Category: Idiots

Quid pro quo

~ Inquisitor

With the “Bully” saga going on and on and on, Rockstar have pulled a rather stunning coup on the British and world media. Now, of course, it’s backfiring on them.

The story so far: Rockstar Vancouver (not Rockstar North of GTA fame, the people who gave you the sequel to “Homeworld“) announce a game called “Bully“, and provide various screenshots of kids giving each other, eg, wedgies. People think it’s going to be a GTA-alike bully simulation game and raise hell.

Rockstar then pull off the wool to reveal it is, in fact, a school survival game in a very jocular 80s Grange Hill-esque tone. People, including the Daily Mail and people involved with anti-bullying charities, ignore the announcement and keep on raising hell. Rockstar repeat the announcement more forcefully, and change the name in European territories to “Canis Canem Edit” (“Dog Eat Dog”, the fictitious school’s motto.) You can guess it: people are still raising hell, despite the fact that the game is complete, has gone through the censors and come out with an ESRB “T” and (more importantly) BBFC 15; it wasn’t intended as a kids’ game anyway.

Now the latest announcement is that Dixons Stores Group is refusing to stock the game. Considering that they stock the 18-rated, gangs and sex and similar nasties GTA, and hope to stock more of it, that seems a bit much.

Admittedly GTA is popular because it doesn’t take itself remotely seriously (something which both Daily Mail type critics and people who rip it off don’t get at all), but from all the reports I’ve seen the same is true of “Bully“. So basically it’s DSG caving into a media backlash, the same way that Game caved over (Rockstar North’s actually distasteful) “Manhunt” a few years back.

Of course, “Manhunt” was back in Game mere months after they claimed to have removed it, so “Canis Canem Edit” will probably turn up on PC World shelves soon. Nevertheless, it’s the principle of the thing; if you’re going to ban games designed for adults from your shelves, ban them all, not just the ones that get coverage in the Metro. Journalists should realise that for some time the biggest demographic for games has been twentysomethings and older; this was true even back in 1995/6, and this group wants games that might actually cover adult themes (although they might not want all GTA all the time).

Rockstar are, of course, not blameless at all in the issue; they started it, and from the (for once, unintentional) controversy over Hot Coffee they probably knew what they were getting themselves into. But they did it anyway. No-one’s played the game yet; it might be crap for all I know, but the controversy will sell many more copies than the entire UK shipment of Psychonauts.

(And couldn’t they have just called it “Dog Eat Dog”? It’s a lot better.)

If it turns out to be a decent game, all well and good, but this kind of marketing can only be bad for gamers and gaming as a whole; making it seem like a “flash in the pan” medium. And the lack of games that cover adult issues well is very troubling. Nevertheless, gaming is a relatively infant medium rapidly growing up, and hopefully we’ll be at the stage that Psychonauts or a non-franchise game with a decent storyline and great gameplay can sell Big Numbers soon (XBLA, Steam and the Nintendo Wii might help here, and Bioshock looks like it could be interesting.) But we’re not there yet.

A rather oblivious howler

~ Inquisitor

Simon Jenkins doing a “Damn those uppity scientists, having their profession destroyed by shitty “with it” GCSEs and chronic underfunding and having the cheek to protest about it” piece for the Guardian (I’m sure they employ him just to piss people off):

My own science O-level included trigonometry, advanced algebra and differential calculus, and related them to physics, engineering, statics and dynamics. I can not remember any of it, nor have I found the slightest use for it. I imagine more people use Latin than trigonometry.

Uh, Simon, quite a lot of people use trig – to take an appropriate example, if you’re pointing missile A at WMD facility B you’re going to need to work out what bloody angle it needs to point in. Is that a howler or what?

It’s a totally useless article on an interesting debate: as someone studying for a science degree entirely due to excellent teachers in high school, although in the much less compromised Scottish system (where combined science splits into chem/physics/biology at GCSE-equivalent rather than at A-level equivalent), I feel that people should have more opportunities to encounter science at school, whether segmented or not. At the same time, this science GCSE sounds terrible: whether it will actually be any good when taught is a different matter, but it doesn’t sound like it’s there to lay down the basics as a good intro science course should do. Shame, huh?

Incredibly, even the cesspool that is Comment is Free manages to produce an interesting comment discussion, proving that even it can be redeemable sometimes. And this is the kind of thing that Ben Goldacre usually has for lunch; if only the Guardian let him write more often.

Chris de Burgh – the new David Icke!

~ Inquisitor

No, really:

The 57-year-old, who is best known for his hit The Lady in Red, told TV host Gloria Hunniford of his gift.

During an interview on her religious show Heaven and Earth he confided: “I have found myself able to cure people with my hands.

“I met someone in the West Indies who was not able to walk. I put my hands on him and he was able to get up.”

