1. Massively (USA) – Enter at Your Own Rift: How gold farming really hurts the economy. “Recently, Trion Worlds CCO and RIFT Executive Producer Scott Hartsman talked to Gamasutra about how gold farming is a much bigger threat than we assume, particularly because of the large amount of credit card fraud. Those who played RIFT at launch probably recall the large wave of hacked accounts early on. According to Hartsman, the hacking attempts were so quick and so intense that the game could have been “denial-of-serviced off the internet” when it launched.”

2. Tom’s Hardware (USA) – Kid Creates Games in ROBLOX, Gets Over 10 Million Followers. “For the uninitiated, ROBLOX is a massively multiplayer online virtual playground and workshop designed specifically for children 7 and over. Unlike other MMOGs where players roam various lands, perform jobs and take on hobbies, ROBLOX allows its users to build virtual worlds and games in a social, LEGO-like environment. “Each player starts by choosing an avatar and giving it an identity,” reads the official FAQ for parents. “They can then explore ROBLOX – interacting with others by chatting, playing games, or collaborating on creative projects. Each player is also given their own piece of undeveloped real estate along with a virtual toolbox with which to design and build anything desired — be it a navigable skyscraper, a working helicopter, a giant pinball machine, a multiplayer ‘Capture the Flag’ game or some other, yet-to-be-dreamed-up object or activity.”

3. 9&10 News (USA) – Camp Grayling Trains in Virtual World. “The military has turned to computers and essentially video games to train their troops for what they will encounter overseas. Camp Grayling in Crawford County is the largest training facility in the US and offers realistic and safe battle zones for their troops. Today’s troop can train in a fake Iraqi village after planning out an attack or rescue in the base’s Simulation Center.”

4. eMarketer (USA) – Quick Stat: US Virtual Goods Revenues to Reach $653 Million This Year. “According to eMarketer data from January 2011, the US virtual goods market is expected to generate $653 million in revenue this year, up 28% from 2010. The popularity of social gaming has catalyzed tremendous growth in virtual goods monetization. Game developers, virtual worlds and social network providers are driving this economy, which is projected to grow substantially in the next several years.”

5. Metro Weekly (USA) – Game Theory. “Some people play to escape. Some people play to belong. Some people play to experience virtual worlds of fantasy, others play to explore realistic recreations of history. There are nearly as many reasons to play video games as there are games themselves. But one thing is certain: More people are playing than ever. And more of those people playing are LGBT gamers. Not so long ago, if the topic of ”gay” came up in conjunction with video games, it was to focus on a negative — the invisibility of LGBT characters in games; the taunting and harassment of gay players online; the stereotypes that seemed to carry over from old entertainment forms into this new, virtual one. But that’s changed.”

6. Business Standard (India) – Gartner evaluates maturity of 1,900 technologies. “Advances in embedded sensors, processing and wireless connectivity are bringing the power of the digital world to objects and places in the physical world. This is a slow-moving segment, but one that is now accelerating with the growing pervasiveness of low-cost, embedded sensors and cameras. User interfaces is another slow-moving area, with significant recent activity. Speech recognition was on the original 1995 hype cycle and has still not attained maturity, and computer-brain interfaces would evolve for at least another 10 years before moving out of research and the niche status. However, a new entry for natural language question-answering recognises the impressive and highly visible achievement of IBM’s Watson computer in winning TV’s Jeopardy! general knowledge quiz against human opponents. Gesture recognition has also been launched into the mainstream through Microsoft’s Kinect gaming systems, under hacker attacks by third parties to create a range of application interfaces. Other areas continue to progress more slowly, including speech-to-speech translation, augmented reality and virtual assistants, while virtual worlds remain in the trough after peaking in 2007.”

7. Forbes (USA) – Females Spending More Real Cash On Virtual Goods In Video Games Than Males. “It seems the virtual world of video games is replicating the real world mall, when it comes to the shopping habits of males versus females on in-game virtual goods. U.S. Gamers, whose online purchases of digital goods were once paid for largely by credits earned from advertiser offers, now say they are migrating to “real world” payment for digital goods using debit, credit and prepaid cards, according to a new study of online gamer behavior commissioned by PlaySpan, a Visa company, and undertaken by research firm VGMarket. The survey data was compiled in July 2011 from over 1,000 gamers drawn from a VGMarket database. According to the study, nearly one-third (31 percent) of the general gamer population has used real world money to purchase virtual content. Of those gamers who use real world money, 57 percent said they make purchases of virtual items using real world money at least once every month. Console games with online play account for the majority (51 percent) of virtual purchases using real world money, with social networking games (30 percent) and Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOs) coming in at second and third respectively.”

