Xbox One and PS4, New Consoles, Old Ideas

Tuesday, Microsoft revealed their new console to the public called the Xbox One. Although they did not give an official release date they did clue us all into some of it’s features, and in more than a few ways gamers are getting fucked.

When Microsoft released it’s first Xbox back in 2001, they wanted to compete with Sony’s Playstation 2, but gamers found that the Xbox was more of a problem than they had bargained for. For one, it was buggy as hell. Much like most Microsoft software of the day, the OS that ran on the Xbox first generation was prone to game freezes and the occasional kernel panic. Many modder’s who have examined the APIs noted their similarity to Windows 2000, and it was believed Microsoft had modified the OS to create a version just for the XBox.

Although the Xbox was a moderate success, the XBox 360 released in 2005 was a bona fide hit. Over the past eight years it has dominated the gaming console market, but with the announcement of Sony’s PS4, gamers wondered if Microsoft would be able to repeat their success with the XBox competing against the proposed PS4. Gamers wouldn’t have to wait very long, Microsoft immediately announced they were developing a new generation of XBox, and rumors aside today’s reveal tells us a lot about the direction Microsoft is heading in, and for the gamer—it’s a downward spiral.

The Past

When Microsoft released it’s successful XBox 360, they were primarily competing against the proposed, Sony Playstation 3 console, which featured, at the time a cell processor capable of nine independent threads of execution, unheard of in console gaming. But where the PS3 relied on Sony’s proprietary architecture, Microsoft went straight to Intel for theirs. This alliance benefited Microsoft greatly because it meant that developers would be able to access a CPU core architecture they would be somewhat familiar with.

Unfortunately, for Sony the cell processor proved to be difficult to develop for, and costly. Games that might otherwise be released across platforms would instead be limited on release to either one or the other, and depending on the partnerships, this could benefit or hurt them. What it meant for gamers was that most of the games they wanted to play were being released a lot faster on the XBox than on the PS3. And although the PS3 featured a blu-ray player the XBox did not, Microsoft focused on their online sales, after the failure of HD-DVD as a standard.

It also did not help that Sony was incapable with keeping up with the demand in production their blu-ray players would need, and by the time Sony was able to get a successful release and run of the PS3, the XBox 360 had already sold more than 10 million units.

While over the years most gamers would end up buying a PS3 and an XBox 360 because of exclusivity release agreements, generally most gamers prefer the XBox 360 for their gaming needs.

Whether Sony lost the 7th generation console war or not is debatable, but they seem poised to win this war if Microsoft’s planned release of the XBox One continues without any significant changes. When Sony announced it’s proposed PS4 earlier this year, they wanted to make sure there would be no confusion as to what the PS4 was.

As such, the PS4 is a gaming console, marketed to gamers, and designed for gamers. And although it features some of the usual stuff included with gaming consoles today, like online features and video and audio streaming, it’s primarily designed to be a gaming machine.

The New Generation of Consoles

Along with ditching the cell processor and moving to the X86-64 architecture found on modern PCs, which will allow developers to more easily develop on multiple platforms, the machine itself features 8-cores, and 8GB of ram along with a GPU capable of 1.84TFLOPS which puts it higher than most modern graphics processors of today. The GDDR5 ram that will clock in at around 5.5Ghz along with the GPU will make the PS4 one of the most advanced, and fastest gaming machines of it’s time.

Unfortunately for Microsoft they seem to have gone a different route with the XBox One. Although the XBox One is a gaming console, this is not it’s primary feature, a fact conceded by Microsoft during a recent interview with Wired Magazine.

“The decision wasn’t ‘we need a gamebox,’” Xbox executive Marc Whitten told Wired.  So in the grand scheme of things, Microsoft isn’t any more interested in hardcore gamers than it is any other potential consumer.

So if Microsoft isn’t really interested in gamers per se, what are they interested in. Well according to their big reveal, the XBox One is a multimedia machine that is capable of doing all sorts of things, but in general it will be an entertainment machine capable of playing games, as opposed to a gaming machine capable of other types of entertainment.

If this really is the case, and gaming is to take a backburner to all the other stuff Microsoft plans to do with the XBox One, than Sony has a real chance at cutting into Microsoft’s sales, and defining itself as real competition, and maybe thus far the only true 8th generation gaming console.

Now in either case, Sony or Microsoft both consoles look like an advanced piece of hardware, and many gamers are chomping at the bit to get their hands on one, but any true gamer, should reconsider.

Microsoft’s XBox One

Tolkien's DRM: One Console to rule them all…

When Microsoft announced their new console a few things were leaked about it, and in the modern post-DMCA error following suit after EA’s always online nonsense, Microsoft seemed likely to also feature just such a thing with their new device. When gamers caught wind of it, of course there was a huge backlash, and an internal leaked memo later stated that an “Always online” feature was merely hogwash… or is it?

Well for one, XBox One will feature direct access to Microsoft’s Azure cloud-computing model of 300,000 plus servers giving developers the ability to transfer computing directly to the cloud, rather than using the XBox to handle it’s processing. Although this may sound really cool, and may open your gaming experience up to many new possibilities, it also limits you as well. Because of Azure’s always online requirement, any game developed to take advantage of this feature will also be required to be always online.

A Microsoft exec recently admitted that although this does not mean that game developers are required to use this feature forcing users to remain online, the ability to compute in the cloud gives developers advantages they might be willing to take. I would even go so far as to say that Microsoft will likely encourage it’s developers to use this Azure cloud computing over computing on the XBox, which means for gamers you will have to be online to play your favorite game.

But most startling was the announcement by Microsoft that games purchased on disk in stores will require being installed to the XBox One, something the XBox 360 makes optional. This proposes two main problems.

1. The XBox One will feature a 500GB HDD which although seems like a lot, modern games can be very large especially when you include content that must be downloaded over the internet after install. This can make a game that is 8 to 10GB bloat to 30 or 40GB.

But since the XBox One features a blu-ray player instead of a DVD drive games are no longer limited to 8GB, and can be as large as 25 or 50GB. That means that the default hard disk that comes with the XBox One will run out of space fairly quickly, requiring either an upgrade, or an uninstallation of installed games.

2. And most egregious, Microsoft has disclosed that users who install the games on their XBox One will find the game becomes tied to their XBox, or XBox Live account. A person who then tries to install the game a second time on a different XBox will be prompted to pay an additional fee, now being called a “pre-owned fee.”

What makes this problematic is that such action first, decimates the the pre-owned gaming market, and  second prohibits the doctrine of first sale, which would allow a user the ability if they have the disc to be able to play it on any machine, and third violates anti-tying law as I will explain.

If Microsoft is allowed to apply a fee and lock your game to your console, in the event you choose to sell your game, you will no longer be able to do so or be able to do so by paying an exorbitant fee, which will surely be covered by you, the seller. Because of this, companies like GameStop will be forced to change their model, which will then kill their sale of pre-owned games. Less and less pre-owned games will be sold, which will most likely contribute to the demise of such companies like GameStop.

Imagine for example you spend $60 on your new game. You play your game but it sucks, or you get bored, it’s not your thing, or you just want to try something else out. So you decide to sell your game at Gamestop. Now normally they might give you $10 value on said game so they can then resell said game for around $40, a significant discount over a new game purchase of the game.

Except Gamestop will not be able to give you $10 value on your game now. Let’s suppose that Microsoft applies a 60% pre-owned fee to all games. That means buying that $60 game new would instead cost $36 pre-owned. That is the fee that Microsoft would apply to the game, 60% of its retail value. This poses quite a problem now, because in order to sell that game, Gamestop will either have to charge that fee as part of the sale of the pre-owned game, reducing their profit margin, or charge you that fee, which becomes impossible if you are only get 25% of the value of whatever they would sell it for.

This means that if that $60 new game were then sold by GameStop at $40 which they might normally sell it for, they only make $4 on that sale instead of the $30 they might make, losing 65% of their margin to whomever gets this said fee.

In either case, either you will be unable to sell the game to GameStop, or GameStop will be unable to sell it at a discount, effectively killing their pre-owned sales, something companies like GameStop rely heavily on.

With respect to the doctrine of first sale, it has always allowed the exclusive transfer of media from device to device as long as the device is playing it. What Microsoft hopes to do here is destroy this doctrine by forcing gamers to install the game to the XBox One instead of allowing it to be played from the disc. Since the days of VHS corporations whose sole business model relies on intangible items they can freely copy, but restrict others from doing, have tried, unsuccessfully to restrict people from sharing, as long as only one person possesses the media on which the copy resides.

This means that if I buy a CD listen the shit out if it and want my friend to enjoy it as well, I have to physically let him borrow the CD so I no longer possess it, to allow this. This is the fundamental scheme that allows things like video rental, and even rental of games to be allowed as a business model. Blockbuster would not even exist if this doctrine wasn’t in place.  USC section 17, 109, A reads:

“Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106 (3), the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord.”

Interestingly enough an exemption exists in section b(1), B ii. that reads:

“a computer program embodied in or used in conjunction with a limited purpose computer that is designed for playing video games and may be designed for other purposes.”

