Via Mark Lisanti and FilmDrunk, if you guessed "terrorists," than you guessed right. Also, you're boring.

Couldn't they have saved this one for someone better? I mean, yes, listen, people who kill other people are shitty and suck, but this is just great, like, artful-great. Like, okay, if NYDN publisher Mort Zuckerman were on his deathbed, this would've been awesome. If their Boris and Natahsa-esque gossip columnist Rush & Molloy were put on trial for being communists, again: incredible. But to waste this one on terrorists just seems a little, I don't know, blase?

Anyway. We can't help but see potential in you, Post. To whoever guessed correctly, take a bow, you get nothing except the knowledge that you're an expert of New York Post headlines and/or you still have a job at the New York Post. Mazel.

First Activision, Guitar Hero's maker, had to weather a storm about their use of an animated rendition of Kurt Cobain. And now Gwen Stefani is getting all worked about about the fact that the cartoon version of her does things that she says the real Gwen would never ever do, like sing about having sex with prostitutes. Sure you wouldn't Gwen...

Stefani and her band No Doubt have filed a suit against Activision stating that the gamemaker's use of their likenesses goes way beyond what the band signed off on and that the game has "transformed No Doubt band members into a virtual karaoke circus act," which is certainly something no band likes.

The LA Times reports:

The suit also charges that the game allows users to manipulate their characters to sing songs popularized by other pop music acts. No Doubt's contract with Activision allowed the company to use the band's music and likenesses in no more than three of the band's own songs, the suit states. The game, which was released Tuesday, puts the group members' images, collectively and individually, into more than 60 songs, "many of which include lyrics, contained in iconic songs, which are not appropriate for No Doubt and have not been and would not have been chosen by No Doubt for recordings or public performances."

Specifically, the suit notes that through the game's Character Manipulation Feature, Stefani's image can be induced to sing the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Women." "While No Doubt are avid fans of the Rolling Stones and even have performed in concerts with the Rolling Stones," the complaint states, "the Character Manipulation Feature results in an unauthorized performance by the Gwen Stefani avatar in a male voice boasting about having sex with prostitutes." It also states that bassist Kanal's likeness can be manipulated to sing, in a female voice, one of No Doubt's signature hits, "Just a Girl."

The suit asks for punitive damages and seeks to take the No Doubt edition off the market, which will create someday a red hot bootleg market of illegal Stefani avatars being made to dance to "Party in the USA". interrupting Taylor Swift acceptance speeches and belt out "Pokerface" in Portugese.

The Valley fad of social network games like Mafia Wars and Farmville disguise old-school scams, Mike Arrington has been demonstrating over at TechCrunch this weekend. High-revenue don of social networking games Zynga, which makes the aforementioned Mafia Wars and Farmville, gets one-third of its revenue from various shady "commercial offers" and lead-generation systems, Arrington reports. Here's how HotOrNot founder James Hong described the social networking cash scene in a TechCrunch comment:

The offers that monetize the best are the ones that scam/trick users.... i'm pretty sure most of the money ended up getting our users hooked into auto-recurring SMS subscriptions for horoscopes and stuff.

Examples, via TechCrunch:

• "Users are offered in-game currency in exchange for filling out an IQ survey... They are told their results will be text messaged to them... and are texted a pin code to enter on the quiz. Once they've done that, they've just subscribed to a $9.99/month subscription."
  
• "Users are offered in game currency if they sign up to receive a free learning CD... The user is told they pay nothing except a $10 shipping charge. But the fine print, on a different page from checkout, tells them they are really getting a whole set of CDs and will be billed $189.95 unless they return them."

There's an entire thriving "ecosystem" devoted to these sort of "deals," the sort of thing that in a different context might just be called a "crime ring." It's a profitable network, at least for the people at the top: Arrington estimates Facebook might be taking in $50 million per year from Zygna alone.

So, social networks are basically turning in to just another snakeoil sales channel in the mold of late-night 1-800 number commercials. Which sucks not only for the marks who've been duped but, ultimately, for Facebook's investors, since taking this sort of easy cash reduces internal pressure to come up with some sort of truly innovative revenue stream.

Not to mention what it does to user trust: Who's going to want to hand over their credit card information or even cell phone number to the likes of Facebook amid all these scams? (Answer: People who passed their "IQ test" with flying colors and a useless $10/month subscription.)

