This man has obviously never been laid

Our favorite asshole lawyer, Jack Thompson, has discovered *gasp* that people are actually naked under their clothes. This revelation came when Jack discovered that the game Oblivion accurately rendered women nude under their shirts.

Like most Republican prudes, Jack has never seen a naked woman and believes that people come from storks, at the ordering of God. He was also dropped on his head as a child.

I really do not understand the issue here. He does not even mention what I have already pointed out the most shocking aspect of this mod. How does plain nudity offend anyone, *unless* they are retarded prudish idiots? Maybe someone needs to talk to Jack about how babies are made.

In a game where you have missions to murder people and can kill people with swords and magic at will, the one thing the media and zealots pull out is a couple breasts. My solution? Get laid. I swear how messed up is this country? Isn’t this fairly analogous to art? What’s next, a condemnation of naked Barbie dolls? Perhaps you should rate them mature. People are naked, this is a fact. People have sex, this is a fact. There is no choice in the matter either, both of these things have to happen to continue living as a species. What does not have to happen is senseless violence. The fact that in American culture the thing that is natural is taboo and the thing that is not is totally integrated into our culture is just plain sad.

Everyone has heard of the Hot Coffee controversy courtesy of a modification to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas that allowed you to have “sex” with a pixilated nude woman in the game. It was retarded, as Maddox pointed out, because it is a freaking game where you run around and steal cars and shoot police. To claim that the worst part of the game is the terrible sex scene really says quite a few things about the American value system.

Thankfully, a nerdy role-playing game called Elder Scrolls: Oblivion has outdone the stupid Hot Coffee crap. In a nod to realistic gameplay, the designers have left in skins and models for females that include *gasp* breasts. The default game covers *gasp* breasts with a default bra or whatever that thing is that covers them. So what do you think one of the first mods released is? Of course, the topless mod!

The caveat? Well kids were complaining they cant see their electronic breasts immediately after loading their modification. See, the women still have clothes on as they walk around the game world. Anger ensues. Anger leads to violence. The best way to get to see the boobies is to murder a woman character and strip her of clothes. Oh the humanity! That’s right, in this game you have to find a woman, kill her, and then strip her of all clothes just to see her naked. Now all you “games lead to real life violence” people can start crying about it. Yes, your kids are ritualistically killing women in a video game to see their naked corpses. Sounds pleasant?

I am certainly laughing. I will be keeping count of how many nerds go crazy and start killing women to see them naked in the real world after playing Oblivion. In the meantime let me continue my nude killing spree.

Blizzard says no to any player who wants to role-play a same sex marriage. Apparently Blizzard has the policy that if anyone in the game ever thinks that what you say or do is offensive and they report it, then it is. This is the best policy to keep everyone happy, while at the same time pissing everyone off. Way to go Blizzard.

Because girls kissing or getting married to each other in a game is going to make your daughter a lesbian, or guys role-playing gay relationships is going to turn your WoW addicted nerdy son into a raging homo. Its just distasteful! It ruins the entire sanctity and seriousness of .. uhh .. virtual world marriages! Because its so hard to ignore someone in game and the game is clearly about chatting and never playing.

This is ridiculous and I think Blizzard knows it. This is a policy that says, no one may make references to sexual orientation, ever. This is to keep people from harassing other people, calling them gay and what not. Ok, that’s a good policy I guess. Now when a man and woman in game role-play a couple … isn’t there an implied sexual reference? Even expressed in many cases? It’s not getting reported, and if it is, how is it treated? The same as if it were a gay reference? I doubt it.

What about when that big ugly Orc marries that blood elf or something. That’s more offensive than girls kissing for sure. But why does anyone even care? Seriously, if you think boys and girls kissing the same sex is the most terrible thing happening in your life and it needs to stop .. MIND YOUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS. WHY DO YOU CARE?

