Danny Puff

By Malathi Nayak

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - In the midst of the bitter national debate on gun violence, gun manufacturers and videogame makers are delicately navigating one of the more peculiar relationships in American business.

Violent "first-person shooter" games such as "Call of Duty" are the bread and butter of leading video game publishers, and authenticity all but requires that they feature brand-name weapons.

Electronic Arts licensed weapons from companies like McMillan Group International as part of a marketing collaboration for "Medal of Honor: Warfighter." Activision Blizzard gives "special thanks" to Colt, Barrett and Remington in the credits for its "Call of Duty" titles.

Rifles by Bushmaster, which made the gun used in the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting last December, have appeared in the hugely popular "Call of Duty."

Yet, in the wake of the Newtown shooting, the biggest advocate for gun ownership, the National Rifle Association, took aim at videogames to explain gun violence. One week after 20 schoolchildren and six adults were killed in the shooting, NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre called the videogame industry "a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people."

Now at least one game maker, the second largest by revenue in the United States, is publicly distancing itself from the gun industry, even as it finds ways to keep the branded guns in the games. Electronic Arts says it is severing its licensing ties to gun manufacturers - and simultaneously asserting that it has the right, and the intention, to continue to feature branded guns without a license.

For the gunmakers, having their products in games is "free marketing, just like having Coca-Cola" in a movie, said Roxanne Christ, a partner at Latham & Watkins LLP in Los Angeles, who works with video game companies on licensing, but has not personally done a gun deal.

Yet it is also a virtual double-edged sword. "It gives publicity to the particular brand of gun being used in the video game," said Brad J. Bushman, a professor at Ohio State University who has studied video game violence. "On the other hand, it's linking that gun with violent and aggressive behavior."

Gun makers, including the Freedom Group that owns brands like Remington and Bushmaster, and the NRA, did not respond to repeated requests for comment from Reuters.

'ENHANCED AUTHENTICITY'

First-person shooter games let players blast their way through battlefields while looking down the barrel of a virtual gun, taking aim with the flick of a controller.

Some of those guns - like the Colt M1911 pistol in "Call of Duty" - turn sideways to face the screen during reloading, revealing the brand name. Games also offer lists of branded weapons to choose from.

Licensed images of weapons in "Medal of Honor: Warfighter" - a game that simulates military missions like fighting pirates in Somalia - offer what EA spokesman Jeff Brown calls "enhanced authenticity."

Back in the late 90's, video game makers initially approached gun companies for licenses to inoculate themselves from potential lawsuits, video game industry lawyers say. Over the years, legal clearances were granted for little or no money by gunmakers, these lawyers said.

Yet overt signs of cooperation between the video game and gun industries had begun to draw criticism even before the December school shooting in Connecticut.

In August, game fans and some video game news outlets vehemently objected to EA putting links to weapons companies like the McMillan Group and gun magazine maker Magpul, where gamers could check out real versions of weapons featured in the game, on its "Medal of Honor: Warfighter" game website.

"What kind of message is a video game publisher like EA sending when it encourages its players to buy weapons?" asked Laura Parker, the associate editor of gaming site GameSpot Australia in a post in August.

EA immediately removed the links and dropped the marketing tie-up, which it said was part of a charity project to raise money for military veterans. The company said it received no money from its gun company partners.

"We won't do that again," said Brown. "The action games we will release this year will not include licensed images of weapons."

EA said politics and NRA comments critical of game makers had nothing to do with its decision. "The response from our audience was pretty clear: they feel the comments from the NRA were a simple attempt to change the subject," Brown said.

EA also says video game makers can have branded guns in their games without getting licenses, meaning the industry could drop the gun companies and keep their guns.

Activision, the industry leader, declined to comment on whether it licenses gun designs from gun manufacturers or if it would stop doing so. Branded guns have consistently been featured in its blockbuster shooter games like the decade-old "Call of Duty."

"We're telling a story and we have a point of view," EA's President of Labels Frank Gibeau, who leads product development of EA's biggest franchises, said in an interview. "A book doesn't pay for saying the word 'Colt,' for example."

