I have found myself in the resonably relaxed employ of the Baltimore County Public Library branch for going on the past two years. In those two years I have seen the system adopt portable mp3 players with preloaded books, do away with casette tapes, streamline e-book downloading onto Ipods and zunes...but most importantly to me was the adoption of video games, thats right, my library system openly rents xbox 360, ps3, and Wii titles for free on three week loan periods. Now I wouldnt go as far as to claim that I am responsible for this trend, because simply enough they carried ps2 and xbox titles before I arrived here, but in a severly limited capacity. Now even though I'm not even a full time employee here, they have taken my advice on a recomendation system and they have been ordering newer titles in bulk for the past few months(we just got Alan Wake and LP2). Now one might assume I could rest on my laurels and consider this a victory for Gamerkind everywhere...alas...my true fight seems to be rearing it's ugly head.


About three months ago I began a campaign to have the library start carrying mature titles for rental. Now before anyone jumps down my throat for wanting to make mature titles available to minors hear me out on our game policy. In order to even check out games you have to put a hold on them using our site which age locks out children under eighteen from even putting the old. Now assuming someone makes it past the block or, lets say, uses a parents card, they would still have to pick the title up using that specific card...so needless to say even putting childrens games on hold is fairly well secured. Anyway I wrote an email to Jim Fish, the head of the entirety of the counties library systems, and had a reasonably well formed business proposal. I explained that by looking at our increased revenue from the titles we had that if we began carrying mature titles that our revenue cap would boom. If parents and even gamers discovered that they could check out Modern Warfare 2 and risk only a $2.50 a day late fine AFTER having it for three weeks that would easily trump the $59.99 they'd risk on a title that they might not even like. After typing this out and sending it across the wonderful web I received my prompt rejection almost immediately that stated that it was BCPL's stance to oppose carrying M rated titles as it posed a risk to our younger patrons. My response was short in the sense that I brought up our policy for checking out games in the first place and I even went a step further and pointed out inherent flaws in the current system that allowed children of ANY age to check out sexually explicit titles. Needless to say I received no response and that leads me to where I am now.


I suppose that my question for you wonderful people would be this. Do you agree with the stance of the library or do you think this is simply "old blood". The system is full of people who opposed renewing our gaming contract and we had to fight tooth and nail for that. Thanks for reading and I look forward to any responses.

*sigh*

Last night I submitted a request to the Dept Of State through the FOIA to secure any documents , laws , or legal statutes for the state of MD that pertain to contests of chance and or gambling through tournaments. One might be wondering why I did such a thing....well here you go

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/h/halo3/championship/rules.htm

[i]"2. Eligibility

You are eligible to enter this Tournament (a "Player"), if you meet the following requirements at time of entry:

* You are a legal resident of the United States, but not a resident of Vermont, Maryland, Puerto Rico, or any other U.S. territory or possession; and
* You are 18 years of age or older; and
* You have access to a Microsoft Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system, the Halo® 3 video game, and you are an Xbox LIVE Gold member in good standing; and
* You are not an employee of Microsoft Corporation (the "Sponsor", "us", "we" or "our"), 38th Floor Productions Inc., MTV Networks, a division of Viacom International Inc., or their respective parents, divisions, subsidiaries and/or affiliated companies, licensees, advertising and promotional agencies, or any of their immediate family members (including, without limitation, spouse, parent(s), child(ren), sibling(s), and their respective spouses) or those living in the same households, whether or not related, of such individuals.

This Tournament is void in MD, VT, Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories and possessions and wherever else prohibited by law."[/i]

It was the same situation for the Bomberman tourney , the Emergence Day events , GRAW 2 Launch event , PGR3 Weekend Racing event...the list goes on.



Now if anyone on this little rock known as Destructoid can shed some light on this I would be forever grateful. I've searched online , spent a while gunning through MD's online legal catalogue and I can't find anything...so my last hope lies in some random member knowing thelaw or reasons or the massive amount of paperwork that is going to arrive(hopefully) soon that I'm going to read through and find out why Marylanders and natives of VT are being shafted. And in all honesty if I can gather enough information and support I am seriously going to look into changing this. It's not fair in the least that our states are cornholed out of participating in these contests.

Your resident Revolutionary

-Rev

I absofuckinglutely love point and click games. They formed my trifecta of gaming that I was weened on while I was but a lad which consisted of

Rail shooters
Jurassic Park on the GB
Point and click

They have always played on my love of detective oriented stories and mysteries and clicking stuff to discover stuff o.O. Anyway onto the point of this post.


