What if Breaking Bad Was a Video Game? - IGN

As Breaking Bad concludes, it's easy to rank it as one of, if not the, best television drama of all time. The characters have the sort of depth that causes us to become emotionally attached, while the plot is riveting and addictive. But what if Breaking Bad wasn't a show, but an action game? What plot points would have changed and what characters would have reached a much different fate?

BE WARNED: This is loaded with SPOILERS. But if you're reading articles on Breaking Bad while only on season 3 you're probably not the bluest meth in the batch anyway, are you?

Walt is forced to move to a cabin in New Hampshire

On the show: Once Walt's secret life as a drug kingpin was revealed, he became the target of a nationwide manhunt. His only option was to disappear into a remote cabin in a desolate part of New Hampshire with no communication with the outside world for, what should be, the rest of his life.

If it was a game: Walt could be the most wanted fugitive on the planet that just blew up half of the city while tossing pirated, leaked copies of The Avengers 2 out his car window. The only thing he would have to do is run into a tunnel or an abandoned building for two minutes and everything would be fine. He could even get back into the car he was just driving with the limbs of the police officers he just ran over hanging from the fender. The percentage of fugitives that police arrest in games are lower than Dwight Howard's free throw percentage if he had an arm tied behind his back while an Olive Garden waiter sits on his should and describes the ingredients of their pasta primavera. Basically, it's not good.

Hank gets shot and dies

On the show: In one of the most shocking moments of the show, our favorite DEA agent gets injured in a gunfight with some Nazis and is executed in the desert.

If it was a game: Hank wouldn't have died when he was shot, but once the bullet hit, all the coins that he had collected would have flown out everywhere. Sure he worked hard to collect all of them and it's going to cause his score to be lower at the end of the level, but at least he would be alive. I always thought of Hank and Gomez as sort of a Sonic and Tails partnership, so maybe it would be golden rings instead of coins. If that's the case, after Hank was shot, he would have rolled into a ball and plowed through all of the Nazis, only to be killed later when he touched a mechanical crab.

Gus gets blown up in a nursing home

On the show: One of the biggest villains on the show was Gus. He masterminded a crime empire while keeping his persona as a fast food restaurant manager. Gus meets his demise when he visits Hector Salamanca in a nursing home, only to be blown up by Walt.

If it was a game:  No way you're taking out a guy like Gus that easily. At the very best that bomb would have depleted a chunk of his energy and he would be flashing when he came out like Bebop and Rocksteady on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game. Gus would have gotten angry and flown off in an elaborate yet affordable flying craft where Walt would have then been forced to fight a series of robots. If Gus wanted to pull a page out of Mega Man 2, Walt would also have to fight a flying, robotic dragon while balancing between three tiny blocks. I wasted months of my childhood trying to kill that idiotic dragon and Dr. Wily only to get a clip of Mega Man walking home and a list of the staff? Thanks for that one, Capcom.

Walt Jr. is mocked for not being able to walk

On the show: In the very first episode of Breaking Bad, Walt Jr. and his family go out shopping for clothes when a group of rude teens start making fun of him because he can't walk. Real cool guys!

If it was a game: Walt Jr. would have walked around the store until finding a pizza on the ground, hidden in a dressing room. Upon eating it his health would be 100% restored and, not only would he be able to walk, but his next objective would be to beat the bullies to death with his crutches. Please note that in addition to pizza, it could also be a pineapple, cherry, a bunch of grapes, a soda can, or a first aid kit. Either way, he's doing backflips out of the mall after he finds it.

Marie and Skyler argue over Walt's behavior

On the show: When Marie finds out from Hank that Walt has been arrested, she meets with Skyler and demands that she tells Walt Jr. the truth about his father. The two argue around for at least the twentieth time before Skyler gives in and tells Walt Jr. everything.

If it was a game: If Skyler was your playable character, there's no doubt you two would get into a fist fight. You would finally have enough of Marie pushing you around and you'd be forced to beat the crap out of her in order to prove your point. After 30-40 punches, Marie's shield and energy would be depleted enough to where she would reluctantly agree with your decision not to tell Walt Jr. and she would storm out. Your relationship level with her would drop -30 points, as well as your morals, but your combat skills would jump +20 and you may even unlock a new weapon! Throwing stars!

Jesse gets caught trying to escape the Nazi meth facilities.

On the show: Has anything worked out for Jesse through the entire series? It seems that every choice turns into the worst decision possible and it's led to him living in a hole while cooking meth for Nazis with the only reward coming in the form of some half melted ice cream. Once he finally tired to escape, Todd and the gang caught him then murdered his former girlfriend.

If it was a game: First of all, I would reset this game and delete my autosave file immediately. Jesse has made every wrong decision you could possibly make. If this were Splinter Cell, he would have died in the tutorial level. Nonetheless, if you got to the point where the Nazis were holding him, you wouldn't try to escape by sprinting to the fence at full speed out in the open. You would hide in the shadows where you immediately become invisible. If a guard dog ran up on you, it wouldn't be a problem because you hid some chicken legs in your pocket and the dogs would be distracted. Also, there'd be a loud conversation that you would luckily overhear where one of the Nazis says to the other "Hey, did you patch up that hole on the east side of the fence that's just big enough for a human man to squeeze through?" The other guy would respond "Not yet, but I think I'll work on it in about an hour. I sure hope no one hears this that is trying to escape. That would be a large problem for us, wouldn't it?"

Huge shout-out to Brian K. Anderson for his LEGO Breaking Bad parody.

Rob Fee is a freelance writer and comedy maker. He is no longer in the nWo. Follow him on Twitter at @RobFee. 

