Video Blips:

 

The Penny Arcade awards its PA Scholarship to University of Washington Vision Sciences PhD student, Jeffrey Lin. Lin plans to use the money to further his research of vision scientists, whom he says, "have the tools and skills to help developers tackle problems from how to reduce motion sickness some experience in [first-person shooter] titles to how to make games more accessible to the color blind." I have enough trouble telling the difference between the colored orbs in Bust-a-Move, and I have good eyes. I can't imagine how hard it is for the color blind. Bless this man.

 

Microsoft plans to improve speech audio quality over Xbox Live with an Xbox 360 update this fall. The game maker intends to upgrade the console's "codec and audio infrastructure" when they release an update to optimize the 360 for Kinect. This should allow for clearer chat for online gamers. Now when those kids call me a "noob," "bitch," and "fag" over my headset, it'll feel as if they're sitting right next to me! [Eurogamer]

 

Developer Valve worked on a game featuring fairies (now canceled) before making Left 4 Dead. Speaking to PC Gamer, Valve Managing Director Gabe Newell lamented over how bad the game was and reflected, "Why are we doing this game which was kind of a...it wasn't really an RPG...it was this action fantasy sort of role-playing game that had no story." I guess this is what happens when you leave one too many copies of Heavy Metal magazine lying around the office.

 

A recent study by Electronic Entertainment Design and Research (EEDAR) found that across all genres of games for the current generation (2005-2010), a notable 51 percent feature female playable characters. Of the same games, unsurprisingly, 90 percent feature male playable characters. What I'm curious to know is out of all the gals, how many of them have a digital cup size smaller than DD? My guess is not too many.... [Industry Gamers]

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