AJ Glasser

Just in time for Valentine's Day, DC Universe Online has a content update all about Catwoman. And Cupid.

Speaking to GamePro by phone last week, Game Director Chris Cao explained DC Universe Online's strategy for monthly content updates going forward. These updates will include new items (like armor), new quests, and new instances. Additionally, big-ticket items like a player Auction House may come with some updates.

It's no secret that gamers love cheating -- why else do you think developers built cheat codes into early games that granted extra lives, crazy weapons, or vast quantities of in-game currency? But in the modern era of gaming where everything is networked, where patches constantly update a game's security level, and cheat codes come printed in a game's manual, entering a series of button presses into a game pad has lost its deviant appeal. To get that heady feeling the Konami Code used to give us as kids, to really feel "in control" the way 30 extra lives used to make us feel, we have to find new ways to get ahead -- new ways to be devious.

I get my deviant fix through obsessive and compulsive exploration and experimentation. I want to see things most gamers never see, I want to know a game sometimes better than its own producer does. I also love to manipulate a game's design features in a way that produces abnormal results -- it makes me feel superior to average gamers and even to the game creators. Example: I spent three weeks in Sims 2 trying to get around the game's "no incest" programming and eventually succeeded in marrying a grandson to his bastard half-aunt. It served no real purpose -- I just wanted to see if I could do it.

In a creepy/cool research move, Stanford University's Ingmar Riedel-Kruse creates a "biotic" video game that lets players manipulate living things.

According to a report from the Stanford University News, Riedel-Kruse and his team created a series of eight video games that influence the behavior of living microorganisms in real time as the games are played.

Blizzard sent out a press release announcing 4.7 million sales of World of Warcraft expansion Cataclysm in just one month. Guess how much it sold in just one day?

According to Blizzard, day-one worldwide sales totaled 3.3 million, meaning 70 percent of Cataclysm's impressive sales happened in just 24 hours. If World of Warcraft is really as big as Blizzard says it is at 12 million players, that means that only 40 percent of WoW players own Cataclysm.

A developer made a game about her grandparents' 70-year marriage using actual documentary techniques. It's a game you'll probably never play -- but here's why it's important, anyway.

Dream Day: True Love is one of those games I wouldn't normally write about. It's from a casual games label (I-play) targeting an audience I don't belong to (older women) with a series of games featuring content I'm only vaguely interested in (the Dream Day series is almost all about wedding planning). But when the press release mention that series creator Cara Ely actually built a game around the real life story of her grandparent's World War II-spawned relationship, I called for an interview.

Ric Turner turned his Christmas decorations into a playable video game for the neighborhood. This is the guy you want to live next to.

Zynga had what it calls its biggest launch ever with CityVille last week, picking up a reported 290,000 users in the first 24 hours. Meanwhile, the company expands its banking membership rewards program reach.

According to App Data, CityVille now has 1.2 million monthly active users. It only needs 5 million more to break the top 40 Facebook apps and 53 million to get ahead of its predecessor, FarmVille.

An interview with financial news source Bloomberg sheds light on just how dire EA's situation is following a rash of acquisitions. Here are the top three quotes from EA CEO John Riccitiello to Bloomberg.

You're tired, your fridge is full of turkey, and now the world wants you to get out a credit card to surf the Internet for great deals. We'll make it easy for you.

ProTip: Read the fine print. Some of these deals make at first appear as "50 percent off a console," but when you click to buy, you find out they meant "50 percent off this peripheral IF you buy the console." So sneaky!

It's three days 'til Black Friday, but gamers can get started now with these digital distribution deals.

In case you missed our Best Black Fridays Deals of 2010 feature, here again are the cyber sales from various publishers, developers, and digital distribution platforms. We'll continue to update this story as we find more deals for you online:

NPD Group: People won't buy consumer electronics.
This is the economy's worst nightmare: people not buying stuff for the holidays. The NPD bases its pessimistic outlook for the holidays on the argument that "no innovative must-have hardware this holiday [...] there is little incentive for most consumers to replace or upgrade."

Keep in mind, Kinect-early-adopters, that the NPD is looking at consumer electronics besides video game consoles -- like flat-panel TVs and notebook PCs. People are starting to think of consumer electronics like those as household goods like dishwashers, not a luxury good they can skip out on. This means that they'll buy an older model cheaper, use it 'til it dies, and not run out to buy the new hotness that is technology every year.

Remember that game design professor at Indiana University who used experience points instead of grades to run his classes? He's at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, now.

Professor Lee Sheldon first caught our attention with the XP system last spring while he was still teaching two "MMO-style" classes at Indiana University. Also, he used to work on Star Trek: The Next Generation before writing for games like the Agatha Christie PC series. Now, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute tells GamePro that Sheldon is their new co-director on the school's Games & Simulation Arts and Sciences (GSAS) program.