"It's time to stop pointing fingers at games"

September 19th, 2013, 12:32 Posted By: wraggster

Games industry representative and trade body UKIE has hit back at The Mirror's headline blaming Call of Duty for a US Navy base massacre.
The story 'Driven to Kill by Call of Duty?' says that Aaron Alexis went on a gun rampage after becoming addicted to violent video games.
But UKIE CEO Jo Twist has slammed the report as 'tiring' and insisting there is no link between games and real-world violence.
"It's always tiring and disappointing to see games being accused as being the cause of real world violence," she told MCV.
"Despite many studies, there is no proven link between playing games and actual violence or that playing games de-sensitises people to violence. And in fact there are many proven benefits of playing games as we know.
"Aaron Alexis may have played games, but he probably watched TV, films, and went online. Millions of people around the world enjoy games across many platforms and many genres every day, playing safely and sensibly, with no adverse effects. It's time to stop pointing fingers."
The paper also ran reports of a shopper getting assaulted and stabbed for his copy of Grand Theft Auto V. Which doesn't really show anything, but was a good way of getting games and violence into the same story.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/it-s-...-games/0121237

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GTA V is the fastest selling game in UK history

September 19th, 2013, 00:29 Posted By: wraggster

Grand Theft Auto V has beaten Call of Duty: Black Ops to become the UK’s biggest ever video game launch.
GfK Chart Track data reveals GTA V sold 1.57m units during its first day on sale, generating over £65m in revenue.
It breaks the previous record set by Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops, which sold 1.41m units for £58m back in November 2010.
GTA V launched Tuesday and saw consumers crowd outside 2,000 UK High Street retailers at midnight to get their hands on the highly anticipated title.
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/gta-v...istory/0121278

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GTA V makes a record $800m in 24-hours

September 19th, 2013, 00:26 Posted By: wraggster

Last year Activision proudly announced that Call of Duty: Black Ops II made $500m in 24 hours. It was a world record for an amount of money made by an entertainment product.
Now, not only has GTA V beaten it, but it has smashed it by an astonishing $300m.
GTA V has generated $800m in 24 hours, says Take-Two, in all countries excluding Japan and Brazil.
More than Harry Potter. Call of Duty. Avatar. Star Wars and so on and so forth.
This is all according to company estimates and is not NPD or Chart-Track verified. But it is the biggest launch in UK entertainment history with 1.57m games sold in a day, look right here for more.
The game launched on September 17th, with some 2,000 games retailers opening their doors at midnight in the UK alone.
“All of us at Take-Two are thrilled with the initial response to Grand Theft Auto V. Once again, the team at Rockstar Games have outdone themselves, setting the entertainment industry's new standard for creativity, innovation and excellence," said Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick.
“Beginning at midnight on Monday, consumers around the world gathered in anticipation to be among the first to experience the evolution of this remarkable series. In North America alone, more than 8,300 stores opened their doors at midnight to welcome fans whose loyalty and enthusiasm were rewarded with what The New York Times called ‘the most immersive spectacle in interactive entertainment’. We are incredibly proud of Rockstar Games’ creative achievement and could not be more pleased with the success of this launch.”

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/gta-v...-hours/0121279

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GTA V: Proving Old Industry Rules Are Irrelevant

September 18th, 2013, 01:54 Posted By: wraggster

Street dates broken, price scalping, ratings ignored. The new generation of games consoles can't come quick enough, says Matt Martin
With the release of Grand Theft Auto V this week, all those tired old industry rules that have long been in place have finally been stomped into irrelevance.
Once again we see broken street dates, early selling, prices hiked on pre-release sales and toothless ratings systems. The release of GTA V shows the absurdity of the old video game business, where arbitrary rules are trampled by the masses - the 'Police Line Do Not Cross' tape snapped with the slightest push.
"Grand Theft Auto V is just another box that needs shifting. That carefully managed marketing plan means nothing - it's just plastic in an envelope. Send it out"

