Bitmob - Gamers Are Too Defensive. Thanks GamePolitics.
A recent news story broke out about a 40-something-year-old American woman traveling to Canada to meet a 16-year-old boy with whom she had been playing World of Warcraft. A call-in show covered the story. The first caller was a gamer who said that he didn't think it was fair to mention the name of the game, because it wasn't the game's fault that this happened. Many of us probably feel the same way. However, if we are going to be more concerned about protecting the reputation of a video game than about fighting international sexual tourism, people are going to continue to look at gamers as an unbalanced people with twisted priorities.

Ramblings of a Gamer - How do you Measure a Game’s Worth? Thanks Slashdot.
First off, I want to point out that it’s pretty much impossible to measure a game’s value before you buy it. Sometimes you will know that a particular game is supposed to be short/long, but you can’t know how much time you will actually play the game or how much you will like it beforehand. That said, thinking about a game’s “value” is not particularly productive if you already own it, so this is mostly just a topic that was interesting to contemplate.

1UP.com - Rolling Blackout: The Dark Side of Updates.
Another, more realistic hypothetical: Say Activision, following last fall's public outcry over Kurt Cobain's inclusion as a playable character, released a mandatory patch for Guitar Hero 5 that removed Cobain from the game. Would they have been wrong, insofar as they were impinging on a player's rights after the point of purchase? That's debatable. After you pay for a game, whether as a download or as a boxed copy, you as a consumer have certain rights regarding how you use that game. It's the question of game developer and publisher's rights to that game once it's in your hands that causes post-release alterations to be a murky issue.

GameSetWatch - 'Homer In Silicon'- Structure in Arkham.
I got an Xbox 360 for Christmas, and the first game I rented for it was Batman: Arkham Asylum, about which I'd heard great things. And I really enjoyed it: the gameplay was smooth and fun, and the narrative was engaging throughout. As I played, though, I found myself thinking that Arkham Asylum is a case study in the way that the commercial demands on a AAA game play against storytelling.