Meg's blog

I've already talked about Chinese Heroes, a new videogame to teach ethics and values, but China's got a brand-new, free-to-download videogame called "The Incorruptible Warrior." In it, you play the only honest official in China. You level, gain gold and XP, work on your magic skills and improve your weaponry, and other typical RPG things, while you run around killing, maiming and torturing the corrupt officials. And their girlfriends. And kids.

I'm not sure how to class this game... Fantasy? Sim?

A lot of WoW players are annoyed about the Warrior changes that are expected with the Burning Crusade expansion, but someone (Myxilydian of Burning Blade, according to WoW Insider)decided to start an ingame protest. He asked everyone who's not so pleased about the Warrior changes to create a level 1 Gnome Warrior on the Thunderlord server, meet up and then march naked from Ironforge to the gates of Stormwind.

I've done some beer runs on the PvP servers, and I've spent more time than I'd like to admit emote flirting. I really like semi-character events, and the naked gnome march is goofy for a good cause.

I share an office with the other ex-pat teachers, who are all gamers to some degree. Sometimes one of us stumbles into work late, mumbling something about defeating the Parthian invasion or playing "just one more hand" until the sun came up. There's a lot of ALT-TABing when the students come into the office.

Right now, I'm beta testing a new game (more on that later) and rediscovering my Puzzle Pirates addiction. I starting playing a buggy beta of PP in 2003, when I was in college. My friends and I would call each other up and meet on the high seas. In fact, when my girlfriend Allison called me to say she was engaged, she totally ruined my drinking puzzle. Unfortunately, when PP became a pay site, my limited student budget went to other things, like Neverwinter Nights and alcohol.

Bubble Bomb from Binary Sun isn't the most original game ever. You've got a screen full of colored bubbles, and you try to explode groups of the same color.

Taco Bell is offering a lifetime of tacos to the first person to trade in their PS3. Unfortunately for Taco Bell employees, the console will be donated to a Boys & Girls Club's teen center, not kept in a secret breakroom.

If you're hungry for $12,500 in Taco Bell Bucks (I'm not a math major, but NextGen says that $12,500 is enough for a taco a day for the next 54 years.) and you have a PS3 taking up storage space, you can send your name and phone number to [email protected] and hope you're the first one!

Usually my local net cafe is full of boys and young men playing CounterStrike for hours on end or staring in shock at the foreign girl playing English WoW. As internet gaming becomes more popular, it's having some surprising effects in China.

China is home to the Beijing Internet Addiction Treatment Center. It may not be totally unwarranted, as this article on a serial cyber-husband, whose internet dating cost real cash and a huge GPA decline, shows. I'm not entirely sure how one cures internet addiction... does the treatment center fake a power outage? Do they find girlfriends for the nerds in page-refresh recovery? Do they enlist all the addicts in a week-long D&D game?