You're right, he's not just talking to hear the sound of his own voice.
He's talking to 1) hear the sound of his own voice and 2) see that other people are hearing the sound of his own voice and 3) make as much money off the people misguided enough to give him money because they agree with the sound of his own voice.
Either way, it all goes back to number one; Mister Thompson.
There was an article up, possibly on Slashdot, that explains how Boll keeps making movies.
From what I remember, it boiled down to a loophole in German tax law that says that investors in things (such as movies) get to write the whoooole investment off if it tanks.
I'll post later if I can find the original article.
Actually, I can walk down to my local Suncoast and get "Ass Parade 1" all the way up to "Ass Parade 55". I just need to move aside the piece of black plastic they have covering the front of the DVD's case.
Yeah, it's a MUSH, but it's one of the longest-running Star Trek themed MU*s out there, that hasn't completely shat upon the concept of Star Trek.
Been running for almost a decade, and it's still going strong, with continuing plotlines stemming from the dawn of the game, just about. Political intrigue, space combat, exploration, it's all there, along with almost every known race in Star Trek canon (straight from the old FASA source books, if I remember correctly).
Rather than wait years for a shitty Trek MMO, why not try out a tried-and-tested-and-fucking-amazing game that's already running?
...I think that if we're going to decrease MMORPG-related killings, we're going to have to get Blizzard and all them out there to put up a ToS where no real money is involved for the purpose of buying/purchasing, and they have an online police for sorting these things out.
I don't have the exact legalese handy, but in the EULA/ToS of the major MMORPGs there is a blurb saying that using real life funds to purchase in-game items/gold/etc is illegal.
That's a slippery slope, there, though. Blizzard more than likely has the means to ban every single gold farmer from connecting to the game, but then they lose ($15/mo x # of gold farmers) for doing it... something that the accounting department probably doesn't like. Or they could ban all the gold buyers, but the same thing, all those monthly fees go bye-bye.
Or they can turn around and try and sue the people that are buying and selling the gold... but they aren't buying/selling the gold, they are simply exchanging funds for the work done, not the actual item. Or if they do sue a gold farming operation (IGE, for instance), and the judge rules in IGE's favor, that it is perfectly legal by the letter of US law to be making money by selling gold, then that'll be a dangerous legal precedent, which Blizzard's legal team probably does not want to be the one to set.
But people (in the US, anyway) aren't going out and killing each other for being loot-stealing ninja's and such, so it's a moot point. Jack Thompson knows that the real killers are playing GTA & killing hookers!
Go read some of Jack's diatribe against the video game industry. If you listen to him, he's on a mission personally given to him by his god to go erradicate all the sinners in the video game industry. He's just the pointman and most vocal one of them, but from reading interviews with the rest of the anti-Video-Games people, it's pretty much the same sentiment: They are personally appalled at what these games are, so these games should not exist. It's not 'they shouldn't be allowed into the hands of children,' its not 'they should be regulated,' it's 'they should not be made.' Yeah, everyone throws up the 'think of the children!' argument, but that's just to further their cause.
That was my initial reaction, but it's the easy way out. They didn't just kill jocks, they killed anyone they could.
I read the interviews with the people that knew those two. They might have shot everyone they could get a bullet into, including themselves, but they were tormented in school by the jocks & the rest of the 'ruling body' of high school.
Anecdotal evidence (which is all I have) is that only a minority of parents exercise enforcement of age ratings. And children who are not allowed to buy adult games can still get hold of the games by borrowing them from a friend, playing them at a friend's house, etc.
That's the parents fault then, not that of the publisher/developer.
But then again, I'm not the developer/publisher for Soldier of Fortune, nor am I their marketing department. So I can't tell you that no, they were not specifically trying to get the games into the hands of kids. Then again, you are not any of those bodies, so you cannot try and tell me that selling violence to children was the only reason they brought the suit forward and got the adults only classification overturned.
