Quantum Immortality

Well in a deviation from my usual direction of rant about something for several pages of size 11 font, I’ve decided to do a bit more of an informative post today, since I’m withholding judgement about the state of England’s chances in the world cup until after the match with Slovenia on Wednesday. Well not really, since I think a group of monkeys could have probably played better than England. But then again I don’t give two hoots about football anyway, so a group of monkeys could get through to the finals for all I care.

Anyway, quantum mechanics. The basic premise of this experiment is you have a machine gun trained at a scientist, and an assistant sat by a button. Every time the assistant presses the button a quantum flip occurs. A quantum flip is a truly random event. It has a 50% chance of being up or 50% chance of being down. If the result of the flip is up, the machine gun fires at the assistant, killing him. If the result of the flip is down, the machine gun remains inert. According to the theory behind this experiment, when such an event happens with several random outcomes, the universe ‘splits’ into several parallel universes, and each outcome occurs down a different branch. What makes this experiment so interesting though, is to consider it from the viewpoint of the scientist looking down the barrel of the machine gun. When his assistant presses the button, the universe splits. The scientist is killed immediately in one branch, the one where the machine gun fires, and in the other he merely hears a clicking sound as the gun fails to fire (and very possibly flinches and wets himself too). But from his own viewpoint, surely he could only ever witness the reality where he is not killed. After all, he is killed in the other reality, and therefore cannot witness anything. So, according to this theory, he can only ever witness the reality where he remains alive. In short he can never witness himself die. That’s pretty much immortality, from his own point of view anyway. No matter how many times the button is pressed, he just doesn’t die. He has to believe he is immortal. But what about all those other realities that also occurred every time the button was pressed? In all those realities, the assistant saw the scientist die. This presents an interesting concept. If we can never witness our own death that means we must all be immortal.

So, taking this theory to a wider area, how many realities must there be in total? Every time anything happens in the world, the universe splits into every possible outcome. Every possible action that every person, animal or atom could possibly have taken are all being played out every second, as well as all the combinations thereof. It’s a staggering number.

As far as the immortality goes, you might say “well people die all the time”. Well yes, they do, from your own point of view. Not from theirs in another reality however. And not from yours in another reality either. It’s a quite a hard concept to wrap your mind around this one. I’ll leave you to think about it.

“In a parallel universe I would have shot you by now”

E3 - An Overview

Well, E3 finished yesterday and it’s actually turned out a lot better than I was expecting it to be, going on the past few years I was expecting it to be a total flop and the usual stream of 360 shooters, Wii shovelware and Sony bragging about their latest achievements in cramming more gigaflops into an oojamaflip then anyone else. How wrong I was.

For this article I’ll just talk about what was mentioned at the conferences, them being the more important/entertaining part of the event.

Let’s start with the bad, 360, simply because it’s hilarious. Anyone else see the irony that they actually announced more casual games than the rest of them combined? I never really saw natal, sorry “kinect” as being all that good, essentially just a glorified eyetoy. Nothing physical means swordplay and gun fights which be something akin to what you’d do in the school playground and all you’re really doing is flopping around like a fish. The fact that most of the “gameplay” footage they showed was blatantly pre-rendered and poorly choreographed at that. Either that or it’s SO advanced that it actually sees into the future and makes the movement before you do. The only note-worthy games they showed (as far as I know, I missed this conference due to internet issues and the fact that I lack the care to view it unlive) where Halo Reach, Gears of War 3, Fable 3 and Metal Gear Solid: Rising, 3 of which games we already knew about, 2 of which aren’t even 360 exclusive and 2 of which are pretty generic no-depth shooters. Sounds like a promising year for the “hardcore” 360 owners to me, he lied.

Then we had Nintendo, the very people who inspired Kinect and Move, the very people who brought casual gaming to the masses, the very people who created the bandwagon for “fitness” games that the others are now trying to fol—Oh cool new Zelda. And a new Kirby... and Kid Icarus... and Metroid... and Mario. The list goes on. So while Microsoft are flustering over getting peoples grannies to play Nintendo have gone back to what makes them good, their old franchises. I’m a huge fan of some of them, but at least they have gone back to their roots. Very good news for some. That’s not even the tip of the iceberg, there’s the 3DS too, and yes it’s a gimmick but this entire generation of games is a gimmick so let’s not point fingers. Plus it's 3D sans the stupid looking glasses. I was unsure at first, but then when they released the footage and the screenshots I was amazed by the graphics and with the announcement of a old-style Paper Mario, Saints Row and Resident Evil I was sold instantly. If the 3D effects are crap, I’ll turn ‘em off. Any console with that line-up I’ll buy regardless.

Finally, Sony. Now this has me worried at first, the majority of the first half of the conference was chin wagging and statistics and stuff no-one really cares about. But then they started showing off games. Move is even more blatant as a Wii rip-off than Kinect, but as a result, it looks a good deal better. You get the usual sports games that come with such a tool but with a significant graphical upgrade so you have a reason to use it over the Wii, whereas with the 360 it’s not really worth converting just to take a nail file to some of the edges. Plus move has promise with the hardcore audience too with games like Sorcery (which actually looks kinda fun), Microsoft announced nothing of the sort. Then we have Dead Space: Extraction coming with move controls (so glad I waited and didn’t get the Wii version now, purely for the sake of HD) which comes with the PS3 exclusive special edition of Dead Space 2, Portal 2 (Gabe is a legend) and to top it all off, Twisted Metal. I saw it coming, Jeffe had been teasing for ages but that doesn’t make me any less stoked one of my top 3 games on the PS1 is finally coming to this gen.

So who won E3? Well, I personally find it hard to call. Nintendo have a better line up if you’re a fan and are offering more to a larger audience, but Sony have more games I’m interested in personally. Let’s call it a tie.

One on final note, the new Zelda got me thinking. What we have here is a Triforce. Sony is power for obvious reasons, Nintendo is Wisdom seen as they have the best business concept and marketing, as proven by sale figures, and Microsoft can have courage because it takes some serious stones to pull of anything that mind-blowingly stupid.



Guess I need to replace #5 on my Top 10...

Games With Morality

A while ago Sneeze wrote an article (When did right and wrong become so black and white?) where he discussed the choices held within certain games. I’ve been doing a lot of reading up about these sorts of games recently and the way in which a sense of morality has been created. I’ve actually got a bit of spare time before starting back at university and I have to think of an idea for my final project. Being a fan of Bioware games (such as Knights of the old Republic, Mass Effect and Dragon Age) I’ve considered the idea of doing a project on alignment/choice systems in games.

I think the first time I really picked up on a game attempting to implement the choice system was Fable. I actually got very excited about this game because of its promise of freedom in developing your character and storyline. When I first played it I did enjoy it a lot, but I found myself playing the good side and wasn’t ever really fussed at replaying it for the evil side. That is because the choices in it didn’t seem to carry any huge implications and most were incredibly black and white. The most notable part of playing an evil character was the fact that they would change in appearance (i.e. sprout horns.) Changing the character is an interesting way to represent good and evil, and has also been done in Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect 2. I personally quite like this method, for I enjoy playing evil characters and I like mine to look like what they are (I especially loved the pale skin and creepy eyes in Knights of the Old Republic.), but some people who put a lot of time and effort into designing their characters don’t appreciate the game then messing up their appearance. This can put people off even attempting the evil side. Fortunately Mass Effect 2 gave you the option to correct your appearance, so that if you didn’t like the scars you could correct them and still perform dark acts (like defenestrating people.)

It was John who told me to check out Knights of the Old Republic and that it would put Fable to shame. He was right. Despite still containing the same Black and White system, the game overall felt a lot deeper and contained better choices and paths. Unlike Fable it seemed to be a lot more re-playable because of the different endings and consequences to your actions. The only problem was that the idea of playing an evil sith lord was more exciting than taking on a noble Jedi Knight. Being good meant turning down rewards and being nice to people, being Evil allowed you to shoot lightning bolts, wear black robes, wield red light sabres and reap a lot of benefits. Evil characters are also better at force powers, where as good characters are better with light sabres, so the style of play you choose may also effect what path you take.

The main problem with black and white systems is that you are probably only making one choice in your entire game play experience, and that’s whether you want to be good or evil, then you just continue to select the corresponding options - not really as free as they make out. It is also strongly based on the opinions of the game developers. Some choices can be quite bad or grey and if for example you wanted to play a good character but accidently picked an option with good intention for which you received dark side points, you’d feel a bit cheated. You could fix this issue by omitting the scale – after all a single scale isn’t really a very good way to represent the complexities of certain life choices (kind of reminds me of the tantrum Donnie Darko threw when told to divide life’s dilemma ‘s between Fear and Love.) Dragon Age is such a game in that there is no way to find out where your character lies. In fact the characters all have their own opinions of you, and even when selecting between an obvious right and wrong answer you will find supporters in your party for both sides (kind of like different factions in Everquest.) Dragon age succeeds in places at getting you to stop and consider each choice you make. Some of the choices work along the lines of, ‘would you kill one person to save many.’ They’re black and white in a sense, but with extra layers of depth and emotion added on top, which may cause you to sway from the more correct path. The only problem with Dragon age is that your party members will leave you if they disagree too strongly with your actions. This and the effect it can have on the game play will at times cause you to pick a choice for its mechanics rather than its meaning. I still like this method, but I think it could have been pulled off in a slightly easier way. Perhaps in a similar way to Knights of the Old Republic 2,where you could influence a character to see your side of things if they trusted you enough (resulting in a changing alignment.)

