I was asked to watch this video about reclaiming "geek" on my G+.  Since I don't work for Destructoid, my thoughts on the video are as follows.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=WUU4L0QzA0E

 

Watched the video.  This video reminded me of Moviebob complaining about the Scream movies because they revealed that comprehensive movie trivia knowledge does not make you unique.

You remember the whole "Hardcore/Casual" gamer thing which led to places like The Escapist and Gamespot turning up their nose at "casuals" and led to statements like "The Wii is lame."?

It's something like that.  Using gamers as an example, the gamer mantra for years was the long-suffering martyr question of "How can we make the public like our games?"  Then Nintendo ruined it by turning the question into "How can we make games that the public likes?"  All of a sudden, being a gamer became something that everyone was.  Gamers achieved the public acceptance that they kept hoping for only to find that being a gamer was no longer something that made them unique.  Thus, they started throwing up barriers such as "hardcore/casual" to try to preserve their former uniqueness.

It's the same sentiment here and Felicia Day (who has a stake in defining "Geek" as an outsider and thusly unique with a martyr complex) is playing to it.  If geek becomes defined as anyone with a geeky interest, then there is no uniqueness.  There is no martyr complex.  Your interests no longer define you as unique.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8I9pYCl9AQ

I embrace this happening.  Most of the people who want to throw up these barriers are fundamentally lazy.  Rather than developing a rich and unique personality, they want to take the lazy way out and say "My hobby makes me a unique butterfly in an underground mindset."

Screw that. 

Being an outsider or a rebel sometimes means taking up the axe for an unpopular cause (admitting that gamers had a big hand in forming EA into what they are now).  It sometimes means painful self-introspection and admitting that an opposite number (see my post on Moviebob and Kickstopper) has a good point worthy of discussion/acceptance.  Instead of just being a "super" because of the social group you belong to or your interests, it requires truly marching to the beat of your own drum.  Defining subsets such as geek is just someone's way of saying "I'm too lazy and the path is too hard to truly develop a unique personality."

Issac Clarke has head texturing that goes back to Tekken 4. Especially the ears. I hope he keeps his helmet on a lot.

So, the necromorphs now start off in human form and then mutate other limbs? Is the DS3 team and RE6 team exchanging notes?

Oh, goddammit. Not the "stomp corpses for loot" mechanic again. Guys, nobody really liked Infernal. You should be copying Ratchet & Clank with your loot mechanic.

Hurm. It's a QTE but it basicly involves the game telling me to climb up and press A to not die so I guess that's okay.

Glad the bulldozer stopped the storm. Planet looks nice in an "sunlight on an H.R. Geiger landscape" kind of way.

DAMN YOU, CHEST-HIGH GATES!!!

Okay, weapon crafting. It's okay but this doesn't seem to add a whole lot since I have to use two separate buttons for my new attachment.

Wait. Snowy Arctic Planet. Monsters with glowing weak spots. I really am playing Lost Planet again.

So they were studying the necromorphs. That always turns out well.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/01/23. This. Seriously, I could understand it in DS1 when you didn't know you were going to turn into an unholy abomination but we're a little past that. How bad can life on earth be when this seems like a good religion?

Guys! Seriously! Join the Catholics or the Muslims. Hell, at this point, even Westboro Baptist Church looks like a better spiritual alternative.

I have no idea what somatic gel is but I sure get a lot of it.

Okay, the part where someone's head runs over to a headless corpse and animates it is kinda gross.

So the humans and necros will ineptly fight each other as long as you stay out of sight. Good to know.

Enough with the elevators already.

Ah. So I get to just craft one uber-weapon over time. Well, at least, I won't have to bother with too many weapon types.

Issac Clarke is the type of person who sticks his hand in an active lawnmower to unjam the blade, isn't he?

Conclusion: The demo feels more like Lost Planet with zombies and other yuck monsters. They've dropped all pretense of being a horror game in favor of shooting critters. If that's what you want, then it's worth a look. However, the series has really jumped the shark.

Also, for the last time, I'd like to point out that even Umbrella's employees know enough to stay away from the B.O.W.s as opposed to teaming up. It's a big fail when, right after you hear an audio clip of people being butchered by necros, the two ignore each other to attack you.

I was on G+ discussing the whole Wal-Mart strike and I came up with this post about three other reasons why people view the strike negatively. I have no great love for Wal-Mart but, in this case, I can see that there are factors beyond corporate greed/consumerist society/labor union antipathy as to why people might not view this strike positively.

