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http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/5/1/

Someone has to post the oblig. link: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/5/01/

I would tell give you the list, but they're pretty obscure. You probably haven't heard of them.

obligatory penny arcade:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2002/7/12/

Well here is an example from the same source showing just how seriously people take war in games.

I remember the fake controversy over how well-received Medal of Honor: Rising Sun apparently was in Japan. Immortalized here in Penny Arcade: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/11/26/ People always find new things to bitch about. Before long, everyone will forget this banner for the next TCG, or spree of kids looking up porn on their PSP, or what have you.

Q. What do you think about gamers playing video games based on World War II?

A. I haven't really paid enough attention to the games themselves to be able to tell you truthfully, but I would think, if it's just people shooting one another, I don't think it's a proper thing for young people to do. I think it sets a bad example for them, because they get into the mood of doing that, and that begins their lifestyle. And that's not the lifestyle you want.

Q. When groups of gamers are playing these games together it is common for some of them to play as the enemy. They might play as Germans defending the beach at Normandy for example. What's your opinion of that?

A. Well, it ties back in to what I already said. I don't think it's an appropriate game. I think they can make games that will interest kids, that don't have to include war. We don't need to be killing each other in games. There's other ways of strategizing and using the kind of skills that make those games popular.

Full thing here

For those who feel that playing the Taliban is offensive, I order you off the property because I am releasing the Dickwolves and you better hope you are not caught.

If this offended you, please read Gabe and Tycho's response while you are being herding to the mines.

For those who feel that playing the Taliban is offensive, I order you off the property because I am releasing the Dickwolves and you better hope you are not caught.

If this offended you, please read Gabe and Tycho's response while you are being herding to the mines.

Not buying and complaining? You are promptly shot down by the zealous fanboys as a wannabe pirate, good luck complaining. I thought i may as well become one and now i am an example of this:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/2/19/
I DLed warezed copy of SC2 and I say this as someone who has most of the blizzard games. I decided they are not worthy getting my monies anymore. They changed so much after the merge with activision it's unbelievable. Axing tried and true features left and right does not win my sympathy. I checked crappy story of sc2 - mostly out of old sentiments - and never touched it again.

If you're scared off by Pocari Sweat, then you don't want to know about Men's Pocky

The only things an iPad (or iPhone/iPod touch) has more in common with PADD's are ... touch sensitive screens

The ONLY thing?

That turns out to be EVERYTHING.

As for the article, one of the reasons a lot of people like the iPad is that it's Stark Trek UI brought to life. I can't help be repeat the quote from Penny Arcade here:

I have been waiting for the ability to manipulate technology by pressing dynamic symbols for basically ever. If you find such things unpleasant, then I suggest you develop a taste for forced labor because by the year twenty-twenty all that sneer is going to get you is a slot in the underclass boiling corpses. Get with the fucking program. Come and touch the neon glyphs.

Again, you're failing.
The points are about why people are pissed.
People are pissed because of the reasons I listed.
You disagree.
People are still pissed.

Wait...so first you say you dare someone to prove you wrong, and now you say no one can prove you wrong because you are simply stating facts...yet presenting them as an opinion? Nice. Oh, and thanks for pointing out that my own thoughts on the matter have no bearing on people that don't even know I exist. I never could have figured that out on my own.

You have tried to prove me wrong by defending the appointees with every liberal ounce of your body.

First off, I have no emotional investment in your original conversation. I was responding to you because ::gasp:: that's what people do in a discussion forum.

Secondly, I've been a registered independent since the day I turned 18. I'm one of those people who thinks you should be able to own a gun while getting government-issued single-payer insurance. But hey, keep on assuming things about people you don't know. I've been called a crazy conservative and a flaming liberal, depending on the topic...so I must be doing something right.

The fact that you are completely retarded

Oh, so that's a fact? That whole "not knowing me" thing applies here as well. But hey, no problem...I understand.

Obama's appointments are both terrible. Sotomayor so far is about par for the course for the SC, and the latest dog is abysmal.

