It appears that it isn't just the PC port of Valve Corporation's Team Fortress 2 that's getting a fix. The Steam site has recently announced that their download service has received a new client update, and should be available the next time you go online. The patch notes are available in the full article.

Soundtracks designed for video games have evolved a lot since the first synthesized beep was created years ago. Indeed, music in the interactive gaming industry has gone a long way. Now you can hear entire musical scores dedicated for a single game.

EMI Classics has pushed this concept further as they, Video Games Live and IMG Artist, are planning to release an album filled with some of the best known and most popular video game music of all time.

Entitled Video Games Live: Greatest Hits - Volume One includes medleys from various well-known games such as Zelda, Mario, Halo, Warcraft, Sonic, Tron, Myst, Civilization IV and Final Fantasy. The album was compiled by Tommy Tallarico and Jack Wall, reknowned video game composers and Video Games Live co-creators. Included as well are the Slovak National Orchestra and the Crouch End Chorus and the "Video Game Pianist," Martin Leung.

The album will be released on October 19, coinciding with this year's Video Games Live event on the same day at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles and on October 22 at London's Royal Festival Hall, performed by the Philharmonic Orchestra.

Valve's Steam service just got infused with some additional Sid Meier goodness. A new update to Steam reports that Civilization IV: Warlords and CivCity: Rome are now up for sale on the digital distribution service.

Here's the original announcement from Steam:

Two new products in the legendary Civilization series are now available for purchase via Steam, Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Warlords and CivCity: Rome. Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Warlords, available for US$ 29.95, is the first expansion pack for the award-winning Civilization IV and delivers new scenarios, civilizations, leaders, and units. CivCity: Rome, available for US$ 39.95, is a city building strategy game inspired by the world of Sid Meier's Civilization.

If you're hankering for more strategy in your life, then this is the perfect thing to add to your collection. Enjoy!

Can we learn stuff from playing games? Sure we can, but for games to become a mode for teaching actual skills (or for teaching to seem more like a fun game), there's got to be more than bells and whistles. An IGN analysis talks about the potential of videogames to teach, mentioning both its strong points and its shortcomings in this day and age.

While "edutainment" videogames such as the Carmen Sandiego series have been out for a while now, they've gotten more and more boring when placed beside heavy hitters like action games and RPGs. In both cases, however, the same rules that get kids to learn apply:

1. Videogames are almost always instant motivators, driving kids to do their best to beat the game.
2. There's nothing like videogames to teach you how to follow instructions. A game will teach you basics before making you tackle tough stuff (Why else do you kill boars in WoW before you can take on dragons, right?)
3. Games make you read and understand things you normally wouldn't think about. How else can you get deep into a world simulation like Civilization IV unless you were quite literate and good at understanding the written word?
4. It's "safe." Only in games can you learn through trial and error without the feeling of being punished for messing up, unless you corrupt your save files. Definitely good for self-esteem and for practicing skills.
   
5. There's nothing more rewarding than that feeling of pushing yourself to the limit for something you find worthwhile and succeeding.
   

"The spectacular rise of the video game juggernaut is not hard to understand when you see the creativity, educational value, and fun the vast majority of games offer to gamers of every age," said the Honorable Cliff Stearns in a meeting with the Committee on Energy and Commerce. The opportunities now lie in making learning through play an affordable concept. For now, at least, while we can't make games part of the ways in which we learn stuff in school, teachers may want to think of how they can make their lessons feel more like videogames, with all the pleasures and successes it can bring. Besides, Brain Age can only take us so far, right?

What about you? What aspects of gaming might you want added to make you and other students more receptive to being taught in school? Do you have any ideas on making gaming fun and educational, or on making an educational game that people actually want to play? Comment with your ideas here! Just remember that any incentive of the Leisure Suit Larry nature will probably get deleted... that's too kinky for our tastes.

During Thursday's Austin Games Convention, MMORPG.Com's Aaron Roxby had the opportunity to talk to Emergent Game Technologies Senior Engineer Vincent Scheib about their Gamebryo game engine and Metrics database system.

Gamebryo, the successor to the NetImmerse engine, is a game engine designed with flexibility in mind. Case in point: Gamebryo made its debut with Bethesda's Oblivion, and the second game created with it was Sid Meier's Civilization IV. Two very different games running on one engine. that's how flexible Gamebryo is. This flexibility comes from its ability to be re-engineered and integrated with existing technology.

