks, creating a blend different from the early to middle 1980s. But the Arcade Ambience Project has created more than eight hours of mp3s, sorted by year that depict arcades at their height, buzzing, chirping and whirring like a field of crickets on a summer evening. Creator Andy Hofle has mixed together the sounds of games popular in the years 1981, 1983, 1986 and 1992, for those who might feel nostalgic for the days of miniature golf, birthday parties or skating rinks. He put a new tool up that ensures the files will play on any sound card, which is why this popped back up recently. The files are about 80 to 90 megs and mirrored at multiple sites. If you want the uncompressed sound you can get that on a CD. The site says Avril Lavigne used Ambience Project sound in the background of a music video. It was also featured (with permission) in the documentary "Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball." My audio memory of arcades is dominated by the sounds of Galaga, of Mario clearing barrels and collecting points, and the siren in Pac-Man. If they could release the mp3 in Smell-o-Rama or whatever, recreating that strange aroma of dust cooking on the back of a hot cabinet, sweetened by the scent of waffle cones. Arcade Ambience Project [arcade.hofle.com] MORE »

Possible Explanations for This Dumbass Sears Ad Look closely (full size on the jump). Reader Ian S. found this back-to-college ad for Sears in his local paper. Looking at this guy's set up, I'm betting the propmaster for this ad shoot is someone so out of it he refers to consoles generically not as "Nintendo" but as "the Sega." Because that's Solid Snake on the screen, and a 360 controller in our hip gamer friend's hands. So here are my thoughts for what might be going on. 1) Newton's Dirty Little Secret: It's a Sixaxis.
2) Check Out This Rad PS3 Casemod for Your Xbox 360!
3)'Intense' Driving Motion Controls Introduced to Metal Gear Solid 4 Cutscenes
4) MGS4 Now Supports Guitar Hero: Aerosmith Peripherals (lower right)
4) Sony Confounded by Standard DVD Players Kept as Heirlooms (console, under the small speakers) I'm sure you've got your own ideas. Put 'em in the comments. MORE »

GameStop Sponsors Race Car With Call of Duty Skin Watch NASCAR much and you notice the winning driver's post-race genuflection to his sponsors can get to be a mouthful. So it's probably a good thing Joey Logano finished 16th in last night's Food City 250 at Bristol, Tenn. in stock car racing's Nationwide series. Otherwise Logano would be like: "Well, Jerry, we just have a super group of guys on the Call of Duty World at War GameStop Joe Gibbs Racing Number 20 Toyota team. Just a great car, ran super good and I'm glad we could get a win for the Call of Duty World at War GameStop Joe Gibbs Racing Number 20 Toyota team. "I thought we was gonna run out of gas there at the end but I got a nice push from my teammate Jerry Jeff Jeeter McPheeter racin' in the Peter Jackson's King Kong The Official Game of the Movie ... Number ... 14 ..." [starts breathing into paper sack]. Food City 250 Results [USA Today] MORE »

What Are You Playing This Weekend? McWhertor is in Germany so I get custody of Lazy Sundays this weekend. As for what I'm playing, I got Bionic Commando: Rearmed and the Fable II: Pub Games on Thursday, and I'm thrilled with both. You know why else I like them? Means I get to game on a super quiet Xbox, which lately for me has sounded like a tuberculosis patient gargling pea gravel. And why is that interesting? Hit the jump for an honest to God IM transcript with Bash and Brian last night, and then tell us what games you're not destroying playing this weekend. MORE »