Video Games, the Olympics and stupidity

I think anyone who has even a passing interest in video games is aware of how much of a thing e-sports have become.  Most people are familiar with the big competitive games like League of Legends or Starcraft 2.  You probably have heard of certain big events such as Dreamhack in Sweden or the EVO fighting game tournament just to name a couple.

E-Sports have become so much of a thing that they are now being broadcast on TV the same way you'd broadcast any other sports.  When I was living in Sweden a few years ago I watched the Dreamhack Starcraft 2 tournament on the TV as it was happening live and on the plane to Rome two videos under the "TV Shows" section of the entertainment were finals from a DotA2 and Hearthstone tournament.

I think even ESPN are showing LoL, DotA and Hearthstone on TV and we also have Twitch which is basically the place to go for live feeds of tournaments so it's safe to say that the e-sports scene has come a fair way.

Then I hear that there's been talk of putting e-sports in the Olympics which is an interesting topic for discussion.  I can totally see why some would see e-sports having a rightful place in the Olympics but I can also understand why some people wouldn't want them there either.  But that's not what I'm here to talk about with this post.

This is Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee.  If you take a quick look at his Wikipedia page you can clearly see he's a well educated man and some kind of ex-fencing beast that took home a gold medal in 1976.  But just because he's got some decent academics and can wield a foil like a pro doesn't make him immune from saying some of the stupidest shit I've ever heard in my life.  Here's a quote

“We want to promote non-discrimination, non-violence, and peace among people, This doesn’t match with video games, which are about violence, explosions and killing. And there we have to draw a clear line.”
[Source: https://www.sporttechie.com/no-violent-video-games-in-the-olympics-says-ioc-president/ ]

What in the name of fuck is wrong with this guy.  Video games are about violence, explosions and killing?  This is the kind of stupid statement I expect to hear from my elderly relatives that barely know what a computer even is, not the head of the IOC.  There are good arguments for and against putting e-sports in the Olympics like I said before but games being "violent" isn't one of them.

The olympic is host to a number of combat sports which could be seen as violent.  I mean this guy making this statement used to be a fucking Fencer.  I could easily make some kind of ignorant bullshit comment like him and say something like "We want to promote non-discrimination, non-violence, and peace among people, this doesn't match with fencing which is just stabbing and slashing at folks with bits of metal"

It sounds to me like Mr Bach is just an old, ignorant man who has a tired old view of gaming and doesn't want to do ANY research on the topic and expand his knowledge on the topic.  Go and watch any kind of analytical video on a game like Starcraft, Street Fighter or Counter Strike and you can easily see that there's so much more going on that just "violence, killing and explosions". 

There's no place in 2017 for stupid, ignorant and misguided comments like that.  Should video games be in the event? I don't know, but should they be disregarded entirely because of "violence"?  Hell no and that idea is so fantastically fucking stupid that my head might just explode violently and kill me in reaction to reading something that dumb. 

Using Games as a Scapegoat

For as long as there have been people on this earth, there have been people doing shitty things to each other.  For as long as I can remember, there are a lot of shitty things that people have done where video games and gamers have had to carry a portion of the blame.  It's a trend that is complete bullshit and needs to die because not only is it needlessly damaging to the image of people who enjoy video games as their main, or one of their main hobbies, but it's damaging to the people who have shitty things done to them.

From the pre-video game days of Dungeons and Dragons being accused of raising little Satan worshippers to school shootings being blamed on the likes of Doom, for the longest people have tried to use video games as the reason for shitty things happening.  Now, people have even added racism and sexism to the mix of things video games have caused so firing up gaming news can get a little depressing.  

Even with the most recent mass shooting tragedy in America, Orlando, there were articles trying to paint gaming as the reason for these things happening.  That horrible event happened around the time of E3 so there were a lot of people quick to point the finger and say it's their fault for "glorifying gun violence".  Take to a site like Twitter or Facebook and the number of idiots repeating these stupid ideas is ten fold.  

