Archive for category I Hate People
Blood Elf Like Me
Posted by Scott Jennings in I Hate People on June 10th, 2009
Ixobelle discovers that, unlike Acclaim’s Dance, in World of Warcraft being black is not that awesome.
This Just In: World of Warcraft WILL KILL YOU DEAD (via FoxNews)
Posted by Scott Jennings in I Hate People, Mass Media Cluelessness, Stupidity, _ on December 10th, 2007
Foxnews, that paragon of moderate, thoughtful journalism, has an article with the following title:
Online Game Meetings Sometimes End Tragically, but Phenomenon Remains Rare
What the hell is this headline saying. Is it claiming that thankfully, the phenomenon of people meeting each other in online games is rare? Or is ending tragically a rare phenomenon? Or does the copy editor at Foxnews even speak English? That last option is the most comforting to me. I’d like to think that News Corp has an enlightened policy of hiring immigrants new to our shores.
And that’s just the headline. Actually clicking the link and reading the story makes my ears bleed.
“When you’re in a social situation like that — playing a game, having fun — you’re comfortable with the people you’re playing with,” said cyber-stalking victim Jayne Hitchcock, president of Working to Halt Online Abuse (WHOA). “People are just not very careful. They lose all sense of reality and themselves.”
Well heck. Clearly we must NOT BE COMFORTABLE WITH EACH OTHER. I can do this. I’m pretty damned uncomfortable with you RIGHT NOW, I’ll have you know.
But wait – it’s not just comfort we must caution ourselves with. It’s the horrible, horrible spectre of roleplaying. That’s right, you have been decieved – she’s not really an elven mage.
“You’re hiding behind a cloak of anonymity and false pretenses,” said University of Baltimore criminologist Jeffrey Ian Ross. “They force you to pick an alter ego.”
Ross said that because defenses are down, people can be more susceptible to the advances of predators or those who are mentally unstable.
Also, since criminologists are commenting on online games, can I comment on unsolved crimes now? I’m just sayin’ is all. Here, like Foxnews I’ll illustrate with a picture.

Of course, the prompting for this outburst of heavy breathing has been the “Baby Grace” story, where the parents of an abused and murdered child were revealed to be World of Warcraft players. Surprisingly, the press spin was not “first abuse and murder case found in community of nine million”, but “OMG YOU COULD BE NEXT LOG OUT NOW NOW NOW“.
When Priester discovered she was pregnant last February and her own parents asked her to leave, she moved in with the Sawyers, Trenor and Riley.
By then, Trenor had developed an interest in World of Warcraft, an online fantasy game. Priester said Trenor would play it for hours, sometimes long past midnight.
Trenor met Zeigler online through the game, police say. Zeigler told her that he lived in Houston and worked as a Shell Oil contractor.
“Kim was young, I mean, 18 years old, naive,” said Sheryl Sawyers. “Maybe he painted a pretty picture and that’s, you know, what made her move down there.”
There were some token voices of sanity – surprisingly, not every person who met a friend from an MMO then proceeded to murder them. Or, as this wonderfully economical quote in a story not published by Foxnews puts it:
“We have to be cautious and not think everyone online is crazy,” said Celia Pearce, a professor at Georgia Tech’s Experimental Games Lab
But of course, with Foxnews, the closing thought is what counts. And what is the closing thought for this article?

Until later, friends, please, if you meet each other, try to restrain the urge to MURDER EACH OTHER DEAD. I know, it will be tempting, since the Internet is involved. Courage.
Clearly, We Do Not Deserve Nice Things And/Or People
Posted by Scott Jennings in Assassin's Creed, Game Journalism, I Hate People, Jade Raymond, Stupidity, _ on November 19th, 2007
Because this entire episode has convinced me that gamers are really, really stupid I’m going to use very small sentences and lots of pictures.
Assassin’s Creed is a really fun game.

Assassin’s Creed was made by a fairly large group of people.

As you can see from the last picture, one of them, the producer as it turns out, is a fairly attractive, and well-spoken young woman.

Ubisoft marketing took advantage of one of the team members being well-spoken and photogenic. The gaming press reacted…

…well… let’s just say restraining orders may be needed.

In fact, you might wonder if Jade Raymond’s Assassin’s Creed was an actual game, or if the entire purpose of creating a next-generation free-form adventure game set in the Crusades was simply an excuse to post pictures of pretty girls. The Internet is apparently short of these.
Hey, look, more!

This is from the unofficial Jade Raymond fan site. I wonder if my producer will ever get an unofficial fan site. Since he’s not very pretty, probably not.
But this is all just harmless fun, right? Right? Surely we can take the genre-bending spectacle of an actual gee-she’s-purty she-smells-nice can-I-see-the-rabbits-george woman in a significant game development role and not make something awful from it?
Yeah, whatever. This is the Internet. We break everything.

That vile little comic (trust me, it gets a lot more offensive) is now famous because Ubisoft is trying to sue it out of existence. Apparently they only like creepy Jade Raymond fanservice if it’s happy creepy fanservice. Or if it’s done by real game journalists.

By the way, Assassin’s Creed is really fun. For some reason I thought I should bring that up again. You know, in case seeing pictures of a real girl makes you forget. Apparently this is a problem many people have.

Other commentary on how we can’t have nice people (warning: both are apparently written by real girls and as has been shown, we just can’t handle this):
Game Girl Advance
Feministe
The always readable Sanya Weathers (who is also a real girl, but moreover also can and will kick your ass) has well-thought-out points as well.


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