Tag: Video Games

FYI: Leland Yee Is Out Of State Custody Next Month


The disgraced ex-senator leaves his halfway house.

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Summer Game Fest Promises Four Months of Events


To cure those no-E3 blues.

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Retronomicon: The Death Of Quirky Rhythm Games


Pata pata pata pon.

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Bad Press: Reuters Uses School Shooter To Blame Video Games Again


It wouldn’t be a day ending in Y if incompetent “journalists” and opportunistic politicians weren’t using the death of children to forward an agenda of nonsensical fear. Cue in this week where an 11 year old in Mexico entered a school and shot a teacher and six others before killing himself. The culprit? Video games of course. Just check out the opening sentence on Reuters.

“An 11-year-old boy armed with two guns entered a school in northern Mexico, shot dead a teacher and wounded at least six others before killing himself, possibly under the influence of a violent video game, local officials said on Friday.”

Under the influence of a violent video game, like the kid drank a 40oz of violent games and drunkenly stumbled into school with a gun in his hand and rage in his heart. Notice the use of the term “possibly,” an easy out for when rational minds come in to call out the underhanded fear mongering. Meanwhile Governor Miguel Riquelme, who might otherwise have to take responsibility for violence occurring in his state, pushed the blame to video games as well.

“He was well behaved, but he told some of his classmates that ‘Today was the day,'” he said. “And what we can observe is that the boy was influenced by a video game.”

How was the kid influenced by a video game? Governor Riquelme doesn’t have the time, the resources, or the actual facts to explain. Just take his word for it and remember to vote Riquelme in the next election.

The game getting blamed is Natural Selection because the kid was wearing a shirt with “natural selection” written on it and we can only assume that Governor Riquelme had one of his assistants Google “Natural Selection video game” and came up with the first result. Of course nobody from Reuters took the time to investigate what Natural Selection is because they would have found a game almost as old as the shooter and could not conceivably have inspired the incident.

Or they did research it and realized that nobody would buy their narrative, so they hid the finer details. Natural Selection is a first person shooter/real time strategy hybrid that pits marines against aliens in various sci-fi locations that are not a Mexican school. It came out in 2012 and has a population of a few hundred people still playing it. Given the game’s age and small player base, it’s probably safe to assume that the kid had never played the game or heard of it.

 

“Experts have long debated whether there is a link between violent video games and aggressive behavior.”

Experts have also pretty unanimously sided with the conclusion that there are no links between violent video games and aggressive behavior, but that doesn’t make for a good story. Experts have also agreed that mass shooters like to copycat other mass shooters, and do you know who else was obsessed with the idea of natural selection? The Columbine shooters. And numerous other violent wackadoodles who believe that they are just culling the weak so that the strong can survive. I wouldn’t expect Dave Graham over at Reuters to be familiar with the Columbine shooting, since discovering that information would require outside research that wasn’t hand-fed to him for the article in question.

Oh and the shooter’s mom died years ago. But it’s the video games for sure. He was a perfectly peaceful, just like how the Columbine shooters were just peaceful loners.

What’s incredible is that it took five credited names to shove out this low quality work only to get outmatched by one blogger in probably half the time it took them to go to print.

China Clamps Down On Child Spending, Adult Gambling In Games


Sorry industry!

China, a country famous for its friendliness toward entertainment media, has officially begun cracking down on the gaming industry in the name of protecting vulnerable citizens. As reported by NPR, the move outlines six initiatives to prevent minors from indulging in online games. Minors are restricted to playing 90 minutes of video games every day except national holidays when that limit goes up to three hours. In addition, minors will be limited to spending $28 or $57 per month depending on age and can not game between the hours of 10p.m. and 8:00a.m.

But the restrictions don’t just apply to kids. All Chinese gamers will be prohibited from enjoying games depicting sex, gore, violence, and gambling.

China’s new directives implicate adult gamers too. A state spokesperson says that everyone, regardless of age, is prohibited from playing games that depict “sexual explicitness, goriness, violence and gambling.”

