Welcome, welcome boys and girls, men and women, gamers and those who stumbled upon this carnival by accident. Welcome to the Carnival of Gamers hosted for April 2007. Welcome to our humble virtual fair of gaming goodness here on GamingNexus. This month we have nearly two dozen acts for you to read through and react to, we`ve got everything from questioning consoles to minding MMO`s and everything in between.

Tales About the Gaming Industry
First up is this massive missive from Man Bytes Blog about the game industries constant battle with the concept of Intellectual Property. It`s a solid read and gives some solutions to one of the biggest battles going on within the industry.

The folks over at Jigsaw have found a way to get $5 off a month on GameFly`s game rental service. It does involve you sacrificing some of your own time and possibly a small portion of sanity. It doesn`t sound like much but $5 a month is $60 a year which is just enough to buy you one of those fancy, schmancy next gen video games. Of course you used to read about those kinds of games in a monthly periodical, those things that that postman brings to your door and haunts your reading tables and bathrooms until you throw them away. I believe they call them "magazines". Of course I`m a little biased as I help run an online gamingwebsite but Jigsaw is thinking the same thing, so it`s not just me.

Next up we have Duncan Gough at Suttree who has some concerns about how the mainstream acceptance of gaming could have on the industry and if the poor design choices made to get things out won`t set the industry back a few years (or more).

Pocket Change has a good look at the five most difficult games ever. Contra? Check. Legend of Zelda? Want the rest of the list? Well head go read the list as I`m not going to spoil it for you.

While we are in the same zip code of the the hardcore/casual gamer topic, it might be good to take a whack at defining what is hardcore gamer and what is a causal gamers. Luckily the folks at Nerfbat have take the time define these terms. They hypothesize that the more time and effort you put into learning a game identifies how far up on the casual/hardcoe totem poll you are. I`d tell you more but the article does a much better job than I could ever hope to.


It`s an MMO world but not everybody has an Alt
While you`re there you might also want to check this discussion of of artificial intelligence in MMO`s. Do you really want really intelligent mobs chasing you all around the virtual world or do you want want a dumb group of orcs who`s sole purpose in life is to take damage and die. Most people say they want more of a challenge but the data doesn`t quite back up those claims.

The folks over at the Idiom ponder if it really is possible that terrorists are using Second Life as a ...