Electronic Arts recently went public with their bid to purchase rival game publisher Take 2 Interactive for 2B. This would mark one of the largest purchases in the history of the game industry. But Take 2 executives believe that EA has undervalued the company. CFO Tammy Walker commented, ‘We have a lot of huge titles coming out, and we firmly believe that we can get at least 3C on the open market. Hell, if we play our cards right we can get like D's and E's’

When told that 2B meant 2 billion, Ms Walker replied ‘Dollars? You gotta be shittin’ me.’

Before becoming a top executive at Take 2, Ms Walker was one of the models for the prostitutes in the popular line of Grand Theft Auto games. When asked how a former sex worker became the Chief Financial Officer for a company the size of Take 2 she responded,  ’One day after a ‘meeting’ with the head of the company, he said I could be CFO as long as I promised to destroy a certain videotape’

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After high school, I decided to join the Army. I wanted to do it for the same reasons that most guys want join the Army. Not to protect freedom. Not to get money for college. Not even to “Be all I could be”. I wanted to impress a girl.

Impressing girls are the motivation for just about everything a guy does, from washing his car to deciding to kill people for your country. It all goes back to girls.  This was no different. She classified herself as a ‘friend’. That of course, didn’t stop her from dating my other friends. I guess I was a ‘non dating’ friend. I remember her as being beautiful. And I don’t mean beautiful in the way all high school crushes are when you look back through the decades. She was beautiful because she smiled when she saw me. She was beautiful because the pitch in her voice changed when I called her and she realized it was me. She was beautiful. And she was dating my friend.

He had joined the Army before he was even out of school. So of course, my teenaged mind thought that if I joined, she’d immediately fall in love with me.  I didn’t tell the recruiter any of this. I did the whole spiel about the College Fund and getting leadership skills. I aced the ‘ASVAB’, the Military version of the SAT. Aced. The recruiter’s eyes lit up when she saw my score. ‘This is the highest score I’ve ever seen. You’ll be able to pick any job in the Army!’  I began thinking that being in the Army would be great, and I could barely wait to get in.

In the end, I didn’t join the Army. Not because I came to my senses and realized that wearing a uniform won’t stop someone from loving someone else. My eyes were too bad. There was no getting around myopia. The girl ended up marrying my friend. He's still in the military and I still see him from time to time.

The last time he came over I popped in Call of Duty 4 for the Xbox 360. I figured he’d love it. After coming back from a tour in the Middle East , he’d probably feel right at home with the large selection of weapons, realistic environments and intense action. I walked him through a few of the missions. The AI in CoD4 is great, shouting orders at you, laying down cover fire, making you feel like you’re part of a squad and not just some Rambo-esque figure lugging around 4 guys as dead weight.

When I switched to the online multiplayer mode, things heated up. He leaned forward in the chair, eyes going into a cold stare. Explosions blanketed the streets and he took command of the 7 other players he’d never met before. ‘Clear that building! Don’t come out till you’ve hit every room. You! Hold this corner. Anything moves, shoot. And call out your targets!.’ I watched this guy that used to play flag football with me, level his assault rifle and calmly place three bullets into another player.

Call of Duty 4 has a ton of multiplayer modes. Old School Death Match, Capture the Flag Variants, Free for all, etc. But we were playing Hardcore Team Death Match. Meaning the ‘realism’ is jacked up. You get shot, you’re out for the round. No cute indicators pointing to grenades at your feet. It’s brutal. And my friend, the same guy who was afraid to dive off the high board at the pool, was kicking ass.  Now he was paired up with some anonymous player, probably 1000 miles away. They would cover each other as they went through the level. One shooting while the other reloaded. BAM! The other player’s head explodes and his virtual body falls to the ground. The graphics in Call of Duty 4 are without equal. I expect my friend to hunt down the offending player on the opposite team, maybe using a knife melee attack for extra effect. But he doesn’t. The cold stare that was in his eyes, got a little colder. He didn’t put down the controller. He used it to  look at the body of the guy who he’d been playing with a few seconds earlier.  When he spoke, his voice was softer, more fragile than before. “Hey, you said had a sweet racing game for this right? Lets check that out instead.”.

I switched the disc in the Xbox 360 and for the next hour we barely said a word.

Score 9/10.

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In a shocking investigative report, The Fox News program, ‘America Right Now’ has found shocking evidence that the popular classic arcade game, Ms Pacman, is actually an elaborate rape simulation and training program.  Host Robert Dinkum says he knows the report will be controversial but they have the proof to back up their statements.

“We interviewed 3 rapists and all of them had either played, or heard of, the game Ms Pac Man. Let’s be clear about that. 100% of the rapists we interviewed had a direct or indirect connection to this game. And the game itself does very little to mask its true nature. You have a woman, trapped in a maze, being chased by men dressed up as ghosts. And once they catch her…well, I don’t have to be graphic. And we dug so deep that we were able to uncover one of the most perverted aspects of this so called game. One of the ghosts is actually a woman named Sue. You heard me correctly. Ms Pacman promotes lesbian rape.”

While number of women’s groups are slated to appear on the program to denounce the game, Fox stated that they were unable to locate anyone from the videogame industry to defend it. ‘We called 3 different GameStop stores last Sunday at 5am and were unable to contact anyone. So obviously, that shows the videogame industry is ducking this issue. We did get a lot of calls from someone claiming to be the greatest videogame player of all time, Billy Mitchell. But after some background checks, he didnt have the level of credibility that we require at Fox News.'

The Special Report, 'America Right Now:How Games are Raping Your Children While You Watch TV Shows Like This One', will air on Fox News, immediately after 'When Animals Attack: Cobra vs Toddler'.

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At the 2007 Consumer Electronic Show held in Las Vegas, the buzz wasn’t about what was being shown. The talk was about what wasn’t being shown. Showgoers expected to finally get a glimpse at the killer robots that major electronics corporations are rumored to be working on. Unfortunately, the show floor did not contain any murderous androids, much to the dismay of the people in attendance. ‘We know they have Killer Robots, why are they keeping them under wraps’ one retailer asked. ‘I have a long waiting list of customers who are demanding a robot that has the ability to one day turn on them and force them into a life of servitude.’

Executives at the show were apologetic. Sony’s Ken Watanabe said ‘Our death bot is just not ready to be shown to the public. We don’t want to display something that can just maim or cripple. We are all about quality at Sony. Until it’s a perfect killing machine, we will continue to develop it.’  Honda had a similar take on the subject. ‘We made a mistake by showing off the Asimo too early, before the stun rays were ready. It gave false hope to would be supervillans. Now we’ve learned our lesson. But, we are doing some closed door demonstrations of Asimo 3.0 using a machete. That’s as far as we’re willing to go this year’.

The show consensus was that 2009 will be the year killer robots finally make an entrance and enslave us all to do their bidding. We can’t wait.

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