Very few people can tell me who Benoit Sokal is , I respect that. He is the man who is responsible for some of the greatest games ever created in the point and click genre and for the PC in general. Some of his credits are

-Siberia(Omg T_T so good)
-Paradise
-Amerzone(I never played this but I've read good things)

So last year he announced what was to be his last game , known as "Sinking Island" which told the tale of an island that was literally sinking under the weight of a massive art deco hotel that took it's residence on the isle. You play detective Jack Norm sent to investigate the murder of a billionaire found dead at the bottom of the tower...the thing is you have three days before the hotel sinks and all of your evidence goes kaput with it. The game was to utilize a time system akin to Mask of Majora where you have a preset amount of time to get shit done and your evidence slowly sinks as time passes. Now normally I wouldn't make such a fuss about a new PC point and click but his company.

http://www.whitebirdsproductions.com/

Have also stated that they are working on a DS version. Not to mention that they are working on a DS port of "Paradise" to be titled "The Last King of Africa"...hopefully with voicing by Forrest Whittaker...sorry bad movie joke.

-Rev

First and foremost I apologize for the lackluster title of the post...It's been a long day. Anyway I ordered a new r4 for my Ds( the r4 is a modified DS cart that lts you use homebrew , roms , mp3 , and other neat shit on a micro sd on your DS) and decided that maybe I should start looking into homebrew. Afterall I hacked the living hell out of my PSP and I've enjoyed most of the homebrew that has been dev'd for it so far , so why not assume I would for the DS?...well I was wrong. Most of the homebrew on the DS kinda blows(with the exeception of Moonshell). None the less I kept perusing through the pages of http://www.ndshb.com/ in the hopes that I may find somthing cool to toss on my DS. What I came across was this


http://home.comcast.net/~olimar/DS/jumbotron/

And while it's not homebrew I must admit that the idea of an oversized DS is kind of cool. If people are willing to carry around the Mac Book Air then I'd def carry around a Uber DS and you can't tell me you wouldn't either! Anyway what hit the link there for the nitty gritty. I just wanted to share it with you guys since we seem to be intrigued with retarded happenings in the gaming-verse.

-Rev

A little known fact about your resident Revolutionary is that I've been reading the Guiness book since I was about twelve. I could never explain why , but I was always been fascinated with reading about the mundane to the extraordinary efforts of humankind. Well last year they were kind enough to announce a new edition to the standard "Book"...a gaming edition. As you can assume my heart skipped a beat and I immediately flew into action. After about an hours worth of digging I found out that they had been in collab with Twin Galaxies(If you don't know who they are....for shame) for about two years , compiling and gathering these records , and readying this amazing little book. Well I've been waiting since last year for this book and I finally got my copy in the mail yesterday and I must admit that for $20...any self respecting gamer owes it to themselves to pick up a copy. They've broken it down into sections for the popular titles , such as

GTA
Castlevania
Metroid
Halo
Mario

You get the idea. Then it moves into an entire sports section broken down by the individual sport. After that they've even added a portable Twin Galaxies scorechart for old school arcade title.

http://gamers.guinnessworldrecords.com/

That is the official site for the book there. You can make an account and submit your own records...but be warned , obviously , Guiness has strict guidelines set around recording a record so check out the do's and dont's before you try and submit your record for "Most Hookers capped in VC". Hopefully enough people will buy the book so it becomes a staple in their lineup....hell the original Guiness is the most popular book in the world other then the bible and I refuse to believe that I am the only gamer that reads it. Anyway I just thought I'd drop that tidbit on ya.

-Rev

For the past few weeks while at work I've been spending alot of my downtime writing out chapter structure and ideas for a book that I'm writing for a few friends of mine that discuss some of our common held beliefs on modern society. Now I've fleshed out and written the first and second chapters along with a prologue. I intend to have ten chapters when finished along with an epilogue. Now all of my writing that I've ever done has been for personal use (with the exception of a collection of poetry that I did for our newspaper) , but when I showed a few of my old teachers and a few colleagues that I had written they told me I should try to publish it. Now I've never made an attempt to publish anything in my life and it seems silly to me that people would actually want to purchase a book of this nature.

Anyway I figured I'd ask for the opinions of my fellow D'tards since our little community tends to be a fair bit more level headed then 98% of the intarweb.

Quick Synop of Chapters 1,2

Chapter 1: The Demon Diaries

-Deals mainly with child rearing in modern society. Broad view compiled with smaller base opinions formed around personal experiences.

Chapter 2: Circuit Bored

-Deals with widespread electronic ignorance(Elderly refusal to attempt to learn basic cpu use , etc). Focused view on segments of society.

PS: If anyone who reads this has ever been published and wouldn't mind posting a few primers on the steps involved I'd be really appreciative.