New Jersey has been in the news quite a bit lately, as we’re seeing the underbelly of one of the most corrupt states in the country. Louisiana is another, but there’s something about New Jersey strong-arm tactics that set it apart.

Still, there’s plenty to like about New Jersey politicians as well, particularly when they tell the politically correct suits in Washington to go to hell. There’s been all sorts of controversy through the years as the feds tried to stop people from enjoying themselves by playing poker and other games online. Then we had a court explain that federal law didn’t cover games of skill like poker, and now we have a bunch of states led by New Jersey making it clear that they’d like to control how people entertain themselves in their state. The state of New Jersey is now allowing its citizens and people in their state to play online.

The latest news has Richard Branson’s Virgin Group getting involved as they have teamed with the Tropicana Resort in Atlantic City and online game maker Gamesys. They will offer online poker, blackjack and slots this week. The state hopes to bring in $1 billion in casino revenues this year by imposing a 17% tax. Finally, something that makes sense.

Of course people have been playing for years and this industry is growing like crazy. Everyone accepts online poker as a new and fun form of entertainment, and many new poker champions started by playing online. There are tons of poker sites for American players and there always will be, but now we have states getting in on the act and that should make things even better for consumers.

Hopefully, this push from the states will finally get Congress to adapt consistent rules and regulations, or at least make it even easier for states to innovate. Poker has become such a popular game and it seems silly to deny people the right to enjoy it in their pajamas. Sure, real casinos are fun, but sometimes staying home and playing on your own is even better.

The gaming world seems to change faster than most industries these days. Several years ago Nintendo was on fire with the Wii, and now everyone seems down on the company and Wii U. How did things change so fast? Well, it shouldn’t be surprising in a world where cheap apps are flooded onto the scene, offering new options daily for gaming fans, and online gaming options seem to expand exponentially as well, with everything from slot games at Sports Interaction, massive multiplayer games and then games like Minecraft that seem to turn conventional wisdom on its head. The console makers seemed to rule the world just several years ago, and then social gaming companies like Zynga suddenly became powerhouses, but now we’ve seen how quickly things change. Wii also will be facing the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in coming months, so even in its own console space the competition is fierce.

But many still have faith in Nintendo. Oddworld Inhabitants founder Lorne Lanning recently made the bold statement that Nintendo would be around for another 100 years, while Zynga would not. Casual observers might be startled a bit by this statement, but when you look more closely at the history, the man has an excellent point. Nintendo is a 124-year-old company that was founded in 1889 as a producer of playing cards. The concept of innovation has been ingrained in this company and its financials are very healthy. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has made it clear he won’t be laying off development staff to deal with short term problems, as that would destroy the company long term. He understands that the key to long term success involves consistently producing great products. He shouldn’t let the short term analysts distort his thinking.

While this culture is ingrained at Nintendo, a young company like Zynga has less to fall back on in tough times. Their games exploded in popularity off of Facebook, but then reality set in when the landscape was changed a bit. Now who knows how they will react to adversity? I wouldn’t make a long-term bet on them.

So when you look at the landscape out there, it’s clear that games will come and go, and so will gaming companies. But I think a company like Nintendo with a tradition of innovation should be able to ride out the highs and lows.

Poker has been steadily gaining in popularity for years, and the number of people trying their luck at casino poker tables has grown. These days, people have options when it comes to playing casino games. When given the choice or playing poker online or playing in person, playing online has its advantages.

Learning Curve

When you play poker at sportsbook.com, you do not need to be a World Series of Poker professional to get involved. One of the main advantages to playing poker online is that you can take all the time you want to learn the game before you start playing for real. The websites offer tutorials and training games that you can use to figure out what is going on and what you need to do to score big.

Distractions

If you have played poker in a casino at all, then you know about the audience that can sometimes develop around a good game. Even if the game is not good, there is always the chance that someone will plant themselves right behind you and make you feel uncomfortable. When you play poker online, you do not need to worry about these distractions, which allows you to focus on the game at hand.

