Thinking of joking around about a serious crime on Xbox Live? Well, you better think again because it could land you in a good deal of trouble. A Texas teenager who decided to run his mouth about shooting up a school found this out the hard way.

He actually went as far as saying actual names of his planned targets. Well, another gamer who was in the game up in Canada got wind of this and asked the teenager some questions which caused him to leave the game. Upon the gamer leaving, the Canadian phoned the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who launched an investigation into the matter.

With the help of Microsoft the gamer was traced to San Antonio, Texas where he was arrested.

Remember kids, even if its a joke there are people out there who will think you are serious.

via kotaku

It seems that a 22-year old Bronx resident, by the name of Jeremiah Gilliam, thought it would be a good idea to to play a stolen Xbox 360 online. Sure, everything might have seemed fine at first but the boy whose console it was noticed the Gamertag come online and decided to call his parents. Making note that the console was missing, the parents called the cops who were able to track the IP address through Microsoft to the burglars home.

Not only did they find the stolen Xbox 360 along with a plethora of other gadgetry but they charged Mr. Gilliam with grand larceny. Remember kids, crime doesn’t pay.

Read (NY Post)

Well here’s another reason parents are going to have to keep their kids from gaming — It seems a (presumably very desperate) 27-year old man hooked up with a 15-year-old girl he met over Xbox Live after driving over 30 hours to from Missouri to Central California.

The punishment? 10 hears in the pig pen, of course.

via sfgate

The once high and mighty development studio Midway is facing imminent closure. Though they weren’t the first company to put blood and guts into video games, they were the first ones to accomplish it in so stylistic a manner that others followed suit soon after, with Mortal Kombat’s ‘fatality’ becoming something of a gamer buzzword. Unfortunately they’ve been on a steady decline for some time and the lukewarm reception of Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe and the absolute flop of Wheelman have pushed the company to the grim precipice.

Many of the branches have already been They’re not going quietly into that good night- their Newcastle studio has revealed their last hope at getting a financial backer who can help them pull out of their slump. It’s an open-world action game called Necessary Force, set in the film cliche of a maverick cop in the city who makes his own rules. They’re looking to explore the ‘troubled morality’ of the situation with the game and feature the sort of choice/consequence idea that’s becoming increasingly popular these days.

The website for the game is up and features a trailer which looks good so far, though it seems to be long on rendered environments, concept art and cutscenes and short on actualy gameplay footage, but it does look good. Will this be enough to get someone interested in the studio? Can a non-fantastic open world title that lacks the familiar GTA branding succeed?

If you were one of those people who grew up reading Nancy Drew and find themselves watching unhealthy amounts of CSI, this game is for you.

Recently announced to be shipping for the Nintendo DS this winter, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth puts you in the shoes of a prosecutor as he searches for evidence to support his various cases.

Capcom is saying that this game will feature more than 15 hours of gameplay broken down into various episodes. Each episode will feature a different case in which players will have to rake the crime scence for evidence and question witnesses using said evidence.

Read (Kotaku)

It’s sad enough to see people so caught up in the world of video games that they eschew friends, family and normal social situations, but when violence gets involved it’s much, much worse. Recently Daniel Petric, a teen from Ohio, shot his parents after they confiscated his copy of Halo 3 (which they’d forbidden him to buy). His father survived the shooting, which Petric had attempted to make look like a murder-suicide by putting the gun into his father’s hand after he had shot both of them.

As one might expect, the lawyers attempted to blame the crime on Petric’s video game addiction, which had something to do with why his parents instructed him not to buy Halo 3. They were going for the insanity defense, but the murder-suicide plot and the fact that Petric admitted to thinking about killing his parents in the weeks before the crime generally eroded his claim of insanity and he was convicted.

Daniel Petric now faces sentencing with life in prison without parole as the maximum sentence. While this is a terrible tragedy and I send my sympathies to Mr. Petric and his family, it’s good to see that the spirit of accountability is still alive in a country that’s all together too quick to blame others.

There are several certainties in this world. We will always have air to breath, Nintendo will always rule the NPD charts, and Grand Theft Auto will always, always, be blamed for violence. Ok, so the first two aren’t guaranteed, but the third one is assured. The best part is, we don’t even need Jack Thompson (who has been eerily quiet recently).

For example, look at this story in the Dailymail site about a 13 year old who set some cars on fire.

“A teenager who torched three cars in Lyon, France, told police he was wanted to imitate scenes from the Grand Theft Auto video game.

The 13-year-old schoolboy used petrol to set light to three vehicles after playing on the violent GTA 4: Liberty City game on his home PC.

The game awards points creating as much as crime and destruction as possible in a city.”

To get the obvious point out of the way first: Why was a 13 year old playing an M-rated game in the first place? Secondly, how did he get the PC version, which hasn’t even been completed, let alone shipped. Finally, the game does not award any points for causing destruction and crime. The only thing the game has ever awarded me was having my weapons confiscated, and that was only for shooting out someone’s tire.