To play devil's advocate here, in what ways from a professional point of view, specifically, are they terrible? What have they done that invalidates them as being up for the job? Remember, talking points don't count...give me something that isn't being touted around by the news networks.

and choose to wipe Obama's ass with your tongue

Ah, I see. Nothing meaningful to say in response to what I posted, so you resort to insults. Again...nice.

You can rationalize her bullshit all you want,

No rationalization, I was merely explaining it from a point of view you obviously hadn't considered. You do know people have views different than yours...don't you?

but what she did with regards to the ROTC was illegal

I completely agree.

and wrong

I completely disagree.

How she handled the confirmation hearings was hypocritical, condescending

Again, you yourself quoted her as saying that such hearings were a joke. How was it hypocritical to react the same way she essentially said she would?

abhorring with regards to respect of the office

Oh, right...her calling a spade a spade by talking smack about a process that you yourself had said bad things about is abhorrent and disrespectful...but I take it you weren't being disrespectful when talking about...what were your exact words? Oh right. You said:

The bottom line is that the Supreme Court is a fucking joke. When one of the fossilized fucks shuffles off the bench, it's an opportunity for some sanity to be injected into our lives. But that never fucking happens.

Yeah. Calling someone who serves on the bench a "fossilized fuck" that "shuffles off the bench" when they retire...that's not disrespectful at all. ::eye roll::

and totally expected.

Then why are you raging about it?

I just have to wonder what was in the conversation between Jobs and Papermaster.
If Papermaster is the true mastermind of antennagate, may the heavens have mercy on his soul... Jobs would be pissed .

...and...so what? Jobs would have a hissy fit and stamp his feet and cry? He'd throw a bamboo latte at him?

A five-year-old girl could beat up Steve Jobs.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/6/9/

I'm all for not buying games that you don't believe in, I will not buy Modern Warfare 2 or anything from Activision because of my feelings toward them. If that means I miss out on some "AAA" titles the who cares, I'm an adult who can provide his own entertainment and doesn't need to be fed a constant stream of games that cause me to fork out my money.
Companies aren't charities, you "can't" take one of their products and pay another and claim you've come out of this neutral, you are still doing wrong and encouraging even worse DRM in the future!
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/02/19/

To be fair, they lay into pirates and piracy pretty hard in this video: http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/pa-the-series/120/

As with many things game related, Penny Arcade says it best. In the struggle between pirates and game-makers, only the pirates win.

Maybe I've just been lucky. But Apple seems to put the same Quality controls on their laptops as the others do their business lines.

Yeah, that's exactly what scares me the most about Apple products. A few years back I thought that, since I had plenty of experience with both Linux and Windows, I'd spend some money on an used Mac and try to get some experience with it as well, just in case. Well, over half the models I was looking at reported serious heating issues, even melted-down keyboards after leaving them on overnight. In fact, they've built up a reputation for such issues. Ended up buying one of the few models that actually didn't, and despised the Mac's UI and plasticky keyboard so I threw it in a corner and went back to my Thinkpads.

It's a pity IBM got out of the PC business, they were second to none in the laptop arena. Reliable, comfortable, beautiful and, for what you got out of them, reasonably priced as well. Ahh well, Lenovos ain't that bad either, and at least I know I'll be able to use them for more than a few hours without burning my lap.

The folks at Penny Arcade toyed with this idea a little bit. Bear with me here, it's a long walk to get to my point.

October 13 2003, Tycho posts:

There was a new Call of Duty demo available this weekend, Dawnville it was called, but now it's gone and you can't get it anymore. I popped back to the desktop for a bit at the LAN party I was at, apparently in the brief window the game was available, and had no trouble getting my hands on it - it's great, like the other one is great, at any rate that's not why I brought it up. The reason Gabe went over to Spokane at all was to show his Grandfather - a man who has never discussed his experience in World War II - the original Call of Duty demo, and talk to him about his reaction to it. I have to admit, there is a part of me that has always wanted authorization from that generation to play these games, set as they are in their private definition of hell.

