hypocrisy
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Walden the video game is funded by the NEA, is hypocritical
If your high school English teacher had assigned you to play the game Walden instead of reading Thoreau's writings on living deliberately with nature, Spark Notes may not have evolved into such a booming industry. USC's plan to put abridged study guides out of business, a video game based on Thoreau's Walden, has just received $40,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts (which is like Kickstarter but older, more official and possibly not as lucrative).USC has been crafting Walden for roughly two years, and this funding may be the final step to its completion, lead game designer and USC associate professor Tracy Fullerton told TIME. "Having this support will allow the time we need to really bring the world of Walden to life," Fullterton said. "We anticipate a rich simulation of the woods, filled with the kind of detail that Thoreau so carefully noted in his writings."Hang on. Thoreau's point with Walden was to note the intrinsic benefits of separation from technology in modern society, to slow down and live as one with nature as part of a larger, living world. Putting this experience inside of a video game, running on people's computers in an air-conditioned office, cafe or mother's basement misses the point entirely. However, it may offer a fine lesson in hypocrisy."Of course everyone should spend time in nature, but not all of us are able to set aside our lives for the time it would take to conduct an experiment like Thoreau's," Fullerton said. "The game is not a replacement for direct experience, just as the book is not."Fair enough. Perhaps if you want to stop Thoreau rolling in his grave, play Walden on a tablet in the middle of the forest without an immediate charging station. Or plant some beans or something.
YouTube: Viacom would demand removal of videos it covertly uploaded itself
As you may have heard, Viacom and YouTube have been having a little tift lately, in the form of a major lawsuit by the former over copyrighted material posted on the video portal. It's a lawsuit that, according to YouTube, will cause such video sites to "cease to exist in the current form" -- but more importantly, it's a lawsuit that leads to some rather hilarious behind-the-scenes details. Here's a really juicy one that the official YT blog published today by Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine. Word has it that Viacom had hired over the years at least 18 different marketing firms to inconspicuously upload content. We can't really say it better than the posting: "[Viacom] deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom." Wait, it gets better. According to Levine, Viacom's tactics were so good that the company itself didn't even know which videos it had uploaded, prompting multiple occasions where it would demand a clip removed, only to later ask for its reinstatement. "In fact," she claims, "some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself." Hit up the source link for all the details. Honestly, we can't wait to see what else is dug up in these proceedings. Update: Of course, that's not the whole story. Also revealed in court documents today was discussions by Viacom to -- get this -- purchase YouTube before News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch got the chance to do it himself. Let's be thankful for that judge's decision to unseal all court documents, shall we?
Spitzer wins GamePolitics' biggest political hypocrite poll
GamePolitics had a pretty sweet idea this week when it polled readers on who they thought the biggest political hypocrite is when it comes to the games industry. Was it Boston's Mayor Menino, who's seeking to pass a "games as porn" bill while trying to woo developers to the city; or perhaps California's Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger who... well, look at the man's career! Nope, the winner, by a wide margin, was New York's disgraced former governor Eliot Spitzer.Spitzer wins the poll for actions like attacking Grand Theft Auto and making sensationalist statements like, "Children can even simulate having sex with a prostitute." Meanwhile, the governor was doing more than simulating when he played the role of Client 9 to a high-priced prostitution service. It's still as delicious to write now as it was a month ago.
A bot farmer commends Blizzard anti-botting measures
"Andeasdr" on the official WoW forums claims to be an American bot developer who works "for companies that cheat at WoW for a living." Apparently he is deeply bothered by all the complaining players do about botters lately. He claims that Blizzard is doing a lot to fight botters such as himself, banning 8 of his personal accounts and 200 of his company accounts, as well as dealing "lethal blows" to popular botter programs. He says we don't hear about Blizzard's efforts in this arey because they have to keep a lot of it secret. Finally he tells us how much he loves Blizzard games, tells us that Blizzard is one of the best companies when it comes to fighting botters, and thanks them for all their hard work.If all that seems odd to you, you're not alone. Lots of people in the thread call him out for hypocrisy and contradicting himself. He not only plays a game that he loves and then hurts it at the same time, but he commends Blizzard on a job well done when he's the one that they're trying to put out of business. Some flatly say that he doesn't make any sense and that they don't believe him at all.He replies to these accusations: "yes, it does seem hypocritical and conflicted, because it is. Struggling between what you're good at and what your concious says you should do is always quite the dilemma. I have my excuses I tell myself when I got to sleep at night, but doesn't change the fact I still know it's wrong."After the first couple pages of his thread, however, he gets into the usual "your logic doesn't make any sense because your dumb" type of argument with other posters, and that's my main reason to suspect he's just a troller wondering how much he can get people to believe about his identity. Still, whether he is the real thing or not, I do believe that Blizzard for doing a lot of behind-the-scenes bot-fighting that isn't easy for them to discuss publicly. What do you think?
