UK news reader stars in game

Sometimes it's the most unlikely people who come out in public support of video games. For example, even though Florida attorney Jack Thompson has been famously antigames, the first American female Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, announced earlier this month that she is working with a team that is creating a game to publicise the ins and outs of the American legal system.

Now the gaming world has found another unlikely fan: veteran broadcast journalist Jon Snow. Snow, 60, is a well-known face on the UK's Channel 4 News, and has previously served as ITN's Washington correspondent.

Snow's likeness appears in Dead Ends, a full game that accompanies the new series of shows called Disarming Britain. One of the programmes included in Disarming Britain is Fallout, a drama about issues concerning law and order in light of the murders of Stephen Lawrence and Damilola Taylor. There will also be a film tentatively titled Kids, Knives, and Broken Lives with testimonies from teens in the UK about gun and knife crime.

In Dead Ends, gamers play two characters, Keith Wilcox and Detective Jameson. Wilcox is a new gang recruit who finds himself out of his depth, and Jameson is trying to get to the bottom of the mystery of who killed Wilcox and why.

To progress, gamers will need to interrogate witnesses, chase down suspects, pass gang-initiation tests, and make a getaway through a dangerous estate. Dead Ends was developed by London-based multimedia company RollingSound.

The PC game can be downloaded for free from the Channel 4 Web site. Although there isn't an age rating, Channel 4 advises, "Dead Ends is an urban game about the death of a young person on Britain's streets and is not suitable for younger children."

The Guardian newspaper reports that a special "making of" documentary about the game will be shown on the Web site. In the documentary, Snow says, "I'm extremely excited. I've never been in any kind of a game before. I think computer games are a fantastic means of communication--everybody plays them and I think they're a terrific way of getting messages through."