Video games I want to play

I was looking through the E3 coverage tonight and thinking about what kind of video games I'd like to play that I just haven't seen done right in years. All of them have been done before, but none of these are things I feel have been realized to their full potential. There are lots of things that are just begging to be made into really great games and they just haven't been. I really don't think this post is going to influence anyone to actually make these games, but please indulge me while I piss into the wind. Okay?

Surfing: This is probably a tough one to really pull off, but it's been done in the past, and pretty well. Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer was pretty much the best you could've hoped for in a surfing game at the time. What I'd like to see from something like this is a semi-realistic approach along the lines of Skate (although with the controls tailored to surfing instead of skateboarding, in an equally intuitive, non-gimmicky way), and also like Skate, a learning curve that rewards a prior understanding of the sport, and makes the sport easier for newcomers to understand as they pick up the game. The main challenges I could see with this would be accurately representing the sport in a way that's fun to play, and also making the actual gameplay varied enough to be worth the purchase to people used to land-based "extreme sports" games. My suggestion would be lots of unlockable boards and wetsuits/shorts/etc. and multiple "real world" beaches with their own algorithms for generating waves that mimic the ideal conditions present at each of those beaches in real life. I think this approach, which probably seems rather dated in a way, is still the ideal for this kind of game (a "sandbox" approach would probably just be awkward and serve only to destroy the immersiveness of the experience). Another problem I could see is defining gameplay objectives without getting too "arcade" with it. I definitely feel that an emphasis on realism, and a system for producing photos and videos along the lines of Skate would be essential here. I could see, for example, something like Skate 2, where you compete against professional surfers in competitions and make videos for sponsorships and cash to unlock new boards and clothing. Of all the ideas I have here, this would probably, I think, be the hardest to implement.

Speedboat racing: Anyone who's ever seen Live and Let Die wants this game to be made. But I think for it to be done right, it needs to go above and beyond the call of duty for a game like this. First off, realistic driving physics and actual licensed boats, past and present. The ability to upgrade and tinker like in Gran Turismo would also go a long way. Really, it's a pretty simple idea I think. Just one that hasn't really been implemented. Add a strong online component and you'd have solid gold.


Rugby: I know, another sports game. But rugby is a sport that's never really gotten a good, solid video game adaptation, despite being far, far more entertaining to watch than sports that have really excellent video games based on them (American football, baseball, and golf come to mind). That said, I have to wonder what's so hard about making a good rugby sim. I know EA sports has made one in the past, but it's never really been good. This needs to change. Are you listening EA? I know you're making Rugby 2012 right now. For fuck's sake, don't screw it up!

Really, none of these ideas is really anything too special. In fact, almost all of them could be done in a way that would feel fairly familiar or at least be somewhat intuitive to pick up for anyone who's been playing video games for a few years. But what I'd like to see is a fresh approach that makes them all relevant genres again.

A quick anecdotal lesson in why skepticism is important.

Today I found out my sister's cat had feline leukemia. This was entirely preventable. She loves those cats like they're her kids. She takes great care of them overall, and even buys them this stupidly expensive organic pet food that I have no idea how she affords.

The reason her cat got feline leukemia is related to that last point. The lady who sells it to her (owns a pet food store called Bark and Purr here in Boise, which I urge everyone to boycott for reasons I'm about to get into) convinced her that her cats do not need to get their vaccinations every year. I don't know what her reasoning behind this is, and frankly, I don't care. The bottom line is, feline leukemia is preventable. So is FIV. So are a lot of other diseases cats get. My stance on this is that if you can't get your pet the proper immunizations and can't provide proper care (not to mention spaying and neutering), don't own one. Or if you must, there are lots of great pets in animal shelters whose shots are current already. But anyway, I'm getting away from my point.

