Where Moviebob basks in his elitist ignorance

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Moviebob criticises the critics by shoving his foot squarely in his mouth.

So The Game Overthinker decided to address the controversy about the ending of Mass Effect 3 and in it, Moviebob manages to cram so many stawmen, that I thought my PC would overheat. As someone who has played the Mass Effect games (extensively), unlike Moviebob who feels capable of expressing an opinion on hearsay and assumptions, I felt compelled to point out that many many ways that he has completely failed to address the issue at hand, in favour or basking in his own elitism.

“You can’t have a different ending for each minor choice”

First of all, he is amazed that people are upset that there aren’t many different endings for “every little variable”, which just shows not only the fact that he hasn’t even heard someone explain the ending to him, but he hasn’t even bothered to do cursory research on the extent of the lack of choice in the endings and why fans are upset about it. Seriously, this is not hard to find, and for someone who has already claimed he will probably never play the games, the use of spoilers should not be an issue in their drive to do justice to the critics and other point of view.

But this is not done in the slightest, because it wouldn’t then be as easy to paint critics “entitled” brats much as he is expecting due to how he has seen comic nerds act.

So let me make this clear, Bob, this is not part of the criticism in the slightest. Almost nobody is asking to have a different ending depending on each minor choice we made in the game. You would have known this had you done your homework. It would have been nice to have, but most people wouldn’t have minded had the minor stuff been ignored ((Althought I fail to see how they couldn’t even address these within a text-only epilogue)).

“Nobody won a Pulitzer for Choose-Your-Own story books”

This argument is given to show that audience-driven choice is counter-productive to good story telling. This is based on absolutely nothing but some previous bad books and live theatre. This is only used as a beach-head to once again point out gamer entitlement when he claims that “people think they should be part of the story team, and the story should thus be changed to cater to their preferred whims”. This is so stunningly inaccurate on where the criticism actually is, that it can only be seen as a deliberate insult.

Bob completely misses the fact that almost everyone admits that Mass Effect 3 was brilliant, except for the 10 last fucking minutes. For a story driven by something that can only be as good as a “fucking choose-your-own story book”, this seems to be a resounding success. The only reason ME3 is not being hailed as an immense success of the audience-guided model of storytelling is because the ending so thoroughly sucked that it was bad enough to retroactively go back in time and make Mass Effect 1 and 2 feel less good as well. If they hadn’t managed to fuck the closure so absolutely, you wouldn’t be here making this argument, Bob.

It is not a “whim” to point out that the ending was downright atrocious. You are acting like an insufferable elitist jerk to imply that we’re trying to modify the story in a hundred different ways. We’re trying to modify the story in a way that makes sense, acknowledges some of our major choices, even a bit and hopefully provides some closure. This is not a lot to ask for, Bob, in a game built around choice. The failure to provide these is not a failure of the choice-driven storytelling. This is a failure of the developer who can’t even provide the absolute minimum of their fans expectations. The absolute minimum, Bob.

You would know that had you played the game, or read about the criticism, or, you know, engaged in any way with the community you broadly paint as entitled brats…

“If your choices are different in some way, depending on the choices you made, then Bioware didn’t lie”

Then, after Bob allows us to be upset (jeez, thanks?) he then start with a ridiculous amount of strawmen. First is the above quote where he claims that critics say that Bioware lied to them.

Well, you see Bob, the choices were not different in some way depending on the choices you made. In fact, I will go right ahead to point out that it doesn’t actually matter what choices you took. The endings are not different. One can be the nicest fuzziest paragon, or the nastiest puppy-kicking renegades, and it wouldn’t change the 3 choice of endings in the slightest. And no, just slapping 3 choices in the end, completely disconnected from everything else you did in the rest of the game, except from an arbitrary number that you have to grind via a minigame or multiplayer, does not count!

So while I wouldn’t call it lying (as that implies a specific intent), I will call it a catastrophic failure on Bioware’s part.

