Amber Night (rebooted)

Socialist Nigerian kidney thief spammer so-called “President” (as IF!) Barrack “Obama”¹ is apparently very healthy, which is a very dickish thing for him to do because he is also “growing orchards” (this is stoner code for “marijuana,” try to keep up old people!) right there in America’s oval office which he then “tokes on” while perching his dirty hippy feet up on America’s first desk as if he were the dirty hippy king of the desk world or something sheesh!

Which has what to do with gaming you ask?  Fuck all, really.  I’m just trying to avoid playing Star Trek Online.  I mean, it’s fun.  I guess.  I’m just not really experiencing the wonder around every corner like I did in LoTRO, the WAAAAAAGGH (sp?) in Warhammer, the wow² in WOW,  the massive nipple overload in Age of Conan (everything has nipples–the swords have nipples!!! THE GODDAMN SWORDS HAVE NIPPLES!!), or the complete bewilderment at how anybody thought this was a good idea in The Matrix Online.  I am, in fact, completely apathetic towards this game.  I honestly can’t pick out a single thing I don’t like, and maybe it gets better, but…meh.

Oh and also this:

Melissa Morris didn’t realize the graphic nature of her son’s new video game, “Dante’s Inferno.”

“I didn’t know anything about it, he said he wanted it, so I got it.”

Because, you know, what little Yale (seriously, his name is Yale) wants, little Yale gets, and then mom and little Yale (SERIOUSLY THAT IS THE FUCK HIS NAME!) get to express outrage and horror to some Channel 42 bimb…her name is Shanisty Myers? Seriously? Okay then, little Yale and his mom–let’s just call her Incontoneta Asspickenowski–express horror and outrage at their purchase of a game about hell and blood and violance, to Channel 42 wunder-journalist Shanisty Myers, because it contains graphical depictions of hell and blood and violence.

Anyway, nothing…NOTHING AT ALL…would have tipped this woman off to the fact that there might have been a wee bit o mature content. Oh, except maybe…

…the big ‘ol “18″ right there in big red letters, or the fact that it takes place in hell (read a book lady!) or even the fact that there’s A BIG BADASS WITH A BIG FUCKING SCYTHE WHICH HAS A HANDLE MADE OUT OF VERTEBRAE!!!?!?!

I dunno…too subtle? Maybe the Dante’s Inferno aisle at Best Buy should have been surrounded by a moat of boiling blood and guarded by syphilitic Harpy beasts armed with big-ass vertebrae scythes or swords with nipples or something.

Learned lesson says mom:

“Parents need to read the back of the package especially if they are buying for anyone under 17.”

D’ya think?

Maybe she should go out and buy Star Trek Online for her son. It has tribbles!

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¹Who is conveniently using a fake birth certificate and military ID, supplied of course by high school dropout and 7-11 loiterer Joe “Cheech” Biden, the stoner who also supplies all the 3.2% beer for Obama’s every-morning quote “Beer Summit” unquote.

²As in, “wow! I cannot believe THIS is the most popular MMO in the universe.

Space Monster Richard Garriott demonstrates prostate is 'this big!', circa 2008

Hey remember that Lord British guy who bought the Soviet Union so he could go to space because, well…fuck, SPACE amiright!!!??  Besides that and living in a Lego castle, he was also responsible for the incredibly well-received disastrous Tabula Rasa, which is Latin for Seinfeld because it was an MMO about nothing ha! (ziiiiing!!) But seriously, the mutant radioactive brain of Richard Garriott cannot be stopped with our earth weapons:

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Richard Garriott isn’t a man content to rest on his laurels. Just after we hear that the documentary about his space trip is coming out, we now hear that he’s found a new niche in the multi-player gaming industry. Only this time, he’s not developing a traditional MMO as one might suspect. Instead, Garriott has revealed his involvement in a start-up called Portalarium, which is setting out to get a chunk of that browser-based social game cash floating around on Facebook and other social media networks.

Maybe it’s the Saurian Tribble brandy that he’s been quaffing to excess to ease the painful itching of the space herpes, or maybe…well I’m just gonna go with the space herpes, but…Portalarium?  Portalarium? Richard Garriott’s new company apparently makes fiberglass toilets for RV’s or construction sites or…Роскосмос? (it all makes sense now!)

Anyway, congratulations to Richard Garriott for not “resting on his laurels” and instead resting on the laurels of about sixty-seven million other startups who think that “revolutionizing the game industry” means cloning Farmville but with hobos. Resistance is useless puny earthlings. All your base are belong to that Ultima guy.

Hey, remember that angry tax hero dude who killed himself and others because wtf taxes suck!!!??  Well now you can BE HIM!

From Prisonplanet.com:

In the game users must obtain a can of gasoline, burn a house, then pilot a single-engine airplane into an IRS building. Upon successful completion, the game declares: “Justice is Served!” Along the way, if players manage to hit a malfunctioning Toyota Prius, they are rewarded with the “Auto Recall” medal.

Haha! Stupid Joe “Sixpack” Stack (there is a Trig Palin joke in here somewhere, I just know it!) flew his 1/75th scale Boeing 747 into a tax building thus killing himself and people who are not selfish asshole douchebags, but all he really had to do was wait a couple days for this game, which has worse graphics but is less irl deathy.

