PC Gamer FTW!

Were you aware Obsidian entertainment was working on an Aliens themed role playing game for the console and PC? Well if you weren’t, bad news, it was cancelled. If you were, at least you can watch some footage that was released over the weekend. (Which I guess seeing something cool that has been cancelled is also bad news)

Now the footages is from “an extremely early pre-production build” according to Matthew Rorie, PR/Marketing Producer at Obsidian Entertainment. First released on Kotaku, the video shows some game-play footage and allows us to experience the atmosphere of the game. After watching the video I must admit I share the same feeling the Kotaku guys had, it is quite dark. However, for an extremely early build the game dose look great.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately depending on your view, there is not much in the video that will tell you what the finished product would look like. You will see some environments, a little gunplay and some alien sound effects, but hey, it’s better than nothing.

We have heard stories about parents, wives and girlfriends who become upset when a video game hobby turns into an addiction. We have also seen what happens when a parent tries to take away a game from a child. Now we take another step forward in this story from the Boston Herald.

It’s game over for a 14-year-old Roxbury boy, whose overwhelmed mother was so exasperated with his incessant video game playing that she called the cops on him.

The final straw for Angela Mejia snapped at 2:30 a.m. Saturday when, “I woke up in the middle of the night and saw the light on in his bedroom,” hours after she had told him to go to sleep.

“Sometimes I want to run away, too,” Mejia said, breaking down in tears in her immaculate apartment. “I have support from my church, but I’m alone. I want to help my son, but I can’t find a way.”

Mejia is among thousands of parents struggling with today’s video-game obsessed youth. The Entertainment Software Association reports the popularity of video games is skyrocketing, with 42 percent of adults intending to give, or hoping to find one in their Christmas stocking this week.

Mejia’s son – one of four children the 49-year-old is raising alone – was playing “Grand Theft Auto,” an exceedingly violent video in which the gamer assumes the role of ladder-climbing criminal.

An argument ensued as Mejia unplugged her son’s PlayStation. Then, this mad-as-hell mother dialed 911. Police responded and managed to talk the boy into shutting off the game and going to sleep.

“They (police) were just like, ‘Chill out. Go to bed,’ ” the boy told the Herald.

Mejia said she approves of athletic-themed videos, but as for “Grand Theft Auto,” she said, “I would never buy that kind of video. No way. I called (police) because if you don’t respect your mother, what are you going to do in your life?”

Mejia, a cafeteria cashier at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Jamaica Plain, said the two officers who responded “were surprised” there was more involved than putting the lid on a simmering family feud.

Emmy Award-winning documentarian Lawrence Kutner, former co-director of the Center for Mental Health and Media at Massachusetts General Hospital is the author of “Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do.”

“Clearly, it’s a very, very rare situation for someone to call the cops. That she went to the extreme of calling the police tells me more about her level of frustration than anything else,” Kutner said.

“Adults tend to view video games as isolating experiences,” Kutner said. “Kids view them as social experiences. It’s a way in part – especially for boys – of gaining social acceptance.”

I guess I could dive into a commentary about the fact that if a parent has to call the cops on a kid something is wrong with the parent, but I will save that for another time. I have to ask, why is it so many kids grew up with the Atari, Commodore 64 and Amiga and turned out reasonably well, but today more and more kids cannot balance game-play with life.

The problem is parents seem to refuse to take the time to parent. There are no set rules to raise a child. You need to learn your kid and take the time to teach him the correct way to live based on your values. You can balance an extended World of Warcraft session with school and work, people do it every day.

Television cannot raise your kids nor can school or the cops. It’s time to look in the mirror and point the finger of blame.