Tiger Woods isn't on the cover of the "Historic Edition" of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14, the fifth such box—special or main edition—in which the game's titular star has not appeared alone, or at all, in the past four years.

Bobby Jones, who designed Augusta National Golf Course, and Bubba Watson, who won the Masters Tournament played there this year, will grace the cover of this special edition. (Jones' fabled "Calamity Jane" putter was on the cover of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13's "Masters Edition," which featured no humans.)

For visual pairing, it helps that Jones hit righthanded and Watson is a lefty. The historic edition will also include five extra courses, plus Augusta's charming Par 3 course—which was free on Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 but has been a premium inclusion since. One of the historic edition's courses will be Augusta National as it appeared in 1934, the first year of The Masters.

We can therefore assume that Jones will be a playable golfer. His Grand Slam of 1930—winning the United States and British Open tournaments and both nations' amateur championships—is the basis for the modern feat of winning four major tournaments in a single year, never since accomplished.

Glancing at this cover, the title of the game appears to be, frankly, "Masters" or "EA Sports Masters," given the prominence of the logos and the small typeface and secondary placement given to "Tiger Woods PGA Tour," the series' actual title. But the cover art for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13's "Masters Edition" was laid out in the same way.

EA Sports in a statement, said that this does not represent any distancing of the game from Woods, reminding that the standard edition cover features both the game's full name, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14, and Woods alongside Arnold Palmer, one of the sport's most accomplished stars.

But the spread of shared and alternate covers, in the past four years, to me does point to a game that has to start marketing itself beyond the appeal of a single star, especially one who turns 37 on Dec. 30. From 1998 to 2009, Woods was the sole cover star, as well he should have been. No other golfer could have sold a video game on name alone in that span. But that can't last.

Even into his retirement Tiger Woods will remain on the cover of this game the same way John Madden is on the cover of EA Sports' NFL game. The relationships are too strong—especially because EA was one of the few major brands to stand by Woods through the nadir of his personal scandals.

But as kids today think first of a video game when they hear the name Madden, tomorrow's may do so when they hear Tiger Woods. These cover choices are a push in that direction.

Slight warning, this post contains talk of butt-slapping (just in case that wasn't clear.)

Earlier this year, we told you about a Kickstarter project for Makey Makey, an invention kit that allows you to turn nearly anything you want into an input device. The kit has been out in the wild for a while now, and people have been using it for games in all sorts of ways. For example:

But by far, the most out-there idea I've heard about comes from developer Anna Anthropy, who is in the process of making something where to play, you have to slap a butt. In an email exchange, she told me a bit about how she once saw a fake Kinect game called "SLAP DAT ASS," a rhythm game about slapping butts.

After seeing the fake Kinect game, she thought she could realize something like it using Makey Makey. Maybe. She had to make sure that she could use a butt as a controller.

The way the makey makey works is this: the player holds onto a gator clip plugging into the makey makey. another gator clip is attached to some object that can conduct a current. like a potato, for example. when the player, holding the first gator clip, touches the potato that's attached to the second gator clip, she completes the current, and the game registers a keypress.

She used a prototype to test it out. It's called RUN! YOU FUCKER, a game by Hubol Gordon. She used her partner's butt to control the game. To her surprise, it worked. In fact, even the slightest contact would trigger it.

Now she's in the process of making a more full-fledged rhythm game called SPANK OR DIE! She explains the idea:

[It's] inspired by SKATE OR DIE 2's title screen - the one that makes an entire song out of three samples, "skate," "or" and "die." in SPANK OR DIE!, you would have to spank an ass (nominally, my slut's) at the word "DIE." the speed between "SPANK" and "OR" would help you to gauge what time to spank.

Spank or Die, she hopes, will happen in the nearish future.

PlayStation gamers, Bethesda swears it's not ignoring you.