8. The Global Mail (Canada) – Video games teach kids ‘new literacy’: Do you buy it? “When you check in with your kid, who is now into hour three of his Halo marathon, you repeat that well-worn phrase your mother used on you about killing brain cells and trading in the controller (well, it was a joystick back in your day) for a book. But are video games really the anti-books? A new article on PBS’s Mediashift web portal presents a different argument: our definition of literacy is outdated. Kids may be learning a “new literacy” through playing video games.”

9. Fast Company (USA) – Civil Resistance Simulator Teaches Players To Topple Dictators. “You say you want a revolution? Download the how-to video game for nonviolent change, now with a special Middle-Eastern edition to help continue the Arab Spring. Revolutions can happen anywhere, as we saw in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia earlier this year. But seemingly spontaneous uprisings against governments are usually anything but random: they are the result of relentless organizing, persistence, and strategy. Now a video game called PeoplePower has been updated to instill a new generation of revolutionaries with the tactics and strategic skills to pull off nonviolent movements. Originally called “A Force More Powerful,” which we reported on in 2006, the new game was developed specifically to reach an audience in repressed and often poor regions, particularly in the Middle East. The most innovative feature allows users to build their own virtual worlds to match their governments and countries, essentially creating an open-source platform for learning about regime change.”

10. Nature (UK) – Video: Relaxing on a virtual beach. “For centuries a stroll in the countryside has been touted as beneficial to health – something modern science has confirmed. But for many people these benefits are out of reach.
Nature Video took a trip recently to the laboratory of Robert Stone in Birmingham. Building on work done for the Ministry of Defence, Stone is building digital recreations of the English countryside to help improve the mental health of people who can’t reach it in reality.”

1. App Market TV (USA) – More than Second Life – It’s a Second Nation. “The electronic campfire which we gather around for news and support is a worldwide one. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and various other networks allow for people to update, keep tabs and offer useful links 24/7. They also allow for that most rare and valuable of human commodity – kindness and support in dire times. Where those have passed or fallen, there are Facebook accounts where we can leave our messages for families and friends. That we can gather around topics of interest from far flung places, keeping the conversation focused and vital is a great strength of our networking power. Twitter and Facebook are what I call flat applications or 2D applications of interaction. For those who want to flip through or read what other folks are saying, commentating along the way, possibly coming back to have an ongoing conversation, touching on some things of interest, it obviously works. There are instant messages, now voice and soon webcam will be ubiquitous. When I want real dialogue with a group of people, I log in to Second Life where my avatar, an extension of my person, can have a real–time conversation with others of “my kind.” This feeling of belonging to a virtual or Second Nation tells a lot about what virtual worlds can be. They are often left out of the social network conversation and I have wondered why because what they can offer is truly great.”

2. Search Engine Watch (USA) – Ears to the Ground: Linden Lab is Changing How it Listens to its Customers. “Change is rarely revolutionary. This is probably a good thing, as most people dislike change as a general rule. A sudden change into unfamiliar territory, even if it’s seen as a benefit, can often leave people shocked and confused. This causes them to lash out and reject change, even changes that might otherwise be beneficial (though, admittedly, some changes are frankly pretty lousy). Most changes are evolutionary. If you think that culture can’t change in an evolutionary fashion, I suggest you watch “Revenge of the Nerds.” I’m serious – if you watch it with 2011 eyes there’s parts of it that are pretty horrifying and there’s an overall “wait, but don’t those same folks just run everything now?” My, my, how things have changed.”

