It's one thing to cheat at blogging, but quite another to cheat at Halo 3.

While we're not certain Gilbert Arenas is cheating to up his in-game stats, it certainly looks that way and a whole bunch of Bungie forum-goers agree.

Look at all his games that he gets 1st place in. He joins up with a friend and has his other account quit out so he gets 1st place every time. How can this be allowed?

Checking out his stat page you can see that he does play an awful lot of Social Doubles and always ends in first place. Oh and that the lifespan of many of his "matches" is under five seconds.

Hey Arenas, I hate to break it to you, but matching and dumping just pumps up your experience, it doesn't do a thing for your Rank. To boost that you're going to have to actually play a game. Hit me up at Gamertag Crecente anytime so I can show you what a teabag is.

NBA player Gilbert Arenas cheating at Halo 3 [Bungie Halo 3 Forums]

Update: The Washington Post got Arenas to fess up.

It's a glitch," he explained. "It's a glitch in the game. I seen some kids that were like 600s, they won 600 Halo games and we only had that game for two weeks. And all the kids go to school. So I'm like, 'What the hell you all doing?' And they said that's what they doing, two-on-two."

And Bungie has released this official statement to Kotaku:

"As Gilbert Arenas himself admitted, his EXP is suspect. What isn't suspect, however, is his skill level, a far better gauge of a player's ability than the grinding of EXP. He is a level 42, which is pretty exceptional, especially considering all of the time he's likely putting into grinding."

Skill level? One word Arenas: Teabag

Well it's gone.

The reference disappeared from the online version of the story sometime between when it hit yesterday evening and when it went into print today. The online version no longer has the reference either.

When I first was tipped off that it had disappeared I thought it was likely the result of a running story getting edited. Often with a breaking online story, a reporter's notebook is sort of dumped into a story. That goes double for hot, breaking news and triple for online stories.

I suspect what happened was that as time went by the editors and reporters got more relevant details and edited the story accordingly, beefing up the bits that mattered and cutting out the stuff that was not really connected.

Among the bits on the cutting room floor? The Counterstrike reference. I suspect that's because a childhood habit of playing video games while in high school doesn't really play a part in what a person does when they are in college and his roommates never mention him gaming, so more than likely he wasn't much of a gamer anymore.

Nosing around I was able to find out that, that was indeed the case. No conspiracy here, just good editing. Too bad that didn't happen before the reference made it into the first version. Brian Crecente

Washington Post Links Shooter to Counterstrike [Washington Post]

It looks like the witch hunt is really starting to kick into overdrive.

Hours after the shooting you had people on national television speculating that the shooter, who had yet to be identified, was a gamer and that his playing of games likely led to the rampage.

Today multiple media organizations are already starting to dig into the whole violence and video game angle. At least one unnamed publication put out a query looking for anyone knowledgeable "about shooter/violent video games" who would be willing to write an article for a major daily.

The Washington Post, quick to get reporters to the childhood neighborhood of the shooter, posted a five page article on their site this evening. In it they say Cho Seung Hui was a "fan of violent video games."

Several Korean youths who knew Cho Seung Hui from his high school days said he was a fan of violent video games, particularly Counterstrike, a hugely popular online game published by Microsoft, in which players join terrorism or counterterrorism groups and try to shoot each other using all types of guns.

Marshall Main, a neighbor who lived across the Chos in the quiet community of townhomes, said the Chos were hardly ever home, but always waved and smiled when greeted. The couple worked long hours at a dry cleaner, neighbors said.

What they don't say is whether it has anything to do with the shooting. And, granted, it is only one graph in the story, but it does make you wonder if he was also a fan of violent music, violent television, violent movies. Whether he read Catcher in the Rye.

Fact without perspective is almost as bad as lies. Brian Crecente

Centreville Student Was Va. Tech Shooter [Washington Post]

Here are the links and ledes:

Rocky Mountain News
PlayStation 3's followers tire of the waiting game: Sony's announcement of a delayed street date for its PlayStation 3 may be too little, too late.

Mercury News
Sony's PS 3 delay likely means tumultuous year for video game industry: Sony's decision to delay the PlayStation 3 video game console — although not unexpected — will likely make 2006 a rocky year for the video game industry.

Wall Street Journal
Sony Delays PlayStation 3 to Fall: TOKYO — Sony Corp. said it will delay the launch of its next-generation video game console until November from the spring, even as competition is intensifying with advanced devices from rivals.

New York Times
Gamers Voice Some Annoyance With Sony: Those who invest or work in the video game industry expressed little surprise yesterday at Sony's announcement that it would delay its next PlayStation console until November. The shock appeared limited to the industry's customers: everyday gamers. And the beneficiary seemed to be Microsoft.

Associated Press
Sony does the expected and delays PlayStation 3 release: SAN JOSE, Calif. - When Sony Corp. hiccups, everyone else in the video game industry feels it.

The Washington Post story on the inevitability of video game movie sucktitude ran today. I'm very proud of the fact that I was able to introduce reporter Jose Antonio Vargas to the master of shit-movies himself, Uwe Boll.

At the heart of this competitive marriage is this question: How do you successfully turn an interactive experience (playing an Xbox game) into a passive one (watching a movie version of an Xbox game)? For whatever reasons, the recent crop of video game movies — including 2003's "House of the Dead" and this year's "Alone in the Dark," both helmed by the German director Uwe Boll — have consistently disappointed gamers. Someone even started a Web site called Uwebollsucks.com. Is it for real? A joke? No one is sure.

"Whether or not that site is for real, there's a huge amount of animosity for this guy — he represents everything that's bad about video game movies," says Brian Crecente, senior editor of Kotaku.com, the video game equivalent of the snarky and very opinionated Gawker.com, which owns it.

And another Boll hater is born.

Doom Takes a Shot at the Gamers [Washington Post]

Just got off the phone with Jose Antonio Vargas, a reporter with the Washington Post. He s working on a story about the video game movie stigma to run in paper s Style section. The story is spurred by Doom, which he saw and apparently did suck. Dammit!

Vargas sounds like just the kind of mainstream gaming writer the industry needs. He was telling me about a story he wrote on GTA where he went to South Central to see how some of the people there played the game and then compared it to the playing style of suburban white kids. Excellent.

Anyway, we had an interesting conversation about why video game movies suck and if that will ever change. Part of the problem, I think, is that Hollywood tends to pick the blockbuster, plotless games to turn into movies instead of focusing on games that have some depth to them.

Another issue is that you just can t replicate the immersive experience of gaming in a linear format. Movies tend to lean to heavily on the success of their video game counter-parts instead of trying to reshape the experience for the medium they are using.

My two cents.