Game on - until 2022 - Hufvudstadsbladet

The camps have run into time and there is no longer reminiscent of the industrial dispute that blighted half of last season. Absolutely nothing. This fall is through broadcasting rights clear, so the Finnish hockey audience may be involved from the start of the season.

club owners cheated the fans of half a season to enforce a stricter salary cap and restrictions on spelarkontraktens length. Then someone could be fooled into thinking that the economically hard-pressed club owners would keep hard on the wallets this summer.

Anything but that. To date, the club owners spent $ 1.5 billion on new playing contract then transfer season started in July. Among the jewels include David Clarkson’s seven-year contract with Toronto, which is worth $ 36.75 million, or why not Valtteri Filppulas five-year contract with Tampa Bay, giving him $ 25 million. It is no exaggeration to say that they have a lot to live up to.

The figure above is not even including contracts signed before the summer, as Ryan and Corey Perry Getzlafs giant contract with Anaheim. Both get around eight million dollars per year for eight years.

why we had a lockout at all? Say it. For club owners behave like children kids and let it cost what it wants to outdo the competition. Which is at least curious, given that the majority of club owners are clever businessmen who made a fortune in business. The new collective bargaining agreement was a desperate attempt by the club’s owners to put safety locks for their own gluttony. But just as the last lockout and then introduced the salary cap could prevent club owners from bankrupting themselves in the hunt for the Stanley Cup, the new labor agreement make it.

So enjoy hockey when the season starts rotating. If history teaches us anything it is that the probability is very high that it will be a new labor dispute when the current collective bargaining agreement expires in 2022. Until then – game on!

Shrinking List of Video Games Is Dominated by Blockbusters - New York Times

Big video game makers, like their cousins in books and music, have scrambled in recent years to adapt to the digital technologies buffeting their business. Tens of millions of people now play games on smartphones and tablets, usually for a sliver of the cost of playing on a game console.

But one part of the games business is thriving as never before: the blockbuster.

The biggest console and PC games — usually those games that are part of an established franchise and have the slickest production values — are posting spectacular sales figures. This month, the latest in the gritty urban adventure series Grand Theft Auto took only three days on store shelves to reach $ 1 billion in sales, faster than any video game ever, its publisher said.

"The winners have gotten massive," said Doug Creutz, an analyst Cowen & Company, a stock research firm.

The richest games are getting richer partly because the industry makes fewer games over all, concentrating players' spending. Publishers are also squeezing out a little more money per game sold by selling add-on content and other digital goodies. And the legions of players eager to do battle with one another online create a sort of virtuous cycle, as players are attracted to the titles with the biggest pool of opponents.

Now, the most popular games, like Call of Duty, Halo and Assassin's Creed, or top sports games, like the FIFA soccer series, have the biggest development budgets and fan bases and are getting a bigger portion of sales. The top 20 games in 2012 accounted for 41 percent of total American game sales in stores, nearly double what they did a decade earlier, according to the NPD Group, a market research company.

"At a time when people are bemoaning the fate of the interactive entertainment business, if you pursue a strategy of giving consumers the highest-quality titles in the business, they will come out for what you have to sell," Strauss Zelnick, chief executive of Take-Two Interactive Software, the company that publishes Grand Theft Auto, said in an interview.

The lower output of publishers makes the stakes higher. In 2012, only half as many new games were released in American stores as in 2008, NPD said. Electronic Arts, the publisher of the Madden football series and other sports favorites, sold 67 different titles in stores in the fiscal year ending March 2009. In its last fiscal year, it sold 13. Because fewer games are released, game makers must get more sales out of those games that do reach store shelves.

"Every publicly traded publisher will talk about a 'bigger, better, fewer' strategy," said Edward Williams, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets.

But a blockbuster strategy comes with big risks. Games meant to be console blockbusters generally require tens of millions of dollars to build the graphics and gameplay that smartphones and tablets cannot yet match. Grand Theft Auto V, for example, features a sprawling game universe even more immersive for many players than big movies are for theatergoers.

Those costs require millions in sales — and create big losses if sales are weak.

The development costs on Grand Theft Auto V were likely to have been more than $ 100 million, and its marketing $ 50 million more, said Evan Wilson, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities. He estimated that a typical console game would break even at about four million units, while that figure would have been one million a decade or so ago.

Game makers have tried to compensate for the higher costs by getting more out of consumers with each game. Like many big publishers, Electronic Arts sells its marquee titles, including the FIFA soccer games, at the standard price of $ 60 each. The company also lets gamers enhance the game by spending money online to compose fantasy teams of their favorite soccer superstars. For its last fiscal year, E.A. said such digital revenue from FIFA was more than $ 200 million, up 94 percent from a year before.

The growth of multiplayer gaming, in which players converge online to compete against one another, makes big games bigger through the benefit of what economists call the network effect, analysts and game executives say. This is the tendency for people to jump on the bandwagon of various services — whether Facebook or Craigslist — because that is where everyone else is.

Analysts say people buy Call of Duty not only because it is a consistently high-quality game, but also because their friends and others are playing it on the Internet. Mr. Creutz of Cowen and Company says he believes that is a dynamic not present with movies, even blockbusters like "Avatar."

"You don't have that online networking effect" with movies, he said. "My enjoyment of 'Avatar' is really independent of everyone else's enjoyment of 'Avatar.' "

Still, the movie industry, which is also largely dependent on blockbusters, has managed to keep box office sales stable compared with the video game industry, which is suffering an overall decline in retail sales. Last year, video games generated $ 7.09 billion in retail sales, 39 percent less than their peak in 2008, NPD estimates.

Restoring growth in the video game industry is difficult partly because players are spending more time with cheaper and free games. Revenue from the various methods of selling games online, like a $ 3 version of Angry Birds for the iPad or the $ 1 required to buy extra lives in the otherwise free game Candy Crush Saga, is by most accounts not yet big enough to reverse the slide in overall sales.

New consoles from Microsoft and Sony will be released in the coming months, and that could temporarily stem the tide of lower sales. The current generation of hardware has been around a while, with Sony's PlayStation 3 at seven years and Microsoft's Xbox 360 at eight. Game sales traditionally slow the longer a system is out, and revive when a new one is introduced.

