Thursday, January 31, 2008

Fox News and What NOT to Do




Not that long a small website reported a story, which was error filled, puclished a story on "graphic sex" in Mass Effect, few people bodered to check the news from that site as they were flat out wrong. The incident went without much thought in the world and everyone thought that the false statements would cease; we were wrong.


A couple or so weeks ago, Fox News recycled that story from the small website and blew it up into a full debate (see video on top of the page). This would had been perfectly ok, had they correct the errors of the original story unfortunately, they only added upon the already big pile of lies found in the original story.


First, as pointed out by the video game journalist Geoff Keighley, for the sex video to appear, the player has to follow a path that is both long and complex. The game does not just load and asks you "do you want to see sex scene now?"


Fox News repedeatly stated that the video game Mass Effect "featured full frontal nudity and interactive sex scenes." The reality is that the game does not show full frontal nudity since it only shows angled shots which display as much nudity as you would find in other popular prime telivision shows. The game is does not feauture interective sex either. Like many other video games and forms of media, it features a NON-interactive video with the shots previously defined before. If someone was to edit a few clips from some of the scenes of prime time shows, the outcome would be far worst. Looking at movies, things only get worst. Have any you guys seen or read the plot of the Saw series? Are you telling me it is ok to display "torture-porn" in movies, and to display sex in TV, but it is not ok to show a clip, on a video game?

The sad reality is that most of the people running the world right now have little to no idea of what a video game are or what they are made of. Indeed, video games have become the easy band wagon to ride to gain some votes.

For those of you reading this, just keep in mind that when you see something on the news, it does NOT have to be true.

Real Story

Saturday, January 26, 2008

From One End to the Other: MLG and the Wii

In these our modern times, what people thought of gaming and gamers has radically changed. The image of some fat nerd playing in front of his computer has largely been eradicated due to the more accesible consoles that have been created. Nevertheless, these consoles may have come to change more than the gamers' image.
What is a harcore? One look at the wonderful world of MLG will tell you that. Only those who go through rigourous tests can have the honor to become an MLG player...or you pay you way up. Like everything else in life, MLG is all about the money. In order to enter into a tournament, you basically only need to pay the fee and create an account online. The only thing that stops most people from entering is the extreme level of competition of most players in there. These are people who devote almost all day long to practicing in these tournaments. They often live from the sposoring that companies like ATI, INTEL, Ubisoft, and the alike provide for them.


The league is not only for men; believe it or not, there are very hardcore girls out there. Ubisoft, a company that makes games, sponsors what could be one one of the most deceiving teams out there: The Frag Dolls (pictured right). The picture only shows four of a group of about twelve which play everything from PC to Xbox 360. Hence, anyone can be MLG, but if you don't want to go in the first round of the competition, do you? If you guys are interested in battling it out online out go to MLG (click here) to see what's up.


On the other side of the spectrum, we have the Wii which has come to break what a lot of people thought was possible in the world of video gaming. The success of the Wii comes from its super cheap price point . Although most people don't have $250 just lying there in the floor, it is still not such a high price to pay to have some fun. The Wii is a pretty cool machine to bust out when your friends come home. Still, the Wii can have unforseen consequenses for "hardcore" gamers.


Some of these consequences are that as people buy more and more "party" games, the rest of the genres may vanish away. Games like Halo, Half Life, or even Mario and Zelda may not even be made in the future if people aren't buying them. That is why many hardcores are angry at the Wii, because it may destroy all that they care and love.
In the middle, of these two extrmes, we have games like World of Warcraft (WoW). WoW has attracted not only casuals, but also hardcores into its world. Personally, I haven't really play that much WOW since it has a monthly free to play. I don not have a WoW account but I have, seen someone else playing and have often times wanted to jump in. However, WoW also is one of those games that makes the time disappear really fast; next thing you know five hours have slipped by hence, it is not my type of game.
What is the future of gaming? I don't know, really. I just hope that in the future I still get to play first person shooters with a joystick.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

First Post!!!!!!!!!!!

First of all, let me apologize for my pic since I took the pic in the library when I working with in the blog. It should change, hopefully, in the future.

On other news, yeah MLG!!!!! Even though most of you guys haven't play games like Halo 3 or Half Life, I know most of you have played Guitar Hero or the "infamous" Wii. So, you guys know where I am coming from by playing games competitively.
I'm not into "official" leagues anymore since it requires some retarded amount of time of practicing just to hang out with the big guys. College takes some time too you know... I do still, however, hit XboxLive now and then, and I'm always ready for a challenge in whatever games you guys are playing. My gamertag is "The C Nerd." 
If you guys are curious about something gaming related or chemistry related, just post back!
Isaac