An online game ban will be instituted in South Korea according to the Korea Herald. The new policies “will attempt to block underage access to online computer games after midnight in light of the rising problem of video game addiction among youth,” according to the report.

One of the policies will affect popular online games such as Barameui Nara, Maple Story, Mabinogi and 16 others by cutting off access to underage users at 12am sharp. Another policy is “the slowdown policy” where gamers will find their Internet speed dropping to 56k levels if they play for too long.

There was no mention of regular Internet connections cutting off, just online access to those games. So, the underaged gamers in question will stop playing any one of these 19 games at 12am, then either a) load up a new game, b) find a way around the block, or c) surf for porn.

Then what happens when Star Craft II releases? The original Star Craft still draws millions of South Korean gamers online, in LAN parties, and at professional Star Craft competitions and tournaments across the nation. Good luck stopping people from playing that. Its practically a national sport.

As reports of this new online game ban circulate, the example of gamer depravity and addiction that keeps getting mentioned is the story of the death of a South Korean newborn through starvation. It has been claimed that the parents’ addiction to online gaming led to their neglect of the child.

A horrible story indeed, but will this new online game ban save millions of babies of underaged parents from a similar fate? Considering the parents in the story mentioned above are 41 and 25 years old, this new ban stands to only truly aggravate and generally hack off millions of (tech savvy) South Korean teenagers, force new games into the limelight, and drive porn profits instead of curbing online game addiction or saving babies.

A mother has warned of the risk of children spending hundreds of pounds on “free” online games available through Facebook after her 12-year-old son ran up bills of more than £900 without her knowledge.

The woman, who prefers to remain anonymous, discovered last month that her son had spent £905 on FarmVille. He had emptied his own savings account of £288 and had used her credit card to the tune of £625 to pay the bills.

FarmVille, one of the most popular games on Facebook, allows members to manage a virtual farm by planting, growing and harvesting crops, trees and livestock. New users are given virtual coins to set up their farm, and the revenue from matured crops can be used to maintain it. But those who are desperate to progress more quickly can buy extra virtual coins using real cash.

The mother said: “The first use of my card was on 14 March. I discovered it on the 29th and the card was stopped at that point. Any transactions after that date were already in the system, so what I thought was a £427 spend turned into £625 over the next few days.

“The total spend is about £905, but the credits are still rolling in. Facebook and [game creator] Zynga will not refund anything as [the son] lives in my house. Facebook has disabled his account and Zynga has unhelpfully suggested I use password protection on computers in the future.”

She contacted her credit card company, HSBC, but was told she would only qualify for a refund if she reported her son to the police and obtained a crime number. “He would be cautioned and I have been told that this caution would stay with him. Obviously the idea of a stupid farm simulation jeopardising his future earnings is not something that I want to consider,” she said.

She added that her son was “very shocked” when confronted with the amount he had spent, but it was clear he knew what he was doing. “When I asked him why he did it he said that they had brought out ‘good stuff that I wanted’.”

She does not blame Facebook, Zynga or HSBC, saying that her son was the one using the card and is entirely at fault. But she added: “I do think they need to shoulder some responsibility in this business and put systems in place to stop this happening again. The fact that he was using a card in a different name should bring up some sort of security and the online secure payment filter seems to be bypassed for Facebook payments.”

A spokeswoman for HSBC said that had the credit card been used on a gambling site it would have started alarm bells ringing for “unusual usage”. But because the card had been used to buy Facebook credits HSBC did not consider the transactions to be suspicious, even though £625 was spent in just two weeks.

Michael Arrington, founder of the Techcrunch blog, criticised Zynga last year for “monetising” the game, and warned that people who didn’t have access to a credit card to buy extra virtual money could use “pay by mobile” companies instead.

The indebted 12-year-old has not used his mobile to pay for virtual money, his mother said, but only because his older brother lost all his credit buying a ringtone a couple of years ago.

“We sound terribly technologically unaware don’t we? I wouldn’t mind but I am always explaining that all of these online offers, ringtones and games are a scam designed to take money off stupid people. Kids know best though.”

