Internet points! Better than real-life points!

Let's start nomination threads, with a link to a comment you liked. What's that? The comment you liked was already nominated? Vote it up! Wait, you don't remember what you liked this week? Look through your comment history for those #cotw hashtags (hopefully you're using them for your own tracking needs).

And as always, please no self-nominations. And if I see one more "This comment right here hurr durr" I will...think bad things about you. Horrible things. Things involving scenarios where kittens hate your guts and puppies look at you in disgust. Yeah. Take that.

Near the end of our interview earlier this month, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime jokingly asked me for harder questions. We'd mostly been talking about the ins and outs of the Wii U, but on this final day of the big E3 show, an event that included a big showing by Nintendo's new console, he wanted to joust.

What follows is our exchange, which turned into something unexpected: a consideration of the hardcore gamer, who, in Fils-Aime's mind, is a tough customer to please. Too tough?

You judge...

Me: Why do you think your press conference got a negative response among a lot of our readers who felt there wasn't a lot that was new there, that was that different from what had been shown last year [on Wii U] in demo form?

Fils-Aime: One of the things that, on one hand, I love and, on the other hand, that troubles me tremendously about not only our fanbase but about the gaming community at large is that, whenever you share information, the perspective is, 'Thank you, but I want more.' 'Thank you, but give me more.' I mean, it is insatiable.

"And so for years this community has been asking, 'Where's Pikmin?' 'Where's Pikmin?' 'Where's Pikmin?' We give them Pikmin. And then they say, 'What else?'

"For years, this community have said, 'Damnit Reggie, when you launch, you better launch with a Mario game.' So we launch with a Mario game, and they say, 'So what's more?'

"I have heard people say, 'You know, you've got these fantastic franchises, beyond what you're doing in Smash Bros., isn't there a way to leverage all these franchises?' So we create Nintendo Land and they say, 'Ho-hum, give me more.' So it's an interesting challenge."

Me: "I think part of it is your fans expect genius from the company. And they got used to Nintendogs, Brain Age, Wii Sports—not all of them necessarily launch games—but you're a hit-driven company that can create phenomenons, and when you guys launch a console, people expect—I expect—to see software that doesn't feel like stuff I necessarily saw the year before, but an evolution and new shocking ideas."

Fils-Aime: "Time out. Time out. Again two different issues. When we show a game like Brain Age or when we show a game like Nintendogs, what's the fan-based community reaction? 'Ho-hum.' Until it sells millions of copies. When we showed Wii Fit on stage.. go back and read your blogs, what was the reaction?"

Me: "You've said this one before. I disagree specifically about Wii Fit. You're right on the other ones. Wii Fit people understood right away."

Fils-Aime: "It's not a question of understanding. I think people understood what we showed. It's the question of, as a gamer, 'Is this for me and something I can get excited about?' And Wii Fit did not get that reaction. And yet 43-million copies around the world, it's a phenomenon. And so I would argue that the gaming community actually is unable to differentiate between a phenomenon and something that is 'ho-hum.'"

Me: "Until they play it."

Reggie: "Until they play it. Until they experience it. Until their friends and their non-gaming associates say, 'Hey, have you seen X?'"

This exchange occurred after Nintendo ran four press conferences for E3, one of them online and the other three in L.A. Four press conferences came and went with lots of Nintendo news, but, seemingly, things missing. Was it the dissatisfaction of gamers? Could Nintendo possibly have done more? Two weeks after E3—just last night—Nintendo held another press conference. This one was full of news for the insatiable appetites of gaming fans.

Since his role as the ring announcer in the first Spider-Man movie, B-movie and television star Bruce "Ash" Campbell has been a fixture in the webslinger's video games. Next week's The Amazing Spider-Man is no exception.

Campbell plays an over-the-top journalist in the game, putting Spidey through his paces in a series of challenges that will task all of his radioactive spider powers.

And here I was hoping he'd take on a more subdued, dramatic role.

The Amazing Spider-Man hits stores next week.

BioWare is releasing the Extended Cut downloadable content for sci-fi role-playing game Mass Effect 3 on June 26, it said today.

You'll be able to download it for free on PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. It's a whopping 1.9 gigabytes.

"The Extended Cut expands on the endings of Mass Effect 3 through additional scenes and epilogue sequences," BioWare said on its website. "It provides more of the answers and closure that players have been asking for. It gives a sense of what the future holds as a result of the decisions made throughout the series. And it shows greater detail in the successes or failures based on how players achieved their endings."

BioWare also added that this new DLC will not change the ending, but instead expand upon it:

"The Extended Cut is an expansion of the original endings to Mass Effect 3. It does not fundamentally change the endings, but rather it expands on the meaning of the original endings, and reveals greater detail on the impact of player decisions."