Put another way, EA is asserting a constitutional free speech right to use trademarks without permission in its ever-more-realistic games.

Legal experts say there isn't a single case so far where gun companies have sued video game companies for using branded guns without a license.

But EA's legal theory is now being tested in court. Aircraft maker Bell Helicopter, a unit of Textron Inc, has argued that Electronic Arts' depiction of its helicopters in "Battlefield" was beyond fair use and amounted to a trademark infringement. EA preemptively went to court, suing Bell Helicopter to settle the issue.

The U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, has set a jury trial for the case in June.

(Reporting By Malathi Nayak, Editing by Peter Henderson, Jonathan Weber, Mary Milliken and Tim Dobbyn)

Read More

By Kevin Murphy

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - When a racist pitcher beans Jackie Robinson in the head in the new movie about the first black man to play major league baseball, Sherrill Duesterhaus wants everybody in the theater to know it's a lie.

Duesterhaus' father, Fritz Ostermueller, threw the pitch, but it did not hit Robinson in the head and there is no evidence he uttered, "You don't belong here and you never will," as shown in "42," the Warner Bros. Pictures film that opened in April.

"I respect Jackie Robinson, his story is so inspiring and it's good that it is out there, but not at the expense of someone's good name," said Duesterhaus, 66, of Joplin, Missouri.

Duesterhaus said she had been warned by a friend that the film was unflattering to her father, who died of cancer at age 50 when she was 11 years old.

But the scene in which he taunts Robinson and throws at his head was still a shock, she said.

"It just took my breath away," Duesterhaus said. "I thought, 'All these people are sitting here believing this and it didn't happen.' It broke my heart."

She said her father was a "kind and loving man" and neither she nor her mother can recall him talking badly about Robinson or any black player.

Duesterhaus produced an article from a Pittsburgh newspaper in 1947 in which her father said Robinson crowded the plate, making pitching to him difficult. Ostermueller played for the Pittsburgh Pirates at the time.

"I told my wife the night before I pitched that I might have trouble with Robinson - that one of my pitches would hit him, if he didn't move back," Ostermueller said in the article.

"I knew, too, some people would say it was intentional. It wasn't at all, but in his first trip to the plate I hit him. After that, he moved back a couple of inches and showed me some respect."

TRUTH 'WENT SOUTH'

The pitch early in the 1947 season - Robinson's rookie year - sailed toward his head but he deflected it with his arm before falling to the ground, according to several accounts.

Robinson's teammates on the Brooklyn Dodgers yelled at Ostermueller, but no fight broke out on the field as shown in the movie.

A Warner Bros. spokesman, Paul McGuire, had no comment in response to questions about the film and Duesterhaus' concerns.

She said the movie contained other errors, such as showing Ostermueller as a right-handed pitcher, when he threw left-handed.

"I enjoyed the movie," Duesterhaus said, "up until the truth went south."

Jonathan Eig, author of the 2007 book "Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season," said Robinson took verbal abuse from some players but there is no indication Ostermueller wanted to drive him out of baseball or threw at him because he was breaking the game's color barrier.

"I was surprised they chose that moment to dramatize the issue and picked Ostermueller of all people to be the villain," Eig said. "Even as I was watching the movie, I wondered if any of Ostermueller's kids will see this and what they would think."

Eig said Robinson was known to lean into pitches and swing wildly, making him vulnerable to getting hit.

Robinson was hit by more pitches than all but one other National League batter in 1947, and led the league in that category in 1948, according to baseball-reference.com.

Robert Butler, a former film critic for the Kansas City Star who now has an online movie review site, said the movie unnecessarily tainted Ostermueller's reputation.

"In my opinion, it's the result of bad research, laziness or outright malice," Butler said. "It would have been the easiest thing in the world to give (Ostermueller) a different name in the film. That said, anyone who goes to movies looking for true history is fighting a losing battle."

(Editing by David Bailey and Xavier Briand)

Read More

LOS ANGELES (AP) Members of Slayer say Jeff Hanneman died of alcohol-related cirrhosis.

The guitarist died last week at a hospital in Hemet, Calif., at age 49. It was initially theorized that Hanneman's death might have had something to do with a suspected spider bite that led to a case of necrotizing fasciitis, nearly costing him his arm.