There was a gay player in my World of Warcraft guild when I played, and he played a lot. It’s these kind of policies that drive away players that are really playing the game, not farming loot and gold 24/7.

Bottom line Blizzard takes a biased and discriminatory approach to the whole thing. They make the assumption that any reference to alternate sexuality is immediately offensive. When a gay person acknowledges that he or she is gay, they are not offending themselves or anyone else. When someone continually harasses a player using sexual orientation references, its the harassment part that’s important. The sexual orientation part is just what he uses to accomplish it, he could just as easily be calling him an asshole over and over again.

CNN.com – Virtual property yields $100,000 – Nov 10, 2005

Well not exactly burn, but the next best thing! Look, I have made some nice cash selling accounts to massively multiplayer games, even items, but $100,000 to buy a virtual property? This leaves me with no choice.

I am going to unveil the “SUPER FABULOUS GAME WHERE EVERYONE GETS RICH”. See, me as the developer will create this virtual world. Early adopters of this world, if they can tear themselves from World of Warcraft, will pay me a little money for my product, virtual land. This should be considered an investment. Then they can charge later adopters money, and they can charge others, and so on and so on … in a big huge PYRAMID.

Sound like a good idea? Yeah, too bad its illegal.

ETA until government regulation of online games which have connections to real monetary deals .. ?? years and counting.

This post is actually something that I wrote over a year ago. I am clearing out my saved posts in WordPress and found this one and many others. Of all the little snippets of posts that are not finished, this one looks mostly complete, so I figured I would publish it. It is still interesting to think about.

I can play video games for hours, I can read a book for hours, I can watch movies for hours, watch a good television show for hours, and generally get caught up in worlds which are not real at all for hours at a time with little thought of reality around me. Normally, and throughout my life, I haven’t given it a single thought … but while trying to create a comprehensive philosophy for myself, I arrive at a paradox of sorts.

See, there is some common sense to realizing that living in a fantasy world is bad for you. Medical professionals sometimes call it a “peter pan complex” and it can get quite serious. The most extreme examples are highly mentally unstable, creating entire worlds within their own minds as illusions. Most of us can say, well that will never be me. However, upon closer inspection of our lives we run into a problem.

If I play a computer game for 6 hours a day, everyday, for months, that is pretty extreme. A large portion of my day would be in a fantasy world outside of reality (for the most part). Most contemporary critics would say this is bad for you. Hell, China is actually making it political policy to limit playing of online games. Now, not to turn this into a “games vs. tv” debate, right now it may be more socially acceptable to watch 6 hours of TV a day, but it is still the same kind of escape. Either way our minds are engrossed in a fantasy world for entertainment. These might be extreme examples, but add up the time you spend each day and you may be surprised.

I have read articles by people saying we need to limit this kind of behavior. It makes sense if you don’t really think about it in depth. Just kill the bad and ignore the why, after all it’s the American way. Just think, however, where the bulk of the average American’s time goes. To work. You work 8 hours a day, usually close to 10 hours with travel and preparation time. Are you in the real world while you are working? Surely you aren’t being entertained … so it must be the real world, and the real world is good, right? Not exactly, on both counts. You work 8 hours a day to provide for yourself, your family, to “get ahead” like every American thinks is their destiny to do. Every generation must do better than the last! Where does it end? Has anyone really thought it through? Just what the hell is real anyway? Where do you draw the line? The experts say that escapism is bad, and that it keeps us away from the real world, the world that is important and right, the world that makes sense.

What a bunch of bullshit. Does anyone think about what they are doing, why they are doing it, and where it is all going? I have, and really when you think about the real world, escapism doesn’t sound too bad. How do you change a government that never seems to get it? How do you get all the countries of the world to actually accomplish global tasks that must be done? How do you stop capitalism from widening the gap between poor and rich, impoverishing millions every year across the globe? How do you stop murder, genocide, crime, disease, famine, terrorism, etc, etc on a global scale? Every year it does get worse, even though many don’t see it on the micro level, it happens on a macro level, globally.

