The Humble Indie Bundle is one of the best ideas some video game industry folks have come up with that takes your average publisher (e.g. EA, Ubisoft) and kicks their business model where the sun don’t shine. Basically, you say, “I want to pay ‘x’ dollars and cents for 5 to 7 games, sometimes their source code and game music, multiple platform support, and extra Steam licenses beyond the DRM-free downloads. Plus, I get to help a charity or two!” They’ll even take less than $1 but will display an image of a hungry programmer. And you don’t want to see that.

This Bundle has the following games – in order of awesomeness:

Jamestown
Cave Story+
NightSky HD
Shank
Super Meat Boy
Bit.Trip Runner
Gratuitous Space Battles

Disclaimer: Order is of my own personal opinion (aka what I’ll be buying it for).

Steam is still doing their ‘Wishlist Giveaway’ thing. The prices haven’t been spectacular except for VVVVVV – and I seriously can’t recommend that game. It was insanely difficult for no good reason that made any sense. Twitch gaming doesn’t work well on the PC and the default controls were hideous. Methinks that this is just a warmup to some real end-of-year deals to keep people logging into Steam every day.

If you were like me, you were expecting some amazing Thanksgiving-ish deals on Steam. Instead, what we got was a lousy round of pathetic deals on some rather mediocre games. It made me and my friends sad. Sure, we picked up a few things, but nothing worth blogging about other than Portal 2 being $10.19 at one point.

Enough griping. What is happening right now, though, is definitely worth getting excited about: Every day on Steam, there will be a new Daily Deal (not unusual) AND as long as you visit that deal’s page while logged in, you will be signed up for a drawing to get the top 10 games in your Wishlist for free. You don’t have to buy anything, just visit the deal page while logged in.

Today’s Deal: Terraria – looks/feels like a weird little Minecraft-ey game but in 2D and focused more on fighting enemies than building. Cost: $2.49.

The Steam Daily Deal tends to be Indie games. So, expect budget productions here for the most part. The real excitement is the chance to get your Wishlist items.

BRINK is also Free-To-Play until Sunday. Dunno if you want to buy it – a 70 Metacritic rating with actual gamers thinking it is a lot worse than that. But free-to-play is easy enough to deal with.

If this legislation (S.978) passes through the U.S. Senate, House, and subsequently signed by the President – who wants it to pass, that YouTube video of yours with more than 10 views in the last 180 days will suddenly put you at serious risk of a prison term of five years. You could be wearing a random T-shirt from your closet with a logo on it while doing a game review or share a gameplay video so other people can see if they want to buy the game. Or, my personal favorite, posting speed runs of video games. It doesn’t matter – ANY material under copyright (which is basically anything) that is streamed over the Internet and watched by more than 10 people in 180 days makes you/me/whoever liable for criminal prosecution or an insane fine of thousands of dollars.

Throw children in the mix and you’ve got disaster in the making. That innocuous cat video could land you in prison too. Showing your friends gathered around a display someone else’s video could be construed as constituting a “performance”. EVERYONE is at risk.

The Entertainment Consumers Association has a nice little form letter on their website you can use to send your scathing reply to this abomination of a proposed law to Senator John McCain and Senator Jon Kyl.

S.978 is one of those bills that seems to be quietly passing without much press. Let’s make this into a massive uproar of disapproval. Send a big fat NO to Congress!