While luckily we hear about it less frequently these days, there are always stories popping up in the news covering some tragedy or mishap that the mainstream media has connected to playing video games. This recent episode of natural selection is just another link in the chain.
I think that most of the controversies are stemmed from the same issue, but for the sake of an example, I’ll be discussing the most popular topic: Video game violence.
Remember that post I made about how fickle gamers are and how they ask for sequels filled with dumb shit? Well, here’s some proof for my pudding:
Street Fighter IV just came out and fans are already pining over Street Fighter V. Can’t we just be happy that we ever got a SF4??
If your bounty of shitty ideas didn’t make it into SF4, don’t expect them to make it into SF5. Here’s a clue: Why didn’t any of those ideas make it into SF4? Because they’re shitty. I’m so happy that Capcom only listens to its smart fans.
It’s a holiday classic… You give someone a gift that appears really crappy, but when they open it further, it turns out to be totally awesome! You psyched them out but they came out as the winner in the end.
The video below is an example of the opposite. A family plays a mean joke on a little boy; making him think that he’s scored an Xbox 360, when in fact the box is filled with clothes. They proceed to mock the boy as his eyes well with tears. I find this act of cruelty to be indefensibly despicable.
The fact that this involved a video game is circumstantial. I fully believe his mother (or whomever’s female voice that is) that the boy knew that his family couldn’t afford to buy him something that expensive. But when he tore into that wrapping paper and saw that logo on the box (you can see that exact moment), that boy thought he’d experienced a true Christmas miracle. He’d had his heart set on this one thing only to have his own blood use it to ridicule him.
And that’s what gets me the most. There was no apology or remorse from his family. They continued to make fun of him for wanting the 360. As an adult, your values change, but when you’re a little kid, material things like that can mean the world to you. By mocking this boy, his family essentially told him that his dreams are a joke. And in turn, he was a joke for having such dreams.
I seriously hope this comes back to haunt them. Shitheads.
People are often surprised that I appear to have such a hate-on for Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. I guess the biggest reason is that I just don’t get the demand. I loved MvsC2, but it walked that very fine line of being devastatingly broken and retarded. With the trends originally set by Capcom’s “Versus” series, MvsC2 was pretty much as far as they could (and I feel should) have gone. And as much as I enjoyed the game, I think that it’s since grown to be extremely overrated.
Truth be told, I wouldn’t mind a MvsC3. After giving it some thought, I would actually love to see them follow someone’s suggestion that they take the look and gameplay of the licensing nightmare, Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom, and replace the Tatsunoko characters with those from Marvel. The cast may be a fraction of that found in MvsC2, but I would deem that to be a worthy current-generation installement of the series. But because I felt so satisfied with MvsC2, I’m also not as excited about another sequel.
I’ve asked people to help me understand, and I’ve never gotten an explanation that wasn’t based on the sheer novelty of the title. So I guess what my true position on the matter is not so much my resistance toward the game itself, but what the fanbase is demanding of it. The MvsC3 that I describe above is not what most fans are asking for, and since they are the consuming majority, Capcom would most likely listen to them.
So here’s the dilemma I face with MvsC3: The game I feel it should be to be god would be unappreciated and not sell. Yet the game that everyone wants would be utter shit. It’s a no win-situation for me. In the meantime, I continue to bitch, remind dorks to be careful what they wish for, and preach that we should focus on continuing our support of MvsC2 and the other “Versus” games that we fell in love with in the first place.
I was watching the new ScrewAttack video of the Top 10 Games That Need To Be Made, and at first I was digging it. Especially halfway through when they made a BASEketball reference. (Best. Movie. Ever.)
But then I saw their #1 choice and I screamed, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Why is it so hard to get public access to the law? Be it city law, state law, federal law, etc? You’d think that making things like that accessible to the public would be one of the reasons why the internet exists, wouldn’t you? If “Ignorantia juris non excusat”, then I think citizens should have the opportunity to see the law so that they’re less likely to break it. And in the event that someone is in trouble, we should all have access to our rights so that we may protect ourselves.