No word on how loot boxes fit into the depiction of gambling.

Source: NPR via MassivelyOP

Food Reviews: FPS Gaming Supplement


Those of you who read MMO Fallout know that I’m a hardcore gamer with hardcore gamer needs. Coffee? Forget that casual nonsense, I mainline Red Bull and Mountain Dew via IV drip 24 hours a day. I’ve had six heart attacks in the last forty five seconds, but you wouldn’t know it while I’m 360 no-scope headshotting scrubs and getting those chicken dinners. Are chicken dinners still a thing? Time to floss dance.

Anyway, I had the opportunity to score a sample pack of FPS gaming supplement in devastated dew flavor. This isn’t a sponsored article, but it absolutely can be. First thing I want to say about this packet is that it tells me I am absolutely going blind. Maybe it’s just the small print but I can’t read the back of the package without a magnifying glass. Actually it might be the lack of focus from not having FPS in my body.

So you mix the package with 8-12 oz of water. Since I’m not a baby, I decided to use as little water as recommended. I also chose my toxic consumer advocacy mug to drink this out of, since I thought it would be funny that if FPS kills me that my death be somewhat related to a SidAlpha product. Some fuel for those Kotaku “the gaming industry just got a little better” articles that would no doubt follow.

This stuff doesn’t look great.

But how does it taste? FPS Devastated Dew tastes a bit like flat Mountain Dew that someone dropped battery acid into. It starts out on the sweet side but you quickly get kicked in the teeth with a very bitter aftertaste that digs deep into your throat and nestles in the back of your tonsils and refuses to go away. It has the same bitterness like chewing on the rind of an orange, and I’d hate to call it painful to drink, but it is. It really is.

I understand the bitterness since the ingredient list is just a ton of bitter components and no sugar, but it doesn’t change the fact that every time I burp I get the taste of stomach acid in my mouth. It probably doesn’t help that against my better judgment I forced myself to drink the entire cup.

So how well does it work? I will admit, pretty well. It does exactly what it says it does and I found myself more energetic, better focused, and video games. Also video games. Don’t judge me.

Video games.

[Breaking] Daybreak Undergoing Fourth Set Of Layoffs In Two Years


Daybreak Game Company is laying off more people, a statement that has become all too familiar over the past couple of years. While an official statement has not been made by the company, Daybreak (now ex) programmer Alex Hoffman posted that today was his last day at the company as part of a “studio wide layoff.” There have been no confirmations of how many were let go or how many remain at the studio.

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MMO Fallout has contacted Daybreak and will update this piece if we receive a response.

MMO Rant: Onigiri On Switch Is A Pathetic Mess


Sporting Playstation 1 graphics and Super Nintendo performance, Onigiri is the most pathetic thing that will release on the Nintendo Switch in 2018.

Onigiri is such an offensively incompetent mess that I find it hard to believe that the game wasn’t made this bad on purpose, either as a method of intentionally driving a business into the ground to fulfill a personal vendetta, or it’s just the front for an international money laundering operation like a pizzeria run by the mob that gets its real money selling heroin on the side. Am I saying that developer Cyberstep Inc has underlying motivations for releasing this game on the Switch apart from releasing a game? Yes. Yes, I am.

And I do so because the alternative is to admit that Cyberstep is one of the worst developers to put out an Asian MMO, which is like giving the worst score of a pool of test takers that already sit in the .001 percentile in a classroom full of baboons. With this show of competence, I wouldn’t allow any of Cyberstep’s developers to boil me water for tea out of fear of somehow managing to be poisoned in the effort while my house burns down. It astounds the mind that people come into work on a daily basis, call this game a job well done, and actually get a paycheck to put this stuff out. The folks at Cyberstep do get a paycheck, right? This isn’t an involuntary internship program that specifically hires poetry students with no programming knowledge?

I’m going to state the obvious and point out that Onigiri is a port and isn’t new. It is, however, a port from a 2013 game. Yes, this game came out in 2013. It was ported incompetently not too long ago to the Playstation and Xbox where it exhibits most of the same problems that it does on the Nintendo Switch.

