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Denver, 9:05 PM
Fri Nov 20
55 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/19/09
For example, Band Hero got hit with more heavy edits than Radio Disney and yet it got a E10 for "Mild Language". They blocked out "Whiskey" in "American Pie" for pete's sake and the ESRB still nailed them with that tag.
11/18/09
11/18/09
Edit: Damn. Not again! Should have scrolled down first....
ummm....umm....
*does a jig ashley simpson style*
11/18/09
11/18/09
#speakup
11/18/09
Foot: "Allow der' ow are ew?"
Gun: "I'm doing fine. Sorry mate, I'm gewng to haf to shoot you now!"
Foot: "oooh...."
PEW!
/Dunno why I did it in an English /Cockney accent...
11/18/09
how many 'French/cockney' accents do you know of?
p.s the dialect inflections you've used don't imply cockney anyway.
Seems almost Dorset. Maybe Yorkshire.
Cockney would of ended with "PAAAAAATTTTTT" anyway.
11/18/09
You got me, I've been watching My Fair Lady again...
#speakup
11/18/09
11/18/09
I know I have seen a few titles get 'T' Ratings and thinking "What? This title is much worse that (insert M Rated game)," but I can't think of them off the top of my head right now.
11/18/09
Sounds like the problem isn't "Devs try to cheat the ESRB" but instead "The ESRB is too lazy to do anything more than watch a video"
11/18/09
If I'm not mistaken, yes, it's a twenty-minute trailer.
Be glad they don't have to play something like Oblivion from start to finish before it gets released (although this has been suggested).
(While I'm on the subject of Oblivion, *for example*, I think it should have been rated Mature, but not because of the topless hacks: the violence in the game seemed a little intense at times for a Teen rating, and I think what really made me think this was walking into this one room, for one of the side quests, in which a murder has scattered people's dismembered and bloody body parts, complete with his dead mother's head. Maybe I'm wrong, but that seemed a bit much for what the ESRB would have found acceptable for a teenager.)
But yes, I'd say that Oblivion is a comparatively tame Mature game (or an oft-intense Teen game).
There was this old PC RPG called Soulbringer where you could take a pickaxe and knock someone's head off, causing blood to spurt everywhere. That game was rated Teen.
11/18/09
#speakup
11/18/09
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#speakup
11/19/09
If you were offended, apologies.
11/19/09
Oh, no, it's fine -- *I'm not talking about you or any specific person,* but I can definitely see how someone who hadn't been following the Oblivion situation *from the beginning* (this happened so soon after the game's initial launch that I would imagine that there are many people who are none the wiser) might not understand what I was talking about.
I have to ask: Is your username a reference to the Samuel Beckett play? (Also, thank you very much for your being so considerate! ^_^)
#speakup
11/19/09
As for being considerate: nobody is these days, you know? Especially on the internet. It takes so little effort to be pleasant and so much to be angry, so I went with the happier choice.
11/18/09
11/18/09
Not that anyone pays attention to ratings anyway.
11/18/09
@TrjnRabbit: That headshot never happened... and I and Mr. Wilson were never here.
11/18/09
11/18/09
It's just the common perception that M rated games are better. The real reason it was posted was to drop a link to TV Tropes and have everyone who read my comment disappear for a few hours.
11/18/09
#speakup
11/18/09
I find these kind of baseless accusations offensive. The screenshots I gave to the ESRB (shown above) for "Death Bringer 6:Death been Brought" were perfectly legitimate.
11/18/09
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11/18/09
I know of a few that should have been rated C for crap.
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11/18/09
Really, I'm excited to see what they're going to go with. Will it be like the Bowser of Objectivism, and they'll go with the extreme opposite, Kantianism? Or will it be like Ayn Rand's Wario, and they'll go with the twisted version of the individualist hero, Nietzscheism?
Regardless, I can't say that I liked everything about BioShock 1. I didn't mind the overall anti-moral-universalism tone, though obviously I disagree with it, but I can say that what went way beyond normal critique of an ideological system was the assertion that killing others to save yourself is tantamount to *SPOILERS, RUN, PLAY BIOSHOCK FIRST!!* capturing a nuclear weapon, presumably in order to satiate a power-crazed hunger by threatening the world with and potentially using said weapon. Ah well, the rest of the game was great.
11/19/09
Or perhaps it's a critique of the slippery slope of allowing act-utilitarianism to erode what society enshrine as categorical imperatives, much Bioshock did, except the imperatives are collectivist rather than individualist this time around.
I'm not an expert on Objectivism, but some of its tenets do seem deontological (read: Kantian); there are moral ways to act that are not made immoral if they are not act-utilitarian.
11/19/09
*Spoilers, run, run, run if you haven't played BioShock* Fontaine, I think, was an evaluation of altruism in the same way that Andrew Ryan was an analysis on self-interest. Obviously they could put a bigger focus on the former this time; I'm just pointing out that in a smaller way they have already touched on it.