Also hey!! The Toyota Prius is a deathtrap just like…Trig Palin?? No, still not there. I’ll work on this and get back to you.

(But welcome first-time “Trig Palin Joe Stack Toyota Prius douchebag” Google Alerts viewers!)

Are there three a’s in “waaagh” or eleven?

Anyhoo. According to Game Politics, incumbent Soviet Prime Minister and 80th Level Heal Spec Shammy Barrack Obama is set to nominate Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm—the woman who tried to ban anything more entertaining than regedit from your computer—to the Supreme Goddamned Court:

Among potential Obama appointees, Totenberg drops the name of Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Veteran GamePolitics readers will recall that Granholm was the driving force behind Michigan’s 2005 violent video game law, later ruled unconstitutional by a U.S. District Court judge. Michigan was compelled to pay the video game industry’s legal fees in that case to the tune of $182,349.

Okay, actually it’s just incumbent Soviet Secretary of Propoganda Nina Totenberg speculating funding the social redistribution of rape kits through the siezure of control liberation of all RMT operations in China and Australia. Or at least that’s what I’m getting out of this. Cough syrup is good stuff.

Dave said he’s writing a review, so I won’t steal his thunder. But if you play the Passively Multiplayer Online Game, I’ve written my first mission. So go now my pretties, and revel in the power and the glory that is Bob Saget. (To actually revel in the power and glory, you’ll need to sign up for PMOG and get the Firefox plugin.)

Update: Dave’s review is up, and it’s a great synopsis of PMOG. Go read it.

Another update: Someone stuck a PMOG portal over on Broken Toys called “Amber’s Brain.” I took it before I checked to see who the author was, so whoever you are mystery portal creator, thanks for the link. And if anyone knows how to get a list of portals, or a history of portals you’ve taken, please share.

According to his website:

CrevoScope is a text-based game of strategy, community, wit, and commitment against a backdrop of the modern creationism / evolution debate. Represent your ideology – your destiny lies in front of you. Choose to become a renowned and knowledgeable scientist, a devout biblical scholar, a powerful orator, or remain moderate and balanced. Compete against other players to prove your side to be the more powerful, and join forces with other players to ensure your faction’s domination.

You level up by winning debates against your chosen enemy. Which is initially intriguing, until you discover that “debating” means “rolling a virtual die.” Here’s how it works:

To gain exp you must debate other people and win. To debate someone go to the crevocafe and click debate. Next find a person whom you would like to debate and if you are capable of debating them a yes will be next to their name. Click this yes to debate them and see who wins.

That’s it. That’s how you pwn teh n00bz in CrevoScope. Here, for example, is a transcript of my “debate” with aklouk90. Mind you, this isn’t a blow-by-blow account. I clicked on the “debate” link, and this is the text that displayed:

You turn toward aklouk90 and say “How could Noah possibly fit all those animals into a small boat?”
aklouk90 replies to your argument with “Well… um… all that matters is that he did!”
amber smiles with victory.

aklouk90 says his own argument: “If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?”
You think for a moment and say “Scientists say that we evolved from chimps, not monkeys! I guess that God of yours didn’t decide to give you a brain so you could realise this, huh?”
aklouk90 nods, enjoying seeing his opponent make a complete fool of himself.

Once again, you challenge your opponent: “How could Noah possibly fit all those animals into a small boat?”
aklouk90 replies to your argument with “Think about it, God is all powerful, he could have used a variety of ways to fit the animals in- He could have shrunk them, make the boat larger, or many other possible choices. He is God afterall!”
amber seems to be annoyed, un-satisified with the answer, but uncertain how to respond to that.

aklouk90 wins the debate!

I’m not even going to get into how somebody with more than a middle school science education could possibly lose this argument, but apparently my text-based avatar is a dumbass.

There are other problems with the game. For starters, successful “free” games usually operate by the rule that “our game is free, but we’ll make it slightly easier on you if you pay us a little money.” Crevoscope, through it’s use of “fossils” as the real monetary unit in the game (you can also earn in-game cash, but it’s insanely easy to farm), makes it darn near impossible to compete on any level unless you’re willing to either refer other players or “donate” real cash. These are the only ways to acquire fossils, other than trading for them. This is a huge design flaw. Because everything except fossils can be obtained through free play, nobody in their right mind would trade a fossil to a free player for something they can get already. So at some point (and as it turns out, very early in the game) you’re going to have to put up some real cash. And if Crevoscope offered any hope in the early game that the later game was worth paying for, that would be one thing. But between the horrible “debate” system (which should really be the hallmark of a game that purports to simulate the creationism versus evolution argument), poorly written and typo-laden dialog, and overall poor design, there’s just nothing there that makes me want to check out the areas that paying real-world money would open.

What really dooms Crevoscope is simply that it does nothing well. The interface is primitive and gives no sense of an actual community. There is simply too great a disconnect between the mechanics of the game and the realities of the ideologies to make Crevoscope a convincing “simulation.” (In fact, an argument could be made that The Super Columbine Massacre RPG is a better simulation of the complexities behind the Columbine attacks.) The writing is repetitive, uninteresting, and at a minimum should have at least been spell-checked.