“Bioware owes me”

Another strawman that Bob uses in different ways, and the last version, in which he claims that a common point is that “Bioware owes the fans a different ending because they were very invested in the story”, is just…I dunno, cringe-worthy? I mean, sure, there are idiots out there who might actually make this argument, but to present this as a major point in your criticism Bob, are you serious? This “you owe me” is a marginal opinion at best, Bob, and you’re presenting it with a multiple of different versions as if it’s one of the most common complaints. You disingenuousness is amazing.

Fans, by the large, do not want a better ending because Bioware owes it to them. They want a better ending because they love the franchise so much, they do not want it to see go down in flames due to how bad it ended. And yes, Bob, it is that bad comparatively. It is not at all weird that it’s the most passionate fans that are feeling most burnt by the “conclusion” (hah!), while the impassionate critics who haven’t even bothered to play the game to completion, like you, Bob, sit on the sidelines taking potshots at the fringe opinions and painting everyone with the same brush.

The reason why fans want Bioware to change the ending is because it ruined the universe, and it ruined the story they were telling about Shepard. The former is ruined, both literally (which I cannot expound upon without spoilers) and in the meta sense as it was so counter to everything they had on the lore until now, that it retroactively went back and wiped whole parts of canon. The latter is ruined because Shepard’s story didn’t matter. At all. But alas, We can’t expect a self-professed critic to know what they’re criticising first…

The outrage is here because most people are angry that 1. Their personal Shepard story didn’t matter and was completely out-of-character. 2. They are so disgusted by it, that they will never be able to enjoy either any new ME content in this canon, or even the previous content they were enjoying until now.

“The medium will never be taken seriously as long as you’re all so entitled”

And here Bob, you spew the largest load of garbage I’ve ever seen.

You claim that the medium will never be taken seriously when the audience is so passionate about the story, that they cannot accept the canon that has been given to them?Hey Bob, remember Arthur Conan Doyle? I guess Books are not taken seriously by “the broader culture” now?

And this proves that we do not take games seriously, how exactly? What kind of argument is this, Bob? Where does it stand? You claim that if ME wants to get the same “serious analysis” as Movies and Books, we need to accept the same limitation? This is absolute nonsense of the worst degree. First of all, no, Bob, fans have not been claiming that Video Games are similar to Movies and Books, they have simply been claiming that video games are a form of art. To claim from there that they are similar and should have the same limitation, is equivocating, Bob. It would be akin that Movies should be judged by the “broader culture” in the same way that painting are!

In what world is this a compelling argument? Video Games are art, but they are a different form of art in which case interactivity can very well take part. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t and “it cannot be done” or “you won’t be taken seriously” is not an argument. In fact, Mass Effect is the perfect sample that what you say is absolute nonsense. Had the ending not been so atrociously bad it would have been one of the first samples of games as interactive art that would have been both immensely successful and taken seriously by “the broader culture”.

This is another reason why many people are criticising the ending on the basis of being bad art, because it destroys this perfect opportunity. I am not so much dismayed  by the lack of choice in the ending. I am dismayed because the lack of choice destroys such possibility for the video game medium as a whole (which cheapens the medium). I am dismayed that professional critics like you Bob, feel the need to throw in your two cents on an issue you have not bothered to understand, therefore proving that video game critics actually suck (which cheapens the medium). I am dismayed that all the professional reviewers of the game praised it without even finishing it and then turned around and snubbed their noses at those who actually know what they are talking about (which cheapens the medium). I am dismayed that it takes an outsider with no conflict of interest in the game’s success to point out hypocrisy in the detractors of the critics (which cheapens the medium).

This is what is not making the “broader culture not take the medium seriously”. It is cultural dinosaurs like you, Bob, who need to shape everything into their own preconception of “serious art” before you accept it. Where in the age of unprecedented capacity for criticism and constructive feedback, you have to ask everyone to “sit down,shut up, and let the professionals handle it.”

“Entitled fans” has become the keyword of the moment, and is being thrown around by every established entity in the reviewing industry and their peripheral “serious critics”. It feels like we’re being likened to the “unwashed masses” flinging shit at the ivory towers of the enlightened few who feel their precious art is being dragged down by our lowly opinions. It stinks of elitism and snobbery and I am glad that slowly more and more people are picking up that there’s no reason to rely on the self-proclaimed “professionals” with established conflicts of interest or critics with outdated cultural assumptions, rather than our own opinions.

