In 2012, the US Federal Trade Commission did a mystery shopper sting to see if stores were selling adult-rated movies, CDs and games to kids. It turns out that video game retailers have the best compliance in not selling M-rated games to kids. Take that, NRA. [FTC]

But for the gaming industry, it’s two steps forward and one step back. Here’s a look at some of the most offensive attempts at video game marketing. [Cracked]

A group at Full Sail University have spent months breaking down the weighting behind Metacritic’s games review weighting system. Metacritic claims that the results are inaccurate but of course they’d do that. They wouldn’t want anyone to know they give a volunteer site the highest possible weight and Giant Bomb the second lowest weight. [Gamasutra]

A report says that fewer games have multiplayer components. While I’d suggest that when you include indies that may be true, if you were to only look at releases from the big publishers, I’d bet that the percentage with multiplayer has gone up. [The Penny Arcade Report]

With Doctor Who coming back this weekend (can you tell that I’m excited?), here is a look at some of Matt Smith’s best moments as The Doctor. [Geek Sugar]

Deadspin’s resident video guru Timothy Burke has been pretty busy yesterday and today gathering clips to post. He does this through one of the biggest video recording setups you’ll ever see. Gee, I want just a little bit of that to create video content for here. [Gizmodo]

Let’s have some fun introducing this link and call it “Victor Sandberg and Missile Command’s Holy Grail.” [ars technica]

Can we declare Anna Kendrick our new nerd queen? She’s actually a huge Game of Thrones fan and has the House Kendrick crest to prove it. [UPROXX]

I didn’t realize it until yesterday but Twitter has officially been around for seven years. Here are seven people who have had their lives changed by Twitter. Sadly, Charlie Sheen isn’t on the list. [CNN]

Over on the sister site, I examine what Major League Gaming and eSports needs to do to make it big and why they won’t be going mainstream anytime soon. [The Lowdown Blog]

Researchers from the Royal Observatory of Edinburgh have done a thorough study of professional StarCraft games and have determined which of the three factions would win the war. [Wired]

This week, a source inside Maxis tried to blow the lid off of EA’s story that SimCity needs to be hooked up to the cloud to work. Well, a modder confirmed that story by making the game run offline. Hell, it might actually be better modded than standard. [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]

Looking for something to drink in a couple of weeks’ time when Game of Thrones returns? You should try Game Of Thrones: Iron Throne blonde ale. [Businessweek]

Google is killing Reader as of July 1st. It’s only been the backbone of my blogging and internet surfing for years. There are a lot of people who use it or rely on it more than I do. So what is Google’s game? [Forbes]

The thinking is that Google is trying to replace Reader for reading recommendations with Google+. The problem is that no one actually uses G+ and it drives absolutely no traffic, especially compared to Reader. [BuzzFeed]

Considering that I run a geek blog, it should come as a surprise that I have a rather large collection of late 90s and early 2000s Star Wars novels. Even I can tell that they aren’t all good. Just read early Luceno stuff when he relies too heavily on references to events from the movies. Anyhow, here are 12 of the worst things in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. [io9]

Robert Kirkman, he of The Walking Dead fame, is creating a new comic series about exorcism. It hasn’t even come out yet but it’s already in development for TV. This man pretty much prints money now. [The Hollywood Reporter]

Andy Ihnatko explains why he went from being a long-time iPhone user to an Android man. [TechHive]

If Mr. Burns were to need to call in nine ringers to start for the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant softball team today, which MLB superstars would he/Smithers get and what odd fate would prevent them from making the big game? [The Triangle]

In my big weekly gaming column that I have on a couple of sites, I examine the reasons why publishers are pushing their big releases back to the after-Christmas season. [The Lowdown Blog]

While you’d be forgiven if you think that millionaire Dennis Tito’s plan to send a privately funded space mission to Mars and back is a bit outlandish, not everyone thinks it’s impossible. [Wired]

Kickstarter has become the medium of choice (for lack of a better term) for small game developers looking for funding for a new game. We know how it works from our end as backer. Now, a one-man dev team explains the process from the other side. [Gamasutra]

Uncharted 3’s multiplayer went free-to-play this week. At first glance, it doesn’t make much sense but I think it’s a brilliant business move and it may be copied by other games. [The Lowdown Blog]

Who doesn’t love a good gaming glitch? Okay, apart from people who got hosed by a glitch. Anyhow, here’s a look at a half-dozen unintentionally hilarious glitches. [Cracked]

Normally, I don’t run videos in the Geek Links but I love Conan’s Clueless Gamer segments so much that I had to make an exception. Here’s Conan O’Brien reviewing the upcoming Tomb Raider game.