And lest I be accused of picking on the little developer, let me just say that I think the core idea is at least interesting. But Crevoscope as it stands now is, at best, alpha quality. It’s simply too immature, and too broken, to be asking for players to spend money on it. Now is the time to be gathering player feedback, scrapping the “debate” system for something that’s actually fun, and polishing up the interface and community experience. Right now Crevoscope is only now pulling itself out of the primordial ooze. In a world where there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of web-based games competing for your microdollars, it will need to either adapt quickly or…um…be kicked off the ark.

For years, the answer to the question “do boomer women play computer games?” has been as elusive as…as…well as elusive as finding anybody who has ever actually used the phrase “boomer women” in a gaming context. Nonetheless, Forbes’ Brian Caulfield has the answer:

It turns out boomer women do play computer games.

And do they ever. The business of cranking out casual games–snack-sized alternatives to time-consuming fare like “World of Warcraft”–is mushrooming.

Mmmm…mixed metaphors! Unless Caulfield thinks mushrooms are a snack food, in which hey, my bad. Heck, maybe that’s what rich people who read Forbes snack on. Mushrooms and the crushed and lightly salted souls of the cubicle workers whose backs their fortunes are built on. But mostly mushrooms.

To be sure, classifying casual games as “games for girls” would not be fair.

Caulfield then goes on to classify casual games as games for girls:

But casual female-targeted gaming hits with female heroines, such as “Diner Dash” and “Wedding Dash,” make it clear that casual game developers are attacking far broader swaths of the population than the traditional 18-to-35-year-old male demographic coveted by makers of hardcore games.

“Diner Dash?” “Wedding dash?” Sweet Jesus on a Maxi Pad, I think my ovaries just asploded. Which is why–I guess–these games are targeted at “boomer women,” because…you know…they don’t have any ovaries. Or to apply a more scientific definition:

And while casual games appeal to everyone from pre-teens to old men (the world’s richest man, Warren Buffet, 77, haunts online bridge parlors while using the handle “T-bone”), women over 35 are the most likely to pay for them; 75% percent of those who pay for casual games are women, and 72% are over 35 years old.

According to Forbes, a “woman boomer” is a women over 35. Also, Warren Buffet is such a greedy fucking bastard that you’ll pry a subscription from his cold dead jewel-encrusted fingers itellyawhat.

In summary, traditional “boomer women” (of the non-Warren-Buffet variety) are purchasing casual games targeted at women performing traditionally female roles. Zoemygawd that’s profound. Tomorrow we’ll tackle the question “do 10 year-old girls play with Barbie dolls? The answer may surprise you!”

Why else would Evangelical Christian group Operation Standup (which is actually just a clever anagram of their true name, “Porn Audio Patents”) send our fighting men and women crappy video games like Left Behind: Eternal Forces?

The game, which raised the ire of many activist groups for its promotion of killing and converting non-Christians, will come packaged in “freedom packets” that also include a pocket-size Gideon bible, a Christian extreme sports DVD and the proselytizing book More Than a Carpenter.

What should have really “raised the ire” of just about everyone is that from a pure gameplay perspective, the game blows harder than Ted Haggard at a Village People fanfest. I don’t care if your game lets you kill hookers, school children, or non-believers, just…you know…let me have fun while I’m doing God’s will or whatever.

Recommendation: Take out the video game and give ‘em something that makes much more sense.

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(obRumsfeld: “We know where the FPS are. They’re in the area around Tehran and Karbala and east, west, south and north somewhat.”)

From the Associated Press (via GamePolitics):

TEHRAN, Iran – An Iranian hard-line student group unveiled a new video game Monday that simulates an attempt to rescue two Iranian nuclear experts kidnapped by the US military and held in Iraq and Israel.

…

In “Rescue the Nuke Scientist,” US troops capture a husband-and-wife team of nuclear engineers during a pilgrimage to Karbala, a holy site for Shiite Muslims, in central Iraq. Game players take on the role of Iranian security forces carrying out a mission code-named “The Special Operation,” which involves penetrating fortified locations to free the nuclear scientists, who are moved from Iraq to Israel.

The Union Students of Islamic Association (or USIAMBLA¹) refused all interviews with Amber Night Megalomedia, but sources hint at the possibility of a “Turkish Coffee” mod which may allow players to have simulated hand-holding with women who are not in their immediate family, and whose ankles are exposed. The ESRB is reportedly outraged and plan to revoke the game’s “M — For Martyr” rating, replacing it with the dreaded “I — For Infidel.” USIAMBLA plans to abduct and behead them appeal.

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¹ With apologies to Jon Stewart.

Just so you know, I am a freaking genious. I just read GamePro.com’s 11 Worst Trends in Video Games, and the gears started turning. I can fix the video game industry. The answer has literally been sitting in my basement the entire time! I’m documenting it here on my blog because somebody with some money is going to figure it out (the answer and what I keep in my basement), and then I’m going to need to sue their asses and/or flee the country.

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