As of now, I cannot keep my silence with the current events surrounding video games. Because massive knee jerking reactions as typical are constant reminders why my current job blows and looking for work elsewhere is the usual meet the new boss, same as the old boss and difficulty to find a new workplace.

Anita Sarkeesian and her holy war crusade against gaming

Bear in mind that I am not a misogynist. I live with 5 sisters. Gaming has issues right now I am fully aware that it is mostly male dominated gaming. I can’t blame them. It was the way it was as a male’s club only. To watch Aris stating the obvious made me disappointed in gaming culture. After watching Anita first and second video, watching her videos is painful. Anita lacks research and it shows. I have failed my English Thesis essays number of times due to my awful research and poor English and I can still tell if this is made up or not. Problem is that Anita does not bring up anything new to the table nor she doesn’t bring any solutions to the table. She only happens to stir up the hornets nest (from the kickstarter project to every video she posts on the internet) benefiting from her white knights to do her bidding. The worst aspect of Anita is that her mind, she is playing the victim game being victimized not only once but twice. Did I mention that with that huge library of games that she took a photoshot of, she has no knowledge of gaming whatsoever. If she plans to continue her six digit money project, I expect her to 1) get her research done right 2) Confront those who have legitimate criticism (of course she’ll never respond back she has better things to do) 3) Not just pinpointing that video game culture is all anti feminist (go to fatuglyorslutty.com why don’t you) and 4) To go beyond being an above average internet troll. One thing is for sure, Anita is very late to the party and she has a very large target painted on her back. If her idea was to stir up the hornets nest and not even give any solutions to fix video game culture, then congratulations she has done her job. All I know is that Anita happens to be an above average troll and suckered everyone into this pointless arguments including me. It is already been there, done that.

As a fair man who is ignorant, the best answers to find is go look on both sides with a thesis and an antithesis, find the parts that work and you have a good presentation. This was not a good presentation. All I can offer is that god help us morons if she continues this awful, pointless war.

I am not happy that she happen to open up this can of worms or dump well worth gasoline into the fire.

Tune in next posting for the 8th console generation. I am not happy with the results.

~Tharticus

Just when I thought that the piracy issue was going away from time to time until someone decides to deploy landmines of hostility anyone with a different opinion, piracy continues to be rampant as either side of the debate in a continuous stalemate or possibly that the game publishers and developers are slowly decaying impending for another video game market crash. Piracy is not purely black and white issue, it is certainly nothing but grey matter.

On April 29, 2013, Greenheart games released a game called “Game Dev Tycoon” an indie game on gaming development. On that same day, Greenheart games put out a cracked copy on torrent sites and within 4 hours of their game release, they post their journal about the irony about gaming piracy. This also brought up that how game developers also managed to screw with pirates. The most infamous is the Earthbound game if obtained illegally not only making the game more difficult than the legal version, the game would crash upon the final boss forcing the user to reset it and like a cherry on a turd sundae, it also deleted your saves too. That is very brutal. Until when hackers override the few changes and it becomes like any other normal copy.

But this brings another issue about piracy since Greenheart games pulled up the numbers that 93% pirated the game. I’m not statistician but with <90% failure rate, how does a game company stay afloat? I can’t say for all game companies but for companies pinpointing for blaming piracy for their loss there has to be a bigger picture. Most if not all indie developers experienced having their game pirated such as World of Goo having an 90% piracy rate most indie game developers took it well. They are not like AAA gaming with huge budgets with multimillion needing massive sales to break even. Some indie game developments trying to self sustain and simply promoting their game. Indie game developers were disappointed to see the game pirated when they look at the figures. Even Minecraft creator Notch considers piracy to be a crime less than jaywalking.

Again apologies to those who have Asperger Syndrome.

After doing much soul searching after I got hacked, I decided to return two years after I got hacked. Turns out I didn’t like the scheme Nexon was doing to the game. To be fair, it is putting more content and taking out what is wrong with MapleStory but that is curing the symptom, not the problem.

Ever since Big Bang is introduced which is equivalent to World of Warcraft’s cataclysm, it changed. For me it was neither good or bad.

Much like every other MMO out there, they must change for the better if they want to keep players or reel in new players. Because stagnation is inevitable. But sometimes vanilla (insert MMO title) is what possibly kept the game good.