I find a future in which the audience of a game/book/movie can reach the ear of the creator directly, to be a far brighter one, than one in which we passively consume and hope some critic is lucky enough to have an effect.

Objectivist Dad

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A child is cursed with an Objectivist dad.

Ayn Rand

I haven’t batted heads with Objectivists for a while now (and I don’t miss that experience one bit), but I always enjoy seeing what results their cult-like ideology brings around. Just now I read this article about a woman who’s childhood was ruined by Ayn Rand and it was fairly depressing.

It’s funny because the experience described here also closely reminds me of the experiences another person described to me about having a (right-)Libertarian dad, and how the parent-child relationship devolved into a form of market exchange. “I’ll send you your birthday gift when you reply to my letters” was an example that stood out.

These ideologies are mental poison.

Don't strive to be happy. Strive to be content.

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Once again, science rediscovers what Epicurus was saying two millenia ago.

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Cracked.com has this great article called “5 scientific reasons your idea of happiness is wrong” and it is really a great piece on the issue. In the end, the article manages to touch the truth of the matter

The very act of trying to achieve happiness made people unhappy because of the anxiety they felt when they failed. They were happier when they weren’t trying. You know, like if somebody had told them it was out of their hands, or that they should focus on doing good things and declare the result to be “happiness,” regardless of what it looked like.

This is very similar to what I’ve been saying myself for a while: Explicitly striving for happiness is a recipe for failure. Happiness is not an attainable goal, primarily because of how our own brains work. Rather, the on best way to go about life, is to simply strive as much as possible to avoid pain and discomfort.The feeling of general happiness will naturally bubble up once this is achieved.

The more articles and studies I read on the matter, the more it seems that modern science is merely proving Epicurism true.

"You deign to reply to me?"

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“I’ve got more knowledge in my left testicle than you’ve got in your whole brain.”

Oh Gawds, the arrogance is over nine thousand!

The title quote from a right-libertarian redditor named “Libertarian Atheist” who fancies themselves as some kind of anarchist. They got a bit upset that I declined to include /r/agorism in the confederation of anarchist reddits and apparently tried to educate me on their personal ideology. The discussion soon after degraded, until they said this particular sentence, and I just had to bow out. What more can you say to that, that is not said by itself.

For posterity, I’m going to quote in full their latest reply. It’s that amazing.

You mistake arrogance with intelligence, knowledge, and an ability to convey ideas in an effective manner. “Arrogance” is a term dumb people with false ideas and impressions use to describe other people with better ideas. A smart man with false ideas and impressions who comes across another person with better ideas will not call that person “arrogant,” he will try to better understand what the other man is saying and be on the ready to throw out his own follies. What you laughably call a “combin[ing]” of “ideologies” is not so, it is the end result of years of study and reading, throwing out weak ideas (like “gift economy”) and championing the strongest. This is what I have been doing all my life and it does not bother me in the least that you (or anyone else, anarchist or otherwise) can’t understand. Luckily opinions are not measured by how many people “take [it] seriously” (if that were the case Christian and Muslim opinions would be the best) and a man seeking the best opinions does not care who “takes [him] seriously”, what matters is reaching as close an approximation of the truth as is humanly possible.

The funniest part is where you claim to be able to teach me anything. I’ve got more knowledge in my left testicle than you’ve got in your whole brain. You’re barely fit to teach a dog. You deign to reply to me? What a laugh! This back in forth with you is the greatest waste of my time this year so far. . . we’ve got quite a bit to go but you’re in a very high running at this point.

I just love that they also italicized the “me”, making that phrase totally sound like Invader Zim. Adorable!

Missing the point: The Megaupload takedown is about scaring the competition.

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Megaupload was taken down, but there’s no point in discussing how justified this was. That wasn’t the goal of the act.

Logo shown on The Pirate Bay homepage after th...

I just saw this article on Torrentfreak where it reports on a recent Kim Dotcom interview, where he is dismayed that the law went against Megaupload so aggressively, even though they were co-operating so much with content owners and paid a lot of lawyers to confirm that they were within the letter of the law.