But it is easier to assume, in a multi-billion dollar industry, that they'd be more apt to go after something that would possibly cut them out of a huge chunk of the market (game rated adults only, and therefore no longer carried by the bulk of the retail chains, and therefore no longer easily accessible to the adults it is intended for), then it is to believe that they were trying to specifically get kids to play the game.
The video game industry is in it for the money. That's the bottom line; their bottom line. Johnny-Twelve-Year-Old does not readily have $50 to spend on a video game, so they are not the ones buying the games. Johhny's parents, on the other hand, do have $50 to spend on a video game, if they so choose. Clearly labelling the game as not for kids and marketting as not for kids is enough. It's not the government's place to do a parent's job for them, just because some parents can't be arsed to read the ratings and parent their own child.
I'll agree with you there. If a parent is raising a bad kid, then by all means, take the kid away. But you don't do that by using blackmail and litigation and lobbying to basically stigmatize an entire industry. Which is what Jack Thompson and his ilk or doing.
You are right. They don't give a shit whether or not adults want to play the games; they feel that the games are an affront to their god, and should not be created, period, end of story.
A parent raising a kid the wrong way, and developers making violent video games are two exclusive actions; take away the violent video games, and you'll still have parents raising their kids the wrong way.
And as for the 'parents of the slain wanting the parents of the killers to be held responsible', did anyone actually try sueing the parents of those two kids from Columbine? I remember the parents of the victims going after Smith & Wesson (the guns), id (Doom), Sony (Playstation), the Wachoski siblings (Matrix- that's why they wore the trenchcoats!), Anne Rice (Moody vampire stuff, she has to be involved!), and the makers of Sharpee markers (black markers! They wrote in their notebooks with black markers!), but nothing about going after the parents who ignored their obviously mentally unstable children (or the jocks that made their lives living hell, or the school that let it happen, for that matter)...
One publisher does not an industry make (unless it is EA).
Was it just the publisher of Soldier of Fortune that brought the court case together, or was it the industry itself? Maybe the ESRB, the EFF, or their Canadian equivilants did it, because the ratings system as it existed was already in place, and there was no need for further rating?
There's also a difference between 'Mature' games, which I believe Soldier of Forture was rated, and 'Adults Only' games. Mature carries the conotation that it's violent, or dark, or moody. Something like Apocalypse Now. And at least in America, you can still get Wal*Mart and Best Buy to stock Mature-rated games. But Adults Only carries the connotation that it's pornographic, like Debbie Does Dallas, and Wal*Mart and Best Buy refuse to carry it.
The logical conclusion in my mind is that the publisher didn't want it's game to be labelled pornographic, and kept out of the major retailers, cutting into it's profits. If they had a marketting campaign that focused on the fact that Soldier of Forture was NOT a kid's game, there was no need for the authorities to classify it as Adults Only; the Canadian ESRB (or do they use the American one?) and the advertising campaign would have been enough to inform parents that this game was not for children.
There is a difference between pedalling to children, and making sure your bottom line isn't slaughtered by uptight government officials.
They want kids who get raised with an attitude that violence is ok in society to be taken away from their parents.
I was just under the impression that they didn't want any sort of violent anything produced. Ever.
A child raised (raised meaning 'brought up by their parents') to believe that violence is ok, and then being taken away from said parents is worlds apart from 'stopping video game makers from creating a video game with any sort of violence'. I'm all for the first one; if a parent can't raise their kid, take the kid away. But I'm against the second part; don't take away the video games just because one kid was raised wrong and went psychotic, and happened to play the game.
Jack Thompson and his ilk have the second one as their goal. Not the first.
Re:Level 60 Elite Tauren Chieftain not a garage ba
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Blizzcon Writeup
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Still a garage band. Just a garage band composed of Blizzard Employees.
Re:BBC Article on Spyware in WoW
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Blizzcon Writeup
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· Score: 1
Welcome to last month. Population: You.