Consequences to your actions are still necessary as they add to the weight of your decision, but they also can’t be so bad that the player will be put off the game due to unfairness. If a consequence to an action is received instantly, the player will just re-load a moment before and pick the other option. Save-points can fix the saving issue preventing players from taking this liberty and adding depth to the game, but a lot of people also frown on the idea of not being able to save freely – I personally find it a relief as I can be a bit of a save addict at times. Having more drawn out consequences that impact the game in the long run are probably a better way of dealing with this issue.

Another problem with these games is also the fact that no matter whether you’re good or evil you still can’t seem to get out of the main story line which tends to involve saving the world or something. I admit, it’d be boring to play a game where you just refuse to help anybody and sit back with your legs up, but even on a smaller scale an ability to defy the flow of things somewhat would be better than nothing at all. I find the biggest problem is being evil because on a lot of occasions games have the illusion of choice such as refusing to help people, only to find that you can’t progress without doing so anyway. You then have to go back to the person you refused looking like a right jerk. (I was actually quite pleasantly surprised in Dragon Age when I refused to help Redcliffe as when I came back it had been destroyed.) The other problem is of course, refusing means less game play for you. Knights of the Old Republic is quite good in that the storyline kind of fits in a way that you can still end the game on a negative, become the evil sith lord and take over (unfortunately for me the game ended too suddenly. I wanted to continue having fun over my new empire.) I can’t think of many games, however, that allow you to strongly influence the main storyline. The problem is time and money, as you would need more assets for each possible branch within the game.


To make the game feel more free and open like it promises the best way would be to keep the main story a lot more simplistic. An example of this would be Princess Maker, an old life simulation game released in 1993. The game had a weak plot in which you were landed with a little girl that you are then placed in charge of. From then on there isn’t really any story but the way the game pans out each time is very different making it feel quite free and unrestrictive. You had to send your child to school, on jobs or out for adventures where she would earn skills that would affect her development (she doesn’t necessarily have to fight and kill people.) The game would then end when she reached a certain age and would tell you what she thought of your upbringing and what career she ended up following. There are a fair few endings considering the age of the game. Although some of the endings are quite obviously light or dark, it wasn’t really the only focus within the game. In fact a fair few endings were pretty neutral, such as becoming a soldier and marrying a dragon. Despite the incredibly simplistic game play it did actually feel quite free to me in terms of the choices I had to influence her development. The sense of morality in the game was that of needing to raise your daughter well. If she grew up to become a princess of darkness or a bondage queen (yeah it was a bit controversial) for example, you would probably get a telling off from the gods. The problem is, a lot of games dealing with choice and morality are RPG’s, and people expect big stories from these game. However the bigger the story the harder it probably is to make the game feel free and unrestrictive due to expenses.

Games with choices and morality have definitely picked up a lot in popularity and versions of the system can be found in many places such as the good/evil witch options in The Sims 2 which also affect your skills. Unfortunately, a lot of games also state that they are free and open by simply tacking on an alignment bar (for example Infamous), to make it look as if the game contains extra features. The ones that do try to focus on it often succeed in some areas but fail in others. Some of them like Dragon Age will present great choices that will get you emotionally involved, but can also cause you to pick your options based on the mechanics of the game over the implications of the dilemma in place. Getting the balance between consequence and reward seems to be a difficult one. I’m personally a fan of the Faction system, taking the sense of right and wrong away from the developers which is a matter of opinion and perspective. There needs to be a way to do this however without feeling a need to do something just so that you can make friends with people. Using terms like in Mass Effect ‘Paragon’ and ‘Renegade’ is also a good way to get away from the typical light/dark scenario. Even when I’m playing a good character I don’t feel upset when receiving renegade points as this is a part of building up their personality (my version of Sheppard for example wants the greater good, but is willing to take violent rebellious means to get there. She was always loyal to her crew, but hated the council.)

Unfortunately the games industry is run mostly on money, which means that takes precedence over the art and passion of games creation. Chances are most great morality games will get cut back because of the costs. It's a real shame, because each time a bad version of one of these games gets released it alienates people against the idea of creating games that focus on choice. When it is done right, however, it’s awesome to feel like your decisions are actually making an impact on the characters and the game world in which they derive.

Related links (random stuff I found interesting):
1) BITMOB - Spotlight: Deadly Premonition, ScreenBurn, and Alignment Systems
2) GAMASUTRA - Opinion: Mother Theresa Or Hitler? Designing for Ambiguous Moral Choice
3) FUTURISMIC - The Mechanics of Morality: Why Moral Choices in Video Games Are No Longer Fun

"It's better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a terrific cost." - Stephen King

Come and have a go if you think your hard enough...

Expanding on Jo’s post from a few weeks ago on cheating AI I’ve recently suffered a streak from it myself. I’d been looking forward to Modnation Racers for months; I’ve always loved kart racers and the idea of a one where you can create karts, characters and tracks sounded like an idea that couldn’t go wrong. Unfortunately, it did.

There’s a career mode you need to play to unlock parts and objects for creations which is fun and challenging at first but towards the end of it I was pulling my hair out and resisting the urge to put my foot through the screen out of sheer frustration. Each racer has 2-3 bonus challenges which can range from anything to a perfect lap (no wall hits, challenging but fair) to some that are stupidly situational and just becomes a game of sheer luck, one makes you need to sideswipe an specific opponent at a specific point in the track, this means being right at his side when you are in that area and having enough power in your boost meter to perform the sideswipe, and then hoping he doesn’t shield... And then finishing first. This is the most wearisome task anyone has ever conceived. Don’t get me wrong, I love a challenge on a game, as long is it’s a fair one, I want to have at least some control over my fate and not have it all bottle down to whether someone happens to be in a certain place at a certain time. By the end of the career I just ended up skipping most of the challenges due to not wanting to risk the irritation that might come with them. Unfortunately this just put me off the game and I haven’t even gone back for the creation aspect since, which is the whole reason I bought it.

Onto the main part of the topic, it really begins to annoy me when developers use cheap tactics to make a game more difficult on harder modes, just using cop-outs like enemies have more health or simply do more damage rather than actually making more aggressive or tactical AI and it sort of feels artificial. But even this is better than tasks that require you to wait for a planetary alignment to have any chance of them actually happening. I love a challenge, when I finally completed Resi 4 on professional mode for the first time and unlocked the Handcannon via Mercenaries, I felt a great sense of achievement and felt I had earned what the game rewarded me. When I finally nailed the take out one opponent with a devastator challenge on Modobahn on Modnation I just felt relieved it was finally over, which the attitude one would normally have about a prostate exam, not a game.

More recently, I’ve been playing Killing Floor, which is one of the hardest games I’ve ever come across, rarely managing to survive on even normal mode, and with hard and suicidal above that I daren’t think how insane this game can get. But, in spite of how crap-your-pants difficult this game is, it’s never once angered me enough to rage quit, swear, scream or smash anything, if I die, it’s my own fault, I learn and improve. Maybe I forgot to check behind me, maybe I wasn’t efficient enough with my ammo, maybe I stepped on my own grenade, it’s never been at fault of biased AI or just pure luck and chance (or lack thereof), just my own stupidity or misjudgement (or trying to take on a guy with drillhands with a weak weapon...) and much like with RE4 when I finally beat Farm on Long and Normal (and solo) I again, felt a sense of achievement, not relief.

Yes, Killing Floor is a bit cheap and goes against my earlier point about making games harder without significantly improving AI, but in all fairness, they are zombies so I’ll let it off, and above all else, it’s fun. And surely that’s the most important thing.

And besides, why does a game even have to be difficult to be enjoyable? Sometimes I love to just pick up Ratchet and Clank, Paper Mario or Wind Waker and just enjoy the game for what it is without feeling the needed to be challenged down to the very core of my skills.

One more thing that in my opinion all games should start implementing and that’s where the game recommends a difficulty level for you, off the top of my head three games come to mind. Both Modern Warfares and inFamous. It’s a nice feature, when it works but with the MW2 I played the training course a few times until it recommended me the hardest difficulty, by the half way point I’d turned the difficulty two levels because I was getting annihilated, and with inFamous I planned on playing it on Hard anyway so I could get the trophy without picking up any bad habits or normal beforehand. When done right this should be the standard in all games because it’s a really useful feature and will work for newbies and hardcore gamers alike, plus, I never know what to pick when starting a new game, one game’s veteran is another game’s easy. Or, better yet, instead of having set levels have a feature where the game gradually adjusts difficulty for you depending on how well you are playing making the enemies stronger or weaker (like in Devil May Cry 4) instead of taking a huge step forward to back (many times in games I’ve found normal to easy and hard to hard, this solves that).

Another (albeit less common) issue is when completing a game on normal or hard or above you don’t unlock the unlockables for the difficultly below it, If I finish a game the first time on hard why would I want to play it again on easy, most games are retroactive with this but there’s still a few examples that haven’t implemented this yet (John recently played Bayonetta and mentioned this) and there’s really no excuse for it.

Anyway, as much as I hate to say it, the best way to achieve a challenge from a game is to play on online, as good as AI can be sometimes it’ll never match the unpredictability and lateral thinking of another human. Plus, arguably, winning is a lot more fun when you can imagine a retelling of Angry German Kid happening on the other end or your sniper rifle.

The Differences Between Men and Women

Firstly, I’d just like to apologise for my absence from Gabbling Geeks recently. I haven’t posted an article in a few weeks, mainly due to a combination of lack of time, the fact that I’ve just built a new computer and am now playing Dragon Age Origins as I’ve wanted to since before Christmas, and my own sheer laziness. Anyway, on to the subject of this article.

