Edge reports that US video game hawkers, GameStop, have increased sales despite our current economic clusterfuck. A surprise? Well, not really.
GameStop — an American gaming chain — has proven with $8.8bn sales, and a 24% year-on-year increase in business, that when times are tough, we have a habit of turning to smoting Zombies .
Now if you’re an appalling gaming whore like me, it’s arguably always Halo-time. But you have to admit, while difficult times usually, in my experience at least, put people off spending, stress and economic uncertainty tends to make people slaughter each other online all the more.
Hell, if we can’t afford that trip to Agent Provocateur or a weekly night out at a fancy restaurant, the least we can expect is a session with the Master Chief, a pastrami-sandwich, and frag-fest of the highest order .
Lists, lists, lists. Everyone doing ‘em, so why not me? The 2007 list is here.
Best Record Kings of Leon - Only by the Night Well I can’t say I’ve been blown away by any one record this year, but Kings of Leon are making very good music. I actually think - shock, horror! - that there are some good pop records in the charts at the moment, too.
Best Film The Dark Knight Well it was the year of the comic book movie. We had Iron Man, Hulk, Hell Boy II and Wanted (and those are just the ones off the top of my head). I’d say that Dark Knight wins out with Iron Man a close second. I also enjoyed Burn After Reading.
Best TV Show The Wire - Series 5 The Wire is simply the best television programme ever made. Period.
Best Book
N/A I’ve read no new fiction this year. I spent most of my time reading old John le Carré books and Graham Greene. I’ll have to remedy this in ‘09.
Best Podcast This American Life This is probably the choice that has caused me to ponder most, as I listen to oodles of podcasts. But This American Life has provided the most memorable and beautiful moments. Subscribe, if you haven’t already. Worthy mentions to The Collings and Herrin Podcast [sic], Sarcastic Gamer and Football Weekly.
Best Radio Show Adam & Joe
Funny and creative. Brilliant, basically.
Best Video Game Gears of War 2 It’s been another cracking year for gaming. GTA4 was outstanding, Far Cry 2 was a surprisingly deep game, and Left 4 Dead (which I get for XMAS) looks great. Nothing quite topped GOW2 though. It’s awesome. The art style is incredible. The level design spectacular. And the weapons rock. Epic.
Best Gadget iPhone I haven’t got one. I can’t quite give up my BlackBerry (or switch to O2). However the app-store has made the iPhone a serious proposition. The utility of the device - theoretical and realised - is astonishing. I will get one, eventually.
Best App Fluid I have adored this app all year. I have run GMail and Google Reader constantly using Fluid and it has made life much easier. I’ve also been mega-impressed with Skitch.
Best Political Blog Chicken Yoghurt Justin has simply rocked this year. One of the best writers in the medium. Sadie’s Tavern would be a worthy mention too.
Best Non-political Blog Limmy This blog has made me - figuratively - piss myself all year.
Best Newspaper The Guardian It better watch its back. The Guardian has lost its way a little this year. It’s still the best paper, though.
Best sportsperson MS Dhoni Finally, someone’s made a team out of the Indians. They’ve always had the talent (although the current team is pretty darn hot).
On Valentines Day, again, a US university was rocked when one of its own students entered a lecture theatre and shot at classmates with a shotgun.
Five students were killed, and sixteen wounded before the gunman turned his weapon on himself. As usual the 24hr rolling news channels descended on the university campus and the salivating media circus had begun. Thrashing around for hard facts, and finding little, the networks - desperate to hold onto viewers - resorted to type: calling on their army of commentators and “experts” to offer opinions and suspicions based on… well fuck all really.
Of all the vultures who profit from this sort of tragedy, the most infamous is one Jack Thompson: a Fox News talking head, who happens to be an attorney (who isn’t?) specialising in jumped-up cases based on his own fucked-up Christian Conservative moral compass.
According to Wikipedia, Mr. Thompson has wasted a variety of people’s time, chasing targets such as rappers, shock-jocks, and more recently video-game companies. And it’s this latter obsession that led to Thompson’s smug face appearing on Fox News last month. Within hours of the killings, and even before the police had released any information, we find Thompson breaking his neck to blame video games. It’s really quite phenomenal: the speed at which he twists events to justify his agenda.
After an initial intro from the Fox presenter, Thompson begins with: “yeah, I wish I weren’t here”.