Retailers don't care about rules put in place by distributors or publishers. Amazon sends out copies of the game early because it can and it will. It's an efficient distribution machine. This is a company that doesn't pay tax - why on earth would it abide by an agreement that says it must only mail out a parcel on a particular day? The machine is greased, the product is ready to go. Grand Theft Auto V is just another box that needs shifting. All those years of development and that carefully managed marketing plan mean nothing - it's just plastic in an envelope. Send it out.
Second-hand retailer CEX capitalised even further. According to this BBC report the company was selling copies of the game before its official release today for £75 a pop. That's the video game equivalent of ticket scalping. But the customers are paying for it, right? Give the customer what it needs. Where did it get the stock from in the first place? I would guess it ordered bulk copies from an online retailer to sell at a higher mark-up because it's cheaper than going through the official distributor. Pre-orders of GTA V at Amazon were £34.99 with free delivery. Walk into a copy of GAME today and you'll pay £40.99. The mark-up on those games is pennies, not pounds - at least until the second-hand market kicks into life.
Thanks to online retailers, the game was in players' hands days before release, while others ramped up the price. Parents saw the latest must-have game and bought it for their under-age children. Here's a reportedly . He kisses the shrink wrap. Keeping the kids happy is more important than any nonsensical barriers, because age-rating systems are toothless. On the surface something must be done, but in reality they're an inconvenience to anyone but policy makers. It's 2013, don't tell us what we can and can't watch, we're not listening.
All of this has happened before. It happens all the time, in fact, and these flimsy rules, rarely adhered to, remain in place like a broken fence battered by the wind. When a game reaches a mainstream audience like no other, it highlights the absurdity and ineffectiveness of it all.
In part, this is just a tired industry propping up the old retail model because it has to. The video game world outside of bricks, boxes and trucks has long since moved on, and we can see that the next round of consoles from Sony and Microsoft are designed to bypass the wheezing retail model once they've Trojan Horsed their way through the shops.
Amazon has proven its unbeatable efficiency at distribution so it can be relied upon to get the PS4 and Xbox One hardware out. Once it's in players' hands, it becomes so much easier and convenient to sell digital games with systems built to cater to that world from the ground up. Even hardware specs become less relevant when the cloud begins to seriously factor into the equation a year or so after the hardware release. All those policies Microsoft u-turned on? They'll come back over time and you won't even notice or care if the convenience is there.
"The next round of consoles are designed to bypass the wheezing retail model once they've Trojan Horsed their way through the shops"

Look at games like Payday 2 or Dust 514 as precursors of what's to come. Or, more relevant to this conversation, The Lost and the Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony. Scale that thinking up, where games are preloaded and ready to go at midnight, and you bypass the early sales, the headache of scalping and price slashing, the chore of putting a game in an envelope, printing off an address label and mailing from one country to another. It's not even worth mentioning age ratings in a digital world, where dad's credit card is already being exploited by both players and games designers.
The hardware manufacturers know this, but they've had to wait until now to change the technology. The publishers have known this for a long time and some have changed. The recent changes at Sega - where it sits supporting the PC with a digital presence that can be applied to consoles later down the line - is a fine example, but there are others that will be following the THQ route to oblivion sooner than new consoles can save them.
The big issue for digital distribution on consoles will be pricing. Downloading Grand Theft Auto V on the PlayStation 3 costs £49.99 - a ridiculous price for sure, but not so high that it's been putting off customers. Services like PS Plus will soon come into their own, and the digital marketplace will stabilise once more companies show their support with content.
But what a primitive business the current generation of consoles has left us. It's no wonder so many companies have collapsed this generation. Yet despite all of this, the games will continue to thrive. There are less franchises now, but Grand Theft Auto and its kind are stronger than they ever have been.
It's time to draw a line under it, move on from the misguided obligation to support a retail world that has for years exploited developers and kept publishers in a stranglehold. Look at the buzz around Grand Theft Auto V this week. It's smothering the mainstream media. It's an event to celebrate, a conversation starter far beyond industry circles, and it should act as a catalyst and wake-up call for those that aren't already on board. It's not too late for the console business to make a success with digital sales, and maybe even help pioneer a new way of looking at retail.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...are-irrelevant

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Giant video walls powered by a Raspberry Pi