Unfortunately for Microsoft although the first generation XBOX may qualify for this exemption, it was meant solely for gaming consoles like the NES, or Genesis, maybe even the Playstation 1 and 2 class of consoles, which were legitimately limited to playing games.

However, no coherent argument can be made in favor of extending this exemption to consoles like the XBox 360, or PS3, and certainly not the PS4, or XBox One, which by their own admission is anything but a gaming console. When Microsoft and Sony decided to bloat their consoles into something that more resembled a modern PC, they were no longer allowed to claim this limitation.

Because of this they too must adhere to the law of first sale, which states that you are authorized without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or dispose of the possession of your copy. And although the law was written to apply to records it has as since been applied to Compact Discs and other media with the time. After all, if copyright holders can adapt a three-hundred year old law written to protect the author of books alone, to mean “anything I create,” so too must they allow adaptation of laws to apply to new technologies.

And on the point of Anti-tying laws, and this is where it gets hinky folks. The term "tying" is used to refer to a situation where one benefit is tied to the person or entity doing something else. In 1970, Congress attempted to limit unfair competitive practices by providing that a bank shall not extend credit to a borrower on the condition that the borrower obtain some other service from the bank or an affiliate of the bank. This has since been applied to U.S. code and is found in almost every state of the union to apply to all forms of tying.

This prevents any company from tying a product to another product thereby requiring the purchase of said product to use another product. Now before I go into this, I’ll play devil’s advocate and say, “Well what about the XBox 360? You would have to purchase an XBox to be able to use an XBox game right?

Well someone would, but you specifically wouldn’t have to. And that by it’s nature defeats said practice, also in no way does this game become tied to said device, thereby being part of its altogether defacto purchase price after the fact. If Microsoft intends to tie games to an XBox One, then by it’s very nature the sale of an XBox with games tied to it become mandatory as one cannot be disjoined from the other. A person trying to sell their XBox or their game, cannot without selling the other, or paying a fee, both of which are not allowed by anti-tying laws.

If Microsoft continues on this course, and they so far appear to be doing so, they may find themselves in court, and it wouldn’t be the first time for such things. These kinds of unfair practices have been fought by them before, and they have lost previous cases, an example of which is the case in which they were sued for tying Internet Explorer to Windows 98 and claiming that one could not exist without the other, a fact dismantled in American court, and later by the EU forcing Microsoft to unbundle Windows Media player from Windows.

As Microsoft is no stranger to court, it is unlikely that a lawsuit would dissuade them from moving forward with this nonsense, however, as they have buckled previously to public opinion, gamers might still affect this outcome.

Microsoft whose attempts to often push software on to the public has often been rebutted in terms of loss of sales, something that will affect their plans as it did with Windows ME and later Windows Vista, and the recent flop Windows 8.

What strikes me isn’t that Microsoft doesn’t bend to public opinion but that they have not learned from their mistakes yet, which makes me think that even if they bow to the gamers and release this next XBox DRM free, it is only a matter of time before they can convince them it’s in their best interest.

PS4, Maybe the Answer After all?

If Sony wants to pivot themselves into a great position here as the anti-Microsoft, something they have always been happy to do, they need only advertise their PS4 as DRM free, free of “always online” gaming, free of pre-owned fees, and they will kill the XBox out of the gate. Although you may not think it a  big deal, just imagine if Sony said “we’re not going to force pre-owned fees,” and then entered some kind of deal with companies like GameStop.

GameStop would be forced to sell more PS4 games as opposed to XBox One games, and could legitimately explain why the PS4 was a better choice for gaming.

It would not take long for Microsoft to drop their DRM requirements from the XBox One, or face dismal sales, and another round of firing executives. Sony has a real chance here to do something correctly, and not repeat the mistakes of the past. We are not talking about piracy, we are talking about fairly selling something you purchased, and not being forced into a DRM scheme that will not only turn people off to your console, but have the opposite effect, causing people to turn to piracy and cracking mods to make the console they purchase run the way they want.

Possible look for Sony PS4

Why This Kind of Nonsense Hurts all of Us?

Imagine for a moment that you buy a car, but when it comes time to sell it, Ford or Honda want a piece of the action? Do you think you would stand for that? How is this any different? Game developers want to hide behind EULAs and say you don’t purchase a copy of the game, you purchase a license to play it. Really? So this seems fair to you? Sorry guy, you didn’t buy that car, you bought the right to use it, and only I can sell it for profit. It wouldn’t work in real life, why do we allow these dodgy asshats to force us into this nonsense?

The funniest thing about EULAs is they are mostly invalid on principle alone. Should anyone ever challenge one, they should win, if they properly challenge it. Example: I walk into a store and buy a copy of some software off the shelf, go home, begin to install. Suddenly, I’m presented with a EULA, to which I can agree and install or not agree and… ?

That’s right, they already have your money. When you purchased the product that is a contract, you agree to hand them money, they agree to give you some software, at no time do you need to agree to any EULA. Once you begin to install the software and are presented with the EULA, they are attempting to modify the contract which is not allowed. Therefore the contract becomes invalid if I choose to disagree. Once this happens I am entitled to a refund. So go ask for one, see what they tell you…

If they refuse, they are in breach and the entire contract goes poo-poo, at which point you may disagree with the EULA and install said software, or they can give you a refund. Once they are in breach they can’t hold you to the contract. Every contract requires a meeting of the minds, whereby each person is getting something. I get software, they get money, at no time is EULA discussed, therefore it is invalid.

Please forgive my little tangent here, but it provides a valid point for the sleazy lengths at which a corporation will go to take your money and give you the least possible services they can get away, sometimes even violating the law, because it only counts if it is challenged and they lose in court.

It’s been 15 years since the DMCA was signed into law, and since that time we as consumers have been forced into DRM as a consequence. As long as we are willing to suffer the ill of deficient gaming, and a hard-coded craptastic forced medium, nothing will change. And maybe the worst has yet to come.

I’m reminded of A Christmas Carol, the character of Scrooge who suffers blindly a terribly selfish, and lonely life, given the chance to see his past mistakes, and the future to come, ultimately deciding to correct his fate before it’s too late. This can be corrected, we are not too late. As consumers we have the all the power. So long as corporations, no matter how much they spend to develop, must still yield to consumers to purchase their products, we have the control, we have the power.

We can say “yes” and we can say “no.” What has become the norm is that we are more apt to say “yes” not because we want said product, but because we are too lazy to know what we are buying, and apathetic to knowledge. If you doubt what I am saying, consider for a moment Windows 8. Referred to as mostly the OS for noobs, it’s geared toward those not with an interest in technology, but rather an interest in convenience, and sadly, Microsoft believes the majority of you fit this description.

Ignorance isn’t the end of knowledge. The end of knowledge, is indifference.

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30 Years in Review: My Experience With The History of Violence in Video Games

For as long as I can remember playing video games, there has always been violence, whether it be inconsequential or direct, or merely abstract. In this article I will attempt to list some of the games I have played in my lifetime which I consider to be violent and explain the difference between mild or gratuitous violence, as well as attempt to get to the real issues in violence, specifically in video games and movies and the relation between what we see on our screens and what we see in real life.

Not that I ever hold back when I write anything, but this will contain many references to violent video games, movies, and other media, as well as depictions through video and images, so you are warned!

The 1980’s: For the graphically challenged

Growing up as a kid I played a lot of video games, starting with our first computer, the commodore 64. To my recollection the Commodore wasn’t much of a gaming machine, as much as it was a computer you could do some basic programming on.

10 print “FUCK YOU!”

20 GOTO 10

We did own a few games, in those days it either came on a large 5 1/4 inch floppy diskette or on a cassette tape. In either case the sophistication of such games was lacking, and I would be surprised if in its list of games there was anything that could be remotely considered violent. Later on I would own an Atari 7200, and it would introduce me to some games that may have been considered violent for the time, but in retrospect pale in comparison to anything made today. For instance, a game I played endlessly during my youth was a game called Pitfall.

In Pitfall you are a guy named Harry who must run across the screen avoiding rolling barrels, snakes, scorpions, and alligators, all in an attempt to get to the end before the timer runs out. It’s a great game, but in fairness if you touch a scorpion or an alligator you die. Is it violent? Well the technology certainly isn’t available at this point to make it look anything as violent as today’s standards, but you certainly die, and in the example of the alligators you fall into the alligator’s mouth, presumably becoming it’s meal.

Activision’s 1982, Pitfall

Now some would say that calling this violent isn’t really fair, after all Donkey Kong picks up barrels and flings them at Mario, and if one hits you, you are killed, but is Donkey Kong violent?

Well I would ask you a simple question? If you were watching TV and saw a man getting eaten by an alligator or someone tossing something at someone else in an attempt to kill them, would you not consider these to be violent acts? Our understanding of violence is obviously determined by perception. In these two examples I have given you, it’s apparently ok in video games, but not in real life, so is it that we only consider them violent if the depiction includes gore?

