Round-Up: Battlefield Winners, Utah Law Challenged, Net Hunting Banned

Today's round-up includes news on a $250,000 Battlefield 2 win, some First Amendment discussions around Utah's new video game bill, and the possible Kentucky banning of the allegedly 'video game'-like hunting over the Internet, as well as the latest GameSetWatch stories and Gamasutra job postings. - Team Legends defeated Team Professional Skills in the final round of EA's "Best of the Battlefield" tournament for Battlefield 2: Modern Combat on the Xbox. The 10-member team, which will divide up the $250,000 grand prize evenly between its members, beat its rival by 340 to 337 points, narrowly edging out a win. The final round of the tournament, which began in November and involved over 200 teams, was held at EA's Redwood City offices on February 17th. Team Professional Skills received a second-place prize of $50,000, with the two teams that lost to the respective finalists each taking home $10,000. - Clay Calvert and Robert D. Richards, constitutional law experts for the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment, have written an editorial in the Salt Lake City Tribune criticizing Utah's "Games as Porn" bill. "The weight of judicial precedent thus is overwhelmingly against Hogue's bill," says the duo, "which would be caught up in an expensive taxpayer-funded legal battle to defend it in court were it to become law." Several states' bills, including Illinois' and Michigan's, have already been overturned or blocked due to constitutional challenges from the Entertainment Software Association. - According to the Associated Press, Kentucky state representative Robin Webb has introduced a Kentucky bill to ban Internet hunting, saying the remote-controlled activity is "not a sport, it's a video game." The bill would ban a version of the sport in which users can aim a remote rifle using crosshairs at a PC and shoot wildlife from their living rooms. "We feel like this is not hunting," said Kirby Brown, executive vice president of the Texas Wildlife Association, which pushed for the law. "It's clicking a mouse. You have to be there to be hunting." The activity is banned in 11 states already, with 12 other states examining proposals. - Gamasutra sister weblog GameSetWatch has recently added posts including some info on excellent physics game Pogo Sticker, a long-lost De La Soul video for Parappa, and some ruminations on wished-for Xbox 360 Live features, among others. - Also updated today: the latest Gamasutra job postings, including positions from Codemasters, LucasArts, Rare, The Art Institute of California, Mythic Entertainment, and PlayFirst.