September 18th, 2013, 01:53 Posted By: wraggster


There’s no denying that giant video walls are awesome, but creating one usually means a fairly complex setup with either multiple computers or very expensive video cards. Now,with Pi Wall, you can make a video wall as large as your wallet will allow with only one Raspi per monitor, and a single master pi to control the whole shebang.
As long as you have a few displays with an HDMI input, it’s easy to turn them into a giant monitor. Just plug one Pi per monitor into a network switch, have a Pi (or other Linux box) transmit a video to all the video tiles, and sit back and enjoy the show.
Right now there is an installation guide for creating a Pi Wall, but there are a few limitations; this software only works with the video player provided with the Raspberry Pi, omxplayer. If you’re looking to create an enormous display for a flight simulator or what have you, you might need to do a bit of tinkering under the hood.

http://hackaday.com/2013/09/16/giant...-raspberry-pi/

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Grand Theft Auto V on track to become highest rated game of all time

September 18th, 2013, 00:41 Posted By: wraggster

Only one other game has ever settled on a 98 per cent average on reviews aggregation site Metacritic – can you guess what it is?
Yes, it's Grand Theft Auto IV. And it now looks as if its successor Grand Theft Auto V is on track to join it.
Almost 24 hours after the global review embargo lifted yesterday afternoon the Xbox 360 version currently sits on 98 per cent, with the PS3 version on 97 per cent.
GTA V has won an astonishing 37 10/10 reviews so far, with plenty of time left for more.
Only three other games have ever won a 97 per cent average – Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3.
A host of titles sit on 96 per cent including Half-Life 2, BioShock, Uncharted 2, Batman: Arkham City, Mass Effect 3, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Resident Evil 4.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/grand...l-time/0121161

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Ultra Street Fighter IV: Capcom’s latest rebalancing act

September 18th, 2013, 00:28 Posted By: wraggster

Given that Street Fighter X Tekken failed to capture either the hearts of fighting game players or the wallets of a wider audience, it’s little surprise to see Capcom dipping into the SFXT asset libraries for this, the third major revision to Street Fighter IV. Four of this game’s five new characters have been imported from the crossover title, but producer Tomoyaki Ayano insists this isn’t just a case of dropping a failed game’s models into the engine of one whose appeal endures five years on from its arcade debut.“They will definitely not just be copied and pasted,” he tells us. “The battle systems of the two games are completely different, so the characters will play completely differently. A lot of work goes into making these characters fit within the SFIV framework.”The absence of SFXT’s universal Boost combo system will certainly mean that four of USFIV’s five new characters play differently, but they sure do look the same. Final Fight’s German giant Hugo benefited the most from the Boost combo, which gave him mobility to go with his tremendous power. How he will fare in a game in which grapplers tend to struggle is for Capcom to figure out, but he has the tools to cope, including a handclap which nullifies projectiles.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/...balancing-act/

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PS4 and Xbox One next-gen consoles to give retailers £1.2 billion boost

September 17th, 2013, 23:43 Posted By: wraggster

The launch of the PS4 and Xbox One in November should give retailers a £1.2 billion boost in sales, says research.
The Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), who conducted the research, said that the total provided by the release of the next-gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft might even pass £3 billion.
“The drama and excitement generated by PS4 and Xbox One look set to produce the sales boost retailers have been crying out for,” said the Director General of the ERA, Kim Bayley.
The popularity of the consoles may even result in games sales beating sales of the music and video sectors combined, the ERA added.
The ERA’s research also found that the PS4 may outsell the Xbox One at launch, with 10 per cent of people saying they were “definitely or likely to” purchase the PS4, while seven per cent said the same of the Xbox One.
The two rival console makers are to present at the ERA’s Annual General Meeting on September 18th, along talks on digital services, the war on piracy and what video and music have to offer to compete with games.
"This is a last minute opportunity for Microsoft and Sony to eyeball their most important retail customers just weeks before battle commences," said Bayley.

http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/read/...n-boost/031921

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GTA 5 smashes pre-sale records; lots of 'sickies' expected

