When U.S. prisoners journey beyond their prison 
walls, it’s usually because they’ve been assigned to a roadside cleanup crew. In China, they head to World of Warcraft.
In addition to the physical labor he was required to perform during the day, a former inmate at the Jixi labour camp in northeast China is alleging he — and 300 fellow prisoners — were forced to play online games at night, raising credits and finding loot that prison guards then resold for real-world money, reports The Guardian.
Brian Kingrey isn’t really a fan of 
baseball video games, nor is he particularly fond of baseball in general.
But money? He’s a big fan of that — and now possesses a hefty chunk of it. The Lousiana man raked in $1 million by being the first player to throw a perfect game in 2K Sports’ baseball sim, MLB 2K11.
While there are a handful of 3D videos on 
YouTube already, they’re anything but cutting edge.
The only 3D format the service supports is anaglyph – requiring the old-school red and blue glasses to see the effects. That’s hardly ideal for studios looking to promote upcoming films or publishers looking to showcase 3D video games. But that’s all about to change.
With a valuation of $10 billion, Zynga is by 
far the largest private game maker in the industry. Now investors hoping to get a piece of that pie may have their chance.
Tech blog AllThingsDigital reports the company could file for a public offering as early as this week. Once that IPO takes place, the company is widely expected to be the second biggest publicly-traded publisher in the industry, far surpassing Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive Software.
With his enduring anthems to margaritas, 
cheeseburgers and flip flops, you wouldn’t peg Jimmy Buffet to be much of a gamer. But with popular -Ville games like FarmVille and FrontierVille dominating people’s time online, it only makes sense that the man behind ‘Margaritaville’ would join the party at some point.
That point is now. Buffett and THQ are set to bring the tropically inspired Margaritaville Online to Facebook and Apple’s iDevices, packed with a hefty dose of classic Buffett songs, characters and virtual cheeseburgers.
Subscriber numbers tend to ebb and flow 
with massively multiplayer games. No matter how high they get, people generally expect them to come down — unless that game is World of Warcraft.
So when Activision-Blizzard announced earlier this month that subscriptions of its crown jewel had fallen 5 percent, heads turned. Was the mightiest title in the persistent world universe finally showing signs of weakness?
Apple may tout the diversity of the App 
Store in television ads, but let’s face it — the store is prejudiced against certain users. Sure, there are apps for adults and children, scholars and idiots, big spenders and cheapskates…
…but what about cats?
When select TV manufacturers announced plans 
to include a Netflix button on their remote controls, it raised a few eyebrows, but wasn’t exactly shocking, given the company’s dominance in the streaming video space.
Now Vudu is getting the same treatment – and this time, people are shocked.
Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris talks 
to Exent Technologies’ Kobi Edelstein about the need to move away from the try-then-buy PC gaming model, and instead focus on the more stable ad-supported angle.
The try-then-buy model is something of a tradition in the PC gaming world. While most major publishers have left it far behind these days, developers like id Software and 3D Realms might never have risen to prominence if not for shareware.
Today, it’s mostly smaller companies who embrace it, taking a leap of faith that players will be so engaged with their titles that they’ll pay for the full version. But games-on-demand leader Exent Technologies argues that the model is broken.
No one is more eager than Sony to put 
the recent cyberattacks on the PlayStation Network behind them. Unfortunately, there are still some hurdles to clear.
The electronics giant issued an earnings warning Monday, noting that early estimates on the cost of the PlayStation Network breach have hit about $172 million. And that figure could increase in the months to come.
Chris Morris: Journalist 