Vietnam places a gaming curfew!

While China was facing issue with the deaths of those who were addicted to online gaming Vietnam has came up with a plan to help cut down the amount of time spent playing online games and eliminate side effects.

The Ministry of Information and Communication has asked internet service providers to block access to on-line games from 10:00pm to 8:00am. "Provincial departments of information and communication will inspect on-line games activities nationwide and deal with organizations that violate regulations by canceling their services," said the ministry's Deputy Minister Le Nam Thang (

Video Game News:
Civilization Music Composer awarded
Music's Highest Honor.

It's a first in video game history, never in its history has any part of video game's music industry won a Grammy. Christopher Tin who done recent work for Red Dead Redemption, Mass Effect, the Civilization series and various other video games, has beaten out other Grammy Nominees in the Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists category. Christopher won the award for his piece "Baba Yetu" which he wrote for Civilization IV back in 2005. Sure it was composed six years ago and is now later nominated and won for the 2011 Grammy's but hey, the video game

Apparently, driving video game players are quicker to and better at passing their licenses to get on the road, and then worse (and more terrifying) at absolutely everything else that involves handling a car. According to a study held by Continental Tyres, gamers are the most overconfident drivers out there, with marginal skills to support their self-belief.

Continental Tyres polled 1,000 gamers and 1,000 non-gamers between the ages of 17 and 30 about their driving habits. Results found that gamers are more likely to crash, be pulled over by a cop, hit things while parking, clip other cars and leave, run red lights (which, my bad, I accidentally did yesterdayguess I support the facts!), and exhibit road rage, among other things.

Most interestingly, the study showed that the gamers got their licenses quicker than the non-gamers, averaging 2 attempts at the licensing exam to the non-gamers 3 tries. This shows the gamers dont necessarily lack in skill, as Continental Tyres safety

League of Gaming Continues in Video Game Industry

If you've followed competitive gaming at all, then you've heard of MLG. Major League Gaming has been around since 2002 fighting tooth and nail for the legitimacy of competitive gaming. The uphill battle of bringing competitive gaming to the mainstream has since been won. While MLG doesn't necessarily bring in the ridiculous large market shares like the NFL, MLG has come a long way.

It was announced a few weeks back that MLG has raised over $50 million dollars in funding. For a company that's been around for only 8 years, that's quite an achievement. According to MLG's own research they reach over 4.5 million users a month with over 600,000 unique

Gamer News - Don't do what this man did.

As read here:(the story of the real life frogger), a man in Clemson, South Carolina thought it was a good idea at the time to play a real life version of Frogger. He was wrong...but at least he came out alive.

The local authorities say that the man was playing the real life game in the late evening and had arrived at the hospital around 9 p.m. after he was struck by an SUV (this is where you'd insert the sound effect) while trying to cross the road. According to Chief Jimmy Dixon of Clemson, the 23-year-old-frogger-man said that he was discussing the entire event with his friends earlier in the day.

In the end, the driver of the SUV that hit

Politics in Games - North Korea not going be lead by a Gaming Loser

One of Kim Jong Il's sons is apparently too busy playing video games to take over the reins of his father and run the world's most secluded militaristic oppressive country. Wikileaks (you know that organization that just likes to be the fly in every government's luncheon soup) has released information from a 2008 U.S. government consulate cable in Shanghai to the U.S. State Department. In addition to the information about the future prospects of North Korea and its leader being in very ill health they released this:

"...the two youngest sons, Kim Jong-chol and Kim Jong-un, far too inexperienced and incapable of effective governance. xxxxx, observing that KJI's oldest son, Kim Jong-nam, is

Nintendo makes a mark during largest sales day of 2010

According to the Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime, an average of 9,000 Nintendo hardware systems sold during every hour of every day of Black Friday in the United States alone. He and Nintendo attributed these high sales this to the recent release of the 25^th Anniversary of Mario red Wii and DSi XL systems, the orange and green Nintendo DSi holiday bundles included in Black Friday

Virtual property with a high marked up price

Back in the year 2009, Jon Jacobs set a world record by making the biggest online purchase. A space station in the online sci-fi game Entropia Universe....this month, someone broke that record with the same game.

In a click of a button, John Foma Kalun, purchased a mall, a stadium, a club, and a number of bio-domes (not the Pauly Shore movie) in the game for the mere price of $335,000. You're probably scratching your head on why would people do such things and spend so much of their earned income for a game

Going used, is it a problem or not?

Danny Bilson is the Vice President of core gaming at THQ. THQ has been around since 1989 and some of the popular franchises are Red Faction, Saints Rows and WWE Smackdown vs. Raw. In an interview Bilson was making comments about the next steps for THQ. Ever since he left EA to join THQ in 2008 the company has taken a new turn. For example, Bilson discussed that games need to made as if they were going to be a hits. When Darksiders 1 came out In January 2010, there was already a green light for Darksiders 2. The biggest thing Bilson wants to do is have a blockbuster title per quarter over the next two and half years.

I thought it was interesting listening to a business man talk about what a video game/publisher company needs to do. The most interesting thing Bilson talked about was the problems in the gaming industry. Bilson was asked, "What a big problem with the video game industry?" He responded USED GAMES. I've thought about this myself,

Gamer News view - Patience

It's expensive to be a gamer, new games come out all the time and it's difficult to stay on top of releases. Quality titles are becoming more spread out as the investors behind them get afraid of launch windows that carry larger more well known titles. Gears of War 3 was pushed back to Fall 2011 and I guarantee that games projected to come out around that time are being rushed to come out before then, or are being given more development time to come out later. Economic times are tough right now and every publisher wants our money.

But really, if we were smart, we'd wait a year before purchasing any game, because in the long run, that would save us money. Anyone that uses Amazon has probably noticed how quickly games that aren't triple-A titles drop in price, but even those come down eventually. BioShock 2 came out a little over 8 months ago and is now only $27.99 brand new. That's a much better price then the original $59.99 we'd pay on day 1. We