The new systems will test whether console game sales have been permanently dented by the shifting ways that consumers play games, making it even more important that the blockbuster franchises showcase the consoles' capabilities to potential buyers.

Last week, E.A. released what is likely to be one of this year's biggest hits, FIFA 14, the latest edition of the soccer game that has become a smashing success around the world. By the end of March, E.A. said, it had sold 14.5 million copies of FIFA 13, its previous version, about 30 percent more than FIFA 12 had sold the year before.

David Rutter, the executive producer of E.A.'s FIFA game, said that in recent years the struggling economy had made gamers more discriminating about what they buy. As a result, critical plaudits — often a reflection of how much investment a publisher has put into a game — have become more important to sales.

The players' discriminating nature also means that many of them flock to game franchises they have enjoyed before — perpetuating the cycle of blockbusters.

"Consumers get excited about a particular experience and remain loyal to it," said Mr. Zelnick of Take-Two. "When you have a commanding market share, you maintain a commanding market share."

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Only in Battlefield you can destroy the building, shielding your enemy. Only in Battlefield you lead an attack from the back of a gun boat. Battlefield gives you the freedom to do more and more while playing to your strengths and carving your own path to victory.

In addition to his trademark multiplayer, Battlefield 4 offers an intense, dramatic character-driven campaign that begins with the evacuation of American VIPs from Shanghai and follow your squad to fight to find his way home.

There is no comparison. Immerse yourself in the glorious chaos all-out war, found only in Battlefield.

Requires Origin Client to activate.

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Vikings conquer Steelers in NFL Wembley game - Reuters

Minnesota Vikings quarterback Matt Cassel throws in the fourth quarter as Pittsburgh Steelers nose tackle Steve McLendon (L) defends during their NFL football game at Wembley Stadium in London, September 29, 2013. In center is Vikings center John Sullivan.

Credit: Reuters/Eddie Keogh

South Park: The Stick of Truth Grand Wizard Edition - Xbox 360 Collectors Edition

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Indians aren't in playoffs yet, but dream will live beyond Game 162 - CBSSports.com

Carlos Santana (41) high-fives Jason Kipnis after hitting a fourth-inning HR on Saturday. (USATSI)

MINNEAPOLIS — You start off dreaming of winning it all, but at some point in so many good baseball seasons, the goal becomes so much more simple and so much more immediate.

You just don’t want to go home. You just don’t want it to end.

You just don’t want anyone to tell you that your dream has died.

The Indians’ dream lives on, and Saturday’s events in the wild AL wild-card race guarantee that it will stay alive at least past Sunday’s final scheduled day of the regular season. The Indians aren’t in the playoffs yet, but now they know they’re not going home after Game 162.

If that’s not mission accomplished, it’s at least something accomplished, for a team that lost 94 games last year and hasn’t made it beyond Game 162 since 2007.

Indians still rollingRecap: Indians 5, Twins 1

At worst, after a Saturday that included the Indians’ ninth straight win, the Indians would finish the regular season in a three-way tie for the two wild-card spots. In that case, they would get to the playoffs with a win either Monday at home against the Rays or Tuesday in Texas against the Rangers.

At best, the Indians spray champagne after Sunday’s game against the Twins, and move directly on to Wednesday night’s AL wild-card game.

“We just need to win,” Indians manager Terry Francona said.

That’s not technically true. If either of the other two AL wild-card contenders loses Sunday, the Indians still clinch.

But it’s hard to blame Francona or the Indians for thinking that way, because they’ve been in must-win mode for more than a week now.

What’s impressive — and this is true even with the Indians’ “easy” September schedule — is that the Indians have turned must-win into almost-always-win. Saturday’s 5-1 win over the Twins gave the Indians a 20-6 record this month. They were 4 1/2 games out of the second wild-card spot when the month began, and after all those wins they finally took over the first wild card spot by themselves on Saturday.

“That says a lot about this team,” Ryan Raburn said.

Yes, it does. It says a lot about the way all three of the remaining AL wild-card contenders have played this week that one single win is going to determine who moves on and who goes home.

“You hear every manager say at the start of every year that every game’s important,” Jason Giambi said. “You think, ‘Come on, you play 162 of them.’ Then you get to the end of the season and you’re looking back and thinking, ‘How did we lose that one game?’ “

With one more win (or with a Rays or Rangers loss Sunday), the Indians would have no need to look back. They could simply look ahead to Wednesday — and with a win Sunday, they will guarantee getting that game in Cleveland.

“To be honest, after all we’ve been through, I’d love to play a [playoff] game in Cleveland,” Francona said. “I think that would be really cool.”

This is already pretty cool, for a franchise that hadn’t even had a winning record since that 2007 playoff appearance, and for a manager who lost a job after his 2011 Red Sox collapsed down the stretch. Saturday, in fact, was the second anniversary of the final day of the 2011 season, when Red Sox lost in Baltimore and Evan Longoria homered at Tropicana Field to put a dismal end to Francona’s final Boston season.

He can talk more easily about the worst parts of the Boston experience now. He said this a smile Saturday morning that the “hate mail is way down this year,” then answered a question about how not to get any hate mail in Boston by saying, “Yeah, win every game.”

Francona’s viewIndians’ skipper still a fan of his hometown Bucs

He had good times in Boston, too, obviously, But watching him with the Indians, even in the heat of a close pennant race, it’s easy to think that he’s as happy now as he has ever been.

It helps that the Indians are winning. It helps that some of the wins, like Saturday’s, rarely seem to be in doubt. The Indians went ahead in this one on Carlos Santana’s two-run home run in the fourth. They made it 5-1 in the fifth, and the Twins put only three runners on base the rest of the way.

