Xbox Live Bans Teh Ghey

It just makes me want to set up a new Live account called ImHereImQueer. I don’t exactly know how to feel about this, Microsoft has apparently taken to banning gamertags on Xbox Live with the word “gay” in them, including a dude who supposedly used his last name “Gaywood” in his. Yes that’s right, the service known for being stuffed to the gills with 13 year olds calling each other “faggot” fifteen times in any given match of teh Haloz finds a little gay in your gamertag offensive. Or rather, the “greater Xbox community” finds it offensive according to one supervisor.

Which leads me to question: are they trying to protect gay people from being made fun of by homophobic Xbox Live gamers, or are they trying to protect homophobic Xbox Live gamers from having to knowingly interact with someone who identifies themselves as gay? This insofar is pretty unclear, but many gay gaming sites (yes they do exist) are a tad concerned about this.

Where it may come as a surprise to some people out there that gay people are gamers… and tax payers, and home owners, and can be found walking the streets among the general populous, you can rest assured there are gays on Live.

Video Games and Kids

This post is sort of a spiritual sequel to my oldschool post “It’s the Parents not the Video Game“. I was perusing Game Politics reading typical posts about people in the public harping on about 8-year-olds playing games like Grand Theft Auto and acting like it’s somehow the game’s fault entirely for just existing, as if it’s just some malevolent force that materializes in the Playstations of every child in the world. But that’s not the part that got me thinking.

I happened across a comment by a parent saying that they get to decide what games are right for their kids, and if they want to give an 8-year-old an M-rated game that’s their decision and no one else’s. That’s true (even though it causes an endless source of annoyance for gamers and the image of the video game industry as a whole), and if a parent is going to make decisions like that it’s up to them. But aside from the violence, prostitution, strip clubs, criminal activities and all else in the GTA series my thoughts began to turn to an entirely different reason kids shouldn’t play these games.

The McCullough Mass Effect Debacle

So much can happen so quickly on the internet in just the span of three days. I’ve been following such a whirlwind regarding Kevin McCullough, a conservative blogger and apparently an obscure radio and/or podcast personality who seems to know jack-all about jack half the time and mistakingly extended his school-yard taunting thinly disguised as journalistic blogging to the world of video games.

McCullough posited that the video game Mass Effect (which I have completed, by the way, and am considering doing final impressions on) was some sort of sex simulation game where you could design characters specifically to "hump" in, and I quote, "the most realistic sex acts ever conceived". He even goes on to claim Mass Effect contains rape and sodomy. Oh lawdy.

Dear Politicians: No One Gives a Damn About Manhunt 2

So Hillary and Lieberman have got their respective panties in a twist over video games again. This kind of sucks, because they were doing so well, but they’re obviously old and there’s still alot they don’t understand about this new-fangled interactive television entertainment that all the kids and manchildren are into. So just a year after praising the hard work of the good folks of the ESRB, they’re now bitching at them again.

Let me tell you something: the ESRB is very strict in their ratings, they don’t let a whole lot slide. Some games are rated E 10+ for “comic mischeif” for the love of delicious cake. Even Super Smash Bros. Melee was rated Teen. But once again Manhunt has gone and ruined it for everybody.

As hilariously as Penny Arcade depicts it, there is a real problem facing the ESRB. Right now there’s a bill sittin’ on the steps of capitol hill that would require the ESRB to play entirely through every single game before giving them a rating. With many games, this is somewhat impossible, given user created content and procedural content generation, as the comic says (which you’re gonna find prominently in the game Spore when it finally comes out in friggin’ 2080 at the rate it’s going.) Obviously the Senators, the writers of the bill, and anyone who thinks they could do better than the ESRB has a fundamental misunderstanding of the games industry and video games in general. Now Manhunt 2 is threatening to make them up the anty on their well-meaning but completely misguided crusade, and they represent a looming threat to put the absolutely clueless in charge of telling us what we can and can not play.

Alert Nintendo! PETA’s Gon’ Get Sued!

That’s it little chickities. Walk into KFC
and become delicious popcorn chicken

We all know PETA: the so-called “animal lovers” who set buildings on fire, protest fast food restaurants, send death threats to people who work for insurance companies that happen to insure testing labs, and worship a hypocritical organization that euthanizes animals given to them when they become too expensive to care for, all because they’re pissed off and confused due to being so damn hungry. They even think owning pets is animal abuse despite the fact pets are the most spoiled, healthy, long-lived and loved animals on the planet.

Anyway, before I get onto a rant about PETA (some day, some day) let me get to the point of this post: one of PETA’s websites is currently hosting a game. A very expensive looking flash game that must have taken a long time and alot of money to make and is a Mario Bros. parody. Even for a parody it’s dangerously close to the source at first glance, but upon further investigation (I.E. playing it) one finds that it actually contains cameos of actual Mario Bros. characters. WHAT!?

Video Game Addiction?

A Mysterious Midget brought this to my attention. So some bitch from Texas thinks video games should be considered a serious addiction just because of her own failure as a parent. Now this is really unfair: they’re only talking about online games here but are trying to apply it to all video games. I’ll admit: some people can get very addicted to online games (personally, I find them boring). But is it the nature of the game that does it? Perhaps, but unlikely. Is it the game producer’s fault? Hell no. If someone has locked themselves in a room to delve into a fantasy land that screams that there is a much more serious underlying problem. Ever think that maybe these people are just, I dunno, depressed?

But of course no one takes personal responsibility anymore. We’re apparently just easily manipulated by outside sources, so much so that the slightest influence of one of these devious forms of entertainment can control us completely. It can’t possibly be that you’re a weak-minded idiot or that you’re a bad mother.