Here's the thing, using gaming or anything else as a sort of scape goat for the ills of the world is not only incredibly stupid, but it distracts from the real cause of the issue and basically guarantees that it will happen again.  It's a lot easier to attack games for gun violence rather than discuss things like gun control or the sorry state of mental care in America.  Whenever you read stories about violence at LAN cafes it's much easier to blame the game rather than examine the probably tragic lives of the victim and offenders.  It's much easier to blame games for sexism than actually have the balls to stand up for women in countries where you can be killed for that kind of thing.  It's spineless and shows that you care more about shifting blame rather than trying to solve the issue.  

Gaming is a huge hobby, a huge industry enjoyed by millions of people.  It's also still a fairly young industry that a lot of people either can't or don't want to try to get their head round.  When you have a hobby this large there are OBVIOUSLY going to be shitty people around and they are going to do shitty things regardless of their pasttimes. 

Using games to scapegoat real world issues is damaging, distracting and cowardly and any writer that's ever taken part in that shit should be ashamed.  

Your Controversy Is Bullshit

Just who the fuck is this sexy sideways beast?  Well his name is Mark Ankucic and he has quite the story to tell.

Basically, he's an Aussie games writer that got fired from his gig for showing some kind of support for GamerGate, a can of worms I'm not about to get into.  Anyway, after being dropped from his job he set up a pen name known as Sandy Beaches and starting contacting a number of publications to try and get his pieces published.  What kind of pieces was he trying to get published? Well stuff regarding sexism in games and gaming feminism and his shit was ate up by a site called The Mary Sue. 

Despite much frustration with his pieces due to being misinformed and over exaggerated it turns out that everything he wrote for The Mary Sue was complete and utter bullshit.  Sandy Beaches was his little experiment to see how much bullshit he could get away with as long as he was posting as a feminist gamer and the results are pretty staggering.  You can read his story in much more detail here

https://medium.com/listen-to-my-story/what-i-learned-as-feminist-critic-sandy-beaches-f1ee45a7e0aa#.rro5h1f5l

One of my favorite lines from his article is this

"And that’s where the rub is. You write a hundred headlines claiming something, and people who don’t know anything about the actual topic will believe it."

That right that there has been the problem with any gaming controversy.  It doesn't matter if it's sexism in games, violence in games or table top being satanic, it all stems from the fact that the people writing and commenting on these things don't know JACK SHIT about the topic they are writing about.  They just read what other people have written and then parrot those misinformed opinions without doing any actual research of their own.

But what about these people writing the first few headlines?  The ones that all the idiots go ahead an believe without doing any research of their own?  Well it's one of two things.  One is that they are actually fucking stupid enough to believe their own shit or the second is money.  Writing click-bait controversy because they KNOW that there are enough uninformed idiots in gaming that will eat that shit up and happily jump on a bandwagon.  All those clicks will generate plenty of dosh and give the writer a nice fat paycheck .

Let's say you're writing a review for a game, this goes double true if you're writing a review of some obscure JRPG or something.  You COULD review it straight up but unless it's a big name game, chances are you aren't going to get all that many clicks due to a general lack of mainstream interest.  Throw in some controversy though and BAM! clicks for days as people flock to your review in order to find out just how "terrible" the game is.  Call it sexist or claim that it will one day fuel the next big school shooting and people will be retweeting, commenting and sharing out the asshole.  KA-CHING.

So next time you read an article about how X game is sexist or Y game is too violent, just stop and remember the story of Sandy Beaches.  Just think how much that shit is being spun to fit a current controversy for clicks.  If you do however just genuinely believe that shit, please go and educate yourself, the truth behind these gaming controversy's are never as terrible as certain publications make them out to be. 

Is Mortal Kombat X too Violent?

Hooray!  A new Mortal Kombat has been released and with it a whole new bunch of people complaining about how violent it is! 

I can kind of see what they mean even if it is still complete stupidity.  Back in the day when Mortal Kombat was just digitised sprites it was kind of hilarious but those games are long gone.  Graphics are now super realistic and stuff so seeing a dude getting cut or ripped in half seems a bit more real than it did back in the games first iteration.

