People pay thousands of dollars to hobnob with their fellow captains of the video game industry here at the DICE Summit just outside of Las Vegas. Or they call themselves a gaming journalist (that's editor-in-chief to you!) and attend for free.

And when you register, they give you a bag of stuff. A bag of nonsense, really. Take a look.

Todd Howard, the game director for Bethesda Game Studios (The Elder Scrolls, Fallout) is the keynote speaker opening the D.I.C.E. Summit, the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' annual conclave in Las Vegas at 9:30 EST. Howard's address, whose livestream, courtesy of GameSpot, is embedded below, will cover "Why We Create, Why We Play."

Update: Well, looks like GameSpot isn't embedding its livestream of this event. Instead, we hope you will enjoy this liveblog from Kotaku's Stephen Totilo.

GameSpot's livestream coverage will continue throughout D.I.C.E. (where Kotaku editor-in-chief Stephen Totilo will be reporting throughout the week). Tomorrow, the 15th Annual Interactie Achievement Awards—video gaming's closest approximation to the Oscars—will be broadcast tomorrow at 10:30 p.m. EST, hosted by comedian and actor Jay Mohr.

Tim Schafer, an adventure game legend for his days working on old Lucasarts titles, has just put his Double Fine studio to work on a Kickstarter project. To "make an old-school graphic adventure". Oh boy.

I say OH BOY because not only would Schafer - whose adventure gaming credits include Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango and Full Throttle - be involved, but so too would Ron Gilbert, the creator of Monkey Island and Maniac Mansion.

There's no name or anything for the project yet, just a working title of Double Fine Adventure. Along with the game itself, there'll also be a documentary filmed about its development, which will be done by the stylish team at 2 Player Productions.

Check out the announcement trailer below, with a link to where you can contribute to the project below that. Note the Kickstarter page doesn't list all the perks for investing: if you're flush with cash, try these on for size:

Pledge $15,000 or more:
Dinner with Tim Schafer and key members of the dev team.

Pledge $20,000 or more:
Dinner and BOWLING with Tim Schafer and key members of the dev team.

Pledge $30,000 or more:
Picture of Ron Gilbert smiling.

Pledge $35,000 or more:
Undoctored picture of Ron Gilbert smiling.

Pledge $50,000 or more:
Become an actual character in the game.

Pledge $150,000 or more:
Tim Schafer (that's me) will give last four remaining Triangle Boxed Day of the Tentacles, in original shrink-wrap." (Limit of 1) (Holy crap, what am I thinking? I only have four of those!)

If it takes more than a week to reach that $400,000 goal, I'll be very surprised.

Double Fine Adventure [Kickstarter]

Yesterday we posted an interview with former America's Next Top Model winner Adrianne Curry, in which she tried to sell Stephen Totilo on her new pheromone fragrance Erox. In the end, though, we mainly talked about armpits.

Curry is an avowed gamer and fan of World of Warcraft, and so in the second part of this interview, Stephen talks to her about the new Mists of Pandaria expansion, her guild "The Legion of Derp" and the difficulties of balancing work and gaming.

No armpits, this time. We swear.

Republished from Rock, Paper Shotgun.

What do you own? Looking through my possessions, I feel fairly comfortable that the food in my fridge belongs to me. And I have an odd confidence that the hardware in my PC is mine. But the books on my shelves? I seem to have very little rights over them. The CDs stacked up in a cupboard (remember CDs?) certainly aren't my property. And the software on my computer may as well be tied to a long piece of elastic, just waiting for the publishers to give it a tug. You own a license. But a license for what?

This lack of ownership becomes even more concerning when it comes to the digital space, at which point our rights to anything become extremely ambiguous. And that's something that can bite you hard on the bum, when places like Steam seem to reserve the right to ban you from your account, and not even tell you why they did it. Below is the story of one RPS reader who says he lost access to his entire Steam collection, and thoughts from game lawyer Jas Purewal on whether we really own any game we buy.

We've heard some very stupid banning stories from EA, and as many as we've reported, we've heard dozens more. But the odd thing is, EA tends to tell the bannee what ridiculous reason they've assigned. That's something RPS reader ‘gimperial' alleges he discovered Valve wouldn't, after he had his account banned. An account that had over 250 games, with well over £1000 spent.

Gimperial's case wasn't clear-cut. He's in Russia, and openly admits that he's gifted games to people in exchange for money, to help them get them cheaper. Not frequently, and it's certainly not something Valve could have known he had done when they banned him. And he states that he mostly gifted games for free, just as a favour. He acknowledges that gifting in exchange for a financial payment is against Valve's TOS, and doesn't protest innocence. But the strange thing is, while Valve wouldn't tell him what he did to receive the ban, he says they did tell him that it wasn't because of gifting.

