Bioshock's Rapture locale, soon Columbia.

Barrelhouses were mostly illegal houses of gambling with skewed odds, prostitution, cheap corn liquor and a house pianist. As the barrelhouse became the only place men could romance women somewhat without fear of retribution, its popularity rose steadily and a circuit was established for travelling musicians - soon this began rivalling gambling as the main attraction. Barrelhouses were usually staked by farmowners hoping to sieve their workers' wages back rather than letting them spend it up north in the barrelhouses of Beale Street (Memphis).

Pre rendered backgrounds, real humans acting, strange modulated gore, disturbing sound effects, cutting edge for its time Roberta Williams' Phantasmagoria was the PC- gamer's B-movie alternate, darker Myst (the 'inspiration' for Lost). Its most inventive death was by funnel.

Masters of the sub-universe, Goldman Sachs looks as if it simply games out no-loss situations in 'proper' precentages that have the potential to trigger collapses at its own reward (nothing new or self destructive until the edges of the market are pushed). While buying into full range mortgage securities, cash-swap defaults to 'insure' them, staking other banks to take similar positions and also having them insured (in this case Societie General), and then making trades planning for a housing collapse, it became Goldman's best interest to destroy AIG by both being paid its 'insurance' and retaining control of the securities. By carefully observing its structure from a puppetmaster level, Goldman survives and thrives while massive shops like Bear Stearns and Lehman are revealed as mere amateurs whose planning and percentages skewed slightly too positive. If this activity remains legal and underwritten by our Government, there will be no end to this exotic envelope pushing. Greed will destroy our species. A metaphor would be building a plane that breaks the sound barrier but is always destroyed attempting it, the occupant's survival only possible if the military steps in to rescue. Sure we broke the sound barrier, but did we? The U.S. spends taxpayer's dollars insuring the smart and help liquidating the dumb.

sectional quotes from a brilliant narrative in the NY Times:

“Al probably did not know it, but he was working with the bears of Goldman,” a former Goldman salesman, who requested anonymity so he would not jeopardize his business relationships, said of Mr. Frost. “He was signing A.I.G. up to insure trades made by people with really very negative views” of the housing market.

By July 2007, when Goldman demanded its first payment from A.I.G. — $1.8 billion — the investment bank had already taken trading positions that would pay out if the mortgage market weakened, according to seven former Goldman employees.

On Nov. 1, 2007, for example, an e-mail message from Mr. Cassano, the head of A.I.G. Financial Products, to Elias Habayeb, an A.I.G. accounting executive, said that a payment demand from Société Générale had been “spurred by GS calling them.

On Aug. 18, 2008, Goldman’s equity research department published an in-depth report on A.I.G. The analysts advised the firm’s clients to avoid the stock because of a “downward spiral which is likely to ensue as more actual cash losses emanate” from the insurer’s financial products unit.