Video Games

If you think Bluetooth is a rare dental condition and an app is what you eat before the entree, you might not be a candidate for today's high-tech, whiz-bang smart phones. Instead, you might be happier with a mobile phone geared toward seniors. Those phones typically don't have Web-surfing capability, GPS maps and video games. Instead they have large buttons, oversized digital readouts and hearing-aid compatibility, along with a relatively simple calling plan. Although senior-friendly phones aren't new, their lower prices and variety are. A recent price skirmish among wireless companies means seniors can get an easy-to-use cellphone and cheap service to go with it, said Mac Haddow, senior fellow on public policy for the independent and nonprofit Alliance for Generational Equity.

In the smart, involving documentary "Indie Game: the Movie," when video game designer Phil Fish chillingly asserts that he'd kill himself if he didn't finish his long-gestating game "Fez," you get the feeling he isn't bluffing. That's the level of depth and candor filmmakers Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky mine here as they profile several independent artists struggling to succeed in the highly corporatized - and often hugely lucrative - video game industry. In addition to the French-Canadian Fish, who spent more than four nerve-wracking years developing the much anticipated, aesthetically oriented "Fez," the movie also compellingly follows the long distance, rollercoaster collaboration between designer Edmund McMillen and programmer Tommy Refenes as they create "Super Meat Boy," their first major game for Xbox (it went on to sell more than 1 million copies)

I had been with him through a wardrobe door to Narnia, and down a rabbit hole to Wonderland. So when my 12-year-old son disappeared into a television screen beyond my calls for dinner, curiosity led me to explore the world that lay on the other side. I come back transformed by both wonder and horror, as I believe our children do. I had vastly underestimated the significance of that journey, as I believe most parents do. The PacMan wave came and went. A second wave has hit like a tsunami.

Video game giants Activision Blizzard Inc. and Electronic Arts Inc. have settled their litigation as a larger trial over the Call of Duty video game franchise is scheduled to proceed this month. Santa Monica-based Activision and Redwood Shores, Calif.-based EA announced their settlement at a California Superior Court hearing in Los Angeles on Wednesday. The long-running rivalry between the two companies heated up in 2010 when EA agreed to fund a new studio headed by Jason West and Vincent Zampella, the co-creators of Call of Duty whom Activision had fired that year.

Blockbuster Inc. plans to allow some customers to rent video games on the Internet. The pilot program will begin during the second quarter and be available to subscribers of its Total Access service. Blockbuster plans to make online video-game rentals available nationally in the second half of the year, the Dallas-based company said.

National Geographic, best known for its yellow-framed magazine and often breathtaking nature shows, is getting into video games. National Geographic Ventures, a unit of the nonprofit National Geographic Society, will work with game publishers to turn its material into games for PCs, consoles and hand-held devices. "Our content is extremely well-suited for a global gaming audience," said Paul Levine, the National Geographic executive who will lead the new games division. The games will be drawn from a broad range of content and themes across National Geographic's properties.

Electronic Arts Inc. on Tuesday canceled Tiberium, a spinoff of its popular Command & Conquer franchise of shooter games, and said it would lay off an unspecified number of employees at its Playa Vista office. "The game was not on track to meet the high quality standards set by the team and by the EA Games label," EA spokeswoman Miriam Sughayer said. Sughayer said the Redwood City, Calif., developer would strive to place most of the affected workers into other EA projects. "This is not about cutting back financially," she said.

Yahoo Inc. will offer 400 free, advertising-supported games to increase revenue. Yahoo will use Double Fusion Inc.'s marketing technology and NeoEdge Networks' ad networks to sell and place video spots in the downloadable games, the company said.

Want to fool merchants with a fake ID? Hack someone's text messages? Or how about tracking where your co-workers are, without their knowing it? There's an app for that. The explosion in smartphone and tablet applications that enable people to check the weather, follow their stocks and play Words With Friends has a dark side: apps that facilitate questionable if not outright illegal behavior. Apple's App Store, for example, offers Drivers License software that promises "unlimited access to realistic-looking licenses" for all 50 states.