Then, on October 15 2003, Tycho posts again:

I had a chance to listen to the tape of Gabe's interview with his granddad, and it's already harrowing. They touch on the new Vietnam games very briefly, and without going into much detail he wasn't crazy about the idea. My stepdad was in Vietnam, as I would imagine many dads were - step or otherwise. If he'll talk to me, and I wouldn't blame him if he didn't, but if he did, I'll ask him what it's like to have someone make a toy out of your best friend dying in a jungle.

Nothing for a while, then on November 24, 2003, Gabe posts:

I get lots of mail every week from people asking about the interview I conducted with my Grandpa regarding his experiences in WW II and his thoughts on war related games. I promise it's still coming. My schedule recently heated up a bit but I'm still trying to crack out this article for you guys. I'll be taking a short vacation to Spokane for Thanksgiving and I'm hoping I'll have some time to sneak off and get some of my thoughts typed out.

Then... nothing. for a very long time. I even emailed them a few months, perhaps a year later to ask what happened. Did I just miss the interview? I wasn't finding it in the site's search. I never got a reply.

On December 3, 2007, Gabe partially answered my question with this post:

I know that I promised you all an interview with my Grandpa a couple years back. I showed him a WWII game and then talked with him about hisexperiences and what he thought of kids playing these kinds of games. I've still got the entire thing on a cassette tape and I'm honestly ashamed that I haven't transcribed it yet. It's my goal for this week.

To make a long story slightly shorter, here's the interview.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed. It was not a well conducted interview. I don't know what I was expecting. They're not journalists or historians, or authors. They're a comic artist and a humorist (although they are great at what they do, and I often marvel at their writing). The first half of the interview sounds like what you'd expect a 10 year old to ask on an interview for a school assignment. The three or four game related questions at the end just barely scratched the surface.

What really struck me was Tycho's quote "I'll ask him what it's like to have someone make a toy out of your best friend dying in a jungle". This is one of those situations where the question is a bit more powerful than any one literal answer you can expect to get.

There seems to me to be a line. Simulation vs Toy. One treats the subject more seriously, and the other uses the subject as a setting for yet another more technically impressive clone of Doo

The folks at Penny Arcade toyed with this idea a little bit. Bear with me here, it's a long walk to get to my point.

October 13 2003, Tycho posts:

There was a new Call of Duty demo available this weekend, Dawnville it was called, but now it's gone and you can't get it anymore. I popped back to the desktop for a bit at the LAN party I was at, apparently in the brief window the game was available, and had no trouble getting my hands on it - it's great, like the other one is great, at any rate that's not why I brought it up. The reason Gabe went over to Spokane at all was to show his Grandfather - a man who has never discussed his experience in World War II - the original Call of Duty demo, and talk to him about his reaction to it. I have to admit, there is a part of me that has always wanted authorization from that generation to play these games, set as they are in their private definition of hell.

Then, on October 15 2003, Tycho posts again:

I had a chance to listen to the tape of Gabe's interview with his granddad, and it's already harrowing. They touch on the new Vietnam games very briefly, and without going into much detail he wasn't crazy about the idea. My stepdad was in Vietnam, as I would imagine many dads were - step or otherwise. If he'll talk to me, and I wouldn't blame him if he didn't, but if he did, I'll ask him what it's like to have someone make a toy out of your best friend dying in a jungle.

Nothing for a while, then on November 24, 2003, Gabe posts:

I get lots of mail every week from people asking about the interview I conducted with my Grandpa regarding his experiences in WW II and his thoughts on war related games. I promise it's still coming. My schedule recently heated up a bit but I'm still trying to crack out this article for you guys. I'll be taking a short vacation to Spokane for Thanksgiving and I'm hoping I'll have some time to sneak off and get some of my thoughts typed out.

Then... nothing. for a very long time. I even emailed them a few months, perhaps a year later to ask what happened. Did I just miss the interview? I wasn't finding it in the site's search. I never got a reply.

On December 3, 2007, Gabe partially answered my question with this post:

I know that I promised you all an interview with my Grandpa a couple years back. I showed him a WWII game and then talked with him about hisexperiences and what he thought of kids playing these kinds of games. I've still got the entire thing on a cassette tape and I'm honestly ashamed that I haven't transcribed it yet. It's my goal for this week.

