October 1, 2001 -
Virtual Baggage, Real Bucks
- By Andy Patrizio, WiredNews, Characters
in EverQuest sell for thousands of dollars., Anxious for a competitive edge, or just too lazy to do the work
themselves, hardcore gamers are paying $1,000 or more for characters and
equipment in online multiplayer games. Sword and sorcery games like Sony
Online Entertainment's EverQuest, Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo II and
Funcom's sci-fi-themed Anarchy Online generally require players to
collect equipment, dispatch opponents and advance through new levels.
But because they require an investment of vast amounts of time, some
players are taking the easy route by buying items such as shields,
weapons and spells that would normally have to be earned, found or
fought for...
October 03, 2001 -
Lessons Born of Virtual Violence
-
Hours spent playing complex video games may have helped teens
see through propaganda of war. By GLENN GASLIN , Special to The LA
Times, The ancient World War II weapons take a little getting used to,
and Kurt Chiles, 17, fumbles with the German rifle, even if it's just
a rifle in a video game. It's not the heavy futuristic weaponry the
Venice High School senior usually hauls through digital dungeons,
hunting demons, in his favorite game, Quake III. All around him here,
in a darkened room behind a computer store in Torrance, a dozen other
men (and one woman) tap on their keyboards, calm amid sounds of
warfare: airplanes screaming overhead, bombs exploding. The computer
screens glow with bullets tracing yellow paths through the air,
soldiers scrambling toward a dynamited hole in a wall...
October 02, 2001 -
Rogue Spear' to train military to
tackle terrorists -
By Marc Saltzman, Gannett News Service, Ubi Soft
Entertainment, one of the world's
largest video game companies, is
licensing technology used to create
counterterrorist simulation game Tom
Clancy's Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear to
help train soldiers. The Department of
Defense plans to use the game engine —
the programming that powers the game's
logic — to train troops to fight
terrorists in urban terrain. It will
be modified to use maps and scenarios
requested by the U.S. Army, and will
teach strategy and tactics, as opposed
to weapons training, Ubi Soft says...
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