What’s the point of all this? You can’t fix it. We have seen hundreds of movies and books on government corruption and big business, yet it still happens. We have seen countless studies on the links of race, gender, etc on income levels, and yet the problem remains. We see thousands of animal and plant species go extinct every year, and the people that can do something do not care. There are reasons none of these things get fixed, and it usually boils down to money. I am not saying they are even fixable, as if they were not so complicated, they would be fixed by now. However, human beings have a nasty habit of waiting until we hit that wall at full speed until something is done. Then it becomes a “crisis” or a “disaster” and everyone says, “how did this happen?” and people like me can say, “I told you so.”

There are two primary types of people. People that escape reality because they want to, and people who escape reality without knowing it. The former person asks “why?” at every opportunity and makes a decision to escape because they want to escape a life where the “why?” is endless. The latter person never asks “why?” and follows the herd in a life they have never even attempted to understand.

Well I guess I have to admit it. I was addicted to World of Warcraft. The key word here is was, and I am happy to tell you that I broke my addiction with a little reflection of just what the hell I was doing and why.

Addiction is probably too light a word for what I was doing. I bought WoW on January 1st of 2005, a little bit later than most people who had started. Immediately I started my MMORPG powergaming routine that I have been doing for years (I may write about my history in other games, but I dont think I approached any as hard as WoW). I can say that WoW is an incredibly designed game and probably worthy of all praise it is given in the press. So great that, thanks to the nice function in WoW to see how many hours you play your character, this lead me to play for 40 whole days in a 140 day stretch. Now to those not familiar, when I say I played 40 days … it means that I was actually at the keyboard playing the game for a total of 40 days, which is 960 hours. Over that 140 days, I played and average of 6.8 hours a day. Not bad.

Now that you think I am totally insane. Keep in mind I am a college junior and that semester was particularly hard actually, with two classes of constitutional law and political theory. I also will tell you that I never once slept for less than 8 hours a day. So with a little calculation, 960 hours of WoW, 1120 hours of sleep out of 3360 hours total. Thats about 9 hours a day left in “free time” which I probably spent mostly eating, going to the gym, and watching TV. There wasn’t much time for class.

Why did I stop this whirlwind of warcraft? What the hell is the point of continuing? I had seen everything, done everything, and was quite bored of doing it over and over again. I don’t think that 100th run of Strat or Scholo (god I hated Scholo) was going to be as enjoyable as the first. My guild was (arguably) #1 on the server. First to Ragnaros on the server, first alliance to kill Onyxia, blah blah blah. Every week I would attend the full Molten Core raid and the Onyxia raid, got some nice epic loot. Every week it became more and more like a chore.

The same thing has repeated in other games I quit playing. After a while you are just doing the same thing over and over again. You beat the game, even if there is no real official beating to be had. Optimized your character for its role, gotten the best loot easily obtainable, been everywhere and seen everything in the game. Why should you keep playing? PVP? Sucks … go play an FPS. The people? Get AIM … you can play an interesting game or do something more useful while you chat.

The only reason I would keep playing is if there was some kind of evolving storyline and regularly added content. Not dumb expansion packs that are explored, exploited and farmed within 2 weeks of release. With WoW I do not see that even remotely happening, seeing as how when I quit (in May 2005) they could barely give us an update to fix bugs every month. Promises of PVP systems simply don’t cut it because every battle has the exact same dynamic almost, once the powergamers figure out what works best.

So, to all you future WoW users, current users, and future users of any MMO: try to think about what you are doing. Why are you playing? Where is it going? Is it worth it? You will know when to quit then. Never worry about the time spent and throwing it away because it was a game that you got enjoyment out of (or else why were you playing), so that alone is never a reason to stay playing. If more people realized these points, perhaps the companies would realize their revenue falls out a few months after release and they would create games that capture our attention years after we start them.