Hello again. It’s Steve Bolender, producer for NBA 09 The Inside for the PlayStation 3. Another great new feature we’ve added to NBA 09 The Inside is the Jukebox. What’s the Jukebox you ask? It’s a music player that allows you to assign songs you have on your PlayStation 3 for use in NBA 09 The Inside. Talk about cool! Now you can have your favorite tunes playing while cruising through the menus and during on-court action!

In Thailand, video games have been under government attack ever since the August slaying of a taxi driver by a 19-year-old man who reportedly told police he was re-enacting a scene from Grand Theft Auto.

In today's edition of Bangkok newspaper The Nation, an editorial terms games "a menace":

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 MLB Stickball hits Arcade this Wednesday for 800 points.

(No game detail page is available yet on Xbox.com, but when one goes up I’ll link to it)

World of Warcraft usually gets blamed for bad grades, not praised for contributing to the educational process.

But LiveScience reports that the use of online games - including WoW - is getting new attention from proponents of the unschooling movement. By way of example, University of Wisconsin-Madison educational researcher Constance Steinkuehler organized an after-school group in which boys gather to play WoW:

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The parent company of top video game blog Kotaku is girding for tough economic times.

Silicon Alley Insider reports that Gawker Media CEO Nick Denton axed 19 (of 133) employees late Friday. Those getting the chop toiled for blogs apparently judged less competitive by Denton, including Valleywag and Consumerist (a GP favorite).

Kotaku is in no jeopardy, and is actually getting more writers, as Denton explains in a letter strategically leaked on Friday:

LucasArts' and BioWare's long-awaited, much-discussed joint development project -- widely speculated to be an MMO set in the Star Wars universe circa BioWare's own Knights of the Old Republic -- will be revealed to the press October 21, according to an invitation sent out to media outlets including Gamasutra. It is likely that the official announcement will come shortly after the October 21 press reveal held at LucasArts' San Francisco offices; events of this nature ...

Georgia Tech Prof. Ian Bogost has launched a new election-oriented game.

Campaign Rush debuted at CNN late last week and Bogost writes of the new offering at Water Cooler Games:

My studio Persuasive Games developed a new game that CNN International has just published. Campaign Rush is a light-hearted game on the theme of politics and the current election. It's a casual click-management game in a campaign office, in which the player helps volunteers respond to the barrage of incoming phone calls, emails, letters, and the like. In addition, you can create an account and choose your party to compete for the best score.