Someone might want to place a call to former Senator George Mitchell, so he can get a jump on this before this little substance from Germany becomes as ubiquitous among gamers as steroids are among baseball players. After all, performance- enhancing drugs have permeated just about every sport, so why wouldn’t video games be next? To some people, Halo isn’t just a game, it’s a way to make a living. Heck, some people are even pushing to get competitive gaming into the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Clearly to some, gaming is serious business, and anything that can give players enough of an edge to wrack up a few more frags is worth looking in to. That’s where German company Tomarni stepped in, offering up “FpsBrain,” a pill they claim offers a “remarkable increase in perception and reaction capacities.” Meaning you twitch faster, and wrack up more kills. or so the company seems to claim.

But is this pill a slickly packaged snake-oil placebo, a safe way to win the day, or a potentially dangerous drug that’ll have gamers dropping like flies in the midst of heated LAN battle? MTV’s Multiplayer gaming blog seemed to think the question was worth a little digging. Aside from contacting the company’s CEO, the post’s author also brought in the expertise of a registered dietitian. This was all done via email, because, you know, us bloggers don’t know how to use a phone, or actually interact with another human being.

The findings?

“The ingredients in this product include amino acids, vitamins, minerals and caffeine,” she wrote in an e-mail yesterday. “[L-tyrosine] is also a precursory of several neurotransmitters, including dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinenphrine (also known as adrenaline), which are the body’s main stress related hormones. These hormones signal the heart to pump harder, increasing blood pressure, opening airways in the lungs, narrowing blood vessels in the skin and intestine to increase blood flow to major muscle groups. Vitamin B6 is a certain vitamin that is necessary for the conversion of L-tyrosine into neurotransmitters,” according to the emailed dietitian.

Funny thing is, what neither the dietitian nor the writer here seem to notice is the word “precursory.” Now, prehistoric plant and animal matter are precursors to oil, but the last time I tried shoving a bunch of ferns into the gas tank of my Nissan Sentra, I didn’t exactly make it to the local 7-11. Other obviousness oddly overlooked by MTV’s blogger include the fact that, because Tomarni is a computer case manufacturor, the likelihood of their employees concocting a new substance that significantly tweaks perception and reaction times with no ill affects on the user is somewhere just a hair this side of zero. It borders on comic-book logic: Sure, a teenage boy could create chemical webbing in his own home that rivals the tensile strength of steel while still remaining flexible and elastic. Right. It’s a wonder Stan Lee didn’t sell someone the Brooklyn bridge in the 1960’s. Yeesh.

The good news is that the pills don’t seem to contain much in the way of potentially harmful substances, either. Apparently, they only contain about 1/16 the caffeine of an average energy drink. Still, the pills seem to be a hit with gamers, at least in Germany, where they are currently sold. The company says they are in talks with the FDA to release sell FpsBrain in the US. Are gamers the nation over about to get a noticeable edge by popping a few of these pills? Not likely, even if they do work as advertised:

“Supplementing a diet with these products can lead to peaks and valleys of energy levels, which defeats the original purpose,” she said. “Generally, people who watch a lot of television and play video games may have a sedentary lifestyle. In addition to diet, exercise should be incorporated into one’s lifestyle to increase energy levels as well,” wrote the dietitian, via email.

I might add that for a quick caffeine and sugar high when your gaming needs it most, a Bawls will do the trick. Sure, it’ll leave you crashing a half-hour later, but at least tastes refreshing and has a snazzy blue bottle. You aren’t going to get that from a pill.