To make a long story slightly shorter, here's the interview.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed. It was not a well conducted interview. I don't know what I was expecting. They're not journalists or historians, or authors. They're a comic artist and a humorist (although they are great at what they do, and I often marvel at their writing). The first half of the interview sounds like what you'd expect a 10 year old to ask on an interview for a school assignment. The three or four game related questions at the end just barely scratched the surface.

What really struck me was Tycho's quote "I'll ask him what it's like to have someone make a toy out of your best friend dying in a jungle". This is one of those situations where the question is a bit more powerful than any one literal answer you can expect to get.

There seems to me to be a line. Simulation vs Toy. One treats the subject more seriously, and the other uses the subject as a setting for yet another more technically impressive clone of Doo

The folks at Penny Arcade toyed with this idea a little bit. Bear with me here, it's a long walk to get to my point.

October 13 2003, Tycho posts:

There was a new Call of Duty demo available this weekend, Dawnville it was called, but now it's gone and you can't get it anymore. I popped back to the desktop for a bit at the LAN party I was at, apparently in the brief window the game was available, and had no trouble getting my hands on it - it's great, like the other one is great, at any rate that's not why I brought it up. The reason Gabe went over to Spokane at all was to show his Grandfather - a man who has never discussed his experience in World War II - the original Call of Duty demo, and talk to him about his reaction to it. I have to admit, there is a part of me that has always wanted authorization from that generation to play these games, set as they are in their private definition of hell.

Then, on October 15 2003, Tycho posts again:

I had a chance to listen to the tape of Gabe's interview with his granddad, and it's already harrowing. They touch on the new Vietnam games very briefly, and without going into much detail he wasn't crazy about the idea. My stepdad was in Vietnam, as I would imagine many dads were - step or otherwise. If he'll talk to me, and I wouldn't blame him if he didn't, but if he did, I'll ask him what it's like to have someone make a toy out of your best friend dying in a jungle.

Nothing for a while, then on November 24, 2003, Gabe posts:

I get lots of mail every week from people asking about the interview I conducted with my Grandpa regarding his experiences in WW II and his thoughts on war related games. I promise it's still coming. My schedule recently heated up a bit but I'm still trying to crack out this article for you guys. I'll be taking a short vacation to Spokane for Thanksgiving and I'm hoping I'll have some time to sneak off and get some of my thoughts typed out.

Then... nothing. for a very long time. I even emailed them a few months, perhaps a year later to ask what happened. Did I just miss the interview? I wasn't finding it in the site's search. I never got a reply.

On December 3, 2007, Gabe partially answered my question with this post:

I know that I promised you all an interview with my Grandpa a couple years back. I showed him a WWII game and then talked with him about hisexperiences and what he thought of kids playing these kinds of games. I've still got the entire thing on a cassette tape and I'm honestly ashamed that I haven't transcribed it yet. It's my goal for this week.

To make a long story slightly shorter, here's the interview.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed. It was not a well conducted interview. I don't know what I was expecting. They're not journalists or historians, or authors. They're a comic artist and a humorist (although they are great at what they do, and I often marvel at their writing). The first half of the interview sounds like what you'd expect a 10 year old to ask on an interview for a school assignment. The three or four game related questions at the end just barely scratched the surface.

What really struck me was Tycho's quote "I'll ask him what it's like to have someone make a toy out of your best friend dying in a jungle". This is one of those situations where the question is a bit more powerful than any one literal answer you can expect to get.

There seems to me to be a line. Simulation vs Toy. One treats the subject more seriously, and the other uses the subject as a setting for yet another more technically impressive clone of Doo

The folks at Penny Arcade toyed with this idea a little bit. Bear with me here, it's a long walk to get to my point.

October 13 2003, Tycho posts:

There was a new Call of Duty demo available this weekend, Dawnville it was called, but now it's gone and you can't get it anymore. I popped back to the desktop for a bit at the LAN party I was at, apparently in the brief window the game was available, and had no trouble getting my hands on it - it's great, like the other one is great, at any rate that's not why I brought it up. The reason Gabe went over to Spokane at all was to show his Grandfather - a man who has never discussed his experience in World War II - the original Call of Duty demo, and talk to him about his reaction to it. I have to admit, there is a part of me that has always wanted authorization from that generation to play these games, set as they are in their private definition of hell.

