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The Seperation of Church and Gamers!

Posted on January 16, 2008 by Brian under Games, Life, News, Web.

For those of you that are not up to date on issues in the gaming world, there is a war on for gamer’s rights. That’s correct, a war! Currently there are several religious factions that feel that they need to have a hand in the business of everyone else in the world, and since the government is not doing the things they want, they are just going to try to take over the government.

Currently Kevin McCullough, an uber religious zealot in my opinion, is leading a political campaign to BAN all video games that HE feels is inappropriate for ANYONE. In an article on Town Hall.com he attacks a very popular video game called Mass Effect created by the company Bioware. In this game you are a character of your own creation that works their way through a 40+ hour long story line. In this story there are a few events that you have the ability to have sexual relations with another character. Kevin McCullough states in his interview with Town Hall and directed apparently to the Presidential Candidates.

“I know that they all probably assume they have better, much more important, urgent, timely, things to campaign on, but I sure would like to get their individual takes on the new video game that one company is marketing to fifteen year old boys.

It’s called “Mass Effect” and it allows its players – universally male no doubt – to engage in the most realistic sex acts ever conceived. One can custom design the shape, form, bodies, race, hair style, breast size of the images they wish to “engage” and then watch in crystal clear, LCD, 54 inch screen, HD clarity as the video game “persons” hump in every form, format, multiple, gender-oriented possibility they can think of.”

First I would like to address the issue of the game being targeted to 15 year old boys. I want to know where his research came from for this claim. If you look at the package and on the website itself as well as anyplace that sells games online, you can clearly see that the game holds an ESRB rating of M for MATURE. That means that no one under the age of 17 is allowed to buy this game. So unless the parents ignore the rating on the package (or just don’t care) and buy the game without doing the research to find out what the content is like (this is not a surprise, we read stories of this every day) then a 15 year old child should not be purchasing this game at all. All of the stores that I have been to card even me a 30+ year old gamer before purchasing a mature rated game. If you are a parent and you did purchase the game without doing the research first, shame on you and don’t bitch. It’s your own fault that you didn’t do the research before buying the game for your kid.

Second, where is the statistics showing that all gamers are Male? He makes the comment ” universally male no doubt “. When did religion become so sexist? I play a lot of different games ranging from Console to PC games and if you look online the numbers are about even when it comes to Male/Female players. He should really get out more often and get some new statistics; I think he is still using reports from the “Super Mario” days of gaming.

Next we have the claim that every 15 year old gamer has a big screen HD-LCD in their room. As he talks about the ability to create these characters he goes on to say that the kids can then watch these sex acts in “crystal clear, LCD, 54 inch screen, HD clarity”. Like every 15 year old gamer has a 54 in LCD in their room, for that matter he makes it sound like EVERY gamer has a 54 in LCD in their room. Well let me tell you that some of us are not so lucky to afford the nice 54 in LCD TV. Some of us still play on conventional TV’s. To assume that everyone can afford luxuries such as this is ridiculous. You should have chosen your words a little more carefully Kevin McCullough!

And let’s not forget the comment he makes in the very beginning when he starts out by stating “I know that they all probably assume they have better, much more important, urgent, timely, things to campaign on”. Sure, lets all drop our platforms of Medical Reform, Economics, Immigration Rights, School and Education Decline, and Tax Reform. Sure, let’s drop the topics that drive this nation, the topics that need to be addressed before they bring this nation to its knees. Let’s drop all of that and focus on this one man’s RELIGIOUS crusade to ban a video game because it has sex in it. Does he really wake up in the morning and look at himself in the mirror and say “today is going to be the day”. How disappointed he must be!

To me Kevin McCullough is a religious socialist. He is upset not just because there is sex in a video game but in the article he focuses on the fact that you can change your image. He states in the article “Starting with the disgusting idea that one can “create” their own versions of what people look like, removing warts, moles, and bald spots while enhancing – shall we say – the extended features of the game’s characters tends to objectify women, sex, and human relationships”. Has this man not seen late night TV? I can buy products that do the same thing. I mean, come on. Gamers have had the ability to create or modify themselves within a game for years; this is not a new concept.