September 17th, 2013, 23:41 Posted By: wraggster

After Grand Theft Auto 5’s pre-release sales have smashed records, the game is expected to shift over 25 million copies before the end of the year.
RockStar’s GTA 5 was released today (September 17th). IGN.com polled nearly 11,000 of its readers and found that 46 per cent had booked today off work. Industry experts predict that thousands more will call in sick.
William Hill is offering 4/1 on the game hitting the number one spot for Christmas.
“GTA 4 sold over 25m copies although it was for sale on PC as well as XBOX 360 and PS3,” said William Hill spokesman Joe Crilly. “GTA 5 is such an in demand game, however, that sales could well reach the 26.78m mark to push it into the top 10.”
GTA 5 is currently the third favourite game to be named as the Christmas number one behind Call of Duty: Ghosts (6/4) and FIFA 14 (2/1).
Today, RockStar has also announced the launch of a GTA 5 app which offers players the ability to create their ultimate GTA vehicle.

http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/read/...xpected/031927

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Grand Theft Auto 5 takes aim at Call of Duty

September 17th, 2013, 02:01 Posted By: wraggster

Grand Theft Auto games are always full of satirical digs at staples of modern life, so why should our present obsession with online shooters be immune from parody?Apparently that's Rockstar's view, anyway, judging by the prominence of adverts for "Righteous Slaughter 7: The Art of Contemporary Killing" in Grand Theft Auto 5.Developed by "Misfire Games", Righteous Slaughter 7 is billed as "A first-person shooter like no other (except for the Righteous Slaughter 6 which was released 3 months ago)."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...t-call-of-duty

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Is the most disturbing scene in GTA5 justified?

September 17th, 2013, 02:00 Posted By: wraggster

Grand Theft Auto is no stranger to controversy, but now that Hot Coffee has gone well and truly cold and highbrow networks like HBO have made sex and extreme violence a more regular fixture in polite living rooms, Rockstar obviously feels comfortable expressing itself again fully. In the case of GTA5's most disturbing scene, however, it draws inspiration from real life rather than fiction.The US government's use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" is the basis of a mission called "By the Book" where Trevor Phillips, one of GTA5's three playable characters, tortures a man suspected by the GTA world's government agencies of harbouring secrets about terrorists. Players must choose between various instruments of torture and press buttons and rotate sticks when prompted in order to use them on the suspect. If the suspect's heart stops, it can be restarted so the questioning can continue. Meanwhile, one of the game's two other playable characters, Michael, races around Los Santos following any leads gained during the interrogation.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...gta5-justified

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Disney Infinity sells 294,000 in first two weeks

September 16th, 2013, 22:32 Posted By: wraggster

Spokesperson touts "strong start" for starter packs in US, company pleased with global launch performance
[h=3]Disney Interactive Studios[/h]

Disney Interactive is banking big time on the success of its new Disney Infinity toys-to-life game, and a spokesperson for the company told GamesIndustry International that the game's launch last month went well.
"Disney Infinity sales are off to a strong start, selling 294,000 starter pack units in the US during the last two weeks of August," the spokesperson said. "We're very pleased with the launch in both the U.S. and globally, and believe Disney Infinity is well-positioned for the critical holiday sales season."
The game finished third in the NPD Group's US retail sales chart for August, behind only Madden NFL 25 and Saints Row IV.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Disney has spent more than $100 million on development of Infinity, with a former employee of the division calling it a "Hail Mary [play] with a tremendous amount of pressure to be a hit." Disney CEO Robert Iger was also quoted as saying, "If Infinity does well, it bodes very well for the bottom line of this unit... If it doesn't do well, the opposite will be the case."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...irst-two-weeks

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FIFA 13 breaks Chart-Track record

September 16th, 2013, 22:21 Posted By: wraggster

Blockbuster FIFA 13 has smashed the record for the longest consecutive stay in the Chart-Track Top Ten on current-gen systems.
The football title fell out of the Top Ten last week for the first time since it launched last September, which means it enjoyed an incredible 48 weeks at the top.
FIFA 13 is the most successful game in the series so far, and over the last 12 months it has eclipsed UK sales of Call of Duty for the first time in four years. It has sold over 3m units so far.
FIFA 13 dropped from No.10 to No.14 this week as hype builds around FIFA 14, which launches on September 27th. EA released a demo for the game earlier this week.