Ok, so recently a majority of the posts I have had dealt with the subject of malware and viruses. So I figured that it was time to change up the pace a bit and talk about some gaming a bit. Everyone loves games… from the little simple games such as checkers or bubble breaker all the way up to the highly intense games such as Call of Duty or Left 4 Dead. But no everyone has the cash to pay for some of these games that while being very fun, just aren’t worth the money in some people’s eyes.

So that led me to look around and actually stumble upon an article over at pc.ign.com which talks about the top 10 FREE to play Shooter games. Shooter games have been very popular as of late and more and more of the “Free to Play” games have been popping up left and right with some being worth it and some… well just don’t have any appeal and only make the others look that much better. Without wasting anymore time, lets go straight into the list!

• Alliance of Valiant Arms
• America’s Army 3
• Battlefield Heroes
• Combat Arms
• Quake Live
• Savage 2: A Tortured Soul
• Tremulous
• Urban Terror
• Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
• World of Padman

So I won’t go into any details other than the fact that I personally have played a few of these games and can confirm that the list is indeed a good one. If you would like to check out these games or read up on what IGN has to say about them in the article, you can do so here.

The next time you are bored out of your mind, and do not feel like dropping $50.00 or more on a new game, check out one of these games from the list, you should be very pleased and entertained by any of the games on this list. So check them out and get to shooting!

While still low-intensity compared to the PC platform, malware attacks against Macs are definitely becoming more prevalent. Trend Micro researcher Ivan Macalintal has found another new variant of the JAHLAV family hosted on known malicious domains. The new variant is detected as OSX_JAHLAV.I and, like other JAHLAV variants, poses as pirated versions of legitimate applications and modifies the system’s DNS settings, allowing malicious users to be victimized by phishing attacks, or surreptitiously redirecting them to sites which might harbor malicious exploits.

Unlike the earlier variants which only posed as versions of QuickTime, this one also poses as pirated versions of Foxit Reader and several antivirus applications. In addition, like the June variant of JAHLAV—OSX_JAHLAV.B—at least one website hosting OSX_JAHLAV.I could also deliver malware onto Windows systems, although the said file is no longer available from the said website.

This is bad news as it seems that lately there have been more and more attacks on the Mac community. Macs are known to not really have many types of security threats that they need to watch out for allowing a good number of users to not even worry about having antivirus software installed. If Mac users are not careful they are going to be easy targets for some of these new threats if they continue to browse around with their care free attitude.

So even for all you Mac users out there, you are not completely safe from the dangers on the internet. There are guys out there trying to compormise your system to use it for very bad things so if you do not have antivirus software installed I would highly suggest that you look into it. Even if you do not want to buy any software for this there are tons of free versions out there as well so there is really no excuse.

Is a gamer not entitled to his accolades? Are his mantles not strong enough to hoist bronze statuettes and framed placards? Is he never to rise from the solace of his throne of bean-baggery, clenched fists caressing the sunrise as a green-screened mountain range draped with opaque patriotic banderole sails behind him?

No, say the parents of the would-be misanthrope, as they watch their progeny sink further into a headset.

No, says his social circle, shaking their heads and wondering why he’d enjoy such endeavors as they pile into a Pasat en route to giving Michael Bay $15 each.

No, says the FOX News anchor, as he spouts rabid talking points blaming videogames for the decline of modern everything.

But he deserves better. We deserve glory.

Being a gamer is no easy task. It seems that you will always catch some flak from people because of one person or another just because they probably don’t understand. Most all of us gamers have been in the situation where we do something in our favorite games that we didn’t think was possible or just got darn lucky. If it was beating the final level on the hardest difficulty, or finding that secret room that everyone said didn’t exist, we have all had our moments that we like to brag about.

Those of us that are gamers understand where our fellow gamers are coming from, but those who choose to miss out on the excitement of gaming will sadly never get to be a part of these great moments. So below is a list of nine moments that we gamers were proud to be gamers!