What kind of a person, other than a socialist, gets upset because you have the ability to change your appearance? It’s not even a real life change, it’s a video game! It has no bearing on your real life, other than a few people may get really wrapped up in the game and forget to pee or something. McCullough makes it sound like the world is going to come to a screeching halt because these video games exist, like the gates of hell are going to open because these video games were created.

McCullough needs to brush up on his law a little before asking the Presidential candidates to take on a platform based on his religious beliefs. Anyone that knows the law knows that there is this thing called “The Separation of Church and State“. The first amendment to the US Constitution states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. So what this is simply trying to say, if you read the whole thing, is that no one can create a law based on their religious beliefs. This means, Kevin McCullough can not ask the Presidential campaigners to drop what they are doing and enforce this law. This is something that he is trying to enforce based solely on his religious beliefs. Using his religious presence to try it fight his case is clearly not wise if he wanted this game to be removed from the market.

He picks on several congress people and even says that he knows that they will tell him “Government has no business censoring freedom of expression.” This is correct and it just goes to show you that he is somewhat aware that he has no platform to stand on, The government recognizes that his argument to remove the game is not because its a danger to the social, economic, or moral development of the world. But instead, because of his own religious beliefs and is own fears of what he obviously does not understand. If you go on and read the whole article you will see that he even tries to tie video game sex and violence to the creation of serial killers and rapist. He evidently has so little faith in humanity that he feels he needs to take it upon him self to ban anything that he feels is a danger to us, like we are all children and he is the father of us all.

I could go on for days on how I despise this man and people like him and how I disagree with anything that comes out of his mouth. I would love to be on a debate panel with him and break him down on national TV. Not only would it be fun, but I think it would wake the world up to just how crazy this guy really is and how people like him can be an even greater danger to the world then a video game. You don’t see video games jumping off shelves and bombing churches or subways in the real world in the name of religion now do you!

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Our Day Today

Posted on January 5, 2008 by Ching under Family, Food and Drink, Games, Life.

We decided to take the day off from working on the office. I was supposed to wake Brian up at eight or nine, but he was sound asleep so I didn’t get him up until eleven or noon or so. Anyway, that pretty much killed our morning.

We got up, showered together and decided that lunch at Olive Garden was in order. We were both really good during the week, bringing lunches to work and making dinner instead of eating out so we figured that we deserved a nice lunch date. I had recently watched Alton Brown making meatballs on the Food Channel so I was craving some spaghetti and meatballs (except I had to substitute spaghetti with capellini because I like the skinny noodles better). Brian decided to be adventurous. He tried the lasagna rollatini with chicken, a new special menu item. It was delicious! I think we will have to go again and just split that next time. The serving he received was enough to feed two people.

After our late lunch, we went to visit grandma and grandpa at Cherry Creek. We are donating some stuff from the office: our old dresser, TV, and VCR. The activities director was really thrilled to find out that we didn’t want any money for it. They’d been wanting a new TV for the activities room because the one they have is ancient. This one isn’t exactly new but if you’ve seen the one they currently have in there, it’s a huge improvement. Brian was scoping out where we would put the stuff. We are delivering the items tomorrow.

Anyway, we brought grandma and grandpa a tin of Godiva chocolate and toffee covered caramel popcorn and a case of Ferrero Rocher, grandma’s favorite chocolate candy. At Christmas we promised them that we would swing by and bring them some special munchies and finally had the opportunity. Grandma, grandpa, and their friend John were playing Phase 10 in the activity room when we got there.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at Tim’s where we met some of Tim’s coworkers: Errick (who is in the MBA program also), Chase and his wife Tiffany (who made this excellent chocolate cake), and Tim’s other coworker who is a transplant from California. She didn’t stay very long, though, so we didn’t have the opportunity to get to know her very well.

