Stephen King Weighs in on Video Game Violence
Comment by: bzr_wzr
Nominated by: Hayko

Just my two cents: The amount of condescension and disrespect here is just unreal sometimes. People with differing values and opinions are not automatically dumb, idiots, morons, fascists, anarchists, or otherwise-negatively connotated. They simply come from different frames of reference. People should respect the opinions of others, unless they are presented in a manner that is just outright rude, hostile, or disrespectful. People on both sides of the argument here have presented valid opinions, and simply writing them off because you happen to disagree with them is ultimately a disservice to yourself and your future as a raitonal human being, not to mention your peers. And, again, I'd like to reiterate that this applies to people on both sides of the issue (or any issue, really).

Argue, but don't condescend.

Pachter Predicts Wii Fit Win
Comment by: Sixtail
Nominated by: NeoAkira

Hardcore gamers are angry because Nintendo is again #1 and they had little to nothing to do with it. They are angry because Nintendo has discovered what everyone else knew, the money and marketshare is not with the self confessed hardcore gamers who tend to buy 15-20 games a year, but with the casual gamers who buy 5-10 games and play the hell out of them. They are angry because they are waking up to the fact that all their focused rage means complete dick in the grand plan of things, the biggest blockbusters are just that because causals drive the market and have driven the market from..hell the 8bit years, but have only really gotten attention from the PSX launch.

They are angry because they feel Nintendo is no longer sucking their taint enough with game offerings and thus spew misbegotten slanted talking points like "Minigames lol" "Two GameCubes taped together, lol" and rage like babies without their bottle when Nintendo does small minor things like..not allowing you to do the full range of things with a Gamecube controller that you can do with the Wiimote and scream "Lazy programing. How dare you not cater to me and my refusal to adopt the new controller!" They claim Nintendo's focus is on causal gamers when the 'Wii' series of games that are causal focused amount to a whopping '3' titles, yet when the typical Nintendo mainstays come out, they demand new IP's and when new IP's are released by Nintendo or anyone, they bomb in sales because hardcore gamers forget that they are at best 30% of the marketshare and that translates into complete shit for sales. When causal focused titles rack up millions of copies sold, they retreat to sites like this and rage among fellow nerds the crime of it all...the crime that the devs go and make a game that will make money.

These hardcore gamers claim they have supported Nintendo for years, yet they demand Nintendo do things that Nintendo does not do. Valid points they have like poor online are completely washed out because they can't stop acting like Nintendo's murdered their wife and child and the endless, endless meme dropping.

It is my belief that most of all, hardcores feel the last days for them at hand and believe that just because causal games sell better that Nintendo is leading the Four Horsemen up from hell to ruin all they hold dear..when that line of thinking is stupid, the flood of causals can only lead to growth and if properly taken care of, many of those causals might fall in love with gaming as these angry, hateful hardcores and thus result in proper sales for games the hardcores drool and masturbate so hard over, yet bomb so hard.

British Press Offering Cash for Lies About Gaming Crime
Comment by: Cruithne
Nominated by: Nirolak

I gots to have another go.

OK, How videogames turned me to a life of crime

I started out at University doing a media studies course, I was young, pretty and idealistic in those days. It was always my goal to be a hard hitting scandal exposing journalist, I wanted to change the world for the better, I wanted to make a real difference in people's lives.
Everything was going so well, I graduated with first class honors and soon found myself being headhunted by the biggest names in news publishing. I took a a job with The D**** M*** sure I was going to be a big name in journalism. But then things changed. I kept approaching my bosses with tips about scandals involving the highest in the land, sex parties with politicians and hookers, captains of industry up to their necks in criminality and tax dodging deals. The bosses didn't want to know, "we don't care about that stuff, just give a story with something about tits" they'd say.
I thought I could handle it at first, after all, what's wrong with a little titillation for the masses?
but it got worse, instead of me bringing them stories, they'd start telling me which stories they wanted, usually involving some harmless sub culture, something that the parents knew little about and could be terrified into thinking was the sure sign of the impending apocalypse.

It is with shame that I now think back on the headlines I gave them:

Hip Hop linked to autism

Comic books and cancer, is there a link?

The seedy underworld of the Teletubbies

My bosses loved it, the parents were terrified and the papers sold my the million.
And then one day my editor called me into his office.

What do you know about video games? he asked me.

Quite a bit I replied, I've been playing them for years, it's a great pastime and the community as a whole are a decent bunch of people always willing to help out someone down on their luck, donating games to kids in hospitals and sending games to troops stuck out in some foreign country, trying to make their hellish existence just that little bit better. And that's not all, I continued, for every negative study there's usually two or three demonstrating the positive side to games, the valuable skills learned through playing games and their use as a tool for teaching, I mean for instance,did you know that most surgeons who grew up playing video games perform better with new technology than older surgeons, that's a recorded fact.

