Running Full-tilt for Fascism

I know how to ruin anything. For now, it's videogames. Now, many people will say, "Oh they're just games," and yeah, they are for most people but they are incredibly influential. Today, I watched live coverage of E3 and the unveiling of Modern Warfare 3 gameplay. One in the long and almost universally recognized Call of Duty war-game franchise, this game takes war to the homefront in an epic urban battles against the Russians. Now, don't get me wrong, I'll play it if I can but I can't help but feel like the Modern Warfare series presents a huge danger to our political future.

By virtue of taking place on American soil fighting a foreign occupant within the near future, by virtue of the game containing modern weaponry and modern enemies by virtue of the games intense realism, it will have an incredible ability to inculcate an obsession with military culture and patriotism in today's youth. In Nazi Germany and fascist Italy similar obsessions were encouraged in an attempt to build support for the military industrial complex and the fascist state. There, participation in organized sports, boy scouts and military rallies were used to create this military obsession in everyone young and old. Here today, we have millions of young men fighting in simulated battles that could theoretically occur. What will the effect be? This will fundamentally change the public's view of the military. This will create less opposition to military action and more of a sense from the public that military action can be just.

When kids play Call of Duty, especially Modern Warfare 3, they will associate glory, patriotism and freedom with their military and yes, maybe those are things that the military should stand for; however, I can't help but feel that anti-war messages will be drowned out and that we will find ourselves incapable of seeing the military in a bad light. Call of Duty is the most politically irresponsible thing ever to happen when you consider the impact it may have on the security of our freedom and democracy in the Western world and to think, it was the people who made it and the people who chose it. Farewell freedom, I feel the Fascist fanfare.

Videogames, ruined. But seriously, I'm going to play that game for sure but let's all keep an open mind and don't let it change us.

Sony sucks and Nintendo f**ks

So, Sony releases their slim version of the PlayStation 3. True innovation if you ask me. Where other companies look to innovate and provide a better gaming experience to users, Sony just says, "Well, we'll make our system smaller and more attractive, and everyone will buy it." So they put it on a diet, but it wasn't working so what did they do? Lowered the price to $299. They basically turned the PlayStation 3 into a cheap crack whore. But look at what the competitions doing. Microsoft is going to revolutionize gaming with Natal, the motion sensing, AI peripheral... that will cost users upwards of 400$. Okay, so Microsoft is innovating, but not doing much for the consumer's wallets. Then there's Nintendo, who's been fucking us all along. They had the technology for 1:1 motion sensing at the very beginning, but instead of releasing it on launch day bundled inside the little Wii remote they decided, "Hey, we'll let them play with half-assed motion sensors for two years and then when the novelty of flailing their arms randomly wears off we can make an extra buck off 1:1 motion sensing and no one will notice our clever trick." Also, how can the slim, HD, blu-ray playing, 120 Gb hard-drive PS3 system with 100 times more processing power than the Wii be only 100$ more than the meagre Wii? Finally, after 3 years Nintendo has agreed to a 50$ price cut that brings the Wii from 250$ to 200$... they could have done much better not to bundle Wiisports with it in the first place and sell it at 200$ then cut it to 150$ now, but maybe the economics isn't on my side here. What's one of the selling points for the Wii? Its supposed to be cheap. Its supposed to be accessible to everyones price-range, but you'll probably find that it quickly becomes more expensive than any system with its many peripherals. Between the console, an extra wii remote an extra nunchuk, classic controllers, virtual console/wiiware games, SD cards, 2 wii motion pluses, balance boards, a few games, maybe a few accessories a la Wii Zapper we're looking at upwards of... 600-700$. That's only if you don't want to go for the full 4 controller set. And whats this new feature in Nintendo games that allows players to skip parts of the game if they're too hard? Or to have the game play it for them? I thought game guides were bad, but now the actual game will play for me. That's just obscene, its an interactive media for a reason, you aren't supposed to watch it like a movie. Casual gamers are hands down ruining gaming. So Sony sucks, Nintendo is screwing us over, and Microsoft is... tolerable but still staying costly. What choice are we to make? Well, to be honest, the choice I should have made was not to get a gaming system at all, because I rarely play videogames these days. They just aren't living up to their hype and publicity anymore. The gaming industry has taken a long slippery slope since the hayday of Nintendo 64 and PS1. There was a point where the Big Three stopped being passionate about what they did and just started grabbing for money at every turn, that is the point where I stopped being passionate about gaming. I feel like, as much as the gaming crowd is "expanding" to new audiences, it is ultimately dieing because of the policies of these corrupt organizations. The new gamer is a gamer that gets bored after a week and moves on to new things, but these are the perfect impulsive people with disposable income for the gaming industry to market to. These people don't care about quality, they care about a cheap thrill for two minutes and once the companies have sold their system what do they care if it gets thrown in the garbage? Nintendo sure doesn't care about attach rates, considering the average attach rate is 0 for Wii (with WiiSports bundled). Hopefully someone will start developing for people who actually enjoy videogames, hopefully, this boom of casual gamers will prove unprofitable for the companies, and I can start to enjoy gaming again.