Kids Murder Someone - Instant Messengers To Blame

Its pretty fucking hilarious if you imagine this entire article takes out anything to do with World of Warcraft. All you would need to do is replace it like this: 

After Proctor's murder, the boys told a friend on AOL Instant Messenger what they had done. One of the teens admitted that the murder didn't feel like he thought it would. Those messages were collected by police and used by prosecutors.

...

Bonnie Leadbeater, a psychology professor at the University of Victoria, says some kids have trouble knowing that what's acceptable in an internet chatroom may not be in real life. 

"You don't know which aggressive kid is going to take the fantasies of instant messengers and try them out in reality. You just can't predict those very rare occurrences," she said.

And it's instant comedy gold.

Everyone knows at this point that violent games don't even have anything to do with murders other than namedropping or a videogame being in the room. But in this instance a bunch of twats at CTV News saw a videogame somewhat related to it and decided to make the connection. The connection, in this instance, is online communication.

That's it. There is no talk of what they trained to do, any measure of practice, or some kind of educational murdersimulator horseshit you usually hear, maybe like about Manhunt or GTA or something. It is just a fucking chatroom. 

I guarantee you if Kotaku didn't exist we wouldn't have heard a fucking word about this horseshit schlock journalism. I'm not sure if that's a good thing in this instance or not. 

A slightly more coherent post on PA's rape comic

(Trigger warning: rape)

First of all, a huge shoutout to Questioning Transphobia, who linked to Devil May Rant's last barely-coherent ragepost. Much appreciated, and I'm honored.

But now I'm going to try and be a little more explanatory about all the problems with this, and why Gabe and Tycho's incessant insensitivity is downright incredible. A recap first.

As you all know, Gabe and Tycho did the rape-joke comic, where someone says "every night we are raped to sleep by the dickwolves." People took offense to this, because rape is not something you should toss about lightly. It creates PTSD and stumbling across 'being raped' could very well cause a reminder of the horrible experience I'm sure the person would just like to forget. Plus, it's just more of the same Bro-gamer bullshit, padding on more and more insensitivity to a topic that (almost entirely) affects just women and pushes to alienate them.

Penny Arcade's response was as subtle as a nuclear bomb. In their next comic they talked of being sorry that "fictional creatures made out of dicks raped fictional people" and that "anyone who became a rapist because of our comic should stop." Okay, you do not fucking make fun of people who take offense to your work, especially not in this instance. They flat out ignored the issue or completely didn't understand.

When I glanced at Gabe's twitter someone posted the response to him where they talked about all the reasons that the horrible word being used was enough, not necessarily the context it was used in. He replied with, "I read it," and left it at that. I'm beginning to think that he knows of this, but either outright disagrees with it (which is, um, wrong, I mean I wouldn't tell a rape victim what they should or should not feel or take offense to) or just doesn't care and is planning on milking the PR for all its worth.

Now, if that were it, it'd be okay. They're being assholes but maybe they just believe in comedy being the higher authority, and that nothing is sacred. That's a disagreeable stance, I mean you wouldn't toss around 'faggot' or 'nigger' in a standup comedy routine and expect to be taken as anything other than a homophobe or a racist, but at least I could shrug and remind myself that PA is just the pinnacle persona of the gamer society.

I can't expect them to change their minds since they're ultra-successful thus far and probably think what they're doing is working. I can take offense, but they are more than likely not to listen as evidenced by their response. I'd rather just forget about it and so would everyone else. 

So if that were it, it'd be alright. BUT!

Next week's comic had a person talking on the phone and, on his shirt, was an outright second serving of cockslap to anyone who took offense, where he was wearing a shirt that said, "PENNY ARCADE  - DICKWOLVES"

The internet blew up a second time. Were they really going to make a shirt? Were they honestly just making any attempt to wring out some money from anything, including rape victims? 

Surprisingly, no, and the shirt concept vanished. To me, at the time, it seemed like they were heading forward into trolling the internet some more and ran into Blade Barrier cast by a maximum-level cleric and decided to back out. Maybe this was a bit much for them, and they decided not to after all.

If that were it, it'd be okay. BUT!

Just yesterday, in the blog post I mentioned, they announced their new shirt, Dickwolves. It was made out to be a sports jersey-style, IE, "Timberwolves." The internet once again exploded into a frenzy. This is about the time I took a step back.