That said, that doesn't make the violence in MKX "problematic" or "too much" or whatever.  We are talking about a series built on its gruesome fatalities performed at the end of the fights so who are these people who play it KNOWING that's what its all about and then taking to the internet to complain?  The series has been around since 1995 or so and this is the tenth game in the series so there's no way most people aren't aware of what they are getting when they pick it up.

I don't want to hear any of that "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" argument either because that's total bullshit.  If you are a parent buying your child a copy of MKX then maybe you should hand that baby over to a different family because you sure as fuck aren't qualified for the job.  If teens get a hold of this game and they are the kind of people who can't differentiate this kind of violence with real world violence then again, that's not MKX's fault, that's more shitty parenting.

Don't these people who write these posts/articles get bored of being such joyless wankers?  If beating a dude to a bloody pulp before ripping out his heart with your bare hands isn't your thing then go play something else.  There are plenty of other, non violent games for you to be having fun with so why don't you go and play those instead of complaining about it on the internet. 

This controversy is as old as games itself and like most controversies with this medium it's a bunch of shit.  Games=Violence or Games=anything else are myths put forward by fucking idiots who don't play games and have no idea what they are on about.  Quit hatin' and just enjoy your own shit.

British News Reporters Reach New Levels Of Stupidity

I have never seen anything so insanely stupid in my whole goddamn life.  When something like a school shooting goes down in America I know the media like to grasp at straws but THIS SHIT takes the fucking cake.

First of all, a link to the story
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/frustrated-father-who-killed-crying-3831547

In case you don't want to rot your own mind by reading something of The Mirror then I'll give you a brief synopsis.  Mark Sandland got pissed off at his 5 week year old baby who wouldn't stop crying and shook her to death.  He also happened to be playing Assassins Creed 3.

The reason this story is so fucking stupid is because all these news sites are writing the story as if the killing of the baby and Assassins Creed 3 are linked somehow.  Like the reason he shook his baby to death was because he was playing that game, and not because he's just a bad father/got mental problems/whatever else.

Let me share with you my favourite part of the above article.

"Police who attended the flat after Aimee-Rose was admitted to hospital on November 5 2012 found a PlayStation game controller on the sofa opposite the TV."

WELL SO FUCKING WHAT?!  What does the fact that he was playing a Playstation, let alone Assassins Creed have to fucking do with anything?!  The ONLY reason that was put in there is to add some fucking spin on the article so that retards who can't think for themselves start to think "OH! THOSE VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES MAKING PEOPLE MURDER AGAIN! BETTER CONSIDER BANNING EVERYTHING!"

This is an absolutely terrible story but these fucking news sites are distracting from the ACTUAL issue by making a big deal out of a fucking video game.  What really caused this poor baby to die was a stressed father with a short temper being at wits end.  We SHOULD be discussing how this kind of thing could be prevented by maybe providing support for families who feel overly stressed with their children or something like that.

BUT NO! OF COURSE NOT!

Instead we're just giving bits and bobs of information and shoving some references to Assassins Creed 3 in there to get people riled up about the non-issue of violent video games that I THOUGHT was swept away fucking years ago.

It's not just The Mirror who are at it either, pretty much every news article I can find on this story runs with that whole Assassins Creed angle and let's be brutally honest here; there isn't a fucking link between the two events at all.

For the last time, the fact that he owned/was playing a Playstation at the time had NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.  I have a Playstation and I bought bread yesterday. I ate a sandwich today, so does that mean that playing violent video games makes people want to eat sandwiches?  No, of course not, don't be so fucking stupid.  Video games are one of the biggest industries around now, pretty much every mother fucker has some kind of video game in their possession so OF COURSE you're going to something game related if you go to some average shmucks house.

So fuck the Mirror, fuck the BBC and fuck any other so called "Journalist" that worked on this fucking story.  You should all be ashamed of yourselves for reaching Kotaku levels of total stupidity.