Video game giants Activision Blizzard Inc. and Electronic Arts Inc. have settled their litigation as a larger trial over the Call of Duty video game franchise is scheduled to proceed this month. Santa Monica-based Activision and Redwood Shores, Calif.-based EA announced their settlement at a California Superior Court hearing in Los Angeles on Wednesday. The long-running rivalry between the two companies heated up in 2010 when EA agreed to fund a new studio headed by Jason West and Vincent Zampella, the co-creators of Call of Duty whom Activision had fired that year.

Video game sales took a nose dive in April, plunging a stomach-churning 42% compared with a year earlier as companies cranked out fewer releases than in April 2011. Retailers rang up only $292.1 million in game sales last month, down from $503.2 million a year earlier, according to NPD Group, a market research firm. With fewer new games to drive people into stores, sales of game consoles also took a hit, falling 32% to $189.7 million. "Simply stated, there were notably fewer" new game releases, said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

In an effort perhaps to sharpen his recently poor putting, Tiger Woods appears to have contacted an unlikely source. Shaq Fu. A new commercial promoting Tiger Woods' PGA Tour 13 features Shaquille O'Neal and Woods mimicking classic kung fu films, including awkward voice dubbing and endless kung fu moves. Based on O'Neal's free-throw shooting history, it's likely the former Lakers center adopts Happy Gilmore's game: tremendous driving power and unreliable putting. So it's unclear if such an approach would actually help.

Here's your fortunate-son Friday roundup of consumer news from around the Web: --Are there better cities for singles? Our friends at Kiplinger's Personal Finance crunched the numbers and found that there are, based on such stats as how many households are single versus married, whether those households are affluent enough to date, and just what a date might cost. The top city in the country to be single turns out to be Ann Arbor, Mich. More than half of the city's population is single, thanks in part to proximity to the University of Michigan.

Bolstered by the continued dominance of the Call of Duty military shooter franchise and a new hit in its Skylander video game and toy line, Activision Blizzard Inc. swung to a profit in its fourth quarter, beating Wall Street's expectations and pumping up its stock price Thursday by 1%. The Santa Monica game publisher also reported that subscribers to its World of Warcraft online game fell to 10.2 million as of Dec. 31, down from 10.3 million customers...

THQ Inc., once one of the largest publishers of video games for children, said it will no longer produce licensed kids titles for traditional game consoles. Instead, the Agoura Hills company announced it will double down on making hard-core games such as Saints Row: The Third, a Mob-themed game that sold 3.8 million copies since its release Nov. 15. "THQ will be a more streamlined organization focused only on our strongest franchises," THQ Chief Executive Brian Farrell said in a statement Wednesday.

With 125 million viewers watching more than 1 billion of its videos a month, Machinima may be the most-watched channel that's not on TV. The specialty channel devoted to video-game aficionados — which offers game walk-throughs, gaming news, exclusive trailers and original series — is the channel with the fourth most subscribers on YouTube, itself the world's third most popular website, according to online measurement firm ComScore Inc. ...

Music composer Garry Schyman sits in his Culver City studio, at a desk topped with Gustav Mahler biographies and Krzysztof Penderecki recordings, and ponders the hero's predicament. He pivots to his keyboard and plays a handful of chords conveying utter loss, the draining of hope. If you happen to play the video game Resistance: Retribution after it's released next spring, you'll take on the role of a British soldier working to subvert an alien invasion in post-apocalyptic Europe.

When 11-year-old Matthew Garcia of Lancaster wants to get some exercise, he bypasses the two bicycles in his garage and heads to the Antelope Valley Family YMCA for one of his favorite workouts ? an electronic game with light-up targets and a scoreboard that tests his throwing, catching and speed skills. At home, he jumps on the Wii Fit alone, or with his mother. When he's working out, he has one thing on his mind, and it's not his heart rate: "I always think about how much fun I'm having.

Top 10 video games of 2011* (publisher) Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (Activision Blizzard) Just Dance 3 (Ubisoft Entertainment) Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Bethesda Softworks) Battlefield 3 (Electronic Arts) Madden NFL 12 (Electronic Arts) Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision Blizzard) Batman: Arkham City (Warner Bros. Interactive) Gears of War 3 (Microsoft) Just Dance 2 (Ubisoft Entertainment) Assassin's Creed: Revelations (Ubisoft Entertainment)