Chris de Burgh? CHRIS DE BURGH?  The man who inflicted “Lady in Red” on us all can apparently cure people, instead of causing everlasting pain as it appears he usually does? Yeah, right.

What’s worse is that he’s actually apparently serious about this – according to a poster on the DVD Forums, he turned up on Aled Jones’s Radio 2 show and claimed he was surrounded by angels that protected him.

The last word on the subject, thankfully, will be provided by Bill Bailey via the medium of Youtube video:

Truth from fiction

~ Inquisitor

Sony Europe’s Jamie MacDonald:

Q: What would you say to consumers who like Sony and want to buy your products, but perhaps feel that because they’re in Europe they’re always last in line?

A: European consumers have shown that historically they don’t mind that, because they end up buying as many PlayStations, if not more, than the US and Japan. In Europe, it doesn’t seem that the release of our platforms after the US and Japan – in the long run – affects how consumers feel.

In other words: “Europe will take it as hard as we want to give it to them.” Nice of them to admit it.

Sony’s PS3 strategy really is a disaster waiting to happen, and a lot of it is the fault of SCE marketing: arrogant and obtuse, managing to put out exactly the messages they’re trying to dispel. They claim revolutionary graphics; those “screenshots” that aren’t renders look like Xbox-360 screenshots, or only slightly better. They claim a full online environment; every manufacturer is making their own, just like with the PS2, and most probably won’t be Xbox Live level. They claim their controller is entirely original; but it’s just a Dual Shock without the shock and with a tilt, as opposed to the real Wiivolution (which manages both). They’ve even forced a pro-PS3 magazine to take down a video of the system booting up.

And, of course, Sony is still stuck in the Dark Ages of European Pricing, as they are with the PSP. £425 (for the 60GB model) does not equal $599 (the US price for the 60GB model), it equals $800; we’re being stiffed by over a hundred pounds at current exchange rates. It doesn’t equal €599 either, although that’s only a £25 extra Ripoff Britain stiffing by SCEE (how nice of them) – and that one can’t account for VAT either.

[In the meantime, the Xbox-360 HD-DVD drive is £119, which is basically the US price ($199) plus VAT. Microsoft are being friendlier to us than Sony. Now that’s weird.]

Of course, Sony can still rescue themselves if they make decent games and people decide that they want the console, but by the current look of things they really don’t deserve it. Especially since the PS3 isn’t “coming out” until March, although it isn’t really coming out until then anywhere (only 400,000 units to the USA = instant $2000 eBay sales, you can count on it.) But right now, they’re screwed, and they’re doing it to themselves. If only they hadn’t said it would be out this year, and if only they didn’t exaggerate or screw Europeans on pricing, things might be going better for them… might.

[via Engadget.]

Mercury Music Prize 2006

~ Inquisitor

So, the albums in competition are low-key numbers from Richard Hawley, Thom Yorke and Isobel Campbell (the former of which should win); “popular act we’ve ignored previously” entries from Muse and Scritti Polliti, the Big Name entry from the Arctic Bloody Monkeys, and the “truly godawful, WTF they put it there over a decent album” entry from Hot Chip. And the real should-be winners, Kate Bush and the Pet Shop Boys, aren’t on the list.

SPOILER WARNING: Unfair winner revealed after the break…

Continue reading “Mercury Music Prize 2006” →

The greed wins out: or does it?

~ Inquisitor

If you don’t want football matches to be shown between 2:45 and 5:15, maybe you might wish not to allow TV companies to broadcast them. This thought has apparently not come to the SPL:

A licensee in Glasgow has been stopped from using a decoder to access and screen overseas broadcasts of Scottish Premier League matches.

The Court of Session in Edinburgh granted an interim interdict against The Spirit Bar in the east end.

[BBC News Scotland, “Licensee handed TV football ban“]

The basic situation is that all games are taped. Through a UEFA ruling, we can’t actually show most games live within the UK (those between 2:45 and 5:15 on Saturdays) because it’ll stop people being extorted by the clubs, but at the same time rights to all the games are sold to countries outside UK jurisdiction which aren’t subject to this limit.

Since the satellites that serve the Middle East are very much accessible from UK skies using a large (but standard) dish, you can entirely legally purchase a subscription from a Turkish satellite provider and thus gain access to SPL/EPL/other non-Sky football. Often with English commentary, too. A few people in the know – mostly satellite enthusiasts and pubs – have taken this up, and the football authorities are not happy.

Sky in particular are furious at this: the fees they charge pub-owners are astronomical (for a lesser service, too – the pub versions of Sky Sports are 4:3, not widescreen) and they don’t want to lose that easy, monopoly income. They’ve actually failed at this in the English courts, but obviously they’ve decided that the Scots might be an easier target.

