They'll never get a red cent out of me! - April 29th, 2001 - 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. Is God a bad enough dude to save the Queen? Don't say we didn't warn you.
I can tell by the grin on your face that you're looking forward to this column. Sucker.
| Sorry for playing so nice lately |
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Drew,
I was very surprised by your response to Jennifer Diane Reitz's (I love
that name. Nothing to do with anything, but it's a cool name) letter. She
was far, far kinder than I would have been, and I'd always sort of thought
you were even crueller than I. Then again, maybe I'm just in a bad mood.
The local news kicked off with a story about the local police breaking the
law (following on the heels of them doing a very, very poor job with some
rioting. Motivated by a fucking basketball game, of course), then moved on
to one about a kid getting shot at a birthday party, and finishing with a KKK
member going to trial for blowing up a few kids, 40 fucking years after the
fact. So, I changed the channel, and saw a sizeable audience cheering while
Tom Green sucked on a cow's udder. He was wearing a chicken suit. So, I
turned off the tv, logged on, and saw this lawsuit shit. In conclusion, fuck
everyone. I'm going to go read a book, or something.
-The Neocount of Merentha, wondering how expensive some high grade
uranium would be.
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If there's a problem that unfocused hostility towards everyone and everything can't solve, life just isn't worth living, I say.
Happy note: for those of you upset with me for actually being relatively civil of late, I think you'll enjoy the last letter in today's column.
| It's hard to make fun of you when you're right |
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Dear Drew and fellow gamers,
I would just like to note that all complaints about injustices to the gaming
industry (eg. the lawsuit against gaming companies from the 'Columbine'
parents) should not just be sent to gaming websites, etc., but should be
sent to newspapers and such for some real coverage.
Sincerely,
-Jae
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Yeah, sending in a letter denouncing videogames as correlary to deadly violence to a forum like Double Agent is pretty much preaching to the converted. I've noticed that when they aren't having unprotected sex, insane conservatives seem to spend their free time sending equally insane letters to magazines and newspapers for print. Conversely, the average person reads something upsetting, gets pissed, forgets about it and never sends in a letter. That leads to some pretty weighted letters sections.
So what I'm trying to say with my unprompted dig at approximately 25% of the population is that you readers ought to send letters representing the opinion of the average gamer to publications that are read by people other than gamers.
| Sorry, IGN |
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I think that subscription based web news services will just
exacerbate any failings that the website has. The free portion of the
website will seem stunted since it only gives partial news. The pay
portion of the website will fail because it is written into computer
logic circuits that no one will pay for content unless it is
pornographic in some way. Sorry IGN.
-BeerGoggles_FromMARS
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The Internet is pretty much based on a culture of free trade. I'll be the first to admit that I expect to get everything off of the Internet for free. When something has been free all along, you can't suddenly turn around and start charging for it with the expectation that people will be okay with the idea. Internet users will put up with any form of obstructive advertising gimmick you throw at them, but they aren't going to pay for anything, plain and simple.
That said, I wouldn't be surprised if we startseeing Flash-esque "web-mercials" that last for a few seconds before the site itself is loaded. It's going to suck, but I'm pretty sure we'll start seeing them. Here's hoping broadband becomes more pervasive and affordable before then.
| I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say |
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The only way I'll ever visit a subscription site is if my college library pays for it and lets me access it remotely from campus. I repeat: the only way I'll ever visit a subscription site is if my college library pays for it and lets me access it remotely from campus. Again: the only way I'll ever visit a subscription site is if my college library pays for it and lets me access it remotely from campus.
-Fares
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Just doing my best to ram a point home with the aid of you readers. Always glad to let you do my dirty work. I think sites like IGN, which are amongst the first to give this a whirl, are in a particularly bad situation since we can just as easily go to the sites that are still free to get the same information.
| Helpful hints |
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Dear Anthropomorphic (insert board game),
I hate to say it, but games certainly do have a bad effect on gamers.
Especially RPG's. When playing FF Tactics, whenever I returned from a
job expedition and did not make out as well as I had hoped, the solution
was to hit the reset button and try again. But in real life, the boss
just doesn't have a reset button, and it's gotten me in trouble many
times when i've tried to poke his belly button.
yours cruelly,
opultaM Forward
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Hey, you think that's a lesson to learn? Let me give you guys a little hint before you make the same mistakes I have: street punks don't flash and then disappear on the ground when you hurl garbage cans into their faces.
| Why buy the cow when you can get the videogame news for free? |
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Heil Cosner,
Alas, I feel sorry for the guys that're trying to get subscription-based news services going. There's basically nothing they can do that'd make them better than any free service. Most site travellers just need the news with some bells and whistles. They don't need feature bloat like in-page chat and buddy systems, or customized newsletters. While it's possible that one or two elite pages could work out deals to get large high quality images (instead of cruddy scans from Japanese mags), or mass quantities of streaming videos, such features would only appeal to hardcore gamers with broadband connections. Not the best market, there. Even then, how could they compete with specialized pages like GIA? You guys always try to get high quality art, and even with limited bandwidth you jamp pack insane numbers of screen shots and movies. Don't know how long that's going to last, but ya gotta admit it's hard to compete with that.
It's difficult to offer 'exclusive' content on the net, since most everything can be ripped off.. Sure, you could make exclusive streaming audio or video shows, but that stuff costs big money, and these sites are having to set up subscription services just to cover the usual stuff. Ouch.
