There must be a barely hidden message in Mytopia’s name: this new, addictive social gaming site could likely become a large cause of myopia, or at least CVS, for its well cared-for users.The open beta is still under quite a bit of construction, but the current offerings and style seem to indicate a warm, relaxing, and time-consuming world of games to inhabit.
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Far removed from the Reagan era “Ketchup is a vegetable” motto which helped cafeterias skirt nutrition.

requirements, schools today are searching for genuine ways to keep kids healthy.The Nintendo Wii may be the next piece of ’sports equipment’ classes raise funding for.
Of course, the current Wii lineup will not replace physical activity.A study funded by Nintendo’s UK marketing branch, Cake, determined that “In a typical week, active gaming rather than passive gaming would increase total energy expenditure by less than 2 percent.”A disappointing, yet not especially surprising result, considering only Wii Sports was tested for the active games‘ camp.
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(The battle for YouTube’s rattle.)
We know gamers are gutsy, competitive, and territorial. So it’s not surprising that games-only, user-posted video sites are now springing up in attempted defiance of Father YouTube. Three new names in particular have niche-carving knives in hand: WeGame, Leet Tube and GameVee, or GeeVee.
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In spite of the expansion of online gaming throughout China, the Chinese government is planning a crackdown on the burgeoning problem of so-called “video game addiction.” Ostensibly, several highly publicized deaths related to video games are the reason behind the tighter restrictions.
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Bored with your real life? Second-Life starting to get a little too expensive IRL? Just got too much time on your hands? Well then you’re in luck. Following the recent announcement by EA, a brand new Sims 3 website has just arrived, providing sneak peeks and progress updates. Most importantly, the site gives 2009 release date.
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Since their grand debut in 1997, social networking sites have drawn hundreds of millions of users to communities such as Facebook and MySpace. Recently, casual game applications have sprung up within these networking powerhouses, allowing players to compete in wildly popular game variations such as Scrabulous or Texas Hold’em Poker. Half a million users on Facebook have taken up the Scrabulous challenge, and plenty of others kill time in any of the site’s over 500 other game-related applications.
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The American military, already one of the most tech-saavy industries in the US, is now looking at video games as inspiration for their newest project: mixed-reality contact lenses, transparent yet able to depict transmitted images. In their Request for Information (RFI), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) utilized first-person shooters as their primary illustrative point: “This information might be command-and-control information, not unlike information provided to players of first-person, shooter-type video games or synthetic entities and effects in a live training environment.” The US government seems quite fond of our dedication to first-person shooters, though these lenses are hardly the America’s Army style marketing campaign for enlistment.
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Since Apple’s iPhone SDK Press Conference on March 6th, the potential to transform the iPhone into a respectable gaming machine has been greater than ever. Apple demoed their personally developed space shooter, Touch Fighter, alongside Sega’s Super Monkey Ball demo and EA’s Spore variant—each of which took only two weeks to develop, per Apple-enforced restrictions. The former showcased the touch screen’s gaming capabilities, while the latter two mostly utilized the iPhone’s accelerometer to guide Ai-Ai or a custom spore throughout their new iPhone world.
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