So according to a wired interview, the xbox one will only use discs to install games one time. Then those discs are locked to your account. If you pass those to a friend a "fee" will be charged to them to install that disc. 

This is video games now. 



I'm really upset about this. I love sharing games and borrowing them. Without renting games or buying games at yard sales, I wouldn't have had access to nearly as many games. These days, piracy and file sharing are definite problems. Locking users out of sharing games legitimately would likely lead to a widespread amount of those issues. 

I really don't like what video games have become. It's like a subscription service.

Things like Netflix and Hulu are full of people sharing accounts, I fully expect this to be an early and easy way for people to share their content, with dummy accounts that they pass games around amongst friends. Especially if you can play a game without the disc, why wouldn't people just pool together on a single account for the majority of games? Not everyone is looking to play first person shooters or any sort of online game. I'm bothered as shit by this.

This case is very interesting for several reasons. 

I’ve been searching around trying to find a legal precident for this, but I can’t find one. If this goes to court and is ruled on, then say goodbye to let’s play videos. We would be one step closer to the internet that Lamar S. Smith wrote about for the SOPA bill. An internet where sharing anything is a finable offense. I’ve written about piracy before and how piracy isn’t piracy, it is file sharing. How does that relate to video of a copywritten material? 

The idea that you own a game you own, is false. You own a license of that game. Using a modified console or a copy of that game is somehow a bad thing.  

If I was to sit down and read a book word for word onto you tube, would that be the same as a let’s play? When does it become an audiobook? When I sell that? Well what about sprite comics?

One of the more interesting things I found on the internet in the year 2001, was the idea of sprite comics. These are created using art assets from video games as stock art, that are manipulated to tell stories. You can make Sonic & Knuckles a gay couple who hate Mega Man. You do like I did and make “Chronic Sonic,” where Sonic the Hedgehog uses jokes from the film How High and Cheech and Chong films. For some reason, I found this type of humor funny. The idea of adults who are idiots is funny. That’s why Three Stooges, The Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, or Abbot and Costello work well for comedy. They’re all men behaving in idiotic ways. Using drugs as the catalyst for these adventures makes sense. With characters who are stoned, they’re free to be as stupid as possible. A great irony of Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke is where they ride a van made of marijuana looking for marijuana. That’s funny. 

What isn’t funny, is that there are a lot of people using these game art assets to create, “original characters.” Simply painting Sonic green and swirling his eyes does not make him an original character. At best, these are elaborate palette swaps that serve for author inserts into these comics. At worst, these are people using other people’s content to make their own content. Legally, this is not okay. Ethically and morally? I have no qualms with it at all. 

But if I draw a cartoon of Mickey Mouse or Spider-Man as a gay couple, will I get in trouble? What if I drew the cartoon of Mario feltching Princess Peach over the course of several weeks. I’m sure someone out there has done that. This brings one of the golden rules of the internet, rule 34. If it exists, there is porn of it on the internet. 

The gag is, surely there isn’t pornography of this! Followed then by pictures of cartoon characters with exaggerated genitals engaged in acts of sodomy. 

What about fan games! I like those!

There are a lot of classic games that don’t get new games produced. Chrono Trigger has been reissued on several platforms now, but a few years ago it wasn’t. It was as rare as aids in the seventies, when it was just grids. A few people decided to make a 3D remake of the game, it looked amazing too. Recently more of the game has been shown off, but it was cease and desisted years ago. Is it legal to continue making something, then leak the complete game declaring you had no intention of releasing it that it was stolen or any other excuse, in spite of being told not to?It looked incredible why couldn’t Square just bring these developers in and make this product? They don't understand how to make and market a product, several big games all sold millions, but are considered failures. You can't make money by spending all your money. That's simple business. The thought of making smaller, affordable titles is lost on bigger developers and publishers. They all want to go with big bets, where if they keep failing like this, they won't exist. They need to invest in some fan projects, if only to keep their fans. To actively push your fans away from you aggressively is the dumbest strategy I've ever heard of, there are ways to say you want to protect your copyright without being a dick about it, but game companies haven't figured that out yet.
 
The same goes for the amazing Streets of Rage fan game SEGA had taken down off the internet. Thing is, wanting something off the internet means people are going to spread it around.  

The legality surrounding copyrights is troublesome. After seventy years, you can do with a work whatever you like, as it becomes public domain. I can write Frankesenstein marries the Tin Man and sell it, but is it ethically right to use characters I didn’t come up with? I love Frankenstein and the Tin Man, why wouldn’t they fall in love with each other isn’t the issue, the issue is simply that they aren’t mine to use. That if I was asked, by someone who was in control of them to write their stories, then I could ethically feel okay about that.

