Tag: games

I said it would take 24 hours for any indisputably factual information added to the Wikipedia page about me to be removed by Wikipedia’s political commissars. It actually took all of 26 hours and 21 minutes to have my views on economics and the fact of Psykosonik’s four Billboard-charting club hits to be removed by one Hullaballoo Wolfowitz, who is the self-appointed left-wing policeman determined to keep the page as negative and fact-free as possible.

That being said, I can see that those who were trying to edit the page and make it more factual made several errors that the more experienced Wikipedia editor utilized to his advantage. For example, the citation of the four Billboard hits was not changed from the original citation that mentioned only two, thereby permitting Hullaballoo Wolfowitz the excuse to claim that the information was false and needed to be reverted.

When playing the Game of Wikipedia, one cannot merely add the information on a contested site, one must also support every single statement with a correct citation. Moreover, the editors missed the opportunity to strip out all of the nominally negative “facts” that are based on the “unreliable source” of this blog, such as this:

Beale is opposed to feminism[22] and female suffrage, writing that “I consider women’s rights to be a disease that should be eradicated.”[23]

Always look at the citations. If it’s this blog or WND, you can “unreliable source” it and strip it out.

UPDATE: In case you truly didn’t believe John Scalzi thinks like a girl:

John Scalzi @scalzi
The hilarious irony of someone who goes out of his way to try to
irritate me complaining that he’s best known for trying to irritate me.

John Scalzi @scalzi
Pro tip: If you’re best known for annoying people, you only have your own life choices to blame.

Translation: There is one Wikipedia editor gatekeeping the page about me. There is another Wikipedia editor gatekeeping the page about him. Therefore, the narrative controlled by all of two people defines reality. It would be amusing that John thinks a three-time nationally syndicated columnist and founder of a four-time Billboard charting band is chiefly known for annoying him, if it weren’t for the fact that he doesn’t believe that at all. It’s just his usual passive-aggressive snark.

This demonstrates the essence of the Gamma delusion. So long as you can convince just one other person of your version reality, it must be real. The fact is that I’ve already passed up the blog that he once claimed was his legacy. Everything else in due time.

In light of John C. Wright’s Unified Field Theory of Madness, perhaps we need an addendum to explain the Contrapuntal Certainty of Left-Wing Social Policies:

From Grand Theft Auto V to Saints Row 2 and Fight Night, many games let players choose between characters of different races. However, researchers have found that when white people play as black characters in video games classified as violent, the players were more threatening, offensive and racist in real life. Scientists described the findings as ‘disturbing’ because it is the first time the race of a computer alter ego, or avatar, has been linked to this change in behaviour.

There may be a third certainty beyond death and taxes, and that is the tendency of every left-wing social policy to deliver consequences that are the EXACT OPPOSITE of those expected and predicted. We have seen tax hikes that raise less money, we have seen a War on Poverty that increased the number of the poor, we have seen how multiculturalism increases social divisiveness, and now we are seeing that the proposed solution to supposed racism in video games actually increases racism in real life.

This should have interesting ramifications for the women who are incessantly crying for more female protagonists in video games in order to encourage more female involvement; at this point, one wouldn’t be surprised if that ended up leading to the development of online prostitution through video gaming networks.

I ran across this interview with the driving force behind the Colecovision and found it to be fascinating. It seems incredible to think you could once get the rights to great arcade games like Zaxxon and Turbo for $5,000.

Bromley knew this title – which was hitherto unknown in the West – could be the game to propel his console into the public consciousness. He also knew he had to act fast. “A meeting was arranged for the next day,” he reveals. “I said I wanted the rights to Donkey Kong. I didn’t want Atari to find out about this game. After a lengthy conversation Makihara-san told me Yamauchi-san wanted $200,000 advance and $2.00 per unit royalty. It was around 10:00AM and Yamauchi-san knew that I needed to catch my train, so then he added the kicker: the US$ 200,000 must be wired to his account by 12:00 midnight, or there was no deal.”

The odds were most certainly against Bromley. “The most Coleco had ever paid for an advance for any license up to then was $5,000,” he says. ”Also, they never, ever paid more than 5% of their selling price; the worst case would be about 90 cents. Now because of the need to wire the money before 12:00AM Tokyo time, I needed to take the next available train. I would have to call as soon as I got back to my hotel in Tokyo which would be in the afternoon and therefore wake up Arnold Greenberg in the US, the only one who could authorise an immediate wire transfer. I was to call him at home, wake him up, and then ask him to wire $200,000 for a game he has never seen or heard of. If that wasn’t bad enough, he then has to agree to more than twice the usual royalty amount!”