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/fifa-...record/0121105

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Indies braced for Grand Theft Auto V windfall

September 16th, 2013, 22:20 Posted By: wraggster

It’s not just the big chains planning events around GTA V, with indie retailers telling MCV they are running midnight openings of their own.
Small stores say they’ve been delighted by the support they’ve had from Rockstar and Take-Two.
“We’ve supported the GTA series since the original and it’s great to see a game designed in Scotland become one of the largest franchises ever,” said MD of indie chain Games Centre, Robert Lindsay
“Pre-orders on GTA V are huge and it’s shaping up to be our biggest selling title this year. We will be doing midnight launches through all Games Centre stores with staff dressed up in homage to some of their favourite GTA characters.”
Chris Muckell of Xpress Games added: “GTA V is our biggest day one order with suppliers in our eight year history. We’ve got a midnight launch planned for each of our stores.
“And even with the large volume of stock we are taking we will still see a stock shortage shortly after its release.”
Meanwhile, 24-7 Games’ Kevin Garraway expects GTA V to eclipse sales of Call of Duty and FIFA.
“GTA V will sell many more units than Call of Duty Ghosts and FIFA 14. It’s the game of the year,” he said.
“It’s going to be a massive midnight launch. I might even sleep in the shop for it. We’ll have trailers on the screens and we’re seeing what else we can do.”

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/indie...ndfall/0121106

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Mobile gaming just as popular as consoles for kids

September 16th, 2013, 21:53 Posted By: wraggster

53 per cent say they are gaming on a mobile more now than a year ago.
The changes in the way children aged between two and 17 now play computer games is largely due to mobile devices, reports the NPD Group.
Ages 12 – 17 are playing on their mobile devices for around seven hours a week compared to five hours in 2011 and over half of kids overall spend more time than last year as well.
Liam Callahan, industry analyst at the NPD Group, said: “Kids embrace change, adopting new devices and technologies, for the experience of gaming and accessing other entertainment content and it is critical to understand the current mindset of the highly engaged two to 17 year old gamer.”
Laptops, desktops and consoles remain the main devices for gaming, however mobile is rapidly becoming increasingly important for a dedicated gamer. Now almost as many kids are gaming on mobile devices as they are on anything else.
The age children are starting to game on a mobile is getting lower and lower, and as the gaming industry proceeds in embracing mobile technology, the age is expected to continue to drop.
Games developer Gameforge is seeing the potential in mobile devices as mobile games become its main focus, and plan on doubling its portfolio of titles.
Callahan continued: “The question becomes whether this mobile usage will continue to grow for two to 17 year olds, and if usage will become more prevalent than gaming in consoles and computers as time progresses.”

http://www.mobile-ent.biz/news/read/...or-kids/022361

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Turning a Raspi into AdBlock

September 16th, 2013, 00:35 Posted By: wraggster

There’s nothing quite as annoying as seeing bandwidth wasted on unimpressive flash animations, irrelevant ads, and animated GIFs. The bad news is these ads are the sole source of income for a lot of your favorite websites – Hackaday included. The good news is you can turn these ads off with a Raspberry Pi, a WiFi adapter, and a little bit of fun in the terminal.
This build creates a wireless access point with a WiFi adapter plugged in to a Raspberry Pi. With an Ethernet cable plugged in, this effectively turns the Raspi into a wireless router.
To configure the software to block ads, it’s a simple matter of installing dnsmasq from the command line and making sure all the ads on your favorite webpages time out. This means a fairly big hit on the performance of your new DIY router, but with the installation of Pixelserv you can host a 1-pixel transparent GIF image that replaces all the ads and renders them invisible.
It’s a great project if you don’t like watching ads on your PS3, XBox, tablet, or other non-PC Internetting device. If people stealing your wireless connection is a problem, it shouldn’t be hard to make every image upside down or blurry for those rogue WiFi pirates.

http://hackaday.com/2013/09/15/turni...-into-adblock/

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rpix86 progress

September 16th, 2013, 00:01 Posted By: wraggster

via http://rpix86.patrickaalto.com/rblog.html

As I mentioned at the end of my previous blog post, I am working on a new project and thus do not have much time to work on rpix86 (or zerox86). However, just before I released the previous version of rpix86, I was asked on the rpix86 forum thread whether I had any plans to make rpix86 run on a terminal window. At that time I did not have such plans, but I immediately thought that this might be something interesting that I would like to try. Thus, while mostly working on my new project, I have also made some experiments with running rpix86 using the Curses library for screen output.

