It May Even Be In Our Time

Sorry I’ve been delaying my posts so much. Summer vacation’s barely been a vacation, and after lying around at home for several weeks and avoiding writing I came back to find work and no time for writing. Thankfully, I’m on top of things again, and in an environment that makes me want to write about games once more. Fancy that, eh? My immediate surroundings dictate my work ethic. I probably need to get a job immediately after graduating, else I fear my portfolio work and blogwriting might go down the drain. I need a gaming environment. Thank God, I’m back.

A while ago, months, I had been talking to my housemate and we started joking as I popped Uncharted into the Playstation 3, “What if PS3 games needed various disks? I mean, what would you fill up Blu-Ray disks with?” He mentioned textures having textures, and I laughed and replied that each molecule would be modeled in order to ensure the maximum possible true-to-life texture. At that, he mused, “It would be tight if developers could set up the code for molecules and how they behave inside a texture.”

As he said this, I suddenly remembered. They already have.

Read that article. Don’t just go past it and keep reading what I wrote. Just look at the pictures and videos if you want, but go to that site.

You did it? Good.

4D technology is essentially the use of algorithms to dictate the behavior of each pixel in a texture, affected by time and forces around the particle as if it were a regular bit of matter.

The amazing thing behind 4D technology which is slowly starting to appear in more and more PS3 games (mentioned in the article are Afrika and Killzone 2) is the way the algorithms programmed into the world allow for minimized use of textures, and yet manage visuals that far exceed most anything games have come up with so far.

That’s great when you’re doing things in High-Definition, where a low-res texture is going to look like utter crap. And if you want to fit thousands upon thousands of gorgeous upscale textures on a single Blu-Ray disc

The reason I’ve mostly used PS3 terminology is because 4D is simply not possible for the Xbox 360 and the Wii. They don’t have the power to parallel process all those behaviors. Without the core processor, there’s no way for a console to calculate the renders. So I once again wave my PS3 flag, and everyone continues to think I am a fanboy.

I really wish I could find positive things to say about other consoles for that very reason. But what do I do?

Anyway, we won’t see the use of 4D to its full potential just yet, but we will start to see games incorporating it rather soon. When this article came out, Killzone 2 was still heavy in development. Nowadays it’s scheduled for next year’s Q1 release (What? What happened to later this year? Our dear Delaystation 3) and who knows when Afrika will be released. Sometime next year.

Still, be on the lookout for this rising technology and its negative effects: soon, texture artists will not be as needed anymore, or their function will change. Get ready to no longer seek to make the greatest upscale texture possible but the most condensed, quality texture in the minimum amount of space. Be prepared to see this lose people jobs and create ones for new skillsets.

This is in reply to Costikyan’s “I Have No Words & I Must Design”, in particular his assertion that “Stories are linear. Games are not.” I recently was asked to agree or disagree with this statement, and went haywire and wrote this next rail.

I hate hearing the words “Games don’t need story.” It bothers me. It worries me. I worry that people have lost sight of seeking a more exploratory world of games, a more experimental experience. But I can respect their opinion–they’ve chosen Form over Purpose, if you’ve read Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics. They want to find a refined way to create a game that will appeal to the viewer.
However, I’ve long since leapt that fence and raced to the heart of what I consider games: experiences. People developed games through evolution, Will Wright has said. It’s important for our growth and development. It’s a form of *experience*, in which our actions and the “management of our resources” affect our trajectory towards our goal. But our goal could be something far greater, far more profound than simply “Achieving victory”. “Owning all the property.” “Defeating the final boss.” By seeing games in this light, I almost feel like we’re trying to make games more shallow than they are or could be. More dry. More boring. See, if it’s just about capturing the flag, what’s the point? If all you need to do is get to the finish line before everyone else, why do it? There has to be more to designing a game, and I think by exploring the ways we tell stories through gameplay is the key. After all, people create their own stories when playing any game–they don’t just observe the rules of play, they observe the EVENTS of play–the rules simply become the reality, the medium for that story to take place.

Think of a game like the Indigo Prophecy (Farenheit in the UK). It had an amazing story which steadily became a Wachowski Brothers fest as the game continued, thanks to an unfortunate lack of funding for the tale that was supposed to be a sequel. In any case, the way the story was told was entirely through gameplay–through a set of rules that players began to learn and obeyed throughout the experience. The final goal of the game? To uncover the secret behind the murder your main protagonist appears to have committed. It’s a survival game, in a sense–the point is to survive to the end. But even if it’s such a simplistic formula, without that story the game would collapse onto itself. The gameplay is strong and interesting and experimental, but it’s simply not enough to convey the experience–it’s the story that drives that.