Towards achieving this protection, Dotcom told us that the company had developed relationships with 180 takedown partners – companies authorized to directly remove infringing links from Megaupload’s systems – and between them they had taken down in excess of 15 million links. Those companies included the major studios of the MPAA who, incidentally, in 7 years of the company’s existence had never tried to sue Megaupload for copyright infringement.

On the advice of Megaupload’s legal team, the company believed it had the same rights as YouTube in its case against entertainment giant Viacom. In that 2010 case U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton said service providers can not be held liable for infringement as long as they remove links upon copyright holder request – even if the provider knows that parts of their service are being used to host illicit content.

“[YouTube] won their lawsuit and I’m sitting in jail, my house is being raided, all my assets are frozen without a trial, without a hearing. This is completely insane, is what it is,” said Dotcom of his predicament.

This shows how naïve Kim Dotcom is about the causes of the aggressive raid on Megaupload. It wasn’t really that Megaupload was hosting infringing content. It wasn’t that Kim Dotcom is extravagant and an easy target. It wasn’t that the judges were misled by the content industry.

Is is because of this

Megaupload did something that scared the bejeesus out of the dinosauric content industries. It developed a new business model and got it endorsed by popular names of contemporary content culture. It was about to show the world that ad-supported content creation is viable and in the process steal some of their best-known names.

If it succeeded (and it would have if left unattended) it would have served as the first domino to fall, urging other companies to follow suit and more artist to bail the sinking ship that is the RIAA. This clearly had to be nipped in the bud.

It is no surprise that the content industry went from calling Megaupload a “rogue site” (even though it co-operated fully with them), to strongarming the New Zealand state to take action with such ferocity that they called anti-terrorist groups to raid the house of a non-violent citizen. The immediate action and the excessive response is not random. It is in fact perfectly planned.

The point is to make an example out of Megaupload, not as a detriment to pirates, but as a warning to anyone seriously thinking of challenging the obsolete business model of the RIAA without playing by their rules. The response was there to remind everyone that the law jumps at the behest of the plutocracy and publicly snubbing your noses at them is a recipe for pain.

In fact, the similarities with The Pirate Bay takedown of 2006 are not few. Both sites were considered legal in their respective countries until the moment that they were raided without warning. Both times the response was unheard of compared to the nature of the crime. Both sites mocked the old content industries and openly agitated people to embrace the future of content creation and sharing. Both sites were not the largest available. The takedown of both sites was hailed and promoted by the content industries as a bloody warning to others.

In the case of the Pirate Bay, it quickly surfaced that state officials had been strongarmed by US diplomats to “Take immediate and definite action or else…” and they followed suit. It will not surprise me in the least to hear that New Zealand state officials had been pressured off the record by the US via economic sanctions if they did not immediately take action against Megaupload, legal precedent be damned.

The point is not really to defeat Megaupload in court – even though given the farce that was the Pirate Bay kangaroo court, it’s not unlikely – the point is first to scare all sites like Megaupload into shutting down or toning down their business, regardless of how legal it seemingly is. This is why such excessive force was used by the police, to give nightmares to site admins. Secondly and most importantly, it was to disrupt Megaupload enough so that they won’t be able to proceed with their plans to try out a new business model.

Both seem to have been successful. Already many other large uploading sites have taken measures to prevent their users from effectively sharing files or closed down altogether. Furthermore even if Megaupload wins the trial, the time it will take and the disruption it will do to them due to their frozen funds and burnt clients (those who lost their subscription money) will most likely ensure that Megaupload won’t be able to recover its former glory ((Naturally, I hope I’m wrong on this.)).

The distributed and free nature of the The Pirate Bay network/community helped them to quickly come back up and quickly resume services. As such, their takedown served actually as huge advertisement for them, and their popularity skyrocketed since then, making them one of the largest, if not the largest and most influential torrent site available, and a continuous trolling thorn in the content industry’s side.

Unlike them, Megaupload is centralized and concentrated in the hands of one leader figure, Kim Dotcom. As such, it is far easier to kill the beast by cutting off its head, which is exactly what happened in this instance. Megaupload cannot as easily be moved and brough up by allies, it cannot go rogue, and without the running accounts, it cannot function. It doesn’t matter if they are absolved in 5 years. By then it will be too late.