But what if I read someone who wrote a story where Frankenstein and the Tin Man fall in love, in a you tube video? I call it a “let’s read.” Now what if I read from more contemporary literature, like Chuck Palahniuk or I don’t know, let’s say Fifty Shades of Gray. 

As we all know, Twlight is a book series where a woman wrote about herself falling love with a Dracula who isn’t really an evil Dracula at all. There are also wolf men involved, I saw that in a movie trailer where all the werewolf boys took off their shirts revealing how masculine they are. Someone wrote fan fiction for that, somehow, that became Fifty Shades of Gray, another series of books. I say books, but I mean multimedia franchise. These stories are now movies, games, books, and any other product you can apply them to. I’m sure there hallowen costumes and action figures of all that stuff, but do they own those ideas, since they used properties someone else created? 

If I write a story about a robot, does that mean I owe something to whoever invented the concept of robots? Even just an acknowledgment that the idea of metal thinking machines that act and think on their own isn’t mine, is that okay? Where is the line there?

When it comes to video games, the content of them now depends not just on seeing it, but on playing it for yourself. Unless it is just a cut scene, a video that just plays that informs you of the story around the game. 

When Bioshock came out, I rented it and played through it to completion. I got a good ending, but this being video games, the possibility of a bad ending was there. I was curious, what was that like? Then it hit me, like everything hits me, why not just look it up online? I wouldn’t have time to play the game all the way through before I had to take it back to Blockbuster, so this was perfect. I just watch the tape online and be done with it forever. 

Why do I feel like I robbed myself of something, by doing that?

Another example is Demon’s Crest, one of the greatest games ever made. It contains several boss battles that I would say are among the most challenging ever. It occured to me, why not watch how to beat it and see if I can do it myself based on their knowledge. Then it occurred to me, why do I have to play the fights at all? Then the real shocker hits. 

If you can just watch someone play through all the latest video games, why would you buy and play them all?

I’ve a friend who I did a podcast with that did this. He would watch playthroughs of games and be up to date on everything. Some people are intimidated by long RPGs, but watching someone else play through these games and watch them struggle, that’s fascinating. Even if I’ve already played a game, I like watching people play thinking games. Anything that involves strategy over skill, I really want to watch that. I say that, but then, I love seeing truly skilled game playing. 

]Here is a guy beating Mario 3 in eleven minutes!

In just eleven minutes, he does what took me a summer as a kid. I went back and fourth between Contra 3, Mystical Ninja, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, and Mario 3 that summer. I remember that so clearly. I wanted to go legit through every level, without using warp whistles. 



Now I can complete it in an afternoon or two. I wonder, how much of this game did they have to play to get that good at it? The thought also enters my mind, to discuss speen run and save scumming. The idea of using software that pretends to be a video game console on a computer, where you can save anywhere, eliminating luck from the equation and making the absolute best possible move. Playing a game this way is mind numbing. I saw people play Mario 3 save scumming, saving over their save in a spot where they constantly died, or worse erasing progress by save scumming in Mario 3.  Such a different way to play a game, isn’t it.

Nintendo and any game developer or publisher, isn’t making these videos. They shouldn’t be entitled to ad revenue from these videos, but should people who didn’t make these games be able to video tape themselves playing these games? Even if they’re playing legitimately, errors and all? That is a question I can’t wait to hear the answer to.

My opinion on it is extraordinarily clear: It is okay to do a let’s read. It is okay to write about robots. It is okay to video tape yourself playing video games, even ones that came out a day ago. There are entire websites devoted to watching people play games. 

The legal precedent this could set, could really hurt video games. It could have the potential to end any gameplay videos that aren’t officially released, through official channels. The problem with content, is where it is. As I like to point out Destructoid examples, Jim Sterling does a video series for the Escapist, that you can find on Destructoid. The same with Hey Ash What You Playing, which is made for Gametrailers, which is owned by Viacom. For some reason, Viacom also owns MTV Multiplayer which produces similar content to Game Trailers. Why would a company want to own two different publications that focus on the same enthusiast content?

Using video from a film is easy through fair use. You’ve seen documentaries where clips of Predator are played and Arnold and Apollo Creed lock wrists and Arnold calls him a son of bitch, all they have to do is put the studio that made the film, the year, and the name of the film and you can use that clip. How much of a clip is too much? I’m not exactly sure the legality of that either. 

The real issue, is that Nintendo isn’t just wanting to take these videos down. That would be easy, Prince proved you can do that on YouTube, but not the entire internet. If you really want to see a Prince music video start looking around the internet, someone puts up everything eventually, just look up the Striesand Effect. They want to take these videos and the ad revenue generated by them as their own. That is unethical. I immediately am offended by this. To take someone else’s content and make money off of it, without profit sharing, is insane.  The problem is, who is insane here? The videos are of Nintendo products, but they aren’t being produced by Nintendo. Who should share profit with who and how much profit should be shared, if profits are to be shared anyway?
I’m very curious to see how this story plays out. Nintendo have put themselves in a very Dreamcasted position with their video game console. Hand held consoles are losing to phone games. In fact, I think console gaming is losing ground to phone gaming. The future for Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony isn’t bright. I don’t think any of these companies will exist forever, nothing can. I know my own personal thoughts on it. If I made something and you want to steal it, I can’t stop you. 

