Call of Duty: Black Ops II, like the last few Call of Duty games, allows players to create and personalize emblems—little icons that appear on their weapons and next to their names when they're online.

Naturally, being mature and respectable members of society, Call of Duty players are using these emblems to draw swastikas made out of penises.

This is a problem, as Activision community manager Dan Amrich points out:

This divides COD players into two camps: The people who want to create penis swastikas and the people who do not want to see them. I hear from both of them, complaining loudly that they should be able to create whatever they want and/or these people should be banned.

Amrich goes on to criticize the Black Ops II art community—"Are you suggesting you are enhancing my game with your Nazi symbol made out of wangs? You are not. You have my guarantee on this."—and begs them to stop drawing penis swastikas. The moderating teams at Activision and Treyarch are trying to delete/ban all of the offenders, but there's no approval process for emblems, which makes that a complicated process.

So allow me to echo Amrich's point. Please, folks, stop drawing penis swastikas in Call of Duty. For as much fun as I am having writing the words "penis" and "swastika" in succession, most people play Call of Duty to shoot people, not to look at Nazi symbols made out of genitalia. If you absolutely must draw penis swastikas, at least do it someplace where people won't mind. Like Second Life.

Photo: JPFotografie/Shutterstock

Images purportedly of in-store promotional materials suggest that Call of Duty: Black Ops II's first map pack extension will be a timed Xbox 360 exclusive arriving on Jan. 29. Five maps are included.

"Revolution" sports five maps, one of which—"Die Rise"—appears to be a zombie map. The others are named Hydro, Grind, Downhill and Mirage. The promo placards also say a weapon—the Peacemaker SMG—is included. No word on pricing; if you have the Call of Duty season pass, it's free.

We've pinged an Activision rep for comment, so this is unconfirmed for now.

Black Ops 2 Revolution, first dlc coming out January 29th [Reddit via Joystiq.]

Bless map editors. They make wonderful things possible—wonderful things that normally couldn't exist.

MP1st brings our attention to Youtube user ShadowZack, who took it upon himself to recreate a few famous maps in Far Cry 3.

These maps hail from franchises like Call of Duty, Battlefield and Counter-Strike. The one above is Nuketown. Here are the rest:

There is one more map to check out, here.

This looks really rad—if I was playing Far Cry 3 on PC, I'd play these. Alas, console gaming. I can't even take the HUD off my copy of Far Cry 3... not yet, anyway.

Battlefield, Counter-Strike, And Call of Duty Maps Recreated In Far Cry 3 [MP1st]

Initially, Mass Effect incorrectly (and embarrassingly) got the blame for the tragic Sandy Hook school shooting. Now, British tabloids are picking up the "played video games" angle to single out Call of Duty and Dynasty Warriors.

Today's morning edition of The Sun carries this headline: "KILLER'S CALL OF DUTY OBSESSION". The sub headline reads "Massacre loner addicted to controversial vid game" and features a photo of the killer, Adam Lanza. As Eurogamer points out, the double page spread is titled "BLACK OPS BUNKER" and contests that Lanza played "bloodthirsty computer games such as Call of Duty" in the windowless basement of his mother's house. A plumber named Peter Wlasuk apparently visited this basement and recounted his visit to the tabloid.

"It was a beautiful house but he lived in the basement," Wlasuk said. "I always thought that was strange. But he had a proper set up down there—computers, a bathroom, bed and desk and a TV. There were no windows."

The plumber recalled how the boys loved the military and had military posters all over their walls. Continuing, Wlasuk added, "I'm not blaming the games for what happened. But they see a picture of a historical gun and say, 'I've used that on Call Of Duty.'"

The Daily Mail The Express, meanwhile, is calling out "shockingly violent fantasy war game" Dynasty Warriors as Lanza's title of choice. It's unclear what The Express sourced for that information. Guess that's why it's a tabloid! (The story was originally reported by Reuters.)