Kinda bland, but it's the topic you set, jerk.-
Jagger, devil on yer back
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Well, while it would be nice to think that sites would be able to get their hands on better images and other media, the situation just wouldn't allow for that. Any gaming site has to wait around until the publishers decide they're good and ready to send out media packages to get the high-quality stuff. If you want news before it's practically out of date, scanning images out of magazines and the like is just what all of us gaming sites have to do.
| The spirit is willing but the points themselves are weak |
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*sigh* For some reason I feel a need to write to the DA about this one. Maybe it's because I feel guilty for not writing in for so long, maybe it's because I'm just tired, but I digress.
I feel an urgency to rebut Ms. Reitz's argument featured in yesterday's column. I'm not saying video games are the cause of all evil; if anything, I'm one of the staunchest opposers of that theory. It's been proven that it only truly affects children who play it for extremely long periods of time at early ages to have any real effect, but I'm not going to go into that. I'm talking about the parents.
Have you ever lost a child, Ms. Reitz? I'm not saying that I have, but I do have a point to all this. I am more than willing to bet that, when one becomes a parent, they have decided to devote their life to another being, even more so than when one marries. To borrow a phrase, yes, everything does revolve around them. Now imagine that child, the thing you hold most dear to you in your life, that you have dedicated most of your being to, taken away forcefully and violently by a couple of teenage psychopaths who couldn't care less that they were going off to college in a year, that they had finally made the honor roll, etc. What would a person's feelings lean towards? After grief and denial, obviously, comes revenge and anger.
Where and how would they be able to satisfy these feelings of aggression? Sure, they could go and start a little shooting spree of their own, but they know better than that. They do not get to see the people who took so much from them spend a lifetime in jail; the actual offenders committed suicide. They don't see anyone physically pay for what happend to their child. Their only legal recourse? A lawsuit. The question now is against whom. The most debated topic was violent video games, the media made a circuis of it. Eventually something had to give, in this case it was the parents' temper. They lash out in the only way they can. Odds are they'll lose, and I believe that they will eventually find some way to make peace with all this. But they way it was depicted in this column was very one-sided. I'm not saying that there aren't some money-grubbers out there jumpin! g on the Columbine Bandwagon, but let's all have a moment of quiet thought for the people that lost the most and are fighting back the only way they know how.
Wishing he had no need to write this,
Aleksandrs Bomis
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I absolutely agree with the spirit of your letter, but I have to wonder how pure some of these parents' motives are, as they're quite obviously aiming for the biggest, slowest moving targets in the form of videogames. Rather than, say, founding or joining organizations to help tackle the social problems that lead to the kind of aggression we've seen. Rather convenient that the first option makes them cash, whereas the second option is exclusively done of a sense of justice and genuine desire for positive change.
By the way, I don't actually think your points are weak, but it made for a good heading.
| Flamers' Corner reborn! |
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"Look, I like dogging DQVII with no rational reason to do so as much as the next guy, but a quick joke-making hint: if you need to explain the joke in paranthesis or otherwise, you may want to review it."
unsolicited editorializing not appreciated. Self-satisfied CS major hint: if somebody puts something in parentheses and then adds a quotation-marked "HEL-lo" after it, they're making a pathetic attempt to add to their joke through satire; OR they're a loser albino from Siberia who learned English by watching "So I Married an Axe Murderer." ...I guess what I'm trying to say is this: I did not NEED to explain the joke (I would hope) any more than you NEEDED to lampoon me in the column by posting my "joke" with your snyde little commentary. If you're going to embarrass me, in the future you might want to clip my name/pseudonym along with the rest of the stuff you decide to cut-and-leave-beyond-the-flow-of-time.
machka drek... disappointed.
[SNIP, SNIP] - DREW, CUT HERE - [SNIP, SNIP]
Life begins with Drek and ends with Drek. This is true. This I believe. At least for now.
Yeah, I'm a spoiled, fur-king brat. I guess that after I've written this... THEN I'll do the mature thing and just not even bother with the column anymore.
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Apparently you haven't been reading this column very much lately, since virtually every reply Chris and I give is, at its core, editorializing. And seeing as this is our column, it's not just our right but our job to reply to every letter we opt to print. So while I appreciate your attempt to spruce up your letter with a pairing of big words you saw somewhere, you may want to make sure you're actually applying them correctly in argument.
Secondly, I clipped the little explanation of what your nick means since choosing an obscure nick generally entails an acceptance that no one will understand it. If you get a vanity plate that says "RegBC" or something equally nonsensical to the average observer, the state probably isn't going to give you a second, really big plate with an explanation.The same logic applies here in Double Agent Land; if you want people to know where your chosen nick comes from, go with something like "Cloud763," because, quite frankly, nobody cares what your nickname means, and printing an explanation is a waste of the electrons required to display it on every DA reader's monitor.
And while you've got me on a refreshing tirade, I do technically have the right to alter any letter I receive however I see fit. Be glad I didn't interject a bunch of really effeminate idiosyncrasies into your letter to make you look like a total boob.
Wow, I haven't laid into somebody like that in a while. At any rate, have your Flamer Award, Machka, you've earned it.
Closing comments:
In the land of burgers, Chris Jones is king. He rules from atop a diamond-studded throne, crying out his latest overbearing decrees in a girlish voice while kicking his legs playfully, as his young highness is still unable to reach the floor. Having already attained an immunity to ground up glass, our only chance for freedom is for you to mail Chris in hopes that you'll reach through to his heart, making a benevolent ruler of him once and for all.
-Drew Cosner
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