That’s 

I told Hamza I wanted to write articles for the website, the words I used was “sling dick.”

 Consider my dick slung.

Story 1) The story of Chloe Sagal makes me feel awful, but I read a lot about it.



 A person who developed an independent game I never played, has some medical issues. Some sort of metal lodged in their person requiring surgery to be removed. This person sought funding on indiegogo, which functions much the same as Kickstarter. These sorts of “crowd funding” operations are in vogue currently with video games and starting to be a thing for movies. The idea is, a project you want to produce can be funded by a people interested in that work. Kickstarter has a rule that you can’t keep all your money if you don’t make your goal in thirty days. Indiegogo works much the same, except that it has international crowd funding and allows you to keep all the money if you don’t meet your goal. 

The problem is, Chloe Sagal did not want to produce a product. The money from her project was refunded to those that backed her. She was unable to afford the operation she had wanted. According to Eurogamer, the surgery was not for metal poisoning but for something else entirely. 

 Using my super power of investigation (google searching indiegogo) I looked up the rules on their website: 

Indiegogo is a crowdfunding platform where people who want to raise money can create fundraising campaigns to tell their story and get the word out. Indiegogo is also a place to discover what people all over the world are passionate about and how to get involved.

That certainly clears up every concern I had.

Wait a second, that language could be used to argue  anything. Well, where is the problem then?

The story gets a little foggy for me here. The story as I understand it is that Chloe Sagal needed this money for this operation, but didn’t have a project so indiegogo refunded the money for the project that didn’t exist. That’s easy to understand. I recently read a story of a girl who made a simple experiment that got her into trouble, in this story it mentions how the NASA engineer from West Virginia, the one depicted by Jake Gyllenhaal in the movie October Sky. That movie meant a lot to me, being from West Virginia and not being a complete idiot, it made me think, well, maybe someone can actually do something from here. What he did was start a campaign to send this to space camp, where I assume she will learn real chemistry. The service used, was specifically for fundraisers, called Crowd TiltI commented of this story, that merely all that needed to be done was for the donations to go through another service, be it paypal or this thing I didn’t know existed. Some people on twitter, implied I was insensitive for suggesting that. 

That very night I was reading about this, a story came up that Chloe had attempted suicide on a web cam. 

That I have no opinion of, other than this statement about suicide: If someone wants to kill themselves, I will not stop them nor encourage them to the best of my ability.  As a believer that all life is suffering, I cannot judge the action of taking your own life. If that’s what you want to do, I can’t stop you. A well motivated person will do whatever they want regardless of how much I try to help or don’t try to help. This is a lesson I’ve learned the hard way. I have reported this story based upon Destructoid's post about the indiegogo and the incredibly buried forum post where Niero, the founder of Destructoid talks about this story.

I wonder why people want to kill themselves? I want to die, because I feel like I don’t belong. I feel aliened at every turn. I think that perhaps in death, I can get some sort of peace. I don't think about this as often as I used to, ever since I had a real moment of clarity.

This is a foolish thought for many reasons. No religious doctrine has ever suggested suicide leads to any sort of paradise. In fact, I don’t think it leads to any sort of limbo or purgatory either according to any scriptures. There is also the thought that, perhaps consciousness doesn’t extend beyond death. That once we die, that’s it. The light switch is on, then it goes off forever. The thought I had a few years ago, as I wrestled with the idea of death was simple: What if I lived my life, like I was in an alternate universe, where I was successful. Where instead of being an idiot, I attempted to learn and grow as a person in every way I could. That in this alternate world, where I didn’t die that night, I have an infinite potential to anything I want.  I’ve spent a lot of this time playing video games and watching cartoons, but I do so with more glee than I had since I was twelve when my older cousin was murdered and a downward spiral of depression set in, that still haunts my soul. The idea that your soul exists and can be in pain, that hurts a lot. If someone wants to kill themselves, why try to stop them. 

According to the law, suicide is a felony in a lot of the United States of America. Even if you have cancer and a mind full of sorrow, legally killing yourself or having someone kill you, is illegal. 

But if you really want to, I can’t stop you. Like when I googled suicide and hit images like an idiot, I can't unsee what I just saw. 

Beyond my simple letter of the law examination, the Destructoid community has had some talks about it. I’m fascinated by this story and how it continues to spark discussions about a lot of things.