Back on the console front, Scheib explained that they're currently hard at work on optimizing Gamebryo for use with the PS3. It's been said that while the PS3's multi-threading Cell processor is definitely powerful, it can make development complicated. To address this they are developing Floodgate, a Stream Processing Engine that hopes to simplify the process. One of the more exciting things about Floodgate is that it's being developed as a cross-platform engine, meaning once a PS3 game has been developed, it can easily be ported directly to the Xbox 360 or PC.

With the Floodgate, it appears that game development for Sony's next-gen console will be much breezier than first anticipated. Maybe we'll get to see the full power of the Cell much earlier than most of us thought.

Opinions? Thoughts? Leave a comment.

Plato's Republic puts into analogy the human body with his ideal, utopic city-state. The head represents the philosopher-kings, tasked with governance. The chest symbolizes the warriors or the military, specifically for the protection of the Republic. The stomach personifies the merchants who are accountable for the flow of resources into the city.

While there is a blatant display of hierarchy, it does not go to say that one is necessarily more important than the others. For while they may be different in levels, they are the same in their goal, that is to ensure the survival of the Republic. Thus, all component parts, while maintaining their individuality, are expected to work together for that one same goal. Much premium is placed upon this goal to the extent that to attempt to multitask on these roles is to put the goal at high risk of falling into utter chaos. Therefore, it is forbidden.

The underlying principle behind this system is that titles aren't there just for the convenience of identification. Categories are not there merely to be able to sort out things from each other. Titles and categories exist not just to portray some semblance of order, but more importantly, to define roles and responsibilities. Now, this is, more often than not, usually overlooked. But the thing is, names and roles ALWAYS come in a tight package.

Applying that same principle to our everyday existence, we often find it constricting to confine ourselves merely to just one area. Artists need not be just artists, they can be politicians. Professors need not only be able to teach, they can be athletes. Women need not be mere trophies and housewives for their husbands, they may be high-powered corporate executives.

And gaming need not be only frivolous and trivial, they can actually have a higher sense of aesthetic, even pragmatic, value in our existence. That is the battlecry of columnist Ernest Adams, at least insofar as gaming is concerned.

He posits that in the light of the growing clamor for censorship in video games, it brings to mind the fact that although gaming has already niched itself tightly into popular culture, it still remains to struggle for the respect it deserves as an art form. The most apparent excuse would be that video games or gaming has always been stereotyped into the category of entertainment for kids. And kids are almost always never taken seriously. By this mere affiliation, the gaming industry has been deprived by the highbrow end of society  of the proper value it should have.

Don't we just hate stereotypes?

The full article awaits after the jump!

A patch has arrived for several pesky problems that plague Mac users who play Sid Meier's Civilization IV.

Aspyr Media's 15MB beta version update for Civ IV 1.61 Rev A is currently available for download.

This patch is to correct problems some users had with the shipping version. It offers better performance on certain Macs, mostly the G5 systems, that had excessive CPU use. “The game should no longer run dual CPU’s to 100 percent capacity,” Aspyr stated.

Also, Aspyr has fixed an issue that kept certain sounds from playing correctly. “Other sounds may still be inaudible. A future official release of the Rev A patch will address those,” the company reported.

The publisher added that this update is a beta release, and “may have problems not in the original game.” However, it has been released to help those users who have reported difficulty getting Civilization IV to run well on their Macs.

Any other issues the beta update may stir up? Well, in addition to possible sound problems, Aspyr said that kernel panics on Intel Macs may occur, but can be fixed by installing the latest version of the Mac OS X v10.4.7 Combo update. Also, turning off Full Scene Anti Aliasing (FSAA) options or running the game in a window may correct the issue.

Download: [Civ IV 1.61 Rev A Beta Version Update]

Civilization IV, the brainchild of Sid Meier, is now officially on beta status and is scheduled to ship later this month for the Mac, maybe even a few days ahead of its target release date which is July 2006, along side the release of its expansion pack, Warlords.

Civilization IV features multiplayer support over LAN, the internet, and "Play-By-Email" for competing or cooperating with live players.

The game boasts of dozens of fully animated units and customizable armies, as well as cities and its different wonders. The game is expected to have a fast-paced gameplay, greater accessibility via an easy-to-use interface, a flexible tech tree allowing players more strategic choices for developing civilizations through unique paths, and lots more. Civilization IV requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later and is priced at $50.

Let's just see if Civilization IV will have a good run in the Mac even amidsts speculation that it may not run smoothly on MacBooks.