Instead he received a message informing him he'd violated Valve's Steam Service Agreement (SSA). Questioning what aspect of this he'd violated, as he could find nothing he'd done that matched up, he received a response with just a copy and paste of the exact same SSA, and the news that,

"We will not be able to help you further with this issue."

They then ignored tickets he sent, trying to get clarification. Attempts by him and his friends to contact Valve directly, including emailing Gabe Newell, also didn't receive replies.

Oddly, gimperial had his account suspended over Christmas because Valve were concerned it had been hacked. Once he assured them it had not, and he was the one purchasing, they apologised and reopened his account, telling him – says gimperial – that they would put a note on his account to prevents its being suspended again. gimperial claims they told him,

"If you are going to make large amount of purchases again, please reply to this ticket so there are no issues with your account in the future."

And replied,

"I will make a note of it on your account."

You can read the full exchange here.

Because Valve cannot have known that gimperial had gifted in exchange for cash (and he insists that most of the time it was genuinely as a gift, and often just in exchange for a beer), that cannot be the reason for the ban. And if it had been their suspicion that he was doing something like this, the normal practice is to issue a warning, not to just shut off the account. And it's especially of note that gifting for money is not mentioned in the SSA.

On Sunday I emailed Valve to ask about this case, drawing their attention to the forum thread, and to ask what their policy is for issuing bans to accounts.

"Is it Valve's policy to refuse to explain to customers why their accounts have been banned?

Does Valve think it reasonable to permanently withhold access to a customer's purchases without offering the appropriate refund?"

As of Tuesday lunchtime, I have still not had a reply. However, late yesterday, gimperial received an email from the Valve tech support op who had told him they wouldn't help him any further, saying they would be looking into his case once more. And this morning, gimperial has found that his account has been restored, with access to his 250+ games returned. However, he has had his trading privileges permanently suspended.

Well, suspended until 2022, it seems. So gimperial won't be sending out gifts any more.

So this story has a sort of happy ending, and gimperial would be the first to say that this result is fair. Clearly there's confusion, gimperial saying that Valve previously explained that his gifting was fine. The ambiguity is unhelpful, and certainly a cause for concern from any philanthropic sorts who might take it upon themselves to do something lovely like buy a game for everyone on their friends list. The idea that just the suspicion that extensive gifting is enough to have you account banned without explanation, isn't one that sits comfortably. And hopefully Valve will soon get back to us with answers to the questions we've asked.

It's also worth noting that had Valve not chosen to get back to gimperial, which only happened after we'd contacted them (although of course this could be a pure coincidence), he'd be stuck, and have nowhere to go but lawyers. When Steam's meagre customer support refuses to respond, there's no phone number to call (the one that exists redirects you back to email), no manager you can reach. You're just shut out, seemingly unless you can cause enough fuss on the internet.

Once again drives home a crucial thing to understand. You do not own your games. Whether bought through Steam, Origin, or any other digital download service that requires a live account to play them, you are at best renting those games, with no guarantee that you'll be able to continue to do so. And those bans can be issued without a stated or proven reason – it's in the agreements you click "Agree" to when you sign up an account, or buy a new game.

But is that legal? I asked gamer lawyer Jas Purewal about this a short while back, not specifically about Valve, and he explained that the matter is still unresolved. "In fact," he says, "it's never been completely resolved for software generally – at best, we have some guidance to follow." But he explains that the commonly taken position is that when we buy a boxed game, we own the DVD, but only have a license for the software on it. "A ‘licence'," Purewal explains, "is essentially a limited personal right to use the software on certain terms and conditions – it doesn't give you the right to e.g. sell/transfer/copy/reproduce the software."

Of course, when we have a physical object, we do just about have the right to sell it second hand (something publishers are of course doing their best to scupper, taking away perhaps even the vestiges of ownership that we have of the plastic). But in the world of the digital, that right is obviously absent too. And indeed this comes with the ability to cut off your access to the game, even though you paid for it. Purewal says this adds even more focus onto the licenses that come with the games, usually the EULA. And where does that leave us?

"Is a EULA subject to consumer protection law? Yes. Has that been tested in a court yet? No, although as a very broad summary it requires a company who sells to consumers to act ‘reasonably' towards its customers. Nor have governments/regulators definitively stated their position regarding consumer protection regarding digital content yet (though that is already beginning to change, certainly within the UK/Europe). So we don't know the exact extent of consumer protection law regarding games – although developers/publishers generally do try to comply with the law insofar as they are able."