As the forum thread talks about, the author of the Destructoid front page post first detailing this story, came under fire for allegedly posting messages on twitter about the alleged transsexuality of the indie game developer. This, I can have an opinion on. I do not think it is okay to out anyone who is gay, lesbian, transgendered, or anything. I still love discussing who is and isn’t what, but that’s different from outing someone. This is not the right thing to do, so I now attempt to avoid such discussions. It is rather catty to talk about people, especially people I don’t know. I do not judge anything Chloe has done. I don’t own indiegogo, I did not send money to her crowd funding, I haven’t played their video game, nor do I know them at all. 

However, as a community member of Destructoid in bad standing, I have engaged with Alister over twitter, commented on his posts, and probably skimmed a majority of his writing.

 I also judge the action of outing anyone a harsh one. A lot of people can’t accept who they are, they aren’t confident enough, you can get so broken down by the people around them, that they can’t talk about how they feel. I don’t like that. I want everyone to be open with me. This is why I have a policy, if you want to talk to me at any time about anything, you can contact me. I won’t judge you or your actions. I’m just looking for someone to talk to. E-mail is the best way to contact me: [email=randombullseye@gmail.com]randombullseye@gmail.com[/email] If I ever get a cell phone, I’ll publish the number publicly so anyone can call me. 

Now that I’ve told you I won’t judge you, let me judge someone’s actions.

What Alister did was an unethical thing to do. According to Destructoid founder Niero, he informed Alister not to talk about Chloe being transgendered. Alister wisely kept it real, posting messages to twitter that I have yet to find. If this is wrong information, correct me. If anyone has the actual messages, please show them to me in the comments section below. I want to judge them for myself. I judge this as unethical based on second hand knowledge, the information I read He was punished with a suspension, on Monday morning a meeting is being held to decide his future according to that forum thread, but I imagine a large percentage of the internet won’t be satisfied until he is physically crucified on a mountain top, also castrated. This exaggeration is probably not enough for some people.

A pound of flesh isn’t the answer. 

Was it obvious from the video in the first Destructoid post about this, that this woman was transgendered? I didn’t comment on that. I don’t think I did. It would be mean to mock someone sick, but we are all dying. At no point can any of you reading this stop yourselves from dying, so why can’t we all be sympathetic to each other all the time? 

In my younger and less nobler days, I would have said dozens of mean spirited comments thinking no one who would be effected by them would read them. I’m sure Morgan Webb appreciates me comparing her to a dog. I don’t know why I thought that was funny or how it got published. I think about my time as a new toys journalist with my jaw dropped. Maybe I saw her on TV while I was writing that and thought that would be silly? Saying silly things on the internet can be fun, but the reality of today is that anything you say about someone isn’t anonymous. Google alerts mean that if I mention certain people, they’ll know I’m talking about them. Me saying Alister did a unenthical thing, will get back to Alister. In fact, I’ll message him myself and tell him that, as if no one else said anything to him.  He has gone dark on the internet. I will try to reach him and talk to him about this, even if it is a year from now when no one else cares, I won’t forget. I try to never forget anything, if something was important a year ago, if it really was worth talking about, shouldn’t we recall what it was?

Thing is, if what he did was so bad, why spread it around the internet on other websites? It really looks like other websites are jealous of Destructoid and want to be the first to condemn us for anything. The features editor said something on twitter that they deleted. If you really want to keep that information close to the vest, if it really was such dangerous information, why put it all over the place? Gilbert Godfrey’s jokes about the Japanese tsunami were repeated on news programs, I was offended. They butchered his material and never attempted to imitate his voice at all. 

That isn’t to say I want the guy fired. I imagine he understands he upset some people, knowing is half the battle. Learning from a mistake is the other. 

It isn’t like Destructoid hasn’t fired people before! One gentleman wrote comments to a pretty haired girl making light of how she didn’t do anything worth note. It was never really brought up on the site. Maybe it was buried on the forums somewhere, but an open discussion of the gentleman and his words never really materialized. We celebrate the success of guys like Reverend Anthony, but we never the failures of others. Perhaps my belief in learning from every mistake is not something most people consider important, but to me, learning from failure might be the most important thing I ever realized.The gentleman merely disappeared without trace. He was news on other websites for a day or two, then that story fades away, like every story. Except for the people involved in those stories. 

 If we’re supposed to buy into the idea of Destructoid as a personality driven website, when these personalities disappear are we not supposed to notice? There is never a front page post saying “oh hey, uh, that guy who wrote stuff and was an intern, like he’s not around now.” Some people get goodbye posts, while others fade out without mentioning that they left. Maybe they were on bad terms, maybe there was a horrible fight, or maybe it isn’t news everyone needs to know. 

The fact that the forum thread discussing this is locked, I find unethical. I don’t know who did it, but I judge that action much harsher than I do what Alister deleted off his twitter. Maybe when I find the actual words, I’ll be really pissed off or rethink the issue completely. 

