In the video above, John McCain talks about his experiences with war throughout his life. Listen carefully to the music in the background. That orchestrated piece is from Medal of Honor: European Assult, and the use of the song by McCain has irritated composer Christopher Lennertz.
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In its continuing effort to kick E3 while it’s down, Gamecock has announced its “BE-3 Initiative,” to “mock and take full advantage of the E3 Expo (or, since its death, the Media & Business Summit).” In conjunction with this, Grand Champeen of Gamecock Mike Wilson is running for ESA President (see his campaign ad above).

It’s hard to argue with “fun we can believe in,” and I’d vote for him just to get his hair into office (if I actually could).

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Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama talked about gaming, television, and entertainment’s effect on education and how the importance of school has to be emphasized at a recent stop in Indianapolis. He specifically made reference to Grand Theft Auto IV (you may have heard of it), although he talked about games in general as well:

“I was just catching the news this morning about Grand Theft Auto, alright, this video game, which is gonna break all records, and make goo-gobs of money for whoever designed it. Now, this isn’t intended for kids, I understand, although I promise you there will be kids who are playing it. But, those video games are raising our kids.

“It just reminded me, video culture, TV culture - across the board - middle class, upper class, working class kids, they’re spending a huge amount of time, not on their studies, but on entertainment.

“And so part of our job is gonna have to be to inspire the entire country to say how are we giving our kids a thirst for knowledge, and turning off the TV set, and getting them to be engaged and interested and really feel… that their future really does matter on how well they do in school.”

It’s true that a lot of parents try and let games and entertainment raise their kids instead of doing it themselves, and I don’t think it’s an attack on video games as much as Obama saying games shouldn’t detract from things like education. Michelle Obama, his wife, also clarified that this applied to “not just one specific game.”

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Reports are flooding in from all over the place of the first ever death by video game. Early this morning 25-year-old Juan del Locomotion, a resident of Sacremento, CA, was found bludgeoned to death by a copy of Viva Pinata for the Xbox 360. His body was found by his neighbor, Chesty Laroo, who said she had heard exclamations of childish glee before nothing but silence for many hours. When she entered the room she found del Locomotion dead on the floor with the bloody Viva Pinata box learing over his body. Scared for her life she quickly retreated to her apartment where she called police.

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There has always been controversy around the video game ratings system (and movies too). Many people disagree with the ratings games are given, or games have to be censored to reach a desirable rating, or retailers get busted for not being strict enough when it comes to who they sell the games to. Whether it’s a senator, the ESRB themselves, or more likely the infamous Jack Thompson, there is always enough blame being sent around.

But it seems that among the many groups that can help prevent children from accessing content meant for older and more mature audiences, there is one that is continually left off the hook and forgotten: the parents.

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It seems that the Australian government is finally considering having the equivalent of the US’s R rating for movies or the UK’s 18+ rating instituted to allow dozens upon dozens of ‘adult’ titles to be shipped to the blood famished country.

It looks to be a hard sell to members of the Australian Family Association who believe that the violence in video games is potentially more harmful than that in other forms of media due to its interactivity. The Association says that there is NO reason to allow an R rating for video games in Australia.

“We’re concerned about the level of violence and so on in R-rated material,” said Angela Conway an AFA spokeswoman. “But in terms of the games, it seems that there’s a lot more scope to actually change people’s brain structure and their attitudes with games.”

Currently, Australia’s highest rating is MA (mature audiences) and is for ages 15+, anything that doesn’t meet the criteria for MA is immediately deemed inappropriate and does not get granted its classification. Games can not be released in Australia without the age classification.

This seems like a step in the right direction for the extremely conservative country to take in order to help them play catch up with the other westernised democratic countries that have less strict guidelines for releasing games. Maybe we’ll see some Aussies playing Bonestorm one of these days. One can always hope.

[Quotes via ABC News]

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It seems that Brian Crecente, executive editor of Kotaku, keeps strange bedfellows. Well, maybe not bedfellows, but certainly strange penpals, most noticeably anti-gaming activist Jack Thompson. It seems in their most recent exchange of emails, Jack…I’m really not sure how to put this…Jack Thompson achieved a moment of clarity.

Crecente and Thompson were discussing the recent Mass Effect/Cooper Lawrence affair, in which Ms. Lawrence slandered Mass Effect with misinformation on Fox News. When Brian brought it up, Jack replied “I don’t see any problem with it. The guy who shot his mouth off about it had no idea what the Hell he was talking about.” The full transcript is after the jump.

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With so much hoopla being brought up with the Iowa caucus electoral event looming in the imminent future (read that as tonight) and which savior the American people should choose as the next president of the US; one group has decided the ’ultimate’ way to decide who should be elected, with Mortal Kombat!

The game on the atom films website is about as fun as a game based on elected officials battling it out can be, however the area where this game truly shines is in the amount of political satire it has.  Like Giuliani’s projectile locking someone in a cell which is a reference to his arresting homeless individuals in New York City when he was mayor*.

Each character uses a weapon, Giuliani uses ninja claws, Obama uses a samurai sword, while Clinton uses metal fans (ala Kitana in MKII).  I put a good 5 minutes playing this game before growing bored with it, so if you’re in for a good laugh and a wasted 5 minutes of your life give the game a glance at www.kungfuelection.com.

(Many thanks to Razak for pointing out this little gem of the internet.)

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While it may have been proven that most gamers don’t care about gaming’s right of free speech this doesn’t mean that our President shouldn’t. This is why, as a registered Democrat, Hilary Clinton has just lost my vote in the primary. She recently responded, late, to Common Sense Media’s survey on how the presidential candidates would deal with gaming rights. All her fellow democrats that responded said they would be fine with letting the industry regulate itself as they thought it was doing a good job and parental education was the place to focus their attention. Clinton, on the other hand, had this to say:

When I am president, I will work to protect children from inappropriate video game content.

Of course this shouldn’t come as a surprise as Clinton already introduced a bill that would regulate game sales two years ago which was oh-so benignly titled the Family Entertainment Protection Act. This is something to strongly consider when choosing who you vote for as changes like this will effect everyone, not just gamers. For the full run down on responses, which every gamer should read before voting, go here.

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