Seriously. We know about Warden. It's been posted to Slashdot, dupe-posted, and then the dupe was duped. And we know that the guy leading the battlecry is one of the developers of several different bots and cheats for World of Warcraft, all of which Warden has effectively shut down. It's not news just because BBC posted it.
People are making educated guesses, but for the parts of your comments about the Dranei and Arthas killing Illidan, WoW's covered that. Apparently there is an enclave of 'Lost' Dranaei around the location of the Cavern of Time (I forget the zonename at the moment), that give quests and expand on their part of the lore, and for the four new dragons rampaging around the various World Trees, kill one of them and it gives you an item quest that reveals that Illidan is alive and brooding in the Outland.
You also have people on the forum making baseless complaints and sending death threats!
No, you have one man claiming that he's getting all these death threats. When he ponies up the emails, with headers, from all these people putting out death threats on him, then he has a case. Right now, he's twisting the truth to get other people to do what he wants. But of course, that's what lawyers do.
I mean, go check out actual email conversation with the guy.. VG Cats & Jack!.. even when he starts the conversation, he starts seeing death threats and attacks in the responses. He's got the shittiest pair of rose-colored-glasses I've ever seen. Anything said to him is either total support, or a death threat.
There are going to be 'FLYING FREAKING MOUNTS' for use in the Outlands. That's straight from the leaked Italian preview that was floating around the web last week. Check out World of War, probably the third or fourth news article down is the translated story from that mag.
It fits with what I've seen of the Outland so far, what they've built in the game.
Yes, the Outlands do exist in the game files, presently. They are located south-southwest of the eastern continent.
The 100-man instance northrend/emerald dream/etc stuff is BS.
About a month ago someone started circulating 'expansion notes' that were a WoW fanboy's wet dream. Full enviroment interaction, massive new content, new realms that were expansion-only to take advantage of it, several new races, etc etc etc.
Warlocks have to go out and farm soulshards in order to be at the same level as the other classes, in PvP.
Why? Why force the Warlocks to work their asses off just to be balanced?
They shouldn't be going after the store that let the game get into the hands of a child, at least not as heavily (iirc, those fines are more than those for selling smokes/booze to kids).
They should be going after the parents of the children. That law still isn't going for the source, bad parents.
Wake me when they start fining parents for buying those "evil" games for their kids.
Damn. I think I need to start reading the bible. That sounds like good reading, there. And a hell of a way to bug people at the bus stop.
"Would you like a copy of the Book of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints?" "Nope! Got my own! Got the best parts dogeared, too. This is where they rape the village whore... and this is where they kill the pagans..."
Slashdot Mirror
He's talking to 1) hear the sound of his own voice and 2) see that other people are hearing the sound of his own voice and 3) make as much money off the people misguided enough to give him money because they agree with the sound of his own voice.
Either way, it all goes back to number one; Mister Thompson.
So does that mean Area 50 will be showing up in the middle of Podunk, Nebraska in a few years, complete with the guy in Dave's spacesuit?
From what I remember, it boiled down to a loophole in German tax law that says that investors in things (such as movies) get to write the whoooole investment off if it tanks.
I'll post later if I can find the original article.
+ 1 for the .hack reference. :)
...what?! That's the only ancronym that matters! :)
Actually, I can walk down to my local Suncoast and get "Ass Parade 1" all the way up to "Ass Parade 55". I just need to move aside the piece of black plastic they have covering the front of the DVD's case.
Yeah, it's a MUSH, but it's one of the longest-running Star Trek themed MU*s out there, that hasn't completely shat upon the concept of Star Trek.
Been running for almost a decade, and it's still going strong, with continuing plotlines stemming from the dawn of the game, just about. Political intrigue, space combat, exploration, it's all there, along with almost every known race in Star Trek canon (straight from the old FASA source books, if I remember correctly).
Rather than wait years for a shitty Trek MMO, why not try out a tried-and-tested-and-fucking-amazing game that's already running?
