Good morning, gamers.

So I woke up one morning last week and read a headline about a report that Cisco was considering an acquisition of Nintendo. Crazy, I thought. Absolutely crazy! The Nintendo I know would never sell out. So I began to track where the story came from, and what ensued was a high-tech game of telephone. If you caught the headline, then you already know the source of the original article so I don't have to criticize the "news" source that created this speculative fiction. Cisco, in fact, was not going to buy Nintendo, and the beloved video game company was not actually on the block - so everybody just chill. In fact, the story's concept had no source. It was an orphaned rumour. Call it an immaculate deception. The author merely made the suggestion that Cisco could be eyeing Nintendo because the networking giant is moving toward consumer electronics and entertainment and, well, Microsoft got into gaming with Xbox. I suppose I've read more outrageous pieces, but I just can't think of any right now. But hey, I'm sure it pulled in a lot page impressions.

GUN Laws

I haven't played Activision's Gun yet, so what do I know about anything. But the Association for American Indian Development has found the content to be objectionable for its negative portrayal of Native Americans with "derogatory, harmful, and inaccurate depictions of American Indians," according to the web site www.boycottgun.com. The group has called for a boycott of the game until GUN, which rewards players for killing apaches, is retooled. Activision apologized for offending anyone, saying the game was "designed to reflect the harshness of life in the American frontier at that time." Is this just another example of a group of hyper-sensitive people overreacting to a game? Maybe, but how would people feel if there was a game where Southerners were rewarded for killing runaway slaves, all in the spirit of reflecting the harshness of the Civil War era?