Chase and Tiffany brought their two-month old baby Titus. They were the next to leave and Errick left shortly after. Don, Sarah, and her husband Tony came too. The five of us were the last to leave. We left at the same time Sarah and Tony did. Don was still there and contemplating eating again as we were leaving.

It was an interesting afternoon/evening. Tim’s house is really nice. I think it is big for a single guy but it is in a great neighborhood (Chestnut Ridge, where Everett and a few of Brian’s other coworkers live also) so he could very easily raise a family in his new house. If anything, he can probably sell it in a few years for a very nice profit.

I tried several times to bring up playing a game. I wanted to play Catchphrase but Brian wouldn’t let me. Everyone was busy chatting and visiting, though, so maybe it wasn’t the right time. Once we get the house all sorted out (or after we move to the new place, wherever that might be) maybe we can have people over. Then they will have to play by my rules and we’ll play Catchphrase. LOL.

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WOW Withdrawal!

Posted on November 25, 2007 by Brian under Games, Life.

Its been three days since my WOW account stopped and I am already having withdrawal. I am so board without my WOW that it’s almost unbearable, its so bad that I tried to make a deal with my wife today so that I could get my account reactivated. She was wanting to put the T-Mobile bill on the Bank of America card because she wanted to accelerate our World Points Collection. I have been reluctant because I don’t want to get into the habit of using the credit card again. I am still not wanting to use the credit card but she wants to use it for everything and then pay one bill every month. However, I foresee the possibility of the spending getting out of hand and thats what worries me. So today I decided to make a deal with her, I told her that I would put the T-Mobile bill on the card if I could reactivate my WOW account. She said fine (very reluctantly) and waited till I started to input the information for the bill and then asked me if I could wait till after the holidays to reactivate my account because I had asked for a 60 day card for Christmas. I was like “fine, you hate me playing that game anyway” in a rather pissy tone, I was actually excited that she agreed to the deal. I went ahead and input the credit card information because I was already there and knew it would cause grief if I said “fine, no WOW no Credit Card”. She is afraid that I wont work on the house if I have my WOW account active. I know I have better will power that that but I can see her concern, I have a tendency to get very lost in that game. It’s not a game that you can just sit down and play for a few minutes then move on to the next thing its something that you set aside several hours to play. If you go into a RAID or an Instance you could be playing for hours. This is going to drive me crazy because I just got to 70 and this is when things start to change. I don’t play like the other WOW geeks, I cant grind for hours on end to level up so I quest and try to find groups for instances. I thought I would have more time to play in the Battle Grounds to upgrade my Armor but I ended up running out of time just as my Honor Points reached enough to get a new piece of armor. I was trying to get good armor so that I could get into a Raid group to get better armor so that I would have a fighting chance when the expansion comes out next year. The last time the expansion came out I had just hit 60 and all my gear was weak. I figured that I would work up my toon or get a second toon up to 70 so that I could have options in the next expansion. I have a hunter that is at mid 40’s and I figure that if I can get my account reactivated then I can work to get it up to 70 and that would make me a more valuable player. Listen to me, I sound like one of those addicts, “Just one more fix is all I need”. I gave my dad my X-Box to watch over for a while so that it wouldn’t get messed up in the remodel so I don’t even have that to fall back on. I have had to resort to an online text based game called O-Game to play. I may just have to look into some of these new Free MMORPG’s that I see coming up. I have already played one but I didn’t like the game play, it didn’t play well. In the end, I guess I need to use the withdrawal that I am experiencing to drive me to finish the remodel and get this house done. We will see if I can hold out or go insane from the lack of WOW play. I got to give it to the people at Blizzard! they made a game that if maintained with Expansions and Patches, will go on for a life time and I will be one of the faithful Zombies that religiously plays.

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It will be a sad sad day!

Posted on November 7, 2007 by Brian under Games, Life, Toys, Wishlist.

