I’d like to tell you a story about telling stories. It ends with a headless man, and may contain nudity, but it starts off with buzzwords.
Confusion. As a gamer, it can be caused by all manner of things. Many’s the time that rubbish design has left me scratching my head as I wondered what I was supposed to do next, and made me reach for a walkthrough. Given that I was holding a controller at the same time as scratching my head and reaching for a walkthrough, all it meant was that I trying to use at least three hands, thereby causing even more confusion for my two arms.
Words, words, words. That forums, boards and blogs are breeding grounds for all sorts of them, particularly the biased and bizarre, is well-documented enough. Indeed, there’s few better summaries of all that’s wrong with internet debate than Charlie Brooker’s, as one poster astutely pointed out when another thread went west earlier this week (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/jun/02/comment.charliebrooker).
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Leona Lewis? Leona Bloody Lewis?
Sheesh. They managed to find a way to spoil it a bit.
Easily the best magazine on the market by a massive margin.
I'm gonna get me a gun for that one. Yeah.
I was originally going to comment that it's amazing more prominent libertarians, and for that matter Republicans, aren't bigger fans of videogames. Actually, even the religious right; all that Ban This Sick Filth schtick often comes from people who'd be more than happy gunning down unpatriotic types to save a ruined nation from the enemy within, like they already metaphorically feel they do. In general, the fantasies games allow (encourage?) are often a very good match with the kind of paranoid delusions extremists have about some kind of inevitable and imminent American Armageddon.
However, I'm now scared that, having posted this, someone's going to shoot me to prove how free I was. Particularly given some of the comments below. After all, people can argue all day about the right to bear arms. But the manner in which someone chooses to bear arms, and the idea that doing so is not only an appropriate way to make a point, but the best way to do so, is, well, less of a gray area. It's not about having a right as much as it is flaunting a weapon in a place that needs dialogue. Weapons and angry people aren't a very good mix, at least outside video games...
It would certainly promote a new kind of PC argument. Let people argue over speculative figures rather than actual ones. It'll cut down all that 'my favourite game sold 47 more copies than your favourite game so it's better, and that's a fact.' nonsense that happens all the time.
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