Thursday, August 25, 2005

My Final Thoughts On This Matter - Hopefully


Ah, Hot Coffee.


Rockstar, you little rascal, you stinker, you thorn in the paw of the industry.

You smut peddlers, you corrupters, you filthy liars.

Here are a few things I learned:

1. Some people think that the "big lesson" in all this is that we need to censor our games before they hit the market in order to keep the government from getting involved and censoring our games. Hahaha. Those people are fucking morons.

Here is what that statement can equate to: We are so paralyzed with fear that the government will begin regulating content that we will regulate the content beforehand, ensuring that nothing even possibly controversial will ever occur, simply because we cannot guarantee that our own elected officials will have enough perspective (and we certainly won't provide it for them) to protect our rights; An obvious path for a free society.

2. Rockstar is a terrible company and they lied and, and, and . . . And much of this from gaming advocates, who, like so many Democrats when there is blood in the water, join in the feeding frenzy in order to have their own lives spared. Remember Clinton? Yeah, it was totally about him lying under oath, it was the lie, it was the lie, it was the lie - or was it the reaction to a fucking blowjob which provided the big distraction from the really bad shit that was going down (forgive the pun)?

Misdirection still fucking works.

3. My god, wait until the "censor games" crowd realizes that the Japanese have been releasing games for years (readily available on the Internet, too!) that make Hot Coffee look like Bugs Bunny in drag kissing Elmer Fudd.

4. Rockstar shouldn'ta done what they done. They was bad.

I don't give a shit.

Again, much enmity flows from the industry itself as it tries to convince all those scared parents that, no, don't worry, the rest of the game industry isn't like that and never will be.

What might we gain by maintaining that games are (solely) friendly and not-objectionable-in-the-least?

We could damn ourselves to arrested development. Like movies, we can guarantee that for stimulation we will defer to violence - and thus make it more grand, more brutal, more fantastico!! Sex will remain the shhh, dirty-little-secret - just so mommies and daddies don't have to worry about teaching their children a prime function of life.

Oh, we'll still use it as subtext in advertisements. No problem there. Materialism at its finest.

Which leads me to . . .

5. We have a serious problem with sex in this country.

No, I don't mean that it should be anywhere and everywhere.

But our repression smacks of a sickness. Our dishonesty fuels our sexual dysfunctions. Our classification of the act as obscenity speaks to a deep sense of shame. Our unwillingness to accept anything but our own notion of intimacy can be disheartening.

That's all about that. If you think sex should be A or B but not C then have it your way. Of course, many people who feel in such a way also think that I should have it their way.

6. Here are some things that seem like secrets in this country (pardon the 'is-es'):

Tolerance is not acceptance.

Attempting to understand something is not condoning it.

Seeking answers is not subscribing to an ideology.

Forgiveness is not approval.

Regulation is not suppression.

7. The fingers can point to lots of people.

The industry's been talking a big game lately about copyright and the law when they think money's coming out of their pockets, but they conveniently forgot to back up Rockstar and mention that modding Rockstar's game is a clear and definite violation of their End User License Agreement. Looks like I can keep ignoring those fucking things and downloading as my heart desires. Controversy equals bad business.

Rockstar could never be a company seen as fully supporting its mod community (not by any argument I could make) - they don't shut them down, but they don't give them any help, either. No company-released tools, a closed file format, not even a mission editor (which I bemoan). For people so eager to get caught, they sure buried the content deep.

The politicians refused to take any parents to task. Why would they? Those are voters they have to court, and by tackling corporations they come out looking like roses. Hillary Clinton is a brilliant opportunist, always ready to show how eager she is to protect the family - and never holding the family accountable. Bravo.

Rockstar can take a finger, too, for all I care. At most, however, they could be accused of covering their own ass when they saw the circus sideshow that a dull bit of polygonal thrusting caused on this side of the pond. Despite the theories of (1) a year-too-late controversy-to-drive-sales, or (2) a rogue programmer leaving the digital boobies on the disc, or (3) the dire demonic forces of vidyagames, the best I would hazard to say about Rockstar is that a PR guy failed to tell the truth. Wow, what an eye-opener!

Parents get my waggin' finger, only because the ones that accept the responsibility for what their children consume have such a difficult job and shouldn't be lumped in with the one's buying whatever their mini-dictators demand. Still, if there's doubt whether something would be appropriate for your child, don't let them have it. If they seek it out somewhere else, ensure that they at least know what your stance is on the subject.

Oh, and I don't have children, so just ignore what I say and buy your kid Feast of Blood 2. Yes, it's about nutrition.

8. Two nipples beats a full clip.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree with a lot of the things you've said but I'll diverge from you on a point early on. The reason things are being censored beforehand isn't a fear of government censorship, it's a fear of lost revenues. I think rather than a symptom of a broken society you're looking at a symptom of a spineless gaming community. This would be a side effect of the insane profits that games CAN make for a developer. It's to the point now that the guy thinking it would be funny to have a sex mini-game isn't the guy who owns the company. The stockholders who own the company are uniform about one thing, the money.