3. Co.Design (USA) – MoMA Preview: 12 Brilliant Projects That Explore How Tech Helps Us Talk.”If you listen carefully, deep inside MOMA’s remarkable new show, “Talk to Me: Design and Communication Between People and Objects,” you can hear the sound of a mournful howl. A wounded baboon? A lonely chimpanzee yearning for its mate? Turns out it’s Lucy, better known by her family name, Australopithecus Afarensis, the Ethiopian hominid generally considered to be the mother of humanity. Or rather, it’s what she might have sounded like, if her vocal organs had been preserved along with her skeleton. Designer Marguerite Humeau, from London’s Royal College of Art, took the skull of a chimp (close to Lucy’s size and shape), replicated what her soft tissues might have looked like, printed them in 3-D, and hooked them up to an air compressor. Turn the switch and bingo! A 3 million year old voice from the grave.”

4. Forbes (USA) – Playstation 4 ‘Eco-Concept’ Is Gorgeous. “With Nintendo recently announcing the successor to its popular Wii video game system, all eyes have shifted to Microsoft and Sony for hints of what the future holds for the the Xbox 360 and Playstation. Neither has said anything officially, though leaks here and there are starting to garner press. A DigiTimes report said Sony is prepping a new console for release in 2012; while a director of operations for chipmaker AMD claimed that the next Xbox will produce graphics rivaling the scenes in James Cameron’s “Avatar.”

5. Bellingham Herald (USA) – Welcome to the armed forces; here’s your computer. “The use of computer programs to simulate combat situations is growing in the military, despite concerns over their limitations. And as budget cutbacks hit the Defense Department, cheaper computer-training options will only become more attractive. Computer simulations have been important training tools in the military for decades. Digital computers were first used for flight simulation in the 1960s. But the gaming aspect to some simulations is relatively new. The Marine Corps bought Virtual Battlefield System 2, which creates a virtual reality environment similar to the popular Sims game, in 2001. The Marine Corps Training and Education Command boasts at least 14 different virtual training programs. Their gaming aspect, leadership at Marine Air-Ground Task Force Training Simulations Division said, is irrelevant. What’s important are the decision-making cycles that the simulations reinforce.”

6. VizWorld (USA) – The Virtual Mine Receives an Emmy Nomination. “Now this is impressive. Sand Castle Studios has a Second-Life creation called “The Virtual Mind” which strives to educate the public on the importance and dangers of mountain-top removal coal mines, coal fired power production, and alternative energies. Done as part of a documentary film called “Deep Down”, the project has now been nominated for an Emmy Award for New Approaches to News & Documentary Programming.”

7. Examiner.com (USA) – Second Life Relay For Life benefits American Cancer Society. “Second Life raises hundreds of thousands of US dollars every year for Relay For Life, and is committed to the fight against cancer. Over 95 countries are participating in this year’s RFL of SL, and the 40 sims will feature spectacular builds by some of Second Life’s most prominent builders. This year Relay for Life of Second Life past the $1,000,000US mark for the last seven years of fundraising and this year alone has already raised over $300,000US.”

8. Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) – Sony making VR a virtual reality. “As Sony continues to evangelise the benefits of stereoscopic 3D, the Japanese giant is also working on virtual reality hardware and games. Ahead of a keynote address about the lessons learned from 3D gaming at this week’s Develop game developers conference in the United Kingdom, Sony London Studios head Mick Hocking says VR could make a comeback. Hocking tells Develop that Sony has been experimenting with adding head-tracking to their new head-mounted display with twin, high-quality OLED screens that impressed attendees at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show.”

9. Washington Post (USA) – World on a Wire. “In 1973, decades before “The Matrix,” “Avatar” or “The Sims,” German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder directed a thriller about life within a computer simulation. Made for German TV, “World on a Wire” didn’t rate a U.S. theatrical debut until last year. Seen now, the movie seems as timely as it is outdated, its themes contemporary even if its clothing and hairdos are anything but. The 31 / 2-hour film was loosely adapted from “Simulacron-3,” a 1964 American sci-fi novel that later inspired “The Thirteenth Floor,” a 1999 Hollywood flop. But Fassbinder’s approach is quite unlike Hollywood’s. “World on a Wire” riffs on Plato’s and Descartes’s philosophies of existence, forgoes sympathetic characters and employs almost no special effects.”