You'll have to resume a saved game from the Cerberus Base attack section in order to see the new content, which BioWare says will change based on what you've done in the series so far.

"The Extended Cut endings will differ depending on choices made throughout the Mass Effect series, so multiple playthroughs with a variety of different decisions will be required to experience the variety of possibilities offered by the new content," BioWare said.

The ending of Mass Effect 3 has turned into one of this year's biggest controversies. Just days after the RPG was released this March, the Internet exploded with upset reactions from fans who felt the conclusion to Shepard's story had not lived up to their expectations. Many complained that their choices had no effect on the ultimate resolution of the popular sci-fi trilogy.

Fans even started a petition to demand that BioWare change the game's conclusion.

In late March, BioWare announced that it would release new downloadable content to add new scenes and provide "more clarity for those seeking further closure" to Mass Effect 3.

Kotaku writers had a variety of differing opinions on the controversial ending. Some of us loved it. Others hated it.

Ubisoft's been coy about what platforms its next open-world game will be coming out for, even if they've already said when. That it's coming to PC is a given, I think.

But this Watch Dogs screen that's been floating around today definitely looks like something destined for the next round of console hardware. But will Orbis or Durango be able to render this amount of detail? We'll see.

The meltdown and collapse of 38 Studios not only halted the development of a potentially promising game in progress, but also hurt plenty of people.

In a recent interview with Boston-area sports radio network WEEI, studio founder Curt Schilling—formerly a major league baseball pitching star—explained how the studio collapse hit him, personally.

In addition to the now infamous $75 million loan that 38 Studios received from the state of Rhode Island, Schilling invested approximately $50 million of his own income and savings into the company, he told WEEI. Money which is now all gone. Schilling related the story of explaining the bankruptcy of 38 Studios to his family:

[T]he money that I had earned and saved during baseball was probably all gone. And that it was my fault. And that they might start hearing some things in school and things like that. And let's be clear: We're not talking about a terminal illness or somebody during. But it's a life-changing thing. It's not a conversation I would wish on any father, or on anybody. But I had to do it, and explain to them that part of growing up is being accountable. This was my decision to do this, and I failed. And life would probably start to change and be very different for us.

Schilling himself never drew salary from 38 Studios, and while he admitted that salaries for other employees may have been slightly excessive, he said it was the only way to draw top talent.

And why did 38 Studios fail? A lack of financial investment. But not, apparently, a lack of emotional one. "Listen, we absolutely made mistakes," Schilling said. "But everything I've ever done in my life has been from my heart."

Curt Schilling on D&C: ‘I'm not asking for sympathy' after losing $50M in business collapse [WEEI, via ESPN]

A couple of days ago, after reading Kotaku editor Stephen Totilo's Pay to Win article, I expressed my disappointment to him and to Kotaku on their choice to advertise and promote cheat sites. Totilo felt that talking about the details about the cheat sites were meant to be as sourcing for the article, not advertising, while I felt that he might as well have linked directly to torrent sites for games.

Is cheating as destructive to multiplayer games as torrents are? I certainly think so, especially for free-to-play multiplayer games.

For a free-to-play game like the game my company makes, Super Monday Night Combat, cracked versions or torrents don't affect our sales. Our game is free. There's nothing to gain by redistributing a DRM-free client, because all the security and verification happens on our servers that we control. The downside of an easily-accessible free to-play-games is that it's primed for third-party hacks like the ones mentioned in Totilo's article. I feel the hacks are more destructive to our game and players than any torrent could ever be, because it ruins the experience for every other player in a particular match.

There was a line in the article: "The man from Canada doesn't seem like such a bad person. He just pays to cheat at video games." It expressed the idea that it's just cheating, that it's not a big deal and is part of the gaming culture. Sure, pay-to-win cheats have been around since the early days of games, from the adventure-game hint lines, strategy guides, and cheat cartridges. The difference is that cheating in a single player game can be fun and interesting for the player doing it. In a multiplayer game, it's a completely different story, because it's a shared experience with other players.

Super MNC is a team-based, 5v5 competitive multiplayer game with a focus on team play. With so much focus on team makeup, the game can get pretty intense. All it takes is a single player using cheats to ruin the emotional experience for nine other players. If those nine players feel like they've been cheated against, they're unlikely to keep playing or invest more time or money into Super MNC. Since there's no upfront cost, our hope is that if players play the game, enjoy it, they will invest some time and possibly purchase characters or items they find interesting.