But when it comes to answers, there are few. Pointing out that consumers tend to want to actually own something, Purewal also points out that publishers are pushing ever harder in the other direction.

"All this could have a big impact on the ‘ownership' question. Would gamers care about ‘owning' a game if they had very reliable, maybe cloud-based gaming controlled by rules that they understand? Would a publisher? If a publisher gives a gamer a right to return or exchange a digital game via a fair system that the publisher controls, would it really matter to gamers that they can't sell the game through any other means?"

Of course, in the case of Steam, or any of its counterparts, this is a somewhat different situation. Steam isn't a publisher, it's a shop. This is the equivalent of being suspected of shoplifting from a GAME/GameStop, and having an employee come to your house and remove your entire gaming collection from your shelves. Individual publishers of the purchased games aren't consulted for a Steam ban. This is Valve overriding all those individual licenses with their own, and removing access to your purchased goods. And, despite there being no legal position yet known, that doesn't seem right at all.

It's a little frustrating to realise that the answers to every question are, at this point, "We don't know." Can Valve legally ban you from accessing thousands of pounds worth of games you've purchased? We don't know. Can EA really stop you from playing online games because you said a swear on their forum? We don't know. And infuriatingly, the only way we're ever going to find out is when it happens to someone rich/supported enough to take it to court. In the meantime, it seems that publishers are taking advantage of the ambiguity to write their own laws in the form of EULAs and other agreements, whether they could survive the test of a court or not. And that's always worth bearing in mind when you consider what you actually own.

PS. We held this story back a day to give Valve a second chance to respond to our questions, but once again replies came there none.

The Killzone official Twitter feed today said the PlayStation Network release of the original Killzone has been indefinitely delayed. It had been scheduled for a Jan. 24 release. [h/t LulzJager]

This Wednesday edition of Kotaku's The Moneysaver catches all the offers, promotions and bargains that can't wait until the weekend. The Midweek Moneysaver is brought to you by Dealzon.

Software

• Tuesday's release The Darkness 2 (PC Download) is $37.99 from Green Man Gaming. Normally $50. Best offer for the Xbox 360 and PS3 is $59.99 plus $10 credit from Amazon. [Dealzon]

• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (PC Download) is $39.99 on Steam. Normally $60. [Dealzon]

• Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception Collector's Edition (PS3) is $64.99, free shipping from Best Buy. Next best is $100. [Dealzon]

• Battlefield 3 (360, PS3, PC) is $39.99, free shipping from NewEgg. Next best is $51. [Dealzon]

• Dynasty Warriors 7 (360, PS3) is $39.99, free shipping from Amazon and NewEgg. Next bests are $43 and $48. [Dealzon]

• NBA 2K12 (360, PS3) is $39.99, free shipping from Kmart. Next best is $53. [Dealzon]

• Ace Combat: Assault Horizon (360) is $29.99, free shipping from Amazon. Next best is $37. [Dealzon]

• Portal 2 (PS3, PC) is $27.99, free shipping from NewEgg. Next bests are $32 and $29. [Dealzon]

• Operation Flashpoint: Red River (360, PS3, PC) are $22.69, $22.98, and $10.39 from Amazon. Next bests are $32, $37, and $20. [Dealzon]

• Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster for Kinect (360) is $14.99 from ToysRus. Next best is $30. [Dealzon]

• Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (DS) is $14.83 from Amazon. Normally $40. [Dealzon]

• Bulletstorm (PC) is $7.13 from Amazon. Next best is $13. [Dealzon]

• Tropico Trilogy (Tropico 3, Tropico Reloaded, Tropico 3: Absolute Power) PC download is $4.99 from Amazon. Next best is $20. [Dealzon]

• Dungeons and Dungeons: The Dark Lord (PC downloads) are each $4.99 from Amazon. Next bests are $20 and $30. [Dealzon]

• Disciples III - Resurrection (PC download) is $4.99 from Amazon. Next best is $30. [Dealzon]

Hardware

• Xbox 360 Kinect Sensor with Kinect Adventures, Gunstringer and Fruit Ninja Kinect back down to $99.99, free shipping from Amazon, after about a month at $130. The cheapest refurbished Kinect sensor is $79.99, free shipping from Microsoft. [Dealzon]

• Xbox 360 Live 12-Month Gold Subscription Card is still $35.99, free shipping from Microsoft. Next best is $40. [Dealzon]