A few months ago I decided that I was going to cancel my account to World of Warcraft. This does not mean that I loose my character or anything like that it just means that I am not going to pay to play for a while. I looked online to see when my account ends and it says that it ends on November 22, 2007 4:16 AM PST. That happens to fall on a Thursday I am thinking of taking that Thursday off and just staying up and playing WOW till my account disconnects. It’s what any good WOW player would do if he was going to take a break from playing. Don’t get me wrong, I love the game! and they are coming out with yet another expansion that I want that will raise the cap to level 80 (I just hit level 70 on my Warlock) and add a new series of skills and powers to my character. However, the reason I am stopping for a while is because we really want to get our house done and on the market. I don’t want any distractions from me doing that so I am packing up anything that might be a distraction to me. The WOW is getting turned off for a while, the X-Box is going to get put up for a while (or I may let my dad play Halo 2 on it till I get moved. you know to see if I can get him hooked, lol!) and the PlayStation is going to go to Game stop to see if I can get anything out of it, maybe get some credits toward a PSP game or something. But the point is I want to completely focus on getting the house remodeled so that we can move out and into a nicer house. Ching said last night that when we get into our new home I can turn my account back on and play again because thats all we will really be doing, staying at home playing games and watching movies. We wont have the money to do anything else. I am hoping that we wont go into serious debt because we have a new house but I do want a house that will make her happy. We are trying to find a comfortable middle ground right know. I am sure that we will find it eventually but we have about a year before we really need to look, at the moment its just all a dream. Until we get this house fixed up and looking better we have no hope of selling it and getting into anything so first thing is first. Until then, I will be sad because I can not deliver my other worldly level of pawnage to the unsuspecting n00bs that reside within the World of Warcraft. Maybe I can ask for the expansion for Christmas, that would be a definite motivator to get me going.

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Daytripping at Legends Mall

Posted on September 3, 2007 by Ching under Flickr, Food and Drink, Games, Travel.

As you all know, Brian and I are pretty fond of daytripping. This time we went to Legends Mall to hang out for the afternoon. I needed some new work clothes anyway and I figured there would be some good Labor Day sales so off we went.

We got there in time to miss the lunch rush at Dave & Buster’s. Brian and I just ended up sharing everything as we normally do. We shared the philly steak egg rolls (which is surprisingly good by the way; I’m not sure why more people don’t serve it on their menu), had the gold fingers as a $23.99 “eat and play” combo, and then had the chocolate fondue for dessert. We couldn’t finish all of our food, but it was a pretty good deal. Even after the additional cost of the “eat and play” the cost was still no more than dinner at a nice place so we were pretty happy. And since the combo gave us $20 worth of credits, our chicken fingers really only cost us $3.99 when you think about it. Not a bad deal at all.

We had a blast at Dave & Buster’s. We played several games. I played this zombie shooting game with Brian and totally sucked at it. He kept dying trying to save me so I actually ended up outlasting him the first time. The second time I told him not to worry about me and naturally I died before he did.

At first he didn’t want to play Time Crisis with me because he said “It takes a lot of coordination and you’re not good at that.” You have to step on the pedal to peek, shoot bad guys, shoot off the screen to reload, step off the pedal and click to change guns — you know, that sort of thing. We did play it a few times and he was right. I was horrible at it. I think I spent most of the time hiding than shooting. LOL.

I did kick his ass at Virtual Tennis, though! I totally dominated him at that game. I was rushing the net and everything. Of course, when he was channel surfing last night he came across the Jankovic-Bammer match and he quickly pointed out that they weren’t rushing the net like I was. “They just don’t know the strategy,” I told him boastfully. Hey, let me bask in the glory of my victory. It’s not very often that I can beat Brian at a video game.

Anyway, we played a whole bunch of different games. We gave our tickets away to random kids. I just wish we had a D&B here in Wichita. I would totally live there. Although, I really wouldn’t mind doing another daytrip like that again. The drive was nice and relaxing. Of course, I can say this because I didn’t have to drive. And I actually got some reading done. I finished my Marketing Insights book.

Here are some of the other photos we took: