Here's a win for the video gaming industry: a judge from the US Court of Appeals issued a ruling to block a Minnesota video game law that was passed way back in 2006. The law proposed a bill that calls for US$ 25 fine every time a minor below 17 is caught renting or buying a Mature or Adults Only game. Read more about it in the full article.

EA Sports is taking its Madden NFL series off the cyber grass and into the real world with its "Ring of a Champion" promo in cooperation with Minnesota jeweler Jostens to award elite players a chance to get tokens that will show off their accomplishments.

Jostens has created roughly half the championship rings given out in the history of the Super Bowl. Now, players of the video game version can have the honor of wearing a ring from the same maker by accomplishing virtual achievements of cyber-athleticism. That and a little sum for the piece, of course.

Users will have to pass through three skill levels to prove that they've got game in them. Once the challenges are conquered, a code is given in order to unlock the Madden "Ring of a Champion" promo on the Jostens website. You can then choose a design you want and decide whether you want it in white or yellow gold. Those go for US$ 495, while the ones with real diamonds sell for a higher, undisclosed amount. Basic ones go for US$ 149.

Madden NFL 08 ships on August 11 for a wide array of platforms that include the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3, Sony PSP, Nintendo DS, and PC.

2k Sports second annual Hit-n-Run Tour for Major League Baseball 2k7 will be arriving to your college campus for a video game batting showdown pitting your school's best virtual bat hurlers for a chance to win a trophy and prizes. Starting April 9, the public will be invited to compete in the Home Run Derby mode of Major League Baseball 2k7 on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3

Coming from the Take Two Interactive's official press release, all participants will be receiving a gift bag loaded with select 2k Sports games, 2k Sports soundtrack CDs, ISO50-designed t-shirts, limited edition Rawling baseball mitts, retro style baseball jerseys, and a whole lot more.

While waiting for your turn to swing at the home mound, you can listen to the antics and arrangements to be brought to you by Shade 45's DJ Statik Selektah.

And because Major League Baseball 2k7 is redefining the the musical repertoire of sports games today, following the tourney will be XL Records' Tapes 'n Tapes to deliver rocking alternative tunes to your campus grounds. Starting April 16, The band hailing from Minneapolis, Minnesota will be performing select songs from their album, including MLB 2k7-featured "Insistor," to present the new face of MLB 2k7 to the musically inclined public.

Just because GDC is hot right now, doesn't mean that that's all we'll inform you folks about. Let's talk legislation. If you're a follower of gaming related politics, you may recall that in 2006, the state of Oklahoma was one of the three (Louisiana, Minnesota, and Oklahoma) that saw video game legislation signed into law.

That law of course was eventually blocked from taking effect, but what's this? Even more video game laws?

Gamespolitics reports that a new video game bill is under consideration. The said bill, HB2031, introduced by Rep. Mike Shelton, requires game retailers to provide game buyers written notice that the product they are buying may contain violence which may be harmful to minors. Here's an excerpt:

Every retailer engaged in the business of selling or renting video games to the general public shall distribute to any customer who is purchasing or renting a video game, a written notification that the video game may contain violent content and that said content may be harmful to minors.

This means that Oklahoma's Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services will have to prepare written warnings for games. What's difficult with this bill though is that - it doesn't differentiate between violent bloodfests and addictive detrimental-to-study-time yet kid friendly DS games.

Well this isn't as harsh and certainly more interesting than outright bans. If this does push through, Oklahoma may need to advertise it or something. A lot of folks just tend to throw away written stuff that comes with the products they purchased.

Honestly, how many of you have read the f-in manual? The effectiveness/sensibility of this bill may be debatable (don't the ratings warnings cover this already?), however, judging from the way it's made, it does seem to have good intentions, and it looks like it's trying to not step on the gamer community's toes.

For those who are thinking that the term "freedom of expression" has been wearing thin, think again. A law against selling violent video games to minors has been struck down by the Louisiana district court yesterday, as it was "deemed unconstitutional and a violation of the video game makers' and retailers' rights to free speech."

The law firm Jenner and Block are the champs in this fight, and they aren't neophytes in this war, either.

Since 2003, they have been defending video game makers in various states such as Oklahoma, Minnesota, Michigan, California, Illinois, Washington, and St. Louis.

The court said that "the government has no authority to limit minors' access to creative works based on the general belief that those works might be 'psychologically harmful.'"

Some happy news for the world of gaming for once, whatever type of fanboy you may be. This time, it has nothing to do with helping out the world of doctors and medicine. Rather, it's simply about a place for kids to go to keep them from trouble.

Game Politics got news from the St. Paul Pioneer Press about a strategy a local Boys and Girls Club in Minnesota is using to keep kids off the mean streets: enticing them into the youth center through video games. The set-up is simple: an Xbox unit, ten games and a television to keep kids occupied and, at the same time, introduce them to the other after-school activities the youth center has to offer. The ten games hit the "Teen" rating to keep things wholesome, and multiplayer action and socialization are assured because most of them are sports or racing games.

Support for the endeavor comes from all sides, including words from the administrator of the nearby Ames Elementary and heads of the local anti-gang units of the St. Paul police force. For Dolores Henderson, the administrator of the nearby school, she sees it "as a good thing - if it's going to be heavily supervised and structured." Paul Strong, the leader of St. Paul's anti-gang unit, also has good things to say of the plan. "Saves (the anti-gang unit) and I a lot of work," he asserts. "Your idle time leads you to get in trouble."

It's a good thing that Best Buy and Microsoft (the folks responsible for this) are thinking of positive things to do with consoles and other pieces of tech. So long as the gaming and interactions between the kids and teens at the Club are healthy and supervised, it shows how gaming isn't the devil some people make it out to be. Too bad it wasn't a 360 though.