There's a lesson to be learned, here. This reminded me of the kind of behavior exhibited by people like Jenny McCarthy who are trying to convince America that putting ourselves at risk of dying of some of the most horrifically painful diseases nature has to offer is preferable to the possibility (based on a paper with no scientific credibility, even among the scientists who did the study) that we might get autism. I'm sick of seeing people (especially celebrities) handed credibility to spread their crackpot ideas while real scientists and doctors are fighting an uphill battle to get anyone to even listen to what they have to say about health care. So here's a hint: your doctor went to medical school. He has a highly advanced degree and passed classes that would make your head explode. Jenny McCarthy was in Scary Movie 3. Compare the credentials for yourself.

My point is, consider your source before you believe things. A lot of people have got this down already. A surprising number, however, will believe pretty much any stupid thing someone tells them, especially if it's in print or on TV or sharted out of a congressman's mouth (fun fact: a seat in congress is not the same thing as credibility). In fact, don't even believe anything I say without looking into it. While this is not always the case, your life or the life of someone you care about might depend on it. Whether it's you, your kid, your pet, your best friend, your neighbor down the street, or whoever. There are lots of people out there trying to make money off of things that have potential to be incredibly harmful, and it's up to everyone to make sure they don't get paid for it.

This is all I feel it necessary to say about Glenn Beck

Following the whole Glenn Beck thing has become a favorite pastime for conservatives and liberals alike. I guess I'm mostly addressing the latter here, because I don't feel I'm actually capable of changing peoples' minds about the actual content of what he has to say. People have all got their minds made up on that by now. While I disagree with it, that's not really what I have a problem with. What I have a problem with is what a childish little prick the guy is.

Glenn Beck thrives on attention, and he likes to get it through overblown appeals to emotion, shock tactics, and saying unbelievably "politically incorrect" (read: ignorant) things. His show is all about the gimmicks. Lots of silly drawings and those sorts of things. His show is Howard Stern meets Bill O'Reilly with a dash of low-brow childrens' TV. Fox has found a winning formula, and I'm honestly sort of disgusted by it. The difference is, no one takes Howard Stern seriously past the age of about 13 when they realize how much of a tool the guy is. On the other hand, every time Glenn Beck says something stupid, I'm hearing about it for a week, mostly from liberals who somehow can't believe he said it, as if it even matters that he said it.

So what I propose is we just stop talking about the guy. I don't give a shit what he has to say, and, at this point, taking him seriously enough to respond to him is giving him far more credit than he deserves. We've got real issues to deal with in this country, and responding to every crackpot cable news throws our way is really pretty useless. The more we talk about Glenn Beck, the longer his show stays on the air. Given that he thrives on this sort of attention, I figure the perfect way to get him to just go away would be to stop giving it to him. If we start treating him like the obnoxious, attention-starved child he is rather than the serious political voice he's not, he'll go away a lot faster than if we keep going on about the guy.

That said, this is the only post I'll make about Glenn Beck.

Medical marijuana, and why I don't support it.

More and more states are legalizing medical marijuana lately. With each election, it seems like one or two more pass a medical marijuana bill. This is commonly seen as a good thing by people who are against the prohibition. And I can see why. It shows a greater acceptance of marijuana by the general public and that their efforts are actually accomplishing something rather than just amounting to piss in the wind.

To me, it seems like medical pot is just distracting from the larger issues the people affected by the prohibition face. Rather than actually facing the issue head on, the medical marijuana movement seems more content to try to "take down Big Pharma" (something I commonly hear from people who buy into other horseshit like homeopathy or naturopathy - but that's a post for another day) and make excuses for self-medication in an attempt to legitimize it by trying to make the law regard it as "real medicine." The problem is, thanks to its potential for abuse, the difficulty of controlling dosages, and the rather underwhelming medical literature on its supposedly beneficial effects, most real, professional doctors would never, ever recommend that people use weed for anything. It would be extremely unethical to prescribe marijuana when something else would be better suited to a person's condition. This would open the door for less scrupulous doctors to prescribe weed to pretty much anyone, which isn't that bad for most people, but is actually horrible in cases where it would actually be harmful for their patient to not be on a real medication, and these doctors would make a lot of money just from saying what their patients want to hear. "Alternative" (non-scientific) medicine would be allowed to thrive, and at the end of the day, I see it doing more harm than good.