I don’t know what is kayfabe and what isn’t. Did Colette really return her powerglove three times? Did Jim Sterling really hear someone yell out, “don’t stomp his face in!” while walking down the road in Britan? Did Chad really live next door to a rich kid who had every game ever? Does anyone ever know what I'm talking about? 

I don’t know for sure. These stories are part of a canon that is Destructoid. Like it or not, negative or positive, the people here and what they do or don’t do is a part of that narrative. Some argue I’m wrong to refer to someone dying as “their story ending,” but my story keeps on going and I’m the hero in my story.

Could that make me a villain in another story?

 I’ve tried to write “in character” as a trash talker of low intelligence.  The exaggeration of my own joker personality online has been monstrous. I’ve rolled across the place like Ganghis Khan. I’ve salted the earth like the romans, but I’ve had some failures. Whenever I try to get really real, I think people tune right the fuck out. Well sorry, that’s how it’s going to be. I’m long winded, I circle around topics, and I like to mention my genitals as much as possible. 

 I don’t think I want to do that anymore. I think my heel to face run is about to get some real heat, making me a bigger heel as a face. 

At what point does reality set in? Will I realize that professional wrestling tropes don’t define everything? When can I say anything and be safe? Tracey Morgan, a comedian, said things on stage he had been saying for years, but people got mad about that. Daniel Tosh, a comedian,  was savaged by women across the internet for making a rape joke when prompted by the audience to make jokes about things he couldn’t joke about. The exact joke was great too, he made his rape joke, then someone stood up and said they thought rape was never funny. Daniel Tosh yelled back, “I hope you get raped tonight!” The idea of a person being raped is funny right? Why am I not smiling or laughing as I write that out and read it back to myself. If I say the N word right here, nerd, and get away with it and feel like I really done something, could I ever use the N word for nerd and not nig ger and have that be funny again? I do a poor Chris Rock impersonation that uses this routine. As I watch that tape, I start imitating him repeating all the racist things he says to an applauding audience. Does that make me a nerd? What is the appropriateness of language? Can words really hurt? I don’t exactly know where the line is, but luckily, there are obscenity laws! I love that for any problem, there’s a law on the books to be argued with.

I was about to publish a research paper here in the middle of all this about such laws in America, the comstock law, the hicklin test, and so much more information that I don’t want to share with you. I’ll publish this piece, with the thought in my mind does this make the Bonerquest obscene? 

'the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value

Now let’s get really personal! 

For the record, I’ve considered myself a transexual for many years. I tell people that all the time, but nobody takes that serious. As a humorist, I have a lot of trouble being taken serious. I recently had it out over twitter, discussing the ideas of transsexuality and being told that I couldn’t understand and that I was an idiot for thinking I could ever. I tried opening up about myself to these people, which was a mistake I won’t ever do again. Oh fuck.

 I like to think of myself as only a few dozen operations away from being a woman, but I haven’t the motivation or money to do it. Plus I don’t think I would make a beautiful woman as I am now, but I really want to be one. If technology can make it so that I can be considered pretty, I’m becoming a woman that day. I’ll sign up and be so happy. Until then, I’m keeping my dick and balls. If I ever really feel like it, the option will be available to me to have them removed. I don’t know how openly other people talk about this stuff, they don’t seem to be as uncouth as me about it, but that’s how I feel. I like women. I like having my dick and balls, but if the day comes that I can be a beautiful woman, I want to be that.

For the record as well, I also consider myself black, libertarian, goth, a pelican, an economist, a professional writer, and up for consideration as a nominee for a Nobel prize. How am I supposed to know for sure that they aren’t thinking of me right now? When I start publishing books, I will send copies to the Nobel committee with a post it not saying “for your consideration.” For the purposes of comedy, I consider myself Jewish but I find myself following a lot of buddhist ideologies I read off wikipedia and take things the Dali Lama says seriously, even though he’s a man with dick and balls who wipes his ass like I do. Maybe I’m joking, maybe I’m not, and I think that’s where the line needs to be drawn. If anything I ever say offends you, fuck you. I stand by what I say, unless I can be made to feel bad about it. Good luck doing that to me, I openly challenge anyone to make me regret what I say, so that I can be a better, more understanding person. As someone who has trolled the internet for over a dozen years in the darkest crypts of the internet, yes, I used to post on webcomic forums, I’ve become stone cold.

Just the other day a guy I work construction with told me I couldn’t have a day off work I already cleared with the guy in charge. He asked, “Who do you think you are?” I yelled from on top the ladder I was on, “I’m Charles, a god damn tax payer and a grown fucking man. Fuck you.” Later, he apologized for being on my ass about taking some days off work. I apologized, saying “I probably shouldn’t have told you to go fuck yourself. I’m sorry I said that.” We shook hands like men, shared some laughs that night, and now I’m on my days off work writing about people I don’t know on the internet.  For legal reasons, I almost wrote a redaction of that statement. I don’t necessarily love the job I’m working at so what am I defending by saying this garbage?