10. People’s Daily (China) – Exploring potential of China’s 485 million Internet users. “According to statistics released by China Internet Network Information Center on July 19, the scope of China’s Internet users has reached 485 million and is expected to exceed 500 million by the end of 2011, with the Internet penetration rate standing at 36.2 percent. China’s Internet has undergone a radical shift from the first email sent by a Chinese person in 1987 to the “fission of speech” in the age of microblogging. From the high-tech dream of an elite minority to its integration into the lifestyle of one-third of Chinese people, Internet is relatively new in China, but its strength has been recognized as virtual reality, and its uncertainty is much more than what is known.”

1. Toronto Star (Canada) – Global Voices: Playing games for social change. “Mission One: Tokyo, 2020. The city is on the verge of famine, with rice rations expected to run out in weeks. Pacific fisheries are at an all-time low. Temperatures are rising; crops are dying. The population is malnourished. It’s not just Tokyo, but the entire world. Will you help? You, yes you, can become part of a global network of secret agents who must complete ten missions to solve the world’s most pressing problems: poverty, hunger, water security, energy, disaster relief. Humanity needs your help. Go. As school wraps up and kids retreat to virtual worlds, parents fear their children are hunkered down in the basement, slaying aliens. What if they were solving real-world problems? Could video games be the antidote to apathy? The scenario above is Evoke, an online game developed by the World Bank Institute with designer Jane McGonigal. A comic-book narrative calls on players to become agents of social change. Using the game’s “superpowers,” such as collaboration, resourcefulness and local insight, they invent solutions to humanity’s greatest threats, then share ideas in blog and video posts. The most innovative solutions received seed money, scholarships or mentorships to turn fledgling ideas into functioning social enterprises.”

2. VentureBeat (USA) – Roblox raises $4M for kids virtual world. “Roblox, a kids virtual world that has grown to 5.7 million monthly unique visitors, raised $4 million in venture funding today. With Roblox, kids are architects of their own games and learn software coding abilities that can help them later in life. Roblox uses physics to simulate a virtual world, allowing kids to construct things in building-block style. The success is modest, but the growth has been organic and steady, suggesting that kids virtual worlds aren’t as dead as some industry observers assume. The round was led by existing investors Altos Ventures and First Round Capital, and it will allow the company to accelerate its next phase of growth. The company’s site draws more than 650 million page views a month and it has been growing steadily since its launch in September 2006. The target is kids ages seven to 16, with boys ages 8 to 14 as the main audience. Children spend roughly 19 million hours a month on Roblox, and there are about 7 million active kids who play each month.”

3. GigaOM (USA) – How to create an avatar for work-related virtual worlds. “The use of virtual worlds is increasing for marketing, training and collaboration, according to a survey that Aliza recently covered. This may mean that there will be more enterprise use for Second Life, Open Simulator, and other online virtual environments. According to another survey, early adopters of virtual worlds are learning to use it for brainstorming and project coordination. This survey also suggests that those who use virtual world technology for recreation are likely to be among the first in their organization to explore the possibilities of using it for business.”

4. Campus Technology (USA) – LMS for Virtual Worlds Released. “Educators who work in virtual worlds, such as Second Life, can now use a hosted learning management system (LMS) designed specifically to work within that virtual environment. The people behind Texas State Technical College’s virtual presence in Second Life, TSTC vushi, have released the vushi learning system (vLS). Texas State Tech offers some of its programs, including degrees in digital media and digital signage technology, in the immersive online environment. The vLS will provide a secure means for users to tap into class information, including class rosters, grades, assignments, assessments, and attendance, without leaving the virtual space. Additional features include a single sign-on interface, a searchable database for in-world education areas, a “field trip” transportation tool for group teleports, and the ability to create and deliver assessments and assignments within the environment.”

5. TechCrunch (USA) – Virtual World Technology Developer ProtonMedia Raises $4.5 Million. “ProtonMedia, a startup that develops virtual worlds technology, has raised $4.5 million in Series B venture financing led by Kaplan Ventures (the venture arm of the education company) with Originate Ventures and Osage Venture Partners participating. This brings ProtonMedia’s total funding to $7 million.”

