Round-Up: Harvard Violence Study, Mercury Game, Nile Game in Exhibit

Author: by Nich Maragos, Simon Carless

Today's round-up includes a reminder of a survey relating to video game violence for developers, a mercury poisoning warning game created by students, and a tie-in for Children Of The Nile with its ancestral relative, as well as the latest Letter to the Editor, product news and job postings. - The Harvard Medical School Center For Mental Health and Media is reminding developers that it is conducting a survey of video game professionals on the effects of video game violence on players, and the deadline is fast approaching. The survey is being carried out to collect data not "agenda-driven or limited in practical utility," but instead unbiased and taking game developer opinion into account. The survey, available online for anonymous responses, will be open to the development community until July 8th. - Students in the Electronic Game & Interactive Development program at Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont have been tapped to develop a game educating its players on the dangers of mercury. Sponsored by Vermont's Department of Environmental Conservation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the students are to develop a game and concurrent video about the hazards of mercury poisoning. The result, which is due to be completed before the fall school semester, will likely be the first serious game project to deal with mercury -- the first non-serious game on the subject, of course, being Archer MacLean's Mercury. - The Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs touring museum exhibit will include Tilted Mill/Myelin Media's PC strategy title Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile game as part of the tour. Though the tour will not include playable kiosks in the actual exhibit, Myelin's partnership with National Geographic and the other tour sponsors will put copies of the game in with the tour merchandise at all stops along the way. The touring exhibit marks the first time Tutankhamun's riches have appeared in North America in 26 years. - Also updated today: a new Letter to the Editor, in which Fiz Gig disputes the recent Soapbox on girls and gaming, arguing that it "perpetuates some of the worst stereotypes and incorrect data about gender differences", as well as product news featuring a new addition to music studio Chakrasound and the launching of Touchdown's FEAR Technology Middleware, plus the latest job postings, including positions from Activision, Blue Shift, Inc, Blue Tongue, Bungie, EA Tiburon, IGE, InTheGame.Biz, Microsoft, NCsoft, OGaming, Smiling Gator Productions, The Collective, THQ, and Turbine.