 I did not actually tell my superviser to go fuck himself, I merely made that up for the purpose of making myself sound cooler than I really am. What kind of maniac yells something like that, while standing on a step stool in the cereal aisle, then goes online and brags about it like it was cool?  

I am a grown fucking man who stands by what he says. If it gets me in trouble or not, great. I still have to live with words. We shook hands and both apologized. I did the same thing as a kid, but somehow this behavior is childish? People say dumb shit all the time. That’s what twitter was made for! People are human. That’s a realization we all have to try to wrap our minds around, I still don’t know for sure if I’m human or a person, but I know I’m capable of hurting other people’s feelings and having my own hurt. I’m not looking for trouble, I’m merely here to do diligence as a talented professional writer. 

If you really think I’m joking about wanting to be a woman, when that technology is perfect and I’m beautiful, I won’t let you see my tits. They’ll be as big as my balls too.

I’m no lawyer nor am I a morally rightious person. I play a lot of video games, my name is Charlie. I'm an ignorant man, but I want to be more learned. I want to appeal to logic, as the culture of video games folds in on itself more and more. 

I wrote this long essay as an examination of the letter of the law and weather of not we should follow it. Every person needs to have their own beliefs and ideas, but laws are laws. If we can bend and break some, how do we decide what is acceptable and what isn't to be broke or bent? 

 I love the idea of an eye for an eye kind of justice, it’s human like that idea. What is mine is mine, thusly, what is yours is yours. That probably worked out well for a few centuries, until bold men like Genghis Khan united warring tribes into a unified group of murderers. How do you deal with a large group like that? How do you police that group from itself? When everyone shares resources and ideas, even would barbarians need law. The foundation of civilization is law. Without laws, wouldn’t we turn into barbarians? How can we be more civilized as a people without some kind of rules in place to govern ourselves.

The idea of the letter of the law is as stated. It cannot be argued against things that were in our more ancient times, written into stone. A famous example of laws written in stone come from the Old Testament, the ten commandments of God. These are stone tablets with inarguable laws meant to make everyone’s lives better. Unfortunately, in my country, America, people forget one of the laws written on a piece of paper when the whole idea of democracy was started, a separation of church and state. This easily understandable statement of law means that court houses, public schools, or any other government buildings shouldn’t have religious laws placed front and center. There shouldn’t a picture of a religious leader hanging up in a school. Even worse, evolution as a theory, which when defined as a word means: “someone thinks this might be what happens.” Don’t take my word for it, I looked it up to make sure I wasn’t being stupid.

Theory is defined as: 
A supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, esp. one based on general principles independent of the thing to be...

That means, it is something someone supposes. If you really get easy, it means guessing.  Stuff people believe as fact are guesses. 

I don’t like arguments like this. I look the law as it is stated. It seems that information isn’t that hard to find these days. Even with certain topics being suppressed or under-represented in any media, Destructoid included, I can still find information. What is information? Well, besides power, information is watching videos, reading forums, scouring poorly designed blogs, searching twitter, looking through web search after websearch, and it doesn’t require a whole lot of effort. People these days hate working so much, they don’t even want to type words into a web browser. I imagine this is because they never learned to type, but my imagination is fucked up. 
   
The thing is, people want to argue about law, when it isn’t that hard to understand.

This applies to video games with two stories from the last few weeks: 

Story 1: A indiegogo fund for a game developer’s health costs.

Story 2: Nintendo going after Let’s Play videos of their current game releases.

I’ll address both these issues with rational, logical coldness. Also, cocks!

I like wasting my time I guess.

Etryian Odyssey 3 - DS

Ugh, I hate losing progress on a game, but the difficulty of the game is in losing progress. I love fighting against a game.

This game is a nightmare to try to play without losing progress.

There was another DS RPG I started up, but didn't finish the tutorial. I'm awful.

EDF 2017 - Xbox 360

This genre of budget games is something I'm going to miss going forward with video games. I don't think these kinds of games will keep getting made or released in the west. 



Angry Birds Star Wars - iOS

My wife got this for free.

This is a better game than Angry Birds.

It is still the same exact idea of crush the castle. You sling birds at pigs and the structures the pigs have, with the intention to kill all the pigs. This game addresses one of my complaints from Angry Birds, that certain birds can do things extra while others are just stones with no special abilities. Nearly every unit does something, but I don't necessarily love what they do. Another wrinkle to the mechanics are planets with gravity, I assume this is from Angry Birds Space, but I haven't played that.

