For some, a video game doesn't stop when the power is turned off - their gaming experiences are bleeding into their day-to-day lives.

This can lead to video game-like reactions to real-life situations, Nottingham Trent University and Stockholm University have discovered.

It's called Game Transfer Phenomena.

The study - Game Transfer Phenomena in Video Game Playing: A Qualitative Interview Study - interviewed 42 "frequent" gamers aged between 15 and 21 years old. "Many" of the subjects "appeared to integrate elements of video game playing into their real lives".

The full study must be bought for $30. One amusing excerpt reported on The Metro website describe a 15 year-old boy wanting to use a gravity gun from Half-Life 2 to fetch something from the fridge. And why not?

One 19-year-old Price of Persia: Sands of Time enthusiast dropped his sandwich and immediately his finger used to press the rewind-time button twitched. A natural response.

Another 19-year-old thought he could use World of Warcraft's search function to locate his brother in a crowd. What a good idea.

Apparently half of the gamers interviewed said they'd looked for something from a video game to solve a real-life issue. One interviewee apparently saw a menu of topics available for him to think about (Heavy Rain?); another formulated a list of possible responses after being insulted (Mass Effect 2?).

Of course, there is a darker side to all of this. Use of aggressive, criminal and/or violent fantasies as solutions to real-life problems were reported by "a few" of the players.

The Daily Mail focused on one particular 15-year-old who said that "sometimes" he wants to be able to get a gun and "shoot down" people. "Irritating people", mind you.

"A recurring trend suggests that intensive gaming may lead to negative psychological, emotional or behavioural consequences," concluded report author professor Mark Griffiths, "with enormous implications for software developers, parents, policy makers and mental health professionals."

This research is being followed up by a study of 2000 gamers.

The Game Transfer Phenomena report hits headlines a day after Grand Theft Auto was linked to a shooting spree and eventually a murder onboard a Royal Navy submarine.

Video: What a useful tool the Gravity Gun would be.

Code possibly belonging to Half-Life 2: Episode 3 has been spotted in the leaked beta client for Dota 2.

The lines of code are for something called "ep3". Take a leap and transform that to Episode 3, and the code suggests the project lives on.

Not only that, we're also given an insight into some weaponry - an ice gun, a flamethrower and a "weaponizer".

/src/game/server/ep3/weapon_icegun.cpp
/src/game/server/ep3/weaponizer_concrete.cpp
/src/game/server/ep3/weaponizer_liquid.cpp
/src/game/server/ep3/weaponizer_metal.cpp
/src/game/server/ep3/weapon_flamethrower.cpp

Half-Life 2 was released in 2004; Episode 1 in 2006; Episode 2 in 2007.

Four years and many Valve games - Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 2 - have passed since. And now Valve concentrates on Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

The absence of Half-Life 2: Episode 3 from Valve press releases, coupled with suggestions that the runaway success of Steam may have impeded Valve's game development, have led many to give up hope.

Has the boat sailed for Episode 3? Should Valve instead concentrate on Half-Life 3?

The Dota 2 beta client link comes from Vietnam. Lambda Generation has rounded up the data mined from the leak.

Video: Half-Life 2: Episode 2.

Quake mod Team Fortress launched 15 years ago today. To celebrate, Valve is giving anyone who plays Team Fortress 2 today a goody bag of TF2 swag.

What do you get? A free hat, naturally - of the party variety. A free noisemaker - which you can use as much as you like today and then not again for another year. Plus free cake and gifts (remodelled health kits and ammo packs).

Valve has also turned on Birthday mode - meaning levels get a "Happy Birthday Team Fortress" beach ball.

The Celebration Gib is also active, which turns exploded players' blood and guts into showers of balloons and confetti.

Team Fortress, a mod for id Software classic Quake, was followed by Team Fortress 2 in 2007. Valve has been tinkering with it ever since, and earlier this year made it free-to-play.

Garry's Mod has passed the one million downloads mark, six years after it was first made public.

"This is a pretty big deal for me considering this all started off as a tiny tiny modification about six years ago," wrote creator Garry Newman on his blog. "This is more than I could have ever expected or wished for!"

Newman added that he had hoped to have a "big secret update" ready for when the milestone was passed, but it's running behind schedule.

"Anyway – thanks to everyone that's contributed to Garry's Mod – whether that be directly by dedicating your time to creating new content for other players or indirectly by playing and enjoying all that Garry's Mod has to offer!"

Garry's Mod is a physics sandbox 'game' modded from Half-Life 2. The $10 download lets you manipulate and mess around with objects and characters from most Source-powered Valve games.

After a no-show at E3 last week, Portal 2 maker Valve has confirmed it will present at August's show gamescom.

Valve joins Capcom and Sega on the list of attendees, according to a Go Nintendo report.

But what, exactly, will Valve present?

More information on DOTA 2, Valve's only currently confirmed project, is widely anticipated.

DOTA is a custom scenario built for Warcraft III using the game's world editor. The idea is to destroy the opposing teams' Ancient boss using a squad of hero units, which can be levelled up and decked out in better gear throughout the course of the battle.

