Starting June 9th, gamers will be able to purchase the Xbox One without the Kinect for $399.99, the same price the PS4 currently retails for.

That should level the playing field a bit, no?

As of early April, Sony announced that it had sold more than 7 million units.  Microsoft says Xbox One has sold more than 5 million.  Will unbundling the Kinect help the Xbox One sell more consoles?  Enough to catch the PS4 by the year's end?

In last week's poll we asked our readers, "Should Kickstarter adopt an equity-based investment model?." A majority of voters - 58 percent - said that it should be an available option to project creators. Around 31 percent said that offering equity based funding to Kickstarter was a bad idea all around. Finally, 10 percent said that it was a good idea. Kickstarter said last week that it had no plans to use that type of model for its crowd-funding services.

On this week's show hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight discuss the latest GamePolitics Poll results (should Kickstarter adopt an equity-based investment model?), the web-hosting service that dared to throttle the FCC, the national Reason-Rupe poll about gaming, and the Tomodachi Life controversy. Download Episode 98 now: SuperPAC Episode 98 (1 hour, 8 minutes) 78 MB.

If someone comes up with a cool project and tries to fund it on Kickstarter, you can chuck a bit of money at them to help them make their dream a reality.  Chuck enough money at 'em and you're usually entitled to various rewards ranging from a "thank you!" to a copy of whatever the heck the project is to a dinner-date with the project creators.

It might not come to a big surprise for many of you, but gamers are less likely to be conservative than non-gamers and more likely to use products and services that many politicians want banned. 

The two most recent Reason-Rupe polls show that gamers are more likely to consider themselves independent in their political views. The polls show that 55% of frequent gamers consider themselves independent while 30% consider themselves Democratic and 15% Republican. 

Last week we asked our readers, "Should the Mental Health Community Officially Recognize "Video Game Addiction?." The majority of you said that all behavioral addictions should be lumped together, with a close second going to "no."

For many years, video games have been the subject of various studies, scares and outrages. One of the most common concerns over video games has been what many consider the addictive nature of games.

Here's a bizarre bit of polling reported on by the Wall Street Journal about the correlation between tattoos and video gamers. Apparently those who have a tattoo are also more inclined to be video gamers, though the folks responsible for the polling don't really understand why.

Pollsters also found that "Tattooed Americans" are more likely to be uninsured, live in a Republican congressional district, and voted for President Barack Obama in the past. The polling data also showed that there are far more tattooed people than there were 15 years ago.

Last week we asked our readers how they divide up their Humble Bundle purchases. The majority of you said that it is divided up equally amongst charities, the Humble Bundle organizers and developers. A majority - 58 percent - said that your purchase are split up amongst all parties.

When you purchase a Humble Bundle, not only do you get to pick the price you pay, you get to decide how it's divided up between charity, the developers of the bundle's games or Humble Bundle itself.

This week's poll asks how you usually split up your payment.  Do you go all charity?  Give it all to the devs?  Do you spread the love around?

Or hey, maybe you've never bought a Humble Bundle.

Earlier this week, King - known for such games as Candy Crush and... uh, Candy Crush - opined that all games should adopt the free-to-play business model.

Last week we asked our readers: "Should corrupt politicians face different penalties for breaking the law?" You voted, and the majority of those votes concluded that politicians should face a more severe punishment than regular average citizens might face. Around 47 percent of voters said that they should face a more severe punishment; while 18 percent said that politicians should be hung (the plain way of saying they should face the death penalty). Tough crowd.

Leland Yee, man.  Leland Yee.

Yes, the would-be regulator of violent video games was recently arrested on charges of corruption including bribery and gun running.  Innocent until proven guilty and all that but holy cow!  If you can't trust the people you elect to public office to do the right thing, who can you trust?  What do we do from here on out?  How can we be sure politicians are serving our interests rather than bending the rules to serve their own?

Last week we asked our readers, "How Will Oculus Rift Be Affected By Facebook's Acquisition of the Device?" A slim majority of our readers believe that the Facebook acquisition of the popular VR gaming technology company is very bad news.

