willooi (www.willooi.com)

The closest I've ever come to having "fun" on Home was when I decided to masquerade as a female player as part of some weird 'research' I was doing at the time - long story - and watching in shock at all the avatar attention my virtual, opposite-gender self was getting hit on by males, as well as seeing my inbox pile up with lude requests.

I'd make more disparaging remarks about those people, but really, I brought it onto myself =p

I've been playing GTA San Andreas again lately and, sorry, whenever I think of Driver or Tanner I just think of Mad Dogg shouting, out in exasperation, "Tanner, you suck!"

@Sora

That's a good idea, but someone already beat you to it (just using MRIs instead)! If you're interested, search for this:

Weber, R., Ritterfeld, U., & Mathiak, K. (2006). Does Playing Violent Video Games Induce Aggression? Empirical Evidence of a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study. Media Psychology, 8, 39–60.

They found that brain activity for varying emotions often come across as pretty ambiguous - like the region that 'lights up' during feelings of anger is also the same region that gets activated during fear...

Which is especially interesting, as this could be interpreted not simply as 'games make you angry', but as 'games make you scared within the world it's created'... which is arguably more a testament to the quality of the game itself and for its effectiveness in eliciting that response from players

But as Xero Theory says, there is no such thing as a perfect study and it's all but impossible to totally account for background factors and genetic predispositions. Which is why it's important that media and governments don't jump on the bandwagon...but hey, everyone loves a good witch hunt I s'pose

I was lucky enough to have this as an essay topic for a psychology paper last semester, and indeed, scientific evidence is sketchy and inconclusive. The main problem in any studies trying to link games and violence is how to properly measure 'aggression'. Via a scale of 1 to 10? How hard they can punch a punching bag? But then these measures can be affected by lying and raw physical strength, etc.

One of the only ways to properly find a link between violent games and real violence is to randomise a group of young kids to play, e.g. Gears of War and another group to play Kinectimals and then see which ones are more 'aggressive' after a couple of years, and obviously it isn't ethical to do that. And then there's the problem on how aggression is measured again. Another possible way to look for a link, is to ask these violent people whether they played games...and chances are, they've probably been affected by other things.

Plus in many biased studies out there, the classification of 'violent games' is completely messed up - even Super Mario counts as violent because you jump on things and destroy them - or at least that's what they've claimed. And then there's also the much wider social issue of moral panic, because society and politicians prefer to find scapegoats for tragedies like school shootings, without properly focusing on other factors such as parenting, gun control, bullying, violence in movies, cartoons, domestic violence, etc.

Anyway, long rant over, I'm glad that the bill was rejected. Common sense won out in the end.

@GreenElf

He's referring to the fan made Black Mesa mod, as the official Source update wasn't as good as it could/should have been

@aray48

HL1 was the first FPS that truly involved you in the action in real time, with sequences advancing the plot and all the major set pieces happening in front of you - no cutscenes. It was utterly innovative back in the day and paved the way for how we experience the genre now

Excellent =) What a classic Half Life is, this trailer brings back lots of fond memories

@Bloodburn

This article is really incomplete. There is a level cap raise, 5 per DLC which including the already-released Dead Money, will ultimately allow you to go up to Level 50

@DURDADUR

Nope, still no post-ending play, but there IS a level cap. All DLCs raise it by 5, to a maximum of 50.

@Ezio Auditore da Firenze

I only just got the game a couple of weeks ago, and timing has dictated that I haven't been able to experience its online implementation yet. Looking forward to doing so =)