1. Finally Getting Past a Tough Boss
2. Reaching 100% Completion for the First Time
3. Beating a Game Without Cheating or Using Codes
4. Beating a Next-to-Impossible Game for the First Time
5. Getting a Higher Score Than Your Sibling
6. Being the First to Camp Out for Midnight Launch
7. Discovering a Cheat or Easter Egg Before Anyone Else
8. Beating a Smack Talker
9. Knowing More Than the Clerk at Game Stop

So there you have it… nine moments that without a doubt would make just about any gamer proud! I am not going to go into detail with each of these nine moments because they are all pretty self-explanatory. If you don’t seem to understand some of these moments listed… well then I am sorry to say that it looks like you are not a gamer and you just probably wouldn’t be able to understand.

Can’t seem to get your kids to stop playing games? A 79-year-old Minnesota man is banking on it.

John Morrisey’s invention, the GameDr, is making headlines as a potentially useful tool for parents sick of arguing with kids over play time.

The device is essentially a fancy version of a cooking timer. Parents simply program in a certain number of minutes or hours, at which time the password-protected GameDr shuts off power to the console entirely. Since it connects to your console’s power cord, it can work with pretty much any system on the market.

Sound dogmatic? Surprisingly, Morrisey is hardly the anti-game grump you might expect.

“Video games are great,” he said. “There is evidence that they improve the reflexes and the thinking process. But right now, for many parents, the option is all or nothing — they either let the kids play the video game or they take it away for two weeks.”

But even Digital Innovations, the company selling Morrisey’s invention, are aware that not everyone will be behind the new tech.

“There are moms who say they love this, and that they know 10 people who need one,” said marketing director Kara Lineal. “And there are gamers who say it’s terrible and that parents should just monitor their kids.”

Some have also pointed out that the device isn’t without some significant flaws. Gaming blog Gamepolitics points out that cagey kids can circumvent the GameDr by using a spare power cord, and so far, similar devices, like Hopscotch Technology’s BOB, have failed to catch on.

So what do you think? Is the GameDr the perfect prescription or a total quack? Sound off in the comments.

So this morning I woke up not really able to sleep and was looking around on the internet for something to do. I just so happened to stumble across a little 2D Flash game which was in a way DOOM! Being a oldschool DOOM fan I thought the best thing to do would be to test it out and see what its made of and if it is worthy of having the DOOM name attached to it.

I was pretty impressed that it was able to load up the entire game in about 15 seconds and was able to start playing. It even let me pick my difficulty and had a large portion of the music from the game (everything from the sounds to the level music playing).

The game itself looked and felt a lot better than I was expecting when I entered the first level. While I was only able to go to the left or right (and jump of course), the details and he models of the guns, bad guys, and myself were so crisp it felt like they had been taken right out of the original game and stuck into what I was playing.

I would also like to mention that while the little levels didn’t look like they were similar to the original game (I don’t really see how they could be in 2D)… I was very pleased at how your objective was the almost the exact same. You simply need to get to the exit button killing anything that gets in your way and if you are lucky stumbling across a secret or two in the process.

Even though this post won’t be as long as they usually are, being a big DOOM fan I just couldn’t resist taking some time out of my morning to talk about this nifty little game I just so happen to find. I am sure some of you are wondering where you can try out this as well so fear not… I do have the link for you to go play it! If you wanna try it out for yourself, just make sure you have the latest version of Adobe Flash installed and CLICK HERE to go enjoy this little game.

When Modern Warfare 2, the successor to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was announced and demoed at E3, the focus was primarily on the single player game. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, as CoD 4 sported one of the most engrossing and well-written storylines to ever grace an FPS game. However, to discount the sizable multiplayer audience of the game, who were no doubt salivating for some new info, seems like a bad idea. There may be a method behind the madness, however, as it appears that Activision may have some new ideas for Call of Duty multiplayer.

The good news? There’ll probably be more features. The bad news? You may have to pay for them. Apparently, a survey has been floating around the gaming community with Activision gathering data on how best to proceed. Would you be willing to pay a small fee to have early or exclusive access to game maps, special modes, and advanced tracking tools? That seems to be what they are banking on. According to the survey, this would be optional content added as a paid service to those interested – you wouldn’t have to pay to just play Call of Duty multiplayer.

