Category Archives: Stupidity

As seen in this podcast description of his frothy/ing radio show, Bill O’Reilly just plain doesn’t like you.

Did you ever talk to these computer geeks? I mean, can you carry on a conversation with them? \’e2\’80\’a6I really fear for the United States because, believe me, the jihadists? They\’e2\’80\’99re not playing the video games. They\’e2\’80\’99re killing real people over there.

Damn it, WE ARE NOT KILLING ENOUGH REAL PEOPLE. We’re falling behind in the killin’ front. Get to it, Christian soldiers.

Seriously, O’Reilly’s actions clearly can have only one justification.

He’s declared war on Christmas.

Matt Mihaly, who is among the few paying attention to a game you probably never heard of that makes a LOT of money, posted a story about how they sent legal threats to a site that charges for gold-farming guides.

That company (whom I am carefully not naming!) sent a very nicely worded request to Matt to remove, as best as I can determine, the name of the person who sent that email.

That person being part of that company’s Online Community team. And, presumably. You know. Talking. To the community. Using his, you know. Name. And stuff.

I’m pretty sure I’m not making up any of this.

This just in: according to a study commissioned by my tax dollars, 1 percent of the web is pr0n.

With Japan’s launch of Battlefield 2142, EA has been apparently been taking notes from Gathering of Developers lan parties.

Larger pic Found on Kotaku

Hint: don’t do this.

br0kenrabbit says:
Can I be honest with you, Greg?

Greg_ValveOLS says:
k

br0kenrabbit says:
Look, I don’t know how you go this MSN account name, don’t really care, either.

br0kenrabbit says:
Unlike you, I DO work for Valve. Trace my ip and you’ll see.

Greg_ValveOLS says:
huh?

Greg_ValveOLS says:
bs

br0kenrabbit says:
Trace it.

Greg_ValveOLS says:
how

br0kenrabbit says:
Start/run/cmd type Tracert and then my IP address and hit enter.

Greg_ValveOLS says:
oh k

br0kenrabbit says:
As an employee, I know that Valve employees will NEVER contact users over MSN. I also know a valve employee will NEVER ask a user for his/her username and password.

br0kenrabbit says:
I’m putting a temporary hold on your Steam account.

Greg_ValveOLS says:
why?

Keep reading for the surprise twist!

MMORPG.com has the story of what happens when an MMO goes out with both a bang AND a whimper. You know your community is spiralling into the ground with the speed (and loud death-whine) of a Stuka when your ex-outsourced community manager is fighting with you, in public, over who owns the license to your message board software.

Pity, he started out such a friendly little guy. How could you not trust your struggling game community to the care of Light Bulb Guy?

I didn’t pick up Battlefield 2142 because, well, I didn’t really want to pay EA $50 for the privilege of having my PC scanned and ads sent JUST FOR ME. However, they apparently have issues beyond that. A blog reader sends this in (although you can blame me for most of the snarky links):

When GameSpy went with a Communist Russia theme for their latest clo..err.. revolutionary new chat app nothing like XFire, they seem to have taken it a bit too far and have it ‘equalizing the masses’ by actually wiping the experience of Battlefield 2142 accounts. While I’m sure Lenin would be proud, players don’t seem to have the same rosy outlook regarding their forced demotion and subsequent return to newbie gear.

Apparently, during the configuration process of Comrade, a duplicate soldier is mistakenly created in the Battlefield 2142 account server and becomes the only soldier you can login to with that name. Of course, this pod-soldier is fresh off the vine and doesn’t know how to use things like, say, grenades, but hey, you can’t overthrow the Battlefield bourgeoisie if you’re sitting on a stat horde of your own now can you?

One would think that this rather major launch blunder (especially since Comrade was bundled with BF2142) would be followed by a fix – adding the experience together of the two soldiers still in the Battlefield 2142 database and prescribing something for the multiple personality disorder, but GameSpy has a much better idea: just delete one of them!

After all, adding two numbers together would be far too much of a programming burden on GameSpy (which is likely true – we’ve seen GameSpy Arcade), and gamers surely won’t mind losing a week or two worth of experience. After all, if getting there is half the fun, and you force them to get there twice, you’ve effectively increased their fun 50%!

Well played, Tsar GameSpy! I’d raise my glass to you, but my soldier and I are busy waiting in the bread line.

This is some kind of very clever parody of gaming journalism.

You know you’re in trouble when your gaming is interrupted by a scream of “come on you f**kers, who’s first?” Things generally go south from there if, when you turn around, you find a completely naked man with a giant erection standing in the middle of the room, beckoning for someone to come over and sit on his lap.

“What the f**k?” I said, turning to my opponent in a now paused game of Rise of Nations. He laughed and leaned towards me so that our crazed colleague couldn’t hear – quite unnecessary, as he was now loudly harassing someone at the far end of the room – and said, with that glint in his eye and half choked laughter in his throat, “we spiked his soup with sextasy.”

“What the f**k is sextasy?” I asked, ever the innocent farm boy.

“It’s E[ecstasy] and Viagra,” my opponent turned guru explained. “E can make you go limp, which is a bitch because it makes everything feel so much better. Mix E with Viagra, though, and you solve that problem.”

Yes, I am frequently accosted by large priapic men while playing real time strategy games.

Those ritalin junkies at Corpnews have more.\’c2\~

She really doesn’t like pickles.
I’m not sure what the logic is behind some of this.

“I’m really scared of pickles.”
“Come with us to the pickle factory!”
“OK!”

…because when it comes to online gaming, the Washington Post is batting .000 on “having a clue”.

Remember “Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, (Select) Start”? If you grew up playing the shoot-’em-up game “Contra” on your Nintendo Entertainment System, chances are that cheat is forever frozen in your brain. GameFaqs.com, one of the most popular game-cheating sites, recently listed it atop its “top 10 most memorable cheats” in gaming history.

Says Jeff Veasey, an editor at GameFaqs: “I hate to admit it, but cheating is a part of playing games.”

But what constitutes cheating? Is cheating less objectionable when you don’t have to pay for it? As in, looking up a code on the Internet, where it’s free, versus dropping$16.99 for a copy of the strategy guide for “Madden NFL 2007″? When roaming the online “World of Warcraft,” is cheating warranted so long as the only one affected is you? For example, buying weapons on eBay instead of earning them in the game?

Yes, clearly there is NO DIFFERENCE WHATSOEVER between buying a strategy guide and duping gold.

Can I write for one of the world’s leading newspapers? About something like, I don’t know, nuclear fission? I clearly know as much about that as the Post knows about my industry.

All bashing of that old whipping boy “mainstream media” aside, this article does have some worth in that it mirrors the clueless “wha…” of a large segment of the MMO userbase… they cheat on every other game they play, with no ill effect. Why should MMOs be different? (Hint: other people are involved.)