Rayonic writes "We all know the issue surrounding those who want to ban violent games, but a TechCentralStation editorial asks - can playing war games influence your political sensibilities? The media, for instance, are usually very ignorant of what goes on during military maneuvers. But a few days of playing Ghost Recon or America's Army might make you more knowledgeable than the average reporter (or even lawmaker), as the writer argues that 'the spread of military knowledge via wargaming might lead to political changes in the way war is perceived by Americans'."

Martin writes "We'd like to announce the first Unified Modeling Language Poem Contest - UMLyrics 2004. Realize the power and shortcomings of UML by writing new or paraphrasing existing poems with UML. The winner is determined with a Google-based voting system - have fun!"

Thanks to Nintendojo for its list of the latest NES titles to be re-released on the Game Boy Advance in Japan. Though "it remains to be seen if any of these particular games will make it to North America", highlights include "Super Mario Bros. 2 [Japanese version], Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Metroid, Kid Icarus, [and] Castlevania." We've previously covered earlier NES Classic iterations - in a similar vein to a recent GameSpy article, how many dollars would you actually spend on these NES re-releases for GBA?

Thanks to 1UP for its pair of articles discussing initial details and new character listings for Namco's arcade fighting game Tekken 5, listed as "Arcades in 2004, Console in 2005." In the burgeoning Japanese arcade market: "Namco plans to initially market Tekken 5 to Japanese arcades as a package of two linked cabinets and an attached 42-inch plasma TV monitor. All told, the set will run operators 3,129,000 yen (about $28,500)." It's also noted: "Each cabinet will also be equipped with a card reader to let players take advantage of the [recently announced, Sega-Sammy partnered fiber-optic network] ALL.Net online rankings, character customization, and ghost character system."

finnhart writes "According to a [free reg. req.] New York Times article, DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has funded a project at the University of Southern California's School of Engineering to create a 'virtual camp' in which US soldiers can learn to speak Arabic, as well as learn local customs: 'All discussions with the villagers will have to be conducted in Arabic, and Sergeant Smith must comport himself with the utmost awareness of local customs so as not to arouse hostility. If successful, he will be paving the way for the rest of his unit to begin reconstruction work in the village'."

Rinisari asks: "I've recently come into a very large amount of defunct, yet still structurally intact, CDs. I did some searching about on Google, but turned up nothing on my goal: A Compact Disc Cannon. Has anyone ever built a device for shooting CDs in a horizontal or vertical fashion? I'm thinking almost something like one of those foam disc shooters..."

tiny69 writes "According to Microsoft, a Person's hair turns grey if there are more than 500 users in a User Group. Supposedly, the grey hair does not affect the functionality of the User Group. Microsoft claims to have a solution to fix the problem. How many people do you know that have hair that has turned grey? This web site has a large collection of links to humorous Microsoft Knowledge Base articles."

azaris writes "While the FIDE World Championships for human players in Tripoli, Libya are down to the last two contestants, the computers are playing their own 12th World Computer Chess Championship in Ramat-Gan, Israel. How will the open source chess engine Crafty do against the proprietary closed engines? Will the computers play more interesting chess than their human counterparts?"

Thanks to GameRifts for its interview with television and videogame scriptwriter Lee Sheldon regarding the state of writing/story in online gaming. Sheldon, who has most recently worked on Cyan's URU: Ages Beyond Myst, is asked "Do you see good, even epic story lines, becoming a core feature of MMORPGs in the future?", and responds: "Yes, and sooner rather than later... The big question of course is whether [developers will] continue to spend all their money on high quality art and programming and treat the writing as a hobby anyone can do. Without the same commitment to quality as in the other elements that make up an MMORPG the writing will continue to fail miserably."

Rogerpq3 writes "The battleground is set - it's confirmed that the 9th annual QuakeCon 2004 video game festival and tournament at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas on August 12-15 will host the first DOOM 3 deathmatch championship ever. Be there to game, hang out with 5,000 of your closest friends, and compete for $150,000 in cash and prizes in the NVIDIA QuakeCon 2004 Championship Tournaments. Online registration for QuakeCon 2004 has begun at www.quakecon.org, and the event is free to all attendees."

Ant writes "I just noticed Doomsday HQ, source of some of the best enhancements of original DOOM, Heretic, and Hexen game engines since the code was open-sourced, has released v1.8.0 of both the Linux and Windows ports. SkyJake, the author, also mentions on the news page that a Mac OS X version might be ported in the future." As the official beginner's guide notes, you'll need "a copy of the original shareware/registered [game .WAD]" to play.