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You gotta work three other factors into it.

1) Apathy: I don't step into a Wal-Mart anyway. The only time I've done so in the last decade or so was when I had a gift certificate and the combination of high prices/standing in line surrounded by white trash makes the whole experience as desirable as eating Twinkies which leads me to:

2) Hostess: Right now, if I was the average low-skilled worker at Wal-Mart, I'd be thinking long and hard about this strike. While not everyone there is there because of poor job/educational choices, enough are that they should pay heed to the fact that corporate will be looking at sales numbers at the end of the year and deciding which stores to close. Hostess has demonstrated that the owners aren't afraid to close the whole chain and that's for something that can't really be sold online which leads me to:

3) Ecommerce/other rivals: Ecommerce has been squeezing retailers badly. It is ironic that places like Wal-Mart are now under the same pressure they put smaller retailers under but such is the case. What'll happen when Wal-Mart shoppers can't get into Wal-mart on Black Friday? They will seek other areas to shop and I guarantee that those that do decide to shop online won't come back. Even those that don't go online will find Target or JCPenney or Best Buy or other brick n' mortar stores ready and eager for new customers. With that in mind, even after the strike ends, the stores will lose regular customers to the point that the stores will either close due to poor sales or the Waltons might just say: "Y'know, we could just dump the brick and mortar model and make a go of it online."

These are all factors that these people should take into account. Not to be rude but, if you made a career out of Wal-Mart (as opposed to just needing it as a job to tide you over), you probably don't have a whole lot of other places to go.

One of the things that I did with the Left4Dead series was read the wall messages obsessively. I loved the little looks into people's lives. Frankly, I have a theory that the most interesting thing about the zombie apocalypse in media isn't the zombies but the people caught in them. RE Outbreak gives us little snippets of who these people are as well as the people around them and it's fascinating. RE: Operation Raccoon City gives us none of that and, by the end of the game, I'm just going through the motions with no real connection towards anything that happens in the game.

In Left4Dead2, during the Hard Rain scenario, in the gas station where you pick up the fuel, there is a message on the wall.

PAUL
Gehrig Girls left for New Orleans October 7 2009 I waited and I still LOVE YOU
Kathy

That always hits me a little and I think it's because of the "still" part. Whatever happened to separate them, it takes the end of the world for Kathy to realize that she still loves Paul. Even though it is seemingly too late, she would rather pass up fleeing to seeming safety to have one last chance to reconcile with Paul.

SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD is, in many ways, the story of people like Paul and Kathy. It is the "What if" for Armageddon. What if Bruce Willis had dropped the ball? (This is the only thing from the film that I'm going to spoil. There is no last minute save for humanity.)

But it's more than the standard Apocalypse story. While Steve Carell and Keira Knightly are the two stars, the uncredited third star is the human race. Throughout the movie, we see humanity at it's worst dealing with the coming apocalypse and we see at it's best. We see people who never really liked their jobs but have spent so much of their lives reaching artificial quotas that they just can't stop even when the quotas mean nothing. (As someone who has worked IT support/Accounting, that resonates with me a lot. The awareness that, when I die, everything that I did in those two career paths meant nothing. The awareness that, if everyone in my field disappeared, the earth and humanity wouldn't miss a beat.) We see people whose routines made them happy to the point that they don't want to stop. We see the hedonistic. We see the spiritual. We see it all through the eyes of these two people who have been thrown together by circumstances that almost required the end of the world to happen.

When I mentioned this movie earlier on my G+, I was told that it's a chick flick. Having seen it, I find that statement to be a bit of a tragedy. Lord knows, when I do see movies, I have seen a lot of guy flicks. But, every so often, I want a little something more than the guy flick. I want a narrative that goes beyond "If we can't **** it, we kill it." In a way, I find it sad that, if a film has more emotional content than screwing/blowing stuff up, it is automatically a chick flick.

There is certainly the chick flick components in how Steve Carell's character and Keira Knightly's character interact through their journey. But, in the end, this movie was a lot more than the standard "Two characters find each other. Romance is in the air." In many ways, this movie is an End-Of-Life story. It is what we all go through at various points in our life when we look back and take stock of all the missed opportunities that we had in our lives. Everything that we should have done but we didn't because we didn't communicate or we were trying to fulfill artificial quotas or we were just content to sit back and let time slip past us.

