Neowin.net

Germans develop shocking gameplay

Two German designers have invented a computer game that allows you to inflict real pain on your opponent.
Dubbed the Painstation, the players put their left hands on a Pain Execution Unit (PEU). When both players touch this electric contact the Pong-based game starts.

According to the designers' webpage a player's right hand controls the bat, and the object of the game is to keep the ball in play for as long as possible.

But when the ball is missed the player suffers an electric shock from the PEU.

And there are more ways to inflict pain on your opponent. The playing field is littered with symbols which, if touched by the ball, will give sensations such as heat, punches and electric shocks of varying duration.

The game ends when one of the players lifts a hand off the PEU.

The inventors noted that it is surprising how much pain people will take before ending the game.

Co-inventor Tilman Reiff said that when you are playing in public against a friend with people cheering you on, it's very hard to throw in the towel without putting up a good fight.

"I've seen people leave the table with blood on their hands and their skin completely raw because they didn't want to back down in front of an audience," he said.

The Painstation is a university project at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne that Reiff was working on with his friend Volker Morawe.

"For those who don't mind a bit of pain, they usually find it extremely addictive," he said.

The product has not been marketed yet and Sony has already warned the pair against using its logo, and made threatening noises regarding the use of the name if the pair ever wanted to commercialise their product.

News source: vnunet.com
View: The PainStation Site

Make sure you check out the PainStation site to download the movie's and see the screens...This thing makes you bleed!!!

Paul Reynolds, BT Wholesale's chief executive, said: "People have been claiming there is sufficient demand for broadband in their areas if only they had a way to channel their interest to us. Now we have created just such a scheme to do that.

"Businesses and consumers can register their interest with service providers who will record it on the broadband registration database. The demand and the target levels will be clearly visible to all and will help individuals, communities, local authorities and service providers to have a direct impact on broadband roll out," Reynolds added.

BT Wholesale's scheme will go live on 1 July and will record firm demand for broadband at every exchange in the country. It will also publish the threshold at which the level of demand makes individual exchanges commercially viable for broadband upgrade.

At launch, trigger levels ranging from 200 to 500 user registrations will be published for more than 300 of 500 exchanges reviewed since April, to establish individual costs of ADSL deployment and operation.

For the remaining exchanges in that review further work needs to be done to work out costs before a threshold is set.

Threshold levels for these exchanges - plus a further 400 exchanges - will be published in phases between July and September.

"The move will also help BT reach its target of one million broadband connections by summer 2003. So far, more than 250,000 customers have been connected to ADSL," said Reynolds."BT Wholesale has enabled 1,115 exchanges, serving 66 per cent of Britain's households and 73 per cent of current internet users," he added.

However, BT pointed out that when the database goes live, registration would not guarantee future ADSL service, since individual customer lines would be subject to line survey and distance constraints on ADSL availability.