Hasbro has announced the creation of a "live worldwide game of Monopoly using Google Maps as the game board;" the involvement of Google, which lets anyone mash-up its map using a public API, is unclear. What is known, per the Guardian, is that you get three million virtual dollars with which to "buy" actual land, knock down buildings, erect skyscrapers, construct prisons, or pay "rent" to some jerk looking to bankrupt you. At least when he does, you won't have to see the smug look of victory on his face. (Until version 2.0.)

Chutes & Ladders
Logline: Speed Racer meets Rollerball meets Contact in this high-octane thrill ride, which depicts a futuristic sports league of zooming "Wormhole Surfers." Set against the backdrop of a dystopian megalopolis planet of towering skyscrapers, the film stars Shia LaBeouf as Zax, a rebellious young punkster who takes on the corrupt leadership of the Wormhole Surfing League... feet first.

Chinese Checkers
Logline: Set on the perilous North Korean border, Clive Owen stars in this searing political thriller about the daring maneuvers made when trying to smuggle North Korean defectors into glorious freedom. Partly based on this National Geographic article.

Hungry Hungry Hippos
Logline: Comedy legends Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy team up again in this irreverent comedy. Lawrence and Murphy, with the help of an amazing makeup and special effects team, play Rae'niqua and Dwee'shawna Hippo, two Atlanta sisters who are, ahem, large and in charge! When a nasty real estate developer (Christopher McDonald) threatens to force them out of their grandmama's house, they enter an eating contest to raise the funds to save their home! Along the way their friends and neighbors learn that it's what inside that counts, and that you should never judge a book by its (very large!!) cover.

Parcheesi
Logline: Slumdog Millionaire meets Agent Cody Banks. International sensation Dev Patel plays Dev Parcheesi, MI6's youngest (and hippest) agent. Assigned to a top secret mission in his native India, Agent Parcheesi travels home. To see his disapproving family, and to save the day! An evil tycoon known only as Shiva (Naseeruddin Shah) is rounding up local children and forcing them to work as slaves in his video game factory. It's up to Parcheesi to get the kids 'home' (just like in the game) and to apprehend Shiva. It all culminates in a thrilling virtual reality climax. At the end all the ladies will be shouting "Parcheesi!!"

Sorry
Logline: When Lincoln (Tom Welling), Alissa (Sophia Bush), Manning (Kellan Lutz), and Charlie (Ashley Tisdale) traveled to Alissa's uncle's cabin in northern Michigan, they thought they were in for a weekend of partying and foolin' around. They were wrong. Dead wrong. A maniacal mastermind will pit them against each other in the most important game of all... survival. As they're forced to kill each other, they'll all be very Sorry they ever left Pennington University in the first place.

Oh, hey—would it be inappropriate to note that this thing looks a lot like that thing?

As something that started in the Ivy League, you knew that this trend was due for a big piece in the Times, and the paper doesn't disappoint. Eleven thousand college kids across the country are involved! I fear for the future of our nation.

For example, at a recent battle between the residential colleges at Rice University, one team gathered in the cafeteria during a particularly dire point in the game. Once assembled, said Jim Deyerle, a junior at Rice who coordinated strategy for his team and now works on the game, "one of the commanders delivered Morpheus's speech," referring to the stirring oration from the second "Matrix" movie. "Then we brought out our laptops to sign more people up," he said.

See the similarities?

[pic via NYT]

As a gamer, I tend to gravitate towards running the show. I've participated in a number of games, but the vast majority of the time I find myself "behind the screen." Different games have different titles for the guy in charge — D&D calls him the "dungeon master," while a lot of other games like to use "game master." My personal favorite, and the one I feel best describes my approach, is "storyteller," used by the White Wolf company in their WoD games.

I come from a wildly literate family. Both of my parents are incredibly well read, and be it genetically or enviornmentally, the habit was passed on to me as well. I knew how to read well before kindergarten, and was fighting my way through chapter books in very early grade school. My personal library at this point numbers close to, if not in excess of, a thousand titles, and ranges everywhere from history texts to cheap fiction. If I had to pin down a favorite genre, it'd likely be sci-fi/fantasy, which I'm sure is what lead me to gaming in the first place. Well that and my high school mentor, a man who has been at various points in my life my track coach, my game master, my computer programming teacher, my stage director, my prayer group advisor, and eventually my father in law.

Anyway, the point is that I love stories. Call it a healthy desire to enhance my mind, call it escapism, call it whatever you want. Since I've been old enough to understand them, I've digested nearly every story I can get my hands on. Novels, comic books, radio dramas, even video games and tv shows — give me intriguing characters and a halfway interesting plot, and I will soak it up. And that's what gaming is for me; a chance to create a story. Which is why I adopt the term "storyteller" over "dungeon master."