Over on the Express' website, fans are sticking up for Dynasty Warriors. Writes GothicSwordsman, "I have been a fan of Koei, and the Dynasty Warriors franchise for several years, and it is not 'shockingly violent'. In fact, there was only a very small amount of blood shown... Furthermore, there's nothing in that series that I think could give inspiration to harm children like that."

"Historical guns" were not used at Sandy Hook. And Dynasty Warriors (above) features swords and spears—neither of which were used. None of it seems to matter. And while not all pundits agree, some are looking for something to blame, and they've found it: video games.

The Dark World of Adam Lanza [The Sun Thanks, Ken!]

KILLER ADAM LANZA 'OBSESSED' WITH VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES [Daily]

UK tabloids single out Call of Duty, Dynasty Warriors in coverage of Sandy Hook school massacre [Eurogamer]

Today's New York Times profiles Bobby Kotick, the boss of Activision Blizzard and longtime bête noir of many a longtime gamer, many of whom have created unflattering portrayals of him quickly found by Google Image search. Well, he wants you to know this doesn't help his game. See, he's divorced and on the prowl.

"Think about what it's like for my dating life when the first picture that comes up is me as the Devil," Kotick tells the Times.

A lot of the stuff in the Times' profile also surfaced in a Kotaku profile more than two years ago— the mob-movie air of the early days, hitching a ride on a casino mogul's corporate jet, the subterranean meeting that got his first venture off the ground, brushes with Steve Jobs and the like.

But it does relate some other fun facts.

• Kotick duped the Sheriff's Office of San Mateo County, Calif. Kotick took over Activision (then known as Mediagenic) at a time when the company's assets were being seized to pay debts. When a deputy arrived to repo an expensive IBM mainframe in 1990, an office assistant surrendered a PDP-11 instead.

• He's unremorseful about the showdown with Infinity Ward's founders. "You find out two executives are planning to break their contracts, keep the money you gave them and steal 40 employees," he said. "What do you do? You fire them."

• He calls himself a libertarian, and voted for Mitt Romney.

There's some other business-y stuff concerning Call of Duty's sales, Activision's share price and pressures on it, and Activision's success despite the overall sour picture of video game sales. But the key detail is that you meddling video gamers are cockblocking him. Guys, guys, stop high-fiving like that. Please.

At Activision, a Hero and Villain, Zapped Into One [The New York Times]

For four consecutive Mondays, we've counted the number of people who are playing Black Ops II on the Wii U. We've wanted to, however roughly, measure the uptake of online gaming on the Wii U, using one of the most popular online series around.

Over those four Mondays, the combined number of Wii U owners playing Black Ops II's competitive multiplayer or co-op Zombies mode has climbed from 560 to 727 to 1,167 to 1,408. In that same time, of course, Nintendo has sold more Wii U systems, launching the console beyond North America to Europe, Australia and Japan. (CoD is now out in all of those regions except Japan.) The game is now available to many more potential players around the world.

These online multiplayer numbers have seemed disturbingly low for a game as popular as Call of Duty. It draws hundreds of thousands of players on Xbox 360 alone night after night. But when we crunched the numbers in week two of our experiment, we found that about 2 out of every 1,000 Wii U owners were playing Black Ops II online at the moment we checked. That compared to about 9 of every 1,000 Xbox 360 owners at the same time. A worrisome comparison? Hard to say. You have to factor in the likelihood that a person who buys the Wii U wants Call of Duty. Perhaps they have it for another console already or would prefer to play it on one where they have more online friends against which to compete. Or perhaps they really don't want Call of Duty. Maybe it's not for them. Another possibility; perhaps many of the Wii U's we're counting are wrapped up under Christmas trees and are incapable of running any game online until they're unwrapped. That means that the post-Christmas count of Black Ops II activity on the Wii U might be all the more telling.

There are many ways to slice this, and it's impossible to say which is correct. I'm simply a fan of data. I like capturing it and letting people begin to think about what it means.

