@GreaterGreyWolf Seek psychiatric help. That is all.

@feathers632 As a male Gamespot regular with a doctorate, I'm really not sure what to say to that statement.

@Meeerkat456: Indeed. That statute in particular is relevant to the abuse that she has received via Twitter, and possibly by email. The problem with the libellous statements is that the United States is one of the few countries that requires such statements to be believable, so basically you can trash someone and ruin their name as much as you like, as long as you do not implicitly or explicitly express that the statements are true. And no disrespect to the US as a whole, but in that regard I'm glad I live in Europe. (As a post-statement and an aside, seeing as Hepler is Canadian residing in Canada and working for a Canadian company, I'm not sure how Canadian law sees this).

@Meeerkat456 Try 47 USC 223.

@Meeerkat456: That's what I said. All the First Amendment does is prevent prior restraint. It is not used (or at least should not be used) to shield guilty parties from the consequences of their actions. There is a reason why there are laws against libel, slander, coercion and harassment.

While I frequently disagree with @Lhomity, I wholeheartedly agree with his/her statement in this case and more or less with the position of Laura Parker. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being passionate about a position, and arguing it until you're blue in the face. There are, however, lines that are not to be crossed, and yet people have crossed them. It frustrates me how people from the US keep screaming "first amendment" as if it were some panacea against being held to accountability for your words and statements. The first amendment is not there to allow you to verbally batter someone for your own satisfaction - it's there to protect the right of people to express their political and religious views. The limits of the first amendment lie in how this manner of expression affects other people. Where I don't agree with Laura is in the idea that we don't own our games. I believe as before that we buy an interest in that game when we pay our money and therefore have an implicit right to be heard by the developer. But then it is the collective voice of the wider community, of the developer and of the publisher that counts, and people like those harassing and abusing Jennifer Hapler seem to think that it is their voice and their voice alone that should be the final word on the matter. I sincerely hope that Jennifer chooses to take legal action against these people.

Tom's arguments basically consist of belittling anyone who dares suggest that smartphones compromise the gaming experience, and he completely misses the point. The problem is without physical controls, the gaming experience becomes compromised. This is a fact that I have become all too familiar with since I bought the Humble Android Bundle. Apart from Osmos, which is a comparable experience to the PC version, all of the games suffer from a lack of precision. The experience only becomes bearable when you get to tablet size, and by that time, it's not really as portable anymore. Try fitting a tablet in your pocket. I found it funny that Tom quoted the Xperia Play as an example of how gaming smartphones can work. Yes, Tom, we know how that turned out, don't we? A solid device that compromised too much as a gaming handheld or smartphone to be a great example of either and just didn't sell. Why are smartphones popular gaming machines? Because everybody has one, and because it has lots of free games. As soon as free and freemium games start becoming passé by virtue of their being unprofitable, the idea of smartphone gaming will die out. If I want to make a phone call, I'll use my phone. If I have ten minutes at a train station, I'll play Angry Birds on my phone. If I have two hours on the train. I'll play Trails in the Sky on my PSP. Kudos to Brendan for actually quoting solid figures.

@oRIOn720: It's also heartening to see that I'm not alone in my perception of the industry. I do actually kick up my copy of CoD 4 or BF2 sometimes and I do still enjoy them, at least until the cheaters and flamers start overrunning the server. It is a healthy reminder of how the FPS genre reached its peak before it started on the heavy decline that it, and gaming in general, has experienced in the meantime. I haven't even bothered with Battlefield 3 or Modern Warfare 3. I do hope that others are right in their optimism. I do enjoy and support indie titles, and I hope that the future belongs to these indie developers, and it is inspiring to hear them talk about gamers' rights, how pointless DRM is, and show how much gameplay matters as opposed to presentation, but at the same time it's depressing to see how easily success can go to their heads (case in question: Mojang). @-Saigo-: Very true words indeed. @mall69: Actually a pyrrhic (as in a noun) and a pyrrhic war/victory are two different things. A pyrrhic is, as you say, a measure of poetic rhythm, but pyrrhic (or Pyrrhic) as an adjective is used to describe a situation where victory is likely to cost as much as defeat. But anyhow, hope that film project works out for you :)

I perfectly agree with the article. Gaming used to be a passion of mine, but the absolutely despicable behaviour of the industry, along with the sheep-like attitude of the mass of gamers out of there, have pretty much relegated it to a boredom-relieving activity. Most of my free time is now spent on filmmaking and editing, and I practically never buy full-price games anymore. My PS3 now pretty much only gets used for films, my PC for video editing and development. While I might have bought 8 or 9 full price games back in 2006, the only one I bought in 2011 was Skyrim - nothing else. I suspect that the majority will eventually share in my distaste for the disgusting practices that the industry has engaged in as the problems get worse and worse and everyone's tolerance threshold is broken. This is apparent in the constant nosedive of industry revenues, yet they are constantly content to blame everyone else except themselves. I agree that boycotts, protests and complaints are worthless, because there are too many sheep out there that are so horribly dependent on the establishment that they fight to protect it. So I do the only thing I can - I go my separate way. Publishers and developers, enjoy the spoils of your pyrrhic war against consumer rights, used games and piracy.

"Why isn't the Entertainment Software Association funding a massive unified preservation effort?" A highly relevant question, the answer being indicative of everything that is wrong with the video gaming industry today - it isn't highly profitable. At least it isn't while people aren't buying emulated versions of these games, pitiful download versions that are shamefully underserviced by their publishers. A director making a film hopes that it will be watched by generations to come. They realise they are creating a piece of art, something that will define their era. There are few game designers that I know of that take this position. Off the cuff, I can name Sid Meier, Fumito Ueda, Michel Ancel, Hideo Kojima, Ron Gilbert and Ken Levine who see games as an art form. Any others I can think of see it as a purely financial pursuit. Do we see The Godfather only available for download these days? Is Citizen Kane only available for viewing on TV these days? No - their directors and studios make a decent effort to bring them out as collector's editions, spruced up and ready for the current generation of hardware. Many of these games don't deserve a neglected download release hidden in the annals of download services. They deserve full rereleases on physical media, with concept art books and full printed manuals. But full rereleases don't sell millions within a week, and so they're not interesting for the likes of Bobby Kotick, John Riccitello and Reggie Fils-Aime.