It's dusty in here.

$> touch blog_entry.txt

LOL @ Us

Civics Quiz

There was a news report about a civic knowledge that we did poorly on as a nation. AVerage score was 49% for regular citizens, and 44% for elected officials.

OUCH!

Here's the test.

Here are my results. Good luck, the country needs you!

/salute
/Theme music from G.I. Joe

You answered 28 out of 33 correctly — 84.85 %

Average score for this quiz during November: 77.8%
Average score: 77.8%

You can take the quiz as often as you like, however, your score will only count once toward the monthly average.

If you have any comments or questions about the quiz, please email americancivicliteracy@isi.org.

You can consult the following table to see how citizens and elected officials scored on each question.

Where to from here?

Signs of Impending Doom

-Election of a "Black" President

-The impending release of Chinese Democracy

-Martian Glaciers

-I discovered the inventor of Popeye's Chicken was a white guy

I don't know if we'll make it to 2009...

FarCry - Post Mortem

Once I play a game all the way through, it's pretty much "dead" to me. I'm not big on replays, so I figured this was an appropriate moniker, even if it is a tad misleading. Besides, between the curly-braces of my site, all variables are scoped locally, so that's all that matters ;)

So, the infamous FarCry. The first thing that I have to say is that, even compared to big brother Crysis, FarCry is still, today, a DAMN good looking game. The water is still mesmerizing, the foliage is realistic (at least from a distance) and the draw distances are still pretty damn impressive.

Story
You're a corny European mercenary type with a tacky red "Hawaiian" shirt. Somehow, you end up on this island with all these mercenaries and of course on your way to escape, you end up having to rescue "Chesty Springfield" the token "tough-as-nails" "gun chick". At some point, you find out about a mad scientist, and some monsters and you end up saving the chick and killing all the bad guys. Same routine, different cup(s). Nothing award winning here. I don't even bother with the sub-par storylines anymore. I'd rather just recognize the good ones. You know, positive reinforcement and all.

Gameplay
Again, welcome to standard-ville. Population YOU! The notable exceptions are that you get to ride around in jeeps/trucks, there's a hang glider that's pretty decent, you have an infinite number of rocks to throw for distracting the guards, and SUPPOSEDLY you can sneak around splinter cell style and pull the old "Puff Daddy" routine on the guards with a machete (Take that! Take that! Take That!) but I couldn't tell...

And speaking of the guards, they're another mixed bag. In the beginning, I thought they were smart. Now I see that their "smart" behavior was just a different flavor of pre-programmed sameness. This is made up for in an odd way by the fact that you can overhear some pretty goofy conversations between the guards at times all over the island. Really good concept, but really bad dialogue.

Graphics
Like I said before, top of the heap, even for a four year old title.

Sound
Typical stuff. I did notice some glitches though. If you caught a guard by surprise and killed him, or a barrel rolling down the hill gets stuck on something, the sound will freeze and repeat. Non-stop, until you...hell, I don't know until you give up and run away like I did.

Multiplayer
Think Doom\Quake on a tropical island. Not much new or different from 10 years ago.

Conclusion
Pretty decent game. It's aged well and from a programming\game engine standpoint, the draw distance on the maps is phenomenal.

Recommendation
I'd say get it for sure at $20 or less.

Tell it to my Nine

I'm done. I'm through with you. I'm fed up and I can't..no, I'm not going to take it anymore. We've been together a long time, but enough is enough. I've put up with your crazy friends, I've put up with your periods of depression, your shilling, your bad attitude, your double standards, and you're attitude of overall apathy towards my feelings. You've been caught sleeping around like a cheap floozy, and I won't allow you to disrespect me or waste my time any more. I'm through with you...

Yes, I'm done with you, traditional game media. I can't deal with you because, basically, to be frank and earnest, you're full of shit. You've been taking advantage of me for much too long.

I'm sorry to have to be so blunt with you, but It's true. To illustrate why I can't live with you as a part of my daily life any longer, for the next few posts, I'm going to show you exactly what I'm talking about when I say:

I can't trust you enough to love you anymore, and I can't love you enough to trust you any more.