We'll be putting our Black Ops II Wii U counts to rest for a bit. We may return monthly. We'll see. For now, here's one more data point:

In the first calendar month it was on sale, November, the Wii U sold more than 425,000 units in November. The machine launched on November 18 and NPD, the U.S. sales tracking firm, counted that number of units sold in the week that followed launch. In that same period, sources tell me that NPD calculated that the Wii U version of Black Ops II sold 23,000 copies (NPD sales figures for individual games are not public, and a rep for the company did not respond to a request to confirm this, though I'm confident my sources are correct).

23,000. Small number, right? That's about 1 in 18 Wii U owners picking up Call of Duty.

Good? Bad? Too soon to say.

Towheaded and small-voiced, Felix von Perfall's countenance seems to define childhood innocence. But look into those eyes. Those eight-year-old eyes have seen war, they've seen ... things, things no seven-, six- or five-year-old should ever know.

"Call of Duty, it's a good game, but it's really—I wouldn't advise it for younger kids," Felix told WNYW-TV in its examination of holiday gift-giving trends on yesterday's 5 p.m. news.

The last Call of Duty rated lower than M was Call of Duty 3 in 2006. The title has never rated an E.

h/t Tim Burke.

David Petraeus would not have gone down in history as a great general, even if he had been able to keep his zipper zipped. Certainly not great enough for the retired Army four-star general and former commander of coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to merit appearing in a strategy game.

It is true that Petraeus appears in Call of Duty: Black Ops II as Secretary of Defense in 2025. But he is there as contemporary political eye candy (and never mind that Petraeus is 60 today and would be 73 in 2025, making him the oldest SecDef in history. Then again, the man is legendary for his physical fitness, which perhaps explains his downfall).

No, I'm speaking of the avatars in strategy games like Civilization V, where you are asked to assume the persona of Napoleon, or Patton, or... Petraeus? Not likely. Petraeus earned—or constructed—a reputation as a military genius who came to the rescue of two floundering wars.

But his luster faded, not surprising for a man who had a reputation for advancing his career through adroit politics (such as marrying the daughter of the superintendent of West Point). With blood in the water from the Paula Broadwell scandal, critics are jumping on his record to claim that his performance (military, not sexual) was nothing spectacular.

Yet the real reason why Petraeus will not achieve strategy game greatness is that he fought the wrong war.

Iraq and Afghanistan were not just politically unpopular conflicts; they were also not the sort of glorious campaigns that earn commanders (though not the soldiers who died for them) a place in the history books. Caesar and Genghis Khan subdued kingdoms and created empires. Rommel thundered across the North African in lightning panzer offensives. Petraeus's claim to fame is that he bribed tribal elders and negotiated with corrupt local politicians during a counterinsurgency, a grinding, thankless form of warfare that neither makes for stirring history nor exciting gaming.

Petraeus is not alone in this. Unfortunately for America's post-World War II commanders, there haven't been too many wars since 1945 that have offered glorious warfare in the grand sense that gamers like. Do you really want to play a game as William Westmoreland or Tommy Franks?

It is difficult to feel too sorry for Petraeus. Once the current scandal dies down, he will probably enjoy a lucrative future as a defense industry consultant or thinktank expert. But he will not be a video game icon.

Washington's War on Wargaming

The only thing that's cheap about war is the gaming. The U.S. military services and their assorted war colleges, the Department of Defense, and various thinktanks do quite a bit of wargaming of potential conflicts such as Iran. Compared to a billion-dollar aircraft carrier, wargaming isn't... More »

Why Beans Are More Important than Bullets

Amateurs study tactics and professionals study logistics, goes the old saying. Or put another way, what's the biggest difference between the U.S. Army and a ragtag militia in the Congo? More »

Wargaming A U.S.-China War

As if the U.S. and China don't have enough problems, now they're eyeing each other like two high school jocks competing to be Big Alpha Male on Campus. More »

What the U.S. Army Wants in a Shooter Game

When most of us want to buy a first-person-shooter, we look for a game with the latest graphics, reliable team play, and maybe an interesting plot line if we're lucky. More »

Why It's So Hard to Make a Game Out of the 21st Century

Let's build a game. Let's make it a strategy game. We will realistically simulate global politics in the 2030s. Perhaps a sort of Civ or Supreme Ruler 2020-type system.
Where shall we start? More »

The other day, a colleague mentioned that she felt like there was something off about Halo 4's multiplayer. She was getting destroyed by other players, eventually feeling like she didn't have much of a chance when up against people with advanced abilities or gear gained from Spartan point unlocks.

