What Would Matt Do

That’s an absolutely horrible statement to make in justifying anything. I know it is, and yet, this guy makes me want to hold him down and write it on his forehead:

But goddamit, am I the only one who think it’s morally disturbing to make a game that celebrates COLONIZATION? It’s ironic, actually, because just a few months ago a friend sent me a link to some information about the original "Colonization" game from 1994 (pictured left) that this one updates. At first, I thought it had to be a joke, but sure enough, it was real. However, I dismissed it as a relic from a time when neither developers nor players took videogames seriously as media with moral implications.

But the idea that 2K and Firaxis and Sid Meier himself would make and release a game in the year 2008 that is not only about colonization, but celebrates it by having the player control the people doing the colonizing is truly mind boggling.

There are more than a few ways to refute this argument.

You could go with, I didn’t hear you say anything as you played WWII games where you celebrated the killing of other human beings over and over in a very grotesque manner (some call it war). I didn’t hear you complaining when you played Civilization where you potentially do almost the same thing you’re going to be doing Colonization, but it’s called a different name. I didn’t hear you complaining as you played evil races doing evil things in numerous games. I didn’t hear you complaining when you played any of the Age of Empires games.

Or you could go with, it’s just a game. No matter the subject matter, it is what you make of it. If you find it personally offensive, don’t play it. It’s not actually real you don’t actually have to do any raping and pillaging. You don’t have spread diseases to wipe out whole nations and you don’t have to get your PC panties all in a bunch about it.

What I’d really say though, don’t be dumb. Just like FPS games aren’t murder simulators, this isn’t a genocide simulator. If you really can’t see that, the least you can do is stop posting your trollish type posts on the internet where I’m subjected to reading them. I mean, I know the 1st amendment protects your freedom of speech, but if you had any morals, you wouldn’t post things like this:

And yes, before anyone brings it up, I believe in the First Amendment. Of course 2K has the right to release it. Nobody should stop them from doing so. But I think personally think they shouldn’t release it, if it’s at all what it appears to be based on the early marketing.

What Would Matt Do: Your forehead, my marker, bitchlips.

I can’t say for sure, but this sounds like maybe they are starting to get the idea that running developers liked crazed gerbils on crack isn’t the best way:

"We were torturing a very talented group of people up in Vancouver, which makes it harder to be as innovative every year. So, I think we are going to get better from here.

"I’m confident that Undercover is a much better game than Pro Street, and I expect that from this point forward they will do a lot better."

So they split up the team, added more people and made the development cycle longer. EA who? Were I an EA developer though I might be a bit worried about the second statement, but hopefully all goes well.

What Would Matt Do: If this keeps up, I’m going to have to cross them off my Idiots Forever™ list. That will just leave Sony on there. We wouldn’t want them to get lonely, right?

(the original statement from Nintendo for anyone that missed it)

I know, it’s not his normal forte, but unless he was drunk (which I guess is possible at 4:35pm when he posted), he’s saying smart things while sober now. I’m not real sure how to take that. I think I’ll roll with his angry self and agree completely with his statements on Nintendo:

a- arrogance at a level that should make Nintendo- if this statement reflects the core of the company- very ashamed.
b- a marketing person who has no real clue about games and thinks she’s being cute and coy by dissing the ‘geeks’ cause she thinks the mainstream loves them now….if this is the case, she really needs someone to sit her down and explain to her which side her fucking toast has been buttered on for years and will eventually get back to being buttered on….

It’s a ludicrious thing to say. Even if Nintendo as a whole believes it to be true, why would you tell the hardcore to fuck off? Definitely not the brightest thing they’ve ever done. Maybe they accidently copied one of Sony’s plays from the book of The Customer Is Stupid And We Hates Them™.

What Would Matt Do: To be fair to Jaffe, I don’t always disagree with him, I just think he’s a bit of a dick. At least that’s how he comes across in the game media. Maybe he’s really sunshine and love in person. Maybe.

(edit: added missing link to Jaffe’s blog. urk)

(I have no idea who made this image, but if you see it and want credit, just let me know. It’s goodness)

If you pay attention to the intarwebs, you’ve heard of Limbo of the Lost by now. I first heard about it two or so days ago, when the story broke that Majestic Studios may have stolen some artwork from Oblivion. By may have, I mean it’s obvious that they did and in a very brash, uncaring manner. They essentially took screenshots of whole rooms in Oblivion and put them in their game. Yeah, I agree, that’s pretty ballsy. Don’t get fooled though, these guys have much bigger balls than that.

