Bitter-sweet: Man Discovers Depth Through the Screen of a Nintendo 3DS

George Kokoris has posted a short article over on Kotaku describing his first encounter with the Nintendo 3DS and how it introduced him to binocular depth perception... Oh and how that made him cry.

Paying Gun Manufacturers by Buying Games.

Here's a video from The Idea Channel on the morality of buying video games that license the permission to use facsimiles of real guns from gun manufacturers. I like the 'no right or wrong' take of the video on the subject, simply pointing out that real money is being given to real weapon manufacturers for the use of these virtual replicas, just like driving your favourite Ferrari in Forza or Grand Tourismo results in licencing fees to Ferrari, so to does firing rounds of an A-K 47 or P90 in games like Call of Duty or Battlefield. So, what do you think about that?

Personally, I haven't really thought about it. I mean, I knew that realistic guns in games bearing trade markings etc. were licensed from the companies that manufacture the real things, but I never made that money trail link between me, the consumer, and Colt getting a licencing check from Activision.

I'll be honest with you, as a huge fan of shooters, I'm not thrilled to think about this. I like my shooting virtual, and don't love the idea of helping to fund real gun manufacturing.

When it comes to matters of gun control and gun ownership I don't pretend the issue is simpler than it is, I mean, I know no amount of legislation is going to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and that, ultimately, bad people are to blame for bad things, but it's hard to argue with the simple logic that it's hard to perpetrate a gun crime without a gun and I wouldn't mind a world with less of them. So, I guess I'll be thinking twice before I open my wallet to a game featuring licensed weaponry from now on.

Video from The Idea Channel
Found via Kotaku.com