As for the Star Wars license, this dresses up the characters as Star Wars characters. The red bird is now Luke with a light saber, the bomb bird now can push objects as Obi Wan, and a piggy dresses like Darth Vader holding objects in place as you try to smash him and his storm trooper pigs.

I played a ton of this game.

I not only played it on my iPod, but my wife's iPad got a lot of play. I found it better on the bigger screen, it was just easy to maneuver on that screen. My man hands are still effecting how I play games.

Path of Radiance - GameCube

Finished it! I played on normal and it was easy. I had a little trouble on maybe three maps in the game.

Early on, I kept restarting when I lost a guy. About six levels of that, I gave up when I lost someone, "expendable."

The idea that I don't have time to do this game perfect bothered the crap out of me. Losing fictional characters goes against my personal ethics code of never leaving a man behind, I hate the idea of loss. Especially the idea that someone could be expendable.

I ended up losing maybe half a dozen guys over the game, some a guide I looked at said were great characters, but not for me. They died. When I import this save into the Wii sequel, those characters are dead. If I play that and lose my save, and characters who should be dead show up, it won't feel real.

Like in Walking Dead when my save broke on the last episode, all my choices of who I saved and what I did disappeared. No apology from TellTale or reassurance that it won't happen in the sequel can forgive that moment of being ready to finish the game, and not being able to. If a save editor doesn't exist, I might not play part two simply because the events won't match.

Without consistency and canon in fiction, it ceases to be credible in my eyes. This is why I have such a hard time reading a lot of comic books. When a story does come together that has such a long legacy and knows its history, I love that. That's the kind of stories I want to craft. Everything is canon.

Except in the case of a retcon, in which case, nothing is canon.

I've looked into picking up a copy of the sequel, but I don't want to pay full price for a six year old game. Nintendo games are so nuts on the pricing, Amazon has copies for over a hundred fifty dollars and GameStop has it listed used at fifty bucks. Well which is it? A hundred and fifty or just fifty dollars?

I don't think I want the sequel. I might move on to the 3DS game when pick one of those up.

Nimble Quest - iOS

My wife got this, so it showed up on my iPod.

I hate it. It is awful. Imagine snake, but with a fantasy theme. Your characters attack enemies, but movement is all snake. It isn't good.

As I write all this, I'm picturing pull quotes. I also think, what if the developer saw this? It is an iOS game, so it could just be a person.

This game is awful.

Machinarium - PC

This is one of those games I've had forever, but never played.

None of this has anything to do with Machinarium or what it is, so I'll just stop talking about that. 

Machinarium is a point and click adventure game, The way it's put together looks like it could possibly have been done in flash, but I don't know how exactly. The game has such an attention to detail in the artwork and animations, that I'm kind of stunned. Someone put in some work on this. I managed to make it a few screens through the game solving puzzles picking things up and stretching my robot. I don't like point and click adventure games, so I may never play this amazing looking game ever again. It's a real bummer too, because this game looks great, I did a decent job solving the puzzles, but I just don't know how I feel about it. 

I had some fun with it, that's more than I can say for a lot of games I bought. 

Red Dead Redemption - Xbox 360

I forgot I had this. I didn't buy it, I had rented it and my wife had played some of it, but neither of us finished. She bought it, but I had the game spoiled for me by the Internet. It was such a bummer. I later rented the zombie expansion pack, which I enjoyed, knowing the ending helped me appreciate the jokes of that game.



R-Type Final - PS2

Shmups, which my iPod changes to shamus, is one of my favorite genres that just doesn't get play like it used to. It isn't discussed openly hardly anywhere, but I love it.

I don't like the vertical ones as much as the horizontal ones.

For me, I'm a U.N. Squadron  Gradius, and R-Type kind of guy. Those are my jam. When I looked through my cases of PS2 stuff, I wanted to play this.

I made it to the fourth level before I quit, I was on the easy difficulty and had some trouble doing it.

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne - PS2

Ever play a game that was so incredible, you had a hard time explaining why it was so great? I can tell you how you would hate this, the grinding of levels and difficulty in understanding the mechanics are why I like this game. That and the tone and atmosphere it creates, like a nightmare.

Unfortunately, some of the advancements in the ease of play from Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey have spoiled me. I miss being able to check status and skills at the same time. I get confused so I check my skills.

I also have no qualms about checking guides now.

Especially in a game I've been playing for over two years that has tons of mechanics and actual labyrinths. The section of the game I'm on, is called the Labyrinth of Almala or something similar to that. I don't have any guides with me right now I'm days removed from my couple hours with the game too.

But Nocturne is all I'm thinking about.

I actually made progress when I played this time, but it took some effort.