• Xbox 360 250GB Holiday Kinect Bundle with Kinect Adventures, Carnival, and 3 months Xbox LIVE is $349.99, free shipping from Amazon. Next best is $400. [Dealzon]

• Xbox 360 Chatpad with Headset is $16.99, free shipping from eBay Deals. Next best is $22. [Dealzon]

• Samsung 24-inch T24A550 1080p 2ms LED HDTV/Monitor (Refurbished) is $219.99, free shipping from eBay Deals. Next best is $261. [Dealzon]

• Asus 23.6-inch VE247H 1080p 2ms LED Monitor is $149.99, free shipping from NewEgg. Next best is $178. [Dealzon]

• Samsung 23-inch C23A750X 1080p 2ms LED Monitor with Wireless Docking Station (Refurbished) is $199, free shipping from Buy.com. Next best is $220. [Dealzon]

• HP Elite HPE-h9se desktop with Six Core i7-3960X, GeForce GTX 550 Ti 1GB, 10GB RAM, 160GB SSD, Liquid Cooling, Blu-ray is $2,149.99, free shipping from HP. That's cheapest ever by $150. [Dealzon]

• HP Elite HPE-h8qe desktop got a processor upgrade from Quad Core i7-950 to Quad Core i7-3820, a graphics upgrade from Radeon 6570 to Radeon HD 7570, and a RAM upgrade from 10GB 1333MHz to 10GB 1600MHz. The price is $1,049.99 after $50 coupon code. [Dealzon]

• HP Elite HPE-h8z desktop got a graphics upgrade from Radeon HD 6570 to Radeon HD 7570. With Eight Core AMD FX-8100, 8GB RAM, and Blu-ray the price is $719.99, which is $45 cheaper than last week with previous GPU. [Dealzon]

As always, smart gamers can find values any day of the week, so if you've run across a deal, share it with us in the comments.

Elegant Portraits for a More Civilized Age | Terry Fan has released more of his Victorian-era portraits of Star Wars characters. C-3PO and Yoda also have posed. The portraits are available for sale. (Terry Fan, via Neatorama)

A Follow-Up with David Jaffe About that Oral Sex Remark

In a promotional video interview that went live on February 6th, David Jaffe included a statement that I and others found objectionable. So I objected. After the piece ran, Jaffe reached out to me through Twitter and we agreed to schedule a call. Yesterday evening, we spoke about the issue by phone for roughly half an hour. More »

Game Developer Sentenced to Death in Iran Asks Obama for Intervention

Amir Hekmati, the U.S.-born game developer sentenced to death in Iran for allegedly engaging in espionage for the CIA, has asked the Obama administration to do whatever it takes, including a prisoner-transfer, to save him from execution. More »

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Leveled Up Considerably During the Review Process

Now that we've put the ever-questing of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning through its paces, it's time to see how it fared in the face of the assembled game critics. As far as I can deduce, it's either horrible or the best thing ever. More »

Real Life Gotham City Impostors Looks More Entertaining Than the Game

Whoa there, viral marketeers! You have to be careful not to overshadow your product with the promotion, as these lovely shots of everyday people dressing up in Gotham City Impostors garb readily demonstrate. More »

The Rules of Religion, and Why The Next One Just Might Be a Game

The things that make us reconsider who we are and what we believe in are often bizarre, random, coincidental; sometimes completely unremarkable save for the sudden realization that concusses you. Lately, things I've been reading and playing have coalesced into a divine cognizance for me. I've been reconsidering my faith. More »

What? Battleship Is Evolving... Into A First-Person Shooter?

Battleship was once a strategic board game in which players had to guess where their opponents had placed their war ships. This summer, it will be an action-packed movie in which ships blow each other up. And this May, publisher Activision said today, it will be a video game in which you shoot people. More »

This Stylish Supernatural iOS Adventure is So Damned Good It's Dangerous

A woman is in peril! Unbeknownst to her, a killer is leaning out from the shadows, murder weapon at the ready, and only one man can save the day. Just one problem—her potential savior is a ghost, invisible and intangible. Guess it's time to get creative. More »

In a promotional video interview that went live on February 6th, David Jaffe included a statement that I and others found objectionable. So I objected. After the piece ran, Jaffe reached out to me through Twitter and we agreed to schedule a call. Yesterday evening, we spoke about the issue by phone for roughly half an hour.

