Free Republic

First, there was 5-Hour Energy BBQ sauce. Now, there's another caffeinated meal on the block: Caffeinated Noodles. In late July, Nippon launched Boost Noodles, a ramen created by a young developer who wanted to solve the age-old problem of how you can eat ramen while also simultaneously participating in an online gaming battle all night. Each serving of the ramen contains 35mg of caffeine, roughly a third of a cup of coffee, so while it might keep you going, it's not likely to keep you up past bedtime (unless you're having a few packets at once). It will, however, give...

Gaming companies are coordinating with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to root out so-called domestic violent extremist content, according to a new government report. Noting that mechanisms have been established with social media companies to police extremism, the report recommends that the national security agencies establish new and similar processes with the vast gaming industry. The exact nature of the cooperation between federal agencies and video game companies, which has not been previously reported, is detailed in a new Government Accountability Office report. The report draws on interviews conducted with five gaming and social media companies including Roblox,...

Chinese players of roleplaying epic "World of Warcraft" bade a sad farewell to the land of Azeroth on Monday (Jan 23), with the game set to go offline after a dispute between US developer Blizzard and local partner NetEase. Massively popular worldwide, particularly in the 2000s, "World of Warcraft" - often abbreviated as WoW - is an online multiplayer role playing game set in a fantasy-Medieval world where good battles evil. It is known for its immersive and addicting gameplay, and players can rack up hundreds of hours of game time.

Republicans’ contrived outrage over the Biden administration’s promotion of climate-friendly stoves has me thinking about how unprepared they are for the realities of our high-tech future. Because climate-conscious appliances and devices aren’t going anywhere. Humans’ continued obsession with technology - whether that’s stoves or blockchain platforms to trade goods or high-powered game consoles - is terrible for the environment. Merely producing these things often requires mining for resources, as well as an assembly process that leaves a major carbon footprint. But the energy to run these things, multiplied across the millions of people who use them, really adds up. That’s...

Bethesda has become well-known for its in-depth dialogue and deeply story-driven approach to game design, and its upcoming space-travel title Starfield looks like it will be no exception. The game will incorporate what Howard calls his "favorite speech persuasion system," which he says is set apart from the standard and will require a point-spending speech check system. "It feels like it's part of the dialogue, but you're spending points to persuade them," he explains. "It feels natural, not like I've entered some other mode ... I'm in this mode of persuading you to get what I want." Another topic of...

Twenty-two patients (18 in the case series and 4 via systematic review; aged 7–16 years; 19 males [86%]) were identified as having experienced suspected or proven ventricular arrhythmia during electronic gaming; 6 (27%) had experienced cardiac arrest, and 4 (18%) died suddenly. A proarrhythmic cardiac diagnosis was known in 7 (31%) patients before their gaming event and was established afterward in 12 (54%). Ten patients (45%) had catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia, 4 (18%) had long QT syndrome, 2 (9%) were post–congenital cardiac surgery, 2 (9%) had “idiopathic” ventricular fibrillation, and 1 (after Kawasaki disease) had coronary ischemia. In 3 patients...

SANTA MONICA, CA — Activision Blizzard introduced the world to its latest entry in the Call of Duty franchise, entitled Call of Duty: IRS Auditor. Developed by Treyarch Studios, IRS Auditor will take gamers on an epic adventure full of national warfare, political intrigue, and violent accounting. "This isn't your father's Call of Duty," said Activision Blizzard CEO Roberto Activision. "No one is safe from the will of the Internal Revenue Service. IRS Auditor will scare you to death with a single-player campaign that hits too close to home." "You can count on it!" he added, repeating the game's tagline....

Once More From the Top: Why Video Games Do Not Cause Real-World Problems,The mainstream media loves to perpetuate a moral panic against the nerds. Following the horrific mass shooting in Buffalo on Saturday, many prominent voices in the media couldn't trip over themselves fast enough to blame the shooting on the one thing we know for sure wasn't responsible: violent video games. Going back decades, accusing gamers for the world’s problems is a popular pastime for the media. Too bad for these finger-wagging luddites that thousands of scientific peer-reviewed studies have repeatedly shown that there is no link between video...

The internet connectivity on older tech devices and smart gadgets could stop working on Thursday after a key digital certificate required to access websites safely expires. Let's Encrypt, a nonprofit organization that is the largest issuer of digital certificates — which encrypts and protects the connection between devices and websites on the internet — will be forced to expire one of its most popular digital certificates, the IdentTrust DST Root CA X3, on Sept. 30.... ...This problem has flown under the radar of many manufacturers, including Big Tech companies Apple, Google, Sony, and Microsoft — none of which have made...

