November 6, 2008 – 2:00 pm
With the election over, we now continue to move forward. However, where exactly is forward? If you’re stuck in the forest how do you decide which way to go? Well, we are all stuck in this metaphorical forest, and the new government will soon tell us where we are headed. Now, I’m not interested in the political or world views of this new government, its economic or foreign policy, etc. No, what I am interested in discussing is where will video games be headed in the near future; the future of this new government.
The world of video games has always had two, if not more, sides. This new government will likely fall onto a new side of their own. The biggest issue I have, and this is as far as I will go into politics, is that this new government, all three branches, are entirely Democratic. The point of this sentence does not rest on the word Democratic, but the word “entirely”. It wouldn’t matter if the entire government were all Republican, my ideas would still be relayed the same way. This is because there will no longer be the system of checks and balances within the government to prevent laws that are unjust, unfounded, or unnecessary to large majority of people; and in this instance I’m referring to gamers exclusively. Now, what this really means is that, if this new government decides on some level to begin to regulate video games, the video game industry will not be able to fight back. President Elect Obama has stated that there is “a role for the federal government to play [in video games]. We need to understand the impact of these new media better.” My opinion on the entire situation is that the government should not be involved at all in regulating video games. (I also will go further to say that the gaming companies should not regulate video games). I’m am all for freedom of speech, freedom of ideas, and pro warning labels and ratings on video games.
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October 21, 2008 – 5:00 pm
Recently it has been announced that Microsoft has been granted a patent, not a patent for some fancy peripheral or new console design, but a patent to help them censor what you hear on Xbox Live.
Back in 2004 Microsoft applied for a patent for real-time censoring of audio streams, and now the USPTO has granted that patent.
The patent involves real-time (or batch) analysis of an audio stream that can recognize inappropriate language based on phonemes, and then overwrite objectionable words with bleeps, other noises, or silence.
This sounds great for anyone who may have small children playing online or anyone that is just plain tired of hearing racial slurs being yelled into their headsets. If this is an option you could turn on for players under a certain age or just during games where you do not want to deal with obscenities it could be very useful.
On the other hand I do have a bit of a fundamental problem with censorship of any kind and this is a pretty big censorship of free speech. Although I rather abhor hearing the ranting’s of the village idiot over Xbox Live, it is unfortunately his right. If I do not agree with what he is saying or just do not want to deal with it, I can always mute that player and continue to play on with whatever game it is.
This new technology and patent opens up a window of possibilities that could infringe on our freedoms and I hope Microsoft is thinking about this in great detail. Perhaps I do not use obscenities in my speech via Xbox Live (although I do regularly) but instead would like to discuss the presidential race or religion and that is deemed inappropriate? We could be setting ourselves up for a regime of censorship that could even limit discussions of other consoles or games. What if someone deemed that discussion of PS3 titles was inappropriate via Xbox Live?
Although the patent at first glance sounds like a great way to clean up Xbox Live, where do we draw the line and give up our freedom of speech?
[Via arstechnica]
September 18, 2008 – 10:00 am
Seems that Sega has become a target of censorship lately on the heels of their Condemned 2 ads being banned for being too brutal for television. Apparantly a total of nine complaints were filed and three people said that the commercials were inappropriate for broadcast television. It is good to see that the network folded to the demands of the majority, those three people probably filed three complaints each to make the grand total of nine.
The ads appeared in post-9pm and post-11pm slots respectively. The longer, post-11pm version showed three punches from a first person perspective, with a hooded figure holding a brick aloft then bringing it down towards the camera.
The ASA concluded: ‘… the ads contained scenes of graphic and brutal violence which, although computer-generated, were realistic in appearance.
I think this is utterly ridiculous that in this day and age we can not watch animated violence on television. There are so many worse things to see, but a thirty second spot of Condemned 2 is ridiculous!? Two things if interest here as well are the fact that the game ads were set to air late night, which you would think would not give it any problem what so ever and the fact that Condemned 2 is an old title by now. The relevancy of the game is pretty low at this time since it has been at least 6 months since its release to the market and now people are complaining?
[Via MCV]
Big ups to EGM and 1up for sticking to their guns. Apparently, Konami has some crazy insane restrictions behind the review for Metal Gear Solid 4. Some of the things they forbid early reviewers from discussing include the game’s 4.6GB install and the length of the in-game cutscenes. No one knows for sure what else can’t be talked about and we don’t have our review copies of the game yet (Konami, what’s the deal?). Direct from EGM:
Metal Gear Solid 4 will hit store shelves shortly after this issue of EGM lands in your hot little hands. And four EGM editors — Matt Leone, Jeremy Parish, Andrew Pfister, and Shane Bettenhausen — have already invested plenty of time in the game. So why don’t we have a full review in this issue? Simply put: We weren’t happy with the limitations Konami wanted to impose on our comments, and rather than publish compromised reviews in the interest of being the first to rate the game, we’d rather wait until next issue, where we can be completely open and thorough with our thoughts. In the meantime, our MGS4 vets sat down for an informal chat about the game (and remember — [once the limitations are lifted] you can find the full review on 1UP.com!).
This type of thing really hurts the review process. It’s already bad enough when you have to play a game for review with developers and PR people looking over your shoulder, but to restrict what you can and can’t say in a review? How are gamers supposed to really know what’s going on? No topic should be off limits in a review. If something sucks or gamers should know about it before buying, it’s a reviewer’s job to make sure everyone knows.
We stand behind EGM and their decision to wait on the review so they can publish everything that needs to be said. We won’t be running our review pre-release, so we won’t be restricted with what we can say. Not that we’d sacrifice our journalistic integrity anyway. We’ll always bring you the full truth that we feel about every game.
There has been some grumblings lately about the banning of users from some gaming website for their comments and overall disagreement with the editing staff. The creative minds behind Loot Ninja created this site for a number of reasons. The first being our sheer love of video games. The second, we want to see what everyone else thinks. If you look at the format of almost every sports talk show now on ESPN( PTI, First and Ten, Rome is Burning, etc), they are all based solely on the principle that people like to disagree and more importantly, people like to watch and/or read people disagreeing.
In everything, there are limitations and gaming forums, blogs, and such are no exception. Thoughtless racism, random cursing, and all the other things that can make a forum painful to read and maintain are not needed and discouraged. On the contrary, if no one ever disagreed with us, my job would be pretty boring.
We have put up some pretty controversial articles in the past year and by God have we paid the price for it. There have been some editorials that have been written that I think people took out all of their frustration on us and let us hear it. But you know what, we don’t ban people. Some comments have been taking off ueobscene content for the sole reason of keeping the site at a level of decency. But, mark my words. WE HAVE NOT BANNED ANYONE. EVER. An argument against this is that maybe we have not had the exposure or the sheer number of readers to constitute banning. Maybe. One thing is for certain, there are some readers that have gotten my blood pressure up. Yet, we have bitten our proverbial tongues and responded in a manner befitting a respected gaming site. There are numerous times we have even semi-retracted stories or backtracked ourselves for maybe misinterpreting a news story or press release. This is what responsible journalists too. They admit mistakes.
I guess what I am saying here is that we really appreciate our readers feedback. We have even created a top commenter portion of our site. I would be naive not to expect a reader who will post something so abhorrent , that they will get try to get banned. Well, there is a first time for everything I suppose. People get banned from the Playboy mansion or even at Denny’s.
This site does not exist as a money making venture. All three of us are gainfully employed. Our rent does not depend on the success of this venture, but that does not mean we do not give 100% to make this a top notch gaming site and hope to take it to the next level. We three hope you will come along with us.