The eyes! They bleed!
I don't have the exact legalese handy, but in the EULA/ToS of the major MMORPGs there is a blurb saying that using real life funds to purchase in-game items/gold/etc is illegal.
That's a slippery slope, there, though. Blizzard more than likely has the means to ban every single gold farmer from connecting to the game, but then they lose ($15/mo x # of gold farmers) for doing it... something that the accounting department probably doesn't like. Or they could ban all the gold buyers, but the same thing, all those monthly fees go bye-bye.
Or they can turn around and try and sue the people that are buying and selling the gold... but they aren't buying/selling the gold, they are simply exchanging funds for the work done, not the actual item. Or if they do sue a gold farming operation (IGE, for instance), and the judge rules in IGE's favor, that it is perfectly legal by the letter of US law to be making money by selling gold, then that'll be a dangerous legal precedent, which Blizzard's legal team probably does not want to be the one to set.
But people (in the US, anyway) aren't going out and killing each other for being loot-stealing ninja's and such, so it's a moot point. Jack Thompson knows that the real killers are playing GTA & killing hookers!
Guess that confirms it...
...everyone was just paying to get into SOE's extended Star Wars: Galaxies Beta.
Jokes on us, I guess.
Go read some of Jack's diatribe against the video game industry. If you listen to him, he's on a mission personally given to him by his god to go erradicate all the sinners in the video game industry. He's just the pointman and most vocal one of them, but from reading interviews with the rest of the anti-Video-Games people, it's pretty much the same sentiment: They are personally appalled at what these games are, so these games should not exist. It's not 'they shouldn't be allowed into the hands of children,' its not 'they should be regulated,' it's 'they should not be made.' Yeah, everyone throws up the 'think of the children!' argument, but that's just to further their cause.
That was my initial reaction, but it's the easy way out. They didn't just kill jocks, they killed anyone they could.
I read the interviews with the people that knew those two. They might have shot everyone they could get a bullet into, including themselves, but they were tormented in school by the jocks & the rest of the 'ruling body' of high school.
That's the parents fault then, not that of the publisher/developer.
But then again, I'm not the developer/publisher for Soldier of Fortune, nor am I their marketing department. So I can't tell you that no, they were not specifically trying to get the games into the hands of kids. Then again, you are not any of those bodies, so you cannot try and tell me that selling violence to children was the only reason they brought the suit forward and got the adults only classification overturned.
But it is easier to assume, in a multi-billion dollar industry, that they'd be more apt to go after something that would possibly cut them out of a huge chunk of the market (game rated adults only, and therefore no longer carried by the bulk of the retail chains, and therefore no longer easily accessible to the adults it is intended for), then it is to believe that they were trying to specifically get kids to play the game.
The video game industry is in it for the money. That's the bottom line; their bottom line. Johnny-Twelve-Year-Old does not readily have $50 to spend on a video game, so they are not the ones buying the games. Johhny's parents, on the other hand, do have $50 to spend on a video game, if they so choose. Clearly labelling the game as not for kids and marketting as not for kids is enough. It's not the government's place to do a parent's job for them, just because some parents can't be arsed to read the ratings and parent their own child.
You are right. They don't give a shit whether or not adults want to play the games; they feel that the games are an affront to their god, and should not be created, period, end of story.
A parent raising a kid the wrong way, and developers making violent video games are two exclusive actions; take away the violent video games, and you'll still have parents raising their kids the wrong way.
And as for the 'parents of the slain wanting the parents of the killers to be held responsible', did anyone actually try sueing the parents of those two kids from Columbine? I remember the parents of the victims going after Smith & Wesson (the guns), id (Doom), Sony (Playstation), the Wachoski siblings (Matrix- that's why they wore the trenchcoats!), Anne Rice (Moody vampire stuff, she has to be involved!), and the makers of Sharpee markers (black markers! They wrote in their notebooks with black markers!), but nothing about going after the parents who ignored their obviously mentally unstable children (or the jocks that made their lives living hell, or the school that let it happen, for that matter)...