On the other hand, let’s take a look at a very story-absent game. Let’s take Pong. Any version–you can go from Pong to Top Spin 2 to Rockstar’s Table Tennis. The game has very little story to it. You rise to the top and all, but, really, the plot can be thrown aside and what would be left is the barebones game mechanic of bouncing a ball back and forth. But what is it that drives the player to invest in that? Is it the cheering fans, the hot asphalt? The original Pong didn’t have that level of realism. Is it the simplistic power of moving a rack and knocking a ball back across the net at the other player? Table Tennis was a great deal more complicated than that, and requires a good bit of hard work to master.
In essence? It’s the spirit of that competition that embodies the challenge and elicits the player’s emotion. We search for so-called “meaningful play” in design, but what many fail to realize is that every time a player is invested, they are alluding to yet another human story.

We shouldn’t be trying to create “meaningful play”. We should be trying to make play players can attach meaning to themselves.

The point I’m trying to make is, games create stories. People create stories–we’re a story-driven race; it’s why we spend such a great deal of time researching and conserving our hi-story. Our memory is comprised of stories and events, and those experiences dictate how and what we have learned over the course of our lives. Humans and stories are inseparable–and games are simply the setup of hypothetical, experimental universes for more stories to be created. Costikian said it himself, and I don’t know why he doesn’t recognize it: “Games provide a set of rules; but the players use them to create their own consequences.” Those consequences are being remembered and learned as stories.

I see ludology as a tool, not an ideal. Creating fun gameplay is essential to a game’s success, yes. But it’s finding a way to capture the spirit of play in the player that I find the true art. It’s why many MMOs fail where World of Warcraft reigns king. It’s why people keep buying Final Fantasy again and again and again. It’s why you keep asking your friends to play Monopoly with you–the universe created by the game is that breeding ground for all players to create their own stories. It doesn’t matter what the mechanics are, as long as they work for that specific event you want to recreate.

It’s why many people disliked Assassin’s Creed. Playing it, you’d want to recreate the story of an assassin. But the gameplay simply doesn’t lend for the creation of that experience. The game isn’t UN-FUN, per se. It just doesn’t lend for someone to believe they’re an assassin in most cases.

Give that some thought before you begin writing numbers down, ludologists.

I would be writing about Monster Hunter right now, if for the fact that the game is too long and I have simply not even reached Hunter Level 3 yet because I’ve been too busy playing Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. All week there’s been a regular storm of controversy wrapped around the so-called last episode of Solid Snake’s life and series. It seems that either our sneaky protagonist has gotten either a great deal of love or a great deal of hate with few in-betweens. I’ve heard any broad number of both ecstatic and disgusted takes on the game, so I decided to share my own observation and try to be what I seldom end up being: a median.

I loved MGS4. Let’s start out honest. I adored it. It was gorgeous, and exactly the kind of thing I want to see in a game. At the same time, I understand exactly why some people were more than disattisfied with acclaims from all over calling this a “Near Perfect” game, not to mention IGN’s PK Rockin’ Omega score of 10/10.

For a great number of people, MGS4 felt like a huge cutscene: a very pretty, very lovely cutscene sometimes lousily voice-acted with occasionally very tacky dialogue. The actual gameplay takes up maybe half of the game, while the other half is comprised of immovable cutscenes that pull you through a gargantuan action story that drags on and on. Were you to be able to compile Metal Gear as a movie you would easily have an 8 hour action adventure epic that would be very difficult for the average moviegoer to understand.

That makes a lot of people turn their noses up at the new Metal Gear, insinuating that it feels a lot less like a game and more like a big movie story you seem to have no hand in. However, what I realized as I was playing and feeling more or less the same along those lines was that there’s nothing really dictating what a game should or should not be comprised of. It was at that moment that I saw MGS4 as something quite different than what I had picked it up as–not as an intricate stealth game but an entire interactive experience, immersing me in the world of Metal Gear so deeply that when the cutscenes rolled around, I still felt like I was experiencing the action. Not to mention that occasionally the movie aspect was enhanced by gameplay aids, like the opportunity to “flashback” every now and then during cutscenes and change the camera’s POV in order to get different takes on the action and foreshadowing for future events.