The Indians are 12-6 against the Twins, who are having such a rough season that manager Ron Gardenhire might not survive it. They went 17-2 against the White Sox, which means that nearly a third of their 91 wins came against those two teams.

Before you say that makes them any less deserving of a playoff spot, just remember that the Rangers have an even higher percentage of their wins (31 of 90) against the Astros and Angels.

All that really counts is the overall total, and whether it’s big enough that they let you keep playing when they finally send all the non-contenders home. The Twins and the White Sox and the Astros and the Angels and a whole bunch of other teams head home Sunday, as soon as Game 162 is over.

The Indians will play on. Their dream will live, at least for a few more days.

Danny Knobler joined CBSSports.com in 2008, after covering the Detroit Tigers through 16 bad seasons and a couple of good ones. He also worked at Baseball America and Sport Magazine.

Should the rules of war be included in computer games? - BBC News

The Red Cross wants to have a greater influence in the virtual world of battlefields.

The aid organisation is arguing that as virtual war games are becoming close to reality, the rules of war should be included.

It claims games such as Medal of Honour, or Call of Duty should make sure that actions which could be war crimes are not rewarded with victory in a virtual battle.

Imogen Foulkes reports from Geneva.

Batman: Arkham Origins - Playstation 3

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Is the Game Over? - New York Times

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL is doing just fine. Unlike the N.F.L. and the N.B.A., it has been free of labor strife for nearly 20 years. It has more exciting young stars than I can ever remember. It has even achieved that elusive "competitive balance," with seven different champions over the last decade. Teams across the country are playing in brand-new ballparks that they somehow persuaded local governments to help pay for. Over the last 20 years, baseball profits have grown from roughly $ 1 billion to nearly $ 8 billion.

The game, in other words, has never been healthier. So why does it feel so irrelevant?

Maybe the best evidence of this admittedly unscientific observation is the national TV ratings. There's no sense comparing baseball's numbers to football's, which exist in a whole other Nielsen's stratosphere. But baseball is losing ground to pro basketball, too. In 2012, the N.B.A.'s regular season ratings on ABC were nearly double those of Major League Baseball on Fox. The last eight years have produced the seven least-watched World Series on record.

More to the point, baseball seems simply to have fallen out of the national conversation (unless the conversation happens to be about steroids, that is). The last time baseball felt front and center, culturally speaking, was the 1998 home-run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. And we all know how that turned out.

What happened — is happening — to our national pastime? For all the moral hysteria, the answer, I think, has little or nothing to do with performance-enhancing drugs. It does have a lot to do with the broader cultural trends that have helped shape modern America. (We are talking about baseball, after all.)

Think for a moment about the very phrase "national pastime" now, in 2013. What sorts of images does it conjure? "It sounds like a guy sitting on a rocking chair on his porch listening to a game on the radio and maybe he's whittling," says Bob Costas of NBC.

As crazy as it sounds, baseball was once celebrated for its speed. Into the 1910s — before all of the commercial breaks and visits to the mound — it was possible to play a game in under an hour, says the author Kevin Baker, who is writing a history of baseball in New York City.

To the game's early poets, baseball's fast pace was what made it distinctly American. Mark Twain called it a symbol of "the drive and push and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming 19th century!" The 21st century, not so much.

Paradoxically, baseball's decline began at the very moment we think of as its golden age, the 1950s and '60s. The game held the country's almost undivided attention. Baseball's heroes were America's heroes. Yet the forces that would undermine the game's cultural supremacy had already been set in motion.

FOR all the pastoral gloss we like to smear on baseball — hey, is that Shoeless Joe emerging from those cornfields? — it was historically an urban game. The national pastime first took hold not in small-town America but in the industrial Northeast, which had the density of population to fill stadiums. Before the 1950s, baseball had 16 franchises in 10 cities, not one of them west or south of St. Louis.

But the same highways that led Americans south and west also pushed professional baseball into new territory: between 1961 and 1998, the number of franchises almost doubled.

You might think that spreading baseball across the country would be good for the game, and in some ways it was: more franchises equaled more spectators. In the process, though, a lot of teams wound up in cities without deep roots in the game.

This could be problematic for any sport, let alone one as obsessed with its history as baseball. Witness awkward spectacles like "Turn Back the Clock Night" at Tropicana Field, the Tampa Bay Rays' annual attempt to whip up interest among its putative fan base. (How does a franchise that sprang to life during the Clinton administration go retro? By wearing the old uniforms of other teams, of course!)

Baseball's never-ending nostalgia trip has made it an inherently conservative sport, one that's forever straining to live up to its own mythology. This year, not a single contemporary player was voted into the Hall of Fame because so many eligible players were suspected of steroid use. Never mind that Cooperstown has its share of racists, wife beaters and even a drug dealer. (To say nothing of the spitballers.)

Expansion also helped ensure that baseball would become a largely regional sport. Economically, this has been great: local TV deals are where the money is. It's been good for fans, too: They can now watch their hometown team play most of its games.

The downside is that only a handful of franchises can claim any sort of national profile. When the postseason rolls around and it's time for baseball to take the national stage — well, it doesn't, unless the Yankees or the Red Sox are involved. "If Tampa Bay plays Cincinnati in the World Series, I don't care if the series goes seven games and every game goes into extra innings, baseball is screwed," says Mr. Costas. "That's not fair to the Rays or the Reds, but it's true."

It doesn't help that the postseason starts in early October, which means it's going up against a new season of TV shows and — yes — football.

You can't talk about the decline of baseball without also talking about the parallel rise of the N.F.L. We're a sports-crazed culture, gorging on the all-you-can-watch buffet of ESPN, fantasy leagues and video games. But even the 24-hour sports cycle lasts only 24 hours. Decisions must be made, and they invariably favor football. Not only is "Madden NFL 25" America's hottest sports video game; fantasy football has far surpassed fantasy baseball in popularity.