6. Forbes (USA) – LEGO Universe Latest Online Game to Adopt Free-to-Play Business Model. “A growing trend in the burgeoning online video game space is to offer games for free and then generate revenue through subscriptions or the sale of in-game micro-transactions for virtual items. The LEGO Group is the latest video game publisher to venture into this free-to-play business with its LEGO Universe massively multiplayer online (MMO) game. Originally launched as an in-store retail PC game on October 26, 2010 by distributor Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment (WBIE) for $50, starting this August the game will be available for free via digital download. Sales of the retail PC game, which currently sells for $20, will be discontinued permanently.”

7. Variety (USA) – Highlights from the Supreme Court gaming decision. “Monday’s ruling that video games are protected under the First Amendment was the culmination of a long fight. And the victory was clearly a solid one for the industry. But in reading through the 90-plus page decision and dissenting opinions, there are some interesting arguments – both for the industry’s rights and those of parents. Much like the oral arguments of last November, Justices were split on the possible differences in interactive and passive forms of entertainment and the First Amendment issues at hand.”

8. Shack News (USA) – EVE Online clothing causes microtransaction debate. “The first part of EVE Online’s long-awaited “walking in stations” update, Incarna, finally launched last week. However, it’s been greeted by a lot more teeth-gnashing than developer CCP had anticipated. The microtransactions for Incarna’s paid cosmetic “vanity” items proved to be not quite so micro, putting into question CCP’s approach to paid content in the space MMO. A pair of digital boots might cost only $5, according EVE News 24’s conversions from virtual currency to real-world money. But a shirt can go for $17, and a virtual monocle is a staggering $61. While players can, of course, choose not to buy these cosmetic lovelies, a leaked CCP newsletter indicated that expensive clothing was only the beginning. The May 2011 issue of CCP’s internal newsletter Fearless (available from EVE News 24) posed the question “Greed Is Good?” In the issue, employees made a number of cases for and against microtransactions in EVE, console FPS tie-in Dust 514, and CCP’s mysterious World of Darkness MMO–but mostly for.”

9. New York Times (USA) – Positive Disruption. “Even in the men’s room at Google’s sprawling New York offices there’s no respite from the cascade of new ideas feeding the behemoth. Rather than gaze into space, I found before my eyes messages about “signal widgets” and the implication of having every “text string” translated into 40 languages. I’d come by to see two former State Department guys now trying to do good things for the world through networks rather than diplomatic cables. Call them T-shirted envoys with algorithms. Both seemed to be bubbling with relief at finding themselves out of the unwieldy bureaucracies that address the world as it appears on a physical map and in a company that views the globe in the same borderless way as the 52 percent of the world’s population that is under 30.”

10. Mail and Guardian (South Africa) – That’s entertainment. “The Race of Man is right at the back of the gallery. But this 19-minute film is remains centerpiece of Michael MacGarry’s new solo show, Entertainment. A parody of the immersive video game, the film follows players killing each other to advance to the next level. MacGarry locates two of these gaming levels in a desert dune and an unspecified white room. Our own uncertainty about these real and virtual worlds is reiterated when the first two players show an unwillingness to actually kill each. Their collusion against the game’s rules advances them to the next level. But here the two players are unable to escape the prospect of facing each other again. Blinded by bags over their heads, separately tied to the same pole and wielding axes, they eventually stumble into each other with gruesome consequences.”

1. Big Think – Learning in Virtual Worlds – not a Child’s Play. “Thanks to high speed Internet and flat rate pricing virtual worlds saw a tremendous boost over the past years. This is unsurprisingly true for online games like World of Warcraft but also for virtual worlds like Second Life and Twinity which are now able to deliver more and more realistic graphics and a better user experience for their audience. All three of them are used in education but today I want to focus on the two more “realistic” approaches of Second Life and Twinity.”

