I was in 4chan awhile back and the /h/ section lost all its porn. And the community came together to rebuild their collection. And I was thinking how sad is that, or maybe how great. Let me explain, that these people came together in a spirit of community and camraderie to put back together something they valued. And what they valued, was to most others garbage, complete garbage something to be shuned and hated. But yet there they were trying to build their collections again, for the community, for each other. It reminded me of a statement Barret made in FFVII that was something along the lines of, "It might be trash, but it's their trash."
Maybe video games are the same? It's filthy, stupid, a waste of time to a lot of people, but they don't understand. Those on the outside, that in this world, some people all they have are the games, it's all they are. They didn't have parents growing up, everyone who was supposed to love them left. And they were left there with a playstation, a nintedo, a computer and a screen. And they learned to love what they got, because it was all they had. And for someone to come along ten or twenty years later and say that's garbage, that means nothing you're just wasting your time. I mean, how inhuman can you get? It's like a parent who was never there coming back when you're grown and telling you you didn't do your duty as a child. It doesn't register with me, the criticism because those making it don't understand. This world is dark and harsh place, if I or maybe we, can find hope in something, who are others to take it away from us?
Looking back I think the world creates it's own evil. We complain about the ends, but we do nothing about the means. It's a cycle of evil, with real human lives as the sacrifice. Real sadness, real despair. It isn't nice or pretty, but we like to pretend it is and make walls around those that we don't want to see. That's why they're put in their own sections of societies, into ghettos and even specific places in the internet where if you want to get to where you want you have to wade through page after page of porn adds.
I don't know how to finish this post, just, I wish we lived in a better world.
When Greg Goodrich goes on to the point where he talks about how people could be touched by a narrative in a game, I've experienced this. Like, I can't play Valkyria Chronicles because of this, the story is about a 22 year old guy who just got out of University and wants to be a biologist, but instead has to fight in a war. And the troops in your control are like 16 years old sometimes. Playing it makes me go what the hell I'm doing with my life. It shames me to no end, four years later I still can't play the game. Maybe I'm a pansy, I don't know, but there's something to what's being discussed here that shows maybe videogames aren't a good thing in this sense. Like, properly done they undermine themselves.
With the recent death of Ray Bradbury and his quote that games are just male ego trips, and should be done just for relaxation, but not full-time, I don't know. I just don't know, I think the conversation taking place here says something about video games in general, like it forces people to not be themselves or something like that. I'm generalizing too much, I know and I'm not saying anything to condemn anyone even by myself, I just don't really understand why games even exist, or what the role of video games should be in society. I hear in my head it's just for fun, but it's crossing the line sometimes, and certain games hit home, and its different for everyone.
Just looking it this, and you're going to need something really powerful to run this thing. Planetside 1 was the same thing when it released, it needed really beefy rigs at the time. The good thing about it is that as time goes on and tech catches up it'll get easier and easier to put something together to get it to run well.
@gix47 I hacked too much in Torchlight 1, lol, want to give it another try. I'm definitely looking forward to Torchlight 2, especially if they have multiplayer this time.
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