The question is, does that mean that if you don’t pay, you don’t get supported? Will there be no new downloadable content for those who don’t buy in?

But more surprisingly, is the rumor of a MMO element that is going to be added into COD4. This might be reality soon since Activision’s Bobby Kotick hinted at the possibility of a Call of Duty MMO awhile back with this quote from Morgan Stanley Technical Conference.

“What would be the natural evolution of a property like Call of Duty into a massively-multiplayer environment and how do you monetize that?”

“While a Call of Duty MMO may be a long way off, if it ever gets off the ground, it’s starting to sound like Activision execs may be giving it serious thought and we’d expect it to be a big focus for the publisher’s ad revenue model.”

Also, Kotick pointed out that he is very interested in implementing in-game advertising, which the model of it will most likely resemble Starcraft ladder tournament style. It could be a risky move on Activision’s part to put in this so called “online shell”, but let’s be real… we all saw this sort of move coming. Who wouldn’t enjoy a MMOFPS anyway huh? What do you guys think?

I personally think this could go either very well for the CoD series if it is done correctly. After recently participating in the Huxley Closed Beta I feel that a MMOFPS can be done, there is just a very fine line that has to be walked to either do it right or have it become a huge failure. We shall have to wait and see!

Valve and EA announced today the sequel to last year’s multiplayer zombie-killing smash hit (and Maximum PC’s Game of the Year). Left 4 Dead 2 will be released on November 17th, and will feature five new campaigns that follow the story of four new survivors. PC Gamer has the full scoop in an exclusive 8-page feature in their August issue, which hits newsstands this month. Check out the cover below, which features two of the new survivors: Rochelle and Coach (Rochelle is an aspiring cable network news anchor, and Coach is a high school PE coach).

According to the PC Gamer preview, the five campaigns of the sequel will be set in the American south — in Georgia and Louisiana. The game will feature new playable boss infected characters alongside the Boomers, Smokers, Hunters, and Tanks of the original. Melee weapons will also be introduced, including fire axe, chainsaw, and even frying pan. No word yet on backward compatibility with the original Left 4 Dead, though we would expect that Valve won’t split their community in two. You’ll want to check out the PC Gamer preview (the Official Xbox Magazine has their own exclusive preview and interview for console fans) for more details, including the new levels, environmental effects, and how the sequel’s story ties in with the adventures of Bill, Louis, Zoey, and Francis.

Here are a few of the highlights of the upcoming sequel:

• Survivors: Nick, Ellis, Rochelle, and the Coach
• Missions played in full daylight
• Witch behaves differently during the day – wanders around like an old homeless woman
• New weapons: silenced SMG (silencer has no gameplay implications)
• One new gameplay mode not revealed at this time
• Stronger narrative thread to connect the campaigns
• Savannah campaign where “the zombie infection hasn’t hit yet”
• Instead of a Last Stand-type finale, survivors may have to fight through a hazard-filled highway
• Director can change the layout of the map
• New boss infected: The Charger

Even though this game will have a lot to live up to with Left 4 Dead being as popular as it was, people are already talking about it as the next big game to hit later this year. But only time will tell if it can deliver as it promises but I for one have high hopes that it can take over where the original left off and provide us with countless hours of mindless (and satisfying) zombie killing that we have all come to love!

So I will leave you with a few videos of gameplay that have already been released for us to start drooling over…

Click HERE to watch the rest of the videos that have been released so far!

Recently I was lucky enough to get in on the Battlefield Heroes Beta through a beta key giveaway that GameSpot.com was hosting for a time frame of around 3 days. While they gave out thousands of keys to just about everyone who signed up for it, I know there were some people who were unable to get a key during that time or just simply didn’t know about the little giveaway they were hosting.

But fortunately, for those who were not able to get keys from them, I am happy to say I found another site that is still giving them out (for free of course) to whoever wants them while they last. So, before I talk about the game a bit I will go ahead and link those who are interested to the site. All you need to go is go here: http://tllg.net/rqnwd6.

For those interested in the game and what it is about… here is a quote from Wikipedia about the game!