The actual sneaking gameplay outside of the cutscenes is just as exciting and challenging as ever, with an even more fresh look and feel thanks to a great deal of Western adoptions by Eastern developers. The over the shoulder view, the ability to play through the entire game as Rambo as you like; all those things add a new flavor and style of playing the game that I couldn’t have expected. I’ve watched people barely using the OctoCamo, Snake’s brand-new, nifty equipment which lets him hide out and blend into his surroundings, and instead avoid enemies like mad by hotfooting their way behind obstacles and diving into cardboard boxes and drum cans. I’ve watched people take out enemies one by one, silently, using snipers and knives and a great deal of patience. My buddy Squall is trying to go through the entire game without killing anyone or being spotted once in under 5 hours on Extreme Mode, and after having ripped through most of the game with guns blazing and seeing his careful, precise art of sneaking, I decided to attempt to emulate his dedication. You can play this game in three dozen ways, and that’s just beautiful design to me.

To counter Tycho’s somewhat aloof stance on the game, I believe MGS4 can be just as much, if not more, a game about remaining undetected as any Splinter Cell or Assassin’s Creed, if not more so. You can even remain undetected to bosses if you’ve got your wits about you. The thing is, Metal Gear does not demand you play a certain way. It does not demand you kill or knock out–it encourages you to stick to Snake’s roots, but does not reprimand you for not doing so. You can actually unlock a few interesting bonuses if you go on a few killing frenzies. I think Metal Gear’s openess for gameplay and intricacy in its execution is spectacular. (Note: Tycho recanted a little earlier this week, so he’s been grudgingly let off the hook.)

But to go back a few steps, I have to agree with a few things being put out there. There’s nothing wrong with Metal Gear being over the top in story, but when it seems like the entire story is a gargantuan plot twist, the player ends up feeling a little bit alienated and confused, as if he or she has been led on a massive wild goose chase. Not to mention the fact that a lot of it is tackily written, which I tend to blame on localization. It also doesn’t help that we have some great English voice actors who are incapable of displaying certain emotions.

The game is still very satisfying to me, but not everyone has the intense analysis and following of Metal Gear characters I do, and therefore they wouldn’t be able to understand as much of the plot. It’s why Kojima very cleverly released the downloadable Metal Gear Database. But even the Database doesn’t give everyone what they want out of a Metal Gear game, and unfortunately there’s a crowd out there who just doesn’t like movie experiences in games, like Yahtzee, for example. There’s people who want the game to be strictly that, a game. As someone who loves literature and film and graphic novels, I have a slightly different focus in what I try to achieve with games. But that’s fine–nobody’s saying anyone’s right or wrong, we just have different end goals. MGS4 just happens to be one of the things I want as an end goal, with a few tweaks.

If you have a PS3, just get Metal Gear. It’s a great PS3 exclusive and most people bought the damn console for the game. I mean, even if you don’t like it, Metal Gear Online is the multiplayer shooter of the moment aside from COD4. Just get Metal Gear. Skip the cutscenes, if you like. You don’t have to watch them. Do yourself a favor and don’t be the guy who has a PS3 and doesn’t have MGS4.

Instead of posting anything about recent news over the past couple of weeks I have been busy avoiding all contact with the outside world, since I have simply needed a break. However, I can’t continue running forever and sooner or later I would have to come on and talk about the recent explosion that has happened this summer in the form of So Much Cool.

The first stage of So Much Cool came when I got my hands on Monster Hunter 2 Freedom for the PSP, which I will be reviewing promptly–as soon as I can stop playing World of Warcraft again, since I could not resist the grind and already have a new Warrior up to level like, 15. MH2F is an amazing game. I have been geeking out over it for the past two weeks. If playing online wasn’t such an ordeal (especially with my absolutely shoddy connection down here in Mexico where I get 4,000 ping in World of Warcraft–I mean, come on) I would be giving this game Grade A points. But I’ll talk about MH2F later this week.