Now, before anyone thinks of making any jokes about this topic (hur dur hur penis lol...) I just want to point out that I’m talking about the way the different genders are treated, both in society, in the workplace and people’s general opinion etc etc. When I was growing up, I never thought there was any difference between men and women. I never thought either my mum or my dad was any better or worse than the other, I just viewed them both as parents plain and simple. As I got older I started to discover that this actually isn’t the case in the world. Women get paid less in the workplace, and men get less paternity leave than women get maternity leave. In fact according to Wikipedia, in the United Kingdom, women now get 52 weeks paid maternity leave compared to 2 weeks paid and up to 13 weeks unpaid paternity leave that men get. I personally think it’s utterly daft that the genders are treated so differently. We’re all human beings aren’t we? In my experience most of the women that I’ve met can do stereotypically male things just as well as I can, better in some cases, and I know some men who are just as good as women at stereotypical female professions. In fact, Jo is a much better programmer than me, she’s probably one of the best in our group at university, and games programming is a stereotypically male profession. There are genetic differences between men and women, men are generally stronger than women for example, but that’s no reason to say that women can’t do something. A man might be better suited for a physical job than a woman due to this, but women can still do the same job, there’s nothing stopping them. Also, women are more often considered to be the carers for children, but that’s not to say that a man can’t give the same sort of care and attention to a child that a woman can.

Going back to the subject of pay and parental leave, this is completely ridiculous. There’s absolutely no reason that women should be paid less for doing the same amount of work as a man. That’s just a completely archaic and chauvinistic view. It’s shocking to think that, even though we have so much political correctness these days, women still get paid less than men. Now imagine if someone got paid less because they were of, say, African American ethnicity. There’d be public outrage right? Where’s the difference?

On the flip side of this argument however you have the parental leave issue. Women have to go through childbirth, but 48 extra weeks of paid maternity leave seems a little excessive to me. I’m not saying women should get less maternity leave, but I’m saying men should get an equal amount of paternity leave. Childbirth is an emotional time for the father too, and I know I want to be there during my child’s early years at least. Why can’t parental leave be shared between the parents? Each parent gets every other week off, alternating with each other to look after the child, once the mother has recovered from childbirth. Maternity leave being longer than paternity leave is another example of an archaic view, this one being of women as homemakers. Today, you often find that both genders work just as much as each other, and it’s not uncommon to find a male homemaker.

The media doesn’t help matters either. If you look at adverts on TV, the internet and in newspapers for example you’ll be bombarded by adverts portraying one gender or the other in incredibly stereotypical ways. A recent example I can think of is the Tesco Clubcard one where the man wants a new TV and sofa to watch the World Cup on, and the women says he can have it because they got double points, or some such twaddle. Not every man in the country follows the World Cup like a religion. I personally detest football, and couldn’t really care less if we win the World Cup or not. I take offense to people assuming I give a rat’s arse just because I’m male. Then again, I’m not your usual male at all. If me and Jo didn’t look like our respective genders you’d have trouble telling us apart. A list of my favourite films would probably include Love Actually, The Holiday and Titanic, which are generally considered women’s films, whereas a list of Jo’s favourite films would include Transformers and Terminator, stereotypically male films. I prefer drinking wine, whereas Jo likes lager. I like MMORPGs which are generally considered to be more suited for women because of the social aspect (I know), and Jo likes FPSs, which are male dominated. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this though. Is there any reason why we should force ourselves to like or not like something because of the gender we were born as?

On the subject of FPSs, I’d just like to bring up the experiences Jo has had while playing some shooters. She generally goes by the name Gamezgoddess online, so it’s quite apparent that she’s female, and while using this name on public servers of games like CounterStrike, she’s had guys having a go at her because she “shouldn’t be playing a game like this” and generally just being dickholes to her. Everyone should be able to do what they enjoy regardless of gender, and I think it’s about time the world as a whole realised this and started to change its ways personally.

Final Fantsay 13 Putting Your Console At Risk

Well... I made the mistake of entering the Game shop over the weekend, and I ended up with a Collector’s Edition of Final Fantasy 13 (PS3). It was really good value which was what gripped me into buying it, even though I was originally thinking of skipping such a purchase. I have always been curious to play the game, but from very early on John and I found out about a certain issue affecting the game and causing consoles to break completely. I’d decided at that point that maybe I shouldn’t bother as the experience probably isn’t worth risking my precious launch PS3 over. You may have heard about the lawsuit recently; a man named Daniel Wolf intends to sue Sony/Square for a lot of money which he then intends to offer to the people that join him so that they can replace their broken consoles. The problem is said to wear out the Blu-ray laser and after the game crashes, the console will no longer be able to read any form of media whatsoever. There are a fair few videos on you tube demonstrating the problem.

At the time of buying the game I had already convinced myself that the game had sold millions of copies, and so therefore surely if the problem was as bad as it was being made out to be there would be more pre-owned copies up for grabs and a lot more of an outrage going on. In fact most people haven’t even heard of this issue before. I asked at the Game shop before buying it whether they had heard anything for which they answered no, therefore re-assuring me that it would be ok; Only when I got the game back and put it in my console the threat suddenly became a lot more real. Despite the fact that the game has so far run smoothly with absolutely no issues whatsoever I can’t help feeling a knot forming in my stomach like I’ve just put a live bomb in the disk tray. It’s hard to enjoy the game experience when you’re worried that your console will crash and burn at any moment.

I therefore decided to have a search across the internet to try and re-assure myself so that I can play the game calmly and hopefully begin to enjoy the experience (after all aren’t games meant for playing, the whole idea that I’m afraid to do so is preposterous.) I found a lot of people discussing things, but no real definite answers. It feels like I’m bashing my head against a brick wall most of the time. Some people are saying it is the fault of the console, others are stating that it is because of defect discs. There are also no exact statistics for how many people this issue is in fact affecting. The problems don’t seem to be mainstream (for I know of many people who have completed the game with consoles still working) and yet it’s a regular enough occurrence to cause concern and awareness.

All I have heard from both Sony and Square Enix is that they are playing the blame game instead of actually attempting to correct the fault. Surly they could work together on this one and sort it out quicker instead of making fans feel rejected and angry. I did consider that maybe I could play the game by buying it for my 360 instead. It isn’t preferable because comparison videos show that it doesn’t look as good on this console plus it requires a lot of discs, still if it means not breaking anything it’s worth it right? Well, on my internet searches I also found a fair few accounts of freezing issues on the 360 version as well.

I really don’t know what’s best in this scenario. I could continue and everything will be absolutely fine. I may have been lucky enough to get a working disc, and my console may be able to handle it (I always de-dust it and keep it in a well ventilated spot,) but there’s always the ‘what if’? What if I end up being one of the people who suffers from this problem? I know for a fact that I will kick myself if this happens because it’s not as if I haven’t received any warning signs. For what is suppose to be a major next-gen release this is ridiculous and I’m hoping that everything will be resolved so that I can go ahead and get on with the game. It’s just that while nobody is willing to acknowledge the problem there will also be no development any time soon in trying to fix it.

Tricky Job Interviews

Is it just me, or does trying to get a job almost feel like trying to win the lottery these days? It just feels like an almost impossible thing for me to reach at the moment and I have to admit, at times I sit and worry about my future prospects. I’m not bad at what I do; I’m a hard dedicated worker with a lot of passion, but... and there is a big but... I have no previous experience and my shyness lets me down. Let’s explore the first part of that statement; how can I get experience if I need experience to get a job? This is an excuse given to me a lot but it’s really unfair. I’ve been a hard worker my entire life, come top of my class mostly and actually tried to get on with things unlike other people, so why not give me a chance? Now for the second part of the statement; this world seems to run off charismatic people. No matter how good your skills are, it feels like a dim loud mouth is more likely to get through than you are. Ok, I know that charisma is an important skill to have, but unfortunately were not all born naturals at it. Also, why is shyness so unaccepted in this overly extrovert society? (By the way, being quiet a lot doesn’t necessarily mean you’re afraid to talk to people, I’m often not talkative when my mind is occupied by another task at hand, and as often is the case the gobby person next to you tends to be the one who makes the most mistakes. Secondly, it is also often seen as a condition that can’t be helped – trust me, I never chose to be this way, I hate it and am continuously trying to break out of this problem. Despite being a condition people seem to be happy to bully shy/introvert people which makes the condition worse and yet other noted conditions are more respected and treated with care.) – Oh and I’m not a babbling wreck either, I enjoy chatting to people face to face and can be quite noisy at times, but my entire life I’ve always been classed as shy like I give off a vibe or something. Anyways, being introvert can be a good thing; they tend to be more creative and think things through better.

My point is, when I was younger I always thought that I’d have a good chance at getting a job, simply because I’m a passionate person and absolutely love what I do which means I practice a lot. Now I’ve lost that confidence, because what they look for when employing people seems to be a bit off. On my university course the 3rd year is suppose to be a work experience placement, which is the year I’m currently on. I’m actually self employed and running a business with John and Sneeze (selling custom-built computers), but I did initially try to get a job. Before attempting to apply for jobs we were given advice on what they look for when interviewing people. The thing is, a lot of people have probably also been told the same thing, so were all making our CV’s up to sound like were skilled in everything they need but also outgoing and cultured, but not to any extremes. It causes you to kind of twist the truth a bit, so they’re not really seeing the real genuine person are they? We were also told that we couldn’t apply for game development jobs because we weren’t yet good enough, but there weren’t many C++ jobs available so it was awkward trying to stretch our skills when applying for completely unrelated computing jobs. I was lucky in that I’d had a past interest in website design so I attempted to take that direction mostly. I ended up with a lot of interviews, so I guess my CV writing skills can’t be too off.

