Gearfuse

Best Buy’s Black Friday ad has leaked, which means it’s time to do some serious itinerary planning for the big day. See, I like me and my fiancee set up a full contingency plan based on what we want the most for us, then comes gifts for others. Come on, we need to set priorities people! Strategy is the name of the game on Black Friday.

So Best Buy has some moderately cool deals, especially in the video game department, but nothing mind-blowing. Though what might be notable is that Best Buy is not going to allow for anyone to get hurt this year because of their doorbuster deals. Apparently they don’t take “death by stampede” lightly. All doorbuster sales will be handled via tickets, which will be passed out up to two hours before the 5 am door openings. Hit the jump for a full-list of Black Friday Best Buy deals. Doorbusters are followed by an asterisk.

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Playing God is entertaining. If it wasn’t, games such as The Sims and the iPhone’s Pocket God wouldn’t be nearly as popular as they are. So why shouldn’t gadgets offering a bird’s eye view of another person’s misfortune not be popular as well?

The Falling Books Bookend adds a dose of omnipresence into your study or library. Watch as a little unidentified man perpetually raises his arms in fear of the oncoming avalanche of knowledge.

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Ahh, a long and eventful weekend brings us to the week preceding Memorial Day weekend. Bet you can’t wait.

• A song worth 99 cents on iTunes
• iPods with cameras? When pigs fly
• The Sims 3 has leaked like a broken faucet
• Sony’s latest offering of DSLRs
• Kinda gross
• Cycling in NYC is evolving more and more
• Microsoft and its magical fairy wand

Have great links you want showcased on Afternoon Linkage? E-mail us: tips AT gearfuse DOT com.

Before you get your molotov cocktails out and start heaving them in the direction of the Electronic Arts offices, stop and listen. We all know what a clusterfuck DRM caused for the game Spore. People bitched quite a bit and this time around, EA is going to listen. On the official Sims 3 blog, Rod Humble from EA just posted this tidbit about how the DRM for the game will work:

The game will have disc-based copy protection – there is a Serial Code just like The Sims 2. To play the game there will not be any online authentication needed.

We feel like this is a good, time-proven solution that makes it easy for you to play the game without DRM methods that feel overly invasive or leave you concerned about authorization server access in the distant future.

Awesome. Back to basics. Power to the player. This not only a good move by EA’s development team; it’s a PR miracle.

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Sky Factory’s new programmable “SkyCeilings” is just what introverts need to raise their Sims “room” stat. In an effort to make surroundings either at home or at the work place aesthetically pleasing, Sky Factory’s ceiling creates an illusion of nature by introducing changes of light and color; all in real-time as if it actually were to simulate the local rising and setting of the sun.

I live in a room with no windows. I haven’t seen the sun in seven years.  This is exactly the healing tool I need to enhance my physiology and well-being.  Ah fuck it, I love looking like Liz Taylor.

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Sources are reporting that Electronic Arts Inc. has sold the movie rights of best-selling game series, “The Sims”, to 20th Century Fox. The Sims franchise has sold more than 85 million units since its debut 7 years ago.

“The Sims has done an interactive version of an old story, which is what it’s like to have infinite power and how do you deal with it,” says Rod Humble, head of The Sims Studio at EA. The thought of a Sim movie seems pretty cheesy to think about. Could it really be decent? We guess if it’s handled right. — Andrew Dobrow

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When I play The Sims, I can’t help but feel a bit envious. Here they are, completely fictional characters with absolutely no care in the world. I envy them because they more often than not are in much better financial status than I am. The Sims Visa Card will just throw that fact in our faces even more blatantly.

Over at The Sims website you can vote for your favorite design. The winning design will have its own designated spot in the Visa family. If Visa really wants people to take notice, they’d have a cheat code feature like the one in The Sims, that instantly adds $50,000 to our bank accounts. And if we’re in some weird parallel universe and we’re actually being controlled by some overzealous gamer, than he should start kicking some ass in the cheat department for my character. — Andrew Dobrow

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Will Wright is the famous creator of the best selling PC game ever: The Sims. As a result of countless addon expansion packs and pre-teen obsessions of controlling other people’s lives, the Sims is/was a phenomenon for PC gaming. Now, the Sims was meant to be run on your desktop because your laptop just didn’t have the guts to run the game well. The Sims Life Stories is about to change that. Not only are laptops much more powerful now in comparison to when the Sims was released, the Sims Life Stories is more of a narrative based game that is being made especially for laptops. This game will launch what EA is calling the Sims Stories line, basically it’s a line of Sims games that actually have a plot.

This laptop-friendly game is the first in The Sim Stories series and features an all-new directed Story mode that lets you take Riley or Vince through a unique story full of romance, conflict, and dramatic moments.

Exactly what laptop-friendly means is still to be determined, but it is probably safe to assume that it is something along the lines of reduced graphics demands. Because laptops can’t fit high end graphics cards in them (and they can’t cool them), graphics on laptops are limited. The Sims Life Stories addresses this problem, and it will probably sell millions more because of it. — Nik Gomez

Sims Life Stories to laptop-dance next month [Gamespot]

EA Games has really been cashing in on all of these Sims expansions. People are just relentless with this game. And you know what they say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. With that said, EA Games has announced plans on yet another expansion release for Sims 2, which will be called Seasons. This eighth expansion will upgrade the Sims weather system to include more then just the sole condition of fair weather. Along with the expansion comes added experiences for your Sim to “live” through. You wouldn’t want to upset your computer generated portrayal of a person by not letting them experience computer generated life! Want more details? Take the jump and see more.

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