 Malik
(4/30/04)
Some of the issues
I have to talk about today may at first appear to be old
news...however, there are important reasons to bring them up.
For example, any issues dealing with a game that is soon to have a
sequel turns the old news into new news. My second issue for
the week is definitely old...but at the same time, I think I'm one
of the few people who actually noticed this...maybe it's because
it's the type of issue that threatens my life and other than me, the
lives of (on average) non-geeks who wouldn't know...I mainly brought
up this issue since it ties in to the first. To put it simply,
it shows the difference between good natured (yet politically
incorrect...and we all thought Malik was 100% P.C...hahahaha...)
joking and hate...and there is (despite what the commercial media
likes to usually say) a big difference. To wrap things up this
week, I'm taking a look at a company that just doesn't seem to know
it's role. Anyways, I just wanted to explain that
before you jumped into my bitchy world. On
Common Sense and Responsibility I
was looking over the site and all the wonderful stuff Velveeta and I
have put up here for your entertainment and education and I realized
there is one subject very near and dear to my heart that I've yet to
touch on; Plus, considering a new GTA is on the horizon...hehehe...I
don't get too excited about games that I know almost nothing about
(more on that to come), but GTA has yet to leave me without anything
short of awe and pure entertainment)...it's a good time to bring
this stuff up. It
seems that people like to often find fault with a game's content for
all the wrong reasons in one of a few fields. Usually, most people
direct their angry and idiotic bitching towards violence and
sex...which usually pisses me off to no end since I then have to
hear about how so and so shot someone because of GTA, True Crime,
Mortal Kombat, blah, blah. Very few people have the common sense to
know the simple fact that people (including children) usually will
not act out in a way to imitate violence or sexual situations
present on a video game when two things are taken in account; one,
if the child or adult has any sense of right or wrong (doesn't
suffer from such psychosis as psychopathy, etc.); two, if the
parents/guardians of these kids actually will keep an eye on their
actions (I mean a parent/guardian is given the title of
"guardian" because they are they to guard the kid not only
from the harm that others can inflict, but also to guard the child
from themselves and teach them to be active parts of society...not
just a new breed of ass-holes who like to play the ignorance card,
like most of these parents who don't watch their kids usually are) and
properly raise these children...in other words, kick their asses if
they stop being socialable. Another
part of games that gets bitched about is the fact that some games
show negative stereotypes. This is best seen by the whiney
individuals and groups who think GTA games put their
ethnicity/religious affiliation/whatever in a bad light. The truth
is simply that these groups are idiots who never even give the game
a shot. Games are entertainment much in the same way that movies are
entertainment. However, usually when a movie is seen as being a
reinforcement for a bad social attitude, the whiney party is often
ignored (or actually challenged to see said movie) by the majority
of people...unless they actually saw the movie. On the other hand,
many of the people who bitch (with no cause...which is quite
different from my all so fun-loving and informative/informed
Bitchings) about games have never even tried them. This has been the
case for quite a while, but especially in the last couple of
years. The
strongest case of this is when Haitian groups started to call for
mass recalls of GTA:VC due to how there's a vocal line in the game
that goes something along the lines of "Kill the
Haitians!". I can tell that this group is either trying to get
uncalled for sympathy (aka...throwing a whiney little bitchy pity
party) or are simply ignorant of GTA:VC (and for that matter, the
whole GTA series). I say this because there is not a single
ethnic/religious group in GTA that doesn't not have stereotypes
imposed on them, and violence directed towards them. Between GTA3
and GTA:VC, we are shown Italians who are almost always ultraviolet
members of the Mafia; Chinese who are usually Triads; Uzi-packing
(Japanese) Yakuza; sleazy Columbian drug lords; Cubans and Haitians
stuck in a bitter and violent turf-war; an African American
explosive specialist/gun seller (ala everyone's favorite bomb
expert; 8-Ball); drug obsessed British rockers (Love Fist) and miscellaneous
wanna-bes (Kent Paul); corrupt police, politicians, preachers, and
Jews; I mean the list goes on and on. I can see someone saying that
GTA promotes racist stereotypes, however to single out their own
group and not give mention of any others not only promotes a sense
of ignorance and self-pity, but it could be construed as racist
attitudes in itself (it seems to say to me either, "I haven't
gotten all my facts straight since I'm completely ignorant of the
circumstances and only heard of this without investigating it on my
own", or "Yeah, those other groups are violent and evil,
but my group is wholesome and perfect...). Keep
in mind, I don't have anything against any group (except hate