Owners of Sony's game console have been angered at how their platform hasn't gotten any of the add-ons for Bethesda's hit action RPG yet. The outcry has been that the publisher doesn't care about the PS3 portion of the Skyrim player base. An announcement that the just-released Dragonborn will be coming to PS3 next year tamped down some of the grumbling but questions have been floated about the older DLC releases. A post on Bethesda's official blog says the following:

On PS3 in particular, we turned our attention to Dragonborn, as we thought it was the best content to release first, and we didn't want folks to wait longer. Once it's ready to go for everyone, we'll continue our previous work on Hearthfire and Dawnguard for PS3. Each one takes a lot of time and attention to work well in all circumstances and all combinations of DLC. Once we have a better idea of release timing and pricing, we'll let you know.

At the very least, the post indicates that the work Bethesda's been putting into bringing over Hearthfire and Dawnguard to PS3 probably helped them figure out how to get Dragonborn to work. Of course, it has to actually happen. Fingers crossed until next year.

Maybe I'm being unfair, but compared to the whole Pokedex—which has over 600 Pokémon, at this point—the number of Pokémon Ash has owned over the years seems laughable.

Here's an image that breaks down what Pokémon Ash has caught and when in the show, along with who his (human) companions were at the time.

Click to embiggen.

Interestingly, Ash seems to favor water-type Pokémon, but has never owned a steel-type or a psychic-type. Weird. And he's only owned one ghost-type? C'mon, Ash, those are the coolest ones!

Apparently the show is turning 15 next year. Boy do I feel old. I still remember when Ash set Butterfree free....

Via Bulbapedia.

Do you think I'm a bigger tipper than you are?

Do you think I remember the name of my kindergarten teacher?

Imagine that we're friends and that a video game is asking you these questions. Imagine that it asks you to answer questions about yourself, too. For example, if you were the first person on the moon instead of Neil Armstrong, would you have thought of something cooler to say than "One small step for man…?"

If you had access to a button that would eliminate all McDonalds restaurants from existence, would you push it?

These are questions in The Friend Game, a new and potentially excellent Facebook game from the same New York-based game studio that developed a cell phone obsession of mine, the puzzle game Drop 7. Answering questions like those about yourself and your friends is how you play The Friend Game. Correctly indicating how your friend would have answered the same question—about herself or about you—is how you win.

This game doesn't feel like most other video games.

"There are a lot of games about tracking things in space and shooting them, which is an actual skill," the game's creative director, Frank Lantz, told me during a phone interview yesterday. "But there are are very few games about thinking about what another person's likes or wants or what their judgment is of you."

The Friend Game is game about "empathy," he added. "It's testing how good you are at putting yourself in the shoes of another human and knowing who they are and what their likes and dislikes are." (Note the timely contrast. This is a game about knowing your Facebook friends; not about IDing them for assassination based on their physical shortcomings.)

The game is played on Facebook, where it is currently in closed beta (you can try to play it at this link, but the beta player count is likely to cap out soon). You have an avatar. Your friends do, too. Clicking on your avatar or theirs lets you answer questions about yourself or them. Sometimes you're answering questions your friends haven't answered yet. Sometimes they have answered and you're scored on whether your answer matches what they said (to be clear: you're not getting points if you both say you're hopeless romantics; you're getting points if you both said that you are a hopeless romantic—or if you both said you're not).

Lantz wants people to think of it as a party game, a drinking game, and a "social karaoke."

It's also a Zynga game, so even in its beta form, it already has a metered energy system. It's free to play, but if you want to play a lot at once—and if you stink at knowing how your friends would answer questions—you can pay more to keep plugging away.

The Friend Game has been a long time coming and, full disclosure, I've been rooting for it before I even knew what it was. Lantz and I have been friendly for years. I've quoted him in articles, attended gaming events in New York City that were overseen by him in his second career as the director of the Game Studios program at New York University. And I've had drinks with him, though he's managed to keep any and all details about his game—the first official game from his studio, Area/Code-turned-Zynga New York—until we spoke yesterday.

It's a relief to see that Lantz, who I consider one of the smartest thinkers about games I've ever met, isn't making what any of us would expect from a Zynga studio. The theory always was that his team "got it," that they wouldn't be making just another 'Ville game or a clone of some other popular game.