Then, on October 15 2003, Tycho posts again:

I had a chance to listen to the tape of Gabe's interview with his granddad, and it's already harrowing. They touch on the new Vietnam games very briefly, and without going into much detail he wasn't crazy about the idea. My stepdad was in Vietnam, as I would imagine many dads were - step or otherwise. If he'll talk to me, and I wouldn't blame him if he didn't, but if he did, I'll ask him what it's like to have someone make a toy out of your best friend dying in a jungle.

Nothing for a while, then on November 24, 2003, Gabe posts:

I get lots of mail every week from people asking about the interview I conducted with my Grandpa regarding his experiences in WW II and his thoughts on war related games. I promise it's still coming. My schedule recently heated up a bit but I'm still trying to crack out this article for you guys. I'll be taking a short vacation to Spokane for Thanksgiving and I'm hoping I'll have some time to sneak off and get some of my thoughts typed out.

Then... nothing. for a very long time. I even emailed them a few months, perhaps a year later to ask what happened. Did I just miss the interview? I wasn't finding it in the site's search. I never got a reply.

On December 3, 2007, Gabe partially answered my question with this post:

I know that I promised you all an interview with my Grandpa a couple years back. I showed him a WWII game and then talked with him about hisexperiences and what he thought of kids playing these kinds of games. I've still got the entire thing on a cassette tape and I'm honestly ashamed that I haven't transcribed it yet. It's my goal for this week.

To make a long story slightly shorter, here's the interview.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed. It was not a well conducted interview. I don't know what I was expecting. They're not journalists or historians, or authors. They're a comic artist and a humorist (although they are great at what they do, and I often marvel at their writing). The first half of the interview sounds like what you'd expect a 10 year old to ask on an interview for a school assignment. The three or four game related questions at the end just barely scratched the surface.

What really struck me was Tycho's quote "I'll ask him what it's like to have someone make a toy out of your best friend dying in a jungle". This is one of those situations where the question is a bit more powerful than any one literal answer you can expect to get.

There seems to me to be a line. Simulation vs Toy. One treats the subject more seriously, and the other uses the subject as a setting for yet another more technically impressive clone of Doo

The folks at Penny Arcade toyed with this idea a little bit. Bear with me here, it's a long walk to get to my point.

October 13 2003, Tycho posts:

There was a new Call of Duty demo available this weekend, Dawnville it was called, but now it's gone and you can't get it anymore. I popped back to the desktop for a bit at the LAN party I was at, apparently in the brief window the game was available, and had no trouble getting my hands on it - it's great, like the other one is great, at any rate that's not why I brought it up. The reason Gabe went over to Spokane at all was to show his Grandfather - a man who has never discussed his experience in World War II - the original Call of Duty demo, and talk to him about his reaction to it. I have to admit, there is a part of me that has always wanted authorization from that generation to play these games, set as they are in their private definition of hell.

Then, on October 15 2003, Tycho posts again:

I had a chance to listen to the tape of Gabe's interview with his granddad, and it's already harrowing. They touch on the new Vietnam games very briefly, and without going into much detail he wasn't crazy about the idea. My stepdad was in Vietnam, as I would imagine many dads were - step or otherwise. If he'll talk to me, and I wouldn't blame him if he didn't, but if he did, I'll ask him what it's like to have someone make a toy out of your best friend dying in a jungle.

Nothing for a while, then on November 24, 2003, Gabe posts:

I get lots of mail every week from people asking about the interview I conducted with my Grandpa regarding his experiences in WW II and his thoughts on war related games. I promise it's still coming. My schedule recently heated up a bit but I'm still trying to crack out this article for you guys. I'll be taking a short vacation to Spokane for Thanksgiving and I'm hoping I'll have some time to sneak off and get some of my thoughts typed out.