groups...they can kiss my arse), but I personally don't care for
those who seem to be out there only for their own benefit without
giving a shit about anyone else. Is it really any less racist to
say, benefit my group but don't pay any attention to anyone else at
all? I think not. Solution I
think to anyone who has ever played GTA3 and/or GTA:VC, it is pretty
obvious that everyone is evil in those games. No one group is being
singled out and no one group is being shown as the "good
guys". It is a game about crime, in a world of crime, separate
from the daily lives that most of us in the real world know. The
protagonists (be it Tommy, nameless guy, other nameless guy, etc)
are just as evil as the antagonists. This series doesn't exist to
promote racism, it promotes entertainment for those who want this
breed of it. In other words, if video games are surpassing movies as
the most common/profitable form of entertainment, then I say we all
still have the same options we've had for the last century...you can
either bitch about everything (showing you have to force your will
upon others...you can't force tolerance, but you can have faith in
your neighbors to be tolerant and open-minded), or you can realize
this is entertainment, and if it's not to your tastes, walk away,
turn it off, don't buy a ticket, don't buy the DVD, etc, and let
those of us who are responsible enough to enough it, and twisted
enough to enjoy it, do just that...enjoy it. Plus,
it's not like any group shown as evil in GTA3/VC (of which all
groups are shown that way) is isolated, singled out, and is shown as
a comical target to vent some rage upon. But
Then Again... Of
course there is an extreme that cancels out everything I said. While
there are a lot of games that touch subjects that politically
correct whores should avoid (while those of us with nicely sick and
twisted senses of entertainment should definitely enjoy to their
fullest), there are also some of these games that touch subjects
that just shouldn't be touched, yet no one complains (except
me...but then I'm a bitchy kind of geek). There seems to be a few
major don't touch types of subjects...mainly dealing with isolating
a person due to the beliefs, the ethnicity, or their profession. Thankfully,
we haven't seen (for pretty obvious reasons) religious fundamentalist
terrorist types of games where you must destroy all the
<blank>. <Blank> could be anything from playing a
Palestinian suicide bomber who must kill all Israelis, or a member
of Al Queada who must bomb Washington DC, or...well, you get the
point. This type of game would not only be horribly tasteless,
insensitive (I am not one to get touchy, feely, but seriously, a lot
of innocent people have died needlessly in this type of crap in the
real world), but just hella messed up. But
then we also haven't seen some retarded game about playing a
pro-life wacko (not that I'm taking a side in abortion...I wouldn't
touch that with a 10' pole...) who must bomb an abortion
clinic...once again, for quite obvious reasons. It's tasteless and
just plain wrong. Anyone who would make such a game for the sake of
being profitable would find two harsh truths; they wouldn't make
money (no one would buy that type of obviously morally wrong
garbage), and they would go straight to hell (or whatever negative
version of the afterlife that they believe in) after being smitted
by whatever they believe in to be the "good" higher power.
In other words...that's pretty messed up shit right there. Then
there is my third subject matter that I believe shouldn't be touched
by games for the pure immoral act of portraying it. That would be
violence against profession...for example, research institutes that
involve animal testing (I count the pro-life wackos in another
category since while they attack "family planning" type of
clinics, which means attack on profession, most of these wackos tend
to bring religion into their attacks more than their personal
beliefs). I mean what sick and twisted dumbshit would even dream of
showing it humorous to let people act out as some wacky and zany
character (or duo of characters...make them animals...maybe two
escaped lab animals...yeah, that's the ticket!) that goes around
inflicting violence to animal workers while at the same time showing
animal workers to be immoral asses who deserve nothing less than to
be harmed/killed while their normally safe work environment is
turned into a terrorist's playground? What sick people would ever
try to profit off of this? How messed up would you have to be to
show this kind of hatred and bigotry? How immoral would you have to
be to actually make a game that purposefully portrays any one type
of person (such as an animal worker) in such a negative light that
you would actually be implying in your game that it is
"right" and "good" to harm them when there are
quite real counterparts in the real world? Don't
ask me...luckily no company has had such a group of callous thinkers
and shit eaters who would actually do this crap...and it definitely
did not come out last year for the XBox...A game in which animal
testers/researchers are shown as cold and immoral and you are
rewarded for destroying the labs they work in (in real life, that is
often the equivalent of setting off a biological/chemical
weapon...literally...random destruction in a building full of