As I watch Brian Schmoyer’s New Leaf Saga and his commentaries, the community degraded 6 months after MapleStory was officially released. Bluntly put it, it is taking the worst of internet personalities and put in this world. Then again, Penny Arcade GIFT (Gabriel’s Internet Fuckwad Theory) works because a digital mask or being anonymous with an audience having an attention span of a hyperactive 7 year old kid. There are several mature players but they are equivalent to diamonds in the rough as majority of players are power hungry and prone to mocking and driving away new players. The worst comes from elite players who currently play this game stating the obvious that it is easy to decimate bosses when they have no experience about first year or even beta for that matter.

Leveling is absurdly easy now comparison to 7 years ago. The only way to gain experience points back then was pure grinding. Killing monsters and very little quests. The challenge of the game is gone. When Nexon implemented new bosses, it was difficult to defeat them when they first appeared. Now they are trivial, featuring zero feat but to be highly leveled to curb stomp bosses solo. Obtaining a Zakum helmet back in 2006 was a sign of accomplishment as a group. Now people can blast Zakum to oblivion as a solo level.

But there are several areas that still surprised me. Party quests are still around but part of why they blow is a) You have to learn about them in advance and b) one party group per channel. It is already 7 years and they still don’t have the problem solved. NPCs for the party quest do so little to help you to obtain the information needed to advance to the next stage and problem is that the party group expects specific classes to do their job. If people managed to know how to do their work they are either lucky or a lying sack of crap to know what you are supposed to do. From 1 party group per channel rule, I could recall that there was a competitive Free-For-All contest called Ariant Competition and it has 3 groups per channel. From what I understand, some party quests are worth the trouble and some are not. It does not give a legitimate excuse why it is packed every time I enter channel 1 to recruit other members and find other channels to be full. Otherwise, your other option would happen to be using the tracking feature.

Classes classes classes. Is Nexon running out of ideas or are they trying to place more variety? I see 5 regular joes called adventurers, 5 legends that dedicate to the heroes, 5 classes that are sub servants, 3 classes are twists of the original and some are expansions while others are something else from another dimensions. When new classes debut to the game, they overpowered the new classes to give the player feelings of empowerment till when the month passes, they are nerfed to never be able to play again by someone.

Perhaps that I am old and bitter about this game that I used to like so much 5 years ago. It is certainly not the same and I doubt that it would stay the same. After all, MMOs come and go and before you know about a certain MMO you liked then vanishes due to lack of development and some MMOs can last long.

~Tharticus

As for the entire gaming culture and assuming that the audience are reasonable human beings, I would like to explain why I am fed up with gaming culture.

I cannot justify why people belittle or having a witch hunt when it comes to certain games that people play. Be it that it is Farmville, Angry Birds or even Call of Duty they are still games. No matter if it is dull or repetitive or more of the same matter they are games no matter how you slice and dice it. If it was involved with UI controls, then it is a game. If people start to claim that Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros or even Tetris are “hardcore games”, this is not correct.

The Hardcore crowd is a finicky bunch. I can state that the hardcore could be either old school or new gamers who proudly proclaim themselves as gamers who played their first console game on the Xbox 360. At times, you could say that the Hardcore crowd could be a veteran MMO player or an elitist jerkoff who believes their playing ground is to dump off their frustrations onto new players or perhaps a different jerkoff to classify that “I play first person shooters therefore I am hardcore”. Well, when we play video games for the first time we turn out to be casual at first. If the interest hasn’t sunk in for a specific genre, then this game isn’t for you. Invest more time and it turns out to be your hobby.

If a person managed to increase their playtime and has an interest on a specific game genre such as Farmville, they would happen to be Farmville enthusiast. I enjoyed Tetris as my first timer and played it on my Game Boy to see how far can I go on A-Type. My sisters used to play NES and SNES and their interests drop off after N64 due to their personal work, growing up and having a family etc. That is when the Wii shows up, everyone was playing it.