It would be easy to argue, “Well, that’s what law school is for,” but I disagree. I believe that law school is where one goes to learn to interpret and apply the law. It’s a lot like medicine. If you read every piece of medical information that’s available online, you have about as much knowledge of medicine as a first or second year medical student. However, it’s through medical school that a potential doctor gains experience in comprehend that knowledge.
Ironically, while medical information is quite available, legal information is scarce, despite that it’s purpose is to serve us as citizens. There’s something fishy about that to me. I don’t think it’s right that I have to pay someone like a lawyer to ask the simple question of, “What are my rights?” I suppose that while doctors would love if it they were each needed less in order to save lives, lawyers would erupt into panic if their profession suddenly became the slightest bit obsolete.
I can only hope that it’s out of laziness that governments big or small don’t feel like investing time and tax dollars to hire someone to transcribe every written law or court precedent. Especially since the law is a constantly evolving entity. I, on the other hand, feel that it’s quite the worthy investment. I’m sure we have some room in the budget somewhere to direct toward the project. And in the long run, it may actually save us money and keep us safer. Heh, but then the way our culture is, you can lead a horse to water..
In a recent article I worked on for GotGame, I expanded on my recurring theme of gamer romance. This article in particular explored the idea of once you’ve found yourself a girl who’s cool with video games, does one prefer to play with her or continue to play alone while she cheers on? This is a topic I’ve often discussed with men and women, gamer and non, so I was quick to sink my teeth into it.
Having quite a few anecdotes in my arsenal, I felt that I should only choose one to illustrate my point. The one I went with is most appropriate to the article, but its close second is a story that simply must be told somewhere. If this tale doesn’t apply to you, I’m sure you’ll get a chuckle from knowing someone whom it does. For those whom it does apply, see this as a warning.
It’s a daily crusade of mine to comment against the lame conceptions of my geeky brethren. As I’ve mentioned before, the dorks of our kind flood the community with their cancerous wish lists. I understand that video game companies like Capcom monitor the web in order to assess what their audience desires in order to determine the next product to be successfully unleashed upon the consuming masses.
Here’s the thing: I love democracy and capitalism. They’re some of the best social and economical systems known to mankind because they exercise the freedom of choice. They’re also natural companions, symbiotically taking the will of the people and directing the course of the future based on popular demand. The unfortunate flaw to both of those systems, however, is that if your society is driven by the majority rule and your popular majority is dominated by idiots, a lot of poor decisions are going to be made.
What’s worse is that those who are less refined also tend to be the most vocal of any depraved community. To quote Plato, “Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools speak because they have to say something.” Ergo, video game companies observe this type of feedback and recess the growth of innovation in lieu of pumping out lines of crappy sequels. Each episode designed with the intent of appealing to the lowest common denominator. The more a product caters to the mainstream, obviously the more successfully salable it’s likely to be.
That said, I take kin to Batman in that I recognize that I’m waging a war that I may never win. Yet I feel that even if I don’t speak out, it insures 100% that my voice will never be heard. I hope that while it may act more slowly, my nuggets of reason will virally spread to others so that the enlightened minority do not fade into extinction. That’s not at all to say that I always know what’s best, but I’d like to think I can sniff out a bad idea when it presents itself. I don’t know every direct path to greatness, but I can keep some lemmings from stampeding off of a cliff.
During my adventures within the fighting game community, I’ve been part in many fanboy conversations exploring the fantasies of crossover games, even before Capcom’s “Vs.” line came into existence. There was the usual pitch of a Street Fighter Vs. Mortal Kombat, Marvel Vs. DC, Street Fighter Vs. Nintendo…and more than once, “They should make a Street Fighter Vs. Anime!”
Even in the mid-90s when the popularity of Japanese culture had not yet exploded, I felt that simply pitting the world warriors against a general idea such as “anime” was painting a pretty broad brush. It may not have been well-understood, but anime comes from more than one place, thus assembling any strong cast of intellectual properties into one product would require some expensive (not to mention risky) collaboration of licensees. I struck many a fanboy with a rolled up newspaper for suggesting such nonsense.
