Big-budget games such as Halo 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops II might brag about how they rule the Xbox 360 in terms of sales, but indie games can also compete – if they’re addictive enough and offer enough value. Take Minecraft, an indie game developed by Markus “Notch” Persson’s company Mojang. According to Mojang, Minecraft, an indie game originally made for PC and ported to the Xbox 360 seven months ago has sold 4,476,904 copies as of the end of November with 40,000 to 60,000 copies sold every week. Minecraft is an anomaly because it doesn’t boast high-definition graphics that ooze of detailed lighting effects and didn’t cost millions of dollars to make, and yet it is the third-most played game on Xbox LIVE. According to Gamasutra’s analysis and

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"He won't follow anyone for now," says one adviser. "He will be followed."Pope Benedict XVI on Monday announced that he had joined Twitter, part of a campaign by the leader of the Roman Catholic Church to better connect with his 1.2-billion-strong flock. Benedict chose the handle @pontifex — Latin for "pontiff" — and is already being followed by more than 240,000 people. But Benedict isn't exactly returning the love: He is following only seven other Twitter accounts, all of which are foreign-language versions of himself in which he speaks in different tongues. ...

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UPDATE: This story has been modified from an earlier version. Combat Shooting Sports, a Florida gun range, has taken the concept of target practice to a whole new level. Customers can actually engage in simulated combat against other people, shooting real guns at each other. However, as local affiliate WKMG explains, the customers aren't using [...]

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BOSTON (Reuters) - Massachusetts' top securities regulator said on Friday that his office is looking into whether top Wall Street investment banks in addition to Citigroup have leaked research in violation of state law on how to share this kind of information. "We are looking at all of them, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan," regulator William Galvin said in a telephone interview about the probe. "It is a very active investigation," Galvin said, declining to give more information about what kind of charges may be made. ...

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BOSTON (Reuters) - Massachusetts' top securities regulator said on Friday that his office is looking into whether top Wall Street investment banks in addition to Citigroup have leaked research in violation of state law on how to share this kind of information. "We are looking at all of them, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan," regulator William Galvin said in a telephone interview about the probe. "It is a very active investigation," Galvin said, declining to give more information about what kind of charges may be made. ...

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Facebook's tepid start as a publicly traded company dragged other social media and related stocks lower on Monday.

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Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. Today, we’re looking at three particularly interesting stories.

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