Thanks to Corpnews.com for its discussion of the history of the Ultima MMO franchise in the content of the recent cancellation of MMO title Ultima X: Odyssey. The author argues of the cancellation: "This isn't a surprise. No, really. More fundamentally, all this points to the fact that somebody in EA's headcheese department is scared stiff of potentially sapping subscribers from the only truly successful title [Ultima Online] to come out of the company's development sweatshops." He claims: "Furthermore, all this comes at a time when the amount of 'surefire bets' in the industry seems to be dropping exponentially. Miniscule subscription bases for former hot-ticket games like Horizons and Shadowbane, coupled with disappointing numbers for Star Wars Galaxies - at last count, the game widely predicted to crack the MMO industry open and bring in a new rush of players... make it easier than ever for suits to pull the plug on projects which require millions of dollars to even hit the shallow waters of beta." Where does EA go from here with the online Ultima franchise, given that this is the second cancelled online Ultima title?

Jon Sandys writes "Spider-Man 2 may have won over the critics, but the hard-nosed bastards at moviemistakes.com are listing 31 mistakes already - and no, not nitpicky stuff that's different from the comics. A scar swaps sides on Peter Parker's face and dummies are visible in hurled cars, not to mention the numerous errors involving tritium which I'm sure Slashdot readers will enjoy refuting. Read the complete listing on the Spider-Man 2 page." Also, people bitten by spiders don't generally become ultra-powerful.

zratchet writes "The IGDA Independent Game Development Special Interest Group is just getting started - this group is for game developers interested in pursuing game development and distribution outside the standard channels as presented by the mainstream industry today. For purposes of this SIG, the definition of 'indie' is: 'Not having any formal relationship with a publisher.' The purpose of this SIG is to provide information and resources to help build the community of indie developers and support their efforts, and we're currently identifying 3 types of Indie Game Developers: Commercial (small self-publishing companies and those using small publishers - for example Sunspire Studios of Tux Racer fame) and GarageGames), Open Source, Shareware, Freeware, and Public Domain (including OSI and Creative Commons licensed games) such as those listed at Sourceforge, and 'mods', such as those hosted at PlanetQuake."

DigitalLogic writes "There's a new security threat at some of the nation's military bases -- and it looks uncannily like a can of Coke. All I can think of is that a furby with a coke can must be the military's worse nightmare."

Thanks to TeamXbox for its interview with Andre Vrignaud from Microsoft's Xbox Live Platform Strategy Team, in which he discusses topics including user numbers (they're "on track" for 1 million subscribers by now, and "on average people are playing three hours a day (which is up from the 2.5 hours we saw a year ago), and the average number of people on Friends lists continues to climb - it's a little over 13 right now."), as well as the Xbox Live alerts through MSN Messenger ("In fact, you can look at these as being the first pieces of Xbox Live on Windows. If anything, people are pushing us to release more of Live on Windows as quickly as possible - and we're working on it!")

yootje writes "A long story about Sony, and how Sony developed: from the first walkman, until the latest competition against the iPod. "

Thanks to CS-Nation for its discussion of the first public showing of Valve's team-based FPS Counter-Strike: Source, including new screenshots and videos, as "the first playable exhibition of it [was held] this weekend in Seoul, Korea." An earlier CS-Nation news story has comments from an attendee, who suggests: "It isn't really different from the way you would feel while you're playing current CS. New physics and graphics are obviously improved, but it wasn't really enough to make me shock in awe." However, he does argue: "The graphics, of course, [are] absolutely excellent. I think the new de_dust2 is the map that can show the real power of [Half-Life 2 engine] Source."

Thanks to GameSpy for its 'Pixel' column discussing the dangers in letting videogame nostalgia run unchecked, as the author explains: "Number one: Just because it's old, doesn't mean it's particularly good. And number two, loosely based on Sturgeon's Law: 90% of all video games ever made are either mediocre or crap." He gives an example: "Case in point: A little PlayStation game called Gunners Heaven. It was a very early Japanese release by Sony... [and] the American import magazines covered it a bit and described it as a Gunstar Heroes clone", but the game, once acquired, "was thoroughly mediocre", showing "the dangers of unchecked nostalgic anticipation."

Thanks to GamersWithJobs for its interview with the creators of PC MMO title World Of Pirates, a 2D game (not to be confused with forthcoming 3D MMO Pirates Of The Burning Sea) in which "the basic idea was to recreate the gameplay and feel of Pirates! and put it into an online environment." Topics discussed include PvP ("...one of the basic design premises behind the game. And features such as a bounty being put on someone's head certainly help the competition among the players"), and post-launch plans ("We're going to increase the strategy portion of the game, lending it a Civilization-style touch. We're hoping that this part will become more appealing to those players who want to take a break from or are tired of their pirate career.") In related news, the official World Of Pirates website reveals an imminent change: "After 2 years of closed beta testing... from Monday 5th July 2004, everyone can join the Beta test."