Lo and behold, 15 years later, we see the production of Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom, a title which more or less realizes the idea “Street Fighter Vs. Anime”. Within the same year, we’re also set to witness the release of Mortal Kombat Vs DC Universe, as day-late-and-a-dollar-short as that concept may be.Whether or not these titles add value to the genre, they do deliver a clear message: I done got told.
Yet I fight on… Speaking out with not only my words, but also my wallet (cuz I ain’t gonna enable these trends by buying that garbage). Whether I debunk crossover ideas or the perversion of simple character design, I’m out there somewhere. Cuz what else am I going to do with my time than bicker about video games over the Internet?
For those fortunate enough to have picked up Capcom Classics Collection 2 for the PlayStation2, one of the unlockable prizes is a game called Capcom Quiz, which is a revision of Quiz & Dragons that themes its questions specifically on the Capcom brand. It’s a fun exercise of trivia for Capcom fanboys like myself who love the company’s games enough to have purchased this collection.
During my own quiz quest, one of the questions I was challenged with regarded from where the company name “Capcom” was derived. One possible choice was “Captain Commando”, a character who is known for his own title as well as making appearances in more recent titles in the Versus fighting game line. This would have been the choice entered by most of my peers, however they would be tragically incorrect. If I may invoke a spark of righteous in-dork-nation, this strikes as one of the many pet peeves among my Capcom and overall game-loving brethren.
First of all, the correct answer to the question above is “Capsule Computers”, condensed into CapCom, in the similar fashion of Japanese names stemming from abbreviations of phrases such as Sega (Service & Games) and Nintendo’s Famicom (Family Computer). Rather than lending his name to the company moniker, it was the other way around for Captain Commando. Years after the company was established, his character was developed and appeared as Capcom’s mascot inside their video games’ instruction manuals. It’s an easy mistake to make, but it’s akin to those who believe that McDonald’s was named after (or founded by) Ronald McDonald.
To make it easier, let’s do a bit of math. The Capcom company was founded in 1979, not even producing their first arcade game until 1984. Assuming you’re not as big a trivia nerd to know those tidbits, just think back to some of their more familiar mainstream games that carried the Capcom logo… The first Mega Man game came out in the 1987 and Final Fight was released in 1989. Captain Commando’s feature title (which most game nerds will claim is where the name connection was first established) didn’t hit the arcade scene until 1991.
I wish I knew why these things trouble me. I’m usually much more tolerant of elitist dorks spouting garbage as if it’s relevant or factual. It may even be related to myself being a stickler to the use of proper English to the effect of applying correct terminology.
To expand a bit–and let me preface this by explaining how I categorize breeds of geek–I see a “geek” as someone who is passionate about the obscure and fantastic, whether it be technology, fantasy, or pop-culture. A “nerd” is someone who is not only passionate, but knowledgeable…often having one or two areas of expertise. A “dork” (as I associate to most fanboys) is someone who has the passions of a geek, but is far less what I’d call clever. They lack the knowledge and wit that their geek cousins possess, yet often assume they possess both in abundance. Lastly, a “spaz” is a dork with waaaay too much passion, but let’s try to move forward in this tangent, shall we?
Dorks, being less clever, can’t seem to present anything truly inspiring, try as they might. In fact, I often sense my own IQ dissipate after long exposures to these poor souls unable to think outside the box. For they’re the ones who romantically indulge in ideas that never go much deeper than their own novelty. Much like the never-ending conversations I’ve witnessed expressing the demand of a Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, Marvel Vs. DC, or any kind of bloated crossover fighting game. Sure, the premise may sound exciting, but if that’s as far as you can go in terms of exploring the depth of how or if it’s truly a worthwhile fighting game concept, then it doesn’t have a leg to stand on. And if you notice, about 9 out of 10 ideas pitched by dorks are crossover-themed, involving two already established entities, few of which would either be appropriate for a video game setting nor easy to execute on the level of licensing. The remaining 1 out of 10 is either a rehash or a combination of currently existing concepts.
