I'd say that you had better tread carefully when comparing democracy to an online RPG. The researcher did no hacking, and only broke the "cultural" rules. A group of Quake players may have house rules against camping or spawn-killing, but the real "rules" are the only the ones put into place by the designers/developers, not the players, and so-called "spoken" rules don't really matter without modifications or admins to enforce them within the game.

I'm not saying I think your conclusion is incorrect, I just think it's a funny context to draw it from. So in this case, if the high level players are the cultural elite then what does that make the devs?

+1 here,

In much the same sense that art exhibits can be art themselves, and a movie exhibiting artful video clips can also be artfully arranged, so can video games be art.

But due to their interactive aspect, games deserve a slightly different attitude. If anybody took a board game or a pen and paper roleplaying game and treated it as art, it would be hard to take them seriously. In fact, the only real "serious" games are the ones that are based on high-strategy and skill, such as chess or sports or card games. There's nothing really "artful" about those, except that the real art is in the game-playing, as it ought to be.

Of course, everyone has a different idea about what a good video game is. And with the industry seeing a major influx of casual-gaming customer base, the power gamers are seeing less and less stuff aimed at them specifically. Casual gaming is quickly becoming kitsch, as power gamers already tend to view it as.

Not to be a nit-picker, but lava and magma aren't actually the same thing; lava is magma flowing on the Earth's surface. The properties of the two are the same, aside from lava being surrounded by relatively cool air, and magma being surrounded by insulating earth.

I know that doesn't really answer your question, but consider this; It's not lava yet.

if it makes you feel any better, I laughed.

Bankruptcy is declared, like crying Uncle. I can be a friggin' hobo and not have declared bankruptcy, as I'm not required to until creditors are banging at the front door of my cardboard box.

Until then, I'm allowed to claim my cardboard box to be a fully-furnished mansion if I wanted to.

wait, what? I don't think that's how science works...

I know this is a troll, but I remember hearing someone say their wireless card works better on a linux driver than a windows driver. Unfortunately, I can't remember where, so no link. Will post again if I remember.

that's kind of the joke. GP is making a parody of people who like to use big numbers irresponsibly.

There's tons of fresh new games out there. You just have to look for them. A lot of great mainstream games of note have been Portal, and Braid, No More Heroes, Little Big Planet, Left4dead, the list goes on.

Of course, you may not like them all, but they definitely aren't sequels. (Well, I guess Portal is a kind of spiritual sequel to that one old game that was made by the same team...)