2. WoW Insider (USA) – The Lawbringer: Avatar rights as expectations. “Last week, I introduced the concept that the denizens of a virtual world may have gained, over time, the right to rights within that virtual world. Raph Koster, the lead developer of Ultima Online, explored the idea over 10 years ago when the MMO genre was in its developmental infancy. These rights synced up with a world where there was a distinction between free-to-play MUDs and for-pay subscription worlds in the U.S. and European markets. Today, the MMO has transformed into a new beast from the close-knit communities of MUDs and the relatively forgiving user base of EverQuest and Ultima Online. The people who made WoW are the contemporaries of Raph Koster and children of the MMO genre that EverQuest cemented as important. How then, in over 10 years, has Koster’s declaration of the rights of avatars held up to the incredible growth of the industry and Blizzard’s own impressive growth? The short answer: The code of conduct you follow in World of Warcraft is pretty lenient, all things considered. The long answer: Well, there’s always a long answer”

3. The Guardian (UK) – Fantastic Pets – review. “Microsoft’s Kinect may not yet be able to cope with hugely complex movements and graphics, but the hardware is already proving perfect for a younger audience. Fantastic Pets makes excellent use of the system’s strengths by letting kids explore virtual worlds free from the controllers and wires that constrain imaginations. Fantastic Pets offers a choice of buddies from a selection of animals including cats, dogs, lizards and ponies. Whereupon there is much fun to be had styling, feeding, washing and training your pet, who quickly learns to respond to voice commands.”

4. The Baltimore Sun (USA) – Learning by gaming. “For those of us who are first-generation students of video games, two words can take us back to another life: Oregon Trail. Remember? In school, we’d play Oregon Trail on a sticky PC, naming our intrepid video travelers after classmates so we could laugh at their fates. Through us, our characters made choices: Ford the river, or try the mountain pass. Sometimes they lived, sometimes not. The point is, some kind of learning was going on. Oregon Trail is now nearly 40 years old, but games in the classroom are still considered an unusual teaching choice and are rarely fully integrated. I was lucky enough to grow up with virtual tutors like Spooky, the ghost who taught typing, or Rodney, a raccoon whose endless quest was powered by solving math problems. Students today are even more used to being surrounded by digital environments, immersive worlds and devices that give them instant feedback and access to worlds of information — in their pocket. Why don’t we do more to harness that?”

5. Computerworld (USA) – Intelligence agencies hunting for terrorists in World of Warcraft. “The FBI raided the apartment of two University of Michigan students to investigate “potentially fraudulent sales or purchases of virtual currency that people use to advance in the popular online role-playing game World of Warcraft.” Two students, a sophomore and a junior, share a University Towers apartment in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but claim the feds have the wrong people as neither of them even play WoW. Records show that “laptop computers, hard drives, video game systems, credit cards, a cell phone, paperwork and other computer equipment” were seized. The college sophomore told AnnArbor.com, “They thought we were involved in some kind of fraud. I’m pretty sure they have the wrong people, but they took all my stuff.”

6. Massively (USA) – The Game Archaeologist plays with MUDs: A talk with Richard Bartle. “From talking with Richard Bartle, reading his blog, and looking over several interviews that he’s done, I’ve concluded that the co-creator of the first multi-user dungeon is, in many ways, a card. A smart one, a perceptive one, and an outspoken one, but a card nonetheless. I say this in a good way, of course, because for all of the verbal pussyfooting that often goes on in this industry, it’s refreshing to hear the voice of someone who knows what he thinks and isn’t afraid to say it, even if it goes against the grain. Dr. Bartle’s name often comes up in discussions of both MUDs and MMORPGs. His designs, work and scholarship have influenced MMOs in substantial ways, and it’s possible that if our children end up learning about massively multiplayer RPGs in school some day, Bartle’s name will be mentioned once or twice. While he’s sometimes polarizing, it’s hard to deny the incredible work he’s done, which is why I was excited to get to talk to him about this month’s subject on the Game Archaeologist. So hit that pesky jump and let’s pick the mind of a guy who really earned the right to post “FIRST!!1!”

7. Hypergrid Business (Hong Kong) – Clouds help propel OpenSim growth. “The top 40 public OpenSim grids gained more than a 1,000 new regions since this time last month, propelled partly by low-cost cloud-based regions from a new hosting provider, Kitely. There are now a total of 14,529 regions on these grids alone, an increase of 7.5 percent since this time last month. Total users increased 3.4 percent to 183,360, a gain of 6,059 new registered users. These totals do not include numbers from the SpotOn3D grids, which did not report their results this month, so actual grid region and user totals may be higher. These numbers also do not reflect land and users on the hundreds of private OpenSim grids run by schools, companies, and individuals.”