At a lot of the interviews I went to they were actually a bit off with me, asking me the question, ‘so you spend a lot of time sat in front of your computer then?’ in an accusing way. What am I suppose to say to that and why is it a bad thing? I’m applying for a computing job, isn’t it a good thing that I’m use to the idea of sitting in front of a monitor for long periods of time. Anyway, at no point in my CV did I state computing was the only thing I did. I enjoy being active; playing things like badminton, going canoeing and I’m soon to join the gym where I will probably spend much of my spare time. I could go further and list many hobbies and activities which I do that don’t involve a computer but I won’t bother. I also got told a lot of the time that I didn’t have the right skills, but this was supposed to be a learning experience job where they teach you the skills. Also it’s impossible to know every obscure program and language in computing because there are so many, usually programmers can pick new things up fast and that should be enough. (It should be about technique more than knowing each thing off by heart in my opinion.) If you want me to be good at everything I will need to spend a lot of time sat in front of my computer practicing - but oh no... That means you’ll accuse me of doing nothing but sitting in front of my monitor once again. That’s why I’d like to work for a software engineering company rather than a company that wants software, because I think they’ll understand you and the job involved better.

You can’t be good at everything, there’s not enough time in the world and I just don’t understand why being skilled at what they want you for isn’t good enough. I know personality will make a difference if you get two people with equal skill levels, but that whole needing to be cultured part of it, like computing people should go visit art galleries or something. Most of us just aren’t like that? The kind that really care about what they do, the kind that can genuinely do a very good job at your computing needs (i.e. the geeks) are also the kind that aren’t as likely to do less techy things. There’s a reason some people are whizzes at computing, they’re either born with it, or they do a lot of it. To expect less is unreasonable. I’ve also heard of cases though where people who aren’t as good at the skills required have gotten it over somebody more capable. This is outright unfair and I’m not even going to bother explaining why because I think it’s obvious. It is also often the case that you can be over-qualified to get a certain job, but it should be down to you to decide if you want to work there, not them. If you’re applying then you’re obviously happy to be working there despite having a lot of qualifications. I thought it’d be a good thing to have a lot of skills anyway, should I just stop learning when I reach a certain point to increase my chances of getting a job, or should I just omit some of my skills from my CV as if they don’t exist. How do I know when I’ve gone too far on my listed skill set? I wanted to work at a Game shop once, but have had no reply from them. They say you have to care about games (which I think it’s obvious I do), and I thought I’d show it by saying that I’m studying them. Now I’m wondering whether that makes me over-qualified and that’s why I’ve never heard back from them – You’d think it’d impress them, but no.

I’m also hard up against it being a white British person. I don’t have issues with ethnic minorities taking jobs or anything and I’m not racist. In fact it isn’t their fault at all, and if they earned the job I don’t really have a problem with them getting it over me. The problem arises because of the stupid pressures put onto companies to make it look as if they are making an effort to provide equal opportunities to all kinds of people; if a workforce consists of all white British it apparently looks bad (even though I have before seen a workforce that seems to only consist of black people). It has reached a point where I’ve actually seen job application forms stating that white people can’t apply even though the job doesn’t necessarily require a foreigner to do it. If you have the right skills you should be considered no matter who you are or where you’re from. I reckon that it’s probably quite condescending to a foreigner who’ll be getting a job because of what they are rather than what they are capable of. All this political correctness does is make it worse by driving a wedge further between the groups, leaving British people quite rightfully mad because they’re being shunned for no reason over people who didn’t originally come from here.

There is also a question of loyalty in jobs where sometimes people will get favours and will get in because they happen to know somebody who already works there, and then there’s the more negative side where loyalty lets you down, perhaps a place lays you off or offers a promotion to somebody with less experience there than you. Appearances and accents have also been said to make a difference, so basically if your ugly and don’t speak posh you have less of a chance even if you’re like as smart as Einstein or something. A lot of job interviews seem to have some sort of expected criteria for how you answer the trick questions they pop at you, and your suppose to read their minds on this one somehow.

I’m sure most of us have had negative interview experiences, or didn’t get a job for a reason that seemed unfair. The whole process feels like pot luck and there is so much competition involved nowadays. I guess recession didn’t exactly help last year and its left a lot of desperate people wondering what to do, but the least companies could do is to actually recruit people fairly and to give everyone an equal chance. The ones that put all the effort in should have the best chance of getting in, otherwise I might as well just not bother and sit on my ass all day doing nought for all the difference it will make.

The Geek Communication Barrier

Sometimes it feels as if the world is divided into two categories; gamers and non-gamers. – In a blunt sense, of course there are many different types of people out there but for the purpose of this article I’m referring to the relationship between these two groups. There’s aren’t many gamers who don’t have a story to offer about how a non-gamer did something stupid on a game or their misunderstanding parents keep bugging them to give it a rest. It gets pretty annoying right, even after numerous times explaining that what they say on the news is wrong you still get told to go away from your console/computer. I use to get this a bit when I was younger, now I’m older not so much. The other problem is also the fact that I’m a geek who spends much of her spare time programming. I don’t know if others get this, but there’s often a communication barrier between computer professionals and everybody else, in the way that you’re expected to do more of the work coming down to their level than they are coming up to yours.

I don’t really mind the barrier being there as long as I have somebody like me to talk to. It seems a bit one sided though because often people make an assumption about you if you’re a geek – that you’re a poor person to talk to. The fact is we don’t always have to talk about computing or video games, but in non-tech gatherings I’m often sat in the corner feeling slightly bored because I feel like people are giving me a bit of a berth. I try to join in and take interest in what other people say and sometimes they’ll let me through. The problem is, I’m expected to let them talk about what they want, but then can I talk about what I want, often not. When you mention the ‘vg’ words or anything computing related you can tell it’s going ‘whoosh’ over their heads. You can try to complain that people don’t take an interest in what you have to say, but they’ll make out that they do even though it’s obvious they’re just trying to look as if they are (as you tend not to get much of a response.) There’s also the fact that they’ll blame video games for everything that goes wrong in your life (tends to make you think that they don’t care much about your interests.) How are you suppose to take their attempts at understanding you seriously if they just irrationally blame everything on what you care about? I feel people think that I have to do something else other than computing, but that’s my hobby and future career choice, don’t have much time for anything else. Why should I change myself anyway? They expect me to just switch that part of myself off, yet they can talk about their jobs, education or hobbies as much as they want. I can’t complain about it because my hobbies are to blame, not the way that society is or anything *rolls eyes...*

I often feel like I have to choose between people and my passion for video game development because it’s always made out to me that when I’m on my computer I’m shutting myself away. The fact is, games programming is one of the hardest subjects you can choose, and I want to make sure I practice a lot each day so that I can pick it up well and live my dream. I actually program on my laptop a lot so I’m sat around in places where people are anyway and sometimes I stop and have a chat. If it seems I shut myself out sometimes it’s because I’m sick and tired of having my passions put down, the very thing I’m striving to create. It’s no different to the passion an artist feels when they start to make that masterpiece, it’s the desire to make something brilliant that other people can enjoy. I don’t even understand how people can’t see the crafting of video games as amazing. It’s so exciting thinking that I can design and produce my own world with its own rules – each to their own I guess. Amazingly, I haven’t actually met many other people who share the same enthusiasm as me for this sort of stuff, which is a shame because you hear about how young computer scientists get together at university and make successful things such as Google. I really wish I knew more people to share my hobby with because it’s kind of frustrating not being able to talk about programming more often. I guess I’ve read too many game development books written by eager professionals and I’d really like to meet them and gabber about computing all day. (To get past that steep learning curve to become a professional I guess you’d have to be pretty eager.)

Amongst the gaming/tech crowd you often find that it’s much easier to bond. (I read a study once that stated that people who played MMORPG’s together often had a stronger bond with each other than people who don’t.) When I went to university and finally met some other genuine gamers like myself we just instantly clicked and got talking away. You find you hardly ever run out of stuff to say because games are plentiful and you’re both happy to sit there and talk about them all day; non-gamers looking on in amusement because once again they think your silly and incapable of talking about anything else. It’s true that gamers can also have lots of tiffs, like over camping or kill stealing, and we don’t all get on such as the FPS and RPG crowd, but overall, once you do meet another gamer with similar tastes you find that your friendship tends to blossom. It’s a shame that all those non-gamer folk will never understand how good it feels to have a friendship like this.

I know that you can’t expect non-tech people to understand every detail of what you do, after all, it’s incredibly complicated, but on the top level it’d be nice to know that some of those people could maybe lay off a bit and try to accept my interests. I’m always made out to be the bad person for having a hobby in computing, and yet I’m not the one going around putting down somebody’s interests and making them feel that they can’t talk about it, or even briefly mention it once. I sometimes even fear going anywhere near my computer because I think I'm going to be judged for it. I admit to the fact that I’m a little obsessive over what I do, but it’s what makes me who I am and I love being that crazy creative person who puts all into what they do (too many people these days don’t seem to put any effort into developing skills anymore.) I’ll be more willing to come down a notch to their level if they can just maybe try, for once, not jump to the conclusion that video games and computers are destroying people lives, because in actual fact it's the un-accepting people in this world who are to blame. Yup the story of my life – I’m interested in a subject in which girls are often not very well received, which in turn isn’t widely accepted by society, and people wonder why I sometimes cut myself off! Oh-isn’t-the-human-race-just-wonderful? -.-

Grand Theft Gameplay

Since GTA III there’s been an increasing number of sandbox games all sticking with the same formula that Rockstar has been trying to perfect since 2001. Games like the Saint’s Row and Just Cause series’ and even the odd super hero game like Spiderman 2, inFamous and Prototype are going for the open worlded do what you feel like approach. The funny thing is, most of them are better than the very thing they are imitating. Don’t get me wrong, I loved San Andreas and would probably put it in my top 10 but having tried to get into GTAIII and Vice City several times each (even though the latter is often considered better than San An) and failing, I’ve just found other games to be more enjoyable. In this article I will be comparing a few sandbox games that have stood out for me, San Andreas, GTAIV, Saints Row 2 and the recently released Just Cause 2. I would include inFamous and Prototype but they don’t really involve cars all that much unless you count using them as a weapon.

