Games

It is a truth, universally accepted, that video games do not translate well to the big screen. From Assassin's Creed to the Super Mario Bros movie, the result is usually a compromised monstrosity, ignorant of the source material and quickly disowned by the studios, directors and actors responsible for it. There have been exceptions – Detective Pikachu was weird but fine and the Resident Evil films have their fans. But films based on games are usually a mess. Have licensing managers been looking at the wrong screen the whole time?

It can be difficult to find time to finish a video game, especially if you only have a few hours a week to play. In our biweekly column Short Play we suggest video games that can be started and finished in a weekend. I was really into playing open-world games when the genre was still new. While I didn't complete everything in those early Assassin's Creed games, or in the original Crackdown or Infamous, I did spend a lot of time doing pretty much everything the games had to offer. These days, however, I find it pretty difficult to devote enough time to finish the main quest line of an open-world game, never mind the additional stuff.

To stop spread of disinformation leading to widespread public disorder, the government is exploring use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to remove such content automatically from social media platforms. The Centre is to "take up the issue with representatives of various international social media platforms operating in the country and monitor their compliance to instructions issued by lawful authorities under Information Technology Act." Sources said, "The introduction of Artificial Intelligence to remove objectionable content automatically from social media platforms needs to be explored." This step was proposed after the government witnessed widespread public disorder because of spread of rumours in mob lynching cases. The Ministry of Home Affairs has taken up the matter and is exploring ways to implement it. On the rise in sharing of fake news over social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp, Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad had said in Lok Sabha that "With a borderless cyberspace coupled with the possibility of instant communication and anonymity, the potential for misuse of cyberspace and social media platforms for criminal activities is a global issue."

More than a decade has passed since the British government issued an apology to the mathematician Alan Turing. The tone of pained contrition was appropriate, given Britain's grotesquely ungracious treatment of Turing, who played a decisive role in cracking the German Enigma cipher, allowing Allied intelligence to predict where U-boats would strike and thus saving tens of thousands of lives. Unapologetic about his homosexuality, Turing had made a careless admission of an affair with a man, in the course of reporting a robbery at his home in 1952, and was arrested for an "act of gross indecency" (the same charge that had led to a jail sentence for Oscar Wilde in 1895). Turing was subsequently given a choice to serve prison time or undergo a hormone treatment meant to reverse the testosterone levels that made him desire men (so the thinking went at the time). Turing opted for the latter and, two years later, ended his life by taking a bite from an apple laced with cyanide.

This year marks the start of a new decade, and the end of a generation of video games. Sony and Microsoft are set to launch new systems during the holidays, marking the beginning of a new phase in gaming. But that's good news: Traditionally, the games launched at the end of a generation are among that generation's best. Here are the video games we're most looking forward to playing in 2020: Computers, synt-wave, betrayal, and Keanu Reeves -- Cyberpunk 2077 is the most hyped game of the year. Fresh from the success of The Witcher 3, developer CD Projekt Red has gone from medieval fantasy to the dark and gritty world Night City in the year 2077.

No word on whether or not the passenger made it to the next level. A passenger waiting for a flight at an Oregon airport needed a bit more screen space for his video game so he plugged his Playstation 4 into a computer screen that had been displaying a map of the airport. Kara Simonds, a spokeswoman for the Port of Portland, told KXL-AM radio in an on-air interview that Portland International Airport staff asked the man to stop gaming on the public map display. He asked if he could finish his game. They said no, and the situation resolved peacefully.

Over a decade has passed since developer Keita Takahashi's first major work in surrealist game design. Katamari Damacy – a glorious fever dream of the PlayStation 2 era which was recently named one of the Guardian's 50 best video games of the 21st century – helped cement Takahashi as a connoisseur of the delightfully wacky. Now, six games and two console generations later, the game designer has released the latest in his absurdist oeuvre. Like the Katamari series, Wattam features a similarly eccentric universe and cast of characters. But unlike its predecessors, Wattam's eccentricities fail to help it overcome extremely repetitive gameplay.

Super League Gaming, the global leader in competitive amateur gaming, announced a historic new partnership with Wanda Cinemas Games, a subsidiary of Chinese media conglomerate Wanda Media. The new alliance will initially bring live, competitive gaming experiences to Wanda's 700 owned and operated theaters in multiple cities across China, with more activations to be announced in the future. With this significant new venture, Super League greatly expands their reach into the world's biggest market of 1.2 billion gamers -- more than the entire population of the United States. "This accretive partnership was a strategic imperative for Super League," says Ann Hand, chairman and CEO of Super League Gaming. "Joining forces with Wanda, the world's biggest entertainment provider, to bring quality play, events, and content to those passionate players transforms the size of our servable market. We are honored to be partnered with Wanda as we bring Super League to the Asian market."

Super League Gaming, the global leader in competitive amateur gaming, announced a historic new partnership with Wanda Cinemas Games, a subsidiary of Chinese media conglomerate Wanda Media. The new alliance will initially bring live, competitive gaming experiences to Wanda's 700 owned and operated theaters in multiple cities across China, with more activations to be announced in the future. With this significant new venture, Super League greatly expands their reach into the world's biggest market of 1.2 billion gamers -- more than the entire population of the United States. "This accretive partnership was a strategic imperative for Super League," says Ann Hand, chairman and CEO of Super League Gaming. "Joining forces with Wanda, the world's biggest entertainment provider, to bring quality play, events, and content to those passionate players transforms the size of our servable market. We are honored to be partnered with Wanda as we bring Super League to the Asian market."

When we get to a point where literally just about everything can be done more cheaply and more efficiently by robots, the elite won't have any use for the rest of us at all. For most of human history, the wealthy have needed the poor to do the work that is necessary to run their businesses and make them even wealthier. In this day and age we like to call ourselves "employees", but in reality we are their servants. Some of us may be more well paid than others, but the vast majority of us are expending our best years serving their enterprises so that we can pay the bills. Unfortunately, that paradigm is rapidly changing, and many of the jobs that humans are doing today will be done by robots in the not too distant future.