8. WKMS (USA) – Fort Campbell Soldiers Game to Train. “Thousands of 101st Airborne Division soldiers deploy out of Fort Campbell. Before they ship out, they run drills with some of the military’s most advanced vehicles, weapons, and gear, under situations that simulate real war-time experiences. The base’s latest training site isn’t a field on the Back Forty. It’s a non-descript brick building. As Angela Hatton report, inside soldiers use computer simulations based on video games to train for war. In a plain and windowless classroom, a crew of young soldiers sits a few feet away from each other at laptop computers. They’re all logged-in to Virtual Battle Space 2, or VBS2, the military’s computer training program. In the game, the group navigates a convoy along a dirt road in a patchy desert landscape, digitally rendered to look like the topography of Afghanistan. They communicate via headsets.”

9. New Scientist (USA) – Putting the DIY in DNA. “WHEN her dad was diagnosed with the hereditary disease haemochromatosis, 23-year-old Kay Aull did the natural thing, at least for an MIT graduate in bioengineering. She went online and bought a used thermal cycler for $100. She also ordered several custom-made DNA sequences, designing each to bind to a different mutation of the gene responsible for the disease. Then, using other second-hand equipment she had acquired, she set up a simple lab test in her closet and determined the likelihood that she would inherit the condition. Aull’s wasn’t the sort of achievement that earns grants or tenure. Doctors already have an effective haemochromatosis test, and most of her lab techniques were way behind the times. Aull’s test was remarkable because she did it herself, getting accurate results for a fraction of professional lab costs. As Marcus Wohlsen writes in Biopunk, “Aull’s test does not represent new science but a new way of doing science.”

10. North Country Public Radio (USA) – How To Save The World, One Video Game At A Time. “Every week, people across the globe spend 3 billion hours playing video games, but that isn’t enough for Jane McGonigal. She says video games can help solve some of the world’s biggest problems — and we really should be playing more. “If we want to solve problems like hunger, poverty, climate change, global conflict, obesity,” she said, “I believe that we need to aspire to play games online for at least 21 billion hours a week by the end of the next decade.” As the audience broke out into chuckles she told them, “No, I’m serious. I am.”

1. Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) – Virtual pigs and chooks see payday for crooks: NSW Police. “Virtual worlds like FarmVille and World of Warcraft are being used by criminals to launder money, say NSW Police, who have discovered that buying and selling virtual items and currency is a growing new way of cleaning dirty money. NSW Police Detective Superintendent Commander Colin Dyson said the “relatively new” trend provided an “emerging opportunity for criminals”. “Any opportunity that is present on the internet for criminals to use they’ll obviously exploit it [and] take advantage of it” he said in a telephone interview today. “It’s certainly something we’re looking at.”

2. The Times Leader (USA) – Virtual worlds bring about ‘e’conomy, but where is it all headed? Tech Talk NICK DELORENZO. “You’ll never get anywhere in life if you sit at home and play games. So the wisdom goes. Unless, of course, you’re really good at it — and you happen to be playing in the brave new online world. The younger generation can tell you all about World of Warcraft, EVE Online, and the like — the so called Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games — or MMORPG for short. People play these games obsessively — spending hours or even an entire day immersed in a virtual world where they fight demons, pilot spaceships, embark on quests, and perform other arcane tasks, all in pursuit of a bevy of achievements, badges, and rewards. These games also feature another aspect: a virtual economy.”

3. Search Engine Watch (USA) – Back to Basics: Linden Lab Releases a Basic Viewer. “There are a number of themes that keep recurring when you discuss Second Life specifically, and more generally, virtual worlds and Internet business itself. One is “How do you capture and retain new users?” This has been an especially large challenge for Linden Lab over the years, and more and more time and resources have been devoted to meeting that challenge. The latest effort on the part of Linden Lab comes in the form of a new viewer, simply called Basic.”

4. USA Today (USA) – 3D Voice comes to ‘DC Universe Online’ on Sony PlayStation 3 and PC. “3D is all the rage now. Nintendo’s 3DS handheld is in stores. Games such as Crysis 2 and the upcoming SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy Seals are playable in 3D on compatible TVs. Now coming to games: 3D voice. Voice technology company Vivox, which already provides 3D voice to virtual worlds such as Second Life and games such as APB and Bloodlines Champions, is bringing the technology to DC Universe Online on the PC and, for the first time, the PlayStation 3.”