This seemed like a marked difference from earlier Halo titles, where it was possible to drop in with your starting gear and have a reasonable shot at being competitive—even against people who totally out-leveled you.

I told her what most people might: that the game starts out that way, but then it peters off. After spending a few hours grinding enough XP to unlock what you want, you'll be able to perform better. After spending a bit of time with the game, you'll be able to tailor your loadout to make yourself a formidable Spartan.

Others, I imagine, might've been less courteous about their suggestions—a common response to this type of complaint is that you're being ridiculous if you whine about starting weapons and abilities because of course the starting loadouts are great! If you're good enough, right? I mean, look at how easily I own everyone with the starting weapons. You on the other hand must suck if you're not doing okay at the start, clearly.

But then I thought about it, and it hit me: why in the world do I act as if this is okay? Simply because unlocks are so common now, and just because you eventually reach a point where you have everything you need to be competitive, doesn't erase the fact that the game starts out unbalanced.

Not ridiculously so of course; developers wouldn't be able to get away with that. The starting gear in Halo 4 is reasonably good, but the stuff you get to unlock later, after putting some time in, still gives you the capacity to be even better. And I can't recall the last game with non-cosmetic unlocks that didn't have me feeling a tad frustrated at the start of my stint with the multiplayer.

Kotaku's own Tina Amini puts it well when she says this about Halo 4:

Getting the fanciest weapons requires real dedication, so it feels like it could be representative of how adept a player you are.

This situation is a constant; the latest game that evoked this annoyance was Black Ops II. To quote myself on that:

Point blank, I hated starting out in the Core playlists because it was immediately obvious that the game was not balanced. It can't be. Whoever has the better gear will invariably win in a duel, and the starting guns suck. Every bit and bob you can customize-attachments, abilities (ie, perks) and extra gear makes a huge difference in how effective you can be on the battlefield.

There's no sign that this will let up—not with RPG elements becoming so pervasive in our shooters, not with how popular multiplayer is. Sure, both Halo and Call of Duty have special playlists where unlocks aren't allowed, but you're not playing with the general populace and that doesn't change that unlocks suck.

The irritation is especially present if I hop onto a game a few months after release, when the community has dwindled to the more hardcore players. Then, the disadvantage of not having the same gear becomes pronounced: I'm being outplayed and outgunned.

In that case, people know the ins and outs of the maps, the tricks necessary to optimize play, and they've had time to figure out the popular strategies used in a game. You, meanwhile, might still be trying to figure out how to use your sub-par gun. I've had to resort to buying games at release if I'm thinking of playing the multiplayer, and that's not something I'm happy about.

Eventually, after I play enough, I'll forget about all of this. It's because the amount of time I play with the appropriate gear will vastly outnumber the hours I spent trying to become properly outfitted.

Beyond forgetting about it, I feel as if there's this weird community thing where it's like "Well, if we have to bear it, so can you." Isn't that a bad sign? When you have to tolerate something? Or like it's a rite of passage, a tradition. You need to grit your teeth because everyone else does it, and if everyone has to do it, what's the big deal?

It's one thing to play on single player and have a sense of progression, feel like you've earned the right to be powerful. It works there. It lends itself to games that feature progression not only narratively, but mechanically: and that's important.

But I shouldn't have to earn the right to play at what would normally be my most competitive in a mode where the entire point is to be competitive. Non-cosmetic unlocks work against the very point of multiplayer, they get in the way of embracing why you're there in the first place.