9 years ago, I gave up on dating. Except for one instance with a married woman that I refused to follow through because of a moralistic belief against those types of affairs (Years later, I relayed that story to my younger brother. His response of "How's that been working out for you?" hit closer to home than I care to admit.), I've been single and unattached. This has never really bothered me even when I have watched romantic films or seen the end of Shadows of the Damned. The notion of dying alone without a wife or a fiance or someone who really loves me by my side, someone who will partially die with me, has never really bothered me. After seeing this movie, I admit that the notion of dying that way actually bothers me a little. It doesn't bother me enough that I'm likely to do anything about it. In a day or two, maybe even by morning, it won't bother me. But, any time a movie causes one to engage in self-reflection even briefly, that is a movie that deserves praise.

Lotta video game news on my brain lately, it seems.

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/05/15/street-fighter-x-tekken-sales-fall-short-of-capcom-expectations/

Sigh. As always, Capcom addresses any reason but the actual ones. With SFXT, Capcom released it with a whopping 12 characters as 100% completed on-disc DLC. Fans found out and they got pissed. Capcom's butt was largely saved PR-wise because:
a) Ono (the creator) had some form of heart problem which made people a little reluctant to yell.
b) Mass Effect 3's ending diverted everyone's attention. (Serious, Capcom should have sent Bioware a "thank you" bouquet.)

What Capcom fails to realize is that SFXT brought about the cumulative rage from a console generation's worth of constant customer abuse. It isn't just the DLC so much as it is On-Disc DLC so we can all see that it was cut out of the final product. As a recent example, I've been told that Capcom actually cut out the ending for Asura's Wrath then offered to sell it to people as DLC. Their DLC abuses have gotten so bad that a large number of people actually filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau over SFXT/Asura's Wrath.

Also these are products which, I might add, will inevitably have a "super" edition. I liked SFXT but I decided to wait a year solely because of Capcom constantly releasing Super/gold editions. It is a bad thing that I can say that and it is a reasonable course of action. (Marvel vs Capcom 3 recently had an ultimate edition. When asked why Capcom couldn't sell the extra characters as DLC instead of forcing people to rebuy the whole game, their excuse was a combination of blaming the tsunami and stating with a straight face "The files are too big for our bandwidth.")

What Capcom really needs, at this point, is to stop blaming everyone and everything besides their poor business model. The fact that SFXT still sold a million copies despite widespread complaints about game balance, online lag, Pandora mode, and the DLC indicates that they still have a devoted customer base. It is not too late to start building customer trust back but that won't happen as long as they pursue their current model of squeezing every last penny out of their customers through activities that are borderline fraudulent.

I wrote this sometime in Jan 2011 on an Escapist message board and it seems to have held up pretty well. The original topic was that someone saw the Star Wars prequel trilogy for the first time and was wondering why it gets so much hate. Most of the responses above mine were "They're terrible movies" or "They're terrible movies and you suck for liking them."

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Because the internet and, more importantly on this site, Yahtzee says they are.

Unfortunately, I don't actually listen to either on my movie decisions. Plus, being a big Star Wars fan, I'm a little more willing to overlook it's faults.

Same thing with Indiana Jones 4. I avoided internet discussion of it because people were already predicting how bad it would be over a year before it came out based on the stupidest things. (One argument was that there was a U.S. flag seen in a preview which offended some people terribly.) I still thought it would suck because Shia "Plague of the Transformers" LeBouf was in it.

But, y'know what? I really dug on Indiana Jones 4. I even liked Shia....somewhat or, at least, didn't hate him.

Same thing with video game movies. Gamers are absolutely the worst people to listen to when it comes to movie adaptions of games. The level of butthurt from Silent Hill fans when it was announced that the lead was going to be Radha Mitchell as opposed to a man could power the Eastern Seaboard for two years if we could have converted it to electrical energy. Everytime a video game movie comes out, the same level of butthurt rises from the fans because a character used a square key instead of a circular key to open a door or other such nitpicky nonsense.

So, in the end, you have to realize that the internet is a hate machine full of people who like Moviebob or think that "Over 9000" references is the peak of comedy. This could lead you to the conclusion that listening to people on the internet over what you should and should not like is asinine. However, while that is not wholly incorrect, the crowd can sometimes be right. So here is the best way to figure out if you should listen to arguments against a movie.