As a storyteller, I'm rather atypical. I don't tend to push my gamers in any direction, and I try very hard not to insert my own will into the adventure. For that reason, I don't tend to run modules or depend heavily on pre-meditated plot devices. As far as I'm concerned it is my responsibility to create a compelling world, introduce a compelling story hook/major plot line, and let my gamers run with it from there. I put them into the world, and let them choose where to go. It takes a bit of effort, largely because you have to create as you go, but it is such a rewarding method. If I create a big enough world, with enough things in it, I'm ready for my gamers wherever they turn. And in that manner, we craft a story together. Numbers are important, but not imperative. The point of my game is never to get to the next level, or to increase your personal stats. I'll flat out lie about dice rolls, or not even make them, if I feel the story is better enhanced by a different result. Because of this, I seek out gamers who are more interested in stories than numbers to sit at my table. It's not me dictating a story upon my gamers so they can hack through it and gain another level; it's a team of creative minds cooperating on a joint storytelling adventure. I'm just the guy who has to keep things spinning.

And to counteract that humanizing story, here's the classic Dungeons and Dragons skit by the Dead Alewives:

Some karaoke slides are pure cliche. ("We offer a wide range of solutions!") Others, taken out of context, feel purely, startlingly random. A chest X-ray. The planet Earth surrounded by cartoon heads. And who thought it was a good idea to superimpose an image of Sony's AIBO toy robot dog over pages from a Dick and Jane-type storybook? And more importantly, what do you say if you're confronted by that slide? (One presenter's take: "Sony AIBO: The Greatest Threat to Humanity Yet!")

We would wager on this popping up on "The Office" any week now. Comparing it to "macho stunts like chainsaw racing," though, is a stretch. PowerPoint karaoke champs can be cool without outside reference points! A video of yourself dominating at this game could be a good way to get hired by Gawker, I imagine.

[via Tax Prof Blog]

Grid16: The best game for old arcade fans, as it relies on a twitch-like rapid hand-eye coordination. See those sixteen games? You're going to play them for about four seconds each.

Dolphin Olympics 2: Yes, I'm a dolphin flying over fireworks. Fuck you, it's fun. It takes just the right level of supposed skill to do tricks in this game, without actually being difficult, or having a plot or point that I'll never fulfill because I always get tired of it after half an hour, and because I have stubby fingers and the reaction time of Amy Winehouse.

Boxhead: Zombies attack, you shoot them. Really frustrating aiming the gun, but that's exactly the kind of terror and annoyance you need to learn to deal with for the real world. So this is an educational game too! Find some kids and make them play.

Four Second Frenzy: Same format (and same creators) as Grid16, but this twitch game has weird rough illustrations.

Papa's Pizzeria: I played this for two hours before I realized I was replicating an actual high school job without the benefit of stealing chunks of mozzarella from the cooler.

In Forumwarz, you don't play something stupid like a dwarf. You play something stupid like an Internet user, who goes to forums, wreaks havoc, gets points for lowering the quality of discourse to nil, and repeats. This gives the satisfaction of acting like a moron without the repercussions of actually screwing around on the web. Your constant raiding of Internet forums like YouBoob ("You'll spend hours searching for pornography at YouBoob - but you'll never find any!") and Fanfiction Freaks builds you "cred" and helps the secret plans of a shadowy Illuminati figure who gives you new quests.

Forumwarz knows its stuff. The game references 4chan, Fark, emo kids, camwhores, Ron Paul, and everything else that makes the Internet beautifully stupid. Blogger Andy Baio, who interviewed the game's creator, says there's even a minigame riffing off R. Kelly's "Trapped In The Closet."

The gameplay is actually simple and well thought-out. The copy is clever. And because users can create new levels, the jokes don't run out. If Kingdom of Loathing wasn't witty enough for you, and you'd rather be caught watching porn than playing World of Warcraft, give it a little try.

Forumwarz! Interact with the web's greatest intelligences and wits!

In related news, children still play games! So says a study by market research firm NPD Group, which reports that kids 2 to 14 spend 45% of their computer time playing games, 31% listening to music, and pretty much no time reading. Meanwhile Chinese students are required to win a Nobel by age six and in twenty years they'll be outsourcing their World of Warcraft character advancement to America.