My text mode screen handling has always used a "dirty buffer" approach. That is, I have a hidden buffer of the same size as the text screen (normally 80x25), and at around 60 times a second I check which characters have changed, and then only draw the fonts of those changed characters on the actual graphics screen. I thought that this approach would work fine also with the Curses library, as I would only need to draw (send via the terminal line) the changed characters. Indeed, this seemed to work fine, and I was able to get some screen output pretty easily.

After I got the basic DOS prompt screen showing, instead of working on keyboard input, I decided to add support for launching a certain exe directly. I wanted to test what happens with all those block drawing characters used by Norton Sysinfo, for example. Studying the Curses programming guides, I saw that you can use an Alternate Character Set to draw some simple block graphics characters. Thus I worked on that a little bit as well, until I got the lines looking reasonably nice on the Sysinfo screen. I also added color support, so that the end result is not far off the original. Here below is a screen copy of me running rpix86 on my Raspberry Pi using the putty terminal program from my Windows PC. Ignore the two cursor images, I don't yet handle hiding the cursor nor disabling the text mode mouse cursor properly.


Next step would be to add keyboard input, and also some warning message to be shown whenever the DOS screen goes to graphics mode, as that can not be used when in a terminal window. It will take me some time before I can release the next version, though, as most of my time goes to the new project I am working on. But, it is quite possible that the next version of rpix86 allows you to actually run it on a terminal window. :-)

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NPD: 'Almost' as many kids gaming on mobiles as consoles, computers

September 15th, 2013, 22:18 Posted By: wraggster

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Oculus Rift VR Jam finalists announced - here there be dragons

September 15th, 2013, 18:40 Posted By: wraggster

Oculus and IndieCade have announced the VR Jam 2013 finalists. If you've got an Oculus Rift and the compatible hardware, 14 of the 20 finalists are available to download and check out for yourself. Reinforcing the common knowledge that dragons are awesome and everyone wants to be a dragon, there's not one, but two dragon simulators on the list: Dragon by James Scott, and Epic Dragonby Aurelian Kerbeci.

The winning team will be announced September 19, at which point they'll receive the $10,000 grand prize and a trip to Oculus HQ. The winning team will also receive a trip to the IndieCade Festival, which runs October 3 - 6, where they'll have a showcase exhibition of their game. Check out the full list of finalists after the break.

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/09/14/oc...re-be-dragons/

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Tooth Cavities May Protect Against Cancer

September 15th, 2013, 18:28 Posted By: wraggster

John Gever reports at MedPage Today on a new study conducted by researchers from the University of Buffalo, which found that people with more cavities in their teeth are 32 percent less likely to suffer from head and neck cancers. 'To our knowledge, the present study suggests, for the first time, an independent association between dental caries and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.' The researchers proposed a mechanism for the apparent protective effect: that cariogenic, lactic acid-producing bacteria prompt cell-mediated Th1 immune responses that suppress tumor formation. The team examined records of patients older than 21 seen in the university's dental and maxillofacial prosthetics department from 1999 to 2007, identifying 399 who were newly diagnosed with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. Assuming that the association between caries and reduced cancer risk is real, the team suggests that one could regard the cariogenic bacteria as beneficial overall, with caries 'a form of collateral damage.' Therefore an appropriate strategy could be to target that effect specifically without aggressively targeting the bacteria. 'Antimicrobial treatment, vaccination, or gene therapy against cariogenic bacteria may lead to more harm than good in the long run.'

http://science.slashdot.org/story/13...against-cancer

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