Oddly, The Friend Game actually feels like what maybe a Zynga game should feel like or, more specifically, what a Facebook game should feel like. That's if you operate under the assumption that the strength of Facebook is the connections it makes between friends and that the real identity of Facebook is one where we both share ourselves and role-play our lives in front of people who are our friends and in front of people who are really just our Facebook friends. How refreshing that we get a game that plays with all that stuff. How devious that it will probably make players second-guess how well they know their friends or why they're "friends" with some people on Facebook in the first place.

The Friend Game is not a clone, but it does echo some other games. Not video games, really, but other games. The guessing-what-your-friend-would-have-answered thing is reminiscent of the old game show, The Newlywed Game. Or, for Lantz, who is a huge poker buff, it recalls a poker game called "What does Johnny Lodden Think", which involves one poker player asking a second poker player what he thinks a third poker player is thinking.

The Friend Game even in its raw, beta form feels like an evolution of those ideas and the invention of them as a video game that expands their concepts. In Lantz's game, I didn't just find myself answering questions about whether he remembered the name of his kindergarten teacher but about what I thought a group of players (everyone in the beta or my circle of friends, I'm not sure) thought about something. For example, if the group all had to wear one of three t-shirts every day for a year, which would they pick?

It's exciting to play something that feels new and works so well with Facebook. Maybe this is what Facebook games should have been like all along. Or maybe that Zynga-style energy system will muck this up. Hard to say, but The Friend Game is a refreshing game amid so many social game me-too's.

"I genuinely hope you like [the game]," he was telling me yesterday, though he went on to tell me I'm not quite his ideal player. "When you make a game, sometimes you have certain people in mind that are your ideal player. You are not my ideal player, but Leigh Alexander was." Thanks, Frank.

I'll be playing it, even though it's not for me.

And if it helps, my kindergarten teacher's name was Mrs. Dawson. And I'd let McDonalds continue to exist. I enjoy their breakfast sandwiches too much.

Bonus detail for Kotaku readers: The one and only Tim Rogers wrote some of the questions for the game. And yes, Lantz laughed, they were some of the longer ones.

Wandering through the Facebook App Center can be a dangerous thing. I've been playing Pretty Simple's endless broom rider, Magical Ride, for an hour now. The only reason I am not playing it right now, is because I have two minutes before I get another life. One minute. Actually, be right back.

Magical Ride would have been a Flash game in the days before Facebook. You play a little witch riding a broom down an endless path, dodging obstacles and attempting to fly farther than your friends before you hit an obstacle, get torched by fireballs or eaten by ghosts.

At times, you become a unicorn.

I've just unlocked boosts, which make it possible to play for even longer. Today's productivity is shot, one of the hazards of covering social games.

I am currently at the top of the weekly friends tournament, besting what I am pretty sure are a pair of people that do not exist. The only way I'll be able to stop is if someone else bests my score and I lose heart.

You have your assignment.

For the last few years, titles nominated for the Independent Games Festival's various awards have been amongst the best digitally playable experiences in the preceding 12 months. But, as good as some of these games are, they haven't all been as lucky as, say, Fez, which was able to make it to a wide release.

That's why the news that finalists in the 2013 IGF Awards competition will have the option of accepting a Steam distribution deal is impressive. Every game that winds up as a finalist in the IGF's Main Competition categories—the Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Excellence In Design, Excellence In Art, Excellence In Narrative, Technical Excellence, Excellence in Audio, and the Nuovo Award—could wind up on Valve's virtual storefront. Finalists will be named in January and it's a safe bet that some of those games will be there already. But for the ones that aren't yet, it's a clever nod of recognition that will also insure people can buy and play some great games.

IGF, Valve to offer Steam distribution agreements to all 2013 Main Competition finalists

Few games understand the true meaning of being a bro. Being a bro is more than being a burly man in a group of burly men who shoot at anything that moves. The concept of "bro" reaches beyond polo-wearing frat boys double fisting red plastic cups.

Bro is a mindset. It's not even constrained to gender, not always. You can be a ladybro, or a dudebro. Your cat could be a bro. But most games don't let you fully embody being a bro, and that's a problem.

Today Gameological wrote a post about affectionate gestures in games that I think captures the beauty of being a bro. Here's what they had to say about Army of Two.