Battlefield Heroes features a modified conquest mode providing each team 50 tickets and eventually one flag at the start of the round. Killing enemies and holding more flags than the opposing army will progressively reduce their number of tickets. The game also features matchmaking, to keep players of the same level together. Developers of the game have talked about levels going as high as 40 or 50. The two armies are called the National Army (possessing a red base color flag) and the Royal Army (possessing a blue base color flag). 

You can read the entire page on the game right here: http://tllg.net/5cxsba. So enjoy it and just maybe I will see you in-game!

**UPDATE** It seems that shortly after this article became available that they too ran out of keys. While this outage isn’t permanent, there is no set time on when more will become available… so it seems for those who weren’t able to grab one will just have to keep checking back and hope to get lucky!

**UPDATE #2** Well I have found another site that is still giving them out! Check it out and hurry over to http://tllg.net/6rfz32 and near the top right side of the page, there is a simple form (just enter your email) and poof, in your email is a key!

One of the latest Screen Digest reports (via mcvuk) shows that last year, Europeans and North Americans have spent around $1.4 billion for MMO subscriptions in total. That is a 22% market growth difference from year 2007 and experts at Screen digest say that despite the increased growth of the Asian online games market model where players instead of paying monthly fees buy items for money, the sector still has five more years to grow. In the report done by Screen digest, here are the basic topics covered:

• Addressable market forecast: broadband households, online active consoles
• Subscription MMOG Market Overview and Updated Forecasts
• Regional Analysis and Forecasts
• North American Territory Analysis and Forecasts
• European Territory Analysis and Forecasts
• Title Market Share Analysis
• Company Market Share Analysis
• Content trends
• The Year Ahead

A comment from Screen digest’s senior analyst and head of games Piers Harding-Rolls: “Industry commentators have for some time been using the example of the Asian online games market to proclaim the death of subscription business models in the West, praising the accessibility and flexibility of free-to-access games that generate revenue by encouraging players to make micro-transactions as part of the gaming experience.”

For now it would seem that the MMO subscription route is the way to go as the more popular games such as World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online have millions of paying players which renew their subscriptions on a monthly basis. With these games and other like them having such a great success I can’t see them going away anytime soon. While the market could move towards more free based MMOs, I just can’t see it happening anytime soon.

And just recently a few MMOs have tried to enter the pro gaming scene with World of Warcraft leading the way. Even though there have been some bugs along the way they are trying hard to make it an even playing field for the players which is already starting to spark more interest in the competitive gaming scene. This will only lead to more people playing these games to try and get good so they can also compete, which is just bringing in more and more cash for the game.

While I am not a big fan of MMOs, I can recognize that they must be doing something right to be able to bring in that type of money from their players. Only time will tell if these business models of the subscriptions will continue to become more and more popular as they get older and newer games come out that are free to play.

This week on Tuesday (February 24th) the beta for Quake Live opened up for all to try and test it out completely free of charge! Quake Live has been in closed beta for a long time now (almost a year I think) with the only way new people were getting in was if someone they knew had access and was able to invite them or they got lucky enough to get an invite to the beta through the website. At the beginning of February I was lucky enough to finally get invited to play in the closed beta and I can say that the game so far feels just like Quake 3 Arena.

For those of you who might not be familiar with what Quake 3 was exactly let me take a minute to explain it a bit. Quake 3 was probably and still is the most popular 1 vs 1 first person shooter (fps) game to ever be released and played competitively. It was orginially released in December of 1999 and is actually still being used in compeititions today for gaming tournaments around the world. Quake Live is a project that ID Software (the creators of the Quake series) started in 2007 to make Quake 3 playable from inside an internet browser and be completely free to play against other people or bots on the internet. The game is going to be completely free to everyone and in the website you have a profile which tracks ALL of your stats from when you are playing (everything from how many kills with each weapon to how many times you kill a certain person). It is giong to be funded from in-game advertising which will be used on a few billboards placed in spots around the maps.