Overall I can’t really pick a single favourite each have their merits but here’s a quick lowdown.

The only area GTAIV is the best for me is story, and even then it’s not brilliant, a little cliché and one or two of the characters are I want-to-punch-you-in-the-mouth-unlikeable, no names mentioned. Its good towards the end but takes too long to pick up. San Andreas and Saints Row 2 are ok, but they are too gang orientated which in my opinion makes it hard to sympathise, but that could be just me. As for Just Cause 2 the story is pretty much nonexistent, it doesn’t flow all that well and the (intentionally) bad voice acting doesn’t help but that doesn’t really matter.

Graphically Just Cause 2 is the best, the draw distance is incredible and standing on top of the mountains or climbing in a helicopter and looking towards the horizon gives you a real feel for how large the game world is, granted this is the most modern of the four but it’s impressive all the same. GTAIV is nice, but on HD resolutions it could have done with better anti-aliasing and there’s way too much bloom at times, all it suffers from is the same fate as a lot of games this generation, everything is grey. Saints Row 2 isn’t amazing but it’s bright, colourful and while not realistic still a nice looking game. It isn’t really fair to compare San Andreas here as it was released last generation but did look nice at the time so it is noteworthy.

When you spend a good majority of the game driving around you need to have a decent soundtrack to help you along or it can get a bit boring, and this is where Saints Row 2 is the better of the 4, plenty of variety with a nice selection of old and new tunes some of which are guilty pleasures but it just adds to the tongue-in-cheek mood of the game. San Andreas is also good, some may argue Vice City is better but I can’t personally vouch for that but most of the time I always ended up turning on WCTR. GTAIV is, well, terrible, I have a very broad music taste but there wasn’t a single station I could get on with, there was Integrity, the equivalent of WCTR but even that wasn’t as good as it was in San Andreas. Unfortunately, Just Cause 2 has no soundtrack to speak of, there’s (mediocre) background music but no radio stations, though, after GTAIV this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Gameplay, obviously the most important aspect of a game, there isn’t really much difference between all of them, get gun, aim, shoot, avoid consequences. Both GTAs have a lock on feature and IV has a Gears of War style cover system which is up there with QTEs and Zombies on a list of biggest clichés this generation, it was useful, but not needed, not in a game of this style. I never really cared for lock on anyway, makes is feel like the game is doing it for you. Just Cause 2 has an upgrade system which adds to the game but is almost compulsory as without it the weapons seem to shoot frozen peas.

Another thing all of these games have in common is collectables, things you run/fly/swim/drive around the entire map for to collect, which in my opinion is kind of annoying, it’s never been something I’ve really enjoyed and almost felt like a chore, San Andreas mixed it up a bit with having photo icons you collected with the camera and spray tags as well as the usual pick-ups but it still felt tedious as all hell but its GTAIV that really takes the biscuit. For those who don’t know, across the entire city are 100 pigeons, or “flying rats” that you need to kill, the main issue is that there is no silent way of doing the deed so 4 out of 5 times you shoot one, you get a wanted level which makes an already mundane task even worse because you need to lose the cops every time you kill one of them. Saints Row 2 has CDs, and these where incredibly hidden, in my entire time playing it I think I found about 10 (out of 50), I could use a map or guide but still, this is a little too secret. Just Cause 2 is nice and puts a blue spot on the map where all the collectables are but with 300 it’s still insane, and then there’s the 2000+ resource items that aren’t on the map, I can’t imagine completing this game 100%.

Then there’s wanted levels, another area where San Andreas is prime, bringing the FBI and even the army in at high levels to take you down, a misguided attempt because then you just steal the tank, maybe that’s why they didn’t do it in GTAIV, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, ey? Saints Row 2, not much can be said, kind of a medium between the one in San Andreas and IV, not quite heavy tanks but a bit more than SWAT. But my main qualm in this area is in Just Cause 2 where the wanted level (or heat as the game calls it) doesn’t really stand for much. Sometimes I can survive for 20+ minutes on level 5 without an issue, sometimes level 2 will completely obliterate me, it doesn’t seem to make much sense. Plus sometimes you will actually just gain heat for nothing, I mean literally nothing, I swear they sometimes come after you because they don’t like your face. I was doing a race once, in a small town, not restricted land or anything, just drove past and bam, level 4, out of nowhere, I don’t know whether this is a bug or known issue but when the game screws you out of a challenge because the feds simply don’t like you it’s a bit silly.

An area Saints Row really did well in was customisability; build your character from the ground up, gender, age, colour, voice, build, eyes, hair, size of cleavage/package even the way they walk. It’s arguably more in depth than the sims which is a little crazy. New clothes and accessories were available through my outlets in the game world which you could choose a colour and material for, car mod shops available too with a nice amount of options, really well done. You can sum up the system on this in San Andreas in 3 syllables. Oh-ver-kill. I know how much I just praised the Saints Row for the amount it had but you chose a shirt you chose a colour, San An would be green shirt, blue shirt, red shirt, black shirt, white shirt, green t-shirt, blue t-shirt; ad infinitum. When you're a completionist [Read: Anal] like I am, and you want to own everything and this is just annoying. IV once again went completely the other way and gave so little choices of attired I could count them on my fingers and toes, and then count the ones that looked half decent on my thumbs. Just Cause has well, nothing. You look the same from start to finish and your choice of colour of car depends on who you steal it from.

Finally, gimmicks and side missions, which is where Just Cause prevails, this is a game to get if you like destroying things, trust me. If you wanna blow crap up then there’s not much better out there, blowing stuff up gets you chaos which in turn unlocks story missions so you can progress. I actually spent the first 15-20 hours of gameplay exploring and blowing stuff up and collecting stuff and did maybe 15 missions in that time (including faction missions). Saints Row 2 has respect, which works in much the same way but you get that by doing side jobs such as assassination, drug trafficking, smearing people’s houses in poop, you then “spend” the respect to do missions. Neither of the GTAs really have a mechanic like this, missions are always available once you’ve unlocked them but will normally yield you money so you can make other missions easier.

In a perfect world we’d have GTA IV’s story and characters, Just Cause’s destruction and graphics, Saint Row’s taste in music and missions, San Andreas’ over the top wanted level system and general “feel”, and a healthy mix of all their gameplay aspects. Oh, and the collectable system from pong.



"Man, I gotta drive a taxi, next I'll be flying a remote control helicopter or some ****" ~ Marcus Reed, True Crime: New York City.

Ignorance and Video Games

Following on from Sneeze’s article about violence and fornication in video games, I’d like to take a closer look at the people who complain about this sort of thing. Jo and I were watching some videos of Jack Thompson and some other people complaining about Grand Theft Auto IV last night, and it was honestly one of the most ignorant, scaremongering piles of crap I have ever seen in my life. I’ve never played GTA IV myself, but I have played III, Vice City and San Andreas, so I know the basic precepts of GTA games quite well. Apparently, in this game (according to the talk show we watched) your child can pick up a hooker, have sex with her, then beat her to death with a baseball bat to get your money back. OK, OK, OK, let’s get one thing straight shall we. Your child can’t do these things because the game has an ESRB rating of M and a BBFC rating of 18. If a child gets their hands on a copy of the game it’s due to negligence, either on the part of the store who sold them the restricted item, or on the part of the parents, to provide their offspring with a video game that has been deemed unsuitable for them. On that note, many people have complained that the ESRB rating of M should be raised to AO due to some of the game’s content. For anyone who doesn’t know, M is for ages 17+ and AO is for ages 18+. I mean seriously, is one year really going to make that much of a difference?

Right, now on to the point of this article. Many people complain that some of the themes in video games, such as violence, sex and crime have an adverse effect on people who play them, causing them to go on mad killing sprees in schools with an AK47 or something. As a side note, if I was personally gonna go on a killing spree I’d screw an AK47 and take a HK47 with me instead. At least it’d add some humour to the situation. “Query: Shall we start with the blaster rifle or plasma grenades master? I do so enjoy the sound of meatbags in pain. Except you of course master. Haha.”
Anyway, random Star Wars references aside, how many reported sales of GTA IV have there been? I can’t seem to find an up to date figure, but according to Wikipedia, as of the 16th of August 2008 (a few months after the game’s release) it had sold over 10 million copies. So I guess we can assume that that figure has increased dramatically since then. Now, how many cases have there been of people running amok in schools with rifles? Yeah, considerably less. Oh and let’s not forget that hardly any of these cases can actually be directly linked to video games. People just seem to think that since someone has played a violent game before, that must have somehow trained them to become psychotic killers. As Sneeze, said in his article, these people also tend to be quite fond of statistics, throwing them out like confetti at a wedding, so here’s one for you: let’s take a high estimate for the number of school shootings linked to video games. Shall we say 50? Yeah that sounds like a nice high estimate. Now how many sales have there been of GTA IV? Well there were over 10 million sales in August 2008, so in May 2010, taking into account additional sales in the past nearly 2 years, plus pre-owned sales on eBay and the like, shall we say 17 million? Right now let’s work out the percentage shall we? Notice I’m being lenient here and assuming that all these violent rampages were linked to GTA IV and not to other games like Counter Striker or Manhunt. So, 50/17,000,000 * 100 = ~0.0003%. Wow, that’s a low percentage. Plus I’ve been lenient with this percentage don’t forget. Now let’s consider, out of all the people who have played GTA IV, how many are likely to have had a deep rooted psychological problem that would probably lead them to become violent with the influence of something like GTA anyway. I don’t know about you, but I’d reckon it’d be higher than the previous percentage. So the only people who would have been affected by violent games are the ones who are quite frankly mentally unfit to play them anyway. I mean what train of thought would lead you to the conclusion “Oh, I just killed someone in this game, therefore it must be alright to do it in real life too”. Sounds retarded doesn’t it? Really, if someone can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality, then it’s obviously a case that needs looking at more thoroughly right?

