Life imitates art, even in video games.

While the Internet release of a new trailer for “Grand Theft Auto IV,” the next in the wildly popular murder-and-mayhem series from Take-Two’s Rockstar studio, had game fans in a frenzy, the company generated a completely different kind of buzz at a hotel in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District.

That’s where investors were finally having their way with Take-Two, which is known for sending parents into fits over violent, criminal and sexual content in their games.

The suits gave the Manhattan video game maker a real dressing down, in fact, knocking out the board and tossing its chief executive, ending years of frustration over losses, mismanagement and legal problems.

Meanwhile, the next chapter of the “Grand Theft Auto” saga is due in October and a newly released trailer has some wondering if its Russian-accented star is hinting toward the future when he says: “Life is complicated. I killed people. Smuggled people. Sold people. Perhaps here things will be different.”

Like, maybe he’ll take a job in a hedge fund? 

(Photo: Handout/Take-Two) 
        

As a new generation of U.S. war veterans returns home, organizations aimed at helping injured troops and their families are turning to the Web to get their message out.

Among those are Operation Homefront, which helps military families with emergency financial support including food, baby items and car repairs, and the Wounded Warrior Project, which provides programs and services to severely injured service members.

Those on the front lines of helping to heal the physical and mental wounds of the country’s newest veterans say they have much to learn and to gain from MySpace, YouTube and even Microsoft’s Xbox Live online gaming service, which each connect millions of like-minded users with the latest Web technology.

The Coming Home Project’s Joseph Bobrow, whose group offers support and stress management workshops for veterans and their families, is based in the epicenter of Web 2.0. He’s looking to help overcome soldiers’ post-homecoming isolation by offering them an online way to meet and communicate with others in the same situation.

Dr. Larry Albers, chief of mental health at the VA Medical Center in Long Beach, California, says young soldiers grap pling with the psychological trauma of war are not big fans of group therapy, but they are very computer savvy. Many soldiers use e-mail and Web-enabled video phone services to stay in touch with family at home.

“They are much more comfortable on MySpace than on my couch,” he said.

(Photo: Reuters/Jorge Silva)
Updates with link to Coming Home Project

Sony is giving gamers a chance to use the power of their new PlayStation 3 video game consoles to save lives — as well as to slay virtual soldiers, enemies, aliens and dragons.

The Japanese video game giant on Thursday said PS3 owners can soon hook up with Stanford University’s Folding@home program, a distributed computing project that connects thousands of machines when they are otherwise unused to assist in scientific research.

Folding@home helps researchers analyze data to find treatments for diseases from Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease to cystic fibrosis and many cancers. “Our ultimate goal is to come up with an understanding of Alzheimer’s disease,” Vijay Pande, an assistant chemistry professor and Folding@home project lead, told Reuters.

“My goal is to push as far as we can with Alzheimer’s at the moment rather than to dabble in lots of little things,” he said.
   
Folding@home targets the complex process of protein folding and misfolding — simulations that can take up to 30 years for a single computer to complete.
   
“This console can run our calculations about 20 times faster than a typical PC. You can’t put a price on that,” said Pande, who added that the beefed up power from the PS3’s Cell processor promises to collapse two years of data crunching to about one month.
   
Pande said teaming up with a video game company was not a huge stretch. As a high school student he helped start Naughty Dog, a computer game company that made “Crash Bandicoot” and sold to Sony after he had moved on.
    
PS3 owners can connect to Folding@home at the end of March, when the company releases a new system update for the console.
   
Richard Marks, senior researcher at Sony Computer Entertainment America, said gamers who sign up will have access to a world map with yellow lights representing other PS3 owners participating in the effort. “It makes you feel part of a much bigger thing,” he said.

Electronics Arts is investing in online gaming, but Chief Executive Larry Probst said on Monday not to expect the world’s biggest video game publisher to emulate Second Life’s virtual world.

“Second Life is a pretty adult product with some unusual adult content. We are not going to go there,” Probst said at an investor conference in San Francisco on Monday.

Play on Second Life, from San Francisco’s Linden Lab, has a lot in common with “The Sims,” one of EA’s best-selling game franchises. Players in both virtual worlds build characters, known as avatars, who own virtual property, erect homes and conduct online lives.

That’s about where the similarities end.

While scrappy Sims players can build, share and apply homemade nude “skins” to characters and have them rub together like kids play with Barbie and Ken, Second Life players don’t stop at heavy petting.

Second Life, which is open to the 18 and older crowd, boasts red-light sections and gives players free rein to endow avatars with a cornucopia of private parts and to have them engage in adult activities that would make the traditional video game industry’s rating agency apoplectic.

Update: How crazy does it really get in Second Life. Click here for a dispatch from Reuters’ bureau in SL.  

Second Life Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/22451128@N0 0/411725442
 

Larry Probst, head of Electronic Arts — the world’s biggest video game publisher and maker of “Madden” and “The Sims” — dropped a couple of surprise facts at the Reuters Media Summit in New York.

• He reads, really.
  “I read a lot of magazines,” including Time, Newsweek, Vanity Fair … and even, sometimes, his wifes Town & Country.
• He doesn’t hate used games — anymore.
  “We used to look at that phenomenon as something that was potentially detrimental to our business. Now, we’re thinking about finding a way to monetize that business (by selling additional downloadable content for used games) as opposed to resisting it because it’s not going away.”
• He has never tried “Second Life“.
• He doesn’t think video game stores are going the way of record stores.
  “I don’t have the same concern about our retailers going away in the short term as people do in the record business.”
• When his kids were younger, he couldn’t keep them from playing “Grand Theft Auto” either — though he tried.
  “They had already gotten their hands on it some other way.”