As I started, I was in the alma, Alama or alalma, I left to look for a fiend boss called the Pale Rider or Red Rider, I can recall which, but the guide said I could fight in the first dungeon, a hospital. The fiend's are like optional super bosses, they unlock levels of the Alama which unlocks the true demon ending. That's what I would like to go for I think. I'm not much for law and I don't like chaos much more. The fact that in this Alama, I'm directly getting information from lucifer makes me anxious to see what's at the end of it.

As I make it to where I think I need to be, I read closer in the guide. To fight this boss I need to have made it to the third level of Alama. I was lost on level two. So I walk back, wander around a bit, then realize I have a moon key that opens doors in this level. I have no clue how of where I got the moon key, but I used it and saw the cutscenes at level three, then pressed my luck in a spot on level two of Alama that would give me a to of money.

The floor was poisonous, or cursed, it was hurting my party with every step and every fight was tough. I was killed, as was forced to start over at level two again on my old save.

Everything I did for two hours was gone.

I go back down to level three, this time I knew my way around the confusing dungeon. I had my moon key. I watched both cutscenes. One is Lucifer telling me about the man who caused the apocalypse in the game, that he was involved with a Gaea cult. Then the fiend cutscene, the four horsemen of the apocalypse are let loose. They left into the world.

So now, I look through guides and ski across a skill called attack all. I want that. My favorite thing is crowd control. I need to hit multiple enemies with my main character. His stats are all power, so I need that. I need to go back to a place called mantra hq. I didn't know if I needed to find that place or if I had been there, I read around a bit more. Turns out I was there. I must not have had enough strength at that time to unlock what I needed. So I go to a town I think is close there, my god the name of this town is Ibuekeno or something similar, and turns out I get to fight a fiend.

A couple tries on him and I whoop him, then wander trying to find the mantra hq. I was lost in a dark tunnel that I know I had been to, but I quit. I was done.

Every month I write what I played on my ipod, but I've been busy doing things. But not really, I've been in a dark place emotionally I guess. It sort of came out in this writing.

I've been trying to post this for three weeks now.



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Randombullseye's March 2013

Hi everybody, I feel fantastic. I didn't die this month and I wasted time playing butt loaves of games!

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Fire Emblem Path of Radiance - Gamecube

Made it about halfway into the game, feel like quitting it now that the game has turned me loose. I'm determined to finish, and my strategy of not leaving a man behind has changed.

If someone expendable dies, they're gone. I can't restart for guys who aren't key to my strategy.

Don't have that kind of time.

Pikmin - GameCube

No game makes me feel more awful than pikmin. I finished it thirty parts of your space vessel collected on thirty in game days, it wasn't difficult, but it wasn't easy. Parts required a little thinking, other parts required some brute force. I liked those parts.

Picture my stats, if I forget to put that in yell at me. (I have it on my ipod, but that's in the other room right now. I did 30 days with 30 parts)

Ni No Kuni - Playstation 3

Made it to the end game, it seems to want to drag on visiting every town and caricature again. This was a stinker of a game, but I had some fun with it.

Katamari Forver / Retro City Rampage - Playstation 3

My nephew wanted to play some games so I showed him these, him and my niece disliked Katamari but loved Retro City.

Chrono Trigger - iOS

One of the best games ever, actually playable, what I mean is the controls aren't stupid like every other ios poet, and it doesn't have any visual or audio problems.

It also doesn't have minute long load times like the stupid Playstation version.

Mega Man 10 - PSN

I played as Bass on easy and I had a great time playing it. I wasn't looking for challenge, just a good time and I got it.

I played as Proto Man on normal and was dusted constantly, making no progress at all.

Video games.

Sim City - SNES / Sim City 2000

Everyone wanted to play the new one, I wanted to play the old ones.

In Sim City, I made a couple really great towns. One was devastated by a plane crash while I left it on overnight. I imagine that's what happened. The other, I just have up on once I filled the screen.

In 2000, I found that making a city was difficult. I forgot how to do anything in the game, just bulldozing ground and making the basic buildings was a chore. After a couple bad starts, I finally got a good city going, but I just couldn't keep the economy working. My city was in debt and broke before I knew it.

Then I built a mega city that was perfect, I had rail systems, subways, and it was an incredible piece of work, but a riot ravaged it. It was only after struggling for twenty minutes in pain that I realized I had to control my fire departments and police.

Etryian Odyessy 3 - DS

Almost bought a 3DS on sale, but didn't. Intention was to pick up the fourth game, but no. So I got a copy of part three, it is very much like part one, but the ease of play has ratcheted up, as has the difficulty. I am getting killed left and right, I love it.

It isn't the games fault that it didn't tutorial me up the ass, it is my fault for not doing it right.

Donkey Kong Country 1 & 2 - Wii Virtual Console

My wife had this, I played some of both with her. I love these games, but I'm done with them. I don't want to say I never want to play them again, but I did say that to her.

I probably shouldn't have said that, these are her favorite games.