The BBC: Masters of the fucking Obvious

The whole video games and violence thing is the kind of issue that has been talked about since gaming was even a thing.  Doom, Postal, Grand Theft Auto and many more have come under the fire of retards who don't know what they are talking about for their graphic content.

For the longest time people have claimed that because these games show violent imagery the people who play them become violent and will eventually hurt someone or shoot up a school or whatever stupid bullshit.  Usually when they say this, they mean impressionable kids but if you let your kid go around hurting others just because he/she saw it on a video game, then you're just a shit parent and that's all there is to it.

But then, the BBC come along with this article

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26921743

Now I'm being unfair to the BBC because it's not really them that did the research but whatever, it wouldn't be as snappy if I put "The University of Rochester" now, would it?

Anyway, some twats in the UK apparently did some "research" and discovered that aggression is linked to bad game design rather than the content itself.....

NO FUCKING SHIT

Have you ever bought a thing like a microwave, toaster or flat packed shelf unit?  You go home and take it out of the box and you THINK it's going to be easy to set up but it's not.  The piece of shit wont work properly or fit together properly or it's too big or some other bullshit and it makes you mad.  You start cursing at everything in the house and cursing the very life of the person who came up with this monstrosity you're trying to make work, the very thing that was supposed to make your life easier.

Games are the same.

The very thing that you were supposed to be able to just sit down and chill out with doesn't fucking work properly and ends up making you frustrated in the same way.  Having a character not do what their supposed to do or having the game just crap out on you because they are a badly coded buggy mess is the EXACT same thing as the above example.  You end up squeezing the controller as hard as you can and cursing the very life of the person who developed the piece of shit that is clogging up your gaming system.

So well done BBC and everyone involved in that "research", you discovered something that anyone with half a functioning brain worked out back in 197 fucking 2.

Podcasty Thing! Violence, Video Games and Bad Parenting

With the release of Grand Theft Auto 5, this debate has popped up and all manner of idiots who don't know anything about games are throwing in their opinion.

I go on a 7 minute rant on how it's not really violent games that cause violent people, but a lack of proper upbringing.  Enjoy!

What happened to our hobby?

Back when I was a wee lad, when I picked up a Sega Mega Drive controller for the first time at the age of 4, gaming was a simple thing.  I was given and objective and I had to fulfil it and stuff would try to impede my progress along the way.  It was a simple time filled with simple, yet fun games and the only thing people were worried about was if they could get to the next level or not.

But gaming is evolving, and for the better too!  As technology gets more advanced, and developers try to do bigger and better things and maybe one day gaming will be able to stand tall along things such as books and film.

However, we are a long LONG way off anything like that happening, but somewhere along the line gaming lost its purity, and in losing this purity it is behind held back by different groups of people throwing complaints and criticisms at the industry without really knowing whats going on.

A few years ago the big issue was violence in games, and while it's still an issue this controversy has sort of lost steam a bit.  People would point at games like Manhunt and cry foul at how its "corrupting the youth" yet were happy to ignore a staggering amount of other media that had extremely similar content.

Nowadays we have sexism, and all the people who seem to be at the forefront of this "gaming is sexist" thing seem to know very little about what the fuck they are actually talking about.  I can't go a day on the internet without being reminded how sexist gaming is and how sexist gamers are, and the issue is starting to wear a bit thin.

Yes, there are issues in the industry but people are so willing to fling shit that nothing gets sorted and it all amounts of a bunch of idiots in front of keyboards silently yelling at each other and just making any issues worse.  While I'm not sure exactly, I think that this internet shit flinging is having an impact on the developers too!  No developer or writer or anything like that is going to want to push the envelope with this medium if all they get for it is people chucking needless amounts of shit towards them online.

People who enjoy this hobby and people who work within this industry need to sit down, and calmly examine the various issues that we have and maybe take steps to sort them out.  Gaming will only get better only if the people who truly know whats up are allowed to do things without everyone else throwing in their 2 cents.  Too many cooks etc.