He just glared at me and said are you taking the piss?

I said nothing, I knew better than to talk back when he was angry.

Look, he said, I want an exposé of videogames and I want it by this afternoon.
But I don't have anything bad to say I answered.
Then make something up, was his reply.

Make something up, isn't that, you know...illegal?

He glared even more, got very red in the face and screamed, look you little shit, there's an election coming up and the powers that be don't want people talking about stuff like the economy and the state of the hospitals, so it's our job to give the poor sods who buy our papers something else to think about, now make something up and it better be good or you'll be out of a job by this time tomorrow.

I said nothing, I just hung my head and left the office.

I had it finished by five O'clock, the headline read: Paedophiles play videogames, and so do your children

Well, he said, it's a bit big for a headline, but it'll do, well done, there'll be a nice bonus in your paypacket at the end of this month, and the Prime Minister wanted me to say thank you.
I couldn't speak.
After that they wanted more and more, and I gave them everything they asked for, I invented fictitious crimes, fabricated entire families torn apart by gaming and bribed desperate people to lie, even to the point of reporting imaginary crimes to the police.
And that was my undoing, you see, unlike me there are still real journalists out there, ones with integrity, and one of the independent press got wind of what I was up to, he exposed me and my paper, printed it all on the front page and supplied the police with a list of my crimes.

And that ladies and gentlemen is how videogames turned me to a life of crime.

Slate Declares the Wii Online a Smashing Failure
Comment by: NeoAkira
Nominated by: Captain Impulse

@Dag:
I can understand your stance on Nintendo draining money out of companies more deserving of the money. But I can't really agree that motion-sensitivity is a gimmick. It can be used in a gimmicky fashion, but the fact is that many developers haven't even tried to find a creative use for it (albeit they have no reason to as good games sell just as poorly as bad ones (Zack and Wiki)). And although Motion controls have been around for a long time they've never been as widely used as they have for the Wii.

Now I'm not saying the Wii is innovative, because it's not really. But I think things like Wii Sports and Wii Fit are more than marketing. They appeal to people who would otherwise see nothing appealing about video games. Now this might tie back in to your comment about Nintendo taking money away from the industry, but to be fair the majority of people who bought the Wii because it was a "hot" item and was "innovative" probably wouldn't have ended up buying a 360 or PS3. Wii = $250. 360 = minimum $350 and PS3 = minimum $400. I don't think those people would be willing to pay $100-150 more for a system that uses your standard controller. Now putting aside those people who bought a Wii purely on hype, we would have gamers who bought the Wii as their video game systems. From what I've heard on this forum, most people seem to have either a 360 or PS3 or both in addition to the Wii. And the fact that it's attach rate is low means that people are buying more games for other systems, which in turn means that it's not really taking away that much revenue from the industry. Sure it's taking away some, but not so significant that it's having a negative impact. I mean look at the total revenue for the video game industry for 2007. The highest ever, in history. So you can't tell me all that extra revenue is going to Nintendo, it's getting spread all around as I see it. Plus Wii games are cheaper to develop for than PS3 or 360 so even if a game doesn't do too well I'm sure many developers can recuperate their losses.

Now while many people dislike Nintendo's online system (as I do) there are still some aspects of it that I enjoy. For instance, a very small amount of memory on the Wii coupled with bad online infrastructure means no DLC for Wii games. I'm fine with that, as it forces developers to put all the content they can on the disc and not end up charging me for crap later; but this does have a downside as it stops me from using DLC usefully like with GH3 (Fuck rock band for the Wii!).

Now you make a good point. The PS3 is creating more advanced hardware/software integration with their video game system, the 360 is creating a more versatile online infrastructure, what is the Wii doing? I would say that in those two categories it's doing nothing. But I would still care to argue that it's expanding the audience for video games more than the other two. Yes the Wii has a low attach rate, but a large amount of the people buying it are newbies to gaming; they aren't gonna buy more than 2-3 games a year and that's fine by me. The point isn't that the people who bought the Wii as their first console begin playing video games fanatically. The point is that they realize "hey, perhaps video games are more than just a violence-inducing, child-like activity...perhaps it's a medium of entertainment that can be enjoyed by adults and children alike."

Shows like Oprah and Ellen DeGeneres displaying the Wii for their brainless audiences to observe as being an exception to the violent video game stereotype is a positive push for the industry. The Wii is like GH for casual gamers who don't want to play musical video games.

And for the record I agree with you about Eye of Judgment. That's actual innovation, but I believe that the Wiimote creates an opportunity for innovation even if the idea of motion-sensitivity isn't innovative itself.