On top of that, I don't really see what legalizing medical pot would change for the rest of us. Even if pot was changed from a schedule I drug to a schedule II (which, thanks to the potential for abuse, is where it would likely end up, alongside other commonly abused prescription drugs like oxycodone), it would still be a crime to have it without a prescription. While the penalties would probably change, due to the rescheduling, there would still be penalties, and to remove those would be to start the whole fight all over again. My main problem is that the medical marijuana movement ignores the wider issues of prohibition. Mostly the issue of whether it's any of the government's business what a responsible adult puts in their body (it's important to distinguish between responsible adults and irresponsible adults, the same way we do with people who drink alcohol), but also the problems caused by prohibition itself. Would crime decrease because of medical pot? I don't think so. Recreational users will still be buying from criminals (or friends on medical marijuana who would then become criminals). Drug gangs will still thrive. The legal system would still be dealing with lots of harmless individuals, who, on the other hand would sometimes have to be forced to deal with actual criminals just to get high.

The problem here is that marijuana isn't harmless. All psychoactive substances need to be treated with due respect, and spreading the myth that marijuana will never cause any health problems or that it's equivalent to any medicine specifically made for a given purpose is in pretty direct violation of that respect. As of right now, the only really respectful or honest use of marijuana is recreational (hemp, however, is another story entirely). The legalization movement has been pretty terrible about spreading misinformation about weed, and in the end it's hurting the entire movement. I support legalization on the grounds that it's none of the government's business what responsible adults put in their bodies, on the grounds that it's (probably) not any more harmful than recreational drugs that are legal, and on the grounds that enforcing prohibitions is a waste of time and money that could be spent fighting real crime. I also think it's a waste of our time to fight for medical marijuana when we should be trying to put decriminalization bills on election day ballots or pushing for legalization in general. Until then, I'm all for looking into medical applications that are actually more legitimate. But it should never distract from the larger issue.

The golden rule and you: on celebrity gossip

This week I've heard more about Tiger Woods than I ever cared to. Personally, I think it would be a great step toward a better world if every source of celebrity gossip all went under in unison. Maybe we could fill the then-bare supermarket checkout lines with back issues of the tabloids that actually had the decency to be funny, like the Weekly World News, or maybe even some delicious candy. Alas, this will never be the case, but a man can dream.

Anyway, the more I hear about Tiger Woods, the more I feel compelled to tell people straight up at the first mention of his name that I don't give a shit about his private life. Of course, this is usually met with some bullshit excuse like "but think of the sponsors!" and "Tiger Woods is a public figure, and doesn't get the same privacy as the rest of us!" and "Tiger Woods came forward and said it himself!" Well, except the sponsors are being screwed by the tabloids just as hard as Tiger woods is, Tiger Woods is human being and fame does not change that, and he didn't come out to the public about it himself. Like many other things, Tiger Woods was outed by unscrupulous gossip magazines who were motivated to shoehorn themselves into his private affairs by the money they were going to make from the lucrative industry built around people being unable to just mind their own goddamn business.

So how this relates to the title of the post: imagine your neighbor is constantly spying on you. Sitting at their window with binoculars, watching who comes and goes from your house. Following you around. Taking pictures of you. Trying to find out anything they can that could possibly embarass you. Generally, I'd imagine people wouldn't be too happy about this, whether they're doing anything society might frown upon or not. This is exactly what you're supporting when you buy into celebrity gossip rags and all that trash.