The band disclosed Hanneman's cause of death on its website Thursday, and a publicist said Friday the determination was made by his attending physician. She did not know the doctor's name.

The statement says Hanneman was not aware of the extent of damage to his liver until his last days.

The band also says it is planning a public celebration of Hanneman's life later this month with details to come.

___

Online:

http://slayer.net

Read More

By Gerry Shih

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - In the past twelve months, Zynga Inc has struggled with a contracting player base, a deflated stock price and waves of layoffs. Now it is coming to terms with downsized ambitions.

As Chief Executive Mark Pincus, 47, leads the online games developer he founded in 2007 through perhaps the most crucial year of his tenure, he is pushing to restore revenues by doubling down on "FarmVille," the franchise that took Facebook users by storm four years ago and launched Zynga to stardom.

Though some industry observers had declared farm simulation games a fad and predicted FarmVille 2's early demise, the sequel to Zynga's best-known title has defied expectations at its San Francisco headquarters, Pincus said in an interview. FarmVille 2 has clung to its perch near the top of Facebook charts and the number of people who play the game each day still hovers near all-time highs of 8 million, even six months after launch.

Given a glaring weakness in mobile games, however, one of Zynga's current priorities is porting FarmVille 2 to mobile devices so players can move from PCs to smartphones and back without losing their data. That presented technical challenges that the company is ironing out, Pincus said.

"The ideal is to make that one seamless experience between Web and mobile so you can take your farming experience from work to home," Pincus said. "We're having to retool and reinvent around our process and technology."

Pincus badly needs a reliable hit franchise. In the past nine months, Zynga has shuttered 20 titles and closed offices in Baltimore, Boston and Tokyo. It has trimmed 5 percent of its workforce, though its headcount of nearly 3,000 still dwarfs that of fierce rivals like Supercell, a Finnish company with 100 people that claims an equivalent amount of revenue, or the 600-strong Rovio, the publisher behind the "Angry Birds" games.

Gone is the swagger that defined the early years, when Zynga's army of developers flooded the market with dozens of new titles from cooking games to bingo variations, its dealmakers splashed money to snap up smaller rivals, and its managers opened studios in cities around the world.

Wall Street is viewing Pincus' shift with cautious approval, having been singed by Zynga's abysmal stock performance an 80 percent decline over the past year that began around the time it invested $180 million in then-promising game studio OMGPOP.

"Certainly their shareholder base wants to see more discipline," said Sean McGowan, an analyst at Needham and Co. "When you have limited resources, it makes sense to start with a proven winner, then expand that franchise. But it needs to be a blend of sticking with the proven brands and realizing when people might say: 'FarmVille 4? No, I'm done with that.'"

Investors place much stock on Zynga's future prospects in Internet gambling, because of its massive poker-playing community and existing game software. But with meaningful income from real-money casino efforts likely to be months, if not years, away, it may have to risk "sequelitis" for now.

TABLES TURNED

Almost 18 months after going public, Zynga is staving off fierce competition from newer or nimbler rivals that mimic its games.

Supercell, founded in 2010, has scored with "Hay Day," an iPad game that contains elements resembling FarmVille. With just one other game under its belt, Supercell says it is on track to make more than $800 million in revenue this year, roughly equal to the $860 million that Wall Street expects from Zynga in 2013.

Veteran video games publisher Electronic Arts Inc, one of Zynga's earliest rivals, in recent weeks said it would lay off an undisclosed number of employees and focus on core franchises like Battlefield and sports titles.

Activision Blizzard Inc, another publishing heavyweight, has fared better thanks to the strength of series like "Call of Duty," which has brought in more than $8 billion in cumulative sales since the first title launched in 2003. Yet even Activision is struggling to sustain revenue growth.

Zynga's bottom-line could be shored up through a more streamlined pipeline, Pincus argued. Since FarmVille first launched, it has gradually honed its development process to reduce the resources and development costs required for each significant update by more than 80 percent, he said.

"As long as our players are interested in farming, we'll offer a Farmville," Pincus said. "It could be the Seinfeld of our era in gaming, a multi-season show that has a quality and a consistency that you can rely on."