On Your Schedule

An online casino never closes, no matter what. If you want to play poker at 3:00AM on a Wednesday, then you will always be able to find people online who are interested in a good game. Online poker allows you to play on your schedule, and not on someone else’s.

Convenience

If you do live near a casino, then it can sometimes be inconvenient to get dressed, get in the car and drive over to the casino just to find a poker table you can play at. If you do not live near a casino, then your problems at finding a casino-caliber poker game are obviously much larger. With an online poker website, you do not need a casino to play poker. You also do not need to spend time finding a parking spot and then walking around the casino just to find an open table.

Poker is an exciting card game that requires skill and a complete understanding of all of the different elements. If you want to play the game at your own pace and on your own schedule, then you will want to check out the many convenient options available for online poker.

Today, one post in particular caught my eye – ‘DAE think a middle school kid reviewed Dead Space 2 for IGN?’ As someone who writes about video games for a living, I had to check it out and, honestly, I found myself wondering the same thing. I’ve seen sites run guest posts from aspiring youngsters for big debuts. The perspective is usually refreshing but still relevant, even if some of the more complex critique is missing.

In this case, though, it was just a bad review. I feel a little guilty writing that. The internet can be a cruel place, as Greg Miller, the writer, surely knows. He’s receiving a lot of crap for it. Check Twitter for #HireMeIGN and you’ll get an admittedly funny look at Greg’s world right now.

That’s the part that’s so interesting to me. The review was poorly written, there’s no way around that, but people are trolling this guy in ways I rarely see. I’ll be taking a deeper look at the situation later in the week on our parent site, Bullz-Eye.com. Stay tuned.

Are you sitting on a pile of holiday money with nowhere to spend it? If you’re an avid gamer with cash to spend, you could check out a web service we wrote about a couple days ago, Playwithme.com.

It might not be for everyone, but it is a way to spend some money if you are interested in games. Playwithme.com lets you play Flash games and console games against hot young gamers. You pay for credits and use those credits to buy game time with the girl of your choice. If she’s online, you can play games until the money runs out.

The system at Playwithme.com lets you chat with the girl gamers as you play. It’s easier to chat if you’re playing a Flash game because those usually have turns. Console games will require more attention on the game and less time chatting with the girl you chose. You get more from your money for playing the Flash games.

They say you can find anything you’re looking for on the internet. As the days go by this seems more and more true. I never would have thought I’d be able to log online and play video games against hot girls in an instant, but it turns out I can do just that.

As Jeff mentioned in an earlier post, social sites are popping up to give gamers a chance to play their favorite games against hot young ladies. The latest site to join the industry is PlayWithMe.com. It has a variety of games and ladies set to team up against you. The system is simple. You buy credits and choose your lady and then challenge her to a game. The site has a selection of Flash games, but it’s also possible to play console games against the girl of your choice.

Your best bet is probably choosing a flash game. You are there for a little female company, right? Flash games give you the best chance to chat up the ladies and won’t require as much focus on your play.

Like I said earlier, anything can be found on the internet. If you’ve got money burning a hole in your pocket and an eye for a hot gamer, PlayWithMe is out there. Just remember, the more you play, the more you pay.

Here’s what Nick Montfort, a professor of digital media at MIT, had to say:

People tend to mean several things by this question. First, can video games be sold by art dealers, appear in galleries and museums and be an accepted part of the art world? They already are: just look at the creations of Cory Archangel, Mark Essen and Eddo Stern. Second, can video games tackle difficult issues and sensitively present us with different perspectives? They already have: see the work of Terry Cavanaugh, Jason Rohrer, Molleindustria and Tale of Tales, and commercial games such as Bully (also called Canis Canem Edit) and Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit). Finally, can video games present an experience of aesthetic beauty that is particular to the medium? Indeed they do: see Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s Rez, a game dedicated to Kandinsky and which I first discovered and played in the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York. It’s a great time for those interested in this question to see what work is already out there.

I think he gives the best response of the bunch, but he gives it in that snide, I-know-things-that-you-don’t kind of way. Those are the questions people are asking, but why do we want the answers? To justify the amount of time that gets dumped into games and gaming?