On a marginally related note, we'd like to let you know that Aaron McGruder's Boondocks comic on US game legislation is definitely on point. We advise you to check out his comic strip or wait for episodes on Adult Swim.

Not everybody who wants a Wii or PS3 this Christmas is going to get one. Face it. Reuters says this is good news for Sony and Nintendo. Why? Because you need to buy something else to satisfy your gaming fix. So what do you do? Buy more games for your existing console - or even buy an old-model or current-gen console.

And this is good news for Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft fanboys alike. Here's why:

Videogame player scarcity may lift old-model sales - Reuter's headline says it all. It's an old article (October 18), and we've been passing it around, and nobody wanted to write about it until now. Because now we have some theories. Here they are:

Is Sony stupid? Try "Stupid like a fox!" - should this have been Reuter's headline? Think about it. So many people think that Sony is stupid for shipping only two million PS3 units this fall. Ah, but even though they won't sell as many PS3s this Christmas, their PS2 sales should go up (and we're thinking maybe PSP sales too?).

Didn't Sony tell us that they committed to a long-term plan for the PS2 and PS3? Reuters says the PS2 currently controls 60 percent of the console gaming market (there's 106 million units sold out there in the world). And Reuters adds that "data from recent months show that U.S. consumers are continuing to buy both PS2 consoles and games." "It will be one of the top-selling consoles for the holiday season," Sony spokesman Dave Karraker said.

Don't forget the Xbox 360! - maybe this should have been the title of Reuter's article? We expect to play with a lot more noobs on Xbox Live come January, because the parents of doe-eyed kids who have been good this year have to buy their kids something, and Reuters thinks so, and Microsoft's Robbie Bach says so, "I think we're set up to have a good holiday."

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter says at least three million Xbox 360s will sell in November and December. We're also thinking: since there are 5 million units out there, will those gamers try to get a Wii or PS3, or will they go to the shorter lines for Xbox 360 games instead?

Inexpensive Wii will sell quickly. Analysts expect a severe shortage for the Wii. At $250, it's about half the price of the PS3, after all. In other words, if you come from Boone, IA, there might not be enough Wii units there to go around (unless you drive to Des Moines, or worse, head north to Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota).

So what are you going to ask Santa this year?

This October 20-21, the National Institute on Media and the Family and Iowa State University will be holding a summit to discuss the growing problem of sexual and violent content in videogaming.

During this upcoming National Summit on Video Games, Youth and Public Policy, these groups hope to tackle the growing trends in videogame rating systems in light of the government's own policies, and the accuracy of independent game ratings groups.

The organizers hope to be able to create a 10-year action agenda based on the findings in this summit.

They've invited ESRB president Patricia Vance as they did Congresswoman Betty McCollum of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, and speakers from prestigious schools such as Harvard and Yale.

And for those of you asking: No, Attorney Jack Thompson is nowhere in the list of speakers.

Given what's been happening lately in the field of gaming politics such as the recent legislation by congress and the revelations on ESRB's inner workings, we're hoping this summit will foster a greater degree of awareness for the concerned parties, and hopefully offer a more sensible means of studying the gaming industry on their part - it's not all bad.

The summit will take place at: University of Minnesota Continuing Education and Conference Center, 1890 Buford Avenue,
Falcon Heights, Minnesota.

As for time skeds per day:

• October 20: 8:00AM to 5:00PM
• October 21: 8:30AM to 1:00PM

More details can be found in the pdf file found on the source link.

In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the booming gaming community finds another ally in Judge James Brady as he rules against a law that bans the sales of violent video games. This is not the first time as other states like Minnesota, Illinois, California and Michigan had similar bans blocked in the courts.

U.S. District Judge James Brady referred to such laws as invasion of the First Amendment, then issued an injunction. According to him, "Depictions of violence are entitled to full constitutional protection." In a similar event, a federal judge issued the state of Louisiana to pay three business groups including Entertainment Software Association more than $510,000 as legal fees.

Governor Kathleen Blanco then, after losing the court battle, appealed to parents to protect their children. "I'm calling on all parents to diligently monitor the video games that their children are allowed to play. If the courts can not protect our children, then we need to do it by rejecting the merchant of violence."

Those states that attempt to impose a ban argue that video games should be treated differently because its interactive nature encourages violence and it can be psychologically harmful to minors. The law sought to imposed both fine of up to $2,000 and one year in prison if the video game is proven to be appealing to a morbid interest in violence, patently offensive to an adult and the games are lacking in artistic, political or scientific value.

All above mentioned basis were nullified and deemed insufficient by the court one way or the other.

It seems like the "inappropriate games bill" is becoming a trend in legislation nowadays. The Minnesota House of Representatives is the newest state to join the bandwagon and has passed its own bill for inappropriate games. The Minnesota state followed suit after states such as Oklahoma, Florida, California, and Illinois filed such bills against inappropriate games.

In Minnesota's case, the bill was introduced by Rep. Jeff Johnson (Republican) and is tagged as HF 1298. The bill requires retail outlets to put up signs explaining the ESRB ratings and just to put a new twist on it, instead of fining the retailers for selling M or AO ESRB rated games, they will be imposing a $25 fine on the minor buying it.

Another representative, Barb Goodwin, unsuccessfully tried to amend the bill by also imposing fines on the retailers on the grounds that they should be the ones responsible for selling those games since they should be the most knowledgeable about ESRB ratings.

Nearly all the bills has been overturned by heeding the First  Amendment. According to Representative Johnson, "we were trying to pass the narrowest bill possible just to try something different from a constitutional challenge standpoint...There are two potential constitutional problems. One is that we are using the ESRB ratings... The other piece is that so far no court has found a strong enough link (between game violence and youth violence)."