Was it just the publisher of Soldier of Fortune that brought the court case together, or was it the industry itself? Maybe the ESRB, the EFF, or their Canadian equivilants did it, because the ratings system as it existed was already in place, and there was no need for further rating?
There's also a difference between 'Mature' games, which I believe Soldier of Forture was rated, and 'Adults Only' games. Mature carries the conotation that it's violent, or dark, or moody. Something like Apocalypse Now. And at least in America, you can still get Wal*Mart and Best Buy to stock Mature-rated games. But Adults Only carries the connotation that it's pornographic, like Debbie Does Dallas, and Wal*Mart and Best Buy refuse to carry it.
The logical conclusion in my mind is that the publisher didn't want it's game to be labelled pornographic, and kept out of the major retailers, cutting into it's profits. If they had a marketting campaign that focused on the fact that Soldier of Forture was NOT a kid's game, there was no need for the authorities to classify it as Adults Only; the Canadian ESRB (or do they use the American one?) and the advertising campaign would have been enough to inform parents that this game was not for children.
There is a difference between pedalling to children, and making sure your bottom line isn't slaughtered by uptight government officials.
I was just under the impression that they didn't want any sort of violent anything produced. Ever.
A child raised (raised meaning 'brought up by their parents') to believe that violence is ok, and then being taken away from said parents is worlds apart from 'stopping video game makers from creating a video game with any sort of violence'. I'm all for the first one; if a parent can't raise their kid, take the kid away. But I'm against the second part; don't take away the video games just because one kid was raised wrong and went psychotic, and happened to play the game.
Jack Thompson and his ilk have the second one as their goal. Not the first.
Still a garage band. Just a garage band composed of Blizzard Employees.
Seriously. We know about Warden. It's been posted to Slashdot, dupe-posted, and then the dupe was duped. And we know that the guy leading the battlecry is one of the developers of several different bots and cheats for World of Warcraft, all of which Warden has effectively shut down. It's not news just because BBC posted it.
People are making educated guesses, but for the parts of your comments about the Dranei and Arthas killing Illidan, WoW's covered that. Apparently there is an enclave of 'Lost' Dranaei around the location of the Cavern of Time (I forget the zonename at the moment), that give quests and expand on their part of the lore, and for the four new dragons rampaging around the various World Trees, kill one of them and it gives you an item quest that reveals that Illidan is alive and brooding in the Outland.
No, you have one man claiming that he's getting all these death threats. When he ponies up the emails, with headers, from all these people putting out death threats on him, then he has a case. Right now, he's twisting the truth to get other people to do what he wants. But of course, that's what lawyers do.
I mean, go check out actual email conversation with the guy.. VG Cats & Jack!.. even when he starts the conversation, he starts seeing death threats and attacks in the responses. He's got the shittiest pair of rose-colored-glasses I've ever seen. Anything said to him is either total support, or a death threat.
It fits with what I've seen of the Outland so far, what they've built in the game.
Yes, the Outlands do exist in the game files, presently. They are located south-southwest of the eastern continent.
The 100-man instance northrend/emerald dream/etc stuff is BS. About a month ago someone started circulating 'expansion notes' that were a WoW fanboy's wet dream. Full enviroment interaction, massive new content, new realms that were expansion-only to take advantage of it, several new races, etc etc etc.
Warlocks have to go out and farm soulshards in order to be at the same level as the other classes, in PvP. Why? Why force the Warlocks to work their asses off just to be balanced?
They should be going after the parents of the children. That law still isn't going for the source, bad parents.
Wake me when they start fining parents for buying those "evil" games for their kids.
"Would you like a copy of the Book of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints?"
"Nope! Got my own! Got the best parts dogeared, too. This is where they rape the village whore... and this is where they kill the pagans..."