Our music editor played with the Washington Metropolitan Gamer Symphony Orchestra, which brings video game music to the masses.

In the wake of the Newtown massacre, Ward 7 activist Ron Moten wants city legislators to crack down on the sale of violent and sexually explicit video games to minors.

People who watched last night’s vice-presidential debate between Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on their Xbox video game systems overwhelmingly favored the incumbent.

Crystal Palmer, director of D.C.’s Office of Motion Picture and Television Development, has a new target: video games. Palmer spent much of last week in Los Angeles attending the Electronic Entertainment Exposition, an annual confab of video-game producers.

What would it be like if the world were invaded by the characters who populate the beloved video games of our past? Pretty ugly for us, the French video artist Patrick Jean projects in his short film Pixels.

Here at DCist, we’ve fostered a reputation as the definitive source of all things Dismemberment Plan fandom. Combine that with our affinity for the blip-bloop of an NES score, and we’re unable to resist.

When I was in middle school, I was, for some reason, placed into the “gifted” student program. (Yup, sure putting that to good use.) Long story short, the program granted students one period a day to pursue independent academic pursuits with minimal supervision and no real culmination requirement. I, of course, used this as an excuse to play SimCity obsessively. I suppose what I’m getting at here is that I’m having a tougher time than normal condemning Virginia Department of Transportation employee Matthew Bolick, who was recently caught spending about 30 hours of on-the-clock time playing Civilization IV.

Here’s something nifty: the Smithsonian American Art Museum is planning on hosting an exhibit devoted to The Art of Video Games, and it needs gamers’ help to piece it together.

It’s kind of a slow Monday morning, which gives me a chance to selfishly indulge my penchant for 80s nostalgia. Wired points out that on this day in 1985, the first Nintendo Entertainment Systems hit American living rooms, with little fanfare and no idea how huge of a cultural phenomenon it would become.

Not everyone was thrilled when the new contraflow bike lanes at the intersection of New Hampshire Avenue, U and 16th Streets NW were unveiled earlier this month. If only there was a Starman, then we’d really be in business.