Why do people describe gamers depending what games they play? The Big Bang Theory stereotypes an MMO gamer and other media shows a gamer who happens to eat unhealthy food, lack of exercise and at times get angry much like every other video game player. The worst happens to be some dumb sexist and racist gun-ho lover who spams the microphone as their dumping grounds for frustrations. At times harassment and trash talking is amusing but this wasn’t happen in the early days of the arcades. There is another person better than you but certainly trash talking didn’t exist. Unless your head is stuck in the late 20th century where being called a white cracker head is the norm and the n-word is used as a double standard.

Fine, it is an opinion that a person who plays nothing but indie games say that Call of Duty sucks but when that person acknowledged that they never play the game only judging by its cover, that person doesn’t deserve an opinion. But hey, the entire gaming hive-mind only exists in the internet and nowhere else unless they happen to be a decent looking human. After all, freedom of speech allows you to talk whatever and whenever you feel like on impending frustrations and the like. However, be prepared for the backlash if your opinion is not popular.

Hardcore players also happen to be narcissistic bunch and very confusing as well. Mass Effect 3? Your expectations are way too broad. Left 4 Dead 2? Could be an expansion set from Left 4 Dead 1. Electronic Arts happen to be the worst company than a bank that happens to make working folks lives worst? Doesn’t matter, EA still sucks. Activision and Blizzard is still hated upon? Why even purchasing their games for? Oh yeah, casuals and ‘hardcore’ people are buying their games. Day 1 and on disc DLC? It is a necessary evil and you damn well know it. Companies need to make more money and well hey, it is Capitalism.

I consider the options of why we need new players for MMOs. Many people state casuals are ruining gaming. Unless you, the hardcore audience continues to fund their servers for eternity, your gaming servers will not survive. I have seen many many MMO go from pay2play to free2play and others couldn’t make it. There are reason that the hardcore audience hates casual players ranging from gaming developers catering to the new audience instead of the core audience to balance changes to even have access to items they never gain before. My point is that without new players continuing to play certain type of MMOs servers will go away and it will be left nothing but a ghost town. That defeats the entire purpose of a MMO server. It might as well serve you a single player experience.

Gaming Ambassadors also vying for the spot since people with different views onto how to make gaming better and the many issues that gaming culture has. So far, many gaming ambassadors doesn’t have one but so far, Aris Bakhtanians is happy to represent us as the hardcore crowd.

To end this in such a downer note, I will quote Charlie Brooker from his pilot episode “Gameswipe”:

Video games, bleeping blooping masturbatory aids for emotionally crippled outcasts,

probably male outcasts, probably physically repugnant and sexually inexperienced,

probably frightened of the real world, probably standing in this very spot saying these very words  on camera right now,

probably me basically, Video games are for losers like me, apparently.

On the other hand, maybe we need to stop calling people gamers as a proud, supreme niche and drop everything related to casual vs. hardcore. Oh and console wars and PC vs. Consoles needs to gently caressing stop.

~Tharticus

When I started playing video games since the Nintendo Entertainment System era, regardless of difficulty and lengthy game play mechanics, I am convinced that from the early days when playing tennis on a computer circa 1950’s is an interactive medium. From the Nintendo Entertainment System to the Playstation 3, games have interactive storytelling.

So when I heard about Visual Novels and the concepts, my expectations was high that you can interact with other characters much like a role playing game. What I witnessed after completing one character arc in one visual novel or dating simulation is massive disappointment and anger that result in almost breaking my 10 year old laptop. But what hit me hard the most is when people lump Visual Novels as part of video games. I have played 3 visual novels so far and only gotten mixed feelings about wasting my time when I could have read a book.

I understand that Japan culture is different to the west and I certainly can see the appeal of playing visual novels because you get to fuck gently caress the heroine that you have affection for.  Then repeat for other characters until 100% completion. Few Visual Novels has exceptions of not having sexual encounters. To classify Visual Novels as video games, I feel as myself, the player to input my actions that would affect the game but Visual Novels aren’t like that. Visual Novels only give choices that will determine the protagonist’s fate. Few Visual Novels involve the plot unless it is a story driven narrative but mostly a character driven story. Visual Novels are a book but with multiple narratives. Much like a tree, it has multiple routes to take. Would you take route A? B? C? Visual Novels tend to be having Chrono Trigger endings since there happens to be dozen of bad endings (including for each heroine and various situations) and good ending for each heroine depending on what choices you make.