If this is true, than its unlikely that any game on an 8-bit system could qualify as anything violent, even if murder were part of the game. The graphic depiction of blood in gaming was quite limited, literally to the amount of pixels that could be dedicated to one thing. Dedicating pixels to blood for example meant that in a limited space cartridge, something more important would not be included. For fun, let’s look at a really controversial example of an Atari game called Custer’s Revenge.

In Custer’s revenge, you control a naked, erect, General Custer and the objective is to cross the screen dodging arrows all in an attempt to rape a naked, Native American female tied to a pole.

Mystique’s 1982, Custer’s Revenge

 

Is this violent? Well the idea of raping anyone should be considered violent but it contains no actual depiction of gore. So let’s see what it looks like when you reach your target.

 

As you can see, Custer takes the woman doggy style, though what it looks like is anything but a porno. In terms of pixelated violence this can be considered very tame when compared to a more modern version of violence, as I will show later, but when it was released this game was banned in several countries and attacked by many parent groups. But looking at this, one wonders other than the implied violence of rape, or the picture on the box itself, where is the controversy? It’s Lego sex for a better term.

 

The box is so much worse than anything in the actual game. In fact, the only thing that would make you think this is anything but sex is that the girl is tied to a pole, implying the sex is anything but consensual.

As a young child I can say I never really saw games like this or played them. However, as for games where someone was murdered, or involved in a fight, or near something that exploded, I played many of these. In fact, I challenge you to find many games from the 80’s era of gaming where the objective of any game involved no violence at all. I’m sure you can, but it’s very rare. For the most part, violence is a part of gaming as much as it is a part of movies, or books.

Moving past the Atari we come to 1985, which brought for me the Nintendo Entertainment System. The NES was a vastly superior gaming console to the earlier consoles like the Atari, but it still lacked the kind of definition in graphics that would give rise to the more violent games including gore, however there are examples of violence even on the NES, which many people consider to be relatively “clean” of this sort of thing.

Duck Hunt, released in 1985 employed the use of NES Zapper, a light-based gun to shoot ducks as they fly away.

 

Nintendo’s 1985, Duck Hunt

This was the first game I ever played where I was given a pistol, and told to shoot as a moving target all in an attempt to kill it. It’s cartoonish graphics, and complete lack of gore hide the fact that this game is completely violent. You are a hunter whose sole objective is to fire your gun at as many helpless ducks as possible, to get a high score. I am a person who has lived in a city his whole life. I have never fired a gun at another living thing, nor would I want to. I consider it to be violent, and amoral, and an affront to civility. But each and every day people do this sort of thing all the time, with real guns, and real animals.

Yet no one considers them to be killers, with the exception of PETA, or other extremists of this sort. My own personal preference is to not kill animals unless I have to, but I enjoy meat, I enjoy fish, and enjoy poultry, as long as I do not kill it myself. But let’s be clear, it’s violent, no matter how it’s done. And despite everything I’ve said to the contrary, I enjoyed playing Duck Hunt. It still remains a memory of better days playing Nintendo as a youth. I loved the fun I had trying to get the high score, and hated the snickering Dog, every time I failed.

The NES had many fighting games, but one I remember playing a lot was called Kung Fu, and the basic premise for the game was that you were a kung fu artist who had to get through levels fighting your way, kicking and punching enemies as they appeared in front of you.

Nintendo’s 1985, Kung-Fu Master

 

Your score was determined by how badly you beat your enemy up through the various kicks and punches you could actually do using a two-button controller. Simple? Yes, very simple. Again, no gore whatsoever, but your objective is to beat your opponents up endlessly by kicking and punching them. If this were a television show it would certainly receive at the very least a TV-14 rating because of it’s depicted violence. But in those days, this was considered suitable for everyone.

In 1985 the NES was a gaming system that was specifically marketed towards kids, with classic games like Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong. Games like these had no gore whatsoever, and so considered completely safe for children. However, even in a game like Super Mario Bros. the objective is to save the princess, but to do it, you have to kill turtles, and koopas, not to mention Bowser who is a large reptile who spits fire at you while you attempt to jump over him all to hit a switch that sends poor Bowser to his death in a fiery pit of lava below.

 

Nintendo’s 1985, Super Mario Bros.

How is this not violent? Of course it is, but lacking actual gore, it’s again considered tame, even then. So the question is why are some games that depict acts of violence considered tame and non-violent, however others doing the same, not considered in the same way?

Let’s consider LJN’s 1989 release of the NES game Friday the 13th, based on the film series. In Friday the 13th, like the movies, Jason Vorhees moves around Camp Crystal Lake killing off children. You play the role of a camp counselor who must stop Jason at any cost. The game is clearly a shit game in retrospect, but its totally violent. Jason actually kills children in this game if you do not stop him.

LJN’s 1989, Friday the 13th

Jason’s got a fucking clever in his hand and he swings it at you. At the top you will notice Crissy’s health, that’s you. But beside that is the amount of children left in the camp that Jason hasn’t killed. If you manage to survive this encounter and Jason does as well, that number will go down. A fucking mass-murdering psychopath is killing children with a clever. There is no blood, but death is obviously implied here. What makes this game any different than Super Mario Bros? Is it the fact that Jason is supposed to be a real person, as well as the kids?

What if Bowser were just a bad dude like Jason? Would dropping him in a pit of fire suddenly make it more violent, in-line with Friday the 13th?

Let’s look at 1986’s NES classic Rampage. Rampage is a game that depicts three humans who become mutated into large creatures that violently rampage cities by destroying buildings. The objective in this game is to kill a building’s inhabitants by knocking down the building while they are still inside. You achieve this by climbing up it’s side and hitting it repeatedly until it falls to the ground.

Midway’s 1986, Rampage

There were 709 licensed games over the NES’ nine year run, of which looking at the list more than half have some kind of violence in them. As a kid, nothing I would see on the NES would ever register with me as violent. After all, I had been watching violent movies, and especially horror flicks since I was very young, so none of that would have much of an effect on me. But as an adult I can easily recognize violence in games, and look back it becomes apparent just how violent most of these games actually were.

But the question still becomes without gore, do any of these games reach a level that would be comparative with many of the modern games that feature a Mature rating? I don’t think they would. If this were true, than the only suitable games for children featured on the NES would have been Barbie, Sesame Street 1-2-3, and Golf, and maybe a few others.

Although I would own a Master System, I never got many games for it, so I can’t really talk about it with any kind of expertise. However, later I would get a Sega Genesis, which changed everything.

The 1990’s: A decade for gore… and porn?

Technically released in 1988 and 1989, the Sega Genesis became a mainstream success with releases like Sonic the Hedgehog, Revenge of Shinobi, Ghouls’n Ghosts and Altered Beast. However, it was 1993’s Mortal Kombat that changed everything.

I was an arcade kid growing up, as much as a console kid. no matter how much fun you could have sitting at home on the Nintendo, the arcade featured games that were way better graphically than anything you could get at home, and so I would often get on my bike and take a short-cut through the local cemetery miles away from my house, across a highway into a large strip-mall area where the local arcade T’s fun center was. All because I loved playing video games, and loved arcade style games.

One of my favorite arcade games was  Capcom’s 1991 Street Fighter II, which featured a 2D style fighting game. In the game you would play one of eight characters which you could choose from, to play against AI characters all in an attempt to get to the Boss man, M. Bison. Each level featured a new character you would have to fight in order to move one step closer.

What made the game so awesome was that each character featured special moves that were different than any other character. This meant you could learn all of the special moves of a character, and chose another, and all the moves would be different. It literally meant having to learn hundreds of different moves in the game. As an adult, this sounds horrible, but as a kid, that’s all it was about. It was status, it was everything. Being able to achieve a move against a character you had just learned was awesome.

But what made Street Fighter II so fucking awesome, was it’s multi-player feature. You and a total stranger or friend, could pop in your quarter, and each one of you would choose a character, and with the moves you know attempt to whoop the shit out of the other person. As an adult I can appreciate the total violence of such a game, but as a kid, it was pure awesomeness.

I remember playing Street Fighter over and over, mastering all the moves, and beating the game with each character to secure a different ending. On one of the days I was set to play, a new game appeared behind me. I remember them carting it in, but I wasn’t really paying attention. But I could see a crowd amassing behind me so my attention was turned from Street Fighter II to the new game. I turned and stepped toward the crowd trying to get a glimpse of all the excitement, but I couldn’t actually see the screen, only hear the sounds coming from the box.

“Get over here!” I could hear, then “Ahhhh!” To say I was intrigued is an understatement. So I pushed my way through the crowd to see what everyone else was seeing. One of the adults was standing there on controller one, and one of the kids on controller two. A row of quarters lined the section which separated the screen from the joysticks themselves, which was customary when someone was queuing to play next.

Popular games were always going to have people wanting to play them, and because T’s was deep, but not very wide, games would be lined along the walls going deep, on both sides making the middle really the only place to stand. This made it difficult to actually form lines, and so a system was formed, I don’t know by whom, whereby you would put your quarter up on the game’s screen signifying your intent to play next. This game screen had quarters the entire length across. When a quarter was placed into the game, another was quickly put in its place.

