These stories are more compelling when viewed through the lens of the usual doomsday coverage, which suggests that videogames are turning children into violent sociopaths (since comics, rock and roll, R-rated movies and swearing all had failed to make that happen):
Poll: 4 in 10 Americans play video games
Rather than reach for the television remote control when she wants to be entertained, Karalyn Valente goes online to play “EverQuest,” “Ultima Online” and other video games – a gaming habit shared by millions in the United States.
Valente, a 29-year-old graphic artist from York, Pa., said she devotes about 30 hours a week in vast online worlds and spent more than $1,500 on games last year.
“I watch less and less TV. I turn it on and the shows are just idiotic,” Valente said. “When I play the games, I actually look through the character’s eyes. I actually become the character.”
According to a new AP-AOL Games poll, 40 percent of American adults play games on a computer or a console. Men, younger adults and minorities were most likely to play those games.
Among those who describe themselves as gamers, 45 percent play over the Internet. And more than a third of online gamers spent more than $200 last year on gaming, compared with nearly a quarter of those who don’t play games online.
Online gamers also spent more time playing those games.
Forty-two percent of online gamers said they spent at least four hours playing games during an average week, compared with 26 percent of those who don’t play online. About one in six online gamers play more than 10 hours a week.
E3: Study shows majority of parents oversee game purchases
New data published Wednesday by the Entertainment Software Association shows that a majority of parents are present at the time games are purchased or rented. Eighty-nine percent of the time, parents are present. The study is also giving rise to a new term — the “gamer parent:� Parents who play games themselves, often with their kids.
Other results of the survey showed that the majority of parents — 79 percent — play games with their kids simply because they’re asked to. Parents also consider it a good opportunity not only to socialize with their kids, but also to monitor game content.
The typical gamer parent, according to the report, is 37 years old. And 47 percent of gamer parents are women. Gamer parents are experienced, as well — on average, they’ been playing for 13 years.
Most of my conversations with my father nowadays eventually turn into discussions of World of Warcraft.
I just got back a little while ago from the Eighth Grade AVID Symposium for rising ninth graders. It was a pool of about 150 students from Hesperia Junior High School and Ranchero Middle School and was held at the Novack Center.
I followed a doctor, who followed a former police chief, so it was a bit intimidating getting up to tell kids about the value of a college education, especially as I was the one thing between them and their pizza lunch.
But I hammered on the theme that few people know what they want to do with their lives. I wanted to be a DJ and only a B-106 disc jockey in DC got me to go to Virginia Tech instead of the Columbia School of Broadcasting. I went on to discover I hated being stuck in a booth that smelled like BO, coffee, cigarettes and old nacho cheese, and stumbled into journalism, where I clicked. But I also created Web pages for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, did PR (and some videogame testing) for Blizzard Entertainment. While there were some questions about the journalism thing, it was, unsurprisingly, Blizzard that was the most interesting thing for them. (And hey, more girl middle schoolers wanted to talk about World of Warcraft than boys did. Go, go gamer girls!) I pimped the Blizzard Jobs page, especially its document that talks about how to get a job in the videogame industry (which I did a rewrite on when I was at Blizzard) and JournalismJobs.com and other career-specific resources.
All told, it went better than Career Day at Hesperia High School but not quite as well as reading at Topaz Elementary School. Middle schoolers, particularly hungry middle schoolers, are a tough crowd.
Well, my worst fear concerning my computer crash came true: My Treo has apparently died, with its years of work-related telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, addresses and other notes. (Even birthdays.)
The good news is that I managed to back it all up on my new hard drive before the phone died.
The bad news is now I have to replace my Treo, which is a real “ouch” situation.”
 Ten years ago this week, a Web site that would change my life (by introducing me to my future wife, among other things), went online. Or at least, it took on a non-links page form, which in turn would end up changing my life.