Yeah whatever. From someone who’s made a name for himself profiting from such tragedies, this sounds somewhat hollow. He’s a Fox News ‘Go-To-Guy’, after all. Some kid goes postal on campus, shooting up his classmates, and the right-wing news agencies know the man to call: Jack “it’s the video games” Thompson. Indeed, in his next breath Thompson squares the blame directly at video-games, even though, at that point, we have no-idea whether the 27-year old perpetrator was a gamer or not. Back to Jack: -
“Well we find from brain scans studies out of Harvard, that if you get started playing, for example violent video games, you can, errrr, are more likely to copycat the behaviours in the games and the disturbing thing, that keeps popping up in many of these, as in Virginia Tech, Columbine, Paducah where I represented the six parents of the three girls shot and killed is that you can rehearse these type of massacres on simulators, which are called video-games, and you can, errrr, are therefore make more proficient in doing this….”
Now, for a minute, if we could excuse the junior-school level grammar on show, let’s have a look at some of the accusations Thompson aims at video games.
First: video-games are killing simulators. Well, I guess, in a way they are. But having a joypad in your hands is a world away from holding a shotgun for real. If all you’ve done is play Call of Duty, I doubt you’d know where to start firing a shotgun. If sitting on your arse playing Halo can can prepare you for a life of killing, why doesn’t my pissy attempts at Wii Golf improve my handicap out on the course?
Second: Video gamers are more likely to copycat behaviours in the game. Well, doh. It would be hard to copycat something if you’ve never played it. But, lets not be pedantic, we know what Thompson is getting at. He’s suggesting that video gamers are more likely to kill, and so, logically: video games cause massacres. Ahhh. And this is the rub: Thompson has tried several times to sue video game producers, hardware manufacturers, and retailers for hundreds of millions of dollars. As the sayings goes: follow the money.
It should come as no surprise, when millions of kids are playing video games, that if a morbid fascination with guns and murder is your bag, you’re more likely to be attracted to games where the plot centres on guns and murder. Much like, if grooming horses is you thing, you may find yourself playing a Nintendo DS game where you… wait for it… groom horses with a plastic stylus. That kids with violent tendencies are inclined to play such games such as Grand Theft Auto, is a no-brainer.
I play games such as Halo, Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, and Half-Life. Online and in single-player mode. Yet, funnily enough, I’ve never once taken it on myself to right a few wrongs armed with a high-powered rifle. It’s just not in my make-up, but competing against players across the world - just to prove how awesome I am, is absolutely my motivation. Video games don’t create psychos - society, chemicals, and fucked-up genes create psychos. Video games merely provide people with a cathartic escape, often one in which reflects reality - be it street crime or senseless wars in the Middle East.
I wonder, wouldn’t Mr. Thompson be better employed crusading against the proliferation of firearms in America? After all, isn’t the easy access to rifles, hand guns, and shotguns, far more important to a prospective high-school shooter than any sofa-based practice with a plastic controller? I wonder why America’s gun laws haven’t been the target of Jack’s vitriol?
Now I’m not going to argue for greater gun control. But then, neither am I going to use the law to coerce others to live by my moral agenda in any other field either.
Blaming video games for high-school violence is a great way to mitigate an incident’s impact on America’s gun laws. So is it any wonder that conservatives rally behind a pompous wanker happy to blame all societies ills on something other than freely available weaponry. You see, it’s got little to do with video games, and everything to do with that most hallowed of conservative institutions: the National Rifle Association. Oh, and in Jack Thompson’s case: money and ego, too.
It turns out that last week’s shooter did indeed occasionally play Counter-Strike: a popular multi-player online video-game. His friends said that this was ordinary - most of them played it. You see, this is what people do… they play video games. But it also transpires that he was a clinical depressive and had recently stopped taking his proscribed medication. His mother had recently died and his father was in a home. The guy was, as they say, pretty fucked up.
But Jack “it’s the video games” Thompson isn’t going to let a man’s dire situation, and ultimate breakdown, stop him from blaming video games. Indeed Thompson has attempted to use the law after several other shootings, to ascertain whether or not the perpetrator was a gamer. The courts have usually refused, citing that the evidence is crucial to an ongoing investigation. Thompson has claimed that “In every school shooting, we find that kids who pull the trigger are video gamers.” Right, so it’s got nothing to do with personal circumstance or free access to guns? Give me a break.
Let’s get one thing straight. Video games should have age restrictions enforced by law - a la DVDs and alcohol. But they shouldn’t be used as a tool to mitigate the greater problems facing a society where kids are taking firearms into class and killing and maiming their fellow students. It doesn’t wash, it’s manipulative, and it’s weak.
Self-interested charlatans such as Jack Thompson have no place passing comment on serious incidents, and the media, however desperate, should start acting with some semblance of responsibility.
Posted: February 29th, 2008 | Author:Aaron | Filed under:gaming, journal, tech | Comments Off
Been busy. Decorating. Setting up the BigPC in the spare room (or office, as it pretty much is). Had to re-route an ethernet cable from the router to the XBOX downstairs (via exterior of house). Can someone tell me why the XBOX doesn’t have built-in Wi-Fi? FFS it’s £70 for the Wi-Fi adapter. Rip-off bastards. Teach me to buy anything Microsoft, eh?
