Not himself, at least not in the Electronic Arts video game that carries his name.

“I never play as me. I always create my character. I have one dude who’s all buffed, I have another one who is all fat,” Tiger Woods told Reuters at the Hollywood debut of “Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07″.

Woods, who put himself in a motion capture suit to update his swing for the new game, said golfers who want to play better in the real world could benefit from the game’s realistic courses, tournament situations and by assessing the actual swings of PGA players.

Asked if he succumbed to the temptation to improve his virtual likeness, Woods smiled and quipped: “Bigger, more buff and more cut. That’s always the goal for every dude.”

The PGA’s No. 1 and top-earning player said he’s getting a kick out of next-generation console technology advancements that make crowds more realistic.

“It’s terrible when you hit somebody in real golf because you see them go down and you feel so bad. But in video game golf it’s the funniest thing to see them go down.”

Asked if Woods and EA include a rude spectator to increase crowd realism in the new game, he said, “No, we don’t. That might be the next level.”

Read our story about the game here.
 
(Photo by Chris Pizzello/Reuters) 

It looks like the infamous “Madden curse” has claimed another victim. Seattle Seahawks running back Shaun Alexander broke his foot in Sunday’s game against the New York Giants and will be warming the benches for at least two weeks.

Alexander, last season’s NFL MVP and cover athlete for “Madden NFL 07″, joins a growing list of players who have been injured or had a dismal season after having their likeness on the cover of the best-selling football game from Electronic Arts Inc.

Athletes poo-poo the curse, which some say has taken over where the so-called “Sports Illustrated jinx” left off.

Here’s a quote from Alexander, which was attributed to an August story in USA Today: “The way I look at it, if I was going to get hurt this year, being on the cover had nothing to do with it,” he said. “So if I was going to be hurt, I’d rather be on the cover than not on it.”

Here’s a list of prior “cursed” ”Madden” cover players, from an August 27 report in the Los Angeles Times:

2001: Eddie George of the Tennessee Titans, which went to the  Super Bowl the previous season but lost, bobbled a pass in a playoff game against Baltimore. The pass was intercepted by a Baltimore defender and returned for a touchdown. The Titans lost.
 
2002: Quarterback Daunte Culpepper sat out five games because of injury, and his Minnesota Vikings finished 5-11. 
 
2003: Running back Marshall Faulk suffered an ankle injury and failed to rush for 1,000 yards, and his St. Louis Rams finished 7-9, after having gone to the Super Bowl the previous season. 
 
2004: Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick broke his leg the day after the video game hit stores and ended up playing only five games.
 
2005: Linebacker Ray Lewis sat out a game because of injury, ended his season without a single interception, and his Baltimore Ravens failed to make the playoffs. 
 
2006: Donovan McNabb, quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles, sat out the last seven games due to injury. The Eagles lost five of them and failed to make the playoffs.

Dave Geffon, 24, “works” about 50 hours per week and expects to pull in between $40,000 to $60,000 this year — playing video games.

The Austin, Texas-based professional gamer is one of 12 members of Team USA, which will face off against 700 elite players from 70 countries at the World Cyber Games Grand Final in Monza, Italy, in October.

“I just fell into it,” said Geffon, who said his gaming team’s Las Vegas win gave him an “amazing sense of accomplishment.”

Members of Team USA took home a combined purse of $75,000+ from the U.S. Final that wrapped in Las Vegas on Sunday.

The team will be the defending Grand Champion at the 2006 world competition in Italy.

Last year’s Grand Final, held in Singapore, had a $2.5 million purse. The value of this year’s prize has yet to be announced.

Here’s a list of U.S. Final winners and Team USA members:

“Counter-Strike”: Team 3D

Dave “Moto” Geffon, Austin, Texas; Ronald “Rambo” Kim, Dallas, Texas; Josh “Dominator” Sievers, Polk City, Iowa ; Salvatore “Volcano” Garozzo, Eastchester, New York; Mike “Method” So, Los Angeles, California

“Warhammer 40,000″: Russ “Ir0nclad” Watson, Wylie, Texas

“WarCraft III”: Franklin “nilknarf” Pearsall, Kenmore, Washington

“StarCraft”: Geunhwa “lastgosu” Ralph, Palisades Park, New Jersey

“FIFA 06″: Isidro “novushaim” Sifuentes, Houston, Texas

“Need for Speed: Most Wanted”: Kamran “omegaelite” Siddiqui, Orlando, Florida

“Project Gotham Racing 3″: Wesley “TTR Ch0mpr” Cwiklo, Camarillo, California

“Dead or Alive 4″: Manny “DOAMASTER” Rodriguez of Dallas, Texas

 

The sought-after but notoriously hard-to-reach young male audience is the backbone of the $28.5 billion global video game industry — whose membership is more diverse, more social and more likely to be big spenders than commonly assumed according to a new survey.