Then... nothing. for a very long time. I even emailed them a few months, perhaps a year later to ask what happened. Did I just miss the interview? I wasn't finding it in the site's search. I never got a reply.

On December 3, 2007, Gabe partially answered my question with this post:

I know that I promised you all an interview with my Grandpa a couple years back. I showed him a WWII game and then talked with him about hisexperiences and what he thought of kids playing these kinds of games. I've still got the entire thing on a cassette tape and I'm honestly ashamed that I haven't transcribed it yet. It's my goal for this week.

To make a long story slightly shorter, here's the interview.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed. It was not a well conducted interview. I don't know what I was expecting. They're not journalists or historians, or authors. They're a comic artist and a humorist (although they are great at what they do, and I often marvel at their writing). The first half of the interview sounds like what you'd expect a 10 year old to ask on an interview for a school assignment. The three or four game related questions at the end just barely scratched the surface.

What really struck me was Tycho's quote "I'll ask him what it's like to have someone make a toy out of your best friend dying in a jungle". This is one of those situations where the question is a bit more powerful than any one literal answer you can expect to get.

There seems to me to be a line. Simulation vs Toy. One treats the subject more seriously, and the other uses the subject as a setting for yet another more technically impressive clone of Doo

The guy is one of the Cyber War nuts 2002 he was running with the business name of Security Posture trying to cater to the conspiracy theory nuts. Everyone already knows that Game Boys emit pilot killing rays.

Reminds me of an old Penny Arcade comic.

Oblig: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/9/3/

So they'll sink $4-5 billion building hardware, software, branding, and (presumably) a market/network? Yeah, maybe.

Or it could be a Zune phone, replete of velvety brownness and the ability squirt.

Actually, it would be fun to see them flop about in a costly and humiliating manner. Sure the Xbox has turned a profit for some select quarters but I reckon they're still down a few billion overall. Does anyone know how the Zune is fairing?

I, for one, welcome Windows Live 7 Professional Phone Xtreme Crispy Chunky Ranch-Bacon. If it worked for Vista and Hotmail, well, they could work similar magic with a homegrown phone.

(We can still make fun of Vista and Hotmail, right? And what the fuck is with those Hotmail ads? They make less sense than the Seinfeld ones.)

who would have guessed that combining anonymity with video cameras resulted in distasteful or illegal images? You would have had to be Al Gore to see that one coming. No ordinary person would have predicted this outcome.

Yeah, who could have seen that one comming

ahem... http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2005/20050314h.jpg

Other than that, single player games are a little sad, and never as challenging as multiplayer.

I play single-player games exclusively. I don't always want "challenging." What I do want from a game is to be immersed in it. For example, after I bought Mass Effect 2, I played that shit for almost five months straight. Yeah, I know, I don't get out much.

Another nice quality about single player games is that, well, I don't have to put up with total fuckwads.

There is nothing worse than the fist bump. I promise you, everyone you fist bump hates it and the office is the last place you should it.

Furthermore, there is this rule to follow with regards to fist bumps: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/3/7/

So, as long as you're studying social interactions online, can you prove or disprove the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory?

The reason why you see the wacky ass scores is for two primary reasons:

1. The journalists do not want to lose favor with the big publishers by giving their latest so-called AAA title a bad score, even when the game is garbage. Not only do they stand to lose advertising money, but they also stand to lose their "exclusive" access to information. What happened to Jeff Gertsmann when he dared give Kane & Lynch less than stellar reviews pretty much justifies these fears.

2. Journalists also do not want to lose favor with their readership, and unfortunately, the gamer they described in the article (ungrateful, entitled, bigoted, etc.) IS their target readership. What this means is that the magazine will likely not give the latest installment of a "beloved" franchise anything less than an 8.0. Hell, some people were frothing mad when Twilight Princess got 8.9, or as another example, when MGS 4 got a 9.3.

Obligatory PA: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/6/13/

They don't want to lose readership for giving latest Final Fantasy spin off a 6.0 (even if it is completely deserved).

It isn't just the shopkeeper making money from stupid adventurers.