The N.F.L. has certain structural advantages over Major League Baseball: teams play only once a week, and when the postseason arrives, every game is an elimination game. But its real advantage is that it's louder, faster and more violent — which is to say, better in tune with our cultural moment. "We are a shouting culture now, shouting connotes excitement and engenders excitement," says Daniel Okrent, who is considered the founding father of fantasy baseball. "Baseball is quiet and slow."

It's telling that professional football has been around for about 100 years, but that it didn't find cultural traction until the age of television.

If baseball was a game you followed, football was one you watched. Beneath the surface, it was an enormously complicated sport. But the passing, the running, the tackling? This was great television. And under the lights, on Monday nights, with Howard Cosell making you feel like the country's fate hung in the balance of even the most meaningless game? Forget about it.

It's almost impossible to overstate the role that TV has played in determining our taste in sports. College football took off after a 1984 Supreme Court decision that allowed the networks to flood the market with college games. The N.C.A.A. basketball tournament has been around for 75 years, but it was CBS's "March Madness" that made it a cultural phenomenon. Now even the president fills out a tournament bracket.

THE increasing interest in college football and basketball fed the increasing interest in the two pro sports. Both the N.F.L. and the N.B.A. drafts are now mega-TV events. And the baseball draft? You can follow along on the MLB Network. Chances are you won't recognize a single name.

Why has college baseball failed to attract any meaningful interest? Mostly because there are already so many professional baseball games to watch. Or not watch. (Earlier this month, an Astros game had a .04 Nielsen rating in the Houston area, which translates to about 1,000 viewers.)

Baseball's ubiquity was once its great advantage. With its 162-game season, it was the default sport; there was always a baseball game on. There still is, it's just that now there are so many alternatives. And not just live games; you have SportsCenter and its countless highlight-aggregating imitators, too.

Sports are now as much a part of our popular culture as movies, TV shows or pop music. Athletes aren't icons, they're celebrities, and are marketed accordingly, which explains why there's a course at Harvard Business School that studies LeBron James.

Yet for the most part, baseball stars haven't really managed to transcend their local markets. To some extent, this is a byproduct of the steroid era; baseball's zealous pursuit of juicers has torn down a lot of legends in the making. It's also the nature of the game, which doesn't lend itself as easily to superstardom as basketball. (Imagine LeBron going 3-for-4 and having that be considered a memorable performance.)

But baseball has also failed to sell its young stars to the broader public. There may be a wariness to do so, a sense that "branding" is undignified for our national pastime. It doesn't help that the game has no pop-culture ambassadors to speak of — no Lil Wayne or Jay-Z. Look at the audience of an average N.B.A. postseason game and you'll find a gallery of familiar faces; look at one of baseball's, and you'll find the strategically placed stars of the latest Fox sitcom.

Much has been made of the declining participation of African-Americans in baseball. Less has been said about the trickle-down effects of this in an era when hip-hop is such a powerful tastemaker in American culture. Baseball is not cool.

Can it be again? By all means. Sports rise and fall in cultural relevance. Football reigns supreme now, but given everything we are learning about its dangers, that could change. People are moving back into cities, which could work to baseball's benefit, too. Also, the Chicago Cubs will presumably make it to the World Series again someday. People will want to see that.

For that matter, it's fair to wonder how golden baseball's golden age really was — and how much our perception of that era is just a function of baby-boomer nostalgia. After all, when Roger Maris hit his 61st home run on Oct. 1, 1961, Yankee Stadium wasn't even half full. "I don't think the game is fading," says Will Leitch, a senior writer for Sports on Earth. "I think the notion of what the game is supposed to stand for is fading."

That may prove to be a good thing for baseball. Maybe a new generation of fans won't grow up thinking the game represents something more than it is. Maybe baseball will stop auditioning for another chapter in the Ken Burns saga. Maybe baseball can just be baseball. Yes, it's quiet and slow, but if you hang in there, through all of the pitching changes and batting-glove adjustments, you might get caught up in the drama. If you don't, there's plenty else to watch.

Jonathan Mahler is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, a columnist for Bloomberg View and the author of "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning."

Final Fantasy XIII-2 - Playstation 3

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Final Fantasy XIII-2 – Playstation 3 – Cocoon – a utopia in the sky. Its inhabitants believed their world a paradise. Under the Sanctum rule Cocoon had long known peace and prosperity. Mankind was blessed by its protectors, the benevolent fal’Cie, and believed that tranquil days would continue forever. The tranquility was shattered with the discovery of one hostile fal’Cie. The moment fal’Cie from Pulse – the feared and detested lower world – awoke from its slumber, peace on Cocoon came to an end. Fal’Cie curse humans, turning them. Wielding servants in magic You are l’Cie – chosen of the fal’Cie. Those branded with the mark of a l’Cie carry the burden either fulfilling their Focus or from a fate harder than death. A prayer for salvation. A wish to protect the world. A promise to challenge destiny. After thirteen days of fates intertwined with each other, the battle begins. Make rescued several years after Lightning and the others Cocoon some survivors have decided to start by rebuilding on Gran Pulse. Lightning is nowhere to be found, however, and are considered by many to be dead, but Serah believes otherwise. When her town suddenly overrun by monsters, a mysterious man named Noel appears to save her.

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• Just as the monsters appear on screen, a dial clock called “Mog Clock” appears in the middle of the bottom half of the screen and a red ring surrounds the player’s character with a radius of about 3 meters.
• The Crux system allows players to jump through various gates throughout XIII-2. Players will see a drastic change, based on their choices. This would also go towards the multiple endings of the game.
• Players will be presented with a puzzle-like problem in a void between dimensions.
• The player will be presented with a series of “dialogue trees” when talking to non-player characters (NPCs).

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Manning Starts Game After Game Despite Hit After Hit - New York Times

Josh Haner/The New York Times

Eli Manning has started every Giants game since November 2004.

