Games

Chinese players of World of Warcraft (WoW), the popular online game, reported they are continuing to have their accounts hacked, though the company says it has no evidence of this. Although China's WoW operator, the9, has offered dynamic PIN code protection since mid July for WoW players, some players expressed surprise their accounts are being hacked as before, according to a leading IT portal. A report on eNet.com.cn claimed that the PIN code software was useless and could be amended at will even without a correct ID card number.

Hoping to spur interest among video game enthusiasts, creative types and students, Microsoft Corp. said it plans to offer a consumer version of the professional software tools used to create video games for its Xbox 360 console.

The XNA Game Studio Express program, an offshoot of the company's more robust XNA Framework, will be available August 30 for a $99 annual subscription, the company announced Monday.

Moms and dads, crack your knuckles, stretch your wrists and hunker down in front of the television or computer monitor -- it's time to confront the monsters, villains and other baddies lurking in your children's video games.

Craig Anderson, an Iowa State University psychologist, says parents need to do more than consider a game's age-based rating before putting it into the hands of children. They actually need to play the game, he says, or watch as it's demonstrated.

Computer game Reservoir Dogs has been banned in Australia. The Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) refused to give the title an MA 15+ rating.

The game is based on the Quentin Tarantino cult classic, and the OFLC said the decision was made on the basis that the game contained "frequent depictions of violence that have a high impact".

An online game based on the Columbine High School massacre is drawing criticism from a father whose son died in the 1999 attack, saying it trivializes the actions of the two teen killers.

The game, "Super Columbine Massacre RPG," was posted on a Web site last year, but is becoming more popular now. It draws on investigative material, including images of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, who killed 12 classmates and a teacher before committing suicide.

Last week Aspyr released the Quake 4 1.2 update which fixed many of the little issues in 1.0 and brings dual core support to Quake 4 for Mac OS X, which is based on the Doom 3 engine (a UB update just came for that too). Having a shiny new MacBook Pro, I thought I'd pit the Mac version against Quake 4 running in Win XP. There's a lot of talk about the effect of dual booting on Mac gaming so I thought I'd do some benchmarking to see what, if any differences exist now that the Windows and OS X versions are even.

Microsoft officially unveiled Halo 3 during its E3 press conference today, and the company released a trailer for its highly-anticipated sequel on the Internet and its Xbox Live service. Halo 3 will be the first Halo game designed for Microsoft's Xbox 360 console, and the importance to the company was highlighted by the fact that Bill Gates, Microsoft chairman and chief software architect, was on hand to help announce the game.

THE makers of combat video games have unwittingly become part of a global propaganda campaign by Islamic militants against the United States, US Defence officals say.

Tech-savvy militants from al Qaeda and other groups have modified video war games so that US troops play the role of bad guys in running gunfights against heavily armed Islamic radical heroes, US Defence Department official and contractors told the US Congress.

This month saw the launch of what is apparently the first game to be developed within another game.

"Tringo," a cross between "Tetris" and bingo, was created by New Zealander Nathan Keir in "Second Life," an online game where players have much freedom to create virtual objects with complex workings.

The game is now being distributed by Crave Entertainment as "GBA Tringo" for the Game Boy Advance portable game player, making the jump from the virtual world to the real one.

With 6 million subscribers, each of whom pays $15 a month, Blizzard Entertainment's online game "World of Warcraft" has become a billion-dollar enterprise.

Now comes the hard part: Making sure WoW is always up and running. Some players are angered by ongoing server problems that have led the game to crash without warning while they were playing. Complaints have also surfaced about long lag times and frustrating waits to even play.