The game: Midway’s Mortal Kombat. I had never seen anything like this game in my gaming life before this. Not only did it feature a fighting style similar to Street Fighter II, in that you selected your character, of which each had a bunch of different unique moves, but hitting an opponent caused them to bleed. That’s right, when you punched someone in the face, unlike in Street Fighter II, but like in real life, blood would appear. Though remembering it now, it was more like something out of Kill Bill than an actual fight.

But the real appeal was that when you had used all your special moves to defeat an opponent, unlike in Street Fighter II where the match just ends, in Mortal Kombat you would hear and see the words, “Finish Him!” at which point if you knew the move, you could end the match by murdering your opponent in one of the unique ways each character was given to kill their opponent.

The first time I saw Kano used to remove the heart of an opponent was awesome, but it was nothing compared to seeing Sub-Zero pulling the head off his opponent, leaving only the spine attached, swinging below, blood dripping profusely as the words “Fatality!” could be heard. I remember thinking this might not be a game I tell my parents about. Even then, I obviously knew there was something different about this game.

All my friends played the game, even kids who never went to the arcade would show up just to play Mortal Kombat. It was exciting, it was magical, it was violent, and fulfilling. Beyond being able to execute an opponent there was something mystical about the game. It was difficult to explain to an outside observer, who could only watch in horror at the things seen. Many a kid would be dragged from T’s kicking and screaming by a parent who saw exactly what their child was playing. The game got such a reputation that at one point the blood was turned off.

I imagine this came because of parental complaint, but as soon as it was, the game stopped being fun, could this have been a sign that violence is addictive in nature? I’m not sure if I have the answer to this, though my gut tells me it is. In any case, the bloodless version didn’t last long, and by the end of the week, it was back on, and violence ensued again, in the game at least.

For all the violence Mortal Kombat had in it’s game, kids were not running around trying to rip the heads off their brothers and sisters as Congress might have you believe. I spent a lot of time at the arcade playing Mortal Kombat, perfecting the moves, the fatalities, and plain whooping the shit out of anyone who thought they might just be better than me.

So of course it was only natural that when Acclaim decided to release Mortal Kombat for the Genesis, I was getting it. I remember I was a teenager at the time so I didn’t really need permission to get the game, so I didn’t bother even talking to my parents about it. I had worked summers doing a paper route so I asked my dad to take me up to K-Mart where I walked into the electronics department and asked for the game. The guy behind the counter said I was lucky they only had a few copies left, it was apparently very popular.

I remember the game was fairly expensive for the time, around $59 or so. Considering prices haven’t really changed much in the last 20 years, with inflation the price of games have actually gone down.

So I get the game home but immediately I realize something is off? The blood is not in the game. Not only that but it’s hard to play the game because the arcade game was designed with 5 buttons in mind, and the genesis controller only had 3 buttons. You see in those days there was no internet to fall back on, so I couldn’t run to Google and type in, “How do I turn blood on in Mortal Kombat for Genesis?” So I did the next best thing, and really the only thing available to me, I walked down to the local convenience store and looked through the rack of gaming magazines.

To my surprise a full cover ad for Mortal Kombat on GamePro, so I slapped down another $4.95 and was on my way home.

 

GamePro cover, September 1993

“A,B,A,C,A,B,B” and you hear, “Get over here!” And blood was enabled. But I was still having difficulty with trying to figure out the controls, so I continued to read the GamePro and found an article relating to a new 6-button controller designed for games like Mortal Kombat and the upcoming Street Fighter II: Special Edition, so it was back to the store I went. Another $30 bucks later and I was all set.

I can remember in those days that both Blockbuster and the other local video rental store allowed gaming rentals, both with various lucrative tier offers. The one I really liked, though I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the place offered you the ability to rent any game for $5 a week, but you could bring it back anytime in the week if you wanted to, and switch it for another game. So if you were like me a fanatic, you could spend day and night beating a game, returning it, and getting another. I could rent 3 or 4 games for the price of renting one game, which was fantastic.

It was how I was able to play so many games, and decide which ones were actually worth buying. One game I purchased in this way was a game called Streets of Rage. Streets of Rage was a 2D game where you chose a character and if you wanted to, bring a friend, and you both could walk through the streets kicking the crap out of street thugs. Yes, you actually walked down the street, a thug would approach and you would proceed to punch and kick him, until he disappeared.

Sega’s 1991, Streets of Rage

One of the most surprising things about consoles in general, but the genesis specifically was the amount of fighting games found on the console, of which I owned quite a lot. A lot of the games were 2D style games where the objective was to either kill someone or at the very least beat them to a bloody pulp. But in fairness, not many games, even on the genesis rivaled the blood found in a game like Mortal Kombat.

But there are a few, like Probe Entertainment’s 1995 release of Primal Rage based on the hit arcade game with the same name or Sega’s 1993 release of Eternal Champions, an alternative and clear rip-off of the mega hit Mortal Kombat. Both games featured buckets of blood, but both are very different games. Like Mortal Kombat, Eternal Champions centered around a bunch of characters competing against each other in a to-the-death competition. Much like Mortal Kombat it featured special moves and kill moves, but although I enjoyed it, Mortal Kombat was still my favorite.

Sega’s 1993, Eternal Champions

Primal Rage on the other hand while still a 2D fighter style of game, it’s characters were, well not human. Instead of killing your friendly human counterpart, you could select one of seven dinosaurs and murder the shit out of them with jumping claws, and bites, and all the shit you would expect from a dinosaur fight. And when you are done, you are given three seconds to perform… you guessed it, a fatality. What’s interesting about these games were that they were essentially clones of Mortal Kombat, but not really Mortal Kombat, at least in the case of Primal Rage.

Probe Entertainment’s 1994, Primal Rage

All three of these games followed a similar type of model which was beat the shit out of your opponent until they can no longer fight back, and then murder them in the most horrific way possible. Even looking back, although I can clearly identify such games as violent now, it would have been impossible for me to think they were anything but just a game. But I wonder than what all the nonsense about game violence is really all about?

If a kid can play games like this and know clearly they are fake, overly violent to the point of ridicule, and still have no feeling of violence toward others, then whether games are violent or not, bares no effect or whether they are violent or will be violent in the future.

I only know this because I myself played not only each one of these games, but many hundreds of other games for the genesis, all as bloody violent as these, and I never walked into a school with a gun, or armed myself with a weapon and beat someone senseless. I was no more violent than any other child growing up at the time, and like kids my age, we got in fights for much more moronic reasons than because we saw it in a movie or played it in some game.

But it seems an easy target for parents to claim their children are being turned into mindless zombies with a propensity for violence, than to believe either their child is apathetic, or violent because they have a mental problem. Many psychologists will tell you that teenagers mimic the many of the qualities of a sociopath merely because their brain isn’t fully developed, but does that mean playing violent video games leads them to do bad things?

I would think the answer to that question lies in another question: Does every child that is abused grow up to be a serial killer? Of course they do not, and so the answer should be that one does not correlate with the other. However, parents worry as parents do, and governments love to brand things, or create laws to prohibit them, and are always looking for a new target. And video games have always been a great target.

People will probably say that for every violent game there was probably three or four that were not, and that’s probably true, but how many of those games were as successful as something like Mortal Kombat? We consumers are the fuel that feeds the fire that are these game companies. Our purchasing habits directly control the types of games a company will produce, because success in a genre or particular style of gaming over time will show a clear pattern they can latch themselves to.

Midway for example whose many hits during the 80’s paled in comparison to Mortal Kombat and it’s subsequent sequels, so much so, that it’s probably what caused their eventual downfall. It’s hard to release something so controversial and amazing that changes the face of gaming forever, and then try to release anything that isn’t the same and be as successful. So they did what they needed to do, pump out more Mortal Kombat games, but in the end it would not be enough.

In 1992, Sega released their first CD-based console with the Sega-CD, which was an attachment that you added to the Sega Genesis. Now model 1 was a beast, and really expensive. I remember asking my mother to buy me one for Christmas but it was $299, which was really hard to justify. So when the model 2 came out, and the price dropped to around $189, I asked my mother to purchase it for me for Christmas again.

And to my surprise Christmas morning, there was a large box under the tree, and when I unwrapped it, my brothers and I immediately stopped what we were doing, leaving countless presents unopened to hook the system up. She had purchased a few games for the Sega-CD, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Ecco the Dolphin, but for me the only two games I wanted to play were Sewer Shark and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula was a game based entirely off the hit movie released in 1992 with the same name. What intrigued me was this was the first time in a game I could see cut-scenes from a movie, and it looked amazing, well as amazing as a 1x CD-ROM drive could look in those days. I had never seen anything like that before and I was dying for more. The game itself was not really all that good and didn’t really have much to do with the movie. I remembered I played it a few times, and then tossed in Sewer Shark.

Now the plot of Sewer Shark takes you, referred to as “Dogmeat” as a pilot of a ship in a post-apocalyptic world, into the sewers beneath that world flying around killing mutants whose goal it is to kill and suck out your brain. You pilot your ship through the sewers in real-time moving left and right when faced with forks ahead of you. As you encounter these mutant creatures you must blast them away. A pilot who achieves legendary status gets the chance to move to Solar City.

