I, the Passive Aggressive Gamer

Gamer, drunkard, fan of Johnathan Swift.

[passiveaggressivegamer]

It's been two months.

I need to update this blog. 

[passiveaggressivegamer]

The internet has birthed an amazing new oligopoly: the lazy man's oligopoly. Regardless of the site - whether it's Youtube or Twitch - you're at constant risk of having your content shut down if you're anyone that's really half-assedly thinking about opening up a channel about video games. It's manned and watched by robots, and they're indiscriminate. No human affirmative action for you.

That's the major concern I had about opening up a Youtube channel. I have the spine of a bloodless snake, and if any company starts knocking on my door and threatening to shut down my electronic wares of ill reputed dick jokes and 9/11 references, I'm out. I'm dead. I'm done.

It's a really shitty proposition. To make enough videos where you can live off of it, you have to treat Youtube content creation like a full time job. However, all it takes is for one heartless robot to tag your Sonic the Hedgehog Skyrim mod and then you're done. Made a series where Sonic decides to save the Circle of Magi through the magic of source animation? Sorry, there's ten seconds that sounded like Miley Cyrus' Wrecking Ball; you're out.

It's essentially working in retail, full-time, and one customer complaint about you, no matter how childish or infantile the complaint, and you're struck with a record. More childish complaints and you're out. Finished.

Back to the perpetual slog, the job search, the shit. Back to the suck.

Thanks, Google. Thanks, Youtube.

[passiveaggressivegamer]

My Facebook feed's been invaded by Bitstrip comics. For those of you unfamiliar with Bitstrips, it's this generated assortment of people that can be modified into a near limitless amount of artistic and stylistic homogeneity.

I'm really against Bitstrips, but not because I'm some trite, elitist scumbag who draws his own stuff and then masturbates to Dubstep remixes of Rush. Well, I'm also that, but there's an exposition dump to all of this.

No, it's because Bitstrips is systemically void of life and emotional connection since every character is a constant palette of boring sameness. There's no variety in different artistic styles, there's no real emphasis on human looks, and there's no thinly veiled racism disguised as an attempt at 'honest' commentary.

It's all too clean and lifeless, refusing to tell a story or a joke. I like reading comics because I like the art style, I like the personalized humor or storytelling, and I like the fact that people sit down, try so hard to make something compelling or hilarious and they slog through it. I don't care whether the art is good or not (or even worth trying to figure out) - it's a sure expression of the individual human character in its most adorable form. Bitstrips is a commercialization of expression that, while I'm not against in terms of message, makes reading them really, really boring and too much alike.

Of course, many people might have dreams of creative grandeur and do it because it's fun, but isn't it also fun to sit down at a desk, sketch out a messily composed set of nonsensical figures and then attempt to post a terrible post on the internet about it? Hell, you can draw stick figures with a giant mechanical dog crashing into a Lulu Lemon's and just change the dialogue, and I'm sure some sort of hipsterish trite would consider it to be the next best thing.

There's really no need for Bitstrips, and I can't fathom why anyone would so down and play what is essentially a flat version of the Sims character generator just so we can learn that you fantasize about doing morphine on top of a school bus.

[passiveaggressivegamer]

Steam Sale Tycoon (NaGaWriMo Entry)

Apparently there's some sort of Polonian claptrap going called NaGaWrimo, short for National Game Writing Month. Since I'm Canadian, I'm likely not in the same country, and thus invalid for the whole National dimension. Additionally, since I am actually competing in NaNoWriMo (and hating every minute of it), I shouldn't be cavorting on Tumblr and instead should be focused on getting my next slew of poorly written 2,000 words punched out with utmost expedience.

No matter, here's my submission: Steam Sale Tycoon.

You are an Accounts Manager for Valve, crushed under the weight of increasingly growing byzantine bureaucracy as you face day after day meetings with pretentious indie developers, foul-mouthed publishers, and moonlight as a customer service rep so you can 'know what it's like in the trenches.'

With a small basket of 5 hour energy drinks to satiate your growing tiredness, you have to juggle a steady supply of unpaid interns whom all have MBAs and are trying to pitch to you - YOU - their next big game. There will be minigame puzzles where you try and argue about the freshness of the olives at the Subway across the street. Sometimes there will be a bonus round where you must tell the clerk that you ordered swiss, not white cheddar (and obstinately try to convince them it is something entirely different).