5. Education Week (USA) – Games and Simulations Help Children Access Science. “Want to know what it’s like to stalk elk, or a mate, from the vantage point of a wild animal? Educators at the Minnesota Zoo, located in a suburb south of the Twin Cities, created just such an online game a few years ago that has proved immensely popular—and educational. Called WolfQuest, it allows players to learn about wolf ecology by exploring Yellowstone National Park as that creature.”

6. Canada.com (Canada) – Nintendo’s 3DS portable game system as groundbreaking as the Wii console. “Heavens to Murgatroyd – the images are jumping right off the screen! Nintendo Inc. has done it again. Discounted by many as a has-been prior to its groundbreaking Wii gaming console, Nintendo now is ushering in a new era of three-dimensional (3D) video gaming with the release of its 3DS portable gaming console. The most appealing part of the technology? No glasses are required to see the video game characters leap to life. The 3DS, which is similar in size to the company’s popular DS console, uses something called “parallax-barrier” technology – a thin film coating the device’s screen does the work of a pair of polarized 3D glasses. The 3D effect is crisp, clean and superior to almost all of the 3D televisions on the market today.”

7. Bloomberg (USA) – Electronic Arts, Sony Use Crisp Thinking to Fight Cyber Bullies. “Adam Hildreth was a 14-year-old in Leeds, England, when he and six friends started Dubit, a virtual world for other teens, in 1999. The site, which makes money selling advertising aimed at kids socializing in cyberspace, grew quickly to 250,000 users. Dubit struggled to hire enough moderators to keep cyber bullies and other troublemakers in check, at one point needing 50 monitors a day. Human moderation “was never going to scale,” says Hildreth, now 26. Hildreth, who left school at 16 to run Dubit full time, began working on software to detect bad behavior in the game world. The idea became his next company, Crisp Thinking, which he co-founded in 2005. Crisp’s software analyzes users’ language and actions to identify harassment, spamming, or predators who may be “grooming” potential victims. The system can react in real time by automatically warning or banning people who violate a site’s terms of service, or referring them to human moderators.”

8. New Scientist (USA) – How will you cope, living with your avatar? “Hello, future. Gaming systems that drop you into another world, such as Microsoft’s Kinect or Nintendo’s Wii, are just the beginning of what virtual-reality technology has to offer. Get ready for virtual immortality, teleportation, time travel and the ability to be in two places at once. But everything comes at a price. There are those who already worry about how this technology is affecting our brains. And once the digital versions of us become indistinguishable from our real selves, what might this do to our societies? Two of virtual reality’s most prominent researchers have come together to sketch out the landscape of an emerging field I call psychotech – the place where psychology and technology collide to produce something new and exciting. Social and cognitive psychologists Jim Blascovich and Jeremy Bailenson detail the current research – primarily their own – and pose some fascinating questions, which have surprising and important answers.”

9. The Daily Mail (UK) – Number of college students having casual sex on the rise…but virginity makes a comeback too. “Rising numbers of college students are having casual sex – but more are remaining virgins too. Some 72 per cent of both sexes said that during their studies they had at least one ‘hookup’, or one-night stand. But at the same time a quarter said that they were saving themselves for the right person, up from 19 per cent in 2002. Experts said that young people were leading such busy lives they either wanted to wait for the right person or just have a throwaway relationship. But in a worrying twist they also suggested that even the chaste could be going online to have hundreds of ‘virtual partners’ – and still claim to be a virgin in real-life.”

10. Escapist Magazine (USA) –Man Let Son Suffocate Because He Was Playing WoW. “A bad situation is even worse than it sounds: A man on trial for the death of his infant son couldn’t tear himself away from WoW to keep the boy from suffocating. A sailor from King’s Bay is currently on trial for his son’s death because he neglected to notice that the infant was suffocating under a pillow. However, the reason for the father’s neglect is being laid at the feet of popular MMO World of Warcraft: the man claims that he was so engrossed with the game that he couldn’t be bothered to remove the pillow.”