This is the weakness of centralized disruptive models I’m afraid and I doubt that Megaupload will recover from this, even though I’ll be pleasantly surprised if they somehow manage it. But until then, lets not delude ourselves that the takedown has anything to do with legality or proper procedure. We know it isn’t and so do they, but they do not care.

All they need to achieve is to convince everyone watching that when you go against them, the law will not protect you and even success in court will only be a phyrric victory.

 

Is Game Piracy, as a form of protest, counter-productive? (A response to the Cynical Brit)

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Totalbiscuit makes an impassionate plea for people to boycott Mass Effect 3 but refrain from pirating it. I explain why Piracy is once again the better choice.

So the Cynical Brit addressed the issue of the Mass Effect 3 DLC and touched on the issue of Piracy and how it will affect the dynamics of the situation if people Pirate the game rather than simply abstain from playing it. As expected from what I heard him say last time, he is horribly wrong on what effects piracy of Mass Effect 3 as a form of protest is going to have.

But lets take CB’s arguments one by one and see why they are flawed.

First of all, lets address CB’s proposed tactic, which is that people who dislike the Day 1 DLC should boycott the game on launch day and instead buy it later on when it becomes cheap enough ((CB also makes some classic anti-piracy arguments, such as the idea that Piracy is unethical or that it is killing the PC Game industry. I’ve already addressed these in length in my series on Piracy, so I won’t repeat myself in this post.)) :

The idea is extremely naïve. It rests on the assumption that people not buying the game, will send a clear message to Bioware and EA that the Day 1 DLC is the problem and they’ll have to change their act to make people buy their game. Unfortunately this ignores the reality of markets and how they are notoriously bad at transmitting information back to the seller. If a boycott was actually organized and it did actually get enough people sticking to it, then EA is still unlikely to understand where the problem lies. The only information they will see is less sales than their expectations, maybe (because it may be the case that their expectations were lower in the first place). This does not tell them anything more than that. Was it because of the Day 1 DLC? Of Technical Bugs? Of Misjudging the market? Of Changed gameplay? Or of Piracy?

You can bet your sweet ass that whatever the real reason of your boycott is, Piracy will be blamed if it succeeds. It doesn’t matter how many letter you send, how many petitions you sign, how many pre-orders you cancel (well, maybe, but pre-orders are the minority of purchases); In the board of directors meeting, the managers will blame Piracy.  You know why? Because it will absolve management of any fault! Managers will declare that Piracy dropped sales and that better DRM and lobbying for laws is needed to combat this disaster.

They will do this even if they have read thousands of letters announcing that it was the DLC (or bugs, or changed gameplay, or whatever else) that caused it and they will waste resources combating a boogeyman. Why? Because they won’t get fired. If a manager were to admit that they misjudged the DLC effect and take it back, they will be blamed for the “disaster”.  Why take the risk, when the convenient scapegoat of piracy is available?

“Geez, our market research indicated that the sales of ME3 would see a 33% increase compared to ME2, we have done market tudies which proved that the Day 1 DLC would only turn away 10% of purchasers but bring in 20% additional revenue. By gosh golly, we don’t know what happened! Look at the stats yourselves dear investors. It must have been rampant piracy! Oh and what do I see here? Here’s a BSA report from of how piracy increased 160% this year. That is surely the cause!”

The only thing that might actually make people stand up and notice a boycott, rather than blame piracy, would be a significant cancellation of pre-orders with an accompanying note informing them of the reason for this decision. Then they might receive the info they need and fix it before it’s too late (as is what happened with BF3, which is a special situation in itself). But if they don’t, piracy is going to be blamed anyway.

This has been shown again and again. The hilarious Modern Warfare boycotts are the most recent examples, where people would boycott, but the games had increased in popularity so much, that the boycott didn’t even register in the radar. Thus people said “fuck it” and bought it anyway. Then there is the boycott of Spore due to its draconian DRM. This even spilled over in Amazon with an incredible amount of 1-star reviews and other kinds of activism. Even in the face of all this, the publisher still refused to acknowledge the real reason why sales of Spore were atrocious (Draconian DRM and bad Gameplay), but rather conveniently blamed Piracy.