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that gaming is a less thoughtful narrative medium that the others we have available to us. Very few games that get made are telling an interesting story or challenging the player’s view of the world in any significant way, likely far fewer of them than books or movies. Games, for the most part, aren’t being designed with story in mind. They are designed directly for a consumer, and they come out of a booming business. If you’ve ever heard the saying “art from adversity” then you know what I’m getting at here. It’s not difficult to throw billions of dollars at a project and market it to expectant masses. There is no struggle, other than the struggle to meet artificial deadlines so you can hopefully keep your job at a top developer instead of packing up and moving your office ten or fifteen miles to the closest competitor. For the most part, video game design is a pretty cushy environment, so it becomes less and less likely as the world gets more and more enchanted by gaming that we will see Sophie’s Choice from someone like Activision.

It’s entirely possible that smaller development houses are turning out some good stuff, but I can’t honestly say that I believe development will reach a point that the smallest, most artistically minded pieces of work will be discernible from the crap like that Columbine game. That game has likely been the most contentious where the art debate is concerned, and I think it’s a good example of why games aren’t art now, and why they might never be. As much as that game wants to be a social commentary, wants to draw the audience in to what the Columbine shooters were feeling, it’s still a game, which is where games will fall short. As long as there is an objective to be met, a quota to reach, a number of infiltrators to be dispatched, games will be no more than a skinner box with an overpriced script, providing gamers with the thrill of objective completion instead of the challenge of a real story. That’s not a slight against games, it’s just the nature of interactive fiction. As soon as the reader has to be pandered to, has to be asked what decision to make, the story has been compromised by the intent of the audience. That’s not what art is about. It’s not about trying to please a viewer, trying to appeal to the artist’s desired protagonist. It is about creating something with which we can can resonate, something that makes us feel about the world that which we may never have felt on our own. The moment a game provides the player a choice, that decision is gone, lost in a player’s desire to “win” the game, to beat the system. Granted, that may change over time, but for now, games can’t be art, because games are designed to be beaten or, even worse, to siphon money out of the consumer. That’s not art. That’s as far from art as we can possibly get.

I tried to cover a wide range of products so everyone could have something to love. Obviously Project Natal and Playstation Move are the big video game releases for the year, and though I didn’t use the iPad, the iPhone 4 is on there (sorry guys, iPhone OS 4 looks great). I’m also looking forward to the nPower PEG and MagicJack’s upcoming femtocell. On the whole, it’s going to be a pretty solid year for gadget geeks.

The site launched today and is already down from the amount of traffic it received. That’s probably not interested gamers as much as it is people curious about what this sort of thing looks like. My guess? A train wreck. If anything, I hate to think of the things the poor girls working for this will be subjected to.

Interested gamers can pay $8.25 for 500 credits, which the company says is about the price of buying a girl a drink. Not if you’re buying her PBR. That’s right, we keep it classy. Each session runs 400 credits, after which you can leave a 100 credit tip. Those sessions will typically last 10-12 minutes, less if you’re playing a Flash game. It’s a pretty stiff way to enjoy the company of a lady, but I guess getting your ass whooped in some Halo by a hot chick might fulfill someone’s wildest fantasy.

Playing bingo and other games of chance on the web is a trend that seems to be constantly growing in popularity. Many of the game-based websites offer free on-line play, or you can register with them to play for money or other prizes. Online bingo lacks the fun of a game held in a room full of people frantically trying to get those tiles in a nice neat row, so they can yell “bingo” at the top of their lungs. Still, it is easy to access and very convenient. You can play at almost any time of the day and from the privacy of your home on sites like Caesars online.

I may be waxing a bit nostalgic, but I would really like to see bingo become more popular as a pastime that is undertaken in person. Oh, I could go to the local Elk’s game, but they usually offer it on a night that is inconvenient for me. So, I guess what I’d like to see is the game become part of our culture once again, whether or not you play for money. It was fun and competitive, but based entirely upon luck, so that those of us without any particular skill still had a chance of winning.