Your department is starting to lose money because Valve is devoting all of its resources to the SteamBox, and though the tutorial level is you riding on the good graces of an overhyped /r/gaming subreddit that tries to blindly support Valve's name, you spend far too much time spending factory-created letters threatening litigious action against unknown manufacturers of chinese knockoffs.

Each boss battle is the aforementioned Steam sale itself, as at the end of each day you are given a tallied list of the viable games from their publishers and developers, which you must then calculated the highest margins and cross tabulate it with the most sales for the best N value on any given day.

Obviously, there will be a multiplayer component with leaderboards. You can never have too many leaderboards.

[passiveaggressivegamer]

Participating in NanoWrimo

So I'm going to be participating in NanoWrimo. I thought that I might as well use my verbosity for some good in the world, and if it's to expand (in somewhat dubious amounts) creativity in the world, I might as well give it a shot, right?

I've written a novel in a month before, but never 50,000 words. Let's do this.

[passiveaggressivegamer]

What is the purpose of the iPad Air?

Perhaps I'm lacking Steve Jobs' visionariness and virulence, but I'm completely baffled by the selling point of the iPad Air.

Generally I'm a more supportive fan of Apple, usually using logical loops within my own twisted cortex to explain why I support their products. However, this time, I'm drawing a blank.

It's a future contraption, likely a functioning herald of a paralleled selling system with a possible iPad 'Pro' (hence the Mini suffix), but that's it. There's nothing else that's coming to me that really stands out. It doesn't have the gimmicky yet proven halo effect of Touch sensors, so we can't say 'hey it's a gigantic 5s' and then watch as Apple rolls in drug money.

Additionally, it doesn't have a comparable dual-lens camera or 120 frames-per-second recording so I can take slow-mos of women jumping up and down in sweaters. Since I can't live out Belafontesque boyhood fantasies with a slab of Star Trek futurist terror-spawn, what is it for?

[passiveaggressivegamer]

I was forwarded an article where a Florida dad blamed his son's decision to bring a firearm to school on Minecraft.

You'd have thought that it would have been the growing bodily and mental inconsistency that comes with puberty, the apparent access to both a firearm and ammunition, and an unobservant parent, but nope. This is a pretty innovative argument this guy is putting forward, and he's taking the claim to the next level of argumentative ineptitude: video games lead to violence.

Throw away those copies of always-online SimCity, folks; you're all walking time bombs.

[passiveaggressivegamer]

P4A 2 DLC Character Suggestion

Since we're on the subject of suplexes, I might as well throw this character into the ring for Persona 4 Arena: Ultra Mighty Supermax Suplex Double Down. Admittedly, I can't draw in the art style of Shigenori Soejima, but I can get pretty close:

Why wouldn't Jax Briggs be fighting a bunch of high schoolers and college students in catsuits and sailor outfits? Wasn't that the whole point of Mortal Kombat 3? This seems like a reasonable and logical extension of stuff he already does, since he babysits kids anyways.

[passiveaggressivegamer]

Chiropractors be damned.

[passiveaggressivegamer]

Blackberry gave me Stockholm Syndrome

Some of you may have heard of Blackberry's bold, new strategy in the field of smartphones, which worries me to some degree. Not in any conventional sense you might think, of course.

It's transitory. You see, eventually, I'll have to migrate because at this moment the company is flowing up shit creek without paddle.

Even worse, here I am, standing on the edge and furiously masturbating hoping that the kinetic energy from my ejaculation will give us some semblance of thrust upon which it'll send the company in the right direction.

But it doesn't. No matter how furiously I stroke my wallet, it just won't work, and at the end of the day, the ship is just going to sink or switch hands or corporate bigwigs will throw me overboard while they puff their cigars and conjure up enterprise-only paddles.

So for that eventual migration, I'll need to get used to either iOS or Android. As someone who came from iOS, the logical answer would be to go back, but having messed around with my sister's phone, I just can't.

You see, I've gotten used to the gesture system. It's a nice system. Sure, Blackberry is ominously lacking in applications, from the most basic ones like Netflix to the more obscure ones like Hulu, but using a Z10 since its released has sort of grown on me. I don't use apps anymore, even on iPhones or iPads. They just sit there, staring at me blankly as I mindless try to access my emails by swipe in nondescript fashion. It's weird.

