You might be thinking of an opinion piece last month about terrorists laundering money through Online Gambling. It was a Schneier Movie-Plot Threat article.

You're definitely correct about most of your references, but I want to mention that, while some of the characters in Borderlands 2 are typical of the male power fantasy, there are a number of important characters who are gay but not defined by their sexual orientation: something the other games you list can't also claim. Also, I might also argue that most of the male characters are showed as flawed or inferior to their female counterparts. Compare the stories in Borderlands 2 of BL's male playable characters to Lillith or the one-sided Scooter and Marcus to Ellie. I would even go so far as to say that the game does more to parody and mock the male power fantasy (see Mr. Torque) than to perpetrate it.

I may be acting nit-picky here, but if I had the mod points, I would have just modded you up instead.

While you might have been joking, they have been caught trying. http://www.theverge.com/2013/10/29/5045076/russia-denies-using-poisoned-flash-drives-to-spy-on-g20-attendees

The glorious Islamic Republic of Iran has no blackjack, hookers, gays, women who disagree with their husbands, or crime.

**GTA V SPOILERS**

I don't want to get too deep into spoiler territory, but the person who orders the torture works for a parody of the real life US Government Agency that uses torture (or "used" torture, I suppose these days it's just "enhanced interrogation techniques"). I haven't gotten much further in the story than that scene, but I assume that the people who order the torture get what's coming to them. But regarding the Trevor driving the victim to the airport while talking about how torture is a useless interrogation tool, Trevor mentions he that did that because he was instructed to kill the victim and refused to be their hired gun. (I believe the government guys who ordered the torture threatened the main characters if they *didn't* torture the victim)

We could have a discussion on that scene and its effects on the player, but I doubt many people played through that scene and felt good about what they were forced to do. Assuming that's true, I think the game just had a more powerful effect on behavior than any Red Cross warning could.

And a wanted level. In GTA V, I believe murder gives you a two star wanted level which means the police come after you with force and will open fire to stop you. You could argue that evading the cops and getting them to forget about you is difficult, but having a crime witnessed in the GTA games does come with a consequence.

Even then, you're often given an choice to have your billing information different than your account information. If you don't want the transactions on your credit card tied to your purchases, there are ways around that as well.

I thought the same thing. My phone can already tell what I'm looking at. Wouldn't it make more sense to expand that technology? You may still need a button interface to distinguish something you're looking at and something you want to click on, but at least then you open up computer access to more accessibility-challenged people than hand waving.

I hope you're right. I'll just add that I believe the most successful games on the 360 and PS3 had strong online multiplayer features. I hope this is the console where Nintendo gets online multiplayer right because I don't think they'll attract serious gamers until they do.

If they can bring the first party Nintendo games I love and the cross platform games I picked up the other two consoles to play, they'll have won me back. Until we see some details, though, I remain pessimistic.

I have to say that I'm not thrilled about this. The next Nintendo console will come out in 2012 as the 360 and PS3 are reaching the end of their lifecycles. But even if this system is set up to compete with the other two consoles, I don't foresee developers flocking to develop on the console and then down rez for the PS3 and 360. If anything, this new console will get imports designed for one of the other two systems.

This also means that when the next Microsoft and Sony systems come out (rumors point to 2014), the Nintendo console will be behind in hardware again.

And if their market are the casual gamers and families? I get the feeling that they're going to lose out more and more to the mobile and web markets much in the way that the DS and PSP are. Games that require the motion controls of the Wii such as Just Dance do well, but as with the Rock Band/Guitar Heroes of the past, there will be a point where no one will want to buy a new game just for new songs.

I wish Nintendo the best of luck, but I see a long uphill battle in their future that they just can't win unless they evolve agressively.

I'd recommend checking out the April 15th episode of Weekend Confirmed or the Extra Credits episode "Consoles are the new Coin-op" for insight on where I'm coming from.

I couldn't agree more. S-E has had so many good ideas that have been mired by some glaring poor decisions. If they had just spent some time before and during development, their games would be released to fewer "WTF were they thinking" comments. They've been such a successful company and still have quite a few successful games that there's no reason they shouldn't have the budget for more marketing research, testing, and player input.

Most people were NOT paying $28 a month. If I recall, it was like $7 for 20 hours of gameplay in the "action zones". The areas where you socialize, design cars/clothes/characters, find guilds were in social zones where your subscription time wasn't used.

Actually, the monthly fee was reasonable and came out to less than $15 (the standard MMO subscription fee) for a month of gameplay depending on how many hours I put in. The audio advertisements were opt in if I recall (they were the downside of turning on HQ voice chat) and the in-game ads were billboards which added an air of realism to the game.

Depends on what you mean by cheating. The match making system drove me up the wall. I only lost against people 5x my rating because they out-geared me. But that's all I was pitted against because they purposely lowered their rank (rating determines your gear, rank determines who you fight, rating goes up as you play, rank goes up or down if you win or lose) to they could fight newbies.

And honestly, the weapons and cars are all that changed. At rank 1, you were robbing stores and stealing cars. At rank 500 you were robbing the same stores and stealing the same cars. The game failed because it was hollow gameplay.

Biometrics are still considered too intrusive by many people, but not a bad idea. Two-factor authentication using a token is fine until someone loses or breaks their token. If getting a replacement is too difficult or takes too long, you won't get people to adopt the technology. If getting a replacement is too easy, then you're back to the original issue: if they could get your token, someone would just need your PIN to access everything.