In August 2005, weeks before his second N.F.L. season, there were questions about Eli Manning's durability. Tim Hasselbeck said he remembered them well.

In the second preseason game that summer, against Carolina, Manning sprained his right elbow. Hasselbeck, the Giants' backup quarterback, started the next game, against the Jets. He started again a week later against New England and began wondering if he would soon be starting regularly.

"I was going into that scenario thinking, Wow, here we are in the preseason and this dude's getting hurt," said Hasselbeck, now an ESPN analyst. "Let's see how this is going to work out."

It worked out something like this: Sunday's game against the Kansas City Chiefs will mark the 150th consecutive Giants game started by Manning, including the postseason, since he replaced Kurt Warner in November 2004.

It is a noteworthy accomplishment, maybe now more than ever before. As the Giants' injury list piles up — including three mainstays on the offensive line — Eli Manning, like his brother Peyton, quietly churns onward as a paragon of N.F.L. reliability.

His is the longest active streak by a quarterback and the second longest over all. (Washington Redskins linebacker London Fletcher had started 243 games entering Sunday.) Here is what else has happened since his streak began:

? Cleveland has used 15 quarterbacks; Miami and Oakland have had 13 each. Byron Leftwich has started for four teams. Cleo Lemon, J. P. Losman, JaMarcus Russell and two McCown brothers all came and went.

? Michael Vick served a prison term and returned. The N.F.L. had a work stoppage. Then the referees had a work stoppage. Brett Favre retired, twice.

? And Hasselbeck appeared in only five games in two seasons with the Giants before retiring to a television studio in 2007. As Manning's teammate, Hasselbeck never attempted a pass. Backing up a Manning, Hasselbeck learned, can be a bit like waiting for a comet to land in one's living room.

"I believe, in his mind, not playing is not an option," Hasselbeck said. "It doesn't matter what it is. He'd never even let his mind go there."

Being an iron man in a sport of brutality requires more than willpower. Derrick Brooks, who started 235 consecutive games at linebacker for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, said he owed his durability to a lot of luck, too.

"The amount of games I played in, week in week out, day in day out, I was blessed," Brooks said in a telephone interview. "Guys that are in this current situation are blessed. And I was lucky."

D'Brickashaw Ferguson, who has started every game in eight seasons as the Jets' left tackle, has blocked for six starting quarterbacks. He said there was no secret to staying healthy, nothing a player could eat or drink to remain active, but said a healthy dose of desire and attitude was required.

"I know guys that do a lot of maintenance activities, and they still find themselves on that injury list," Ferguson said. "It's a privilege to be on this field. I don't like to take it for granted. I'm pleased that I have this opportunity to do it on a regular basis."

Hasselbeck said Manning played through elbow pain for much of the 2005 season. He hurt his shoulder in 2007. He had plantar fasciitis in his foot in 2009. He sustained a gash on his forehead after a hit in 2010. Nothing has yet to hold him out of the regular season (138 games so far) or the postseason (11 games) since his streak began.

"I don't know if it's ever crossed his mind, either," Giants offensive lineman Kevin Boothe said.

Manning is third on the N.F.L. career list in consecutive starts by a quarterback, behind Favre (321) and Peyton Manning, who started 227 games in a row before missing the 2011 season after neck surgery.

Only three other active quarterbacks have started more than 70 games in a row: San Diego's Philip Rivers (122), Baltimore's Joe Flacco (96) and the Patriots' Tom Brady (74). The league's concussion protocols have changed, and attitudes toward injuries have evolved.

A Game With No Clear End - SI.com

Without a uniform to wear, Austen Lane is struggling to come to grips with his future in football. (Bill Frakes/SI)

By Austen Lane

JACKSONVILLE — When writing part one of my crazy football story 10 weeks ago (you may recall What It's Like to Get Whacked, about being cut from an NFL team), I knew in the back of my mind that part two would be my redemption piece. The first article was about sadness, frustration and disappointment when I was cut out of the blue by the Jaguars in June, a bad fit for coach Gus Bradley's new defense. The second part would capture my return to glory, a phoenix rising from the ashes of self-doubt and uncertainty and depression into the light, back into my rightful place playing in the NFL.

See, the Kansas City Chiefs had picked me right after the Jaguars fired me, thinking I could be a fit as a fast, pass-rushing type defensive end. And the first game of the regular season, perfectly, was Chiefs-Jags—in Jacksonville. Part two was going to be a story of perseverance, hope and the power of a positive attitude.

Unfortunately, this is not that story.

There is a special time every year when Sundays aren't just for church and doing work around the house. The special months between September and January feature Sundays when you assemble your friends, drink some beer and, most importantly, watch football. That's for fans. As a player, Sundays were everything to me. Sunday was the one day a week I could just let it loose and have fun.

These days my Sundays aren't as amazing as they used to be. Quite honestly, they stink. The smile I woke with every Sunday morning is now replaced with a scowl, much like the one you might come across in a long line at the Department of Motor Vehicles or the Post Office. This is my normal Sunday now: alone on the couch in my apartment in Jacksonville, flicking through channels like someone with advanced OCD. I watch parts of games, but even that enjoyment is now corrupted. It's impossible for me not to key on the defensive ends and nitpick everything they do.

Having played sparingly in the preseason and hurting from a rib injury, Lane sensed that his run-out against the Packers in the final preseason game would be his last with the Chiefs. (Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)

Ever watch a football game and question your own morality? That's what I find myself doing every weekend. I have never wished harm on any player in my life, but I am also not blind to the fact that with injuries comes a higher chance of me playing on a team again. Instead of checking box scores and stats, I find myself checking injury reports. The inner conflict in me struggles to wrap my head around the fact that I am actually looking up the injury status of players whose availability, or lack thereof, might open a spot for me on one of the 32 NFL teams.