Following the story from there, it appears they’ve stolen assets (and not just art but audio) from many games. RPS says:

It gets better. Neogaf posters have been spotting loads more, including scenes that appear to be from Silent Hill 4, Painkiller and Return To Castle Wolfenstein, and screen decor from Diablo 2, while at Just Adventure someone has claimed spoken dialogue has been lifted from Rune. A JA poster also spotted this story about the motley crew behind the game.

RPS readers reckon they’ve spotted more similarities, including further Thief 3 nabs, Pirates of the Caribbean game FMV, and bits from Crysis, Spawn, BioShock, UT2004, and Baldur’s Gate, although we can’t verify any of them yet. Collect them all!

That’s just pure awesome. This game wasn’t some mod released on fileplanet and never seen again, this is a product you can go to EB and buy on the shelves. Well, maybe you can:

Tri Synergy is just as shocked as everyone else is by the recent screenshot comparisons. At no point during our dealings with Majestic Studios up until the point that the comparison was first publicly made by a third party did we have any knowledge of these similarities. Additionally, Tri Synergy will discontinue distribution of Limbo of the Lost in both retail and online outlets.

I don’t really know what to say to/about Tri-Synergy. Should they have noticed that the game used art from multiple AAA titles all over it’s game? Yeah. Should they be punished for not realizing it? I don’t know. But I can almost guarantee they will. By copyright law, companies have to pursue and defend their copyrighted materials. Going to be interesting to see the fall out of this to say the least.

As you might expect though, that’s not the whole story. You see, this game has been in development since the early 90’s apparently. It used to be a text adventure set to go on the Amiga. The Amiga. This game has been in development longer than DNF (I didn’t even know that was possible).

The whole thing is just amazing. It’s stunning that a game made it all the way to store shelves having so obviously copied artwork from multiple places. It’s pure awesome that Majestic studios thought they could get away with this. They are most obviously crazy:

Apparently, the developer has been pretending to be a player of the game on various adventure forums telling everyone how incredible the game is. Then he sent a review copy to one of them, and the reviewer helped out someone who was stuck in it. Then the developer pretending to be a player started ripping into the reviewer for letting hints out, and then posted as himself, the developer, supporting himself pretending to be a player.

Then… they figured out the "player" and the "developer" were the same person by seeing that their IPs were the same… so the developer said that it was a beta tester and posted as a player without his knowledge.

It’s not the first time something like that has been done on the internet, but if you add that in with all of the other stuff…. I can’t honestly can’t wait to hear more about all of this.

Live this incident up ladies and gents. We may not ever see another release of a game filled with so much insane all at once. We may not see such a blatant rip off mixed with balls the size of sun in our life times. As AC/DC says, "[…]we’ve got the biggest balls of them all."

What Would Matt Do: I really have no words to explain this. It’s utterly awesome. I eagerly await the behind the scenes and the fallout. This is already an awesome trainwreck. Lets see what happens when they poor oil on it (go to trial, dig up details, etc).

I’m actually a big Microsoft fan, mainly because I use their operating system, program in their languages and play games with their Games for Windows logo on them. I even worked there for a bit. But none of that stops me from agreeing with a Mr. Angry on this issue:

The thing that has gotten me pissed off about this all over again is news that Microsoft have decided to fuck over their customers  to an extent that is in no way required by law in an attempt to suck up to big media companies.  Some of the provisions of the DMCA and other laws proposed around the world are outrageous.  But this act of bastardry is not even a requirement, despite the weasel talk coming out of Microsoft.

If you read the story linked, it tells that Microsoft didn’t have to stop Vista from recording shows. There is no law. The law that the cable companies wanted to try to get required by the FCC failed. Why? Because it’s draconian and wrong. The funny part is that the FCC suggested, in the shot down requirement, that people could still record even with the flag, but it should be DRMed so they couldn’t pass it around. What did MIcrosoft do? Just make so you can’t record it all, problem solved!

What a pile of horse shit.

What Would Matt Do: Ugh, Microsoft… I wonder how much NBC paid you to put this feature in…