The Gamers’ Temple Oracle

… hijacking #1’s URL. Visit modernwarfare3.com and you’ll find yourself on the Battlefield 3 site. Stunts like that may seem clever at first, but all they really do is call attention to the fact that you’re not the leader. Take the cola wars for example. You can easily tell who’s the leader and who’s not simply by watching commercials. Pepsi continually compares itself to Coke in one commercial after another, while Coke ignores all other soda companies in all of its advertising. Even if you’re not number one, if you want the public to perceive that you are, then you need to act like you are and not continually remind it that you’re not.

I got a press release from the University of Missouri today with the headline “Violent Video Games Proven To Increase Aggressive Behavior.” As someone with a degree in science, it appalled me to see that headline later followed by text that states, “Scientists have known for years that playing violent video games causes players to become more aggressive.” Translation: “We formed our conclusion before the experiment took place rather than design one in which we could isolate the variables and impartially analyze the results.”

The release goes on to state, “There also could be an unmeasured factor that causes both a preference for violent video games and a smaller brain response to violence. In either case, there are additional measures to consider.” In other words, they’re saying that those participants that showed an aggressive response to videogame violence in the study may have already been predisposed to violence, and they’re not really sure how that affected the results. Is that what’s passing for scientific proof in Missouri?

The upside of PSN’s downtime? I can turn on my PS3 without having to wait for yet another system update…

Red Faction: Battlegrounds is only recommendable to those who already got it for free as a pre-order bonus, and it’s not even that good of a deal for them…

Read the full review here.

Finally received approval for my E3 press pass from the mysterious people behind E3. The approval came in at 10:30 on Friday night on the last week of press registration, so it looks like they were burning the midnight oil to get the passes approved. I’m not sure what they do to make things so difficult on themselves. You’d think it would be easy to approve a pass for somebody that’s been going to your event for about ten years now…

I like that the PS3 has different trophy types, but why not assign each type a score and then add them all up into a single gamer score? The gamer level thing is rather lame…

I was able to get my new 3DS onto my wireless network in under 30 seconds and it’s connected every time I’ve turned it on since. I’ve been able to get my PSP to connect twice. Ever.

We’ll see if I’m better at keeping a Twitter account active than a blog…

@NedJordan

From Eurogamer’s review of Star Trek Online:

“They may not have many different things to do, and the missions and UI may be rather buggy, but there does seem to be enough content to sustain them - at least until the endgame - and even at its worst that content is knockabout fun with more instant appeal, and more suitability for casual, short-session, low-commitment play than most MMOs.”

How many words does it take to say, “it’s kind of ok, but not really?”

Someone explain to me why PSP games available for download on the PSN store are more expensive than the retail boxed versions on UMD? For the exact same game?!?