My experience playing Visual Novels the first was Clannad and I played over 16 hours. Probably what made me disappointed me was that I watched the animated version from Kyoto Animation studios before the Visual Novel version and how I played my first Visual Novel in a completely wrong way. For the first five hours I input different choices and I happen to get all bad endings. Until when I check out the menu, there was a save button. And happen to have guides like a flowchart showing how to get the girl you wanted. When obtaining the guide, I followed the guide like a laser and after completing one character arc, I felt mixed emotions debating if Visual Novels are video games. It also stirs my mind whether or not playing Visual Novels with guide ruins the experience.

Fate Stay Night was perhaps the emphasis why it operates as a novel and it completely sealed it for me to convince myself that Visual Novels are not video games. The heavy driven dialogue between characters and plot development feels like a novel. The latest Visual Novel I have played that recently came out by 4leaf studios named Katawa Shoujo and everyone who heard about the hype learned it the hard way that it isn’t a video game. It is a completely character driven novel.

What Atlus did right on their games is that they done more than I expected from a Visual Novel as interactive storytelling. Persona 4 and Catherine doesn’t feel like a visual novel but they nailed the aspects of a dating simulation as you being a puppet master. For example in Catherine, you play as Vincent Brooks an adult who is being pressured by Katherine to tie the knot together as husband and wife. Vincent however encounters Catherine who is the complete opposite to Katherine as outgoing and freely. The way Catherine the game operates feels somewhat similar to a Visual Novel but really doesn’t due to various ways of how the game will end. The same goes for Persona 4 main character that you can interact with other supporting characters. Visual Novels are somewhat similar in vein to Japanese Role Playing Games but lack the game part.

Don’t think that I hate Visual Novels altogether. I do like the artwork, backgrounds and CG and several menu interfaces Visual Novels offer. And sometimes I wish that several Visual Novels be translated. Fate Stay Night and Clannad are fan translated and some are working in translation. Sadly, Visual Novels are currently a niche market and I never see a published/translated by a distributor Visual Novel much like anime today. Probably due to pornographic scenes which disgust or put off people. But that is how Visual Novels got started. Personally, I would recommend reading Give Yourself Goosebumps novels. I read through 5 books and I was amused by the dozens of endings. On the other hand, if you prefer playing video games, just go play Choose your adventure games. Preferably A Hitchhikers  Guide to the Galaxy or Zork series.

TL;DR – Visual Novels is choose your adventure book with half the book gone, fill it with loads of heroines, background scenes, good looking CG and there you go. Call it a dating simulation. Or remove Visual Novels from video games and deem it as reading a book.

P.S: Anybody who brings up the argument of Western Role Playing Game vs. Japanese Role Playing Game, leave your comment once and never look back.

To those who have been living under a rock for sometime, piracy is the act of stealing content, much like how real life pirates who raid ships to steal. Only this time it is in data form.

Piracy can start from the day when computers used data but I can certainly say that piracy started when VCRs and Cassette tapes have the record button. Back in the olden days, my parents didn’t want to throw money away for movie VHS tapes for 20 USD so what they did is connect 2 VCRs have one play the movie, the other recording it. Same goes for cassette tapes. Then computers became more advanced with 3 and a half floppy disks that can hold up to 1.44 mb of data, enough to carry a word document and carry enough data to play Zork I. It certainly didn’t stop people from recording TV programs (pre TiVo) and sports programs on open TV waves.

Aside from personal history and various ways of people getting away with it, piracy is an issue and many companies are frowning on this concept and they want to destroy the internet as they know it. Complaints primarily from Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) shows how out of touch they really are and only resort to shoot first, ask questions later. Possibly what drove people to hate RIAA and MPAA is the fines they hand out for distributing or allowing anyone else to watch/listen to any media that is open. You purchased the product means that you can do whatever you want with it right? Burn, smash or using it as target practice is okay but distributing or have someone else watch/listen isn’t okay? Even sharing out of the equation, that means that companies should target libraries because they are sharing media. Unless the justifications for punishing users for watching/listening they don’t own is considered stealing and undermines their profits, I don’t know what is the meaning of copies of the original is about as good as the original.