Here’s our EA coverage from the summit.

Sony’s new PlayStation 3 video game console is bringing more married couples together this holiday shopping season — Just not for the reasons one would expect.
 
“We are interviewing shoppers and a lot of husbands said they will shop with wives because they are concerned about crime and violence surrounding the PlayStation 3,” Britt Beemer, founder of America’s Research Group, told Reuters.
 
The PS3 debuted on Nov. 17 to big U.S. crowds eager to be among the first to put their hands on the long-awaited and very limited supplies of new machines from the world’s leading console maker. The launch was marred by violence when bandits shot a man waiting in line at a Connecticut Wal-Mart after he refused to hand over his cash.

Following the shooting, Sony issued a statement calling the attack an isolated incident.

“There are two or three times more men out today,” said Beemer, whose firm specializes in consumer behavior marketing.

(Reporting by Aarthi Sivaraman; Photo by Reuters)
 

                                                  
Do Sony’s chess billboard ads for the newly launched PlayStation 3 console – the ones that feature a beheaded king – leave you stumped?

You aren’t the only one, so during this week’s blizzard of launch-related Sony executive interviews we asked Jack Tretton, co-chief operating officer of Sony Computer Entertainment America to enlighten us.
 
Confused? You’re supposed to be, Tretton said: “A lot of initial ads are designed to make people ask, ‘What’s up with that?’”

The consensus among fans: Mission accomplished.
 
The PS3 chess ad is the ultimate check mate, the ultimate game over statement, he said. “It’s hard-core game on. Game over.”
 
Globally, Sony has shipped 106 million+ PlayStation 2 units so far, nabbing 70 percent of the of the worldwide console market. But does that mean Sony is destined to inherit the throne in its three-way console war with Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Nintendo’s Wii?

Tretton doesn’t agree with analysts who predict that Sony will retain the crown but lose its iron grip over its domain.

The consensus: Until it is game over, game on!
 

Video game fans by the thousands have mobbed stores from New York to Los Angeles — all for a chance be among the first in the U.S. to snatch Sony’s long-awaited, $600 PlayStation 3 console.

This year’s crowds are among the biggest yet to camp out ahead of a video game console launch, reflecting the industry’s growing impact and enthusiasts’ desire to make a quick buck on eBay. Systems are already being auctioned for nearly triple the retail price.

At San Francisco’s Metreon, home to the Sony Style retail store and site of the West Coast PS3 launch party, 750 people formed lines that stretched for blocks. Sony handed out burritos to the devotees, some of whom camped out for days ahead of the launch. A PlayStation spokeswoman hinted that that wasn’t the best of it: “Let’s just say everybody’s going to go home happy.”

San Francisco college student Joshua Motta, who was No. 2 in line at the Metreon party, said he’s debating whether to keep his PS3: “I could go to Best Buy to sell it. But I’m worried about getting jumped.”

Mark MacDonald, director of Gamevideos.com, predicted an even bigger mob for Sunday’s launch of Nintendo’s Wii console — which costs $250 and comes with a pair of one-hand controllers that lets gamers simulate on-screen action, whether it’s making racing school buses summersault off ramps or wielding a sword.

Let the battle begin.

Click here for Reuters’ coverage of the scene. YouTube videos from the Japan PS3, where things got out of hand can be found here.

“Grand Theft Auto” video game maker Rockstar is breaking new ground with boy-on-boy kissing its new schoolyard brawling title “Bully.”

While not the first game to include same-sex make out sessions, Bully is in the vanguard of titles tackling the subject matter.

It’s a risky bet for the Take-Two Interactive Software Inc.-owned studio known for its violent and wildly popular games — and for failing to disclose an explicit heterosexual sex scene in “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.” 

Readers of GayGamer.net – which bills itself a site “for boys who like boys who like joysticks” – have been bullish on “Bully.”

In the game, 15-year-old Jimmy Hopkins, the main character, can be made to smooch other boys at his fictional boarding school. 

A blond schoolboy in the game uses this pick-up line on Jimmy: ”I’m hot. You’re hot. Let’s make out.”

Not one to be outdone, Jimmy’s sweet nothings to the blond include: ”You’re incredible. Come here.” and  ”You smell real good.”

Girls, who fall under the spell of smooth-talking schoolboys, are also prey for jealousy’s green-eyed monster.

An intrepid Reuters reporter researched the game and had Jimmy necking with the blond boy when a tall red-haired girl, who had earlier locked lips with Jimmy, took offense. She watched the embrace, and when the kissing ceased, kicked Jimmy hard in the groin before running off with the blond in hot pursuit.

High school can be so confusing!

(Additional reporting by Wojtek Dabrowski. Screenshot from YouTube.com)

Team Korea overcame rivals from more than 70 countries to reclaim the Grand Champion title at this year’s World Cyber Games, which wrapped on Sunday in Monza, Italy.

Medalists for Team Korea, which regained the crown after four years, took home nearly a quarter of the $462,000 total prize money up for grabs.

Team Korea won two gold, one silver and one bronze medal. Russia nabbed second place with one gold, a silver and a bronze. Germany placed third. Teams from Canada, China, Poland and the United States tied for fourth.

Team USA’s Wesley “TTR Ch0mpr” Cwiklo, 17, of Camarillo, California, snagged the gold and the Grand Champion title for ”Project Gotham Racing 3″ on the Xbox 360. He was the youngest member of Team USA and the sole medal winner for the defending U.S. team, reaping $15,000 in prize money.

The 2007 WCG finals will be held in Seattle.

Read Reuters full story about the action in Italy.

(Photos: Reuters (top) and World Cyber Games handout (bottom))