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Anyone who has ever seen me when I get obsessed with a little programming problem, or a video game, or anything for that matter, knows that I can be a little crazy when my mind gets locked onto something. This blog is no different. Although my posts have slowed down somewhat (I'm not posting twice a day any more, well, except today... Hmmm...) I still like to see where the people who visit my site are coming from. Thankfully, through the miracle of Statcounter, I can easily see the links that people use to get to my site. So far a lot of the links come from search engines, but over the last few days there have been a couple from a site called the Empire of the Claw.
As soon as I saw that link I decided to rush over and see what it was all about, and to my gratification it turns out that the site is exactly the sort of site I love to find. Posted on the site for free download are a bunch of totally radical fonts, including a whole collection of retro arcade fonts. Although I don't know who the Claw is I would like to thank them for the link, and for the fonts. Claw, you made my day. (Now that I think about it, could Claw possibly be the infamous Dr. Claw from the Inspector Gadget cartoon? Only time will tell...)
As a side note I'd like to mention something about the types of searches that could possibly lead you here. I find it truly funny that of all the things you can type into Google, there is one that will bring up this site first in the list. What is that search? Is it "video games"? Hahaha, nope, I wish... Is it "confessions junky"? Nope, too obvious. Believe it or not if you type in "church of robotology" I am the king of the heap. Numero uno. It makes me feel like I owe the world a little more background on the Church of Robotology. The best way to start out would be to read the entry in the Futurama Encyclopedia on Robotology. From there you might as well move on to The Centre for Robotology and Robotonomy, a fun little blog that has, er, pictures of some of the Robo-Messiahs, saints, and popes that abound. After that your only option is to pay me a hefty sum and have me write "the Comprehensive Guide to the Worship of Robots", which you can then release in hardcover and market as an alternative to the bible. Of course then we'd be branded heretics and would have to contend with Ninja Priests, and to be honest nobody wants that.
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After receiving payment for my first completed flash game I decided that it was time to go out and spend a little bling. My first instinct, of course, was to head over to the local game store and buy, well, everything. So many great games are out right now that I just don't have time to play them. For example, I have been dying to try Disgaea, as well as another fantastic looking tactical game, LaPucelle Tactics. As well there are about a hundred other games that I feel I need to play. Custom Robo looks great, Phantasy Star Online III: Card Revolution (despite the fact that I barely have time in a day to type out its name) also looks like a lot of fun. Painkiller has been recommended to me by my friend Emilio, and he's sort of like my patron saint of cool, simply playing a game recommended by him is likely to improve my social standing... And last, but certainly not least, I need to find a game that plays well split screen for when my friend Lisa comes over to hang out, something fast moving with role playing elements, like maybe Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles.
So that was the plan. Leave work... Buy game. Two steps out of my door that plan went straight to hell. I walked out of work and my eyes fell upon the computer book store across the street and I knew what I had to do. I marched straight over and bought Jobe Makar and Ben Winiarczyk's excellent book, Flash MX 2004 Game Design Demystified. Because honestly, I don't have much time for console games lately. The reason I don't have that time is because I spend my evenings making flash games, and I've sort of been stumpling along unguided so far. So I thought maybe, with the help of this book, I could finish the games faster, and thus have more time to play games... Of course, if things continue the way they've been going I might just end up using that time to take on more flash game projects...
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Sometimes I miss the commies. I remember during the 80's it was so easy for me to drop a quarter into a machine and chew apart hundreds of communists with a machine gun, rocket launcher, knife, or whatever. When I was younger I didn't realize how much of a parralel there was between politics and video games, but lately I can't help but think about it. Terrorists have always been a popular villain in video games, but lately it seems that they are the only thing it's politically correct to blow the hell out of. Well, them and aliens. Frikken aliens, if they try and set foot on my planet you can be certain I'm going to take the old atom blaster out of storage and make sloppy puddles out of those green bastards.
Hmmm, I was certain I was going somewhere with that, but where was it? I was so blinded by my xenophobic alien hating rage that I lost my train of thought. Oh, yeah, villains. You see, the point I'm trying to make is that lately I have found that I can't seperate my games from the politics. I've been thinking back to the games I've played throughout my life and I have started realizing just how guilty a pleasure games can be.
Most action games tend to simplify things a lot. Take a game like NARC for example. This was a game in which you rampaged through the streets turning junkies and dealers into charred bloody bits. And then, at the end of the game, after you have destroyed the drug lord, the game congratulates you and tells you to contact your local D.E.A. recruiter. When this game came out it was all the rage to hate drug users, but now that I'm older it isn't as easy to justify slaughtering everyone who has ever smoked a joint. I've known some really great people who also happened to use drugs.
For a long time it was okay to kill communists, too, except for the ones that wanted to defect. Anyone wearing a fur lined jacket and a warm hat could pretty much be shot on sight, because you knew they were a damned red. Now, in retrospect, the Soviet Union doesn't seem so bad, and an entire nation was made to suffer for the sins of a few key decision makers.
Now the U.S. is under fire for the behavior of its troops while over seas fighting the latest and greatest war, the war on terrorism. A war fought by people who have grown up with pixellated demons labelled as terrorists flashing across a screen in front of them. When the photos of Iraqi prisoners being abused by American and British troops were released over here we saw them for what they were, people being brutalized and humiliated. But somewhere along the line those soldiers lost sight of the fact that those were human beings. I bet if you had asked those soldiers before the war if they could ever envision themselves doing those things to another human being they would have been outraged at the very idea. But ask them after 9/11 what they would do to a terrorist and their answer would have been very different.
So what am I saying? That video games drove these soldiers to do what they did? Not even close. I believe that video games are merely a reflection of the current social atmosphere. What I'm saying is that I need to be more conscious of the villains in my games. I have to remember that they are there to provide a challenge, but that they aren't people, just pixels. Just because they are labelled as terrorists doesn't mean that a real terrorist is in any way similar, we have to be careful not to let the labels that get affixed to our pixels spill over into our views of the real world.
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