Politicians 
may occasionally get away with cheating in one form or fashion, but they’d better not try it at the California State University San Marcos. It just might earn them jail time.
Matt Weaver, a junior at the school, ran for president last year. And to ensure his victory, he rigged the campus election by stealing passwords from roughly 750 students to cast votes for himself. Earlier this week, that stunt earned him a year in prison.
Forget 
about reading facial expressions – the Next Big Thing in console gaming is…sweat?
Almost, according to Mark Cerny, lead system architect for Sony’s next-generation console. Cerny says one of the early designs of the DualShock 4 controller measured ‘skin conductivty’ — or, in more colloquial terms, sweat — to detect a player’s emotions.
Thirty 
years ago, Nintendo’s rise to the top of the video game console world began.
Sure, Atari may have started the home video game revolution, but it was Nintendo’s Famicom that took it to the next level, laying the groundwork for the industry as we know it today. That system, which was released two years later in America under the more familiar “Nintendo Entertainment System,” made home gaming cool again.
Gamers 
– and the games media – hate the unknown. They thrive in a biosphere where leaks pre-announce major moves and no one is all that surprised when its made official.
That’s what made Microsoft’s decision to replace Don Mattrick with Julie Larson-Green so frustrating for some. She was, to many, an unknown. And that quickly led some to question her qualifications, which eventually led to prophecies of doom for the Xbox in some forums.
You 
may not know Troy Baker’s face, but if you’ve played the year’s biggest video games, you certainly know his voice.
Baker has been an up and coming video game voice actor for a few years now, but in 2013, he has exploded in a way no one could have imagined, voicing the main character in two critically-acclaimed hits. That’s a bit like an actor scoring major roles in multiple Oscar-nominated films in the same year.
Planning 
on playing Deus Ex: The Fall on your iPhone or iPad? Make sure your iDevice isn’t jailbroken.
Players of the recently released action game who happen to have jailbroken phones and tablets are finding quite a surprise: their guns have been disabled. Considering how often you need to shoot things in the game, that can be somewhat debilitating.
Steve 
Ballmer’s massive overhaul of Microsoft’s executive office and business practices has cleared up the mystery of who will take over the Xbox division after the shocking departure of Don Mattrick.
The reorganization, announced Thursday, will put two long-time veterans of the company in charge of its console division, with different areas of focus.
Imagine 
spending years devoting your time and your finances to acquiring an impressive video game spaceship, one of the biggest and most valuable the gaming world has ever seen.
Now imagine all of that work being destroyed in minutes.
Got 
a laptop or an iPhone in Florida? You could be violating the law.
In an attempt to ban Internet cafes in the Sunshine State, legislators may have been a bit too broad in their language, resulting in what some legal experts say is a law that inadvertently makes it illegal to own a computer or a smartphone.
Let’s 
get this out of the way up front. Yes, you never, ever count Nintendo out of the game.
That’s the go-to response for pretty much anyone in this industry when asked if the company will be able to dig itself out of the hole the Wii U has created – and it’s usually a valid one. (Think back to the GameCube days and things were just as dire as they seem today – but it managed to turn things around.)
But as we head into the Wii U’s second holiday season, the pessimism about the system is starting to crest. And despite Nintendo’s push of first party software coming in the next year, there’s nothing to suggest that a turnaround of any sort is imminent.
Chris Morris: Journalist 