Back to my own irritation, I feel that it’s painful enough that dorks are imaginatively lame would be so much less so if they could at least get their facts straight before building upon these pipe dreams.
Another example of recurring misnomers that twist my nipples is I can’t tell you how many fanboys keep referring to Darkstalker’s Morrigan as “Morgana”. Why do they do that? How are those wires getting crossed? You can see not only the in-game text, but her name is also printed in any game-related document. Most of the recent games will provide a sound bite announcing her name as “Morrigan”. How does one–not just make that mistake once, at first–but continue to factually and unapologetically state her name as “Morgana”?
I mention that example because I believe I’m not alone in that experience. Certainly someone reading this has as well! I’ve personally overheard it pass the lips of people across the country, spanning the past 10 years or so. As if from some kind of peculiar collective consciousness! Is it because it’s the only name (having the sound of “morgue” in it’s accented syllable*) that dorks can call upon for a female horror monster, regardless if she does or does not resemble the bride of Frankenstein? It’s come to be one of the signals that I use to recognize that I’m dealing with someone who falls into my own “dork” category. To this day, it’s yet to fail me. I hope I’ve passed on a useful tool to you as well.
Thus concludes this episode of my alienation of my peers. As well as an illustration why I’m at home playing Capcom trivia video games instead of being surrounded by my fellow geek friends.
*Ironically, I find that another term for “accented syllable” is “mora”, which would be a good mnemonic device, since that is the accented syllable in “Morrigan”.
Sometimes I like to pretend that I’m as hardcore counter-culture as I used to be. So I’ll check out what’s going on in independent media, including some of the extreme conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones or David Icke. Most of these guys are flat out crazy–that’s a given–but I still like to keep my mind open to possibilities, outrageous as they may be.
One recurring theme throughout their rantings is the idea that The Man wants to put everyone into prisons, since the companies that build prisons are big business. What they’ll often present to illustrate that theory are cases where citizens are given heavy prison sentences for trivial crimes.
Most recently, I heard one host discuss how some states have made it so someone can be made to serve up to 10 years in jail for speeding. Yes, that sounds obscene and shocking the way they tell it, however what they fail to include is that in order to be eligible for a sentence that severe, one usually will have a long list of prior offenses–and we’re not talking parking violations; more like DUI, driving with a suspended license, reckless driving resulting in a collision, etc.–and then being busted for speeding to the tune of going 60mph in a school zone. That kind of person is a danger to society and has earned a dime in the joint for being so irresponsible toward the safety of others.
Besides, is it really that hard to find people to put in jail? Have we reached that level of utopia that we’re actually hard-pressed to find criminals among us? What about all those thieves, drug dealers, and wife beaters that get a slap on the wrist by the state before being released back into the public?
I accept that a great deal of our judicial and law enforcement systems are corrupt. Many cities milk their citizens through chicken-shit citations. And too many people are sent to jail for civil affairs like software piracy. But I have difficulty believing that when it comes to filling prisons, the system must be twisted to cull from the innocent, rather than the more deserving. Does the all-powerful Illuminati really have such a hard time finding excuses to lock these jackals up, so they have to resort to picking on harmless tax-paying citizens? Cuz that’s a horrible way to run a secret operation… It would raise far less suspicions to over-punish the guilty than to bully the innocent.
I’m sure that most of those conspiracy nuts would offer some kind of explanation for it. Like maybe that the powers-that-be do this to keep us fearfully in line. All I know is that if it doesn’t make sense, it’s most likely not true. Even if martial law is upon us, I doubt this is one of the precursors. Jello Biafra once said, “Don’t hate the media. Become the media.” I support this idea 100%, but it does us no good if we over-sensationalize minutia just as the mainstream does to distract us from what’s really important.
While luckily we hear about it less frequently these days, there are always stories popping up in the news covering some tragedy or mishap that the mainstream media has connected to playing video games. This recent episode of natural selection is just another link in the chain.