By all accounts, it’s shaping up to be a match made in heaven. If you need convincing, check out this post on Coke’s new ad, our EA in-game advertising story, and this popular American Express “Roddick vs. PONG” TV commercial (play the related game here).
    
The Ziff Davis Game Group of San Francisco offers the following stats from its Digital Gaming in America 2006 survey:

• Out of 113 million U.S. households, 83.7 million have at least one console or computer gamer — up almost 10 percent from last year. Of those gaming households, 21.4 million have at least one “core” gamer, defined as a player who bought 4 or more games in the last 6 months and plays 10-plus hours per week.
• The average age of PC gamers is 32 and the average console gamer is 27. Forty-eight percent of all PC gamers are female, while 41 percent of all console gamers are female.
• Average household income for PC gamers is $85,262 and $85,511 for console gamers. 
• Core gamers, on average, said they bought 10 video games and spent $199 on their habit in the prior six months.
• But there’s more. During the same time period, they also spent $708 on clothing, $231 on athletic shoes and $117 on DVDs. Additionally, they reported plans to spend $1,085 on consumer electronics in the next six months. 
• And in a stereotype-busting discovery…Gamers were most likely to describe themselves as adventurous, funny, competitive and intelligent. They were least likely to say they were a loner, reserved, a geek or tech-savvy.

So go ahead and fire up that copy of “Madden 07.” 

If anyone gives you grief, you can remind them that you’re probably richer, funnier and smarter than they are. 

A new Coke ad doesn’t just teach the world to sing, it shows how to commit random acts of kindness and senseless beauty.

Video game fans are buzzing this month over an animated Coca-Cola commercial set in gritty, urban streets. Clearly, the aesthetic is straight outta the controversial video game “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,” which was briefly pulled from store shelves due to an illicit, hidden sex scene dubbed “hot coffee.” 

While players can take the game’s main character on missions involving drive-by shootings or robberies, the Coke-drinking star of the commercial chooses the high road — foiling a purse snatching, returning a bag of money dropped by a armored car driver and dropping a wad of cash into the open guitar case of a street performer.

Lest anyone forget the cheerful history of Coke’s advertising, here’s a retrospective from the Library of Congress of 50 years of Coke commercials for the brown, fizzy beverage. Check out the 1970s era-defining Hilltop ad.

Some things never change. The latest video-game ad also ends on a chorus. “Give a little love and it all comes back to you.” La-la-la-la-la.

Representatives from Coca-Cola were not immediately available for comment.

Sources: Library of Congress, YouTube, Coca-Cola.

Additional reporting by: Scott Hillis and Eric Auchard

Video game moguls cheered. But just about every other part of the industry cried foul last week when organizers of the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) decided to shrink next years confab.

An executive for Electronic Arts, the world’s biggest video game publisher, said his company was completely behind the decision, which he estimated would result in dollar savings in the “multiple millions next year.” Gaming platform makers Microsoft and Sony also support E3’s makeover into a more “intimate” and productive affair.

The new plan from the show’s organizer, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), aims to pare E3 down to 5,000 attendees from the 60,000 or so that mobbed prior shows. That threatens to cut out smaller game publishers — not to mention the show’s “booth babes.”

Hardcore gaming “fanboys” are in a tizzy. Below is a snippet heard around the net:

– “So here we go, the large companies that care nothing about games get to consolidate their power over the industry, meanwhile the small companies get **** over again,” writes “lordpickle” on GameSpot.com.

– “This has sort of caught us by surprise,” said Christopher Heywood, a spokesman for LA Inc., the city’s convention and visitor bureau. E3 has called Los Angeles home for ten of its 12 years of life. It was the city’s biggest annual convention, packing an annual economic impact of about $19 million.

– One poster on Joystiq, “BlackYoshi,” said the move would likely banish the blogs and fanzines from the show in favor of the biggger site like IGN.com, GameSpot and 1Up.com.

– And what of the fate of scantily clad Booth Babes, the underemployed Hollywood actresses and models who had counted on E3 for a solid week of work? “Who will be sending them to college now?” Petrol123 worried on GameSpot.

Nintendo said its next-generation video game console, called Wii, will be available in the fourth quarter of 2006.

Read the full story here.