Here’s a roundup of today’s news found elsewhere on the internet:

THQ: Facebook games are brand extensions first, profitable second (gamesindustry.biz) - THQ has said that keeping users engaged with its brands via Facebook is more important than creating profitable games for the social networking service.

The company hopes its Facebook titles – three of which are based on existing THQ franchises – can tide users over until the release of console games. CEO Brian Farrell said yesterday that its Facebook titles will launch before console versions of Red Faction and the next Saint's Row, due in the 2011 and 2012 financial years, respectively.

The company further detailed its digital ambitions last night, renaming Juiced Games and Rainbow Studios and aiming the four titles in development at digital formats such as social networking sites, PSN and XBLA, and iPhone and iPad hardware.

"We plan to launch our first digital core games this fiscal year including Facebook games based on three of our major brands and four games in development at our THQ Digital Studios," confirmed Farrell.

During a call to investors, Farrell also discussed THQ's early approach to Sony's Arc and Microsoft's Natal motion controllers, stating that the company will first try out casual games on the new technology, before committing big resources.

BioWare Responds to Self-Censorship Charge on Mass Effect 2 Sex (Kotaku) - Mass Effect 2's tamer (and sideboobless) sex scenes led some to believe that BioWare held something back, after the 2008 uproar over Mass Effect started by the Network That Must Not Be Named. But a dev sternly denies that charge.

User Menelaos1971 opened a forum thread on the subject, calling the sex scene in Mass Effect 1 "a step in the right direction for Rated M games," but implied that the uninformed uproar over it chilled BioWare's intent to extend the theme in the sequel. He also alleged that BioWare was given orders from EA that an M for violence was OK, but not nudity, because it might affect sales. "Or was it just EA lawyers," Menelaos1972 wrote.

Stanley Woo, a member of the QA story team for the game, replied forcefully:

"It's kinda funny that this topic keeps coming up over and over again. People who claim to be old enough and mature enough to handle sex and nudity in a game seem to believe that any lack of sex and nudity in the game is a sign of self-censorship. They generally don't believe that a game can be called "mature" without explicit sex and/or nudity.

"Let me tell you, folks, that as a developer full of mature individuals, we are also free to not have explicit sex and/or nudity in our games, no matter what you, Fox News, the government, or Bunky the Wonder Clown has to say about it. We have never considered it a "problem," it is simply a choice we have made and we have every right to make that choice."

Later on, answering another forum poster who dragged parenting into the discuss, Woo continues:

"You are absolutely correct. It is not our job to parent the child or determine what content is acceptable or unacceptable for our players. But on the other hand, it is not your job to dictate what content we include or don't include in our games. Game development is not a collaborative effort between developers and gamers; it is a dictatorship, where we alone determine what content goes into our game. You the player make the choice whether that content is acceptable to you (and/or your family) or not."

I agree, but I think forum user Gorn Kregore put it a little more succinctly.

"Two words: Get laid."

On the Obligations of Video Games (Kotaku) - Steve Gaynor, a designer at 2K Marin, understands that he works in an entertainment field, and provides a product nonessential to basic human needs. That doesn't mean video games - and their makers - have no obligation to the public.

News reports frequently mention studies that indicate some benefit to playing video games, whether in cognition or critical thinking skills, or physical benefits like hand eye coordination or therapy. Gaynor incorporates some of those examples into his manifesto, which is that games must make the player think. It's a bedrock design principle that will keep gamers from being an underserved constituency.

All media and genres of art have their schlock; Hollywood is a great example, so are commercialized works of fiction, paintings, you can come up with an example of high art and yard-sale garbage in all cases. But games seem to face a higher barrier to acceptance and legitimacy, both due to their origins and their nature. So it would seem to me that the obligations Gaynor describes for games are not only to gamers, but also to the medium as a whole.

You can read Gaynor’s article here.

Just Cause 2 demo "on its way" (eurogamer) - The Eidos bit of Square Enix has announced on Twitter that there is a "Just Cause 2 demo on its way".

Square Enix London Studios community manager Mike Oldman subsequent tweeted: "I'll have more news on the demo soon enough, for now though just relax safe in the knowledge that there's one on the way - and it's awesome."

Just Cause 2 from Avalanche Studios is due out for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on 26th March, and puts players in control of grappling hook lover Rico Rodriguez as he takes on the corrupt locals of fictional tropical island Panau.

You can attach one end of a grappling hook to a passing plane and snap the other to a sentry to get him out of the way.