It's been four weeks since I last stepped on a field. That was at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. We'd beaten the Green Bay Packers in our last preseason game, and that should have made me happy. I'm an ultra-competitive guy. Always have been. As a seven-year-old I used to the throw the Candy Land board across the room when I lost. I should have been high-fiving my teammates after beating the mighty Packers. But no.

First, I was coming back from torn rib cartilage, and the heavy wrap made it tough to breathe. As the game ended, the look of my body language told the story of a guy who just lost the Super Bowl. As teammates around me were cracking jokes and walking in the locker room I just sat there looking around the stadium. For the first time in my entire life of playing football, I got a thought in my mind that I swore I would never get.

At that moment, for the first time in my life, I didn't love football.

I don't know if it was my rib injury that hampered me in camp, or my frustration of not being able to show what I could do. In the last two preseason games I had played a total of 12 snaps, and seeing how I wasn't a starter, I knew this would be my last day on the team. Still, in the locker room I put on a fake grin the best I could. I congratulated some of my teammates, and we listened to coach Andy Reid's postgame speech and had our team prayer. You could feel the excitement in the locker room. But one of my teammates saw through my fake happy demeanor.

"You okay?'' he said.

"Hell, yeah, man,'' I said, mustering up enthusiasm. "Just a little sore."

But unlike my last day in Jacksonville, when I got the news this time I didn't have any emotion. I was over it. Not sad, not angry. Just done. As I walked out of the locker room, I knew it would be the last time I'd share this room with these guys. I had to totally fake it when another teammate said to me, "Big homecoming for you next week—I know you're going to be fired up." All I could think to say was, "I know! Can't wait." Even though I knew it was a lie. A shame, because playing Jacksonville had become something of an obsession with me. I saw myself lining across the guards, working a pass-rush move and sacking Blaine Gabbert. It was always the same, and it always ended with me not celebrating but looking over to the Jacksonville sidelines and nodding my head. For three months I visualized it. Now I knew it wasn't going to happen.

I left the locker room that night and met my mom and my best friend, both of whom were at the game. They knew what I was thinking.

"Mom,'' I said. "No sense in going apartment-shopping tomorrow."

That was it. Talking football fell to the wayside.

*  *  *

The emotion was different this time—less shock, more frustration and questioning. (Peter G. Aiken/Getty Images)

The final cut day is the worst day in the NFL. In one day a team is required to go from a roster of 75 players to 53. That's 22 phone calls that are going to be made on every team to grown men, telling them they're unemployed. Some of those players have families, some players are depending on game checks to make ends meet, and some players simply don't see the cut coming. On this day I never worried too much because for the first three years of my pro career, in Jacksonville, I knew I would have a roster spot when the season started. This day, I found myself not worrying either. I already knew I'd be one of the Kansas City casualties.

The next morning, an unknown Kansas City phone number appeared on the screen of my cell phone. I knew what was waiting for me. It was pro personnel director Chris Ballard.

"Austen," Ballard said to me, "we are releasing you. Please come to the stadium."

My release from Jacksonville was a roller coaster of emotion. This one? As emotional as a kindergarten play. At the stadium I acted like a bitter ex fresh out of a long relationship. I left all of my gear, cleats and gloves behind in my locker. The memories they represented would only frustrate me more. I thanked Chris Ballard for the chance; I always thought he was in my corner. I never spoke with GM John Dorsey or coach Reid. That's just the way some teams do it.

I saw some of my former teammates, now suffering the same fate as I'm suffering. A few guys looked shocked, while others like they were expecting it all along. We wished each other luck and exchanged numbers. These guys were complete strangers to me six weeks earlier and now I find them close allies—simply because they provide a positive outlet for me, like a drug addict in dire need of a sponsor.

Outside the stadium, I called my agent, Scott Smith, with the news, and he was there to pick up whatever pieces of my psyche that felt broken. He said I should have about a 50 percent chance of getting picked up. So I decided to drive home with my Mom. Maybe the short vacation would be good to clear my head before I make my start with another team.

Kansas City to Iola, Wis. Nine hours. About 615 miles. Lots of time to think. And time for a GM to phone me, offering me a rescue from the waiver wire.

We left at 8 in the morning. I kept thinking, as Missouri turned into Iowa: Is this ringer working? Do I have cell service out here in the country? Four hours into the trip, we're north of Des Moines. Every five minutes or so I check my phone. Nothing. Nothing but texts from friends wishing me well. I text back that I'll be fine, and I'll get picked up soon.

Home in Iola. No call. It never came. I started working out. I saw old friends and family friends, and I told them the call will be coming soon. A week went by. The call never came, not even when teams could start signing players after Week 1, meaning they don't have to guarantee your contract. Essentially, you sign a contract with a team, and they pay you week to week, and can cut you any time with no guarantees.

My shield of self-denial comes down. Reality comes back, knocking on my door. Reality bites, I must say. I had lost my "constant" in life. While some people have family, kids or faith to keep them grounded, I had football. Family and faith are a big part of my life, but I spend the most time with football. Football was the one thing that kept me balanced, and while everything had changed the past 15 years of my life, football stayed the same.

My shield of self-denial comes down. Reality comes back, knocking on my door. Reality bites.

It was my escape and comfort. Now it is gone.

Even though I enjoyed spending time with my family and friends, I started losing motivation to work out and I began to sleep in way too long. I sat glued to my couch from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m., flipping through channels or napping. Sleep was my ally. I felt if I slept maybe I would wake up and realize that my predicament was just a bad dream. For the first time in my life I wasn't cleaning out my mother's refrigerator. I'd lost my appetite. The only productive thing I would do all day was stretch. I tricked my body into thinking that if I made some kind of effort, my day wasn't a complete waste. Looking back on it now, it was. My days used to be filled with excitement of game preparation and sharing the unexplainable camaraderie with my teammates. Now the highlight of my day was waiting until 6 o'clock for my friends to get done with work so we could go to the local bar for $ 3 tacos or $ 4 burgers.

