Dazz

Who in the hell exactly is trying to ban videogames based on this? Some of you people are too eager to embrace martyrdom. This kid is by all accounts a legitimate schizophrenic and actually believed he was Carl from GTA. The excuse here isn't that it was a game, it's that he was schizophrenic; his illness simply manifested itself through GTA. The article hardly even references the game itself, it spends most of its time focusing on the drug use and psychotic issues of the man involved.

You know theoretically, Square-Enix and Microsoft could allow XBL Silver members to access its MMO without upgrading to Gold, and thereby only force users to pay the fee for whatever game they release. Also, the servers for FFXI (and EA games) exist outside of XBL itself, so it is not something that is forced onto a developer.

But to be completely honest, I'm about to go play Rainbow and continue not giving a shit about Final Fantasy.

The music at the end is the beginning of the Halo theme song.

Speaking as an owner of NWN II, he's actually right. The game is disappointment in almost every facet and is directly comparable to KOTOR II in that respect; Obsidian took what was a solid game and recycled its formula down to the ’t’, only in the process they screwed up several menial parts of it. He’s correct in all of his criticisms, too. In replicating NWN they’ve missed a lot of advancements that have taken place in RPG’s since its original release. Not only that, but the story and characters are entirely generic and uninspired. I realize there are people out there that would like nothing other than to play Neverwinter Nights over again – they’re the same people who wanted to play KOTOR over again – and couldn’t care less about the outside evolution of gameplay since its release. Unfortunately those are the same people giving Obsidian essentially a free pass on mailing it in not once, but twice now.

That said the reviewer did himself (and the gaming community) no favors with this. You can’t turn in something that is going to ruffle a fanbases feathers without making sure it’s written damn well, and this…well it wasn’t. It was poorly written and failed to properly make its point, which is almost as unfortunate as the game itself. Obsidian is going to get a free pass from its fans and the media, because what seems like the one person who was willing to call them on their missteps failed to get his point across. He’s now a part of the problem instead of the solution, which was obviously the very least of his intentions. What is even worse is that the fanbase can only reinforce its notions of the game by the fact that that one person had his review pulled under the pretense of undermining RPG fans, which is more than likely a way for them to remove it without acknowledging that the writer and his editor made a mistake in letting this thing see the light of day. It’s all very sad.

I think a lot of you are making a mistake in saying, "It's not necessary to have this in the game, so why should Rockstar?"

The question, rather, should be why shouldn't they? They have the right to place any given idea in any given context that they wanted [granted it's legal]. Your objections to it and its existence serve the same purpose as any extremist opinion that violence in games should be restricted or censored, and as a writer that scares me. You cannot advocate one freedom of expression while throttling another.

So the argument can be made that homosexuality is or is not wrong - that is not the issue here. The actual dilemma comes when Rockstar is not given the right to make you all bicker about it. The two greatest rights any of us in America have are of speech and choice, and there are too many people that forget that. We live in the greatest free market in the world and the loudest statement you can possibly make will come from simply not buying the game. Our nation will not and never has required censorship to address the sentiment of its people to any corporation or ideology, because the very foundation of the United States is based on our views.

In short - if you don't like it, don't buy it. The western world will not degrade into a homosexual cesspool nor will our civilization collapse because of a gay kiss. This barrier has been breached time and time again in other media - probably less often than it needs to be - and the fact that games are beginning to is nothing beyond logical. Take away the barrier itself and you're no better than Jack Thompson and the Violence Brigade.

1Up has failed us all.

The thing I really don’t understand is what X-Fire could offer to console gaming. A lot of the features that make it great are based on the fact that it’s a PC system; being able to jump from client to client and game to game easily; built in server searching functions for games; in-game time tracking. Most of this is built around the principle that you can easily swap to different games – with different friends – quickly. That loses its merit in the transition to console gaming, because you’re tethered to what is in your disc tray. There is no need for server searching, game changing, or various other features because they are either physically impossible due to the limitations of console gaming or become pointless for the same reason (specifically the inability to install games on a HD). What that leaves you with is essentially a downgraded version of XBox Live.

What becomes a question to me is if this shows that Sony is building a much less unified online structure than what XBox Live currently is. The true focus of a console specific service should begin and end with server capabilities, especially one that is broadband only. I would trade almost any secondary or tertiary features of both XBL and X-Fire for consistent, steady servers that I can rely on being up at any time of day. The success of XBox Live is a result of Microsoft’s commitment to that, and if Sony has decided to once again leave the bulk of their server load on independent developers they’ve made a mistake – the EA private servers on XBL (and formerly on PS2) are an example of that.

I do like X-Fire, and I’m excited to see what they’ll do to augment the service for PS3 despite my not getting one (maybe they’ll decide not to include spyware!). But my concerns lay with how these steps and measures speak for the PS3, and they are many in number. That is aside the fact that it’ll be virtually impossible to actually improve upon the foundation of XBox Live. Consider me skeptical.

As someone that has personally been affected by racism (as almost all minorities are), the ad is much more signifigant than it will ever be to someone else because it represents a very clear racial overtone of white superiority...and that really isn't the problem. The problem is that even after all we've gone through as a society, all that minorities have struggled to gain over the past 200 years, this is still allowed...and not only allowed, it's defended. It's defended by people that believe racism is "gone" or only enabled by our paying attention to it, as if there is something to gain in silence. That's the problem I have with this, that Sony could ever possibly feign ignorance towards the racial importance of the ad and actually get away with it. The underyling motive and artistic intent of the ads may not have been racial, but the fact is that they construe a form of racism, and Sony should have never cleared it for production because of that.

And really, I don't know what's worse; if they knew it would hurt when people saw it, or if they were so oblivious as to think it wouldn't. Either racism runs so deep that no-one cares, or it runs so deep that it isn't even considered.