biological and chemical research leads to massive repercussions) and
for harming the researchers. True, I know, this game would in theory
be set in a cruel and heartless animal testing facility, but the bad
guys are obvious and absolute. I mean in a game like GTA where
everyone is sleazy, that's one thing, but what about a game in which
only one group is shown as evil, and all members of this group are
obviously ammoral assholes...that is propaganda right there. I
for one work in such a place that animal research is associated with
the location (not that I do any, but I would simply be a bystander
who was in the wrong place). My coworkers and myself are threatened every time
these animal-liberation-type wackos come to town, and the last thing
I want to see when I go to a video game store is a game that pretty
much reminds me of how I am quite easily seen as a threat to all
that is right and good with the world. Sorry if I need to work for a
living and do a quite good (in the moral sense) job at such a
"sleazy and underhanded" location, but I feel threatened
enough while at work...I shouldn't go to a store to find my next
kiddy-crack addiction only to be reminded of this shitty and
uncalled for fact. Solution How
about we don't make games that actually target specific
individuals/groups? If this is acceptable entertainment, then I want
to see a death to all French game next to a bomb Canada game, next
to the massacre all cubical dwellers game, below a slaughter all
cell phone vendors game. If no one is allowed to be a target in a
game (simply because companies have enough common sense...which is
barely any common sense...to do otherwise) except (for some strange
reason I can not even begin to grasp) people who work in my type of
workplace, then I want to see everyone be a target (it doesn't have
to be in one game, but any company that would make this type of shit
has a responsibility to show that they are not just sick sadistic
bigoted pieces of shit). I have no problems with keeping things even
in the video game violence, but keeping it uneven is what gets
me. Intermission...
Well,
I've been covering some hardcore issues about hatred, so let's break
things up for a second with a little humor! Namely, the type
of humor you can only get from a cheesy horror movie and stupid
actions put together.
Gamespot showed this week 12
all new screens of Doom3 for the XBox...for those who've
forgotten (I know I wish I could forget) Doom3 is coming out this
year...supposedly...wasn't Half-life 2 supposed to come out last
fall and Doom3 like two years ago...and then there was Halo2?
This game just keeps me rolling on the floor, gasping for air...the
unintentional comedy inspired by Doom3's development team is through
the roof. However, that's not the only sad thing about
this..."game".
For one thing, the people who are still excited about this project
have to be the most pathetic and silly people available. To
continue to get excited about a game that just gets pushed further
and further back is one thing. It's a different thing
altogether to get excited about a massively delayed game that has
such "frightening" images...seriously...I thought Doom3
was supposed to be some awe inspiring, frightful, king of FPS...
Yet all I keep seeing is a game that has about as much chance of
coming out this year as Duke Nukem Forever has of ever coming out,
or SqaureEnix has of making a non-sissy for the protagonist of a
future FF game (and considering FFXII is influenced by French
culture and the main characters look like they're too wussy to be
allowed into a cosplay contest...I wouldn't hold my breath), with
the most pathetic attempts ever at inspiring horror.
Am I supposed to be scared of a upside-down head with really cheesy
looking crab legs sticking out of it? What about that zombie
looking dude who reminds me more of a butcher or plumber than a
hideous monster...maybe we can give him a blue color type of
name...Hank? Ralph? Bubba? What about the ultra
cool skeleton with rocket launchers on it's shoulders?
Actually, I once did think that type of thing was cool...when I was
really little, I always loved to draw robots (they looked more like
skeletons than
robots since I was little and stick figure people with square heads
were all I could handle at the time in terms of robots) and stick
random guns all over their bodies to make them super strong and
fearsome...if only I was born a decade or two later, I could have
made a crapload of money working for ID as an artist or designer...I
guess I'll have to settle with not making money but instead laughing
my ass off at this pathetic attempt by ID to develop a game that
should have been put to rest a few years ago.
Solution
While it's funny...it still makes me sad (read: lose faith in
humanity) to see so many people prove their stupidity by getting
excited after all this time. So, I can think of two solutions.
1) ID can act a
lot more like Rockstar and just not show anything until the game is
(almost) ready for release. That way ID won't scare away it's
target audience with such a bad looking game.
2) No matter how much I enjoy a good laugh...this is starting to get
old...really old...like The Simpsons. So, like The Simpsons
should be, Doom3 should be put to sleep. The poor thing has
suffered enough. Let it be put out of it's misery...
A
Time and a Place...
