Double Agent
Gone in 20 years - February 3rd, 2000 - Drew Cosner

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not neccessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. I hate showers where the slightest twist of the nozzle changes the temperature by like 50 degrees. Don't say we didn't warn you.


I could've taken the time to write up a really neat-o intro. After, all the GIA has a reputation of quality editorial brimming with wry humor, and I've got to live up to that. But then I realized that with every gaming site in existence closing down I can write whatever I want and it won't really matter, seeing as you've got no place else to go. So instead, here's a comic I made in that paint program that comes with Windows.

You'd write stuff like this too if you had a cantelope for a head.

Suckers.

Another public service announcement

Hey Drew,

In the interest of the mental health of DA readers, I would like to make a public service announcement.

For the love of god -or whatever- don't, I repeat, DON'T watch Valentine. I just got back, and it blows so badly I'm starting to forget it already. The brain cells that received the "information" are already dying.

In the immortal words of J. Peterman, "The horror. The horror!"

-Alex


Yeah, that's pretty much what I've heard. Denise Richards needs to get a better agent or something; barring Bond, every movie she's ever been in sucks. In all fairness, her acting abilities leave pretty much everything to be desired, but I still wouldn't mind seeing her in a movie that's well-written and directed. Then again, if it were truly well-written and directed, it would probably end up being kind or artsy, and I feel sort of weird ogling breasts when I'm supposed to be searching for deeper meaning. It's like standing up at the opera and shouting, "Look, I've been here for an hour, and nothing's blown up yet!"

Which, by the way, I can't recommend doing enough.

Don't make me unleash my level 4. Mana Beast on you! *snort*

"DA's: is not, in fact, a possessive. It's a pluralization, and a perfectly correct one at that. The purpose of an apostrophe is to designate the fact that there are letters missing. When pluralizing an acronym, one generally puts in an apostrophe for that very reason.

Ed M. can rot in punctuation hellfor being a stuck-up ignoramus. Rot, Ed! You GO!

-Zen


Actually, there aren't letters missing; an acronym becomes a unit in and of itself. The correct pluralization of DA is, in fact, DAs. And I don't know where you're getting this "apostrophe denotes missing letters" stuff from, anyhow. If that were truly the case, every letter in an acronym ought to be followed by an apostrophe.

So, uhm, there. Not only am I hosting a videogame-centered column on the Internet, I'm also arguing about English punctuation and grammar. If this gets any worse, Stephen Hawking is going to invent a mind-controlled robotic arm specifically so he can roll up and give me a wedgie.

20 years from now some of us will be dead. Some won't. How's that for a prediction?

In the year 2030, I can see a PS9 in a neck-to-neck console war with the undying force known as the Microsoft, whom's every previous attempted at a gaming consoled failed miserably at launch, but was resurrected once more by the head honcho, Bill Gates, with his [by now, one TRILLION dollars ascents] financial resources. Of course two new contenders have entered the battle: Squaresoft's [whom now goes by the name, NeoSquaresoft after the great financial bankruptcy known in the history books as Playonline and Final Fantasy:The Movie] own system in a close second with Sega/NintendoInc. in a distant third. All this, and with a communism-government started by the Saddam Hussein bombing of the WhiteHouse with his "40 Playstation2 hooked up to make a supercomputer" missiles, has offbalance the world's economy, making it extremely difficult for anyone below the "NSYNC financial status standards" to afford the next Final Fantasy installment, FF20:The Same Rehash, which now comes packaged in an outrageous 30 DVD's, composed of 30 hours of FMV's. Well there you have it, a glimps into the future :-]

-Obese roach-

-Joseh F.


This is kind of a difficult topic for me. After all, what am I supposed to say to a letter about the future that's obviously intended to be facetious? I can't exactly argue. I guess I'll just move on to the next letter.

Let's get real

The real question is will square and nintendo still be around in 20 or 30 years?

-Eric G.


I'd imagine that both companies will still be around in some capacity. Then again, that's just my opinion, and you know as well as I do that there's no way to verify this assertion. Unfortunately, all of my attempts to become a god, having power of the very fabric of time itself, have failed, and no matter how many times I say "I would sell my soul for a time machine" the Devil doesn't appear next to me in a flash of smoke.

The Critics

Drew,

Maybe I'm a cynic about business, but I think that if someone of the "young generation" here (say, 18-25) is running Nintendo in 20 or 30 years, they'll be so jaded from the experience of being in the gaming industry for 30 years they won't be as radically "l33t" as they are now. Even so, I somehow doubt we'll be as so...uh...."old-fashioned" as Yamauchi. What a guy.

I have to respect him for having the sheer balls (or sheer arrogance/stupidity/pick any or all of the 3) to say stuff like that, though. Rarely will you find a CEO willing to go out on that far of a limb in a statement.

But what do I hope to see? I want to see gamers running game companies. For example, there's an FPS game in development, and I visit the official BB pretty often. We can talk to the dev team whenever they have time - and I get in discussions with them about the good and bad of UT, Counter-Strike, Tribes, Half-Life, etc. They know what FPS games have to offer, and how to improve, and what not to do. Translate that up to management, (and publishers, mumble grumble) and hopefully better games will result if everyone involved in them plays them.

-Peter


Yeah, I'm afraid of how jaded I'll be in about 20 years. As it stands, if I were in control of some development team right now, I would invent an RPG that dispensed with every common RPG staple just because. In 20 years, if a game doesn't require me to smell my way through a dungeon or something, I probably won't be happy.

Of course, I'll say all of this, but then I'll get my hands on a new Mario game and wind up destroying my minimal social life and failing all of my classes out of hopeless addiction.

Sega couldn't manage its way out of a paper bag. Oh!

Hey ya Drew,

I work at a local Best Buy and when I went into work today we had gotten in some of the new PSone LCD screens. At first I thought, "Hey cool." Then I saw the price. They cost freakin' $150. That's $50 more than the damn system.

On a side note I just bought a dreamcast before christmas and personally eventhough it'll all be over in a year I still think that it was a worthy purchase. Why? Skies of Arcadia (and possibly Guilty Gear X).

-Figure Four who's shaking his head at Sega's bonehead management


I've actually enjoyed owning my Dreamcast. It's a shame the thing is evidently going under; seeing as I'm broke, it would've been nice to have it be my next-gen machine. Still, with games like Crazy Taxi, Grandia II, Skies of Arcadia, and Jet Grind Radio, I really can't complain. After all, according to the average RPG fanatic, that's already 2 more games worth playing than the N64 ever had! Which is strange, because I could've sworn I've enjoyed owning that, too.

Closing comments:

Okay, topic time. There's really not much shaking in the way of videogame news, so I'm going to give you something a little more lighthearted; don't make me regret it. And if you don't knock off that noise with swishing your Kool-Aid between your cheeks, I swear I'll turn this car right around. Understand? Okay.

If you could choose the direction the gaming industry would take from this moment forward, how would you direct it? I know you've already got a God complex, so just run with it. I'm expecting something creative from you folks, now.

-Drew Cosner, provider of the manly voice-over for the Trojan radio spots

 
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