Part 2 of So Much Cool was the release of Metal Gear Solid 4: Sons of the Patriots. I have never seen the Internet this excited. Well, I have, but over a game, never. Post after post on blog after blog is about MGS4 and IGN’s perfect score rating for it. I, unfortunately, am not one of those lucky enough to have a copy of the game since launch date, but my good buddy Squall assures me after having beaten the game last night that it is spectacular. His only worry is that it is a great deal of servicing the fans, and he wonders whether a non-fan would appreciate the game in the same way.
Luckily, I’m not a hardcore MGS fan–I’m absolutely awful at sneaking and I have never owned the games–though I did try to play Squall’s MGS1 copy on my computer only to have it fail epically. I do know the entire storyline after having analyzed and researched the whole thing along with Squall, but I’m pretty sure there’s things I don’t know and I’m definitely sure it’s not the same as playing the game. So depending on how I react, we can make some safe assumptions about how accurate 10/10 may be.
I’ll be getting the game sometime in the last days of June, so we’ll wait and see.

The last stage of So Much Cool has been the release of the SPORE Creature Editor and the upcoming demo release on June 17. Details:

I don’t want to be an advertisment here, but download the demo on June 17, for your own sake. The Creature Creator is a ten dollar buy and it’s just indescribably awesome, but considering the demo is released in two days you might as well wait for something free, especially since you can already preorder the game from EA’s Online Store. Launch date for SPORE: September 7, 2008.
The game works on my computer–and not only works, but works on a decent resolution with pretty stellar graphics and I was able to make a lovely number of different creatures. I am just thrilled. I was so afraid I wouldn’t be able to play the game on my computer. But Will Wright loves me, I keep forgetting, and would never let me suffer that way.

This is such an action-packed summer, and already up ahead are the release of the In-Game XMB for PS3, Killzone 2, LittleBigPlanet, Resistance 2, SPORE for PC and Final Fantasy XIII and XIII Versus.
Slap Gran Turismo, GTAIV and Metal Gear at the beginning of that, and this is my favorite year ever.

So yes, I still read Penny-Arcade. Why? Because while their humor has trailed away from that once gloriously sadistic and satirical jest that I so admired, they’re sometimes still very funny. Even if only I think so.

But they have recently let me know that Bioshock will be available on PS3, finally, while I lose myself in the drudge of final exams and not writing any posts for weeks because my brain just can’t take the pressure (The school year is almost over; bear with me and final exams will be done and I will have NOTHING TO DO save write articles for you saps).

This concludes yet another Xbox game that loses its 360 exclusivity. While I’m not implying the 360 has ever had a guise of an exclusives-strong console, it’s still a little sad to see. I’m just waiting for Mass Effect on PS3 now, and the journey will be complete. There will simply be zero reason left for me ever to buy that thing.

I’m almost kind of diappointed.

I don’t talk much about it. Probably because I know if I start saying things about the Wii, what comes out of my mouth will end up being negative.

It’s inevitable, however, for me to say something about that little white posh console, so let’s start out saying a few good things even though we all know where this is going.

1) It’s a great multiplayer console.

2) It has games for kids.

3) …

That’s about it for me. That’s all I can really say about it. You can scream and rant and rail all you want about the magic word innovation; the truth is, the point-and-click remote control idea has been something Nintendo has toyed with since the NES Glove Controller, and infra-red technology is about as twentieth century as it gets–not to mention that it’s recycled from the Game Boy Color’s failed attempts at infra-red ports sharing.

When you sit down and really analyze it, all this new garbage they come out with for the Wii that supposedly makes you feel “immersed” in gameplay because you’re mimicking the motions on the screen has simply resulted in extremely hackneyed and gratuitous calisthenics. I remember talking with a fellow designer about Harvest Moon for the Wii; he was all for it, expecting the addition of the Wiimote to be an amazing dynamic. I continued to try to point out my skepticism because the addition is simply so easy it can be perceived as tacked on. Anything that senses motion can immediately be exploited without a second thought–example: I can make a kayaking game where you swipe the Wiimote left and right to simulate paddling. There you go. I just implemented the Wiimote in a game that should sell bajillions because it has motion sensing technology and therefore should be fun.

What all these sad game designers need to start accepting is that motion sensing gets old. Special gear gets old. Transfer packs and GBA link cables and chainsaw controllers get old. When people start seeing games like Grand Theft Auto IV and Metal Gear Solid 4 and Alone in the Dark and The Orange Box come out on everything but the Wii… well. This article describes it best, and I am in total agreement. Most people I know have stopped playing their Wii altogether. Even Super Smash Brothers Brawl just doesn’t make it anymore. Nintendo’s giving us Mario Kart, but I haven’t heard a word out of anybody’s mouth about it. The little white console is fading, and keeping quiet.