I understand people wanting to know everything about the famous people they hear about. Don't get me wrong. People have a natural curiosity about each other. It's the same curiosity that leads me to be concerned when I see an ambulance or fire truck in my neighborhood. That's completely fine. The problem is when indulging that curiosity causes undue suffering to others. In this case, Tiger Woods' private marital problems have come under public scrutiny when, ideally, they'd be a private issue between him and his family.

My point is, before you pass judgement or try to paint Tiger Woods as some sort of amoral figure who stands against everything society holds dear, put yourself in his shoes. And no cop-out excuses like "I wouldn't do what Tiger Woods did." Imagine you did. Then, honestly (this part is important - no "I'd want to be shot in the face for being a dick" because no, you fucking wouldn't) think about how you would prefer to be treated. Then extend that respect to him.

Godspeed to the horny repair man. You are missed.

I was thinking a while ago about the many reasons that the 70's were awesome. The fashion and the music, of course. The cars, the movies, the well-made electronics. But there's one thing a lot of people forget about: the porn.

You see, in an era of low budget internet porn, and major studios competing to put out as much porn as cheaply as possible, something has been lost. Sure, the fucking is still there, but what about the story? What about the acting?

You see, in the 70's, these things were the best thing about porn. They provided motivation. There was drama. There was feeling. Where modern porn has two people fucking just because, 70's porn had the repair man reaming the lonely housewife just because (there would usually be some reference to "fixing the plumbing" here, but really, he was just horny).

But now, where is the repair man? Out of work. He's on a park bench, track marks all over his arms and legs and eyeballs and that vein right under his dick, feeding the pigeons, reminiscing about the glory days he'll never get back.

So next time you beat off to some hot XXX action, please, think of the repair man.

The "Founding Fathers" wore clothes that we would find unfashionable in modern times

To be honest, blogging seems sort of awkward to me, these days. My brain is so used to expressing thoughts in 140 characters or less (yes, I love Twitter; I'll admit it freely), that I started this blog in an effort to get away from that. And then I start getting really bad about actually updating it. Go figure. Anyway, I'm going to try to get better at it.

Anyway, every time we hear someone talk about politics, we always eventually hear things about what the "founding fathers" supposedly wanted. This has always bothered me for a number of reasons. First off, an argument from authority alone is pretty meaningless from a logical standpoint. Not to mention the sheer volume of misattributed quotes and the number of people both sides of any given issue can somehow claim for their side. And besides, those people knew what they wanted for America, but is it really what's best for America? You'd probably find someone even among them who would disagree with you.

But more importantly, what bothers me about these arguments is that they are completely irrelevant. Maybe George Washington or Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson or John Adams or whoever was on your side. At this point, I have to ask: so what? A lot of people seem to forget that cultural attitudes tend to change over the course of a couple hundred years. A lot of people also seem to give undue weight to something just because it was written earlier than something else, as if the age of a thought has anything to do with its quality.

But a lot has changed since the constitution was written, a lot of it completely unforseeable from that far in the past. We stopped allowing people to own slaves. We allowed the people who were slaves to vote. Then we allowed women to vote. And that's not all. We've also progressed technologically. Laws regarding newspapers and literature are not sufficient when it comes to things like the internet. And transportation laws of the time could never have forseen things like the airplane (at least, not as we know it). On top of that, when the constitution was written, there were 13 states rather than 50, and the United States held a distinctly different place in the world than it does now.

That said, it doesn't really matter what anyone speculates the "founding fathers" might have thought about any given issue. They left us with only one document that actually governs this country, and that's the only one that really matters. The age of our constitution can be attributed not to it having been written exactly right the first time (and it definitely wasn't, or we wouldn't still be arguing about whose side it's supposedly on), but to the fact that it allowed for amendments to be made, to adapt to modern times. The best thing they ever did for this country was leaving the future to the people who would inhabit it.

So next time you want to tell someone that you're right because some historical figure wrote something that can be taken to be in favor of your side, do everyone a favor and construct a better argument. If that's the best you have, then you might consider re-evaluating your position, because it's probably not a very strong one.