Well.. the "RPG" games that I've played on Facebook involve repeatedly clicking the same button to "complete quests" to gain exp to level so that you open up a new button that you can click repeatedly to complete quests to gain exp to level. As far as I can tell, there was no maximum level and the storyline was simply "You steal a car." "You steal a car." "You have failed to steal a car." which then evolved to "You rob a bank." "You rob a bank." "You have failed to rob a bank."

Then if you look at Farmville, you buy a cow then wait some time, click on it and it gives you more cows, then repeat. Ok, so I haven't actually played Farmville, but I've seen people do it, and I'm fairly certain that's the mechanic at play.

The point is, all these games do is give you trivial rewards for giving them clicks/money. The rewards don't mean anything, except to your brain which is sucked into getting some sort of thrill by receiving these random rewards.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/3/12/
http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Operant_conditioning

[...]they all make John Romero their bitch

Hmmm... he's so dreamy with that long hair.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2000/2/18/

The only reason they backed down from things is the uproar and being pilloried over what they did with Spore.

Don't kid yourself. They'd like to be that restrictive- because they went there and would've stayed there if consumers hadn't have so thoroughly rejected what they pulled.

It reminds me more of the fast-acting transdermal patches that Babylon 5 was fond of.

Oh, and: SPOILER ALERT. Sorta.

See also: The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, Penny Arcade. Maybe this is the right solution to the GIFT problem for this particular institution. I look forward to seeing if this is effective in improving signal-to-noise.

I see your Penny Arcade and raise one CAD: http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20100707

If you want to post anonymously and for free (although this is a one-time ninety-nine cent fee, so it doesn't exactly break the bank) then there are lots of venues in which to do so.

Different parts of the internet offer different ways to screen out trolls, with varying degrees of success and with varying costs and benefits. Some newspapers impose lengthy delays (and incur significant costs to themselves) on comment posting to allow for their own moderators to screen comments. Slashdot has a moderation system which is generally good at elevating comments supportive of our constituency's preferred varieties of groupthink, but which may handle less-popular viewpoints less well (even when expressed cogently, politely, and coherently, such views face a toss-up between up- and down-moderation), and which also allows well-written posts that don't appear within an hour or two of the story to disappear from the radar of most readers.

And this isn't exactly a new concept for newspapers. Are there any serious newspapers with appreciable circulation numbers that allow anonymous letters to the editor in their print editions?

See also: The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, Penny Arcade. Maybe this is the right solution to the GIFT problem for this particular institution. I look forward to seeing if this is effective in improving signal-to-noise.

You get bonus points if the DLC is awesome .

And okay, so long as the company is up-front about it and prices the add-on content fairly in relation to the additional amount of playtime which it adds and works it in in a way which doesn't disturb the gameplay experience:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/11/6/

William

Because people are twitter shitters

Well, it could be worse - he could be Will Wright :)

However this situation cropped up quite a bit with the Euphoria Engine

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/2/1/

No way! Pro's would hack all IP's simultaneously

its free?

please read this

You mean like this?

Sure, people can be traced if their actions are bad enough to be criminal. The problem is that there's a huge gap between "perfectly acceptable, normal etiquette" and "criminal misbehavior." In real life, deviations from normal etiquette are handled by social norms and mores. If you are a total jerk (but not to the point of being criminal) then you're ostracized. Its much more difficult to do this online, because whenever you do so, the person on the other end is free to change handles and get a "clean slate."

That said, I do think Blizzard went about this in totally the wrong way. Like the Penny Arcade guys point out, World of Warcraft is a role playing game. People are playing it specifically to get away from their real life identities. A better solution might have been to have persistent identities, but not link them in any way to the real world. One possible implementation would be to allow each World of Warcraft account to have only one or at most a few forum accounts. In order to get more forum accounts, one would have to pay extra and sign up another World of Warcraft account. That cost alone would be a significant obstacle to the trolls, and it would preserve users' privacy.

G.I.F.T. reign on for many years to come!

Parent makes an excellent point, and I happen to agree.

It's well known that a pseudonym enables people to be complete assholes.

G.I.F.T. reign on for many years to come!