And where to begin with the Switch problems? Onigiri runs at a wonderful five frames per second, generally getting down into the slideshow territory the moment you try to do, well, anything. It doesn’t help that the game has a draw distance of roughly twenty feet resulting in the Amiga-tier engine barely capable of loading the double-digit polygonal structures without nearly dying of an aneurysm every two seconds. Movement is a frustrating tango of slightly touching the stick only to have your character always take four or five more steps than you meant which means navigating small spaces will have you contemplating death. Combat would be just barely passable if the creatures didn’t have the habit of disappearing and then reappearing about ten feet away. Throw in a UI that is a mess to navigate and you have a game that takes longer to download than it does to recognize that it’s an unfixable disaster that needs to be deleted.

I considered whether or not posting this article would ultimately be pointless. It’s fairly obvious from the state of the game and its continued quality over the past five years that the developers don’t care. I would be incredibly surprised if the developers go home from work every day with an attitude with pride in their work and less of a “well at least I’m getting paid from this dumpster fire of a company” line of thought. There’s no information in particular to give out since the game is free and very obvious from the start that it is of the lowest quality trash. So I formulated it as a rant.

I suppose my ultimate ending here is that I am disappointed with Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo because this proves that their quality assurance is a myth. Every so often we hear about games being denied release or patches being delayed because the developer didn’t pass the stringent certification from one of the three console manufacturers. If Onigiri is the kind of product that passes, I can’t imagine what a horrible state of existence those games were in for Nintendo to give its stamp of disapproval. It also marks a point where game consoles are no longer the curated stores that they once were, but are now willing to accept every mouth-breathing developer who shoddily compiles some code and calls it a game.

Those of you who read MMO Fallout will know that I don’t attack gamers as part of my coverage, but I think we all know who is playing this on Switch and saying “it’s really good quality.” Cyberstep’s main customer base are the depressingly lonely, the kind of people so sad that they look at these horribly drawn and posed anime girls and ultimately decide that the game is of decent quality because they’re kinda cute and they imagine a different reality where they can hold hands and kiss these anime ladies and the ladies like them and don’t bully them with their bad words like “you’re in your 20’s, shouldn’t you get a real job and move out?”

And for the record, I have nothing against people who like anime or even those who have waifus and like sexy anime girls (or sexy anime boys). If you’re going to like a game because it has cute anime girls, there are so many titles with better graphics, better girls, that are also free or pretty damn near close. There is also an internet full of drawn and animated media available for free if you need to get your rocks off. Have some standards, don’t be such a Thirsty Joe that you start deluding yourself into thinking games like this are good because of some of the NPC models.

Bad Press: Disbarred Ex-Lawyer Jack Thompson Returns, Is Still A Pathological Liar


Jack Thompson is much more than the pathological liar on a never ending quest to destroy video games. He’s also a disgraced ex-lawyer disbarred over ten years ago for no less than 31 charges of inappropriate conduct inside and out of the courtroom, for intimidating and harassing opposition, whose rambling court arguments have been described as bizarre and idiotic by the Florida court, and for coining the idea that teenagers can learn how to properly fire weapons by playing Doom, a game so primitive that you can’t look up and down in it.

But like Freddy Krueger’s sleazy uncle who sells used cars, Jack Thompson refuses to duck out of the public scope and just can’t stop lying. Unfortunately Florida’s least competent attorney has conned another newspaper into publishing his latest attempt to twist the death of children for his Quixotic quest, the Tallahasee Democrat, which we have linked in an archived form for your pleasure and their lack of advertising revenue.

Thompson, who was once scorned by a judge for faxing pornography to the court, has his sights still set on the Parkland school massacre that took the lives of seventeen students and staff members. He writes:

“Cruz’s own mother, now deceased, attributed his violence to his video games and withdrew them as temporary punishment. In “Call of Duty” you use smoke canisters to hide from your virtual reality targets — something Cruz did in reality. So video games don’t just increase the appetite to kill; they train teens to kill efficiently.”