Let's just analyze it for a moment, shall we? From the very getgo it's all been about "the dickwolves." Whenever they talked about the PR storm coming from it, this was the phrase they used. Was this one concept really so offensive? Rape was, yes, but who's making the connection now, anyway?

Maybe Gabe and Tycho just really liked the concept of wolves made out of cocks, with a bulbous wolf-head? And to be fair, that's pretty funny, aside from how these days is connected to a comic where they were raping people. So let me be fair to them and say that maybe they just don't understand what was so wrong about it, and instead want this joke to be the focus and try and move people away from connecting it to rape. 

But THEN!

Remember the trigger warning I gave at the beginning of this post, where I essentially said I will talk in great detail about rape to avoid anyone stumbling across this and accidentally suffering from a trigger? Gabe's post right before Tycho's dickwolves shirt announcement talked of a trigger warning for "attempts to coerce laughter through foul language, Dungeons, Dice rolling, contempt for Hydra’s bodily autonomy,Dragons,"

This is the patriot missile right into the left wing of my attempt to be fair to them. This blows any and all attempts to be nice or generous to them utterly away. They are insensitive, greedy, conceited assholes, and can't possibly be bothered to consider that they might be wrong. 

From the outset, anything and everything related to "dickwolves" is to remind people of the rape comic. Clean cut and dry, this is what they are doing. There's not even a joke anymore. The joke has become "people are hurt by rape and we don't care.* Let's make some money off it." Mocking PTSD is their new 'thing'. 

As I said before, PTSD is not something to make fun of. Army vets are now their beating sticks. Child abuse victims are now funny as hell. If they can find a way to wring cash out of either of these things, they'll do it. Psychological afflictions do not penetrate their cold exterior of generating humor. People who wish to be gamers who have suffered rape now will go to PAX where hundreds of gamers will wear "dickwolves" to remind them of their rape and how PA, by extension, doesn't care about their feelings.

The connection is intentional. I'd expect this kind of shit out of fucking ICP or Juggalos, not a gaming webcomic! Can Gabe or Tycho just imagine what would happen if one of their wives had to suffer through this? They would be extensions of the culture and, unsurprisingly, they would be repressed and humiliated by something their husbands are making a mockery of and desensitizing.

I can imagine that, if this happened, they would probably retract their shirts and try to forget about it. We ask this of them, and they mock us. This is insensitive, you assholes. "A tragedy is what happens to me, a no big deal is what happens to you." 

They didn't just guffaw and handwave someone taking offense. They told an offensive joke, someone got offended, and they promptly started mocking them to all their friends, and now have made a shirt that says RAEP IS GRAET, are selling it, and while wearing it began dry-humping people, loudly announcing "LOL RAPING LOOOOOOLLLL!" 

*Dox said this, not me, and I'm jealous I didn't think of wording it like that! 

Welp. Bye PA.

(Trigger Warning for attempts to coerce laughter through foul language, Dungeons, Dice rolling, contempt for Hydra’s bodily autonomy,Dragons,)

Next post from Tycho:

2. [Our new] Dickwolves shirt.

Wwwwwwwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeellllllllllpppppppppp! I'm done.

Gabe is now officially just mocking the entire populous' offense with and attempt to forget the issue. LOL TRIGGER WARNING ok now buy our rape shirts. 

Here he goes out of his way to mock people with PTSD. I am sorry, there is no fucking way you can do that straight-faced and not look like a total asshole. 

I could kind of see the Dickwolves as a straight-up joke of wolves made out of dicks mascots as a hockey team, but Gabe and Tycho aren't even pretending to give a shit. They are bold-facedly telling everyone in the world, "Yeah, fuck your problems and concerns and post-traumatic stress disorder. I'd rather make money." People who have been raped are now their new beating stick. They are celebrating the "Dickwolves" connected to the PR from the rape comic. What the jesus fucking shit. 

Next I'm going to make a killing with my next target - mocking war vets. I also hear there's tons of cash to be made in child abuse victims! Busy busy busy!

Congratufuckinglations, PA, I think you just lost a couple thousand fans. Starting with me.

EDIT: Dox - "and now there IS no real joke anymore. the punchline is just "people have been hurt from rape and we don't care.""