Another relevant issue is that copyrights are broken. Anyone who made their Intellectual Property based on any subject in mind (from toys to various storylines to any conspiracy theory BS) that anyone with pockets full of money can take your IP and run it to the ground. Can you patent cover based shooting? Yes, but is on every bloody video game. Adaptation of novels to the big screen, screws the original writer of the novel. In other words, do not screw with copyright laws.

Copy protection is useless. If hackers are here to exploit, they will continue to exploit it. The fact is DRM is full of useless garbage for every PC to assure that the consumer does not distribute the data out. Limited installations? So this means that after I used up all my installations, this means I have a bricked game. Thanks game publishers for having consumers spending full price for a game and then expected to be screwed out the next. Always online DRM? Not everyone has online connection unless I happen to leech off an internet provider and been gaming ever since the Nintendo Entertainment System.

This will continue next post on why piracy is not the right thing to do.

I wonder, since technology grows with leaps and bounds. I recall that in my early teens, televisions were by their standard definition ratio 4:3. Now TVs are 16:9 ratio, perfect for either stretching 4:3 ratio into horrible proportions or ideal for moviegoers who wants to watch movies at home. From vinyl records to cassette tapes to walkmen to CD players to now MP3 players.

A relevant article by Torrentfreak sparked my interest since some people are behind with technology in which others are okay with it but some left with mixed reactions and anger in their wake.

As a person who witness technology becoming for better/worse I can recall that DVD players introduced to the market was expensive. A decade later, DVD players are available to every home. About the price of a VCR today. Blu Ray happens to be the replacement of the DVD players but can I see why people are hesitant to buy Blu Ray players. Expensive? Still above 50 USD and people still have standard definition TVs. Any upscale/advantages over DVDs? Not so much but it is getting clearer when the dust settles for a couple of years and it shows improvement. It is a reasonable explanation why people still get left behind with technology.

I can see the understanding why people didn’t like the new formats but playing it for your DVD/PS3/Xbox 360 player? Even better. I wanted to play 10 bit mkv videos on my 1080 television but it wouldn’t.

As a person who is not familiar with playback files such as mp3, wmv, aac, flac, avi, swf, mp4, x264 and mkv, I can certainly see why pirate groups and fansubbers prefer using better playback formats.

To those who doesn’t know the difference between files named above, these are the following grouped:

Music or sound files: mp3, wav and flac.

Image files: jpeg, bmp, png.

video files: avi, wmv, flv, mp4, mkv.

Best for sound? flac. Best for Images? png. In exceptions when taking photos in real life, jpeg is good. Best for video files? mkv.

From a fansub perspective in the early years of 2000 with their purpose to piss off licensing companies  most fansubbers hard subbed in avi format. Till the late year 2000s fansubbers use mkv format due to shows becoming more high definition and that mkv can do more than what avi does. Examples such as selecting subs on/off (an example of softsubbing) and chapter entries.  Most people torrent/DDL mkv format simply because there is a considerable difference when watching and function on mkv and avi. Difference would happen to be quality and the way how the episode is chaptered.

A new issue for fansubbers is the transition from 8 bit to 10 bit. Many people are analpained about fansubbers who still use 8 bit playback instead of 10 bit. While I am all for better picture quality and I upgraded to a better PC, to say that people who watch the 8 bit version is like watching eye cancer. That hurts because not everyone can watch HD anime in 1080p and some people wouldn’t mind dealing with blocky pictures. Cue reasons why an anime made in 1990’s – early 2000 – 2007 isn’t worth converting into HD versions unless the Blu Ray came out. Better to watch 4:3 anime on a standard computer screen than 16:9 and vice versa with having black lines on top and bottom or left and right.

Even 720p vs 1080p has slight difference but for my eyes, it sees no difference unless it happens to be a movie made from Hollywood. Same goes for FLAC vs. AAC sound files. Unless you have really good ears.

Perhaps people can finally stop asking old people why in our olden days our entertainment looks like shit.

The holy trinity known as the big three (Bleach, Naruto and One Piece) focus on action scenes, sometimes stories but loads and loads of characters. As for the adventures, it seems to never end. Some of shows reached up to 500 episodes and manga grows up to 30 volumes.

Now, I watched Full Metal Alchemist, D-Gray Man and Beelzebub and Blue Exorcist being classified  as shounen. Some good, some okay, some are cookie cutters and some are more than meets the eye.

When I watched Naruto I stopped at episode 160 because the plot pretty much crashed and got stuck with filler episodes that go nowhere except character development. That is my main concern about watching 60+ episodes. Even if I did rewatch the series again, Shippuden would even leave more questions unanswered. When I was watching Bleach, I have no idea what is going on and it didn’t hook me in.

Problem with shounen series is that they tend to drag the plot long, has 60+ characters that it is impossible to memorize all of them, increased filler to either character development and/or padding the show and teaches about friendship and small lessons typical of every shounen show. Most of the anime happens to follow the original story through manga, light novel or have the director does their own way.

The recent anime Beelzebub was finished and it was okay as a typical shounen show. Decent characters, absurd silliness and fillers that are decent. Blue Exorcist on the other hand was a cookie cutter of shounen shows. Filler episodes, decent characters but awful ending.

How do I end this? Oh yeah cop out ending.

Aside from watching cartoons since I was a little kid, anime shows gained interest in me since I started watching Naruto. First, I didn’t consider Pocket Monsters, Mega Man or Dragonball Z anime because I was a stupid kid back then when TV aired lame English voice actors.

I wouldn’t consider Japanese animation top notch because there are times when studios have to cut the budget and go for half ass animations that are more frightening than I imagine. Sometimes the studios fix these errors for their DVDs.

Apart from my own personal tastes for certain anime shows, there has been a substantial amount of issues with anime shows. From fansubs, hardcore otakus/weeaboos and licensing shows, to adaptations, moe and  subs vs. dubs.

To start off, Clannad and most of Jun Maeda’s works is about as interesting as watching paint dry and then peeling off.  His triforce masterpiece Kanon, Air and Clannad are what his fans praise as great works. They all started as visual novels which is a cross of choose your adventure novels and adventure games. Not much as a game but more as a novel. I’ve played Clannad Visual Novel for a good 7 hours and I wanted my 7 hours of my life back.

And there is word that due to backlash from Megaupload, other file sharing sites ceased file sharing thanks to the Department of Justice and others for breaking Copyright laws. Torrenting anime is your best alternative but regardless, you will be tracked by your IP address. IRC? Maybe.

More on this when I finally get my thoughts together.

~Tharticus

Unlike the Tea Party group that I considered their beliefs a fucking joke that result in Republicans taking over the house and the next 11 months later through hell and back with their debt ceiling almost in default,  all they do is stick to their beliefs that will “help” the country recover. Completely sad and a embarrassment to their country.

I want to go off topic because this is where the mess started.

It couldn’t be better with McCain since it’s gonna make it better, worse or just the same because either Obama or McCain will inherit Bush’s mess of a presidential legacy, juggling 2 wars and spend more than they earn.

For years, I have a major disdain for congress and how they handle their polices. When did anyone oppose to George Bush’s polices to invade Iraq? Granted that Saddam was a ruthless dictator but there was no solid evidence of Saddam possessing weapons of mass destruction. Another example would be Obama’s healthcare bill. Then there’s the bailout package and I could go on and on about this.

TL;DR congress is retarded and they will continue to be stupid unless they are not influenced by corporate lobbyists or PACs.  Of course they don’t care about my honest opinion nor yours so as long as they keep their checks and keep being reelected till they decide to retire.

Speaking of bailout package, they were terrible to start with. Bailout the banks because they were too big to fail? And I read that they are spending the money on better furniture, bonuses to their employees and self lavishes. Wasn’t the bailout suppose to be an investment? Give money and get money back? But people bitch about taxes and how it is wasted upon prison and various government owned properties.

Somehow the  “Occupy Wall Street” movement started where Michael Moore left off in his previous movie “Capitalism A Love Story” with placing yellow tape around Wall Street. The movie came out 2 years ago.

It’s pretty funny that after a small meeting on the internet for “Occupy Wall Street” turn out to “Occupy (insert city name here)” with no focus on what the Occupy protesters want.

People are already blaming on corporate greed. I blame corporate influence on congress, money wasting mongrels and evil diabolical people with an evil mustache.

On the other hand, I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.

~Tharticus