Blackberry never really catered to me, I ended up catering to Blackberry, and in some sort of weird, malevolent tech contortion, I became a swirling mess of true multitasking and unified hubdom.

I liked, like, it. All other seem alien to me, and I'm so used to the three step management of apps that I'm truly shocked. A while ago, nose-thumbing me would have happily and nonchalantly spoken with dispassionate tones about Blackberry's demise.

But now...now...it just sucks, and I know it sucks. I really, really, really like this phone, but I also know that it's essentially forced me to dance to its tune, and not everyone liked that.

So I guess in all earnestness, this is as close as I can get to a serious take on the Blackberry. I wish the best for the company, but I must be honest in that I am not looking forward to falling into shit creek, cause I just can't swim.

[passiveaggressivegamer]

GTA V is a monster to the industry

You're probably thinking, "With a title as sensationalist as that and a blog as asinine as his, he's probably joking." Well, I'm not.

I think GTA V is earnestly, realistically, undeniably, a vile contraption to our society. You see, it's an enabler. It allows its consumers to play specific roles in our societies, and then even more insidiously, reward them. Punishments are short, meted out unfairly, and you never experience the slight of time, pain, or labour. It's temporary and egregiously transient. GTA V is the devil, even more so than its previous foul spawn.

The next generation of gamers will grow to become tennis players and stockbrokers without understanding how to become good tennis players or how not to become wily stock venture capitalists. It's not the violence, the guns, or even the grand theft auto that is the problem in Grand Theft Auto. It's everything else.

For instance, after watching a 20 second clip on bowling in GTA V, I was certain that I could become a bowler. After all, having suffered several bouts of depression, the video game became an enabler that subconsciously told me that I could become a good bowler.

"Try it," the voices would tell me, as I sat alone in the dark and dank corners of my room, polishing my balls. "Try it, you'll love it."

And I did. I got my duffel bag, I got my gear, and with heavy, sauntering steps I went to the local bowling alley. Sleepless and suspicious, I was both confident and uncertain. I was going to make it, I thought. The media would love me. They'll love me. Everyone will want to know who I am.

And I bowled. But I sucked.

GTA V lied to me. It told me that it was going to be painless and inconsequential. But it was humiliating. Bowling never pays.

Don't buy this game for your kids: they'll grow up to become cyclists, parachuters, and stock market investors. They'll grow up with dreams of grandeur beyond the thankless anonymity you get from being a cog in the machine.

Don't feed sick delusions. Ban this sick filth.

[passiveaggressivegamer]

Mobile OS similarities.

[passiveaggressivegamer]

Will make OKCupid account, wish me luck

As someone who doesn't go out to clubs, minimizes social activities for fun, and has no sense of chivalry or filtering, I am at my wit's end in terms of finding that special someone. As beatniks have once said, "[I've] tried nothing and [I'm] all out of ideas."

You can only spend so much time creating fictional scenarios on Omegle.

So, for the next two weeks, I will be perusing and browsing OKCupid to see if I can find my soulmate. Wish me luck.

[passiveaggressivegamer]

Why in-game transactions have convinced me Volition is the new Jesus of video games

As many of you know, Saints Row IV came out and it's a litany of meth-addicted whacktitude. Any game that's a commiserating mishmash of Captain Anderson and Kanji Tatsumi certainly doesn't take itself seriously, and any understanding of seriousness is compromised by the upteenth degree of ludicrousness etched into its very heart.

But Saints Row IV, despite my criticisms of its evident strengths, has taught me that there's something attractive about the whole role of nonsense in video gamology. As someone who ekes out a living being a pretentious nut and spends much of his waking days trying to convince an aging populace that video games are the new West Side Story and Hamlet all in one, the addition of ridiculous is welcomed.

Consider my amusement when Ryse, that orgy of antiquated Roman goredom, has micro-transactions. At first I thought "well it's another example of the thoughtless and callous corporations shoving down needless things down our throats to pad their already lucrative bottom line!" But then I thought about it.

Since the goal of the micro-transaction is to create additional revenue after the sale of medium, then wouldn't that mean that it's an entirely different good? You're changing the market from convincing people who haven't bought it to people who have, you the intent is to treat a micro-transaction as a completely new and different piece altogether.