The site was ComicBookResources.com. When Webmaster Jonah Weiland decided to put up a fan site for the new DC Comics miniseries “Kingdom Come,” he ended up forming a central clearinghouse for fan info on the series (which is loaded with references and appearances by obscure 50+ year old characters) in an age when large fansites for any and all things geeky weren’t the #2 feature of the Internet (behind porn, of course).
I found the site when I went online after reading the second issue of the series, which I bought at the comic shop in the shopping center next to the Potomac News. I couldn’t figure out who the heck some of these characters were, so I went back to my desk, fired up my computer and used the then cutting-edge search engine, Altavista (which the years have not been kind to) to look up “kingdom come dc comics appearances” and found Jonah’s Kingdom Come Message Board. I found the answer to my questions about who was who in this series, and more than a decade before MySpace, I found an online community before I knew there was such a thing. Among those community members was Jenn, then a college student at Cal State Northridge.
When I moved out to California to be with her, I found getting to work for a new newspaper a little problematic (that’s what you get with moving to the #2 media market in the country, wise guy; all the jobs are locked down and there’s hundreds of people in line ahead of you for openings) and Jonah offered me the chance to scratch my journalism itch doing comic journalism. While I’ve never been Employee of the Month anywhere, I was Employee #1 at CBR. At the time (and still to a large extent today), comics journalism consisted of really painful Q&As.
(Free Journalism 101 tip: Unless you’re writing for a Playboy Interview, Q&A makes you look like a nimrod, more often than not, since no one wants to see your “humorous” back and forth with a complete stranger or the poorly phrased questions that elicit unclear and not worth reprinting answers. You bury that stuff with a shovel like the rest of us do, if you’re smart, and then bury the shovel. If you’re really, really good, you can do a Q&A. But honestly, few people are that good, in my not-so-humble burying-the-bad-questions-with-a-shovel opinion.)
I convinced Jonah to take a flyer on true article-format journalism, he handed over his contact list, and we were off and running, putting together years of journalism I’m pretty proud of. (Alas, more than a little of it has been lost to server crashes and such in those early years.) And with content came more readers and more advertisers and today, Jonah is one of two friends of mine who lives off his Web site. (The other is Greg of Greg’s Movies at Yahoo! Movies, formerly UpcomingMovies.com. I actually encouraged both of them to quit their “real jobs” in the same week, which Jenn had some strong opinions about, once she found out I was pushing them to become penniless and unemployed.)
Today, Jonah has a multimedia empire, as well as hosting pretty much everyone a geek could love. In Internet years, he’s been online practically as long as Al Gore.
I’m hardly alone in that CBR changed my life. I suspect big time comics writer Gail Simone (who once said I was among the least funny people she knew, and she’s a paid funny person) and many others can say the same.
My hat’s off to you, Jonah. If I wore a hat with any regularity, that is.
Well, maybe superhero might be too strong:
A GANG of anarchist Robin Hood-style thieves, who dress as superheroes and steal expensive food from exclusive restaurants and delicatessens to give to the poor, are being hunted by police in the German city of Hamburg.
The gang members seemingly take delight in injecting humour into their raids, which rely on sheer numbers and the confusion caused by their presence. After they plundered Kobe beef fillets, champagne and smoked salmon from a gourmet store on the exclusive Elbastrasse, they presented the cashier with a bouquet of flowers before making their getaway.
The latest robbery is part of a pattern over the past several months, suggesting that the thieves deliberately set out to highlight what they perceive as the inequality inherent in German society.
However, the authorities do not agree. Bodo Franz, a police spokesman, said: “They get off feeling they are just like Robin Hood. There are about 30 in the group. But whatever their motives, they are thieves, plain and simple.”
Carsten Sievers, the manager of a luxury supermarket in the wealthy Blankenese area of Hamburg, recently watched the robbers run off with trolleys full of expensive foodstuffs, including Kobe beef which, at more than £100 a pound, is always on their illicit shopping list.
You can’t make this kind of stuff up.
Man, I wish the High Desert had superheroes. Monster Truck Man! Captain Commuter! The Amazing Off-Roader!
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