What I remember of this game is that it totally kicked ass. It was fast-paced, faster than any game I had previously played, and required quick fingers to prevent instant death at the end of a tunnel. There really wasn’t much to the game, but it was brutal, it was fast, and I could not stop playing. But that was normal, since it didn’t have a save feature. If you wanted to get all the way to Solar City, you were going to have to do it in a single run.

So for the next three days, none of us slept much, and when we did, we would leave the system plugged in and powered on, paused. And after three days, victory!

Another interesting thing I remember about the Sega-CD was that it was the first system I can remember that actually had foul language in it, something that is considered normal now, but very rare then. The first fuck, and shit I heard playing Sewer Shark floored me, as it wasn’t the first time I had heard it, but certainly the first time in a game I can remember.

Now although there wasn’t any blood at all in Sewer Shark its content was certainly violent, after all it was scripted like a movie, which was clearly intended for a more mature audience. Dracula on the other hand had plenty of blood in it, a lot of fighting, kicking, punching, biting, and violent cut-scenes from the movie. By this time of course, I was quite used to these types of games, and blood and violence were just normal.

It was Sega’s 1992 release of Night Trap that really changed everything. I remember playing this game as a rental first, and then having to find the game, which I did, on sale for something like $15. Night Trap was a survival horror game that featured full-motion interactive gaming where you play a Sega Control Attack Team(SCAT) member assigned to watch over some girls at a slumber party. You are told previously five girls went missing and were never found, you must figure out what happens before the next group suffers the same fate.

The game centers around these girls staying the night in a home filled with vampires , and you must capture them all before the girls are killed. Now the most interesting thing about this game isn’t its gameplay, or the fact that it has half-naked slumber party girls running around screaming. Rather, what makes it special is that this game, along with Mortal Kombat are directly sighted by Congress in 1993 as being grossly violent and shameful. These games sparked hearings that ultimately resulted in the formation of the ESRB rating system that all games now feature.

But what are we talking about? How bad is Night Trap? Well if you listen to Congress it must be the most brutally violent game ever made. So I give you below all the Death scenes available in Night Trap, you be the judge.

Nothing worse than anything you would see in a shit 50’s horror movie right? Yet, because it’s a game that was targeted toward children as most games are, than it must be the worst thing ever made. However, there is nothing to suggest this game was ever targeted toward children. In fact, a quick examination of the front of the box reveals on the right side the words, “CONTENT ADVISORY: May not be suitable for young children.”

Remember, this was created even before there was an ESRB rating system, which will feature a more familiar symbol.

So if the manufacturer never intended children play this game, despite it being about as violent and sexual as the campy 60’s B-movie Barbarella, than why would there be such a stink made? The answer is simple, parents who refused to be actual parents and take some control over what their kids were doing were aghast to find out that as absentee parents, their children were playing games that might have gore, sex, and… obscene language. Oh the humanity!

The prude nature of this country, founded in-part by the Puritans still haunts all of us, as if a seeing a breast or hearing someone utter the word FUCK! somehow means the devil is upon us. The sheer ignorance of a mother who’s okay with sticking her breast into her infant son’s mouth until he is three years old but then denying the child ever see another breast until he is eighteen is utterly moronic and obnoxious. Kids are kids yes, but they are not stupid, and they were looking at boobies and vaginas long before you thought they ever would.

Not to mention your husband taught them every word they needed to learned by the age of five, and you always wondered where that language came from?

So after the ESRB rating system was formed, nothing much changed. I was able to get any game I wanted, whether it bared an M or not. The only difference it made was that some parents began checking the box when purchasing a game for their kids, however since stores had no policy on sale to children, there would be no way to actually stop the sale of any game to minors.

Much of the rest of the 90’s I spent playing various systems, but late into the 90’s my brother got a PlayStation and gaming really changed with that system. For whatever reason, playing anything prior to this console just didn’t interest me anymore, and games like Crash Bandicoot, and Madden were the wave of the future for me.

I remember that very few games released for the PlayStation were rated Mature, or my brother was just not interested in buying those kinds of games, being someone who enjoyed more sports-type gaming. It would be another four or five years before my brother would get the PlayStation two which blew the first one out of the water, but for me, I was already gaming on the PC by this time, and that will take us into a new millennium.

 

2001: A Gaming Odyssey

While my brother would focus his gaming on the PS2, I would move toward the PC for my gaming needs. Although I had owned a PC for many years prior and played many violent video games on the PC, the graphics to this point on the PC were still kind of shit. Games like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D were great games but compared to games of today they really looked shitty. But there was a theme with PC games of that type and it might have started with doom back in 1993, creating this kind of 3D type shooter game, now referred to as the First Person Shooter(FPS).

But it was actually around 1998 that things began to change for me, a little game called Half-Life was released, and oh FUCK was that a seriously fucked up game. Released by Valve Corporation, you play a guy by the name of Gordon Freeman who is employed as a physicist at the Black Mesa facility in New Mexico. During an experiment at the facility working on an alien artifact, a rift is opened between two worlds and aliens pour into the facility.

From this point forward it’s all “BLOW THE SHIT OUT OF EVERYTHING!”

Valve Corporation’s 1998, Half-Life

To say that Half-Life changed my life is an understatement. Until this point, I had never been immersed in anything as well made as this game was. It was story driven, it was gory, it was crazy. I loved every minute of it. It was terribly violent, and I cannot imagine too many parents would have been happy with their kids playing a game like this at that time. The best example of the game would be like comparing it to the movie Aliens which was of course Rated-R.

This of course was when games were still released on disk, there was no steam and your box featured the Sierra Games logo when they were still in business. As much as I loved Half-Life, it was actually a year or so later that a small developer creating half-life mods released one that would forever change FPS gaming and create in my opinion the military-shooter genre: Counter-strike(CS).

Counter-strike is a half-life modification that uses the half-life models, and code but creates a new experience by changing the way the original game looks and feels and turning into a brand new game revolving around a Counter-Terrorism team and a group of terrorists. These terrorists attempt to plant bombs or hold hostages, all the while the CTs hunt them down, kill them and defuse the bomb or escape with the hostages alive.

It was a super-hit immediately. What made Counter-strike so popular was that here was an FPS, but it wasn’t just point and shoot, it required strategy by completing objectives. Not only was it superior to all FPS games at the time, but it featured a large multi-player experience that was really unprecedented.  Quake was really the only game I can think of that featured such an experience but it lacked the kind of objective system that could be found in CS.

My friends and I played the game endlessly, and I even joined a cs clan where I played basically every moment I was awake. Much of my time was shifted to development when I began developing scripts and modifications for CS that could make the game more enjoyable and allow for a different experience than the standard one.

For more than six years I devoted much of my free time to playing CS, and random other games like it. It would be a time in my life where I would play many, many FPS games. But this might also be because of the huge success of games like Half-Life and CS, that caused game companies to develop all these games.

Another favorite of mine would be a 2002 Electronic Arts release, Battlefield 1942. However, it became a way better game with the Desert Combat mod. Like most FPS games, violence is just part of the territory. It would be impossible to make such a game without an aspect of violence, due to the nature of the style.

You run around with a gun in hand, shooting other people. I cannot see another way that such a game could be made and not have it involve in some way some kind of violence. But it should be noted that it is around this time that there is a shift in gaming, those who grew up on the old gaming consoles are now teenagers and adults, so as more and more become older the shift toward adult style gaming would become more prevalent.

Graphics would also take a giant leap forward with the release of Valve’s hit sequel to Half-Life with Half-Life 2, which featured it’s own engine called Source in 2004.

Valve Corporation’s 2004, Half-Life 2

The familiar jagged pixilation found even in Half-life is replaced by the smooth anti-aliasing of the Source engine. This huge step forward would require a new machine for most, and I too was one of them. I remember trying to play this beast of a game on the same machine I once played CS on, and it was simply impossible. The graphics card and processor being insufficient, it was time for an upgrade.

Very few games have ever made me actually purchase new hardware but this was one of them, and I never regretted it, because shortly thereafter a whole new host of games based off the Source engine were released all dazzling gems but requiring a hell of a machine at the time to play. One game I remember that was particularly violent was a game called Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines.

Rated Mature for good reason, Bloodlines was a game full of not only violence but sex and gore. Compared to Night Trap which resembled a cheesy 60’s film, Bloodlines was the real deal. More like a modern horror classic bloodlines pushed the envelope, and challenged your thinking of what a horror game should look like. If being brutal was your thing, this game would fulfill that need and more. Whether you enjoyed snacking on the throats of homeless, or teasing and murdering hookers, this game had whatever you liked.

But I can’t talk about violent games and not refer to Rockstar Games, a leader in violent gaming for sure.  In 2001, Rockstar released a sequel to the hugely popular Grand Theft Auto series and third in line. Grand Theft Auto 3 would turn out to be one of the most violent games ever made, and I played it a few times, but it wasn’t something I become interested in until I purchased Grand Theft Auto IV in 2008 for the PS3. That game rocked my world. Unlike any other car-style racing game before it, this game was sadistic to a point.

You play a thug who can steal cars, shoot people, attack the police, even murder hookers for fun. If riding over old ladies gets you off, this game is for you. Never had I ever played a game where running over pedestrians was so much fun, and completely insane at the same time. What maybe made it so different then other games in the genre was it’s mix of racing and combat, as well as it’s “DON’T GIVE A FUCK” attitude, that really appealed to the gaming community. I myself played it for quite a while before I finally got bored with killing people and finally put it away.

When you see a game like this and see what they put into it, you have to wonder if they know some kids are going to play this game. But again, I question parents whose parental skills lack any assemblance of normality, that their kid be exposed to something as off the wall as Grand Theft Auto. After all, it’s called Grand Theft Auto, not Barbie’s Adventure Land.

In what other game do you get to drive up to a strip club, walk in, and get a lap dance in the game? And what purpose does this actual serve? I wonder this myself, as a man who likes girls, why would I want to play this kind of game instead of finding a girlfriend? But then it occurs to me that this specifically whether they care to admit it is marketed to teenage males who maybe don’t have girlfriends because this is exactly the kind of shit they like in games. And to keep it to point, the violence, when you are done with your lap dances you can murder all the strippers like a maniac if you choose to.

But I’m not quite done with Rockstar just yet, because in 2003 they also released one of the sickest games ever made called Manhunt. In the game you play a person who is forced to participate in a series of snuff films. You go through various scenes executing people in various manners, with no remorse intent on getting a good grade, which you do based on the kills. It’s one of the sickest games I’ve ever seen, and exists seemingly for no other reason than do simulate murder.

With respect to violent games in general, games like Counter-strike or Half-Life or even Bloodlines do involve an aspect of murder, however it’s not all there is. There is an objective to playing, other than murdering someone. Even in a game like Mortal Kombat which relies on you kicking the shit out of your opponent to the point you can kill them, there is still an objective that isn’t actually the murder itself. Beating down an opponent and maybe (your choice) killing them, is secondary to the primary goal of reaching the end and defeating Shang Tsung.

But in Manhunt, you cannot complete your goal without murder, because murder is the goal. Even in GTA IV, you don’t actually have to run pedestrians down or shoot hookers, that is all secondary to the goals in the game. I don’t quite understand what would possess Rockstar to make such a game, even if it is their right to do so.

In 2004, Traffic Software released one of the most offensive games ever made called JFK: reloaded. In the game you play the role of the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. You are scored by how well you can match the Warren Commission account of the events of that day. If you are able to replicate with accuracy as close as possible, your score will be higher.

Turning a tragedy into profit like this turns my stomach, and I remember it being referenced on an episode of Law and Order: SVU by Detective Munch. The game is fucking twisted, but a psychopath’s wet dream. Why anyone would want to play this game, I don’t know.

But even this game pales in comparison to the next two on my list. Illusion Soft’s 2006, RapeLay, and Danny Ledonne’s 2005, Super Columbine Massacre RPG! In RapeLay you play a man whose objective is to stalk a mother and her two daughters all in an effort to rape and torture them. I’m not kidding, this is a real game, developed in Japan.

In Super Columbine Massacre RPG! you control the actions of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold; the pair who entered Columbine High School on April 20th, 1999 and killed 13 people before turning the guns on themselves. Though I am a huge proponent of the first amendment, even trash like this drives me crazy. Mr. Ledonne would like to claim that this type of game is an emerging art form and tries to describe the game as a way to turn gaming into art.

This game intended to be cultural commentary on school violence, but instead it comes off as merely a game that’s existence reinforces mass shootings as profitable. What is to stop another asshole from releasing trash like this and calling it art? Probably nothing.

I only wish I were finished, and that brings me to quite possibly the most violent video game ever made, a game released in 2003 by a company called Running with Scissors: Postal 2. In Postal you take on the role of a Postal dude who lives in a trashy trailer park in a small town in Arizona. At the beginning of each day you are given tasks to complete. You can choose to complete them peacefully or violently, but the game constantly taunts you and pushes you toward violence.

Not only are there dozens of ways to kill someone, but some are the most violent and gruesome I’ve ever seen. Pouring gasoline on someone and setting them on fire, and putting them out by pissing all over them, and then striking them in the head with a shovel or just letting them die in agony. It’s twisted, but then when you think it’s reached it’s most twisted point, no you find out, its so much fucking worse. Yeah this game is terribly violent, but I ‘m sad to say I played the shit out of this game.

Yes, twisted as fuck as this game is, I enjoyed it. It’s devilishly crazy violence is so over the top, that it borders on being too ridiculous to believe, again like watching Kill Bill.

Postal 2, The Most Violent video game of all time.

What’s clear is that there is definitely a progression of violence over the years, but what should be most clear is that violence isn’t new, it’s not something that has suddenly appeared but rather it has always existed as long as games have existed. Violence doesn’t change, only the technology. And the more advanced we make games the easier it is to make them seem realistic. And that’s really what is so different than games like Custer’s Revenge. Though the content of that game being offensive for sure, what is worse, that or a game like RapeLay, which puts you at the controls over a rapist, and not merely a pixelated example of what looks like two dogs fucking.

I have played a lot of violent, and offensive games over my life, and not one of them ever made me go out and hurt someone else. So the lesson here is that games while possibly the tools of a sadistic person to focus their sadism in the virtual world, they can also be harmless in the hands of those that do not suffer mentally. As I’ve said not all abused children grow up to be serial killers, not all gamers grow up to be Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

While I still enjoy the occasional game of Assassin’s Creed III or BioShock: Infinite, in my later years I tend to play more relaxed games like Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, or SimCity. I guess those kinds of games don’t really appeal to me like they once did, or maybe I grow weary of violence in general whether it be on the television, in the theatre or in my games. It simply doesn’t appeal to me as it once did, and that gives me some hope that maybe some of us just become more passive with age. But it’s scary to think how that works in reverse.

According to The Entertainment Software Association, 20% of video game players are boys under the age of 17 and 26% are men and women over the age of 50. The average age of a video game player is 37. And maybe that shows a trend in what I’ve already stated, that most gamers tend to be those who grew up on the old systems and have continued to just upgrade as time passes.

If this is the case, more and more games will become adult-based games, and the trend of violent video games will not stop. There will always be non-violent video games aimed toward children, but if this trend continues than those numbers will shrink because as most adults tend to dislike PG and PG-13 movies in favor of rated R movies, so too will their choice in games.

But I’ve always believed that a good game transcends gender and age preferences, it becomes something everyone can enjoy and appreciate equally. And maybe what we really need are game developers willing to push the boundaries and refrain from pushing on all of us the same old shit, repeating the mistakes of the past and resorting to a rehash. When game developers refuse to innovate we are given the same old crap in a new box: Diablo 3 being a prime example.

Every game developer before starting each day of work should ask themselves whether what they are doing has ever been done before? Whether they are being different? Whether they are challenging conventional wisdom? When a developer chooses to be different, you are gifted with a real gem, it doesn’t happen often enough, but it does happen. And it doesn’t have to be gory, or violent, it must simply be unique, because that ultimately that is what we all strive for, and in a environment of immersion, the same old, same old just won’t do.

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Microsoft Skydrive: Bait and Switch By Policy? What You Need To Know, pt. 1

So recently I began unifying stuff between machines, as my health deteriorates and I need to spend more time laying in bed. This allows me to still try to get some work done on the computer while I’m in bed. One of the things I’ve been using are cloud storage accounts like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Microsoft Skydrive.

These online storage accounts are great because they provide a quick way to sync documents between computers without having to map drives or worry about network connections. You drag and drop, and you are ready to go, not to mention the data is stored in a secure, safe location you know will be there, in case anything happens to the computer.

So as I was saying, recently I was trying to unify my documents between my computers so I could use them anywhere, and I wanted to use Skydrive. Skydrive until recently has been rather useless, being only something that can be used while online, through the Microsoft live website interface. Before this I had been using Dropbox, and Google Drive which both offered integration into Windows, something Skydrive was lacking.

So I started uploading my documents to the Skydrive, all 1GB of them, when I realized it had been a while and I wanted to make sure my Microsoft account info was accurate. So I logged into my live account and proceeded to the Skydrive interface only to find something odd. My 25GB of free cloud storage was no longer 25GB, but it was now 7GB instead. This seemed really strange. I looked through the interface, and could find nothing about it. I looked through my email, and again nothing. I clicked through the upgrade options, and only found pay options to get something close to the 25GB.

I decided to email Microsoft, and this began an interesting thread of conversation. You won’t believe what they told me…

So this is my first email to Microsoft:

 

 

I’m linking to each image of the email itself, and if you click on it you can see a bigger, clearer version of it.

I’m really cordial to start with, as I ‘m just wondering what happened.

“I had an account with 25GB when i signed up for skydrive when it opened. Suddenly I have a 7GB account, what happened?” I asked.

I assumed there was some mistake, something I did, or some error that would just need to be corrected. I actually didn’t expect a reply at all, or something weeks or months later. It has been my experience that when dealing with customer service or technical support over email, the responses are rather, wait and see, meaning you’ll wait, and maybe see a reply.

To my surprise a reply came rather quickly, although not the reply I expected at all.

 

 

The contents of the reply read:

Hello John,

Thank you for contacting SkyDrive billing support.

We apologize for the inconvenience that you have undergone through and we do understand your concern. The loyalty offer you are inquiring about was made available until the 25th of June 2012. The maximum storage capacity of the SkyDrive users who had used less than 4GB of storage during this period was automatically reduced to 7GB.

We do understand that you want your maximum storage capacity reverted back to 25GB for free however, as much as we would like to grant your request, it would no longer be possible since the loyalty offer has ended.

By means of a yellow banner, we have posted a link in how to maintain the 25GB maximum storage capacity. This banner which mentioned the loyalty offer had been there from April 23, 2012 and ended last June 25, 2012. As you have noticed that your current maximum storage capacity is 7GB which means you weren't using at least 4GB during the loyalty offer period.

We appreciate your interest to use SkyDrive, if ever there are new offers; rest assured that you would be notified accordingly. Once again, we apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding on this matter.x

Should you need further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us again by replying directly to this email.

Again, Thank You for contacting SkyDrive Billing Support. Have a great day!

Sincerely,

SkyDrive Billing Support

The reply seems rather cordial as well, except for the bad news. Now I would have probably stopped here if not for the fact that I was given no notice when I signed up, nor any notice at anytime during my subscription. At no time was I informed of a change, or asked if I minded if they reduced my available space as I wasn’t using it.

Let me be clear, my problem isn’t that my account was changed so much as I signed up for one product and was given it, only to have it changed without notice and without my permission. And the strangest part wasn’t the change or the happy tone of the reply, but the reason behind it.

The maximum storage capacity of the SkyDrive users who had used less than 4GB of storage during this period was automatically reduced to 7GB.

I read it twice, because I thought it was either a mistake or something I was just reading wrong. Microsoft had decided arbitrarily to reduce a customer’s space available if they were not using a lot of it. So in their eyes, if I was a pig and used all the space they gave me, it would be ok, and I could keep it, but if I were nice and was saving it for something I needed, then they would take it right back, or what we called as a child: Indian giving.

Anyone curious about the Etymological origin of that term:

The phrase originated, according to researcher David Wilton, in a cultural misunderstanding that arose when Europeans first encountered Native Americans on arriving in North America in the 15th century. Europeans thought they were receiving gifts from Native Americans, while the Native Americans believed they were engaged in bartering: this resulted in the Europeans finding Native American behaviour ungenerous and insulting.

--Source Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_giver

This tactic however has a different name in the real world, called the bait and switch and it’s a tactic used by hustlers and con men for a long time, and the unscrupulous companies who try to sell you things like Snake Oil. To this point however, I had never had this kind of thing be used on me by a company I had trusted before, and would have never considered of that sort.

So with some indignation, I replied to this email, changing my tone as to be clear about how I felt about the situation. For one it sucked, my plan was to use the space when I needed to, for backing up projects and documents, and my photo collection, which has been growing in size. The other thing and I don’t make mention of it in any reply, but it bugs me, is that I liked Skydrive because unlike a lot of other fly-by-night operations, I always knew Microsoft would be there, so I wouldn’t just lose my data.

 

 

My Reply:

It seems slightly unfair, don't you think? When I signed up I was given 25GB of space. I used it, but because I didn't use 4GB of the 25GB, you assumed I would never need more than 7GB, so you reduced it to 7GB? How does that even remotely make any sense? It just seems like bait and switch to me. The reason why I didn't load the thing up with 25GB of data was at that time you didn't have an integrated application, all data had to be manually uploaded through the website. Now that Skydrive is included with Live essentials, I want to use it, so I load it up to find that the 25GB I was promised when I signed up for it, was taken away.

Now obviously, you can do business anyway you like. I have hundreds of alternatives I can use instead of skydrive to store my data in the cloud for free, and at least with hosts like google or dropbox which also offer integration, I won't be offered one thing only to find it changed after the fact.

Now my criticism is completely apropos to the nature of Skydrive at the time, and I cannot believe that I’m the only person who would have such a concern.

When Microsoft first proposed Skydrive, it was in direct response to the growing need for cloud storage, and free availability of services like Dropbox  gave people a non-Microsoft way of doing business. Now in Microsoft’s world, much like Google and a few others, if you are not using Microsoft to do something there must be something wrong. They feel the need, and maybe rightly so, to be involved in every market space available. In this case, free cloud storage.

So Microsoft being the giant they are and I’m sure trying to out due Google, gives all early adopters of Skydrive 25GB of space. At the time I was aware that anyone who was not an early adopter would probably get a lot less available when they signed up later. So I signed up immediately, and sure enough it had 25GB of available storage for me to use.

The only problem was that I was using Windows 7. Windows 8, would feature integration services that would allow a user to seamlessly move data from local to cloud storage at the drop of a hat, as if moving from one local drive to another. But anyone who has read my critiques of Windows 8 knows I would not be upgrading to that pile of crap. Anyone interested in reading my Windows 8 reviews I’ve provided the links here:

 

Why Windows 8 Will Fail, at Least In the Desktop Market...

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview, Just a Tad Shinier Than The Previous Turd

Windows 8, Oh How The Blunders Continue...

 

I had done my research, read the Microsoft TechNet stuff, and knew that they would be integrating it as well into Windows 7, however because of the time they would be putting into Windows 8, there was no promised date of that release. I was cool with that, I dropped a ton of pictures and documents into the Skydrive from the web interface totaling over a 1Gb of space and left it there, awaiting the Windows 7 integration.

Now flash-forward, and Microsoft has included this integration as part of the Windows Live essentials package, which is really a very nice suite of free applications. If you need a blog writer, or picture viewer, or parental controls, its top dog in my opinion. It has other stuff like DVD editing software and Messenger as well.

So my intent was always to use the space, but wait until that integration was available. I should mention that Google and Dropbox have had integrated services since inception, so it’s not a lot to ask.

 

 

Her reply:

John Saucier,

I understand that you have been a long time SkyDrive user and we thank you for that. I respect your opinion with regard to this matter. I really want to grant your request in upgrading your storage back to 25GB however; the option isn't available in our system anymore as it has already expired. I am really sorry about the policy implemented that users who are storing less than 4GB will automatically be downgraded to 7GB unless customer have opted in for the Loyalty offer.

Kind Regards,

Joyce

Microsoft SkyDrive Billing Support

She acknowledges that I have been using the service a longtime, and thanks me for it. Then goes on to tell me there is nothing she can do for me. She mentions this “Loyalty offer” which again is a misnomer in the context of the conversation. Loyalty is defined as: a quality of being loyal to someone or something, a strong feeling of support or allegiance, sticking with someone or something as promised.

Now the term being used by Microsoft I find very amusing considering the situation. “Oh yes, we understand you are a loyal customer, but FUCK YOU!”

The claim that she really wants to upgrade my account but cannot because the offer has since been rescinded is ludicrous. We have all dealt with costumer service before, and know for a fact, nothing is impossible. If you walk into a deli and purchase a ham, only to find out when you get it home that it’s gone bad, are you to assume nothing can be done about this ham?

Of course not, you bring the ham back and demand the problem be fixed. And it will be, you will get a new ham.

There is no difference here. When you call your cable company and tell them they have overbilled you, or cancelled some service that was offered, or even better you just have a complaint about a service you have received, they fix it. They offer to replace the service, or give you a credit or some other feature or upgrade to make you happy. It literally costs them nothing in the grand scheme of things.

The mantra with any business should be the customer is king. It used to be that the customer was always right, and when dealing with a reputable company this is still the truth.

In this case, I did nothing wrong. I was offered a service, took them up on the offer, used it, and was happy with it. And for whatever reason, they arbitrarily rescinded the offer only after the fact. And that is key here. This policy that she is talking about is also quite ludicrous, not just for me, but for anyone who has also suffered a similar fate. Downgrading someone for any reason is contrary to everything a business should be doing.

While most people are always looking for ways to improve, increase, and do more, this policy looks to back away and take what was given. There is no solid reason for doing this. As someone who is technically oriented, I know my space isn’t dedicated, it’s shared. I know it’s quotaed amongst millions of other people’s data. For example, a disk with 1TB of available space and 10 customers each with 2GB of disk space available to them would leave the disk with 1,004Gb of available space for expansion of new customers. Now let’s assume you want to increase the space available to one customer.

You would just expand their quota which would reduce the overall available space, but other customers would remain unaffected.  Even better, if you used hard and soft limits you could easily see how this would work.

If each customer is given a soft limit of 2GB but a hard limit of 3GB, then they would be warned after expanding past the 2GB but not actually blocked from additional expansion until the 3GB limit is reached. What Microsoft wants you to believe is that somehow everything is fixed and cannot be undone. However, this is contrary to how quota, disk expansion, and limits work. It’s nonsense, and a lie. When more space is needed, another disk is added to the row, or a new row added to the rack.

There is just no reason to ever downgrade a service under any circumstance, especially a service offering disk space, considering the easy expansion, and cost associated with adding disk space which is small considering the amount of space gained for the cost.

The other thing that bugs me is this notion that I somehow have to opt-in to the service. I thought I did this when I signed up for it, and they actually gave me the 25GB of space for free. Wouldn’t that have been the time I “opted-in?”

Oh you mean the extra opt-in, opt-in? Yeah like when you go to a restaurant and ask for the eggs and toast and they bring you eggs. And you ask, “Where is my toast?” “Oh you have to opt-in for that,” the waitress replies.

Again, it’s ludicrous, disingenuous, and contrary to common sense.

 

 

My reply:

As I've said, you can choose to do business however you like, and I can find storage space elsewhere at no cost, so that doesn't worry me. But it is a lesson that consumers like me will learn from, and remember when choosing to purchase products or use them in the future, and choosing who I do business with in the future. I will say for the record, Microsoft is now the first and only company I have ever dealt with that I considered reputable that has now used arbitrary deception as a practice and policy. You may call it "Loyalty offer" or anything else you want to make up as an excuse, but it's a bait and switch practice once reserved for what I would consider only the more crooked businesses.

As I said, when I signed up when Skydrive was first opened, I was promised 25GB, not 25GB until we decide to lower it. I assumed, apparently wrongfully so, that I could trust Microsoft in it's offer. In complete contrast, you look at something like Google which, for example when I signed up for a Gmail account during their beta, I was given 1GB of storage, and each month that limit has been increased, not decreased. Today I have more than 10GB of space on Google's servers, yet I have barely passed that original 1GB. In fact, before this, never has any company that I have used ever done this kind of thing to my knowledge.

You may think me petty for complaining about this. I don't care, it's the principle, as I've said free cloud storage is abundant. But I've always believed your word is your bond. I don't offer someone something if I can't deliver. I don't make promises I can't keep. And I never take anything back, that I have given away freely.

Here I’m getting a little more perturbed by this thread, and take an opportunity to point out my disgust at this whole situation.

My intent isn’t to anger anyone, only to point out the confusion and ridiculous nature of this “so-called” policy. Also, this is clearly “bait and switch” tactics, and there is no reason why I should just take this kind of shit. The fact that a competitor, Google, has only increased the level of my service over time should be enough to give them pause. In all the time I have been using Microsoft products prior to this occasion, never once would I have ever called them deceptive or disingenuous. In fact, on the rare occasion I have dealt with their customer support they have been courteous and willing to help me.

On occasion in my professional career I have had the opportunity to work with several members of the Microsoft team, and have always had good things to say about them. Occasionally Microsoft makes a mistake: Windows Me, Windows 8, and I let them have it. But they also fix those mistakes, like any good company would do. I have never had the occasion where I felt like a mistake was made they did not take the opportunity to immediately correct, until now.

I live by a personal code, which I’m sure most of us do, or I would hope we do. I don’t ever deliberately fuck someone over. I don’t ever give and then take back. I don’t tell someone there is nothing I can do for them. In fact, those who know me would never accuse me of such a statement, because I know it to be completely inaccurate of life. There is always something you can do, always a solution that has not been found yet, and there is always a way to help someone in need, though not always the will to do so.

“...in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” – Ben Franklin

 

 

Their reply:

Hi,

Thank you for contacting SkyDrive Billing Support.

We understand where you are coming from but let me explain further, SkyDrive free is a value added service that is provided by Microsoft free of charge. Microsoft reserves the right to change the terms and conditions of the service whenever necessary. Prior to the update, All customers were notified and was given a month of timeframe to claim/retain the SkyDrive upgrade to 25gb (April 23, 2012- June 25, 2012) . There is nothing Microsoft can do to restore your SkyDrive storage size.

Regards,

Irish T

SkyDrive Billing Support

What is apparent is that my emails are being forwarded around, or they have some kind of system where all support emails go into a queue and someone answers it when they are next in line. This is clear by the fact that each reply has been from a different person. At this point, either they think me to be stupid, or confused, or just angry. True, I may be a little indignant, but who wouldn’t in this situation, the contempt can be felt with each email they send me.

So they send me a load of scripted bullshit, written by an attorney to negate the fact that they are being assholes. Whenever someone tells you, “…pursuant to the terms and conditions,” you get a little weary, because we have all heard this line of bullshit before. It indemnifies them from having to do anything and allows them to treat you like trash. However, this isn’t about a block of bullshit text found obscurely on some page no one has ever visited.

This is about a basic “contract of service” which provides a certain service level agreement. This would go something like this: I give you something, you give me something in return.

Now in this case, you may say that no such agreement has occurred, after all the service is free. So it would seem they are giving me something without anything in return, however don’t let that notion of “free” fool you. What Microsoft gets in return for offering free services is the samething Google or anyone else gets…my information.

Like any other service, you sign up for it, offer up some basic information: name, address, phone  number, etc. and in exchange they give you something. In this case, I was given 25GB of cloud storage. However, Microsoft has decided arbitrarily to renegotiate said contract, by downgrading my service without notice or approval. Now they can contend that they can do this because of this bullshit policy and maybe they can, but does it make it right?

What if I were to walk into Wal-Mart take 22 items off the shelf, walk up to the register and hand the person working there a twenty dollar bill. What I have not told them is this twenty dollar bill is completely fake, and just to be clear about my intent, I write in tiny letters on the back, “I reserve the right to pay you with this fake twenty dollar bill, which by your acceptance, allows me the purchaser to be indemnified against any action you would take against me, or otherwise prevent me to be pursued criminally, or held liable. Conditions may change at my leisure.”

Do you think this would fly?

Well I’m pretty sure it won’t.

You will also see that it is claimed that all customers were notified of this change. I myself, was not notified, and I’ve since asked a friend who also was not notified. So my best guess is, and through my research, that anyone who actually had used over 4GB of their 25GB would have been notified by an indicator to their account which allowed them to upgrade:

 

 

However, since I was using barely over 1GB, I was not notified. I should mention as well, I received no emails, phone calls, or was in any other way notified of such a change. And because I was waiting patiently for the integration feature to be added to Windows 7, I had no reason to upload additional data to the drive, which is more easily accomplished once integrated.

The other thing that is noticeable from this image is the fact that customers who had 25GB of storage were obviously arbitrarily reduced to 7GB and then asked to opt-in after the fact to re-gain the 25GB they had already opted-in for when they signed up. I only wonder what might have happened, had I previously uploaded more than 7GB of data to Skydrive? What might have happened then?

And then there is the matter of this little lie: There is nothing Microsoft can do to restore your SkyDrive storage size.

So nothing can be done? You mean it’s like you sent the disk into space and it cannot be retrieved by any means? No that won’t work, stupid rockets, and shuttles.

Oh I know, put it in a plastic bag, and dropped in in the ocean? Oh damn it, stupid submarines, and divers and sonar.

Oh wait, you locked it in a vault and threw away the key! Yeah that works, oh wtf! Stupid locksmiths, and safecrackers.

Don’t bullshit me, I won’t bullshit you. With the exception of death, and even that can be negated sometimes, there is literally no situation that exists where someone could use the phrase: There is nothing that can be done, and have it actually mean something. It infuriates me to no end when someone treats me with ignorance, and derision. I have been doing this too long, and frankly I am way too intelligent to be told something so ridiculous and believe it.

 

 

So my reply:

 

I know you assume when dealing with customers that they are all idiots. Well I'm not. I understand how raid, quota, and disk rack expansion works. So I know fully you have space available, and that it would be a simple matter to accommodate my request. I've been in IT since I was a teenager more than 20 years, so please don't talk to me as though you were talking to someone who can barely figure out how to turn on the computer.

Now you can quote policies until you are blue in the face, and truth be told I can't really do anything about it. That doesn't mean I'm going to lay down either. As a blogger, I will simply post everything here and let everyone know of Microsoft's policy of screwing over the customer.

The notion that any company would arbitrarily downgrade any service seems contrary to "good" customer service. You never downgrade a customer, you only upgrade, and offer better services.

Telling me there is nothing you can do is like saying that if I ate at your restaurant and got really sick, well that's my problem, right?

Maybe there is nothing you can do, but someone can fix this. So please forward this to your management team.

I'm not just going to go away, at this point it's the principle of the thing, and the fact that it's a company I would have trusted not to screw me over prior to this, hurts just a little.

Thank you,

John Saucier

At this point, I’m a little fumed. But I think I handle it well, as I don’t completely off the handle, as I find it doesn’t serve any solution. In this case, principle is important for me, so I’m not going to just lay down and take it like a, and pardon my French: bitch.

So this is where I currently stand on the issue, and I will continue to update this blog when more information is available.

 

The questions I propose to my readers are:

First, am I wrong in pursuing this?

Second, if I am wrong, why?

and If I’m not, well you rock, but why do you think this as well?

Lastly, has anyone else gotten screwed over, and wanted resolution? Did you get it resolved? Or did you bite your tongue and let it be?

 

Please let me know what you think, post your comments and questions, and share this on FB or twitter or wherever.

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