Valve's gamescom presence may, however, feature an announcement regarding downloadable content for superb first-person puzzler Portal 2.

And then, whisper it, there's always Half-Life 3.

gamescom runs from 17th to 21st August.

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Steam today represents a billion-dollar operation staffed by hundreds. But has the platform's meteoric rise restricted Valve's capacity to actually create games?

We haven't had a proper Valve-bred IP since The Orange Box games Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode 2 arrived more than three years ago.

Brad Wardell - leader of Stardock, the company behind Steam rival Impulse - drew on personal experience to argue that yes, Steam's success has "definitely had an effect" on Valve as a game maker.

"Even though Valve is in Seattle, where you can get developers everywhere, [Steam's] had an effect on their own development schedule. There's not been a new Half-Life in a long time; a lot of people have complained about that," Wardell explained to IndustryGamers.

"[Valve has] had their own challenges getting new titles out the door, and a big part of that I'm sure is the same problems we've had. When one of your groups is so ridiculously profitable, every business instinct you have is to throw all your best people at it, because that's what's making the money. That's just sound business. At the end of the day, again you have decide if that's what you want to do.

"Steam and Valve - of the companies out there I would say we're the most similar. Obviously they're bigger and far more successful than our games unit is, but culturally they're pretty similar. If you were to look at a time-line of games developed in-house by Valve – not developed externally and then acquired – and you look at before Steam and after Steam, it's definitely had an effect," he added.

"I don't argue that that's a good thing or bad thing, but I do know the effect that's had on us, where I've had to put some of my top developers over the years onto Impulse to make sure it was getting better and better."

Since the 2007 release of Half-Life 2: Episode 2 and Team Fortress 2, Valve has launched Portal, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2 and Alien Swarm. Portal 2 is imminent and DOTA2 (Defense of the Ancients 2) has been announced with a tentative 2011 date.

Look at those games again:

• Portal was created by a group of students Valve went on to hire.
• Left 4 Dead was created by a developer Valve went on to hire.
• Alien Swarm was developed by a mod team Valve went on to hire.
• DOTA2 (Defense of the Ancients) is being created by a modder Valve has hired.

What happened to Half-Life 2: Episode 3, Valve? And more importantly, is there a Half-Life 3? There are few announcement platforms on the scale E3 this summer. Is it Valve's turn this year? Maybe, just maybe.

Video: Half-Life 2: Episode 2 - the last Valve thoroughbred.

Garry Newman set a trap within Garry's Mod to expose people pirating his work.

"Anyone unable to shade polygon normals?" asked Newman on Twitter.

Hours later he added: "Just enabled this error in GMod today. It happens when you pirated it. Having fun watching people complain."

A search for "unable to shade polygon normals" turns up plenty of results on Google.

There are even pirates asking for help dealing with the error on the official Garry's Mod forum.

The best part about the pirate-catching error code is that the naughty user's Steam ID is posted within it. When they reproduce the code on a forum asking for help, Newman can cross-check the code against legitimate purchases and hoof the pirates out.

Garry's Mod, a physics sandbox, started as a Half-Life 2 mod. The $10 download now works with most Source-powered Valve games, allowing the objects and characters of the world to be spawned, manipulated and played with.

On Valve's website sits a profile page, and on that profile page sits an entry for Left 4 Dead writer Chet Faliszek. It reads: "We are all still trying to figure out exactly what it is that Chet does at Valve, but at the very least he occupies office space on the 11th floor as self-proclaimed Mr. Awesome."

Mr. Awesome? Where does that come from?

"So our old HR person wrote that for me, and it was the example of a really bad profile to put up," Mr. Awesome told Eurogamer. "Then she wouldn't let me change it."

"The day of Half-Life: Episode 1," he continued, "that's where it came from. They were handing out recognition for Episode 1. No one knew what to say, so the first three or four people fumbled around. I just went up and I thanked myself for being awesome.

"Then other people who didn't know what to say just thanked me for being awesome."

So, what does Mr. Awesome do, apart from co-write alongside Erik Wolpaw on games such as Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal, Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2 and the upcoming Portal 2?

"That description came after Half-Life: Episode 1. A lot of people didn't understand the part I played in that, with the response rules speech, which is on the fly speech.

"It was semi-accurate at the time. Now people know what I do. I walk around the hall with my iron fist, keeping people in line."

The Mr. Awesome description has been on Valve's website for five years. "I have to re-write it," Mr. Awesome said. "We don't even have an 11th floor anymore. We've moved buildings. But I don't want people to be able to find me."

Faliszek and writing partner Erik Wolpaw have been with Valve for six-and-a-half years. The duo, who grew up together, were hired after bumping into Valve through their website Old Man Murray.

"Out of the blue, in 2004, Gabe [Newell, Valve boss] just emailed us and said, do you want to come work for Valve?" Faliszek revealed.

"Gabe's initial email really was one line. We asked, can you explain more? "No. Just come out."

"I figured, what the hell," Wolpaw added. "We were just like, we'll just give it a shot and see what it's like. Seven years later, it's fine."

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