Listen to Erathoniel ranting on and on in good ol' conservative Christian fashion.
All Gaming Today
Published on May 10, 2008 By erathoniel In Gaming

    Don't Shoot the Fish

    Now, I've got a question for ESRB (the darn games raters). Why is it that for Uncharted: Drake's Fortune there is gratuitous bloodshed of human life, but the fish cannot be killed? Why? Because you said it would affect the rating. Is a totally realistic game M just because you can kill anything that walks, or due to its actual content? Why is it that anything goes so long as it's not so "insensitive", but a T game can have a body count of 10,000 people, but if ten animals are killed, it gets an M? Something smells fishy.

    Granted, games are interactive, but have you ever considered that shooting a virtual animal will have much less consequence than shooting a virtual person? That is a true crisis, that you would devalue life of humans to the extent where we are down to being able to kill each other, but not animals?

    Open Letter To EA Games

    You know that all your copy protection is doing is promoting piracy, right? What ends up happening when you implement a hard-core system of copy protection is that the normal users get so darn annoyed that they have no choice but to crack your software. Now, I'm no professional, but I can rip all your sound and music assets out of any game you've ever made with one simple, freeware, open source tool. And it's not breaking into the files. It's just letting the game play them. What you seem not to understand is this:

    People have always pirated games. They always will. Accept that. If you cannot, you will lose your legitimate userbase due to the fact that they're too fed up with the draconian system.

    Also, you do realize that I refuse to buy pretty much any of your games with a year on the title because of three reasons: First, what I end up doing is paying you to watch ads, and they're not even blended in nicely. Second, they're the same game for the fiftieth time straight. I really couldn't care less about your shovelware. Third, there are better free/open-source games with lower system requirements, better or equal graphics, and they actually push the gamplay envelope. Why do I buy the conventional games you make when I can get an open-source or shovelware version for fractions of the price and the same level of enjoyment?

    Granted, I like Need For Speed (Most Wanted, until my computer started hatin' it), and Battlefield 2142 (though my computer started hatin' it also), but Tremulous takes the place of both of those easily.

    Why Open Source Games are Better

    Now, this is simply my way of saying why Open Source/Freeware/Indie games (though it's guaranteed acurate for Open Source games) are better than mainstream games (commercial, free-to-play). First, these small games need to overcome their $100M budget competitors somehow, and they do it by simple introspection. Not "What makes a good FPS?" but "What do we want this game to be?". I thank id for this entirely, because without them so many Q3 and Q2 engine games that are awesome (Tremulous, Warsow, others), would not exist without their open-sourcing. You make a T game, I'll buy it. A small team of game developers will think outside the box. They cannot do the fancy scripting or graphics of big companies, but they can try as hard as they can to make an enjoyable game.

    Take a mainstream game. It's good, solid, and decent, but unless it's a pioneer franchise (TES being a notable example), it's the same old crud you bought last year. Nothing new, nothing great. However, take Tremulous. It's a demigod among games. It has the strategy and action of any game, combining them perfectly. It has unbalanced sides, a good community, Q3 engine, and good graphics. Quite simply, Tremulous and other low-budget games are beating out high-budget games simply because the low-budget games are not afraid to cater to niche denominations, put in new gameplay trends, and open up development to their community. Through this, you have a game that is durable, flexible, and, best of all, not $60 with in-game ads.


Comments
on May 13, 2008
Now, I've got a question for ESRB (the darn games raters). Why is it that for Uncharted: Drake's Fortune there is gratuitous bloodshed of human life, but the fish cannot be killed? Why? Because you said it would affect the rating. Is a totally realistic game M just because you can kill anything that walks, or due to its actual content? Why is it that anything goes so long as it's not so "insensitive", but a T game can have a body count of 10,000 people, but if ten animals are killed, it gets an M? Something smells fishy.

Granted, games are interactive, but have you ever considered that shooting a virtual animal will have much less consequence than shooting a virtual person? That is a true crisis, that you would devalue life of humans to the extent where we are down to being able to kill each other, but not animals?


Are the fish in this game actively trying to kill you? Are they attacking and trying to your harm your character? Are the enemies doing that?
That's the difference between killing animals and people in games. In video games like Uncharted the people you kill are, for lack of a better term, bad guys. They are aggressive, mean and they are doing their best to kill you. That gives you the right to kill hem back. But what would the fish be doing to you to deserve death? Nothing - it would simply be sadistic animal cruelty to kill them.
on May 13, 2008

Yes, but then when you sneak up on a guy and kill him, is it the same?

If you play a game with the intent of killing people, and you know it's why the game is bought, but the enemies may not be attacking you first. In almost any game you can kill a civilian as well as an opponent.

Animals are a part of the environment, sure, and do not need to be killed, but if you're putting players in a bloody kill-fest anyways, does it matter? I've played the demo for Uncharted, and the human opponents seemed to me to be dehumanized to the point where they are killable and animals are not. It is a case of political correctness. Nobody's gonna take up animal abuse because a game lets them shoot a darned fish, as well as dozens of people.