Some people put things better than I can.

EDIT EDIT: Cleaned up a few words and tweaked some sentences.

HEY TYCHO; YOU'RE AN IDIOT

"The idea that THQ is somehow "disrespecting customers" with this kind of rhetoric misunderstands the situation as completely as it is possible to do so. In a literal way, when you purchase a game used, you are not a customer of theirs. If I am purchasing games in order to reward their creators, and to ensure that more of these ingenious contraptions are produced, I honestly can't figure out how buying a used game was any better than piracy. From the the perspective of a developer, they are almost certainly synonymous."

I'm curious where that mysterious used copy of a game came from. Did GameStop take it off the shelf and slap a USED label on it and screw themselves out of ten bucks? 

Nnnnnnnno, I'm pretty sure someone bought it, traded it in, and then that copy is picked up by another customer. If it's a good game the sales numbers are still going to do well, as people won't want to get rid of their copies. Plus hell, I bought Too Human, and I fucking hated that game. I don't want to support those developers so I sold it. Why is the existence of the secondhand market such an awful thing?

Even the oft-reviled GameStop you seem to berate so often doesn't drop the price on their games for close to three months, and even then it's by like, ten bucks at most. 

By the way that's a real slick strawman there dude, bein all "Oh yeah if I am buying to support the developer/publisher, then piracy is the same as used games." That's really slick, there, instead of just calling the people who buy used thieves, you're saying they are if you support the developers. So, you know, you aren't a thief if you buy used, but you're certainly depriving the developers from their hard earned money, you awful person.

Plus, if you even look at it, how much exactly are they 'losing' in sales? Often times people pick up copies on eBay or Amazon on the cheap, months or even years later, and sometimes that's the only way they buy the game. Are they even going to buy in the first place? 

What you are saying is, if the secondhand market didn't exist, more people would have to buy new. Have to. Removal of the secondhand market results in forcing more people to purchase games for higher value if they like it or not. Call me crazy but that's a terrible idea. 

I understand that Gamestop's push of the used gaming market is good business for them but I don't understand why there's this fucking backward-ass disgust for the entire secondhand market. Cars and CDs and books and comics secondhand take money away from publishers/creators. This doesn't mean that there's any efforts to squelch it. Gaming is pretty much the first time that developers are allowed to provide incentive for buying new instead of picking up used. 

And hey don't get me wrong, Gamestop is bullshit. But what Tycho and Gabe are saying is do not ever buy used. Like, not even eBay or Amazon or your friend selling you his copy for ten bucks. You're a thief. 

How does renting fit into this diagram anyway? If I rent a copy from GameFly or Blockbuster, sometimes even buy used from GameFly's bargain bin, I'm still depriving those developers of their money. I could have bought it to play it, but I did not. I am a thief. 

Also, look at GameStop next time you're going by. I'm going to wager that 90% of their games aren't even in production anymore. Usually when I look for an old game like Okami or Shadow of the Colossus, I call up GameStop since I doubt it'd be more than twenty bucks. Most game publishers stop printing after about a year. 

As I've said before, I don't fault this incentive at all. Mass Effect 2 or Gears of War 2 had perfect responses to it, by signing you up for a free download of a pack of DLC, and I completely understand why developers do that. Tycho even said this. But you are not going to underhandedly call me a thief for buying old PS2 games. 

Don't get me wrong - when digital distribution hits the frontlines like Steam has been and I can buy my game cheap from the developer, I am all in favor of it. But until this alternative exist I don't want to be told, "You're just like a pirate" by the biggest PR name in gaming today because I notice Resident Evil 4 on the cheap.

Bonus Stage: Look at their response to the rape comic vs their response to this one and watch your head explode. Apparently the opinions of gamers are more important than the opinions of rape victims. 

Bonus Bonus Stage: What I hate the most about Gabe's response is that Tycho pretty much called every gamer in the world who buys secondhand a pirate, and Gabe stepped in to say, hey, you know, it's okay, we're allowed to disagree. The fundamental difference is that they both agree and Penny Arcade is their collective brainchild, so this whole thing - just like the rape comic - reads as them insulting you, then following up with saying it's okay that you disagree with them. It's so backhanded and insulting. 