Bethesda finally unleashed new details about Starfield, the much anticipated brand new IP from the creators of Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3. In this brand new Starfield Cinematic Trailer, we see an astronaut, dubbed a constellation, about to launch from a spacechip, Frontier NG1350, as a mech walks past. Starfield is currently set to release on PC and the Xbox Series X/S on November 11, 2022.

An investor in CD Projekt, the studio behind 'Cyberpunk 2077,' sued the company and its executives Thursday in federal court in Los Angeles, claiming that they hyped the game with false and misleading statements and cost him and other investors money. The game suffers from “an enormous number of bugs,” the lawsuit says, echoing the complaints of players. Eight million people pre-ordered copies of 'Cyberpunk 2077,' a sci-fi game set in a futuristic fantasy city with movie star Keanu Reeves as the basis of one character. But many players quickly soured on the game after it shipped this month, noting...

Geoff Keighley teased today's announcement as "one of the more important moments this summer," and he wasn't kidding. Epic Games gave us our first glimpse at Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) working its magic. The following footage showcases some technical demos running in real-time on PlayStation 5 (PS5) Since the Xbox Series X is around 2-3 teraflops more powerful than the PS5, we can probably expect better effects on Microsoft's machine. The demo is meant to demonstrate two core features of UE5 known as Lumen and Nanite. Lumen is a fully dynamic global illumination solution that immediately reacts to scene and...

Joe Biden, the former vice president and 2020 candidate for President of the United States, has shared some harsh thoughts on Silicon Valley game developers, as reported in a wide-reaching interview with The New York Times. When asked about the Obama administration's legacy on Silicon Valley regulation, Biden talks about meeting with leaders in Silicon Valley to discuss intellectual property rights, and describes interacting with an unspecified game developer as "one of the little creeps" who make games that "teach you how to kill people." "And at one point, one of the little creeps sitting around that table, who was...

An analysis of how corrupt media continue to reshape our society and legal system and why we should have listened to #GamerGate. (Video at Link)

US Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) announced he is introducing a bill that would potentially bar the sale of loot boxes in certain video games. If enacted, Hawley's bill, called The Protecting Children from Abusive Games Act, would ban loot boxes and "pay-to-win" microtransactions in titles targeted at or popular among minors, likening the business model to addiction. "Social media and video games prey on user addiction, siphoning our kids' attention from the real world and extracting profits from fostering compulsive habits," Senator Hawley said in a statement. "No matter this business model's advantages to the tech industry, one thing is...

Complete Headline: Jacksonville Shooter Was Member of Anti-Trump 'Resistance' - Referred to Trump Supporters at "Trumptards" - Murdered 4 People Sunday afternoon, police responded to a 'mass shooting' at Jacksonville Landing in Florida which left 3 dead and 11 wounded. According to witnesses, the killer, David Katz, began shooting shortly after he lost the Madden NFL gaming tournament. [snip] Killer David Katz was a member of the anti-Trump "resistance." He referred to Trump supporters as "Trumptards" on his Reddit page.

Two years ago, Tyler Barriss called in multiple bomb threats to the Glendale offices of KABC-TV Channel 7, prompting a mass evacuation. Barriss was charged and eventually convicted in connection with the hoax, one of several high-profile incidents at the time that focused attention on the act of crank-calling known as "swatting." Now, Barriss, 25, is accused of a much more serious hoax. He was arrested in South Los Angeles on Friday for his suspected role in a deadly prank in Kansas, police said.

Had to do it. Had to create the thread. The game is too damned good. This thread is reserved for hardcore gamers who play Fallout 4. Norm, KC, TADSLOS and I have hijacked so many threads discussing this game, I felt we needed our own thread.Fallout 4 is amazing. The content is excessively large. There is so much to explore, you could replay this game 10 times and not find every mission or quest. The characters are so much better fleshed out than any other game I have played. Even the radio announcer of Diamond City Radio will have you...

GamerGate is not a “transphobic” movement, as you may have been misled to believe, but there is certainly much discussion of transgenderism swirling around the GamerGate maelstrom–mainly because one of the movement’s leading feminist detractors, it can now be revealed, used to be a man. The gender history of game developer and pathological attention-seeker Brianna Wu would not ordinarily be the subject of public interest, but Wu’s critique of the GamerGate movement has relied heavily on identity politics and her insistence that she represents women in the video games industry. (We are using “she” and “her” as a polite courtesy...

The cost to Gawker Media of its ridicule and viciousness toward video gamers was "seven figures" in lost advertising revenue, according to the company's head of advertising, Andrew Gorenstein. In addition, founder Nick Denton has stepped down as president and editorial director Joel Johnson has been removed from his post and will probably leave the company, reports Capital New York. "Ultimately #GamerGate is reaffirming what we’ve known to be true for decades: nerds should be constantly shamed and degraded into submission," Gawker writer Sam Biddle tweeted in October, sparking a firestorm of outrage which solidified into a sustained letter-writing campaign...