There's a zombie one, too.

Here's the blurb:

GCHQ's recruitment campaign will appear through a range of Xbox Live games, including blockbuster franchises such as Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Left 4 Dead 2 and Assassin's Creed II.

The government agency is running the six-week campaign using recruitment firm TMP Worldwide and said that many of its recruiting criteria are "reflected in game-play experiences on Xbox, such as quick thinking, problem solving and team work".

Xbox Live's main demographic, 18- to 34-year-olds, is also a good fit for GCHQ.

Might be a bit male-skewed if it's XBLA, I wonder where else they're advertising?

Also, the thought of the ad in L4D2 is really making me grin. 

(Thanks Dan!)

Last night we won four BIMAs: Best Game for 1066, Best Content for Routes, Best Video for Year Dot and Best Client for Channel 4 (aw).

Routes is a large, ambitious "playful experience": minigames, a documentary, an ARG/drama, competitions, all rolled into one - and on the theme of genetics and DNA.

Routes worked amazingly well at reaching our target audience of UK-based teens with an emphasis on females; during its live run, it had over 600,000 visitors, views were over 50% UK teen girls, and the games racked up millions of plays: 19m to date. Try your hand at SNEEZE, the most popular of the lot. It's a splatterfest!

Oil Productions.

Nominated for:

• BIMA - Online - Content - WON
• BIMA - Online - Website
• BIMA - Informational
• BAFTA - Children's - Interactive (Nov 29)

1066:

 
1066 is a thing of beauty and a joy to play! It's also now the top result in Google for 1066, above both wikipedia and the BBC, which is an amazing achievement. Watch out for the historically-accurate taunting - and there's multiplayer too. Play it now.

Preloaded (with Hardy Pictures).

Nominated for

• BIMA - Games - Online Game - WON
• BIMA - Special Award - Talent - Sound Design
• BIMA - Special Award - Talent - Visual Design
• BAFTA - Children's - Interactive (Nov 29, and up against Routes, heh)

Year Dot:

Year Dot is a huge project, following teens as they go through their big life changes. Learning from peers! Produced by So TV & Holler.

Nominated for:

• BIMA - Online - Video & Podcasts - WON
• BIMA - Social Media programme

Well done (again) to the teams involved in the making of these lovely projects. It's wonderful to see you rewarded for your amazing work!

Secretary of State Peter Mandelson is planning to introduce changes to the Digital Economy Bill now under debate in Parliament. These changes will give the Secretary of State (Mandelson -- or his successor in the next government) the power to make "secondary legislation" (legislation that is passed without debate) to amend the provisions of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988).

What that means is that an unelected official would have the power to do anything without Parliamentary oversight or debate, provided it was done in the name of protecting copyright.

My bold. Let's not forget that Mandelson is unelected to his post, has already declared that he'd happily change parties to the Tories, and that his copyright-related decisionmaking is done whilst on holiday at the expense of Hollywood bigwigs.

He's buyable, he'll turn colours given a cheque, and he's out to hit the majority - because we'll all be accusable, whether or not we fileshare - for the benefit of the (mainly Hollywood-resident) minority.

In direct contrast, we have Martha Lane Fox heading the Digital Inclusion taskforce, whose job it is to try to help the last 11m currently offline Britons onto the internet. Life online is provably more economically and intellectually beneficial to citizens and government alike. It's a Human Right in Finland, and Mandelson wants the right to take it away if someone near or in your house has downloaded the odd tune off the internet.

Bring on the petitions!

But the best argument for fun and play happens when you take it away.

Deny play to young mammals and the consequences are colossal. This has been demonstrated powerfully in rats, with some of the most significant new science coming out of Canada.

"What's been shown repeatedly," said University of Lethbridge neuroscientist Sergio Pellis, author of The Playful Brain, "if you prevent juvenile rats from engaging in rough and tumble play, you get animals who have cognitive problems, emotional problems and they're socially incompetent. "

In short, stop rats from horsing around and you get socially-awkward, troubled, dumbo rats. Worse still, male rats who never play become bad lovers.

Read on. It gets better. 

Fun is the brain's workshop.

"If you look at countries with the lowest amount of recess time, and scholastic achievement, there's almost an exact correlation," says Pellis. "The U.S., which has the lowest recess rates, often does the worst" in scholastic achievement.

It might even be the brains of children grow more at recess than in the classroom.

I'm not in the least bit surprised by that last bit! 

Now I am actually really curious as to whether the brain can extrapolate out to fun like (heh) co-op L4D, or teamplay in MMOs. Is it the physical interaction that counts more, or the social interaction - or both equally? Does physical interaction extend to "mirror neuron" stuff, so that what happens to your avatar is effectively also happening to you? So many questions. I'd better buy that book.

Cute.

I love battered old cars. Even better when they eventually get converted to electric, super sweet.

It’s those moments that made Left 4 Dead so much more than just a four-player zombie shooter. It was the stories, the individual tales of terror and derring-do. Left 4 Dead 2 is not just a bigger, better, more involved sequel to the original game. It’s an opportunity for more of those shouted celebrations of success, or cries of betrayal on defeat.

This is RPS' review, and do read it for its joyous, infectious, total delight in the game. This is why people play videogames, this level of laughter, and extended, repeated fun - no other screen-based entertainment comes close.

For me Hard Rain was the most outstanding part of the game. The four new Survivors have to make a return trip on an errand, eventually making their way back to the boat that brought them there. It means the level is traversed twice (which rather than meaning they halve the effort by using each location twice, it’s instead just enormous, and played differently on the return leg), which also means you might not want to collect every item you find on your way out there, whether in safe rooms or scattered around levels. You’ll need to save stuff for your way back – which is frightening.

Join usssssss....

A sample:

I listen to a lot of chat about games and hear lots about story and play, but very rarely hear about pretending, when, of course, pretending is central to the whole business. That's how video game reviews should start - "In this game you are pretending..."

And a sample slide, possibly my favourite, because of the gag that goes with it (I won't spoil):

Wonderful stuff.

MW2:

Borderlands:

This person thinks it's a gamesave error.

These people think it's the hard drive, the laser in the DVD drive and a cache problem.

Googling isn't very helpful on this subject...

Spiffy!

(Via Superpunch)

Margaret's very amusingly-titled picture of pingos.

Posted by Crys from Flickr.

Purchasable from the ordinary Play.com for an ordinary fourteen quid.

(Via technobob)

Found over at Crafty Crafty.