Although I took exception with his original statement and some of his Twitter-based defense, I didn't (and don't) feel that Jaffe was some himself some kind of villain, and tried to make a point of not calling him such. Even the absolute best, most socially-conscious and self-aware of us (which I do not claim to be) can still screw up and stick a foot firmly into mouth on occasion. It's human nature: we all have our innate points of view and learning to consider widely divergent perspectives as often as possible is really extraordinarily hard work.

The important thing is to do the hard work.

During our talk, Jaffe and I went back and forth for quite a while, unpacking the original statement, discussing how editing plays into perception in a video, and discussing the problems of intent vs. outcome.

Although in the end we mainly agreed to disagree, it was still a productive chat. He stressed repeatedly, and passionately, that his intent was not to harm and although it does not change my position, I believe him:

Well, let me tell you my position. The reason I even wanted to do the call — obviously, you know, it was hurtful, when I saw this — there's this line you wrote where you talk about, the issue is that to be a misogynist or a sexist you don't have to be so overt, it's the thoughtlessness.

That strikes home with me because I have a brother who's gay, and I grew up in the 80s, and it was very common for us to say, "that's gay." Never meant homosexual, never entered my mind, and it wasn't until probably ten years ago that I was like, "Oh my God! I didn't even realize what I'm doing." That if you're still using that term, even though, yes, you don't mean it, as a knock against people who are homosexuals, the very nature of you allowing this to be in the culture and you associating that word that also means homosexual with something that's crappy or bad or dumb or whatever, is perpetuating a really harmful and bad and frankly not even true stereotype.

And so I get that, and that's why I'm like... Even, the word — you know, I don't even like saying it, B-I-T-C-H, I won't let my kids say it... it means something. I've said it — look, I've said it in the press, I've said it accidentally, ‘cause it's so ingrained, just like, "guys, what up," you know, like that, and I felt terrible about it! So I totally see where you're coming from with that. And so I'm very aware of those things and I definitely don't want to be the person out there doing that.

We did ultimately agree on something, and that was this: that even if women are a minority demographic for a particular game title, they are still a demographic, and should be taken into account. "That wasn't coming from a place that ‘only men can game,'" Jaffe explained, "it was more, you know, that's who I was speaking to. But I can see how that's problematic, given that I really should have been thinking more about the entire realm of gamers."

If you want, you can buy your college term-papers. This has been true for as long as there have been academic institutions—some students just don't want to deal with the agony and all-nighters required to pull together a massive paper. They'd rather be socializing than sitting in front of a computer, bleary-eyed, cranking out half-coherent paragraphs about a topic they barely understand.

Fortunately for them there is A Website For That. A whole cottage industry, in fact, made up of unscrupulous academics and grad students who are willing to anonymously write papers for anyone willing to pay. These mercenaries will write about anything: Math, science, humanities, and even, as it turns out, video games.

After learning about a particularly brazen "buy your college papers" website called "Unemployed Professors", the jokers over at the video game site Unwinnable decided it would be fun to see if they could actually hire someone from the site to write then a paper about video games.

They sent in Brian Daly's comic "A Brief history of Storytelling in Videogames" with the request that someone write a paper about it. Soon enough, they had a bid, from one anonymous "Professor Rogue."

The paper he came up with is… not terrible, actually! Though it does call Police Quest an "RPG." You can read the whole thing if you want to; it contains such gems as:

"Subsequent to this chronological tracing of the evolution of narrative in videogames, the essay concludes by examining psychological literature demonstrating humanity's preference to think and act through narratives."

and

"In Oblivion, the user controls the narrative, inasmuch as initial choices, made when constructing the player's character, and then at salient plot points throughout the game, actually change the story line, and thus the narrative itself."

I dunno, that actually does read like a college term paper to me. Not a particularly interesting one, but hey, it's a college term-paper! It's not supposed to be interesting!

Professor Rogue really brings it home in the conclusion:

Moving to clinical psychology, Murray thus proposes that the narrative approach to psychology, at base, flows from the premise that "human beings are natural storytellers and that the exchange of stories permeates our everyday social interaction."3 On the basis of this then, it is logical to conclude that the increasing sophistication of narratives is likely to increase videogames' market share, popularity and reach. If human beings are indeed natural storytellers, and if the stories that govern our games continue to evolve, new individuals might be drawn into the realm of gaming, and with this, the industry is likely to expand.

Preach it! Heh.

Just goes to show, you really can hire someone to write about just about anything. Maybe the next time the illustrious Professor Bogost is behind on an essay or book, he can just get in touch with the folks at this website.

An Academic History of Storytelling in Videogames [Unwinnable]