For all that people complain about violence in video games, surely it’s better that people do it within the confines of a fantasy world rather than in real life. At our core, human beings are just animals that have developed the confines of society, making many of our animal urges unacceptable, for instance the need to hunt and kill. Animals do it all the time, it’s a perfectly natural part of life, and the old hunter-gatherer instincts are still there in all human beings. Take a look at the Freudian model for example. (I apologise for any inconsistencies here, but I briefly studied Freud out of a textbook at college 5 years ago after dropping out of Psychology for being too boring and taking Physics instead. They just weren’t covering the stuff I wanted to learn in Psychology, and Physics was a much more black and white subject, which suits my style of thinking more, so I decided to just learn the stuff I wanted to know out of a textbook instead. So I apologise if I’m wrong about anything here.) The Freud model states that the consciousness is split into three parts, the ID, the Ego, and the Superego. The ID is the animal instinct, self-gratification part of our mind that tells us what we want and that we want it now. The Superego is the part of our mind that tells us what’s right and what’s wrong, and that we should always do right by other people. The Ego sits between the two, and keeps them both in check, making sure we get sufficient self gratification, but that we are still decent people. Anyway, dragging this back onto topic, the ID part of our minds tells us that we want to kill things. Surely, a place where we can satisfy these urges without doing harm to anyone else is preferable to going out and stabbing someone in the street or something. I know I’ve actually found games where you can be someone else for a while terribly relieving, not having to worry about the real life consequences of my actions actually de-stresses me really well. So in that sense, violent games are surely good for people, provided they don’t have any prior mental instabilities. Maybe instead of age ratings on games they should have mental stability ratings, ensuring the only people who play these kinds of games aren’t the kind who are going to go crazy and start eating their socks or something.

The Glorification of Violence and Fornication

One of the main problems people seem to have with video games is that they “glorify” sex and violence and this makes children grow up corrupted and desensitised and they might stab people. Of course, there have been loads of studies that prove that games make children violent, they are just secret studies that only exist in a realm of reality that only anti-game enthusiasts can see, or at least that’s what I imagine because I sure as hell can’t find any. They just spout random statistics to get ignorant people like putty in their hands so they’ll buy their latest book or whatever they’re selling.

Violence in media has always been around and video games are just the latest punch bag to emerge, 30 years ago, people would be complaining about violence on TV, 80 years ago people would have complained about violence in movies, 10,000 years ago, probably complained about violence in cave paintings. People are always looking for an excuse why someone stabbed someone and instead of blaming the child’s own free will, poor parenting or perhaps the person in question deserved to be stabbed, no its Rockstar’s fault because they “taught” him how to use a knife, I’m not even sure how this works, unless you’re unaware of which end made people bleed.

It’s pretty clear that these so called “experts” haven’t played a game in their life but people believe anything you tell them if you’re over the age of 50 and in a suit and stick some sort of percentage in there. No, you don’t get “points” for killing cops and the aim of the game isn’t to kill prostitutes.

Complaints were actually received about the advert for Heavy Rain glorifying violence, now, anyone with a brainstem can tell this game is in no way glorifying violence, on the contrary. It shows the after effects, the consequences, the problems that come with taking a life. Then, to bring up a point Jo made in a previous article you have adverts for joining the army. They show guns, tanks, airplanes, boats all the machines that where invented to kill a guy quicker than he can kill you, they make it all flashy and give it the “boy with their toys” appeal. This is for an invention, the sole purpose of which is for ending life. Now, which one of these is actually doing the glorifying? Which one is getting the blame for people getting killed?

Then there’s sex, which is equally as hypocritical, all you have to do is turn prime time TV on and see the latest advert for deodorant or make-up and have far more sexual content then you’d see in most video games, and even then, watch anything on Channel 4 post watershed and you’ll see stuff worse than pretty much all video games (well, all of the ones sold outside Japan anyway). Yet Mass Effect got accused of being a “porn simulator” (which when you look at it is a deeply flawed term anyways, how does one simulate porn?) yet it’s actually tastefully done, and shows the feelings and connection between the two characters and the most graphic thing you get is a sideboob. What kind of porn are they actually watching?

Granted this issue does seem to be getting less pressing, Mass Effect 2 didn’t get any stick to my knowledge and that was probably more graphic, and Heavy Rain (yes I know I keep using this game in examples, if it’s bothering you play a drinking game or something) didn’t receive much notoriety and that’s probably more graphic still.

One more point on sex in games, I found this link today: Click. Now, surely he must have known of Rule 34’s existence, by its very nature you can find porn of anything, Sonic, Pokémon, The Land Before Time and pretty much anything that will destroy your childhood in a few simple jpegs. None of these previously had any sexual context but the internet got hold of it and suddenly Simba has a foot long. So, you make a game like Bayonetta which is pretty sexual itself, you’re pretty much doing half the work for them, and then you had the stones to complain when porn of it emerges? If you’re going to make a highly sexual character expect the character to be highly sexualised, it would be like serving someone an extremely salty meal and complaining if they get a drink afterwards.

Video games are no worse than any other form of media, TV, film, music, all influence people to some extent but people are always in control, if someone “copies” a video game it’s not at the fault of the game but at the fault of the person. Some people are naturally violent regardless of what hobbies they do or don’t have (except maybe yoga) and these people should be dealt with accordingly instead of fighting against an industry and ruining it for all the people who have self control and the little voice that tells them what’s real and what isn’t.

The best idea is to educate people more on game ratings, people still think that the age rating is purely based on difficulty and nothing else and then complain when they find out their 8 year old is running over pensioners in a golf cart. I saw a mother and her kid in game a few days ago, the kid wanted Forza Motorsport and the mother said “No, it’s obviously a 12 for a reason” obviously having no idea that a simple flip of the case would tell her exactly why it’s a 12. (which as it turns out is bad language, why you need to effectively cut out a large percentage of your audience by adding a few swears to a racing game of all games is beyond me). PEGI should run a few adverts on TV, tell parents about ratings and leave it all up to them instead of letting the Daily Mail handle it.

In return, for gamers, have a rating on all talk shows when video games are the topic, with little icons that mean “contains people that haven’t the faintest what they are on about” and “contains an audience with a collective amount of less than 5 brain cells” just to give us a heads up on what to expect from the next 20 minutes that way and prepare accordingly, possibly by performing a lobotomy on ourselves beforehand so we’re on the same train of thought as the people on the program.




“Before you go and criticize the younger generation, just remember who raised them.” ~ Unknown

Professionalism? Don't make me laugh

I’m sure everyone who has reached around 14-15 years of age has probably had the concept of professionalism shoved down their throats at some point. Apparently, to get by in this world, you need to be professional and respectable in everything you do. But why? Where did these concepts of professionalism come from in the first place? Who first decided that if someone turned up to a meeting in jeans and a T-Shirt instead of a shirt and tie they would be considered as not being professional and giving a bad impression?

Personally I hate the very idea of professionalism. It’s so stifling. I mean seriously why is it needed? It’s not a necessary thing in life. People just tend to not challenge established concepts, like having a shave for instance. If no one shaved, it would be regarded as completely normal for people to be hairy and have wild tangled beards and the like. The same goes for professionalism. If people didn’t expect other people to treat them in a formal way and behave like robots, no one would have to act like that and in my opinion everyone would be much happier for it. Let me give you an example: I used to work in a cafe in Debenhams. We were allowed to get a drink of water from the tap, but we had to go into the back, out of view of the customers, to drink it. This was apparently to protect the company image and keep us looking professional. So let’s get this straight. People, human beings, drinking water in plain sight was apparently bad for the company image and unprofessional. So it seems Debenhams wants to give the impression that it employs robots, because who ever heard of a human being drinking water? This is the sort of thing I mean. Customers know that the people employed there are humans, and so it follows that they do other things that humans do, such as drinking to stay alive. Why the hell would it be considered unprofessional to be seen doing something that you need to do to stay alive, especially considering you’re on your feet for at least four hours at a time, constantly talking and moving around.

