Ever been inspired to go places because of something you’ve seen in a movie? Perhaps not, but it does happen: take World War II period piece Australia, which was backed by a $1 million campaign by the Tourism board of Western Australia. Or on a smaller scale, consider the sustainability of organised tours of the sights of western Austria that tie in with vintage musical The Sound of Music.

It’s not just film either: you may be inspired by the works of Charles Dickens to visit London, and a love of Bob Marley may inspire a trip to the Caribbean. So, what about video games? Studies into the way they alter our behaviour are nothing if not controversial, but surely they have the same power of suggestion as any movie, piece of literature or song? Could we see concerted efforts in the future by tourists boards to capitalise on games that feature real world destinations? Here are some they could have already exploited:

New York

As Seen In: Crysis 2, Deus Ex, Max Payne, Metal Gear Solid 2, Modern Warfare 3 and countless others

Probably the most famous city in the world, New York doesn’t seem like it would need much of a tourist boost. In fact, it mostly shows that video games are inspired by travel: the majority of the games in which it features manipulate our love of the city by destroying it in some way (virtually all the above involve someone damaging a major landmark, especially the statue of liberty).

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Great news for hand-held video gamers everywhere as Nintendo are about to release the 3DS – a portable game console which can produce 3D effects without the need for any special glasses.

So now you to can play games in 3D without glasses and what’s more is that the Nintendo 3DS also plays all your DSi Games as well.

Check Out The Video For A Sneak Peak

This is a guest post by Ryan who works as an internet marketer for a company that deals with insurance for holiday homes. Although he doesn’t personally think people should fake that they are ill, he understands why many people do it.

There are many people out there that pretend to be ill to get off work for a day or two but the thing that hasn’t been explored is for what reason? The fact is that a company could lessen the amount of days that employees are “ill” if they really looked into the problems that they face when they come into work. Here are some of the top reasons people bunk off.

Days out/Vacation

The fact is that everyone wants to go on a day out from time to time and if they don’t have any holiday left in the year then it can be difficult to make a decision on what to do. Things like theme parks and other tourist attractions are actually very busy and sometimes even more expensive at the weekends and on bank holidays which is why many people choose to simply start to cough over the phone to the boss and pop out for the day.

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This is a guest post by Ryan who is representing a company that deals with cheap Audi cars, he is a keen gamer but believes that parents should look out for their children when it comes to how much time should be spent playing a video game.

It has been announced here in the UK this week that the very first rehabilitation service for children that are addicted to video games is to be rolled out and I was thinking, how on earth do children actually get to this stage?

Gaming has changed a lot since I was kid because the only way that you used to be able to play multiplayer games was to actually invite a few school mates over and sit there and have a laugh. This was always a fantastic way to socialise but times have changed since then and now services such as Xbox Live have been introduced and that allows gamers to sit at home and play with their friends over the internet. Although I am a big fan of Xbox Live I have to say there is nothing that beats having a game with someone that is sitting next to you and I would choose this over the Live service every single time. Read the rest of this entry »

Now I’m not really against games been made in to movies, well some of them I am! But, there comes a time when we must say to Hollywood “NO!” and this is one of those times.

Shadow of the Colossus is a truly visual PlayStation 2 game, ok so maybe there is not too much to it, the idea is to ride your horse around the mythical land, find the different Colossi and kill them, which is no easy task as the creature are huge and I mean huge.

But honestly how can you turn this game into a film, there is one character killing the creatures, would you sit through a film for 90 mins. to 2 hours with a guy firing arrows at giants, climbing up them and then killing them?

Supposedly the script will make some major changes to make the film more action packed and interesting, but surely if this is done then it takes away the spirit of the games haunting feel with it’s melancholy music and peaceful landscapes.

I personally thought this was a wind up from one of my friends until they pointed me in the direction of The Hollywood Reporter’s Risky Biz Blog with info on the film.  So what next a movie version of The Sims, or even Pacman (or have they done that already ) I mean it’s bad enough that Hollywood has ran out of ideas in making movies and has to re-imagine/re-make some of the classic movies, but to keep making video game movies, I suppose one good thing of this Shadow of the Colossus movie is, so far the name Uwe Boll hasn’t spung up