Zynga declined to address its game pipeline. Bing Gordon, an investor at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and a Zynga board member, said he has repeatedly nudged the company to develop FarmVille 3.

"Coca Cola has learned not to change their formula," said Gordon, a game industry veteran who formerly served as chief creative officer at Electronic Arts. "If you've got something people want, keep doing it."

BOLD BEATS

Even as Zynga seeks greater efficiency, it acknowledges it has been pressed to invest more to stay competitive.

At the heart of the company's strategy has been its "bold beat" schedule, a roadmap first laid out by Pincus in 2009 to release significant upgrades and new features to games every quarter to keep players hooked.

Once criticized in the industry for low-quality graphics and rudimentary gameplay, the company's latest launches and "bold beats" have placed a greater emphasis on elements like visuals that were once considered superfluous, game designers said.

"Player expectations are higher than they used to be," said Zynga Senior Vice President Todd Arnold, who oversees FarmVille and FarmVille 2. "You're not able to launch a minimalist product as we used to be able to."

For its leading franchises, the company is also investing more in quantitative and analytical tools. Every week, it shuttles players into a room deep inside its offices, where they are shown minute new design features. Their reactions are recorded by video cameras as well as a team of game designers sitting behind a two-way mirror in an adjacent room.

The company also holds periodic panel discussions with its most loyal fans to solicit suggestions for new features.

Linda Zoccoli, a retired daycare business owner in Moraga, California, suggested at a session in March that water was too scarce a commodity in FarmVille 2. Weeks later, she noticed the game began to feature periodic rainfall.

She has spent three hours almost daily for the past eight months tending her plot but hasn't found it repetitive.

"As long as they come out with new quests, new items, it keeps it interesting," she said.

(This story was fixed to correct spelling in paragraph 22 to oversees instead of overseas, corrects spelling in paragraph 25 to Zoccoli instead of Zoccolli)

(Reporting by Gerry Shih; Editing by Edwin Chan, Jonathan Weber and Chris Reese)

Read More

TOKYO (Reuters) - Panasonic Corp forecast its operating profit will rise 55 percent in the year to March 31 as it steps back from struggling operations in TVs and other consumer gadgets in favor of selling machinery, components and electronic equipment to other businesses.

The company expects operating profit to rise to 250 billion yen ($2.52 billion) in the current business year from last year's 160.9 billion yen. That compares with an average 241 billion yen forecast from 18 analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S before the company released its latest earnings figures on Friday.

Panasonic's CEO, Kazuhiko Tsuga has promised to weed out within two years any loss-making or low-profitability units that fall short of a 5 percent annual operating margin threshold. Further restructuring, however, could add to costs and squeeze its bottom line.

Panasonic's strategy to pull away from consumer electronics contrasts with domestic rival Sony Corp, which is doubling down on mobile phones, cameras and game consoles in a bid to revive the fortunes of its core consumer electronics business, which still accounts for more than half of revenue.

At Tsuga's company, TVs, DVD players and other home entertainment gadgets represent less than one-fifth of sales, leaving it more options to pursue profits elsewhere. Panasonic's biggest earning segments are appliances, such as washing machines and refrigerators, and the division it dubs "eco solutions", which makes light fixtures, toilets, ceiling fans and other household fittings that hark back to the company's beginnings in 1908 making electrical extension sockets.

In October, Tsuga bit the bullet on non-performing businesses by writing down billions of yen in tax-deferred assets and goodwill related to its businesses making mobile phones, solar panels and small lithium batteries. The result was a net loss of 754.25 billion yen last business year, nearly matching the prior year's record 772.17 billion yen loss.

Like Sony, however, the company is relying on asset sales to underpin its finances as it tries to revive profit growth, pledging to keep annual free cashflow above 200 billion yen. Its disposals have included a Tokyo office building and $1 billion worth of stocks in companies such as Toyota Motor Corp.

The value of the company's assets fell to 5.4 trillion yen at the end of the latest business year from 6.6 trillion a year earlier, as a result of asset disposals and writeoffs.