Bromley stayed firm, spurred on by the fact that he knew that Donkey Kong would be a smash-hit once western gamers laid eyes on it. “Upon my return to Tokyo, I called Arnold Greenberg from my room – I was shaking a little,” he admits. “It was about 4:00 AM in the morning and I got: ‘Whaaaaa? Do you know what time it is?’ I referred him to a conversation we had days before with marketing and sales; we all agreed we needed a really spectacular game to bundle with the ColecoVision console to create an impact. I then told him of the conditions: $200,000 advance and the $2.00 per unit royalty. I said: ‘I have found that game.’ To my surprise all he said: ‘is it really that good?’ I told him that it was as good as Pac-Man. He asked what it was called and I uttered ‘Donkey Kong.’ Silence. For the first time I realized how silly the name sounded. What seemed like an hour later he said: ‘OK. Let’s do it,’ and said he would wire over the money as soon as the banks opened that day.”

It’s also an important lesson in what passes for Japanese business ethics. I had to laugh upon reading it, having run into similar issues with both Konami and Sega in the past. Fortunately, having studied in Tokyo, I was more prepared for them than Mr. Bromley was, although it’s hard to argue with how well it worked out for him. What a pity Coleco didn’t tough it out the way Nintendo did; the industry would have been the better for it.

Yet another clueless wonder is yapping about the absence of the unnecessary from video games:

There is a point to including playable female characters in games. I’m aware that most of the people likely to comment on this article (go ahead and bleat about misandry, you worms; I’ll enjoy a tasty cup of your male tears) don’t see that, but I’m also aware that the vast majority of people who read this article do see it, and won’t bother to leave a comment because what I’m saying in this editorial seems sensible, practical, and non-controversial. Such is the way of the Internet. So I’m not going to bother writing out a lengthy justification of why we genuinely need female characters in video games for the good of the industry financially and artistically; if you honestly can’t understand it, go forth and educate yourself. If you feel that gaming is the one thing remaining to men and girls should stop spoiling it with political correctness, then please go boil your head because I see no point in debating with people incapable of basic logic and lacking humanity.

Having taken it as fact that there is a point to including female characters in video games, why on earth are we still hearing excuses for their absence in 2014? Because it is an excuse. There is no reason not to do it. You won’t alienate your existing market by acknowledging the existence of women. You won’t take anything away from your existing market.

I am a game designer. I am designing and producing a game that does not, and will not, have a single female character in it. This is not because I am misogynistic. This is not because I do not women to play the game. This is because putting women in the game makes no sense, violates the principle of the suspension of disbelief, and will not make the game any better as a game.

I am the lead designer of First Sword, a combat management game. The game has orcs and men, elves and dwarves. It has goblins and trolls. But it has no women.

Why not? Because the game is a gladiator game. Women cannot credibly fight as gladiators. We don’t put women in the game for the same reason we don’t put bunny rabbits or children in the game. Putting women in the game would be an act of brutal sadism, an act of barbarism even by pagan Roman standards. While the Romans did occasionally put female gladiators in the arena, they were there as a comedic act. They were occasionally matched against midgets, which the Romans apparently found hilarious.

We could, of course, throw out historical verisimilitude. But we’re not going to. Because we value that verisimilitude far more than we value the opinion of a few whiny women who don’t play the sort of games we make anyhow. And when we design a game with a particular female market in mind, we don’t worry about hurting the feelings of men who we know have no interest in that sort of game.

But the woman is right. There is no point in debating. We’re not interested in debating her. We’re not interested in listening to her. As it happens, we couldn’t possibly care less what she thinks one way or the other.

Perhaps one day I will write a book entitled Why I Play the Classics. But Calvino aside, one plays classic games for much the same reason that one reads classic books. From Slashdot:

An article at The Verge got me thinking. Parents and those of you who plan to become parents: will you introduce your kids to the games you played when you were younger? Those of us who grew up playing Pong, Space Invaders, and Pac-Man have had a chance to see gaming software evolve into the enormously complex and graphically realistic beast it is today. I’ve begun to understand why my grandparents tried to get me to watch old movies. I’m also curious how you folks plan to teach your kids about computers and software in general.

I find it pretty simple. If you begin playing older boardgames with them when they are young, they begin to develop an appreciation for games as a general concept rather than viewing them as something that primarily exists on a screen. I started playing War at Sea with Ender when he was six; this year he was delighted to get a 36 year-old copy of Victory in the Pacific for Christmas.

Ender likes playing modern shooters and sports games, but he also enjoys older games through the use of DosBox.  Right now, he’s particularly into Wizardry and before that he was playing Fantasy General after we were both checking out the recently released Fantasy Kommander from Matrix. He recognizes that graphics do not make the game, which unfortunately is more than I can say for a lot of people in the industry.

Not that graphics aren’t important in the symbolic sense. In fact, some of us were having a discussion on the subject just last night, which leads to a question for the gamers in our midst. Can a blue heart represent morale? If that is too easily confused with the red cross that represents health, then what is a better symbol for morale?

Any ASLers who answer “boxcars” will be summarily shot.