I couldn't help but see this headline as I was signing in this morning: Casual Gamers Don't Like Hard Games.  Now, I don't believe every statement, article, or even blog as a whole has to be particularly profound.  If you want to discuss stuff that most people agree on, go right ahead.  But, holy shit, Captain!  Some things are so obvious, hearing them actually makes you dumber!

To be fair, I think the article is actually about whether or not games have gotten easier over the years (well, yeah, few people use the phrase "Nintendo hard" anymore) and why that is (namely, game companies dumb down their games so they can sell to people who suck at them, too).  It was just the title itself that got me.  Maybe because it's 4 AM, and I haven't slept in almost twenty-four hours.  Maybe because I write pseudo-professionally and the redundancy of some sentences really set off some tangents (the rants, not the calculus equations... God, I hate calculus...), but regardless I was kind of aghast and amused at the same time.

I would've read the article, but as you can see, I can barely stay on subject right now, let alone focus my attention on what looks like about three pages of marketing theory.  Or maybe just a dissertation on the most painfully redundant statement of the year, coming in just second of "the plan we planned on the way to the museum where we are now" which a writer on fanfiction.net very artistically coined a few years back.

But I just thought I'd share in case anyone else was outraged/entertained and to warn the world that if I see you making stupid statements on your headlines, I will laugh at you.  It's not my fault.  I apologize.

Mystic directed me to this article, and I was amused.  This game journalist and her husband work some of the everyday frustrations of their marriage out through Borderlands.  Frickin' hilarious, and totally me some day.

To sum it up for those of you who don't want to read the article (though it is very amusing and you're missing out), she and her husband squabble because they have little time for each other anymore, and they're conversations revolve around work, chores, and raising a small child.  The writer decided to purchase Borderlands for them to play together so that they could both spend quality time together doing something they enjoyed.  Instead, her husband whined that they'd have to play split-screened.  I'd have whacked him upside the head, but that's just me.  Instead, the journalist opted to shell out almost three hundred bucks for another Xbox 360 and another copy of the game so they could each play with her own screen.  Expensive, but is it worth it?

Her points are that even buying an extra copy of a game and an extra Xbox, it's still cheaper and more effective than marriage counseling, which is roughly two hundred fifty dollars for one session.  And it's given them something to talk about besides household chores.  So far, she says, they've been getting along a lot better lately.  Sounds like a nice alternative to me.

So, are you a gamer who's committed to another gamer?  Do you use gaming to bond?  I'll go ahead and admit that my answers to both are yes.

So, the game Arkham Asylum sometimes has an ad playing in the background for the mental hospital and its website, arkhamcare.com.  So, my brother and I checked it out, because we figured they had to have put something up if they were going to have it in the game.  They do, and it's AWESOME.  You should totally check out the prices section.  The last special plan is my favorite.

There's also a site for the city of Gotham, gothamcitymunicipal.com.  It's also very neat, and done up very well as a city government site.  It has news articles, city agencies, etc.  I give them kudos for the world-building.

Since the site is obviously tied to the game (which is a pretty good game, by the way), I'm not sure how long it will be up.  I'd like to see them continue it for a long time, because playing around on it is great fun, but we'll see.

Anyway, if you're any kind of Batman fan, check it out.