A 10 year old school boy in Moscow jumped to his death after his parents banned him from playing computer games. The boy, Andrei Smirnov (?) ended his life after receiving his punishment for bad conduct and poor performance at school. Local Russian experts naturally are expressing concern over the unhealthy dependence of children on computers and games in particular.

Sunage has gotten a new website and has released images of their US and EU boxart. Though the game, which has been in development for years in Vienna, has missed several release dates the release of box art is a positive sign that the struggling Austrian based developer is nearing a gold master. Now here’s to hoping they have some success and can continue to develop more real-time strategy titles.

Panzer Tactics DS, the lovable World War II strategy game that Europe loves to death, is close to release and with that comes the official trailer, unveiled recently that the Games Conference in Leipzig. Developed in Vienna, Austria by Sproing Interactive, Panzer Tactics DS is the first turn-based WWII strategy title for the portable console. Set in 1939, players can assume command of the German Wehrmacht, the Western Allies or the Russian Red Army. Players can also challenge friends via local or Wi-Fi matches over the Nintento Wi-Fi network.

Games That Matter, the production studio started by the ex-heads of Rockstar Vienna, has been acquired by Deep Silver. The announcement was just dropped in Leipzig, so, expect a press release soon. There have been no public updates on the two confidential “major console and PC titles” that GTM have announced their involvement in since we wrote about the company founding in January 2007.

Koch Media, a leading producer and distributor of digital entertainment products in Europe, acquires the Austrian games production company Games That Matter.

The company merges with Koch Media’s premium games label, Deep Silver. Games That Matter’s structure and goals remain the same: Deep Silver Vienna fully concentrates on high quality games, especially for consoles. In the center of all efforts are producing, successful publishing and establishing new brands.

Press release after the jump..

Brilliant! This LOLcats image reminded me of one of my favorite games growing up. Oregon Trail! One of my fondest memories in school was playing Oregon Trail on old PCs in the computer lab everyday. Oregon Trail opened many kids to the possibilities of learning through games, something I think has heavily influenced the serious games and educational games market over the years as these kids become adults. Don’t even get me started on Wall Street Kid for the NES, now there was an educational game!!

Memories: The Oregon Trail Shrine

Originally designed as a learning experience from a designer who wanted to learn Flash and JavaScript, The Human Brain Cloud is a brilliant stroke of simplistic game design and high-brow fun for those of us who still remember Scrabble nights with fondness. The ‘game’ starts out with a player typing in the first word that comes to their mind, allowing other ‘players’ to then begin associating other words with the original subject, creating a lovely (and large) mind map of words and bubbles. For instance, “pizza” might be associated with “cheese”, “Italy” or even “yummy” by other players, creating a sometimes humorous look into the inner workings of word association on the human psyche. Some interesting statistics have also popped up, as of this post, The Human Brain Cloud consists of 209644 unique words, 1934531 connections and 171984 humans , not bad for an experiment from a first time Flash scripter.

Brilliant: The Human Brain Cloud

In an interview early last week, Senator Ray Tenorio, a republican representative on Guam’s 15-member unicameral legislature, revealed that he is an avid gamer, specifically online role-playing games, starting his gaming career with Diablo 2, later switching to World of Warcraft. Currently playing a level 70 Dwarf Priest named Paleray on the Silvehand server. He also pros in Herbalism and Alchemy, but, Guam? Also, I’d be anxious to learn of Mr. Tenorio’s stance on the current anti-gaming sentiment which is tearing through the United States political machine (of which Guam is ‘protected’ by).

Read more: Senator from Guam, lvl 70 priest

With the announcement of Nintendo’s WiiWare, indie game developers around the world felt their extremities go numb, as the creative juices started flowing at the mere thought of being able to develop a title for this generation’s breakout console. Whether Nintendo will be as indie-friendly as everyone hopes remains to be seen, but, they certainly are taking an interesting first step, by featuring Plättchen - Twist and Paint as the first official WiiWare title. Developed by a relatively unknown firm named Bplus in the outskirts of Vienna, Austria and featuring a German name which will surely confuse the hell out of many in the west, but no doubt excite the German-obsessed Japanese market, Plättchen is described as a puzzle-shooter, whose concept was approved by Nintendo in April 2007. Hopefully some screenshots or videos will appear soon and more information on the upcoming Wii and DS titles Bplus have in development will come to light, which we’ll surely post here immediately.

Read more: Bplus | Interview with Bplus at Infendo

Playfully addressing issues such as intellectual property rights, file-sharing and domestic surveillance, Torrent Raiders creates a fun new look at the fight against piracy. By building a real-time game on top of live bit-torrent swarms, Torrent Raiders creates an arcade-style shooter within the net it’s self. Players are placed in the role of a mercenary copyright enforcer, capturing evidence against peers sharing files via bit-torrent trackers worldwide, in real-time.

Read more: Torrent Raiders

Editor’s Note: Please excuse our lack of posts lately. Playthrough and it’s sister blogs are in a transitional phase, with many changes behind the scenes taking place, which will all become apparent in the near future. Thanks again for your return visits and patience, we hope to get back to our regularly scheduled program shortly.

According to rumors from IGN, the upcoming sequel to Katamari Damacy, Beautiful Katamari, has run into trouble over at Namco Bandai. Sources are stating that the Sony PS3 version of the upcoming title has been axed, thanks to development issues and stalling sales of the extremely-overpriced PS3 console. Resources have supposedly been re-shifted to the Wii version of Beautiful Katamari.

Source: IGN