Goodbye.

On Morality in Games

Here's a random forum post I left somewhere. I thought it was interesting enough to save.

I'd have to disagree with this statement of yours Chro:

"For a game to tap into our morals, it must reward positive choices and punish negative ones. "

I actually believe that for games to more deeply and accurately tap into our morals as a society, we need to actually have less discreet "endings". No blatantly "good" and "bad" endings. As N'Gai pointed out, what keeps many/most people on the straight and narrow in these games is not the selection of choices presented to them, but the consequences they face for pursuing those choices. Since it's really difficult to convey consequence in a very deep or meaningful way in a game, you can only reward or punish players so much before they get tired of playing. After all, people have chosen to give you $50-$60, so their tolerance levels and expectations are skewed because of that seller => consumer relationship.

Additionally, your statement assumes that there is a black and white distinction between what's moral and immoral. How should we classify drug dealers???

I have known a handful of people who's primary means of self-support has been through the trafficking of illegal substances. Questions of legality aside, does that make them bad people? For the most part, they weren't bad people. Personal failings aside, they loved their kids and their mom just as much as anybody else. If you didn't know about their questionable business ethics, you might think they were all "stand up guys".

I'll be ambiguous and answer my own question by saying "Not necessarily". People who traffic illegal substances aren't necessarily bad people. Much of the verdict depends on the specific details of the situation. Is it better to sell drugs to adults than children? What if you only sell drugs to other drug dealers? The "moral grayness" of these types of questions/situations is what makes them compelling to explore from a narrative perspective. It's also why these questions of morality are the subject of such heated arguments.

Additionally, what would be the point of condemning a gamer as "immoral" in a game like GTA? Who wants to play a game where you are determined to be 100% immoral? Nobody wants to spend $50 for a guilt trip. The reason that people enjoy playing games like GTA is very similar to the reason that it's considered morally OK to sell drugs in some social circles: It all depends on the specifics of the situation the subject finds themselves in.

In GTA, for the most part, you're interacting with crooks and killers, so it's not a noticeable deviation from the norm to shoot people and kill hookers and pedestrians. Similarly, if you find yourself living in a high crime area, it's not uncommon to see people doing illegal things, so it's alot easier to fall into the patterns you see around you. Just as, in reality, people are at least, to some extent, a product of their environment, so too are our in-game avatars a product of the game universe they come from.

I guess, basically, I don't think it's about black and white moral choices as much as it's about APPROPRIATE choices. Morality, guilt, and things of that nature are all created and incubated in the human mind. We can't force people to feel bad, we have to lure them into doing things that they would feel ashamed of doing in real life.

It's that slippery, seductive approach that hasn't been executed very well yet that will get the job done.

Transmission Aborted

I read this yesterday, a posting entitled "Funny Thing" and I felt compelled to send Mr. Gabe an email. But then I thought better of it.

I wouldn't want anyone to think that I occasionally have the gall to believe that, on the rarest of occasions, I have something to say that I would genuinely consider "relevant" by any plausible definition of the word. After all, I have to pay for all my games myself, toiling away in my insignificance, just to scratch out enough to sustain a modest gaming library.

Eherm...

So, instead, I've decided to waste my time in a different way by posting my incomplete letter below. I think you'll be able to tell when I decided to give up on the whole effort. It's raw and uncut, so please excuse the lack of polish. Enjoy!

Hey Gabe,

I've been reading you guys rather regularly for at least four years or so, but this is the first time I've felt compelled to write either of you. I've also purchased a couple of prints from you off the site as well as some gamerpics on Xbox Live. I guess I just wanted to let you know that I'm a "fan". I'm not trying to rag on you or anything when I say...

That "Funny Thing" post you left came across as a little...petty.

And I say this as a guy who pretty much feels the same way as you do about IGN. In fact, I wouldn't have even known about it if it weren't for your post. That whole barb at teh end about being relevant was probably a little unnecessary too.

Mayeb you were having a bad day, I know how that goes, but I just noticed a big differnecrJust an observation.

Thirsty?

Thirsty!!