At the current moment there are around 30 different maps in the beta, along with 4 different game types ranging from Free For Alls to Capture the Flag. Within the first 24 hours of the beta being open to the public, they reported having over 100,000 accounts registered and have and to place a queue on the site to keep it from being overloaded and un-usable. Overall with my experience so far in the beta I have been nothing but extremely impressed with everything as it feels like I am playing Quake 3 Arena all over again on my PC. It is shaping up to be an awesome game so I encourage everyone to check this out. Only downside right now I have found is that it only works in IE and Firefox running in Windows, but they have already announced they are working around the clock to get it up and running in more browser and as well as Linux and the Mac OS. So finally I will leave you with a video of some footage from in-game! Enjoy!

www.quakelive.com

Most gamers love a game they can play side by side with a friend. Working together to complete a common goal or mission is always fun and is becoming a very popular feature in new games that are being released. There were a good number of great games released this year that allowed gamers to take advantage of a great co-op mode, but only one can take the title as the best of 2008! The guys over at GamesRadar.com put together a panel of testers to figure out what the best co-op game released this year was and here are the games they decided to review for this award:

• Gears of War 2
• CoD: World at War 
• Resistance 2 
• Saints Row 2 
• Left 4 Dead
• Fable 2

After much testing of the following titles there was a winner crowned. Left 4 Dead has won the title of the best co-op game of 2008 by their panel of judges and I couldn’t agree more. Lately I (and everyone where I work) has been pretty obsessed with Left 4 Dead with a couple of us on a mission to complete as many of the achievements as we possibly can! The gameplay it has for both 4 player co-op and 4v4 versus mode couldn’t be better. It seems as though Valve nailed this game right on the head for an addictive co-op shooter which in my opinion couldn’t have been any better. Check out this HD video review of Left 4 Dead if you would like to get a little taste of what it has to offer! Lastly if you would like to check out the original article for some more details on each game reviewed, simply go here! So, Enjoy!

Throughout gaming history there has always been those gaming titles that showed lots of promise. But some of them never live up to their hype and die off with most people soon forgetting about them and never returning to play them. The guys over at IGN.com have come up with a list of the top 10 video games that showed such promise but failed to live up to their hype causing them to flop and being quickly forgotten by most gamers. Below is the list of the top 10 video game flops!

10. The Atari Jaguar
9. Shenmue
8. Lair
7. Messiah
6. Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness
5. Driv3r
4. E.T.
3. Superman
2. Daikatana
1. Pac-Man

The games highlighted in bold are games that I myself have played at one point. If you would like to read their reasons behind why each of these games made the list, you can read the whole article HERE provided by the guys at IGN.

Ok, so back in mid September I had a little post about The 32 Best Xbox 360 Games. Well I am once again back with another similar list only this time it is a list dealing with the best games for the PC. Just like console games, if you are an avid gamer on the PC there is a very high chance you have played a good many of the games and that some of them are actually some of your favorites too! (I know they are for me.) From puzzle games to FPS shooters to MMOs, this list has a little bit of everything so I would suggest you check it out and see what they have to offer in this list of the best PC games!

Without wasting anymore time talking about the list, here it is:

32. The Sims 2
31. Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom
30. Counter Strike: Source
29. System Shock 2
28. Grim Fandango
27. Deus Ex
26. Command and Conquer: Red Alert
25. Half-Life
24. Indigo Prophecy
23. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow
22. Thief: Deadly Shadows
21. Crysis
20. Fallout 2
19. Supreme Commander
18. TIE Fighter
17. Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
16. Battlefield 2
15. The Longest Journey
14. Psychonauts
13. Half-Life 2
12. Sins of a Solar Empire
11. Diablo II
10. Company of Heroes
9. Unreal Tournament 2004
8. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
7. Starcraft
6. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
5. Peggle
4. The Orange Box
3. Civilization IV
2. Quake 3 Arena
1. World of Warcraft

So there it is, while its a pretty good list overall, there are a few games on there I am not a big fan of but as you can see, I have played quite a few of them (ones I have played a bunch or own are in bold). I have to give it to the guys over at GamePro for another great list and if you would like to read the original article with little summaries of each game… just follow this LINK to check it out there!