Normally
I don't care when a company does something uncharacteristic in terms
of making a game or business decision, but recently EA has been
doing a good job at taking some unusual liberties. It started when
EA won the Marvel license away from Capcom...which means an end to
Mavel vs. Capcom games (which are some of my favorite fighting
games, so this pisses me off) and a birth of possible EA vs. Marvel
games (the concept of which is just mind-boggling). This was bad
enough to make me take notice of EA. Now
EA is planning Lord of the Rings: The Third Age; a new RPG. This has
be quite concerned since the laws of odds say that we only get a few
bigger budget RPGs a year, and now one of these RPGs will be this
possible crapfest. Why
would I say it's a possible crapfest, you ask? The setting is
supposed to be at the same time and places as the LotR movies (or
the EA action games), but you play as different characters...not the
Fellowship. In an RPG, the story is supposed to (key words:
"supposed to"...MMORPGs don't follow this...) be key to
the game. Why play a slow turn based thing that usually requires a
strategy more along the lines of leveling than one of how to deploy
people, how to plan an offensive, etc, if there is no story? There
is no reason...but, what's that you say? There is a story...true,
there will be a story, but how important will it really feel to the
player when they know (and if you are a geek, you know the plot of
the LotR trilogy) that the events they are taking part of will have
no real bearing on the history of said world (if you're not Frodo,
then you don't destroy the one-ring and end the war for Middle Earth
and destroy Sauron, and if you're not Strider then you don't become
king)...at best, you might be defending a smaller region, or
stopping some lesser evil, but is that really all that impressive
when at the same time-frame as this RPG, the world is being saved
and true evil is being destroyed? I think not. Then
there's another thing that worries me just as much. When EA took
over the Marvel video game license, what did we have to look forward
to? Honestly, nothing. I mean, what great fighting games has EA
released? What big characters can you find in EA exclusive titles
that could match their might with Spiderman, Apocalypse, Wolverine,
and the rest? There are none. So, EA lacks both the fighter history
and the big name players to take advantage of the fact that we're
now denied Marvel vs. Capcoms for years to come. On
to the RPG, I have a similar thought...what big ground-breaking RPGs
has EA graced our consoles with? Not a freakin' one that comes to
mind, right? Don't say games like FF9, etc. Those were Square titles
being published by EA. They don't have Square under their control
anymore...so where is their experience going to come from. I see
this as an almost three strikes system here...you won't save the
world, you won't control the best characters, and there's no
previous experience to back this game up. Add to this the fact that
it sounds like the trilogy will be key in the game (as you you face
events brought about by the war of the ring), which makes this new
RPG sound more like a compendium than an actual experience in and of
itself...I'm not saying right now that there is no hope for this RPG
(and for the Marvel license), but it looks really bleak...plus the
gods of fate will probably decide that this game will take the
rightful place of another (high quality) RPG...I'm a pessimist when
it comes to good RPGs...but usually that pessimism turns into
realism... Solution My
solution for this is pretty simple. I just think that EA should step
up to the plate before taking a swing. In other words, EA needs to
show that they have some big characters and some skill with fighters
before they take on the Marvel license...I mean when you think of
Marvel and video games, you will typically think of Capcom with
their versus games. To take on Marvel is a big responsibility and in
doing so, EA needs to show up geeks (and quickly) that they are
worthy, so to speak. As
for the LotR RPG, EA needs to gain some more experience with RPGs if
they want to win over true geeks...true, the LotR geeks (which are
different from video game geeks...my geeks) will bite at anything
that has any sort of Tolken influence, but the RPG geeks tend to
have a bit more sophisticated palettes (well...usually...I prefer to
ignore the horrid fact that FFX and FFX-2, RPGs, sold so well when
they were watered down with a pussy of a main character...I couldn't
help but cheer for Sin and Tidus's father to crush that little
pathetic piece of shit) and usually won't buy into some RPG that
merely serves to be a compendium for a trilogy of movies (most
people bought the book after the announcement of the movies, so I
think of this as catering to the movie...plus the game will include
movie footage). EA needs to once again show they deserve the right
to do this project. You
can't say you are worthy to be on top if you don't have the
experience...and that is something that takes time and effort...not
just a single stab in the dark. Conclusion Well,
we all lived, laughed, and learned...I think I've done my duty as a
bitchy geek for another week. As always, if you have a problem with
what I said (especially about how FFX and FFX-2 are merely shells of
RPGs designed for the most simplistic of idiots possible who could
not help but love these games due to how the whiney pathetic Tidus
resembles themselves) tell me. Malik
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