To give this its full title; "Virtual Worlds and Kids: Mapping the Risks". It's an interesting and contradictory read, in almost the exact same way the Byron Report was. In a nutshell the FTC's report looks to Virtual World developers and business owners to get tough with regards to issues concerning the accessibility kids have to adult material when they using their products and services. A laudable aim I'm sure you'll agree, kids should be kids and adults, adults, never the twain should meet.

Except...

The report sensationalises the presence of 'adult' material in virtual worlds, citing numbers to the effect that approximately 2/3^rds of the 30 or so worlds they looked at contained material they deemed both sexually and violently 'explicit' (more on this below). The point seems laboured so as to distract from the fact that, in their own words, very few of these worlds actually had mature content that was easily to get to for 'ordinary' or 'standard' user accounts. Even for the one or two that did, it was had at the end of 'tricking' the registration process into doing what was needed to get at it in whatever that form took - taking advantage of poorly implemented account set-up protocols to outright falsification of information ("identity fraud" for want of a better way to put it). The point seemed missed that this shows a sense of willfulness to be doing something that shouldn't be done, to keep at the various systems to try and find ways around them.

This leads to "Mapping the Risks" supposing (they don't 'suppose', they actually 'state' this) that Virtual Worlds are to blame for user dishonesty and as a result should be the ones to take steps to combat this (read that as "the ones to be blamed/take responsibility for it"). As above, the latter part of that is laudable in that yes, it's in the best interests of Virtual Worlds to effectively 'look after' their user base because they're the bread and butter of the business. But, just how far does/can that go when, as the FTC report itself repeatedly admits, there are limits to how much is possible with current technology - using various forms of ID checks are only so good as to clarifying whether the ID itself is valid, not the person using it; it can just as easily be used by the parent or a child to validate an account, anywhere, not just in a Virtual World.

And this seems to be the whole point missed in these discussions of accessibility, biased as they are by partisan political ruminations. They arm the uninformed parent just as readily as the misinformed politician with talking points and sound bites and nothing ever actually gets done, except for expedient finger pointing and litigious ambulance chasing. No one ever seems to stop to ask just who these miscreants are that muck about online or indeed why they do it; you could be forgiven for thinking that all minors with access to a computer and the Internet try logging in to services they're not supposed to, pretty much finding a way around all sorts of validation systems in the process.

I'm not necessarily conspiratorial by nature but my spidey-sense is telling me that this will be used as self-justification for further control directly over the Internet (as it's lead to in the UK through the Digital Economy Bill). Or, indirect control over an individuals access to it via something like biometrics; neither of which solves the fundamental problem of people (kids) doing things they shouldn't be doing. Issues of this nature always seem to end up with the same question being asked "where are the parents in all this mess?".

Our buddies at Complex Games are offering a series of 'game training' course in Winnipeg through a new scheme called "LevelUp". If you're interested in getting involved and want to further your skills with hands on teaching from a group of guys working with the tools you'll be learning, Unity 3D amongst others, then drop by the web site LevelUpGameTraining.com to find out more information.

A FaceBook group is also available for those interested that will keep members up-to-date with the latest news on events; currently they're hosting a free class on Saturday the 5th Dec so prospective parents and students can find out what's going on. Drop by if you're interested in getting into game development and are in the area.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has broken more records, this time the highest earnings for any media in it's first week. It's earned so much in fact that it's beaten top spots in other formats. Activision revealed that worldwide, Modern Warfare 2 earned $550 million dollars in all territories, beating previous records set by the likes of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at $394m and The Dark Knight $203.8m.

In the UK specifically, MW2 is reported to have shifted 1.7 million units in its first five days, grossing it nearly £70 million (£67.7 million), firmly trouncing GTA IV, the previous record holder (£40 million).

Is Modern Warfare a "pop culture phenomenon" as Activision CEO Bobby Kotick suggests? Not really, pop culture involves a bit more than a game simply selling well.

As this is a beta release don't download this if you have concerns about the functionality of the UDK hotfixes being introduced in this version - wait until its release as a full UDK update. Without further ado... Epic have just released a beta update to UDK to fix some pressing issues that have cropped up since the recent release of the Development suite - fixes include the following.

• Shader compiler no longer crashes when the log is not writable.
• Game/editor will run without having to first check for existing script files.
• Windows XP: Emissive lights causing purple lighting have been fixed.
• Windows 7: Added new SpeedTree binaries to address OS-specific issue.
• Added check to confirm GPU meets minimum requirements.
• Implemented fix for some SpeedTree trees causing crashes.
• Added fix for invalid characters being allowed in journal files causing database corruption.
• Incorporated fix for making a game in non-English and then running it on another non-English machine.
• Installer
  • If a prerequisite fails to install, the install will still continue and warn at the end.
  • Enhanced the check for a valid install path.
  • If the installer is skipped, the EULA comes up once.
  • Fixed CZE install not finding the EULA.
  • Fixed problem if temp install folders were deleted between install and uninstall.
  • Fixed problem if maps were named in non-ASCII characters.

For more details and downloads go to the Unreal Developers Network.

What is it that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is doing right that other modern military warfare shooters are getting wrong? When compared to other games in the genre, MW2's achievement is big enough to have broken the previous record set by GTA IV, which many held as being unbeatable; Rainbow Six sold 20 million units, Splinter Cell: 19 million, Ghost Recon: 16 million, and that's over the period of 2008, 12 months, not just an opening week (a couple of days in fact). Modern Warfare 2, according to the press release that just dropped into my inbox, has sold approximately 4.7 million game units, earning Activision/Blizzard a cool $310 million dollars, a year from now that's probably going to be close to $1 billion, and that's with Piracy!

Speaking of which, Tiga (a UK trade association) recently released the results of a survey it took of it's members over the question of piracy. The results are quite interesting and go so far as to suggest the picture of the problem painted by the media and big studios isn't quite as reflective of the whole industry as they'd like us to think;

Firstly, the majority of video games developers (60%) see piracy as a problem for their business and most also see this as a constant or increasing problem for their business going forward (90%). However most developers view the actual threat of piracy to their business survival as low (60%) with only 20% ranking the threat as medium and only 10% considering the threat to be high (10% had no view).

Secondly, when asked about the Governments plans to tackle piracy through slowing down or cutting off the broadband supply of pirates, developers had mixed opinions, with 50% agreeing this was a good idea and 50% disagreeing.

Finally, developers are pragmatic and proactive in finding solutions to deal with the threat of piracy. 50% said they are considering different ways of doing business as a consequence of piracy, with 75% of that 50% citing digital distribution, subscription based services and/or ad supported free games as the ways they would or could change their business models.