The Cynical Brit is incredibly naïve in this regard. He expects that Management of big publishers is both honest and competent and will take an objective look into the situation of a successful boycott and then take the correct action in the future. But except the fact that management is much more often than not completely incompetent (eg see: Bobby Kotick running successful franchises into the ground (among other failures).), they have no incentive to be honest either.

Next, CB addresses Piracy and how “having your cake and eating it”, in other words pirating the game as a form of protest, is actually counter-productive. The argument is that the companies are then going to ignore the boycott and blame it on piracy. It thus makes more sense (according to CB’s logic) to simply abstain from playing the game and show “backbone” in one’s decision, so as to convince the companies to change their ways.

But as I argued before, companies are going to blame Piracy in case the boycott is successful (or simply the game price is below its subjective value for most consumers, thus making them ignore it). A few thousand people boycotting the game on principle and sending impassionate letters are not going to make a difference. In face, this is very likely to lead to many to break their boycott simply because they are too eager to play. This form of tactic is in itself counter-productive, because it assigns the “pain” of the boycott, to the few thousand people who are the most passionate about the game ((and let’s be realistic here, the only people who care about that stuff are the ones who care so much about the story, i.e. the hardcore fans, who are a small minority)). This is a recipe for failure, as the Modern Warfare boycotts made painfully obvious.

Piracy however can combat this. People can get their “fix” of the game and avoid rewarding the company for a substandard product at the same time. The “pain” of bad decisions is immediately transferred to the company making them, and thus it allows even more people to participate in a boycott, without having to battle with their own drive to play their favourite franchise.

In the end, pirating the game and simply abstaining from buying the game are going to have the same exact results. Piracy is going to be blamed anyway. Protesting people will “vote with their wallet”.  You can still buy the game later on, when it’s price has dropped to its true value given DLC and DRM restrictions. You can still cancel your pre-order and claim that Day 1 DLC drove you to do so.

If everyone who boycotts the game pirates it instead, you’re going to have a few extra thousand downloaders in the stats. This is among millions that are going to download the game anyway because they can’t afford it or can’t purchase it through legal means. Whether you show “backbone” or not, is not going to make the slightest difference in the rhetoric the publisher is going to use whether the game is successful or not.

So do yourself a favour, if the Day 1 DLC is a deal breaker, vote with your wallet and pirate the game until the price goes down to an appropriate range. Then the only one suffering will be the one deserving it, the publisher.

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Quote of the Day: Online Christmas Gifts

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..is borderline torture.

To quoth Mac McClelland

I feel genuinely sorry for any child I might have who ever asks me for anything for Christmas, only to be informed that every time a “Place Order” button rings, a poor person takes four Advil and gets told they suck at their job.

This article shows just why wage slavery is called exactly that. That it’s not “voluntary” as vulgar libertarians would like to delude themselves.

Reading this post was just so depressing…

Why do people hate the USA? – Part 3

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Oh Gawds, when Chomsky puts his mind to remind us of US history, the result is very depressing, even if one is aware of it beforehand.

The most important victory of the Indochina wars was in 1965, when a US-backed military coup in Indonesia led by General Suharto carried out massive crimes that were compared by the CIA to those of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. The “staggering mass slaughter”, as the New York Times described it, was reported accurately across the mainstream, and with unrestrained euphoria.

It was “a gleam of light in Asia”, as the noted liberal commentator James Reston wrote in the Times. The coup ended the threat of democracy by demolishing the mass-based political party of the poor, established a dictatorship that went on to compile one of the worst human rights records in the world, and threw the riches of the country open to western investors. Small wonder that, after many other horrors, including the near-genocidal invasion of East Timor, Suharto was welcomed by the Clinton administration in 1995 as “our kind of guy”.

It is telling in how everyone knows and remembers Pol Pot, Mao and Kim Jong-il when they have to talk about how much worse “Communism” is than everything else, but people like Suharto, Pinochet and Franco are conveniently forgotten.