1) Do the arguments have the appearance of just hating on the movie because it's cool?
2) Are the arguments against it somewhat nitpicky?
3) Does the person write in all caps/like a 13-year-old badly in need of spellcheck/make ridiculous comparisons such as comparing a movie to the Bataan Death March?
4) Is the argument on IMDB?

If so, then ignore them. These people suck.

If, however, the arguments seem reasonable, then you may want to listen to them.

Getting back to the prequels, yes, they have their problems. As an example, there was only one short scene in Episode 2 where I actually bought into Anakin & Padme's relationship and the rest of their "loving" dialogue for the trilogy fell flat on it's cardboard face. But, while they have their issues, they are not terrible movies. It's just that the original trilogy had the benefit of not being torn apart by the internet before they were released in the theater plus people were free to make up their own minds about it rather than be confronted by a large hivemind that bombards you with how badly they suck/you suck if you like it.

Frankly, I've gotten into the habit of avoiding any internet discussion of movies that I'm going to see. This way, I can see the movie with as close to an optimistic blank slate as you can get. I'd rather be pleased/disappointed on the movies merits/faults on my own rather than going into it with the preconception surviving a nuclear blast by hiding in a fridge is the W0R5T M0M3NT 1N F1LM HESTOY 3VAR!!1!

So, in the movie, if you like the prequels, more power to you.

From Gamefaqs:

SterlingFox posted...
I remember the days I bought games for the single player. Do YOU remember those days? Because it seems to me like you don't.

Those where the days when you and I didn't have jobs and rent and bills to pay and games didn't cost $60 each.
Those were the days when lunch cost me a yellow ticket in the cafeteria and passing Algebra 2 was my biggest problem.
Those were the days when the developers were given 3 or 4 years to make a game so they made it worth it.
Those were the days when spending $50 on a game that wasn't worth it didn't mean much, because I had nothing else to spend it on.


It's not "those days" anymore because everybody who was around for those days is old enough to be in the same boat as I am and has to be more careful and responsible with their money than they did back in "those days".

Our time is worth money now. If I buy a $60 game that only lasts me 6 hours, then that game cost me $10 an hour. That means the game is earning more an hour than I am.

As someone who is 39 going on 40, there is so much that I can appreciate with this post. While:

1) $50 was a lot to me back then.

2) I currently make more than $10 an hour.

3) I still buy games primarily for the singleplayer.

This post still applies to so much of what make up my gaming/buying habits that I felt it needed to be immortalized here.

It's funny looking at the upcoming big releases and how they're engineered to bring people into the next generation of consoles.

Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky: If you want to find out how the story ends, you have to buy a Vita.
Halo: We're starting a new story but, if you want to finish the fight, you have to get an Xbox 720
Soul Calibur: A new chapter begins and the first game is the introduction to the story which will continue on the next generation.
Resident Evil 6. 5 finally wrapped up the ongoing story that started way back in 1998. But you remember that note about the Wesker clones? Come along with us for what may be another decade-long story spanning 1-2 consoles generations.

It's interesting how what started with the Playstation 1 (and my friends can tell you how irritated I was when they pulled this stunt with Soul Reaver) has become an accepted industry practice which keeps gamers chained to a never-ending cycle of consumerism.

So, I have a diversity goal as one of the yearly goals assigned to me by my company. Having no idea what they want with this, I asked how I should fulfill this goal. The very first thing out of my manager's mouth was that I could help organize a Black Pride event for next month.

.............

I'm trying to determine if I'm bored enough with life to actually tell the people who are emotionally invested in this: "Hey, [Company which shall not be named] thinks that this event would be better if you let my lily-white self organize it."

sigh

I miss IT. I was never asked to be more diverse or work on the company's sense of community when I was in IT.

Y'know, next time I see an article asking "Where have all the JRPGS gone" or "How can we bring JRPGs back?", I'm just going to direct those people to the demo for FFXIII-2 and let that answer their questions.

The XIII-2 demo showed that it is possible to make a bad combat system worse through the addition of Pokemon and Quick Time Events. I would break it down but people would think that I'm exaggerating. Suffice it to say, if someone tells you to play the demo and claims it is fun, they are not your friend. If you decide to do so anyway, be sure that you don't have a firearm nearby or you may use it on your console....or yourself. If someone tells you that you just don't understand it because you are too American, point out that the sales figures for FF games in Japanwent steadly up until 8 and have since gone down to the point that you have to pull out an MMO/side game/SNES/NES game to find one that sold worse in Japan than XIII.