Always having something new to work toward works wonderfully as a motivational tool to keep playing, and that's why unlocks shine. You're always looking forward to what you might get next—which then sort of becomes what you "deserve." You worked for that ability/armor/gun. That other guy with the inferior gun? Welp, they haven't put their time in. Sorry, thems the breaks. Pile that on with "earning" the right to get killstreaks or ordnance drops for doing well, and things get a little messier still.

For the hardcore, this will make no difference: they're going to play the game long enough that any imbalances at the start are but a short, passing memory.

For everyone else, here's a question: after you unlock everything—then what? You'll have to play the game on, gasp, its own intrinsic merits? I've noticed that many games that rely on this progression model don't hold up so well, despite how unfair the system might be.

Worryingly, it doesn't look like multiplayer games are going to let up with these types of unlocks. Halo didn't used to be like this, after all.

Personally, the game I've poured the most hours into is a game that didn't have unlocks that affected the game itself. That game would be Gears of War 2. The thing about Gears of War is that you know exactly what you're getting from the get-go. And if what a game lays out in front of you is engaging, if that hooks you? You'll keep playing. You'll keep playing for a long, long time. Out of embarrassment, I won't tell you how many hours I've logged onto Gears 2.

The problem is that developers are invested in keeping you playing no matter what, and unlocks are an easy way to do that—even though it means we'll play for (arguably) the wrong reasons.

Normally I wouldn't say there's anything wrong with giving players reasons to keep playing. We want value from what we buy, we want to get as much out of our purchases as we can. But unless we continue to play because of the game itself—without these added layers of bullshit—what's the point?

Maybe the truth is that most games don't work so well in the long term without pulling tricks like these to keep someone playing. And maybe we're so fervent about getting the most 'value' out of our games, we're willing to overlook what a game does to keep you playing. For a developer that might be interested in keeping you engrossed because it means you're more likely to invest in new maps, modes and so on, that reality is perfect.

That's not nearly as gross as realizing that developers are aware of what's happening. Game academic Dylan Holmes noted that Battlefield 3 tells its users that they'd be able to "level the playing field" no problem... if they're willing to pay.

"Tired of fighting an uphill battle against Battlefield veterans?" it continued. "The Ultimate Shortcut Bundle unlocks 119 weapons, gear and vehicle upgrades." At which point it directed me to a link where I could pay Electronic Arts a mere $40 for said "shortcut."

It's worse when you consider what Dylan says next.

The point of unlocks in Battlefield 3 isn't to increase the fun I'm having; it's to encourage me to play more than I would otherwise. Take away the unlocks and the typical play experience remains unchanged.

Ultimately, in a world where we believe that time = money, the transaction that DICE proposes isn't a surprising one. We readily equate the two so, sure, we'll be willing to shell out the money for it. Some people even believe that paying for every piece of a game a la carte should be what games do next. But still, it's ridiculous to think that a developer wants to sell you fairness. What in the world?

Two things jump out about this to me though. First, that the people who this poses the most value to are either those who want to get to the meat of the game, or those who lack the necessary time to invest in the game. But both of these situations don't have to exist in the first place. The person who wants to get to the "point" of the game could just be given everything they need from the start. The person without time could also just be given what they need right away so that they can enjoy the game.

But immediately giving people what they need would inconvenience that whole ‘monetization' thing now wouldn't it?

You know in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, when Lt. Price and Cpt. MacMillan wear those "ghillie suits"? The camo outfits look like they're wearing grass and foliage. Those come in handy while sneaking about the Russian wilderness. They're less handy when in urban jungle known as Tokyo. Or are they?

Japanese site Rocket News sent one of its reporters out on the street all ghillied up, staying low and moving slowly. Sure, when he's strolling down the street, the dude's pretty easy to find. But what about when he's hiding? Or getting Starbucks? Or taking an elevator?

In the above gallery, see if you can see, well, him. Answers included in case you get stuck. Ha, like that'll happen.

スタバ初心者なのでギリースーツを着て買いに行ってみた [@rocketnews24 via ロケットニュース]