I miss good JRPG music. I haven't seen a soundtrack with anywhere near the charm of my PSX era favorites in quite some time. I also miss world maps. I feel like as I have matured, video games have matured with me, which is the exact opposite of what I wanted them to do. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the…

I was pretty disappointed in the new entries for Skyrim. Felt like Soule was on cruise control. And it's an absolutely critical element of this series.

I like it. Probably not enough to play Bulletstorm, though.

Somehow my brain managed to rescue my life from Skyrim by waiting until after my busy season to finally get immersed in the game. If not for this miraculous defense mechanism my life could have changed far for the worse.

The media, in its predictable overreaction to the PSN hack, wanted to make sure that people were frightened and outraged regardless of whether any credit card information was actually stolen. So they said that the hackers were going to use the email address lists and other information to target soccer Moms and 8 year…

Is the second to last from Enslaved?

Actually the two organizations under transactions involving interested persons could be interesting: Community Visions and Alphacom. Not sure what Community Visions is; a Google search yields a lot of organizations by that name.

Here's a link to their 990: [dynamodata.fdncenter.org]

Not mentioned is the fact that Steam gamers, as a generally more technologically sophisticated group than console gamers, are less likely to be misled by phishing emails and other scams.

Silent Hill 2?

The answer to the question is, it depends.

Yeah, until you can concede that people will not, in fact, pay more than they are willing to pay - a tautology by any reasonable assessment - I don't see this conversation going very far.

The so-called "casuals" are experiencing, right now, the same phenomenon that began mesmerizing the 'core" some 30 years ago. The Wii is drawing them in not with striking narratives or impressive visuals, but with entertaining controls. Angry Birds brings them small moments of simple physic-based joy. …

I'm not sure it's a matter of "disagreement" when you're saying that every user pays slightly more than they are willing to pay. That's logically self-contradictory.

Actually, in an anti-competitive environment, companies like Comcast or AT&T would prefer metering bandwidth usage because it would maximize their ability to price discriminate - i.e., their ability to ensure that every user actually pays exactly as much as they are willing to pay, regardless of the cost to the ISP. …

I think we have to agree to disagree on the second point.

Generally, when you pay for a tier, you pay for the average use of that tier, not the top. This is what I mean by cross-subsidization.

Cross-subsidization isn't necessarily unfair; consumers often choose tiered systems over metered systems even if they're going to be at the lower end of their tier, because they feel that metered systems will have a chilling effect. It's difficult to relax while using the internet if you know your bandwidth bill is…

Although I'm not sure reviewing more terrible games will help, I do find grade inflation within the gaming industry to be problematic. A movie with a Metascore of 50 is decent. A video game with a Metascore of 50 is a travesty.

It's not quite the same as a tiered system, though. First of all, tiers allow cross-subsidization of costs, meaning customers who use a lot of bandwidth in a given tier are offset by others who use little bandwidth. More importantly, though, metering has a chilling effect on use.