Here we see Thompson’s master trick that I’ll refer to as “it makes sense as long as you don’t think about it.” Any child over the age of five could tell you what a smoke canister would do, but for someone of Thompson’s caliber this can only be the work of a trained killer, one trained on evil video games. Thompson likes to pepper in his conclusory statements with lies about video games that he passes off as just common fact, like the idea that games “increase the appetite to kill.”

He continues:

“The majority of video games 19 years after gamers Klebold and Harris authored Columbine, are sold to individuals whose ages are not verified.”

First, I take umbrage with Thompson’s use of the word “authored” in reference to the Columbine shooting, but this is another example of Thompson making unsubstantiated, ridiculously conclusory statements with no evidence to back himself up. The kind of conduct that would get one disbarred from the Florida bar association.

“All that is necessary for this dangerous fraud to stop is for states and the national government to apply deceptive trade practice laws that are already on the books to video game sales. This approach will be simple, constitutional and effective.”

I’ll explain this since, as a disbarred lawyer, Jack Thompson is not familiar with how the law works. We’ve already gone down this road of litigating video game sales to minors, and the fact that you have managed (without evidence) to argue that video game retailers are selling games to kids despite claiming otherwise, is irrelevant to everything. Deceptive trade practice laws have to do with lying about the features/functions of a product in order to con people into buying it, it has nothing to do with claiming that you don’t sell something but selling it anyway.

Here is the Federal Reserve’s definition of a “deceptive trade practice,” as per the Federal Trade Commission:

An act or practice is deceptive where
• a representation, omission, or practice misleads or is likely to mislead the consumer;
• a consumer’s interpretation of the representation, omission, or practice is considered reasonable under the circumstances; and
• the misleading representation, omission, or practice is material.

And as I said, we’ve already gone down this road. Feel free to peruse the case of Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association to read about how our supreme court held that a law barring minors from buying mature rated video games is unconstitutional. States do not have the right to determine which video games are too violent in the same way that they cannot decide which Grimm fairytales are too violent for children.

You also have to appreciate how the Tallahassee Democrat refers to Thompson as a “retired lawyer,” which is a fancy way of saying disbarred on dozens of charges of misconduct and fined $43 grand. The website also references Thompson’s involvement in a case surrounding a school shooting in Paducah, Kentucky. They left out the embarrassing details, like how he convinced the parents of three dead highschool girls to take part in a ridiculous lawsuit against two pornography websites, the film “The Basketball Diaries,” Nintendo, Sega, and Sony, claiming that all of the defendants had a hand in inspiring the 14 year old shooter. The lawsuit was dismissed at trial and then dismissed again by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Perhaps if video games were the impressive trainers that Jack Thompson has claimed they are for the past twenty years, he could have sat down with a copy of Phoenix Wright and learned how to be a proper attorney.

Chinese Government Reviews 20 Games, Passes None of Them


This month marks the establishment of the Chinese Online Ethics Review Committee, a government organization tasked with reviewing online games and determining if they are fit for sale in China in guidance with the country’s ethical rules. Confirmed by Tencent in August, China instituted an approval freeze around March of this year for games being sold within the country until the government can establish newer guidelines on approving or banning certain titles.

Of 20 popular titles to be reviewed, none of them passed muster. Judging from the list of games and the reasons for their refusal, most of the problem stem from blood and gore, vulgar content, overly revealing female characters, and ‘inharmonious chat.’ Incidentally, titles like Diablo and Chu Liu Xiang were also refused for “missions including fraud.” Of the twenty titles, eleven were held for corrective action while nine were prohibited outright and are presumably banned. PUBG, Fortnite, H1Z1, and Paladins are in the list of titles prohibited under these new guidelines.

These guidelines are hardly new, as in 2017 PUBG faced a ban over deviating from socialist core values. Tencent has seen a hit to its net worth as China due to the crackdown, and Ubisoft took a lot of heat last month after it attempted to globally censor and remove content from Rainbow Six: Siege in preparation for a Chinese launch.