While I’m on the subject of customers at Debenhams, what is it with the way employees at these places are meant to treat awkward customers? During the approximately two years I worked there, hardly a week went by when I didn’t witness some customer or another complaining about the state of a table, or the service they received, or the fact that a member of staff spoke to another about something not strictly work related. Let’s tackle these issues in order shall we? A table being messy; well during busy periods it’s hardly possible to keep all the tables in the cafe clean. There were around 40-50 tables in the cafe, and at the very most there were only ever 5 people on tables at any one time. Usually there were only 2 or 3. So during busy periods, when there’s someone leaving a table almost constantly, it’s quite impossible to keep them all clean. The service they received; this could range from anything from the amount of time it took to get them a hot drink, the amount of time spent in the queue, or the fact that someone didn’t smile and look happy while serving. During busy periods, when there were around 4 people moving around each other in a small space all trying to make drinks on 2 drinks machines, it was pretty impossible to get every order done straight away, especially when the machines took around a minute to make the drink, and then there was another 30 seconds after that finishing the drink off by hand. As for the queue, it’s unfortunate but sometimes queues take a while, there’s nothing the staff can do about that when they’re already working as fast as they can, this just requires patience on the part of the customer, something which most customers seem to lack in my opinion. It’s also unfortunate, but after an hour or two of serving awkward customers, not all staff have the capacity to remain happy and cheerful when being treated like a piece of dirt in a lot of cases. Also, this complaint mainly came about people who were new at doing the job in question (I got it from the manager once when I first started serving hot drinks, after a 10 minute crash course from another member of staff), so they aren’t always capable of looking cheerful while concentrating on doing their job properly. A member of staff spoke to another; for this, I refer you to my earlier comments about members of staff being human beings. Admittedly, you can go too far on this one, ignoring a customer while having a detailed conversation about the state of electoral system in this country with another member of staff for instance, but just mentioning something of interest to a co-worker while there aren’t any customers around should be fine, since the members of staff aren’t robots and are unfortunately quite incapable of keeping their minds permanently on their jobs. I myself got it in the neck from customers several times for this, when I was cleaning a tray and talking as I worked, but apparently the ability to multitask is lost on most people. I suppose you could argue that there are some jobs where absolute concentration would be required, but a part time Food Services Advisor (my official job title) for £5/hr isn’t one of them.

The worst thing about it was, if a customer chose to be awkward to us, and even insult us in some cases, we had to be polite, stay calm, and treat them with respect. I’m sorry, but he just lost my respect the moment he called me a ‘long haired idiot’ (I don’t remember the exact wording here, but something similar to this happened to me once). My usual policy when a customer approached me with a complaint was to ever so politely say “I’m sorry, let me get my supervisor for you to speak to”, at which point I’d go into the back, tell the nearest supervisor that “we’ve got another one”, at which she’d roll her eyes and go out to deal with them. Hey, they got paid more than me so they can deal with these situations. This is a prime example of professionalism gone wrong if you ask me. Staff members in a cafe are not subservient to the customers they deal with. Customers are not worth more than staff members. They are all human beings, just the same. However, if you were a visitor from an alien world you could quite easily get the impression that we are divided by a strict class system where people are forced to serve those superior to them.

Another problem I have with professionalism is the way it’s shoved down your throat in the education system. From the time you start career sessions in around Year 10 at the age of 14 or 15, you constantly hear about this concept that you must act a certain way in society. It happened in school, at college, and again in university. In our first year of university we had a module called ‘Professionalism and Communication Skills’. In the second year, we had a module called ‘Asset Management’ in which we apparently got prepared for our placement year. In our final year (or right now in some cases, since those on placement year get a fast-track option) we have another professionalism module, where we have to write a 1500 word essay on professionalism. I wonder if I could hand this post in instead? I wonder how that would fly? In every educational establishment and university course you find something like this. A module tacked on that ‘prepares you for the world of work’. I’ve had two part time jobs in the past 4 years, and with that experience, as well as the experience some of my friends have had in the world of work, I can pretty much say that everything they tell you in these modules a huge pile of crap. They make you think that employers actually care about their employees. In my experience this is by no means the case. Employers care about their employees in the same way they care about a piece of machinery: a tool to do a job. They don’t care how you feel, or what your goals are in life, and they only give you the care required by law. All they care about is that you keep making them money. It would be much better in my opinion if these modules in education were replaced by something actually specific to what you want to do, like on our course for instance, Games Software Development, a module on game theory or the games industry would be much more useful than all this professionalism crap.

In summary, going back to what I said earlier, professionalism doesn’t need to exist. If people didn’t expect other people to behave like this, people wouldn’t need to, removing the entire need for professionalism. All it does is stifle individuality, and without individuality what would society become?

Logic Vs Creativity

If you read my previous article (Can games be classed as art?) you’ll have noticed I have a fair few issues when it comes to the art community. I do actually really like art, but I tend to admire works from artists like Escher and Da Vinci (who were both quite clever and produced technical drawings, not just random blotches of paint like many others.) In fact the helicopter design was inspired by Da Vinci, and I’m sure were all aware of the famous staircase perspective drawings by Escher (inspiring many things; the PS3 game Echochrome and the final scenes of the Labyrinth to name a few.) Anyway, now I come to the point of this article, back when I selected Art as an option at school and college I found a lot of people also selected it, not because they cared but because they thought it would be an easy option. Despite the fact that artists like Escher used mathematical ideas within their work, people seem to think that art can’t be academic or involve any intellect – and if I’m honest, I don’t blame them when observing most modern day pieces. Still, most people would later come to realise that as a subject it’s one of the hardest, most time consuming ones you can take.

Now I move to the opposite side of the argument, logic. Apparently people who program like me are dull and nerdy because their brains are so full of logic they’re incapable of doing anything creatively. Before college I had to attend a few interviews to talk about what I wanted to do, and when I mentioned my choices of Art and ICT the interviewer would look at me gone out. They’d tell me that, ‘they’d never really seen it happen before,’ and that ‘it might not work.’ In fact most timetables at school and college were drawn up to have art clash with more logical subjects because people were less likely to combine the two. At school I use to always be considered the creative one, and I was treated differently because of it. Now I’ve started introducing myself more as a programmer I get treated differently once again with statements such as, ‘you need to try and be creative even though it might be a bit difficult for someone such as yourself.’

The first part of my life was dedicated solely to art. I got into it because my mum, sister and cousin all did it. For that reason I didn’t really choose to, it just sort of happened. It used to irritate me at school though because people saw me as the “Art” person, which I didn’t want to be. I can’t even remember how I came to decide I liked computing, I’d always had fun on my Amiga, and then I got my first PC and it just clicked. My Playstation was what inspired me to consider being a game designer, and on leaving school the art supplies went in the cupboard and the programming books came out. Not that I’ve given up my art, I actually find it to be a really useful skill to have for what I’m doing.

When I started my game development course at university, I found that there were a variety of people. A majority were more maths or physics minded, and when it came to the more creative modules such as Flash, they would complain, a lot. Then there were the more creative people, who enjoyed using Flash, and even began to consider that maybe programming wasn’t for them. Obviously it would be quite difficult to be a programmer and a 3D artist, of which I am most certainly leaning more towards programming, but I still find being creative helps a good deal. For starters, I tend not to have as much trouble thinking up ideas for what to make unlike some of the less creative ones. I am also able to create some decent looking games on my own. It’s unlikely you’ll make many games solo, but for the odd university assignment you don’t have much choice. Last time I checked it was being called Programmers art, where the game would be exquisitely made, but the aesthetics would be poor (unfortunately some lecturers are a bit critical on appearance as well.) Then when it does come to working on a team, I’ve read books stating that the programmers and artists have a tendency not to get along because they don’t understand where the other is coming from. The artists want the game to look pretty, but the programmers want good performance. In that case maybe it’s a good thing to have a programmer or an artist who has some idea of what the other wants. I also find that with creativity, comes attention to detail, which can be useful in any subject.

When I write my CV I always try to make a big deal out of the fact that I am a strongly creative/logical person and how this can be beneficial. I reckon it makes me stand out more form the crowd because I believe it makes me unique. Amazingly enough, I don’t actually want to be a graphics programmer, and I’m more leaning towards areas such as A.I. Despite being a difficult mathematical area, perhaps I can bring some creativity to A.I. to make it operate in a better way. Like I said in my pervious article, when I program I actually feel like I’m being creative because I have to design systems and come up with solutions to problems. I love game design because of its ability to combine both logic and creativity.



Who says you can’t be a little bit creative and logical at the same time?

Top 10 People I'd Like to Slap with a Wet Trout

Due to a combination of writers block and possibly deeply rooted psychological issues regarding the combination of aquatic creatures with violence here’s something a little different, the top 10 people I’d love to slap with a wet trout.

#10 – Katie Price
Assuming the fish is long enough to reach over to her face. I almost question as to whether the breasts are actually some bizarre form of satire, at least that way I’d have some faith restored into humanity. Then there’s her and Peter having all them damn shows on ITV2 about their wonderful life together only to lead into a split-up that even John Edward could have seen coming. Also, am I the only one that gets the impression Peter was at home looking after the kids while she was out sleeping with anything with a pulse?

#9 – Charley from Big Brother 8
Do I even need a reason? I’m not being funny but she is possibly the most obnoxious, nasty, harsh, argumentative all around slut to ever be on reality TV, and that’s saying something. I don’t think there’s a single housemate she didn’t have at least one altercation with, oh, and did I mention she’s stupid?

#8 – Al Murray
Now as you know if you read my political correctness article jokes are fair game and shouldn’t be classed as offensive, but there’s one thing jokes should be and that’s where Al Murray fails: funny. I never found the whole “France sucks, Britain is great” thing funny to begin with, when you repeat this routine every Saturday evening coupled with the McFly version of Don’t Stop Me Now you are using the word “entertainment” very loosely, I might change the rules and slap him a System of a Down CD instead...

#7 – Amanda Holden
Three reasons. Number 1: Not everything under the age of 16 is “cute”, Number 2: Stop flailing your hands like the fish I’m about to slap you with every time anyone with abs takes their top off. Number 3: Stop crying every time someone from either of the above two aforementioned categories does something other than take breath.

