1up

According to a story from the Middletown Journal (via Game Politics), during an online conversation with a Blizzard representative an Ohio teen said, "he was suicidal and that the game is the only thing he has to live for." That rep then did what (I hope) anyone in customer service would do, and called 911.

Police and paramedics rolled to the player's house only to learn from the boy when they arrived that it was all a joke. According to the report, the teen told officers he hoped "to try and get what he wanted for the game." The police apparently didn't find the incident very funny, and charged the boy with a first-degree misdemeanor.

Whether suicidal or not, let's hope the young man has someone to talk things through with. Attempting to blackmail a game company by making suicidal claims is nothing to laugh about. With the intensity many WoW players put in their game, it's important to take a step back and keep things in perspective.

SF4 streamed live thanks to ustream.

1UP's Game Night: Street Fighter 4
Time: Tuesday, January 6, 2009, 5 p.m. PST
Location: Watch the embedded video player right here in this story.
Questions: Ask your question in the Game Night thread on the Street Fighter 4 boards.

The 1UP Show's 2008 finale ended featuring a Street Fighter 4 segment showing several new characters and stages, an interview with Capcom community lead Seth Killian, and the arcade Keystone II, home to the finest Street Fighter players in Northern California.

Advanced Workplace Associates (AWA), a UK-based management consulting firm, plans to run what it terms a "Virtual Working trial in Cyberspace involving leaders from some of the leading companies in the world" this coming February. The experiment will be lead by two faculty members from the University of Portsmouth with backgrounds in in-game learning and collaborative traditions. Andrew Mawson, managing director of AWA, explained how it will work: AWA?s psychologists will record and analyse the behaviours exhibited by participants and their avatars during the trial and its conclusion we will establish participants? perceptions of the experience, their views on the usefulness of the virtual environments and their ideas on applications where the technology could be used within their organisations. Along with Microsoft the announcement of the project names financial companies Merrill Lynch, Ernst and Young, and others with "large white collar worker populations" as participants.

While the study says a lot about the versatility of virtual worlds such as Home, it could be argued that it only helps reinforce the argument that the service stands more as supplemental than essential to the core gaming experience on the PS3. Microsoft being a part of this study draws into focus some of the differences between Home and Live. While Live's structure wouldn't be conducive to this sort of business application, it excels at getting gamers together to play online. Not that the study is something Sony is doing to promote Home, but it would be welcome to report on more gaming applications of the service instead of another story that emphasizes the "Second Life on a console" tag.

Having trouble with Garden 7 in PixelJunk Eden? Apparently, you're not alone. Enough so that the good people at Q-Games are going to reexamine the difficulty.

Over in the comments at one of this posts on the PlayStation.Blog (via GameCyte), Q-Games president and executive producer Dylan Cuthbert advised one frustrated player to just be patient, "take it steadily and relax." But if that doesn't work, they'll be changing the mechanics pretty soon anyway.

"Around the second week or so of January there will be a patch which makes (among other things) the large crystals replenish a whole half of your oscillator meter instead of a third," Cuthbert said. "That should help you with Garden 7."

If you aren't too busy with your holiday gifts or recovering from a rowdy night of auld lang syne, Major Nelson brings word that you can now pick up the demo for The Lord of the Rings: Conquest on Xbox Live Marketplace. The game takes a page from the popular Star Wars: Battlefront series, letting you choose your side in massive battles. The game was pushed to 2009, but seeing that we're now in 2009, the release of January 9 seems that much closer. Check out the heavy 1.25 GB demo and let us know what you think.

In the last 52 weeks, Take-Two's stock peaked at $27.95 a share. As of tonight, it closes out 2008 at $7.56. According to an email conversation between Game Politics and every gamer's favorite recently-disbarred lawyer, the price plummeted due to good ol' fashioned divine retribution. And, of course, Thompson's worded it in his own inimitable way: "GOD STRIKES TAKE-TWO DOWN" Cute.

After a few more email exchanges, Thompson said of his recent struggles, "persecution comes Christians' way," but that, "There is no blessing for [Take-Two Chairman Strauss] Zelnick, who is not a Christian, when he gets what he deserves..."

Thompson later quoted the Scripture, defended his claim that the chairman is not a Christian, and said "Mr. Zelnick's problems at Take-Two are miniscule [sic] compared to the eternity of punishment that is coming his way unless he repents and accepts Christ as I did 32 years ago this month."

"We have found across the board, if you look at different categories of games, they all have the ability to develop unique skills,' says David Laux, IBM's global executive in charge of games and interactive entertainment. He continues, "That's from the casual games which improve memorisation and the ability to discern details, to console games and shooter games that develop rapid decision making and to role playing games like the World of Warcraft that are very unique in producing leadership skills."

Laux's expressed these views through a post titled "Gaming is good for you" on the BBC's dot.life blog. Nowhere near revelatory, and not really scientific, they do establish what's behind IBM -- one of the world's most successful information technology companies -- carefully sculpting a presence in the videogame industry, albeit a little later than some. According to the story, the company is aiming to "help the industry leverage IBM's products in developing games and cutting overall costs."

Midway and Electronic Arts, if you're reading this, you might want to give Laux a call and see if you can take advantage of his offer. After all, both Sony and Nintendo have benefited from IBM's money-saving efforts. Maybe they can give you guys a hand?

As you count down the remaining hours of 2008, check out the story trailer (above) for the PlayStation 3 action RPG Demon's Souls. We've been impressed by what we've seen of the game in the past. This new trailer shows us a bit of what to expect from the game's plot, and looks good doing it. Make sure to read our hands-on preview for more details on the game.