What can I say? Nintendo gave it a shot. The problem is Nintendo is the only company that’s good at what Nintendo does, and like I said months ago: It’s my theory Nintendo titles will continue to sell the Wii. No other company will ever really get their fair share of the profit.

I wonder if Miyamoto’s got anything up his sleeves now.

Facebook recently initiated “Facebook Chat”, a messenger concept people have been dying for since Facebook exploded from a college thing into the next MySpace. It’s become apparent to me within the first twenty minutes of poking at it that the thing is pure evil, since my feed shows up live on everyone’s chat list if they happen to me talking at me (I don’t answer back being the Facebook dissenter I am, of course) so now if it even occurs to me to download some stupid application for the day, even if I hide it on the mini-feed, everyone who happens to be staring intently at me will be notified.

Of course, it’s also unlikely too many people will be interested in me. I am, after all, somewhat boring–particularly on Facebook. But I somewhat dread a game designer contacting me randomly after having seen me on someone else’s site and walking in on me taking a personality quiz for little girls. Not that I do that, or anything. I just might some day. You never know.

And no, I’m not giving out my Facebook on here. Why would I? There’s nothing of interest on there. If you really want to find me, go ahead and try to find me. You know who I am and where I study. It can’t possibly be that hard.

So now you’re thinking, “All right, Andres, how does this tie into games?” Yes, I know I’m a game designer and I should be focusing on things like Metal Gear Online and GTAIV, but instead I decided to talk about Facebook–because believe it or not, in-game communication with players isn’t all too far from what Facebook just integrated.

And since you’re all so picky about MGO and GTAIV, I will talk about them–in context with Facebook.

The thing about most games–and this is mostly when dealing with the online multiplayer aspect of any genre–is that communication is crucial for anything to work in an online setting. The reason Facebook is so successful is because it centers around the idea of communication and connection between human beings. Video games in an online setting have had a hard time hitting the right formula in order to thrive because they haven’t been able to find the appropriate balance of communication versus play. (Brenda Brathwaite would be so proud of me.)

In the instance of Rock Band, you have an absolutely gorgeous system for playing your favorite songs with friends, rocking it out and sharing the moments through an online setting–but the connectivity is so limited you might as well just get together at somebody’s house and play there. There’s no real connection to be made outside your little group of friends. When people go online, they want to be connected to the World Wide Web. In that instance, online play has been dramatically downplayed and remained a disappointment for those hoping for a richer, expanded experience.

To open a little on MGO before we get into the online communications versus play idea, I have to say I love this game. Metal Gear Online is a gold shooter–it feels natural to the touch and very different from so many FPSs I’ve played. While I love first person, I have to say that MGO’s beautiful third-person action so far trumps any Halo, Counter-Strike or Unreal you throw at me. The transitions between shooting and CQC and laying traps is so efficient and quick that someone with the absolute upper hand can be devastated by a few small mistakes, allowing the dark horse to burst out of nowhere with a smack to the face. Not to mention that they have something called “Sneaking Mission”, in which you get to be Snake. You get to be Snake. That’s enough said.

In case anyone ever wondered about why AI seems so stupid in MGS4 for not seeing Snake lying camouflaged on the ground, trust me–I can’t see him either. It has nothing to do with stupidity. He’s just hard to see.

In MGO you have different issues–on the connectivity side, the fact that at any given time there may be no more than 2000 people logged on to the MGO server and all of them are in different closed games makes matchmaking becomes incredibly difficult. You might find yourself trapped in a game with a range of skill levels between 0 and 7, ensuring that if you’re lower level, the game will be too hard and if you’re higher level, the game will be too easy. Communicationwise, MGO seems to have no issues–other than the fact that your email can only hold so many messages and that there’s no private chat, so talking to your friends while on the menu and deciding what you want to do is somewhat difficult. It has many ways of talking while within an actual match, including keyboard, microphone and predetermined communication commands. Of course, once you have a mic you’ll usually just be shouting into it whenever anything happens, since you’re on a private channel with your team. Interestingly enough, Kojima Productions made the interesting choice of disabling your communication when you are no longer capable of speaking–for example, when stunned, asleep or dead. It makes dying all the more frustrating because you can’t comment on it, but it stops a great deal of raging over the communication channels as an amazingly efficient fix. The communication versus play, however, is a tad unbalanced in this scenario, since while MGO plays beautifully like a completely non-standard shooter with different dynamics from any other FPS I’ve ever played online, it needs to have a lot tweaked in order to function correctly–mainly the issue with how easy it is to get a headshot, and how difficult and one sided it makes the game. Getting close to someone is now an art, and relies on a great deal of luck and patience–both of which are not exactly prime elements to focus on in any FPS. You want skill, timing and precision to be the elements to focus your gameplay on. We’ll see if Konami lowers the headshot ratios by when MGO comes out in June–I will most certainly be playing it because it is simply a true pleasure and just amazing fun when your team and you really coordinate.