This was originally planned to be last week's poll but then Leland Yee, a guy who spoke ill of the moral depravity and illegal behavior exercised within the virtual settings of violent video games, was arrested for allegedly dabbling in real-life moral depravity and illegal behavior including bribes and gun running.

So, yeah.  I went with that for a poll topic instead.

Last week we asked our readers, "Will Leland Yee’s Arrest Negatively Affect the Viability of Anti-Video Game Arguments?" The majority of votes went to the option that basically said anti-game research will continue unabated and unashamed, despite one of its biggest advocates showing that he didn't really care about the issue at all.

Leland Yee is best known by gamers as a man who claimed that playing violent video games was harmful to children and attempted to pass legislation that would prevent them from buying such titles.

Crowd-funding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have been successfully used by many to fund projects they otherwise would not have been able to get off the ground themselves.

But what about individuals or organizations that don't need crowd-funded dollars for their projects?  What if they could easily afford to fund it themselves?  Should they be able to use crowd-funding sites too or should they pay for it their damned selves?  Should their be rules enforcing this?  Laws?

Last week GOG.com apologized to its users for trying to roll out a regional pricing scheme, saying that it was ultimately a bad idea. This inspired us to ask our readers how the DRM-free digital distribution site should handle regional pricing. A majority (57 percent) of those who voted in the poll said that regional pricing should only be implemented in cases where there's no other way to make a game available for purchase.

A couple weeks ago, Good Old Games announced that it would be instituting regional pricing (some regions would pay more or less for the same title than other regions) for titles it otherwise wouldn't be able to make available on its digital distribution platform.

The decision was not popular.

Last week we asked readers "Should Violent Video Game Research Continue?" The majority of those who participated in the poll said that there is enough research on the topic and it's time to move on.

Anyone think we should keep studying the effects of violent video games?

There has been a lot of research over the last 15 years or so into how violent video games affect those that play them and not a bit of it has convinced a single, solitary court in the U.S. that such games pose any danger to those who play them.  Granted, most of the research is really poorly done, something else courts and various academic reviews have pointed out.  Hell, even the authors of some of these studies have admitted to sloppy methodology.

It looks like Blizzard will soon offer World of Warcraft players the ability to purchase Level 90 characters.

Last week in our poll we asked readers if Candy Crush Saga maker "King would be in the running for the Consumerist’s Worst Company in America tournament," and the majority of you said that it would end up being between King and EA, with EA ultimately winning.

In this week's poll we want to know what you think about Candy Crush Saga maker King's ongoing trademark battles with various independent developers. Are these actions enough to put the company ahead of Electronic Arts as The Consumerist's Worst Company in America Award (or the "Golden Poo," as they call it)?

Last week we asked readers why they thought that the ultra popular Flappy Bird app was pulled from Apple's App Store and Google Play by creator Dong Nguyen, despite the game reportedly making tens of thousands of dollars a day on advertising.

Flappy Bird is a simple game.  Some might even call it boring.

But that certainly didn't stop it from becoming one of the most popular and talked about games on mobile stores for the past week or so.

But, it's gone now.  Yep, creator Dong Nguyen decided to take his money-making ball and go home.

But why?

Last week we asked our readers if video games should go into the public domain after a certain period of time. The results were almost split right down the middle between two schools of thought: that games should enter the public domain after a fixed amount of time and that an IP can only be renewed if it is going to be made available to the public.

Earlier this week, Rock Paper Shotgun posted an editorial in response to some Twitter comments made in response to some comments written in an earlier post about GOG's Time Machine Sale. In that post, RPS Editor John Walker wrote:

Last week we asked our readers, "Will Amazon Come Out With a Game Console This Year?" Many of you seemed not to care all that much about the topic as evidenced in the number of votes. That aside, a majority of those who did vote indicated that they thought that Amazon's set-top box capable of playing Android-based games on a big-screen TV and delivering content from the company's Amazon Prime service would not happen this year.