Gamma Squad has put together a beginner’s guide to comic books for folks who want to start buying comic books. The Cole’s Notes version of it is don’t be afraid to go into a store and buy whatever you want. [Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4]

Red shirts on the Enterprise had a rough go of it but that wasn’t the worst colour shirt to wear. Statistically, the worst option is the command gold shirt. [Significance Magazine]

Wasn’t it cool when Neil deGrasse Tyson said that Thor’s hammer Mjolnir weighed the equivalent of a herd of 300 billion elephants? Well, it turns out that he might have misinterpreted the making of Mjolnir and it put his calculation off by about 300 billion elephants. [The Abstract – NCSU]

In an interview with Eurogamer, Naughty Dog co-President Christophe Balestra says the company made some stupid mistakes in the transition from PS2 to PS3 but think they’ve now sorted it out. This is the same company that’s picked up how many PS3 GOTY and overall GOTY (among other) awards for the Uncharted franchise. I wish they can make as many stupid mistakes for their PS4 efforts. [Eurogamer]

Speaking of the PlayStation 4, here’s a shameless link to our own coverage of the PS4 launch. It’s everything that you need to know from Wednesday’s big event. [et geekera]

Did the Empire really win the Battle of Hoth or did Darth Vader bungle the strategy so badly that he effectively snatched defeat from the jaws of victory? [Wired]

What happens when a real astronaut gets in touch with Starfleet? Something like this. [Twisted Swifter]

Last year, Gearbox released the critically acclaimed and award-winning Borderlands 2. This week, they put out the panned Aliens: Colonial Marines. So what exactly went wrong with ACM? [Kotaku]

The latest ACM rumour has Gearbox working on an 8 GB patch to fix problems with the game. I doubt the accuracy of that claim but if the game was about 7 GB in file size, the patch sounds about the right size to fix the game’s problems. [Velocity Gamer]

Just in case Aliens: Colonial Marines didn’t teach you about the dangers of pre-ordering games, indie developer 11 Bit Studios will let you get a 50% discount on their next game if you pre-order before you know what it is. So how important is $7.50 to you? [RPS]

The fourth and final volume of Animaniacs was released on DVD this week. Animaniacs creator Tom Ruegger and lead voice actor Rob Paulsen go over the final episodes and share some memories. [Mental Floss]

This week’s Sport on TV on With Leather could only be about the greatest sports moments on Community. [With Leather]

Games Workshop has called in the lawyers to protect its copyright of “space marines.” Who gets to impose copyright restrictions on something that’s so common in sci-fi? [io9]

Speaking of people hiding behind the law, a company called Personal Audio is suing high-profile podcasters for use of its vague patent about podcast distribution. What the hell is wrong with people? [EFF]

BioWare doesn’t want you to call ME4 Mass Effect 4. That probably has something to do with the fact that it sounds like they aren’t quite sure what ME4 is all about. [Eurogamer]

Morale at CNET is plummeting over CBS’ edict that any product/company involved in litigation with parent company can’t get any good coverage from CNET. In other words, CBS is starting to take editorial control of CNET. [Jim Romenesko]

NVIDIA made a big splash at CES with their Project Shield handheld gaming device. Did you know, however, that the project was only about a year in the making from initial concept to being a showstopper at CES? NVIDIA detailed the development process on their blog. [NVIDIA]

MIDI turns 30 years old this week. Who didn’t love a good MIDI song growing up? [The Verge]

With the Sim City beta weekend done and dusted, the uber geeks at Mental Floss looked at the history of Maxis’ Sim franchises. [Mental Floss]

So what is the best Final Fantasy game of all-time? I’m not endorsing this list because FF8 is massively underrated and FF10-2 isn’t even on the list. (Shut up. I liked it.) I just want to remind myself to try to get finish an FF6 retro review before Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII (-3) comes out. [Kotaku]

Before he was an enemy of the United States’ Department of Justice, Kim Dotcom and Megaupload cooperated with the investigation on NinjaVideo. [Wired]

BioWare’s Director of Art Neil Thompson says that the first two Dragon Age games looked terrible and the visuals in DA3 will carry the game thanks to the Frostbite 2 engine. That’s not what we want to hear, BioWare. We want to hear that the story is one of the most epic in BioWare history with twists and choices permeating the plot. [OXM]

There’s a porn parody of Community because… Well, of course there is. There’s a porn parody of everything now. [Warming Glow]

Correlation doesn’t mean causation but there has to be something to this chart comparing IE usage to the murder rate. [I Love Charts]

Over on my other blog, I have an infographic chronicling the history of the home video game console. [The Lowdown Blog]