President Obama has been historically a bit down on video games, readily associating them with bad parenting.  In spit of this, Joystiq reports today that Obama’s fiscal commission has been communicating with Microsoft about creating a budget balancing game.

That is: Not a game that would teach people to balance their own budgets, but a game that would let others attempt to balance the federal budget, to promote public awareness of how difficult it is.  Commission co-chair Erskine Bowles said: “What you could get is support among the populace for the exceptionally unpopular things you need to do to solve this problem… [the game could] go viral.”

Joystiq points out that it wouldn’t be the first game built around balancing the United States federal budget, nor would it be the first game that tried to educate you about something decidedly un-game-like.  We list ten of the best, worst, and weirdest, after the jump.  Some of them you can even play in your browser: like, right now!

This past weekend, from March 26-28, Stony Brook University hosted what is advertised as “the Northeast’s largest convention of science fiction, fact and fantasy.” Or, put another way, the university held one of the geekiest conventions you could shake a catgirl tail at, what con-goers already know as I-Con.

And it was awesome:

Do you feel like your t-shirts aren’t witty enough to please your geeky peers? Is the message on your chest making people laugh for the wrong reasons? Geekosystem is here to help!

We’ve combed the planet to find you the best, nerdiest t-shirts the interwebz has to offer.  Whether you’re a mathlete, 1337, gamer geek, music dork, or member of some other branch of nerdocracy, we’ve got you covered:

With the April 3 release of the new Apple iPad nearing, it seems that early adopters can be assured of a few popular apps right from the word go, particular in the gaming department. Flurry Analytics, a provider of a popular analytics software for mobile applications, has apparently been able to monitor traffic on iPhone OS 3.2 received from the developer iPads out in the wild. According to their data, an impressive 44% of the total iPad apps in development are games. Coming in 2nd and 3rd place are the vague “Entertainment” apps category at 14%, followed by Social Networking apps at 7%.

That’s right — Warner Bros. apparently thinks that Mortal Kombat, the legendarily sanguinary video game franchise, is valuable enough to warrant a follow-up to 1997′s critically savaged feature film, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.

The series has indeed already spawned two movies, one medium-grade mid-90′s moral panic, and an, um, “animated film” (see above), but another movie? Wasn’t Street Fighter: the Legend of Chun-Li enough?

Today was going to be MMO-focused, what with the launch of Star Trek Online and the debut of our associated Power Grid, but an unexpected deluge of Civilization-related news has turned this into Civ Day (or…We Love the King Day?)

Anyway: FreeCiv, the open-source member the Civilization family, is now available for free, in your browser. Forget Battlefield: Heroes and browser Quake — this is how the twenty-something creative underclass should be wasting its daylight hours.

Gamers weaned on Sid Meier‘s Civilization and tired of the waves of zombies, mafiosi, and Farmville farmers who accost you daily on Facebook, rejoice: Civilization: Network, a Civ-based Facebook game, is coming out in beta in June.

From the blog Whose Voice is That? comes a truly extensive post on tonight’s Grammy nominees, or at least those who also have voice acting credits. WViT’s list covers a number of areas within our geeky purview, including David Bowie, Yogi Bear, Mos Def, Metalocalypse, and more.

Our three favorite new bytes of knowledge are:

Ars Technica has a post up today on the arrival of the first issue of the official World of Warcraft magazine. It’s a favorable account of its 144 pages of art and articles covering the topics of line of sight and loot sharing; interviews with Blizzard‘s CEO; and a feature retrospective.

It all sounds well and good, but here’s why we’re still skeptical:

Well, that’s a relief! According to the president of EA Sports, the inexhaustible Tiger Woods scandal (seriously, it’s been two months) hasn’t put a damper on the sales of Tiger Woods-branded games.