Over the next two years, Panasonic, which has seen its sales shrink by one-fifth from a peak of $92 billion six years ago, plans to spend $2.5 billion to revamp its businesses.

It has yet to announce additional staff cuts, after shedding 40,000 jobs over the past two years. With 300,000 workers it remains one of Japan's biggest employers.

Since the start of the year, the company's shares have gained 43 percent, keeping pace with a 40 percent rally in the benchmark Nikkei average as weakness in the yen boosted the outlook for exporters. Panasonic's shares rose 3.7 percent on Friday to close at 749 yen before it released its latest earnings figures.

($1 = 99.3050 Japanese yen)

(Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Edmund Klamann)

Read More

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese authorities have begun investigating reports that Zhang Yimou, one of China's best-known movie directors, has seven children in violation of strict family planning rules, which could result in a fine of 160 million yuan ($26.05 million), state media said on Thursday.

Online reports have surfaced that Zhang, who dazzled the world in 2008 with his Beijing Olympic ceremonies, "has at least seven children and will face a 160 million yuan fine," said the website of the People's Daily, the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece.

An unnamed official at the Wuxi Municipal Population and Family Planning Commission said "based on the current policies and regulations, an investigation is currently being carried out", according to the report.

It is unclear where Zhang's children were born, the report said, citing a worker at the Jiangsu Province Population and Family Planning Commission.

Both the Wuxi and Jiangsu Population and Family Planning Commission could not be reached for comment.

Zhang, 61, once the bad-boy of Chinese cinema whose movies were sometimes banned at home while popular overseas, has since become a darling of the Communist Party, despite long being a subject of tabloid gossip for alleged trysts with his actresses.

Zhang's newest project, a film to depict wartime Nanjing under Japanese occupation starred Hollywood actor Christian Bale in a leading role.

There are signs that China may loosen the one-child policy, introduced in the late 1970s to prevent population growth spiraling out of control. The policy has long been opposed by human rights and religious groups but is also now regarded by many experts as outdated and harmful to the economy.

Last December, authorities in southern Guangdong said they were investigating a family for having given birth to octuplets through in-vitro fertilization, a case that sparked intense public debate about China's one-child policy and how wealthy families were able to circumvent the rules.

The one-child policy was meant to last only 30 years and there are now numerous exceptions to it. But it still applies to about 63 percent of the population. ($1 = 6.1410 Chinese yuan)

(Reporting by Sui-Lee Wee, Additional reporting by Sally Huang; Editing by Michael Perry)

Read More

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Actor Neil Patrick Harris will return to host the 67th Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall on June 9th in what will be his fourth stint on the show that honors the best of Broadway, organizers said on Thursday.

The Emmy Award winner and star of the TV comedy "How I Met Your Mother," who won plaudits for hosting the Tony Awards last year, said he was very excited to be back.

"It'll be more impressive than ever - if my math is correct, it will be 267 times bigger than last year," Harris said in a statement.

"Oh wait. No. That can't ... hold on ... carry the one ... I'm awful at math. But rest assured, the show will rock."

The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing, the presenters of the Tony Awards, praised Harris for "his creativity and passion for Broadway."

The actor is a three-time Emmy Award winner for his guest roles on "Glee" and as host of the 2009 and 2011 Tony Awards.

"Kinky Boots," a musical with a score by pop star Cyndi Lauper, earned 13 Tony nominations, followed by "Matilda," a British import, which received 12.

Both shows will be vying for the best musical award along with "Bring It On: The Musical" and "A Christmas Story: The Musical." Lauper was nominated for best score along with book writer Harvey Fierstein and three members of the show's cast.

Actor Tom Hanks, who made his Broadway debut in the Nora Ephron play "Lucky Guy," is up for the best actor award. Other Hollywood stars including Cicely Tyson, Laurie Metcalf, Holland Taylor and David Hyde Pierce have also been nominated for awards.

The Tony Awards show will be aired live on TV.

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; Additional reporting by Chris Michaud; Editing by Vicki Allen)

Read More

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) Gov. Chris Christie will guest-host the "Today" show later this month.

