The University of Helsinki looked at the test scores and gaming habits of 500 high school children and found those playing more computer games have a better grasp of English.

Games such as World of Warcraft, which is particularly dialogue-heavy, are thought to be the best teachers, with the teenagers in the study who played for 15 hours or more a week getting almost full marks in their tests.

Speaking to YLE, Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen, an English professor at the University of Helsinki, said the role playing in the games mimics everyday conversation. “The link between gaming and grades in this case is indisputable,” said Tanskanen.

Lauri Salminen and Samuli Kytomaki are two high school senior students who spend hours every day playing English-language video games. Speaking to YLE, Kytomak said, “If you hear English every day, it’s just a matter of time before you learn it.”

“School English doesn’t really teach me anything new at this point,” added Salminen.

“Not just any firm of our size gets a Super Bowl advertisement or goes into such visible cooperation with so big a player as Fox, so yes, there is a certain status in that,” said Rovio Mobile CEO Mikael Hed in a YLE report.

The Finnish firm produced the popular puzzle game that sees the player use a virtual catapult to launch wingless birds at pigs. The highly addictive application has been downloaded more than 50 million times and was top of the Apple App Store charts in 60 countries last year.

Rovio has already outgrown its premises twice and is looking to move offices again in August as the company expands. The firm has also set up training programmes as suitable employees are said to be in short supply.

“There are about 1,200 people working in the games industry in Finland and, at this stage, when we recruit dozens of them, this is already quite a high percentage,” said Hed.

In 2011, the runaway success story will see Angry Birds secure its own TV series, film and spin-off products as well as a special release for game consoles.

The two 15 year-olds, who were wearing face masks, carrying BB guns and apparently playing war, set pulses racing when one of them decided to perch on the roof between the bank and a supermarket to get a better vantage point on his opponent.

“When we receive reports of an armed man near, for example banks, we take it very seriously,” said Chief Inspector Jorgen Christensen in a report by Sjaellandske. “We drew our weapons because it is impossible to distinguish between hardball guns and real weapons, and we take no chances in those sorts of situations,” he added.

According to the reports, the boy on the roof gave himself up straight away when he found himself staring down the barrel of a genuine fire arm. “Immediately afterwards his friend came out of the bushes in a balaclava and black clothes and armed with an MP5 machine gun. He also surrendered immediately and explained that he and his friend had just been playing war,” Christensen said.

“But it’s stupid to do something like that near a bank. In fact it’s illegal to run around with weapons or something that looks like a weapon, in a public place. They should be using the woods or suchlike,” he added.

The victim and his six friends were playing the latest edition of the hugely popular video game at his home in Laholm nonstop for nearly a full day when the boy began to have what looked like an epileptic seizure.

The boy’s father told the Kvallsposten newspaper: “They played all day and all night. Maybe they got a few hours of sleep. They ate a little food and breakfast at their computers.” After the seizure, doctors at the local hospital reported that the boy’s bodily functions had been tweaked by a mix of sleep deprivation, no food, and an extended period of intense concentration.

Although the boy will make a complete recovery, his father has decided to limit the amount of time his son plays computer games. Officials from Game Over, a video game addiction treatment centre in Linkoping, told The Local newspaper that they’ve received a dramatic increase in the number of calls concerning the newest edition of World of Warcraft, and its addictive effects.

“It’s been a huge problem. We have parents who call everyday and ask,” said Game Over’s Emilie Backlund to the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper.

Inspired Gaming International (Inspired) today announces a large-scale roll-out of its Open Server-Based Gaming (Open SBG) Multi-Content terminals across Asia. Inspired will be working on this deployment in conjunction with Silver Heritage Limited (SHL), one of the leading operators of terminals to licensed gaming premises in the Asia-Pacific region. The two companies will deploy over 250 terminals across the continent during the next few months, with many to be sited in Holiday Group Casinos, the largest chain of casinos in South East Asia.

Inspired’s Open SBG system allows casino operators to select and schedule from a range of electronic gaming content thus offering a multi-content experience to their customers from any single Inspired terminal. Content includes Inspired’s award winning Multi-Win Roulette, which offers customers options to play on up to four live or automated roulette wheels simultaneously, as well as Poker, Virtual Sports and Blackjack Games.

The innovative content is complimented by a range of different terminal designs, optimised for each casino floor. The E-Bar incorporates the monitor into a sleek bar top, whilst the E-Banquette caters for new casino trends and environments by integrating the hardware into coffee tables.

Powered by Inspired’s Open SBG platform, all of the terminals are centrally managed over a broadband network, providing the ability to download content remotely as well as monitor incomes, fault and play data in real-time.

“We are excited to keep up the momentum in our expansion into Asia through this roll-out,” commented Anne de Kerckhove, Managing Director of Inspired Gaming International. “The terminals, with their award winning technology, offer something unique for Asia that will revolutionise the casino market. The wide range of content on the terminals provides players with a great gaming experience, whilst ensuring high revenues per position for our casino operators.”

Mike Bolsover, Director of Business Development at SHL, added: “To compliment our position as one of the market leaders in the provision of managed gaming solutions for the Asia-Pacific casino market, we only look to forge partnerships with companies who can supply the best products to our customers. With its innovative multi-game terminals, Inspired proved a natural choice of partner for us.”

Norman Crowley, co-CEO of Inspired Gaming Group, concluded: “This is a significant step towards one of our key objectives for the year, international growth. Inspired will benefit from long-term participation agreements for the deployment of these terminals, securing consistent and recurring revenues.”

Visit the Inspired Gaming Group website for the current Inspired Gaming share price.

Further endorsing their commitment to the Gala Gaming Platform (GGP) and Open Server-Based Gaming (Open SBG, The Gala Coral Group (GCG) have today announced the roll-out of a further 1200 terminals across the Gala Coral estate.

The latest roll-out, to be fully implemented by the end of July 2007, will consist of 600 Multi-Win Roulette terminals for SBG table gaming and 300 Atronic e-motion cabinets for SBG slots, as well as 300 SBG bingo seats. Built on Inspired Gaming Group’s (IGG) Open SBGplatform, GGP promotes third party integration and the roll-out of Atronic cabinets demonstrates the inherent Open 3rd party integration capabilities within GGP.

GGP is an open server-based gaming platform that allows GCG to download content remotely, monitor incomes and play data in real time over the network. It also allows GCG to source hardware and terminals independently as demonstrated by the acquisition of the above Atronic cabinets.

GCG also has plans to be operating 500 GGP terminals in their Bingo businesses by September 2007, offering both digital bingo and digital slot products.

With 170 Bingo Clubs across the UK, approximately 32 million admissions every year, and a typical weekly payout of £28 million in prize money, Gala Bingo is the industry leader. GCG is also the largest multi-site machine operator in Europe, with 31 Casinos and circa 1600 Betting Shops.

Luke Alvarez, co-CEO Inspired Gaming Group commented: “We are pleased to be part of this latest addition to the GCG estate and it further confirms the success of our award-winning SBG Casino products, from both a technical and financial perspective.”

Peter Hannibal, Electronic Gaming Director, GCG, added: “Since GCG and Inspired first implemented GGP in January 2006, its success is proven, giving us a return on investment in less than twelve months. Technology is the future of our business and 80 to 90p of every pound we take in the future will come from electronic gaming. We will have more and better content through SBG, greater brand leverage, maximum customer choice, an accurate view of our customers and their activities, that will help retention and customer yield. Everyone in the value chain from content providers to customers will benefit.”

Visit the Inspired Gaming Group website for the current Inspired Gaming share price.