Suddenly a weekend of partying and drinking was sounding better than focusing on getting my dream back. That's when I knew it was time to head back to my home in Jacksonville.

*  *  *

Lane turned to boxing to help fill the competitive void created when football was taken away. (Bill Frakes/SI)

With the change of scenery I was back on my normal regimen of weight training, yoga and running. But even that didn't fill the void that football once took up. My workouts lacked intensity, and for the first time in my life I found myself losing self-motivation. That's when I decided to visit my friend Matt at his boxing gym. Boxing has been my saving grace. While it's not football, it's the closest thing I can find. With every session I get worked to the point of having my heart beat so hard that I can feel it ringing in my ears. I get pushed to the feeling of almost puking, and then I get pushed some more. I don't have time to think about football when I'm working on four-punch combos and have to focus on avoiding the mitts when they come back and try to hit me in the face. Hitting the heavy bag as hard as I can for a minute isn't an activity; it's a fight to survive. Boxing at the World Gym provided my cardio, and it made me have heart. You need heart to box—and to play football at a high level.

I still find myself telling people that I will get picked up soon, and the most frustrating thing is not knowing if that's a legitimate statement or not. Four months ago I wrote my first article, a replacement Monday Morning Quarterback piece. I discussed the importance of present and future. I had a plan all written out, and it sounded like I knew what I was talking about. I thought I did, but the problem is this: How long do you go down the road, waiting for the NFL dream to continue? How long do I chase this pipe dream before I end up like an Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite talking about the good old days and how he should have played longer?

Every day I live with the fear that I'll never get another chance. That same fear drives me to push every day. It's now my biggest motivator.

That's the torturous part of this. There is no alarm that goes off and says: No one's calling. Stop fooling yourself. Get a job. Enter the real world.

Every day I live with the fear that I'll never get another chance. It's real. I feel it all the time. I feel for the first time I'm going to wave the white flag. Quit. The game was just too hard, and I couldn't do it.

Ironically, that's the same fear that drives me to push every day with a relentlessness I never knew I had—and that I'm not sure I've ever used to do anything in my life. My fear is now my biggest motivator. Others run from fear. I accept it. I embrace it. I eat with fear, sleep with fear, train with fear. When fear and my motivation are no longer married inside me, then I know it'll be time to walk away.

That's the moment I'll finally find peace.

But not yet. I'm not ready.

Epilogue

So … life takes some strange turns. I finished this story and filed it to The MMQB on Tuesday of this week. Less than an hour after I finished it I got a text message from my agent.

"Get ready,'' Scott Smith texted. "You have a workout next Monday with an NFL team."

I'd rather not say the name of the team. Don't want to jinx anything. But the hope is there.

And maybe, just maybe, there will be a Part Three of the Austen Lane story coming later this fall at The MMQB.

Already cut by two NFL teams in 2013, Lane knows his window of opportunity is closing. A surprise tryout is giving the young defensive end renewed hope. (Bill Frakes/SI)

Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan - Nintendo 3DS

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Game over for old fergekai - People Magazine

Now the decontaminated.

– Since I took up the matter in June, the old ferry pier at Bjorelvnes fell down twice. I really hope we get it off before winter comes, said Anders Killie Solli (Sp) in Lenvik council Thursday.

And a unanimous council stood behind the allocation of up to 150.000 million for redevelopment of the derelict and dangerous jetty.

amount covered by the Chairmanship account reserved for additional funding for extraordinary expenses.

Lenvik Port Authority will be responsible for the practical implementation of the redevelopment project.

(Folkebladet.no)

Week 4 Game Probabilities: Better Outlook for Giants - New York Times

Weekly game probabilities return for 2013. In this space, we will reveal the outcome probabilities for each week's N.F.L. games while examining interesting aspects of game prediction and football analytics.

This Sunday, the 0-3 Giants visit the 3-0 Chiefs. On the basis of each team's record, the game looks one-sided, but a closer look reveals a much more even matchup.

Both the Chiefs and the Giants have turnovers to thank and to blame for their records through Week 3. The Chiefs haven't turned the ball over once this season. They haven't even fumbled, much less lost a fumble. On defense, the Chiefs have intercepted 3.5 percent of opponent pass attempts, significantly higher than the league average of 2.5 percent.

The Giants are at the other end of the spectrum. Quarterback Eli Manning has been intercepted on an amazingly frequent 7.6 percent of his pass attempts. And the Giant defense has a below-average 1.7 percent interception rate.

In retrospect, turnovers explain a great deal of a team's fortunes. But prospectively, team turnover statistics don't predict game outcomes as much as you might think. The reason behind this distinction is something called auto-correlation. Put simply, turnovers are very random. Only a small portion of a team's past turnover rate carries forward to be predictive.

Consider offensive interception rate. In a sample of several recent seasons, interception rate correlates with a team's win total at -0.46. Correlations are a measure of how connected two variables appear to be, calculated on a scale of -1 to 1. A correlation of 1 is perfect lock-step connection, and a correlation of zero means there is very likely no connection. A negative number means the two variables are inversely related; as one goes up, the other goes down. In this case, as offensive interception rate increases, win totals decrease as we would expect.

But if we divide the season into halves — all even numbered games and all odd number games — we see that team interception rate isn't consistent. In fact, the correlation is about 0.1, meaning that a team's past interception rate doesn't tell you much about how many interceptions it may have from game to game. To put that in perspective, the most consistent aspect of team performance is offensive pass efficiency, which correlates from week to week at 0.6.

And that's why the Chiefs-Giants game isn't as lopsided as one might think. The game probabilities for Week 4 are at right. (* Denotes the neutral site game in London, where home field advantage was removed from the probability model.)

Brian Burke operates Advanced NFL Stats.

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