I think a focus on collectivism would be great, but really, I think there are even better ways to go. Part of what made BioShock great was that it took the flip side of the overdone 1984/Brave New World/We the Living collectivist dystopia, and instead of protecting a regime's power by enforcing altruism, we got the total opposite, with an arguably non-power-mad leader who enforced the primacy ofself-interest instead of the primacy of good will toward others. To go an say "well, we're going to flip BioShock 1 on its head this time around!" isn't as great as it seems, because it was already the flipping around of a stale setting; now you're just going back to the original. They could, of course, have an Andrew Ryan type take charge this time, and have it be less of a critique of how leaders like Fontaine will always ruin utilitarian utopias, and more of a critique about if it would be worth it even if it came as advertised with a true believer like Ryan at the helm, instead of a Stalin.
As far as categorical imperatives go, I hope they don't take that approach; it's too much like saying "hey, look how neither collectivism nor individualism completely fall in line with conventional wisdom!" Using society's categorical imperatives as your premise is not conducive to a good critique of any system. Not only would it give collectivism the high ground, but it would be choosing and incorrect metric against which to measure a philosophy's worth.
Anyway, yeah, you're right about Objectivism in one respect. Act-utilitarianism, or utilitarianism in any form, is totally disregarded as being of any worth to the individual; it is not a consideration at all. However, it is not deontological insofar as it is virtue (intent) based. Practically, of course, it can be hard to tell what a person was thinking in his own mind, so, if it is absolutely necessary to make a judgment, you may have to take what you reason he expected the consequences of his action or inaction to be, based on what you know of the situation. Obviously, like I said, if it can be avoided it should be until you have the best knowledge possible. In personal terms, however, if your action causes someone's death but your intention was to protect your own life from a sincerely, though falsely, perceived immediate threat, then you are fine morally and at most should be restrained or killed simply because you're a danger in that you're paranoid or delusional, but for a normal person the contextual conditions may have been stacked against him, and thus it is not his fault and no action need be taken against him.
#speakup
11/19/09
I'm pretty confident in my prediction about the critique of collectivism - the developers and previewers have pretty much stated that it's the focus this time around, with both religious collectivist rationales and statist collectivist rationales being caricatured. What particular philosophical system the final boss adheres to is not yet clear.
#speakup
11/19/09
Indeed, I suppose I shouldn't really expect much difference in terms of evaluation style between the 2 games. Ah well, if they use "life" as the standard of value, even accidentally, from which morality is derived, then at least that much won't be flawed. Although really, it's just going to boil down to particular problems in any given integrated system from the universal problem (according to Levine, and, I assume, his game-designing progeny) of absolute certainty; you could play up that idea in a million different ways, which is what I expect they'll do, the impossibility of absolute knowledge being really the sole criticism of the first game, and widely applicable to any philosophy, even those that attempt to acknowledge it, like Kant's.
#speakup
11/19/09
#speakup
11/19/09
I don't know that it would hurt the mass appeal. The masses (not used derogatorily) will still like the action and gameplay, and the people who like the philosophical stuff will enjoy both. Assuming they go Levine's way, and take the position that all primary premises are ultimately arbitrary, most of your intellectual types who like the philosophical aspect won't mind, since they agree anyway, and most people who would mind won't care enough to be bothered by it, since they're in it for the action.
You're right though, I think. Lack of absolute knowledge is really just derivative of the assertion that any given irreducible primary must be arbitrary, but that is the whole point of Objectivism; it holds that there are non-arbitrary, necessary, and undeniable axioms, and that absolute knowledge is entirely possible, and in fact inescapable if reason is used and the correct premises are held.
Since other philosophies don't espouse the same belief, taking the same approach against Kant or Plato isn't really going to have the same drama, since they already try to address the "problem." It works so well against Objectivism because absolute certainty is its foundation, its core tenet.
#speakup
11/18/09
"Creatively liberty!" they cry... how creative is it doing something that has been overdone? Not to mention how dependence on cursing limits your usage of vocabulary.
"Shock value!" some claim... but these words have existed far longer than any living human... how can that really be shocking? Plus, shock value has been the excuse for at least the last 20 years...
I just don't get the appeal, I guess...
11/18/09
11/18/09
11/18/09
That movie was hilarious for exactly that reason.
Overuse of profanity is a crutch for bad writers who want to try and sound mature, because they know that mature things can contain swearing. Mature media contains swearing, therefore swearing is mature. Anyone who understands what a fallacy can work out what's going on there.
That's not to say overuse of profanity can't be used in good writing. . . it just generally has a point.
11/18/09
11/18/09
But damn ... yeah that script was bad! And it would have ruined Dead Space for me if I saw it first. :-o
Good example of overusing profanity: Just about anything Quentin Tarantino writes. XD
11/18/09
All of these are old hat what we as a language needs is a new swear word...
11/18/09
Ham Doctor.
11/18/09
I found out you guys are missing 'Tosser' from your vocab the other day.
So you could use that.
Actually I think English has a ton of swearwords that we just use.
'Sugar' is one my gran uses alot.
Mainly to stop herself saying shit in front of the kids, but, I quiet like it.
Frak would do well. Considering it is used already in several TV shows.
11/18/09
11/18/09
@#c16931661:Ham Doctor!
11/18/09
Thought you guys use 'Splenda'?
(which after trying to hunt this ad down amongst the various 'splenda is evil' videos it seems you guys might be okay with substituting shit with splenda)
11/18/09
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11/18/09
Us marclars came to Marclar on the marclar, and we were wondering if these marclars could stay on Marclar with you marclars.
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11/18/09
Ahem, excuse me for that. Interesting post, mate!