Monthly Archive

I was beginning to think that Rockstar Games was going to start treading less controversial ground after they released Table Tennis for the 360. I was afraid they were going to cancel Bully. But after seeing the trailer they released and noticing what an apt description of late elementary / middle / early high school it is, I can’t help but think that maybe this is the game we gamers have been waiting for for so long.

As someone who was picked on bullies back in the day before they all got arrested for robbing liquor stores (don’t you love karma?) I can’t help but sympathize with Jimmy Hopkins, the main character of Bully, who, though he goes to extremes to protect himself, finds a way to survive in a harsh environment. In case anti-game and anti-violence activists like Jack Thomspon never went to school in the first place - which at times I think may be true - pre-senior year is survival of the fittest. It’s like prison. See, in prison, you give someone your fruit cocktail, you’re their bitch. In school, you give them your lunch money, you’re their bitch. There always comes a point where enough is enough and you say, “To hell with the consequences” and you just beat the living snot out of the person who’s been making your life a living hell… or at least you attempt to, and then you go to the Principal’s office while the bully gets off the hook. Then people like Thompson claim you snapped because of the video games you play.

WRONG SIR! WRONG! It is not because of the video games kids play that they lash out at people who are making their daily lives miserable. It is because people are making their lives miserable in the first place. When a kid says, “I never want to go back to school again,” it’s not because of the amount of homework they’re getting. They can deal with that. It’s because there’s some junior sonuvabitch who thinks he’s better than your kid and is willing to prove it too. This is not the kind of person that plays games like Bully. This is the kind of kid who’s dad beats on him and his mother when he gets home, who’s baby sister stays locked in her room all day, and who needs to take his aggressions out on someone smaller than he is because his dad is a 6′4″, 300 lb jackass. THESE are the kids who need to be saved, not the kids who play videogames. These kids, believe it or not, usually lead damn good home lives, with parents kind enough to buy them the games in the first place. Troubled kids have never known the freedom that video games can bring to them. They may have played a few, but never enough to escape from the despair of their lives at home.

At the same time, however, I do believe it is the parents’ responsibility to know their child. If their child has been known to get in fights at school, you ask them why. If they say they’re being picked on, it’s the truth. No kid makes that up, and getting the kid and the bully together to “talk things over” is never going to solve anything. The bully’s not going to pay attention, and the kid is going to be too scared of the bully lashing out at him across the table, which probably won’t happen because the bully is thinking, “Booooooring.” What needs to happen, and this is what people don’t realize, is that the bullies need to be talked to so the parents and the principals can find out WHY they’re picking on other kids, and maybe get them therapy or even put into foster homes so they can start their lives over. The case of Jimmy Hopkins, where a kid becomes a bully because of bullies, is rare but not inexplicable. If there comes a point where nobody has been stopping the people who have been picking on you, despite the fact that it’s obvious that you’re not the aggressor, you’re bound to take matters into your own hands. The game is an exageration like all things fictional are.

However, I must admit that its portrayal of a boy who gets picked on enough to have to take revenge against the real bullies of the school is apt. I went through that for my entire childhood and it did not fully stop until about my Sophomore Year of high school. Luckily, by that time, all the kids who had been picking on me were placed into “special programs” for troubled kids. If they could do this in the elementary schools, we could avoid having bullies in the first place. But until there’s enough money in the schools to do that, the relationship of Bullies to regular kids (dorks, dweebs, geeks, nerds, all of whom, later in life, become part of the subculture we like to call “gamers”) will remain intact. We just need to teach our kids how to deal with it correctly, and listen to our kids when they tell us their lives are miserable, be them bullies or their prey.

One last question though, directed at Jack Thomspon himself. Obviously you hate the gaming subculture, people who were once dorks, dweebs, geeks, and nerds. So sir, to you I ask, who were you in elementary school? Is it just me, or does it sound like you were, yourself, a bully?

Oh Walker Texas Ranger. How I love thee. But not in that way.

So my writer’s block seems to have stopped for the most part. I would have kept writing but Josh, who is supposedly a part of the NR team, told me to do the “Great GameFAQ’s Character Battle.” It’s in its fifth year now, so I guess it’s worth winning some prizes if I called everything right, which I may have just done. But, cmon, CATS or Sonic? Goddamn internet fads.

One more thing. Zero vs. Cut Man in Megaman X8? Amazing.

Actual updates on NightRise sometime soon. Promise.

Wrote some more of the dialogue today. It’s going great. The plot ends up taking some interesting turns, and I think you’ll really like the direction it ends up going. Yes, you, specifically. You know who you are.

Before I go let’s talk about this great thing called the internet, just for kicks. I’m sure you’ve all read opinion after whiny opinion on the net neutrality act, and I stand exactly where everyone else who’s sane and who appreciates the constitution does. Without net neutrality, I wouldn’t even be able to post this blog and have you read it without me paying your ISP extra money so it would load. I think this bill is rediculous, a way to separate the rich from the poor and give the internet over to people who will end up destroying it with biased news broadcasts and Communist-like control over everything. If anyone has ever seen or read V for Vendetta, you know what a world with censorship and control over everything is like. This country was built on freedom, the freedom to call someone a nub if I so desire. Speaking of nubs, do we even know what kind of effect this will have on MMO’s? Information is one thing, but people in Congress seem to be forgetting that millions of people every day are doing Molten Core over and over again just so they can afford new equipment. And what will happen if the internet is on two tiers? You won’t even be able to log on to go to Warsong Gulch and play CTF with your Tier 1. The full consequences of turning the internet into a high class, white, Christian Yacht Club would be catostrophic. Sure we’d still all have our yachts, but why should anyone have to race with tattered sails?

SAVE THE INTERNET!

Greetings to anyone who’s been bothering to pay attention to DanAvision Software Entertainment, DeviateSoft, or NightRise over the past five years. That’s right, I said five years and I’m not kidding. I’ve really been working on it for that long. Most of it has to do with designing it, writing dialogue and the like. Now that an actual team has started to form for it, the world will definitely see the first chapter, After the End, sometime in the next couple of years hopefully. No specific release date yet, I don’t do release dates. I like surprises, and I like surprising you. So one day you will wake up to find out that, low and behold, you can download the first chapter of NightRise to your very own PC and play it to your heart’s content. As of right now it will most likely be Source or Unreal 3 powered. The abilities and limitations of both will have to be researched very deeply. The third draft of the script is going great and Chapter 1 should be completed with plenty of time to spare. The bad news is I have no way, as of right now, of promising Chapters 2 and 3. There’s a whole bunch of legal issues involving the engines we’d be using, especially if we decide to go the oh-so-beautiful route of Unreal 3, but when that time comes we’ll find a way around it. For now, wish us luck on Chapter 1. It’s gonna be a heck of a ride.