NBC announced Tuesday that Christie will be a co-host for an hour of the May 24 show, which will broadcast from the Jersey shore as part of its "Great American Adventure" road trip. A location for the appearance hasn't been finalized.

The road trip segment involves the show's anchors traveling together to five U.S. destinations in a single week. Christie has stressed the Jersey shore's importance as a tourist destination in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.

Christie joins Sarah Palin and Laura Bush as other political figures who have co-hosted an hour of the morning show.

The Republican governor is running for a second term. A spokesman confirmed Tuesday Christie had undergone weight loss surgery in February.

Read More

By David Jones

NEWARK, New Jersey (Reuters) - A U.S. magistrate judge sentenced Grammy-winning hip hop artist Lauryn Hill to three months in prison, three months in home confinement and a $60,000 fine on Monday for federal tax evasion.

Hill pleaded guilty last year to three counts of failing to file tax returns on more than $1.8 million of income between 2005 and 2007 and faced up to three years in prison.

Hill has attributed her failure to pay taxes to years of pressure she experienced as a recording star while raising six children, forcing her to go underground and stay out of the public eye.

On the eve of her scheduled sentencing, Hill paid $504,000 in back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service and another $420,000 to the state of New Jersey, her attorney told the court. She still owes another $285,000 in interest and penalties.

"When the government is asking for 36 months and the judge gives three months, I think the judge gave a fair and reasonable sentence," Hill's attorney Nathan Hochman told reporters.

Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of 30 months to the maximum of 36 months.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Madeline Cox Arleo cited Hill's lack of a criminal record, her six children and her repayment of the back taxes as mitigating factors in the sentence.

Hill must report on or before July 8. Her attorney asked the court to assign the native of South Orange, New Jersey, to a facility close to home. The three months of home confinement following the prison stay is part of one year of supervised probation.

Hill told the court she pulled away from society because her life was in crisis, received veiled threats and was blacklisted because she did not conform to the norms of the music industry.

"I was being perceived as a cash cow, not a person," Hill said.

A new single by Hill, her first in several years, called "Neurotic Society," was posted on iTunes on Friday.

"Here is a link to a piece that I was 'required' to release immediately, by virtue of the impending legal deadline," her Tumblr social media page said on Saturday.

Her lawyers confirmed that she signed a new contract with Sony Worldwide Entertainment and was working on her first album of new material in more than a decade.

Hill's seminal 1998 solo album "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" won the singer, a former member of the Fugees rap trio, five Grammy awards.

(Editing by Daniel Trotta, Andrew Hay and Philip Barbara)

Read More

LONDON (AP) Beyonce loved voicing Queen Tara in the new children's movie "Epic" at least once she stopped crying.

Queen B has gone from pop royalty to screen royalty, becoming the forest queen in an animated movie that she hopes her 15-month-old daughter Blue Ivy will be proud of one day.

The film was her first work since giving birth and she says her hormones were raging.

"I literally had tears when I played the voice," Beyonce told The Associated Press in an interview between concerts in London. "There was a scene where Queen Tara picks out her pod and I just imagined seeing my child."

From the creators of the "Ice Age" and "Rio" series, "Epic" follows a teenager who is transported into a secret forest world then embroiled in a battle between good and evil and has to protect a special flower pod to save the forest. The film is being released in the U.S. on May 22.

This role in "Epic" is not the superstar's only brush with royalty of late. When performing in London last week on her "Mrs. Carter Show" world tour, the singer inadvertently singled out Princess Eugenie in the crowd to sing with her. The 23-year-old is sixth in line for the British throne. Beyonce giggled as she revealed that she had no idea who Eugenie was.

"'I didn't know, and I still don't know. Someone told me and I don't know what's going on, but I hope they had a great time and I hope I didn't insult anyone, making them sing into the mic," Beyonce said. "But you know royalty likes to have fun and have a good entertaining night."

Her sellout world tour has also caused some controversy for its racy costumes and explicit lyrics in the song "Bow Down (I Been On)," but for Beyonce it's simply all part of the show.

"I'm an artist and I love being able to express myself and I'm not one-dimensional," she said. "I have different feelings every day and now that I've done movies I feel like I can try and recreate these characters on the stage."

Read More