games and an Amazon complaint
Dec. 1st, 2005 09:14 pm
Wow, it was so awesome how today Amazon decided to tell me the order containing my Xmas gifts for my sister and brother-in-law along with my volume of RK 20 wouldn't arrive until after the 24th, then shipped it this evening. I had to hunt up their customer service number, which they don't display on the site, to determine that I'd be getting the stuff; even though I can check the mailing status now, it still gives me the notice about it not arriving till after the 24th. Lovely. I figure it's the apparently-desperately-scarce RK volume (not on shelves at any stores I've checked in town) that's causing this - I guess people who'd been sitting out the manga until now are suddenly snapping it up because they've heard it's into Jinchuu, which is fine and all but I NEED MINE FIRST. Also, I need it to not give me heart attacks about having to buy duplicate gifts to the tune of nearly fifty bucks; when I got the original "your package was delayed" notice, I went to the site to cancel it and found I couldn't. Because they were packing it to ship but didn't see fit to LET THAT BE SHOWN ON THE SITE.
So I guess in this very special Xmas episode I've learned a valuable lesson about selfishly packaging things for me in with gifts. And about the risks I run trying to avoid holiday traffic by ordering online...
Had a shockingly restful day at work; a computer glitch severely limited how much work we could do, so we all kicked back and played puzzle games on Yahoo for most of the day. I don't mind Whiny near as much when she's not supposed to be working. Because I had all this free time, I was able to go meandering and find a fair number of links I actually feel like bothering to post about: This one about DRM hurting CD sales, HUZZAH, another about a family group bitching about enforcement of ESRB ratings, a related one in which Hillary Clinton laughs merrily at the idea that maybe we should just let the Republicans be the Big Brother party since they're so hot for the job (okay, technically the article is about a bill that'd make ESRB ratings legally enforceable, but that's the subtext. More on the stupidity in a little bit) and from there I got to this one about a bugfuck nuts California gaming law.
My first reaction to the California law was, first, "well, hell, that just describes what I wouldn't let my hypothetical/eventual children play," then I thought "so, wait, it's okay to sexually assault or torture animals in these games?" and then I thought of the time, in college, a friend was playing Wild Arms, that part where there's a very large dog - I think it's actually a demon or something, I forget, but she found that she could use Jack's grappling hook while standing very close behind the dog of unusual size and make it appear he was humping it, and this entertained her like you would not believe. I'm pretty sure she didn't go around molesting Rottweilers as a rule, though. Anyway. Insert usual arguments here about game violence not being necessarily inked to real-world violence, parents needing to pay attention to what their kids play (like I said, I wouldn't want my eventual children playing intensely violent games, but I'd keep an eye on that myself) and add in a new one - it looks like the law would do nothing about parents who don't bother to check out content and just buy the games for their kids... You can't require people to be attentive parents, and you can't censor game content, so if the actual goal is to ensure children never play mature-content games, this is all a waste of time. If it's a goal without much merit, it's even more of a waste of time.
The other two, relying more heavily on ESRB ratings, just call for the usual "ESRB ratings are on CRACK, where was the mature sexual content in Parasite Eve?" I don't tend to think the ratings are deceptive, all in all, but they're weird. Also, while I never had any highly negative feelings toward Hillary Clinton before, she is doing her damnedest to fix that.
In other gaming news, I finally managed, in restarting Suikoden IV, to find the option to turn the voice volume all the way down. It's so much more bearable this way! Now, it's just a game with bad graphics and a hero with the stupidest run in all creation, rather than a carefully calculated ploy to drive me away from all Konami products for all time!
So I guess in this very special Xmas episode I've learned a valuable lesson about selfishly packaging things for me in with gifts. And about the risks I run trying to avoid holiday traffic by ordering online...
Had a shockingly restful day at work; a computer glitch severely limited how much work we could do, so we all kicked back and played puzzle games on Yahoo for most of the day. I don't mind Whiny near as much when she's not supposed to be working. Because I had all this free time, I was able to go meandering and find a fair number of links I actually feel like bothering to post about: This one about DRM hurting CD sales, HUZZAH, another about a family group bitching about enforcement of ESRB ratings, a related one in which Hillary Clinton laughs merrily at the idea that maybe we should just let the Republicans be the Big Brother party since they're so hot for the job (okay, technically the article is about a bill that'd make ESRB ratings legally enforceable, but that's the subtext. More on the stupidity in a little bit) and from there I got to this one about a bugfuck nuts California gaming law.
My first reaction to the California law was, first, "well, hell, that just describes what I wouldn't let my hypothetical/eventual children play," then I thought "so, wait, it's okay to sexually assault or torture animals in these games?" and then I thought of the time, in college, a friend was playing Wild Arms, that part where there's a very large dog - I think it's actually a demon or something, I forget, but she found that she could use Jack's grappling hook while standing very close behind the dog of unusual size and make it appear he was humping it, and this entertained her like you would not believe. I'm pretty sure she didn't go around molesting Rottweilers as a rule, though. Anyway. Insert usual arguments here about game violence not being necessarily inked to real-world violence, parents needing to pay attention to what their kids play (like I said, I wouldn't want my eventual children playing intensely violent games, but I'd keep an eye on that myself) and add in a new one - it looks like the law would do nothing about parents who don't bother to check out content and just buy the games for their kids... You can't require people to be attentive parents, and you can't censor game content, so if the actual goal is to ensure children never play mature-content games, this is all a waste of time. If it's a goal without much merit, it's even more of a waste of time.
The other two, relying more heavily on ESRB ratings, just call for the usual "ESRB ratings are on CRACK, where was the mature sexual content in Parasite Eve?" I don't tend to think the ratings are deceptive, all in all, but they're weird. Also, while I never had any highly negative feelings toward Hillary Clinton before, she is doing her damnedest to fix that.
In other gaming news, I finally managed, in restarting Suikoden IV, to find the option to turn the voice volume all the way down. It's so much more bearable this way! Now, it's just a game with bad graphics and a hero with the stupidest run in all creation, rather than a carefully calculated ploy to drive me away from all Konami products for all time!