Violent ends
The games industry is guilty of selling violent games to underage children in defiance of its own rating system, according to a report by America's Federal Trade Commission. The report, Marketing Of Violent Entertainment To Children, also finds the motion picture and music industries culpable.
Surveys found that unaccompanied children aged 13 to 16 were able to buy explicit recordings and mature-rated video games from retailers 85% of the time. Almost half the cinemas allowed these unaccompanied under-age children to see R-rated (restricted) films.
The report recommends action by the industry but makes no legislative recommendations to Congress. The 409KB file of the report (pdf format) can be downloaded from www.ftc.gov/opa/2000/09/youthviol.htm.
Eidos awaits
Eidos's chairman, Ian Livingstone, has told the company's annual general meeting: "We have a highly anticipated line-up of games still to come in this fiscal year, including Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, Chicken Run, Hitman, Startopia, Project IGI, 102 Dalma tians, Anachronox, and new instalments in the Tomb Raider and Championship Manager franchises, together with sequels to Fear Effect, Commandos and Gangsters. Scheduled PlayStation 2 releases are to include TimeSplitters, Soul Reaver 2, Herdy Gerdy and Eden."
Norns wild
Norns, the artificial life forms that inhabit Creature Labs programs, will be released on the web in November.
The British company plans to release Creatures Docking Station software that will "dock" with Creatures 3 on the PC. It will also let net users play with Norns even if they do not have the program.
The title's producer, Mark Ashton, describes this as "the world's largest artificial life experiment". Creature Labs also has plans for a website at www.creaturesvillage.com for players aged six to 10, when it releases Creatures Playground, the second Creatures game designed for children.
America's Swing! Entertainment has signed up to publish Creatures for the Nintendo Gamecube and Game Boy Advance.
Kick about
Rage, one of the UK's leading software houses, has put its new football management game one the web for users to test. There's a limit of 10,000 players. Check to see if the quota has been filled at www.internetfootballclub.com/beta.
Tokyo gaming
The Tokyo Games Show opens tomorrow, and the news-zine Game Informer expects to see 94 titles for the Sony PlayStation, 65 for the PS2, 49 for Nintendo's Game Boy Color, 18 for Game Boy Advance, and 16 for Sega Dreamcast. Of these, 56 will be action games, with 53 simulations, 40 role-playing games (RPGs), and 32 sports games. Sss www.gameinformer.com/news/news_story.cfm?NEWS_ID=3284.