#6 – Otis from Dead Rising
Stop calling me, seriously.

#5 – Shiguru Miyamoto
I’ve never really settled on one games company, always flitting between Sony and Nintendo over the past 13+ years so I guess in some ways I should be thanking him because he finalised my decision. I loved the Gamecube, as unsuccessful as it was but with games like Wind Waker, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door and Pikmin how could I not like it? The Wii came along and I was stoked, imagine all those great quirky games from the GC on the Wii but with nicer graphics and great motion control. Unfortunately, nearly 4 years down the line, I’m still left doing just that, imagining. Paper Mario was murdered, all Pikmin has seen is a couple of ports and him teasing us a couple of times with a Pikmin 3 but no news yet, at all, well, other than its existence and then the true sequels to wind Waker where... meh. Everything I loved about Nintendo is slowly fading away, bring back the quirks and stop selling out.

#4 – Peter Kay
10 years ago this guy was the newest comedian on the block with his jokes that everyone can identify with, observational humour and stories about his Mum that anyone can apply to their lives and take enjoyment and laugh because it’s all funny “because it’s true”. Now we are in 2010 and yeah... He’s no longer new, and nor is his content. New jokes or feel the wrath of my fish slap, kthx.

#3 – Piers Morgan
Everyone’s favourite journalist, Britain’s Got Talent judge and professional narcissist. If this guy’s ego was any bigger he’d have to actually have to declare it as a separate continent and then he’d probably only let people in if they paid a “Piers is awesome tax”. He just sits there on the panel of talent criticising everyone claiming he “could do that”. Really Piers? Do us all a favour and try it, with a bit of luck you’ll slip and land crotch first on to an active chainsaw, that’s on fire.

#2 – Noel Edmunds
No real reason for this guy other than the fact I don’t really like his face. Just to feel the satisfaction of removing that undeserved smugness from his face with an accelerating pre-moistened fish would be immensely satisfying.

#1 – Nick Griffin
You may have seen this coming and I can’t be the only one that feels this way but this man is just plain... creepy. I mean, even if you put the bigotry aside, just look at the man. He could save kittens from the violin factory for a living and he’d still look sinister. Imagine waking up at 4am just to see Mr. Griffin at the edge of your bed, with that smile of his... It’s not a pleasant thought, on second thoughts he looks like the kind of guy that would enjoy being slapped with a trout, probably while wearing the skin of a recently sacrificed virgin and reciting Hitler speeches.

Punsihment and rewards in schools

Now I was always the ‘good kid’ in school. You know the one I’m talking about, the one who always stays in line, never plays up for the teacher, stays quiet in class and just generally behaves and respects authority. Needless to say I got a lot of trouble from the ‘bad kids’ for my approach. I had a few threaten to ‘deck’ me at times, and I left the school premises worried that someone was going to jump out from around a corner at me more than once. However, all of this, even though it went on in class a lot of the time, seemed to go largely unnoticed by the teachers. No one ever noticed that I was being threatened in the classroom or anything. But then again, they never really seemed to notice me at all. I just got down to work, did my work well, didn’t cause trouble and didn’t draw attention to myself. But did I ever get rewarded for doing well in school? Nope. Outside of the fact that I got good ‘qualifications’ (GCSEs cease to be important once you’ve got into college anyway), I never received one jot of support from the teachers for doing well in school. Nor did I receive anything for behaving myself.

Now the ‘bad’ kids, who disrespected the teachers, never did their work, disrupted classes, made it impossible for anyone else to learn and took up all of the teacher’s time, in our school anyway, were sent to the ‘report room’. This was apparently a punishment – to be taken out of the class with their work and sent to a room where they were watched over by a single teacher. So they were taken out of class and forced to do the work they would have otherwise had to do in class anyway. Well. Some punishment.

Later in my school career they introduced an addition to the report room. Repeated offenders, as it were, were taken out of classes completely and placed in a special class on their own with other students of similar behaviour levels so that they wouldn’t disturb other students. A noble objective to be sure. But let’s not forget the fact that this meant the ‘bad’ kids were being taken out of regular classes and placed in smaller classes as a punishment for bad behaviour. I don’t know about anyone else, but being in smaller classes with better and easier student to pupil interaction sounds like more of a reward than a punishment to me. Meanwhile, all the ‘good’ kids like me are stuck in classes of 20+ students, at the least, with teachers who, in my honest opinion, quite often really don’t care about the subject they’re teaching or whether they are giving their students the appropriate knowledge or not. Right. This sounds fair doesn’t it?

Just for the icing on the cake, our school THEN decided that, as a reward for their ‘improved’ behaviour, this special class got a nice shiny reward of a trip to Alton Towers. Hm. Something strikes me as rather odd here. Let’s weigh up what our school said to the two respective classes shall we.

To the special class: “Well, you’ve behaved badly, but since you’ve been behaving better recently we’re going to take you Alton Towers as a reward.”

To the normal class: “...” Yeah. Silence. That’s what we got. No recognition of good behaviour or anything.

This is just stupid in my opinion. Why should schools reward badly behaved pupils who then decide to act normal for a change. Why don’t the ones who behaved all along get the same treatment? The most we ever got was an extra revision book in History class and a revision/study residential weekend trip to Matlock in Year 11 just before the exams. I don’t know about anyone else but I’d take Alton Towers any day.

Join the army! - No Thanks

I never really liked the idea of the army. To me it’s always seemed like the moment you join your individuality would be thrown out of the window, you’d become a number and would end up being shouted at and pushed to the edge according to the correct discipline. Never mind the fact that once signing up your kind of stuck until the end of your service which tends to involve you leaving your family behind to go and put your life in danger and to suffer from the guilt of ending it for others. Yet despite this you seem to get a lot of young guys who think it’s a really cool thing to sign up; that being behind the barrel of a gun will make you tough and the uniform/status will impress the ladies.

I’ve never liked those ‘join the army’ adverts. They seem to glamorise it, while not showing any of the negative consequences of being there. For example, there’s the one in the swamp where they’re sneaking through with guns. It makes it look really cool, but in reality it would take years of hard training and being shouted at to even get there, and then once you do, well you’re stood waist deep in a disgusting smelly swamp with the possibility of being shot at (not very glamorous at all in my opinion.) No, I think I’ll stay home and experience it through my games only.

Speaking of which, there was also a time when new recruits were found by using video game to lure them in. Personally I’d class that as manipulative and invasive. I don’t actually blame games or films for glamorising war a little, because they are built for entertainment purposes only, and as long as the audience knows this it’s not a problem, but to use them to target new recruits is just wrong in my opinion. I actually, personally, don’t find war games to be that entertaining anyway. For example, I recently tried out the highly praised Modern Warfare (the first one) after its price had been reduced. It feels like the game is trying to be flashy, but it doesn’t look pleasant to me at all. Everyone looks alike, wears the same stuff and are therefore quite flat and unlikeable as characters. They also boss you about way too much as they lead you through the level like some stupid wooden puppet. I guess in that sense it is quite realistic as I no longer feel like an individual within the game; it’s more about the team as a whole, but it does make for slightly less enjoyable game play. Mind you, I have played team-based games before and enjoyed them, because I’ve still felt like I stand out and get a say. In a war game I’d actually like to see more realistic dialogue between the characters to show their emotions and bonds, and to hint at an actual feeling towards what they are doing, (i.e. wiping out dozens of lives while putting yourself at risk.) They would therefore contain more depth and would show that war is not all about running around with flashy weapons and shooting people (as fun as that is in a virtual sense.)

I also remember when they tried to recruit people from my school. They came round to give a presentation and a lot of the boys and some girls got very excited over the fact that these big army dudes had arrived. I wasn’t too impressed having to sit there and watch them babble on about how joining the army would involve travelling around the world and meeting new people. Once again, it felt a little untruthful to me and our young minds at the time were happy to lap it up. I understand the fact that these things need to be done, otherwise nobody would ever join, but some people I’ve met just seem to be completely deluded about it. When something like that will affect your life in such a big way, I think it’s important for people to know exactly what they’re in for.


I once went out on the town with a couple of other female friends and we ended up being approached by these three guys. They seemed to try to hit on us by telling us they were leaving the country to go Iraq the next day. I don’t know whether this is true or not, if so I got the feeling they’d only joined up because they were too stupid to do anything else. I also don’t know why this was suppose to impress me, I imagine it would actually be quite hard for partners waiting back home while their loved ones go out to war, and preferably I’d like a boyfriend who isn’t into all that stuff (which John isn’t.) Anyway, they ended up asking us what we do and I told them that I was training to be a game developer (they also looked at me quite shocked when I told them I was a fan of Counter Strike). They started going on about how we wouldn’t be able to do those jobs if it weren’t for them protecting us, and that they didn’t mean anything compared to what they were doing. Ok, fair enough, maybe being a game developer isn’t a life saving sort of career, but my other friend said she wanted to be a teacher which I’d say is a pretty important role in society (especially if it keeps more people like that from being released out into the public.) But no, apparently what everybody else does with their lives is pointless and unbeneficial; in that case why even bother laying down your lives for our sakes.

If those guys had been lying it was very disrespectful to the actual genuine people who go out there, if they had been telling the truth then they were obviously in the belief that joining the army would bring them attention and respect. If somebody signs up knowing the danger, because they want to stand up for their loved ones and what they believe in then they do get my respect (in that case war can actually be quite honourable), but people like those guys don’t. I find a lot of young people are like this, and they go out there and die way too young before they’ve even had a chance to experience life. I really don’t think it’s right to encourage this sort of behaviour.