Extra Special Bonus Stage: It's good to know that as wealthy adults who run the biggest internet-distributed comic today they feel my being broke is detrimental to the gaming industry. I should stop being so broke.

Bioshock Infinite: Cleavage Edition

Call me immature but holy shit, that woman's got some huge knockers.

Like, Goddamn son. 

ADAM can change physical appearances, right? 

I mean, I'm just checking.

Cause jesus christ those are some sweater kittens.

One could say her breasts are quite large.

Ed Boon: Constantly Not Getting It

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/5948/back_to_basics_with_mortal_kombat.php 

lol

You guys seem to be angling this new Mortal Kombat as a revival, or reinvention, of the franchise. It's been around for so long; at this point, what's the essence of Mortal Kombat? What are you telling your team, and what are you all trying to recapture with this new one?

Ed Boon: You know, I think it hasn't really been that long since the last MK game came out. It's only been like two years, so from that respect, it's not like a reboot like we've seen... like when Tomb Raider went away for a long time, or Street Fighter, Twisted Metal, and all that. Those games had a long absence.

But from our perspective, the last game we did [Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe] was probably the biggest departure for MK. It was the first T-rated MK game, and we added characters that had never been in a MK game, with DC -- you know, Batman, and Superman, and all that.

So from that standpoint, we just heard a lot of feedback asking, "Is the next game going to be back to an M-rated presentation," and, you know, "traditional" MK? So we really felt that now is just a really great time to explore a reboot of sorts.

You know, we've actually kind of rebooted the presentation and the fighting and all that a couple of times in the past. With Deadly Alliance, in 2002, we did. And so we just really felt like, along with the post-MK vs. DC T-rated thing, and the fact that we haven't rebooted our whole presentation and fighting mechanic in awhile, it was just the perfect time for all that to happen.

I played [MK vs. DC] and it was fun, but there was always the question of whether the series would return to its M-rated roots.

EB: Oh yeah, absolutely. Especially coming from a game that was almost instrumental in defining what an M-rated game was -- just sparking the whole argument that ratings are necessary, which they are. So it's ironic, it's like making a G-rated Halloween movie...

So from that standpoint, yeah, it did really well, but at the same time, it created a great opportunity for us, because it gave us a break in terms of a period of time which there hasn't been an M-rated Mortal Kombat, and created this hunger for a return.

So I guess that I really feel like the planets are aligned, and in so many ways; it's the first M-rated MK on this generation of consoles, our last game was a T-rated game... You know, there certainly is a resurgence of games returning to their classic form; Street Fighter, Sonic the Hedgehog, now the more recent Twisted Metal, and there's just a good amount of this trend that's happening.

Oh good lord Gamasutra, are you serious? Nobody gives a shit about Mortal Kombat games that aren't good. Mortal Kombat games haven't been good since the SNES, and then Mortal Kombat vs DC was the first time you did anything right in fifteen years, because the game was, you know, good. It actually had good fighting game mechanics and didn't bother with open-world bullshit, go-kart racing, coffin minigames, or any of the ridiculous crap and just said, hey, I'm a fighting game. Fight people.

I don't know why it is that Boon and Graft are talking about 'returning to the roots', when 'the roots' was a middling fighter with an absurd fixation on middle-schooler violence. Mortal Kombat vs DC was a good game! "Flee!" Boon seems to say, "Run away! Success and money terrify us! We must stick to middle-of-the-road scraping-by to fuel our jobs!" 

Why not take what you learned from the game that's been best recieved, use that as a tool for making better games in the future, and focus on the core mechanics of the fighter rather than making up all this crap about 'returning to roots'? Your roots sucked; returning to them is just downright ridiculous. 

The guy says they're 'reinventing' it, but then Boon keeps going back to 'revival' or 'return to roots.' Pick one! The first one!

"Gun Loco" is like the best game idea ever

That is, if Square-Enix didn't buy the name.

I mean I would play the fuck out of any FPS where you can shoot trains at your enemies. Why the fuck hasn't anyone done this yet is beyond me. Instead we're gonna get a Japanese-beaten third person action game with sloppy gameplay and some ridiculous gimmick, if Neir or anything else SE makes is any indication. 

Joystiq can be pretty hilarious at times. Glad I dropped that supermarket tabloid that is Kotaku for these dudes.