Destroying your enemies is banal; showing a little love is special. So while any game can load you up with grenade launchers and lasers, it's more notable when you can perform some small physical act of affection. A wink. A smile. Or in the "two buddies vs. the world" shooter Army Of Two, a fist bump.

Underneath the bravura and veneer of cool, bro is actually a lifestyle choice wherein camaraderie and love trump all. Love! I'm serious. Love for your fellow bro. And how else are you supposed to profess that love except through high fives and fist bumps? Which, mind you, is not a thing you can do in most games.

And people try to tell me that we play as bros in our games? Bullshit! Unless you can high five or fist bump, you are not playing as a bro. Point-blank. A real bro will profess his broness no matter what, even in the heat of battle. Bros before bullets.

My absolute favorite thing in Uncharted 3 is how the multiplayer allows you to taunt after a kill—with the help of a friend. That was the point of the campaign, really. It was all about your bond with Sully. After we see Drake's origin as a scrappy orphan, we realize just how touching the relationship between Drake and Sully is. Make no mistake, it's the bond between two bros. Gameological says this about Army of Two, but it applies to Uncharted 3 and to bro-dom at-large.

It's simply about one muscle-bound gunman showing his probably-not-homoerotic love for his partner in arms. It's sweet, really.

Thankfully, Uncharted 3 lets you be a real bro, too. You get assigned a buddy at the start of a multiplayer match, and the game can detect whether or not you worked together to bring an enemy down. If you manage to kill that enemy, you can walk over the body and high five your buddy for extra cash. Here, we can make out the fake bros from the real ones: it all hinges on who leaves who hanging.

Medal of Honor did something similar, where you are assigned a fireteam with a bro that you could stick with and help out. No high-fiving, though—and that's where most buddy/team centric games fall short. I need to be able to show my affection to my teammates!

It's not just about being sweet though. Being a bro is very versatile. It might be tender, it might be hilarious, or it might be heartwrenching. I think the @two_bros Twitter account shows this best:

Versatile, but there's one constant: there must be fist bumps or high fives.

Additionally, as important as being a bro is, its inclusion (shockingly?) can't save a game. I think of Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor, which had possibly the most important innovation in modern gaming: Kinect-enabled fistbumping. But, alas, it was a terrible game even with that. Hopefully other games don't get discouraged from including or iterating on Steel Battalion's bro efforts though.

Kinect fist-bumping or not, all more games should take cues from both Army of Two and Uncharted 3. Because I mean, bro. Seriously. Bro.

Despite the fact that 2K Play sent me a plush cow stuffed with a whoopie cushion to promote it, I wasn't finding Herd Herd Herd nearly as charming as I thought I would. Then the sheep showed up.

First demoed at E3 2012, Herd Herd Herd transforms your finger into a sheep dog. Nowhere in the game's description does it say this; that's just how it is in my head. Woof.

The game involves herding various animals, starting with chickens, into color-coded pens, avoiding obstacles and predators while collecting stars. Starting with chickens might have been a misstep. Chickens are boring. Delicious, but boring. So urging the little feathered bastards about the board ahead of my finger fell a little flat. Eventually the solo chickens gave way to groups of chickens (collectively, a bucket). This was slightly more interesting and challenging, but I still wasn't quite feeling it.

It wasn't until the fourth of eight barns (each contains eight levels and one bonus mini-game) that I started genuinely having fun. Thad's when the sheep showed up. Sheep are cool. Sheep can jump. Sheep can double-jump. Sheep have to avoid electric fences. Sheep are especially delicious.

Looking at the trailer, eventually I will unlock cows. Cows being chased by bears. At that point I feel 2K and developer Cat Daddy Games is just showing off. For $.99 on iTunes (Android coming soon), they should have stopped at sheep.

Riot has released a whopping pre-season-3 patch for League of Legends, which will doubtless make a ton of diehard players very happy. Since everyone loves massive patches that change tons of things about their favorite video games.

In the video above, Riot's Joshua "Jatt" Leesman and Ryan "Morello" Scott walk viewers through the many changes made to the game. You can read the full patch notes on the official League of Legends site.

Preseason 3 Patch Notes [Riot via PCGamesN]