Slate Declares The Wii A Smashing Failure
Comment by: obo
Nominated by: Demonbird

@ Sunjammer:
Shortsighted is shrugging off Sony and making little effort to work with all but the biggest Japanese third-party devs. Conservative is refusing to invest in improved console hardware or service, maintaining out-of-date content standards and refusing to take even small fiscal risks. Xenophobic is not caring about, and even fearing, markets outside of Japan because nobody in their top management quite knows what to do other than keep trying to sell units - no first-party understanding, or even desire to understand, what Western markets want.
Changing controller shapes isn't breaking rules. Sega made a much greater effort in the 16-bit days to push technology forward but didn't have the business model or resources to stay with Nintendo. Sony made a much greater effort in the 32/64-bit generation to push core console technologies - graphics, storage, audio - forward. Microsoft made a much greater effort with the Xbox to push online gameplay to the same level as PCs.
While Sega's bundling modems and Web browsers with their console, Sony's adding FMV on cheap media and Microsoft's mastering online gaming networks, what does Nintendo do with the Gamecube? Shit all over their own modem and broadband adapters by making no effort to sell them, and shit all over third-party demands for a high-storage format by going with the smallest disc capacity possible. Why? They thought load times were more important than rich content. They thought there was no market - and in Japan, there wasn't - for online gaming to justify the expense.
And what rules has Nintendo broken? They kept such strict prohibitions on blood and gore through the N64 era that they cemented themselves as a "kiddie console" in the West, and they rode the cartridge format so far into the ground that they entered the disc era with no experience and few third-party friends.
So Nintendo makes a console that finally supports the Internet, and what do they do? Ride inadequate storage into the dirt and cement themselves as a "kiddie console" with inane friend codes built to save the children. So long as each unit sells for a profit, Nintendo doesn't care. They give you a big-bang interface "innovation" - shoulder buttons, analog joysticks on a gamepad, a light gun without the gun stock - and sit on everything else hardware-related.
Obviously Nintendo cares about the world outside of Japan. But they won't ever let anything top the Japanese market as their key to a steady profit. If that means irrationally half-assing features that are low priorities to Japanese gamers - online functionality, graphics, platform inclusion in multi-platform third-party releases - so be it."

I Wonder What Will Break Next
Comment by: Eltigro
Nominated by: Pezdispenser

Here's the deal, as far as I've seen.

You can put scraps from a plate down the garbage disposal. Don't put large amounts of stuff down there. Keep the water running the entire time. Let the garbage disposal run longer than you think you need to (don't turn it off as soon as you don't see food anymore). Run the water for a little bit longer after you turn the disposal off. A friend of the family who is a plumber (not Mario) loves garbage disposals. That's what he gets most of his emergency house calls concerning. =)

You've probably figured this out but, don't put a bunch of potato peelings down the disposal. Here's why. Potatoes are high in starch. Why is that bad? Starch makes an excellent glue. Think of paper mache. The garbage disposal doesn't chop up food really, it's more like a blender with dull blades. It spins really fast and smashes food against the outside walls. Potatoes smash out there and then stick on the walls (remember the starch = glue thing?) That's why it backed up. Would have really been bad if you had put it down there, then turned off the water and not used the sink for a while. If that stuff had dried, you might need a chisel.

My mother-in-law's sister clogged up our disposal with potato skins just before my wife's baby shower. Not happy times.

Oils and Fats can cause a similar problem in that, they may go down the sink as a liquid, but if they cool and turn solid, they will stick to the sides of the drain pipe and cause clogging.

Best way to clean a disposal if it's stinking (wasn't mentioned, but I'll throw it in.) There's a drain for the disposal that the water comes out to go down the drain. It's probably a hose or something that connects to the pipe drain for the other side of the sink. If you disconnect this hose, you can buy a pipe cap for a few cents at the hardware store that will fit over the opening on the disposal. Cap up the disposal so it will not drain. Make sure it's tight. Run a little water to check for leaks. Now put some non-chlorine bleach such as Oxy-Clean in the disposal and run some warm water into it until it comes up to the bottom of the sink. Turn on the disposal and check for leaks again. Let it run for a few minutes. Picture what's going on inside. The blades are turning around in warm water with a cleaner. The Oxy bleach is cleaning all parts of the disposal that food might hit, stick to, rot, and start stinking. After a few minutes, stop the disposal, position a bucket or large bowl under the drain, and remove the cap. Reconnect the drain hose and run some more water with the disposal on as a kind of rinse cycle. The disposal should be as clean as it can be.

Other things to know about your disposal. Won't turn on? Checked the breaker box and the GFCI? There is a reset button on the bottom, push that and try again. There is also a manual crank for your disposal. You'll need a large hex wrench but you can use that to see if it will turn at all.

What's sad is, this is a video gaming website, but my biggest post ever is about a garbage disposal.

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