GTAIV has its own version of gameplay–but I keep feeling after playing it that the entire thing seems somewhat tacked on, like an addition to gameplay merely created to compete with the upcoming release of Metal Gear Online.

First, however, the main game. The game itself is pure gold, and I’m enjoying it very much–though I’m a little disappointed with how the new features of the game don’t really switch up the gameplay. They make gameplay more interesting and efficient and dynamic, yes. But in terms of “new”, nothing fresh really comes to the table. To be expected–it’s another GTA game, and GTA is simply GTA. The story is lovely, however, and I’m enjoying it when I’m not busy working or on my last days of MGO.

Returning to the multiplayer, it seems to be very much the single player game with more players in it, shooting each other. It’s really not as glorious as I expected, and the fact that contacting your friends is practically nonexistent and gameplay modes are nothing short of a repeat of Unreal’s and Team Fortress’s match modes makes it rather disappointing. It’s still kind of fun, but some modes are somewhat pointed or biased and people playing them are downright stupid. I think there were several mistakes made in the GTA multiplayer, and that makes me wonder really if it was in the original plan of the fourth game or if it was put in to try to sell more and build more hype versus the looming colossus of Metal Gear Solid 4.

To close on GTAIV, the game is already starting to stale a little bit on me–and of course I’ll beat the whole thing and enjoy it, but I realize it’s just like playing another GTA, and because I know the gameplay so well I feel like I can’t get anything more out of it other than story–of course the story will be good, with Rockstar’s witty cynicism and newfound ability to narrate. But it’s a sad feeling I’m left with because I only just got the game and everyone’s giving it such high praise. But really, people… it’s Grand Theft Auto. It’s always going to be Grand Theft Auto.

So Facebook has got the formula for connectivity versus play–but do they? I still think even they haven’t refined the formula, because nothing on Facebook catches my attention anymore. I loathe it–I just can’t become interested in wasting time on it. So we still have a lot of experimentation to go… don’t count on the perfect MMO formula just yet, folks.

I can’t talk right now. I’m too busy applying for an internship, applying for scholarships, turning in midterms, working on commissions (due May) and playing Metal Gear Online.

MGO is my only salvation. My nerves are shot and I’ve worked myself down through the skin this weekend. Come Wednesday everything should be turned in, however, and I will be able to breathe once more.

Holding breath until then.

Wish me luck.

MGO is awesome, by the way.

DOES KONAMI HATE ME? IS THAT IT?

I spent quite a while assaulting the Konami ID site in order to finally land the prize of my Konami ID and Game ID. Only to find that at 12am today, the servers were still down, and official press releases this morning revealed the awful truth. At least the beta has also been extended to the 11th of May instead of the 5th to make up for our lost time.

We’ll get more wind tomorrow of when our server will be back up. For now I’ll just grumble, watch my promo DVD and play GT5.

GT5:Prologue is gorgeous, for anyone who hasn’t played it.

UPDATE: MGO Beta will be starting up on Friday, April 25th at 24:00 PDT… I think that means Friday at midnight, though I remember being taught technically 24 o’ clock doesn’t exist. That’s just 0:0 on Sunday morning.

I knew this would happen. Violence and games have been pretty much debunked time and time again, but here’s a professional report. There you have it. Now stop pointing fingers.

You’ve been blaming violence and social order on DOOM since the Columbine shootings. Just get over yourself. Crazy people go ape all the time.

I’m sure nobody blamed Jack the Ripper on anything other than Jack the Ripper. It’s the individual’s fault when the individual behaves against the norm. Not anyone else’s. They’re the ones who should recieve the reprocussions. I understand you want to fix the problem, but I think the Columbine shooters had a great deal more problems than video game addictions. They should have been treated psychologically for WHO THEY WERE, not how many games they played.

Thank you, and goodnight.