noGood Gaming

I’ve never much cared for Wil’s portrayal of Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation. It just never clicked. But, I can’t deny that we share very similar, if not the exact same, views on gaming and how to appropriately handle them when it comes to children. Wil’s latest blog post discusses the controversy over GTA IV, which is logical since its release has pretty much drowned all other games out, and asks the usual questions of why people so worried about parenting and protecting their children don’t spend as much, if not a great deal more, time on other things that will not only protect but improve the chances their children have for a successful future in the world.

Can I just take a moment and point out how insane this is? This type of hysterical overreaction to a video game is completely out of proportion to any alleged harm it could inflict on anyone, but is accepted because it is done, as it always is, in the name of protecting The Children.

Yeah, it’s always about protecting The Children, which leads me to wonder where The Parents are, and if these people are so serious about making the world better for The Children, why they don’t invest the same amount of energy and resources into securing quality healthcare and world-class education for them as they spend wringing their hands over video games that aren’t even supposed to be played by The Children in the first place.

I suggest reading his full post, which covers the whole ordeal fairly well, as well as comments from Rockstar, developers of GTA IV and people directly affected by the political harangues.

I’m not big on religion. In fact, for the most part, I’m kind of opposed to what it has become in today’s day and age through the organization of the various sects of religion. But I can’t escape the feeling that I believe in karma. I’m undecided on the concept of fate, death, omnipotent/omniscient/omnipresent beings and the such because it’s unexplainable to me and the only way to prove it is so far off (I don’t plan on dying any day soon). But, karma, just seems to fit so well in my life.

How so? I’m not quite sure how to explain it, but it varies from me running into a door frame and badly bruising two toes after going to help and in the process openly criticize someone for continuing to move around on three broken toes to the various thing my wife ends up spilling and has to clean up immediately following a period of time when she does something that she knows bothers one of our cats.

The logical side of me says that my perception is not a good enough indicator, while the imaginative side of me can’t ignore the appropriate reactions in life to my own actions. It’s kind of fun, but wonder where it will lead me?

With the latest poster child for anti-gaming coming out tomorrow, Grand Theft Auto IV, and the recent attempts to ban or further limit gaming to children in general you would think that people would ease back on the advertisement of the violence and sex shown in the game, even if it is a game intended only for adults. You would especially think so by the large game media sites out there. Or you would until IGN decided to just let it all hang out.

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I’m kind of sick and tired of Stan Lee. Not that I don’t agree that he has been an influence in the comic book industry, both good and bad, but is it really necessary for him to keep making more and more crud just for the money? First it was the two seasons of Who Wants To Be A Superhero? and now it’s another super group, “Legion of 5,” with what will surely be a big focus on merchandising. I say we let someone who can actually write good stories take the floor for a while.  Press release following link.

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I’m not sure how old these are to others out there, but I was just directed to Sillof’s Workshop today and I love what he did with Star Wars. I’m a big fan of steampunk, especially the style and writing that tends to go along with it, but I’ve never been a big fan of Star Wars due to its huge focus on science fiction when it feels a lot more like a fantasy movie. But, Sillof is able to capture a look and feel that I think would have appealed to me a lot more and could make for an interesting alternate-universe campaign setting. Gallery of images after the link.

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Okay, not really, but John Cusack’s upcoming movie, War, Inc, seems to play out very similar to Grosse Pointe Blank. Not that this is a bad thing, Grosse is a great movie, but perhaps I just expected a bit more from Cusack.

For some reason, the big three one just doesn’t mean anything to me other than a slow crawl to the big four oh. Last year meant something to me, it was a milestone of sorts. When I was twenty, I didn’t think about the future at all and didn’t consider that I would be married, own my own place, raising three cats, and maintaining a job that doesn’t allow me to wear blue jeans. Ok, I still don’t understand why we have the dress code we do hate the fact that older-then-me-timers think that all office-run businesses should require people to wear dress clothing when they sit in an office all day, never go to client meetings, and never interact with clients.

I’d like to thank the people who remembered my birthday this year, you know who you are. I think this is the first one that I wasn’t just greeted by my morning deluge of forum-related birthday wishes from the many forums I have subscribed to over the years. Heck, even the wife remembered, which is a fairly big thing in my book.

I don’t have anything special that I look forward to in the next year of my life. Keep my job and get paid, make sure my wife and cats are happy, and continue fixing up and furnishing our home. Though, I will still keep at losing these annoying excess pounds I’ve built up over the last ten years, so hopefully by next year I’ll get that out of the way.

Mark Methenitis posted a good response to the current legislation issues regarding video games.

This, of course, begs the question: Why games? There are a lot of theories about this particular issue, but I see it as a combination of factors: fear of new things, an easy target, unscrupulous politicians, and a largely uneducated public. Legislators love to find something like video games; something they can use to exploit the public’s misconceptions and fears in order to make it appear as if they’ve remedied a great evil without actually having to tackle a hard-hitting or divisive issue. Almost no one opposes legislation ‘to protect the children,’ even if no children are actually being protected.

Read the full post at Joystiq.

I’m a veteran of more than a few MMORPGs and I’ve spent enough time with more than a few roleplaying game systems to know that archetypes really don’t work in today’s day and age. No matter how well structured you want to make your game, the people aren’t going to be happy with just having one role as an option in combat. It was one of the core concepts of EverQuest II, and it quickly went away as the realization that trying to create diversity within such limited confines always resulted in the failure of most of the classes in regards to being able to do their job equally to the few others that excelled at it. And I believe this is a road that the designers of 4e D&D have not truly considered, or just acting about as ignorant as one can get (but, knowing some of the designers and their ideas for game design, I’m going with the former). Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a new video circulating the Internet and everyone seems to be getting a lot of laughs out of it. I’ve posted it below, but let me say my part on this first.

Addictions of almost any type can develop at almost any age and are typically exaggerated by the lack of emotional and societal support. In the case of this video, we have a young kid, not even a teenager, who has developed an obvious addiction to MySpace. It is an unhealthy addiction that may mean that this kid does not interact with others in real life enough and may develop a long history of hiding away on the Internet, looking for anyone that will listen to him. But it’s fairly obvious that he also is not supported by his family well enough to curb the need for the addiction, and in fact may be driven more and more towards the addiction by them and others.

People out there laugh because they think it’s funny that this kid screams when his brother and friends taunt him with sending messages to others from his MySpace account or even deleting the account as a whole, and video tape all of it to publish on the Web. But I cry for the kid who has had to attach himself to a community Web site because his family obviously isn’t there for him, providing for him the friendship and help that he needs. I cry even more knowing that the chances that this kid will try to kill himself has just shot up a ridiculous amount. I cry even more knowing that this kid’s life as it is now will be comparatively ruined by the actions of a family member.

This is why violence occurs in those so young today. Kids take guns to school when people refuse to accept and/or listen to them because they’ve been pushed into a corner and no one has helped them out of it and most tend to push them further into those corners. Kids also take their own lives when they feel they have nothing else to live for and that everyone, even their own family, has turned against them.

To the people that laugh, I say you’re the number one reason I don’t want to bring a child into this world, and that makes me cry the most.