(p.s. this video accompanies my *first* podcast… to go live sometime over the weekend, once I get everything sorted. Worked very hard today getting the first one ready. Am good. Deserve a present. )
UPDATE: Actually it may be Monday before the podcast goes live. It’s my first attempt and I’m not quite sure how it’ll all come together. I have recorded the first “draft”, but I want to do a few and get comfortable. Thanks.
Best of lists are part of Christmas. Well, seeing as I have the power to publish my own opinions, here are my topper picks for the year…
Best Record The Killers - Sawdust Ok, it’s a B-sides n rarities comp. But The Killers are simply so far ahead of anything else out there right now.
Best Film The Bourne Ultimatum A fantastic, pant-wetting finale to a brilliant trilogy. Paul Greengrass is the best director in the world right now. Period.
Best Book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Incomparable thrilling last book to a quite stunning series. Easly as good as the hype suggested.
Best Podcast Guardian Unlimited’s Football Weekly. This is exactly why MoTD is a waste of everyone’s time. Intelligent, witty, and much, much better than The Times’ Liverpool-obsessed effort. James Richardson is twice the presenter Lineker is (worthy mention: No Agenda with John C. Dvorak and Adam Curry).
Best Radio Show Start the Week Basically the Review section from the weekend’s broadsheets. With added Andrew Marr (worthy mention: Russell Brand).
Best Video Game Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare Just, and I mean just ahead of Halo 3. The graphics and combat in COD4 are unmatched (worthy mention: other than Halo 3, I’d say Bioshock).
Best Gadget XBOX 360 XBOX leads the way online. XBOX Live is unmatched, and the 360 offers far more quality games than either the Wii or PS3 (worthy mention: New iPod Nano - new form factor and new features. Now the true iPod classic).
Best App Twitteriffic Twitter is by-far the most enjoyable social networking site. It’s simple and genuinely co-operative. And I don’t agree with Dave Winer, simplicity is intrinsic to twitter’s appeal. Leave it alone.
Best Political Blog Obsolete A tricky one this, but septicisle’s analysis of the media - not to mention the abundant bile - is a joy to read (worthy mentions: Reading Mike Power is much better than scouring the net yourself. Mr. Eugenides still compels. And Ministry of Truth is still capable of brilliance).
Best Non-political Blog scaryduck Should be read everyday.
Best Politician Alex Salmond It’s hard not to admire the way the SNP leader has captured Holyrood. Even if he is an opportunist and a seditious git (worthy mentions: Vladimir Putin and David Cameron) (Note. this is not an endorsement).
Best Newspaper & Website The Guardian No other paper is quite as creative with formats and online offerings.
Best sportsperson Lewis Hamilton I’m not into F1 at all. But you can’t argue - it was a phenomenal first year for the McClaren rookie (worthy mentions: Kaká, Kumar Sangakkara, and Christino Ronaldo were brilliant in 2007).
Posted: November 29th, 2007 | Author:Aaron | Filed under:gaming | Comments Off
Just had a quick blast on the Timeshift demo on the XBOX 360. Not impressed. The graphics, which we should remember may be better in the actual release build, are decidedly last-gen, looking little better than some games available on the original XBOX.
It’s also horribly unoriginal - even more so than most FPSs. The population-under-siege freedom fighter storyline, complete with condescending loudspeaker warnings from a bearded dictator-type, are straight out of Half-Life 2. And the added “Time-shift” dynamic, which allows users to slow down and manipulate time, has also been done before. It also borrowed heavily from the stylisation of Deus Ex: Invisible War.
I went to my brother-in-laws last night to play Halo3 online.
It’s pretty hectic. The “Team Slayer” mode is brilliant. Two teams fighting over various environments trying to get the highest number kills. Simple, eh?
It’s brilliant.
We play split screen with other online players. We also play one-on-one offline. My sister plays too.
She’s not so good.
Some of the levels are huge sprawling environments with vehicles. She runs around collecting stuff. Me and my brother-in-law take it in turns to track her down and murder her.
Desperate Dave has hinted that he plans to ban violent computer games, as part of a crackdown on violent crime in Britain.
So much for progressive conservatism, eh Dave? *tyger sniggers* Seems to me you’re just another ignorant and conniving politico, prepared to jump on the video games are evil bandwagon, at the very earliest opportunity.
Now. Dave. Let’s go through this veeeeerrrrryyy sloooooowly, ok?
Just because those with a proclivity towards violence, happen to be attracted to violent video games (well, duh!), it does not therefore mean that violent games cause violent behaviour. Have you got that?
We have an age-criterion with regard to gaming. Promote it and enforce it. And stop being such a pompous dick.
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