Right now, in terms of effort-to-pay ratio, it seems like the best job in the games industry is to be a lawyer for the Entertainment Software Association.

You get to go from state to state as each of them sign their Grand Theft Auto Is Bad bills into law, and point out that there’s no laws restricting the sales of Andrew Dice Clay CDs or DVDs to minors, and he’s not even funny. And then you’re done and you get lots of money, because lawyering is hard work. You’ll lose your job someday because eventually the ESRB will get its act together and word will get out to the politicians that there’s these new things called parents that are very good for making kids not see human-shaped collections of triangles have sex with and kill each other.

In the meantime, you got a steady docket of easy wins for the next few years, which is the only reason why you ESA lawyers win over the highly competitive effort-to-pay-wise, but much more time-limited job “George Broussard”. Well, maybe not the only reason— it’s possible that some of you don’t have to pay a woman to pretend you’re not a repellent bemulleted man-child.

But regardless, that’s why there’s no Jack Thompson says this or Oklahoma governor signs that on Metafuture. There’s no real story until the ESA lawyers lose one of these easy-peasy 1st Amendment challenges. “Mailman Delivers Mail” isn’t a headline.

This is great news, because as soon as it’s confirmed that he’s not lying or being crazy again (you have to wonder, since the interview this news comes from also mentions his vision of a “cyberworld”), that’ll be the day Xbox Live becomes free.

I think somebody ought to tell Ken that, though. I’m not so sure it’s a good idea to fight a war of revenue attrition with Microsoft.

Actually, that’s probably been true since Doom 3. But now that that level of technology has caught up with the rest of the industry, we’re seeing more and more screenshots of games using rendering techniques that are tuned for motion looking very bad in a screenshot.

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Still reading? OK then.

In her latest “Sex Drive” column, Wired’s sex reporter, Regina Lynn, tackles cybersex, those looking to mix it more heavily with another popular online activity, gaming, and those resistant to the whole idea, namely most gamers and most cybersex…ers. We’re apparently holding back the free spirits by laughing at their demands to put dongs on orcs.

From what I’ve seen in blogs and forums, “real” gamers scoff at sex games. “Go watch porn,” they say, sardonic and superior. Games are serious, cybersex is not, and combining the two is just another example of the entertainment industry not getting it.

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