Thursday, October 22, 2015

"The mobile games market is an absolute mess, thanks to you"- a rebuttal

Every now and then there comes an article talking about the game industry that makes you take pause and think, to reconsider what's going on in the market, in games media, and all gaming culture. It is a well written, thought provoking article that, if read by the right people, can become the catalyst for real change. This is NOT that article. This is a rebuttal for Aksel Junkilla's article The mobile games market is an absolute mess, thanks to you. Original words from the article will be in bold, and beneath those will be my own words. A link to an archived version of the article here: https://archive.is/h3me2

Thursday, October 15, 2015

A Word on TotalBiscuit

I can't say I'm a fan of his, but I have heard of him. He's one of the biggest voices in gaming, and one of the few game critics with credibility. And today, he's shared with us that he's been given two years to live. I believe I speak for all his fans when I say I wish this day had not come.

We all wish for TotalBiscuit's complete recovery. Nobody but the vilest beings on Earth wish for someone this young to be taken away from us, especially to cancer. I, personally, believe that cancer is one of the worst ways to go; it creeps up on you, and you spend so much time fighting it and fighting it, only for it to beat you in one way or another. Fighting cancer is never easy, and beating it much less so.

I'm speechless. I've never seen a single TotalBiscuit video, and now I'm too afraid to do so, because I fear getting attached to someone with an expiration date...wait, no. We can't think like that. We have to keep our chins up, ladies and gentlemen, keep the faith strong.

In times like these, I find Scripture to be comforting. I scoured the net for a good quote, and I was not disappointed. First Corinthians, 15:42-44 "So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is a spiritual body."

We are all praying for good news for you and from you, TotalBiscuit.

Edit May 25, 2018: regrettably, TotalBiscuit lost his battle with cancer. He will be missed. He suffers no more.

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

A Quick Word in Regard to the Petition to Have Anita and Zoe Arrested

Recently there has been a petition circling the Internet, especially on Gamergate friendly forums, to have Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian arrested under grounds that they have technically committed an act of betrayal by appealing to the UN to censor the Internet. This petition cites the Logan act of 1790, a law that was passed well over two hundred years ago. There have already been thousands of signers as of this writing, including Quinn herself.

Let me get a few things out of the way: petitions seldom work, by my experience. I've yet to see a petition actually achieve what it has set out to do, and I've signed hundreds of them. Second of all, this petition is giving ammo to the enemies of Gamergate. By calling upon the government to arrest these two ladies, based on a centuries old law, we're being no better than these two ladies who call upon big government to censor their critics and silence them.

Make no mistake, what they have done, and what they are calling for, is beyond describing how horrid it is. Sarkeesian and Quinn want to make it a crime to dissent against THEIR feminism, the feminism that makes women victims instead of strong fighters. These two women, who have both been proven to be frauds and charlatans, went to the United Nations, played themselves as little victims, and begged for Big Brother to come to the world and instill his censorship on anyone who dares raise their voice against them. Meanwhile, we have child brides in Yemen, acid attacks against women in India, and in Saudi Arabia it's still perfectly legal to stone a woman to death if she cheats on her husband. If you want REAL misogyny, don't look for it on Twitter, look for it everywhere a woman is legally declared to be worth less than a man.

So yeah, it's easy to see why it'd be delicious to see these two women be given a slice of humble pie. The Schadenfreude would be extremely satisfying, should Quinn and Sarkeesian be arrested. But they shouldn't be arrested, because their "crime", when all is said and done, amounts to little more than making a speech to a congregation of politicians and representatives.

Literally, all they did was go up to the UN and beg for censorship, which the UN has all the right to tell them "no, now fuck off." Quinn and Sarkeesian have been rightly ridiculed by every thinking man and woman on Earth who have wasted their time reading their proposal. Further, the UN has proven itself to be, frankly, useless when the world needed it most. They couldn't stop the Yugoslav wars, the genocide of Rwanda, the Somali civil war, the Syrian civil war, and all the female genital mutilation in Africa, among hundreds of other issues in the world from the UN's inception to today. To expect them to actually censor Twitter and Youtube is, at best, a joke.

The petition to arrest these two, however, is no better than their petition to the UN to censor the Internet, if not on intent, then in spirit. It liberally interprets the Logan Act in order to get two women arrested. Just because it's the law, it doesn't make it right.

By invoking the Logan Act, we are, subtly or not, stating that we are scared of Quinn, Sarkeesian, and their ilk. This petition WRONGLY shows the world that their message is dangerous to us, and that it needs to be silenced. To quote Tyrion Lannister from A Song of Ice and Fire "When you cut off a man's tongue, you don't prove him a liar, you prove you're afraid of what he has to say."

Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian are, when it comes down to it, guilty of little more than being idiots. When it comes to idiots, the best thing to do against them is to let them speak. When idiots speak, only other idiots listen; everyone else just points and laughs.