A compelling experience is a must for the success of a free-to-play game. We spend a significant amount of time fixing exploits, creating tools to detect cheaters and letting players report possible cheats. We record every action a player performs in a game, including weapon-firing, movement speeds, and chat history that is saved to a data-replay-file during a match. There's also in-game reporting functionality that players can use to document a player suspected of hacking. Most of the common hacks like aimbotting, movement speed hacking, adjustments to weapons, and camera hacks are auto-detected and reported to our servers. We also use a community-run ban-list that keeps track of known cheaters. With a combination of automated features, game replays and player patterns, we're able to determine if a player is cheating.

The real interesting thing with cheaters in Super MNC is that they're not typically at the top of the leaderboards. Aimbotting in Monday Night Combat was much worse with the Sniper class due to the headshot kills. We learned from that experience and, with Super MNC's lower lethality and focus on teamwork, being able to auto-lock on heads isn't as useful to winning matches. Another thing we've tried is to take Sharpshooters off our our weekly free-class rotation. Aimbotters are content with paying for a third-party cheat but less willing to spend money in Super MNC to unlock a Sharpshooter class knowing that their account will be banned.

Even though the amount of cheating in Super MNC is low, we're starting to see some more creative hacks start to emerge as we ban the more common techniques. It's an ongoing arms race that will never end and we have to be vigilant with our constant updates. The suspicion that someone is cheating is enough for players to feel like they're not getting a good experience. It's our job to make sure that cheats stay out of our game and the playerbase know that we're active with our cheat prevention.

Is there a better solution to cheaters in multiplayer games? For the majority of the player base, this is a non-issue. The deterrent is game content. The more invested a player is into the game, the less likely they would want to get caught cheating and be banned, losing all the accumulated experience and unlocked items in the process.

Could we as developers deliver a compelling experience where players don't feel the need to pay a cheat site to get their entertainment? Possibly. Only time will tell.

What in the unholy creation of Sims 3 character edits is this?! Be careful when using downloded designs on your toddlers, folks.

ಠ-ಠ It was a boy. [Reddit]

Centipede: Origins, for iOS and Android devices takes you back to the mystical garden menaced by the hundred-footed bug, the spider, the flea and the scorpion, but your protagonist looks regrettably like the Travelocity gnome, not the dashing elf from the 5200 packshot. You can relive the fight of the arcade classic in one of four venues, give yourself a boost with some cute-but-not-essential powerups, and grind away for experience points that unlock more weapons and more efficient means of pest control.

The game still plays like Centipede with a few variations. Your gnome, of course, fires automatically. Mushrooms are destroyed with two shots instead of four, making it easier to clear the playing field. The scorpion is smaller and his entrance is less dramatic, making it harder to tell where the poisoned mushrooms are. These will send a centipede headed to the bottom on a slower diagonal path instead of barreling straight down. The flea also doesn't accelerate after getting hit with the first shot, making him more of a pest than a real threat.

Centipede: Origins' later levels are unlocked with the coins you earn for progressing (or collecting as foes drop them) but this is a minor, minor requirement. I was able to see all four levels after about five minutes of play. The power-ups are interesting but not really critical to success, given how, in straight gameplay, this Centipede is much easier than its ancestor. Its difficulty lies in the one-hit/one-life consequence the game lays down. There's a bit of an annoying wait as the game cycles you over to a retry window.

Aesthetically, the colorful fantasylands and cartoon typefaces are mixed with a whimsical musical score that I didn't really care for. The presentation will barely remind you of the original game, with its pulsating drumbeat of insect footsteps and laser-show colors over a black background. If that's what you want to play, you won't find it here.

I played Centipede: Origins on an iPhone and ended my session thinking this is more of an iPad game. You move your gnome easily enough, with a finger directly underneath his position. But the screen is so small as to make some of the details of the playing field difficult to see or understand. And when the centipede reaches the bottom and begins to crawl back up, your finger will be obscuring his path as you evade him, the spider, and anything else on the field.

Despite these quibbles, Centipede: Origins fulfills the core expectations of its namesake, tones down the in-game difficulty while balancing it with a hard, single consequence, and at a dollar delivers plenty enough replay value to be a solid timekiller.

Centipede: Origins [iTunes, 99 cents]

Centipede: Origins [Google Play, 99 cents]

This is Bravely Default: Flying Fairy. It's a role-playing game made by some of the people who made 3D Dot Game Heroes and some of the people who made Final Fantasy: The Four Heroes of Light. Nintendo showed it off during its Japanese livestream last night. And it looks wonderful.

Let's try to ignore the fact that it's called Bravely Default: Flying Fairy. This is the type of RPG that North American 3DS owners could really, really use right now. Just stick "Final Fantasy" somewhere in the title and bam: instant hit.