Therefore, the micro-transaction doesn't have to be in-line with the game. And if the micro-transaction doesn't have to be in line with the game (just as how every game on the Xbox One doesn't have to be Forza or every game on the PS4 doesn't have to be Final Fantasy), then you can add whatever you want, legal issues aside.

So I want mechs in Ryse. I want a sitcom-spinoff mission. I want a scenario where every single puzzle is a trivia game based off washed-up celebrities. I want a river of Olanzapine and a rainbow of Vicodin. I want Ryse that caters to gamers, entrenched in brony vapidity and meme insipidness.

At the same time, I realised that Volition had already done this, but made a whole game about it. That's cool; they're on the forefront of ludologic crazy. I like that. That's attractive and magical and wondrous.

[passiveaggressivegamer]

The Last of Us needs to have a TV spin-off

I'd watch it.

Imagine a sitcom comedy at Tommy's camp, where all they do is just sit and make dick jokes and occasionally fight off bandits.

Have some Clickers move in next door and watch the barely subdued racial metaphors fly. Make it happen.

Put it on the Xbox One.

[passiveaggressivegamer]

I’ve been watching How I Met your Mother, if only because the show sucked away a good portion of my life and I continued on only to hope that I will one day be privy to the identity of the mother. Otherwise, it’s a repetitive show, trailing behind narrative juggernauts like Kitchen Nightmares and…

[pixiekaiju]

Except.. the mother has always been known to be quirky? She paints pictures of robots, plays in a girl band, and has a little yellow bus. This is a woman we’ve gotten to know through her things. And if she’s the manic pixie dream girl? Ted is one too, because he’s every amount of silly as MPD I’ve seen in anything (with the only exception of Ruby Sparks, because holy shit, was that movie creepy on all avenues). Remember. Ted one time fenced in his living room and wore a pair of bright red cowboy boots. Trope or not trope. If it happens or doesn’t. Ted Mosby is every bit of pixie to out dust even the most Deschanel of characters.

[passiveaggressivegamer]

I am assuming this is how people respond to things on Tumblr.

Yes, you are right.

[passiveaggressivegamer]

I wished the mother in How I Met Your Mother was a chain smoker.

I've been watching How I Met your Mother, if only because the show sucked away a good portion of my life and I continued on only to hope that I will one day be privy to the identity of the mother. Otherwise, it's a repetitive show, trailing behind narrative juggernauts like Kitchen Nightmares and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

They revealed the mother, played by Cristin Milioti. I know I'm a bit late on the revelation, but hey, it didn't hit me until now.

After looking up Cristin Milioti's profile on IMDB, I can only guess that the casting choice was partly because of her eyes (and when I say 'partly', I mean entirely). They're like soccer balls. She's a giant squid, if the defining characteristic of a giant squid are its soccer ball eyes.

I'm not saying she's ugly. In fact, I think she's quite attractive. But why her? I didn't know get it until the ending of season 8.

She was looking around with that dainty stare, wistfully looking at sheet metal and hobo urine at the train station. A manic pixie dream girl.

For those of you unfamiliar with a manic pixie girl, a manic pixie dream girl is a woman whose life plan is shortsightedness and social awkwardness, and she carries a purse full of platitudes that is somehow meant to crack the lonely, brooding shell of a male protagonist.

The eyes are a dead giveaway. They're like black holes, sucking in all negativity and realism to conjure up a quasar of nonsensical spontaneity that is meant to be equal parts smirk-summoning and cringe-destroying.

They not only are supposedly meant to be unique, but impose uniqueness upon others, especially their loved ones. "Oh, she's always been like that." the mother of a manic pixie dream girl would say, struggling to open a bottle of Ritalin.

To a young man whose defining character trait is his lack of one, the manic pixie dream girl is his character trait.

Just watch. HIMYM season 9 will have the manic pixie dream girl. She'll at first be apprehensive, perhaps a little curious, and then go into full blown nonsense mode. She'll have something that defines her as quirky, the character equivalent of a plane crash.

And it could have been easily avoided. Make her a New Jersey matriarch, a chain smoker, and an arms dealer. You already made eight seasons of trite nonsense and overextended half-memes, why not just go full retard and do that? What have you got to lose?