Going straight to the point: it is not illegal for a pub-owner to posess a foreign decoder, the decoder owner pays the subscription fee to the foreign satellite company, the SPL/EPL/whatever are paid for the rights from the foreign broadcaster, and therefore if it gets picked up in Britain it should be none of their business. All prosecuting people does is shows us

  1. how silly the rule is
  2. how expensive Sky areand, most importantly,
  3. that more people really should do this

Yes! Buy a motorised dish! Screw Sky! Screw £30+ gate fees! Screw the SPL and EPL! And then maybe, just, they’ll see some sense.

Panic on the check-in at Heathrow

~ Inquisitor

What on earth is going on? Here we have John Reid making one of his regular “freedom can get tae f***” speeches while obviously knowing what’s going on in the background, a “terrorist plot” allegedly foiled by the security services, and thus the introduction of yet another kneejerk “security” feature that seems to be designed to make people’s lives hell whilst doing absolutely nothing to stop anything bad getting on the plane.

(I mean, explosives getting set off by an iPod? The amount of effort needed to get the battery out of one of those things would make any terrorist attack using one about as effective as Richard Reid’s shoebomb. Maybe a mobile, but that would take time to set up too – and would be just as effective in the hold.)

What’s amazing is that these ‘security’ additions haven’t been thought about at all: instead they’ve just gone for a blanket ban. If you’re facing a threat from “liquid explosives”, (although the current Net rumour is that it was a production-of-HCN chemical reaction designed to incapacitate the entire aircraft) you don’t need to ban laptops, MP3 players, cosmetics or, of course, any and all reading material. Instead, you just have to force people to hand over their bottles of “water”.

Which idiot civil servant thought that banning (or rather, not allowing) reading material was a brilliant idea, and how much of an idiot does John Reid have to be for forcing it through? It’s a tell-tale sign that all that’s going on is a serious kneejerk reaction of the type that does nothing to improve the safety of British citizens. Spending (say) 24 hours on a flight to Australia with young kids, no reading material, no games consoles, nothing other than ludicrously priced airline mineral water is not going to be fun for those families who have to go through with it, or anyone else on the aircraft.

I was close to the weight limit for check-in baggage when I left Britain for Germany at the beginning of July. I return at the beginning of September. If I have to put all my books and my laptop in check-in (along with my laptop’s backup drive, AC adaptor and restore discs, wonderful, no chance of anything going wrong there oh no), it’ll probably take it over Easyjet’s 20kg limit and I’ll get charged oversize baggage – no-one is waiving the fee, because they don’t have to. Worse than that, I’m going to be stuck in Berlin SXF for a long time with absolutely nothing to do, followed by being stuck on a two hour flight to Glasgow with absolutely nothing to do other than read Easyjet’s pathetic in-flight magazine, followed by hoping beyond hope that my bag comes through unharmed with my laptop intact. Don’t know about you, but I’m dreading it.

BBC Have Your Say seems to think that we should blame the terrorists for all the disruption and be thankful that we weren’t blown up, since obviously if we were allowed books some terrorist might find a way to break a window with a bound Qu’ran or whatever. If the plot was real, then I’m fine with the cancellations and the removal of water bottles et al; however, I won’t blame currently hypothetical “terrorists” for what British airline passengers are suffering right now. I will blame John Reid and BAA for being unmeasurably stupid, for instead of thinking about what was necessary to protect us they simply chose to follow the TSA-style kneejerk “Oh my god, let’s ban everything!” overreaction.

And this is his claim to be deputy leader? Pathetic.

If you liked this rant, take a look at Europhobia, where as always Nosemonkey lays it out in the best written of terms.

Q magazine: as usual, wrong in every possible way

~ Inquisitor

Since when the hell was “I’m Not In Love” a guilty pleasure? And since when was “Life Is A Rollercoaster” anything but dire? I haven’t bought a copy of Q since they started printing paparazzi photos, and this only reaffirms my decision.

BBC Have Your Say is on target for once (and for the most part, thankfully, ignoring Gary Glitter’s inclusion), as people admit their own embarassing guilty ‘pleasures’: “Star Trekkin'”, “Barbie Girl”, “The One And Only”, “Ra Ra Rasputin”, “Remember You’re A Womble”.

My occasionally perverse liking of most things 80s leads me to suggest “Material Girl”. Yes, that “Material Girl”. What’s yours?

Shortlist shortcomings

~ Inquisitor

The Mercury Music 2006 shortlist has now been announced, and it’s a bit of a downer. Kate Bush and the Pet Shop Boys are missing, despite both having released brililant albums in the last year; no Mogwai and no Boards of Canada. However, Hot Chip, the Ludicrously Overrated Arctic F***ing Monkeys and Editors are on despite the fact that their albums are distinctly average at best and excruciating at worst (Hot Chip, I’m looking at you). Lauren Laverne thinks it’s a “really good list”, which says everything.

Thom Yorke, please. Wouldn’t mind Muse either. Still should have been Aerial.