Gamers' Voice - full post.

A quick note - this post was written for the Wall of the Gamers' Voice group on Facebook. It was too big, though. So it's presented here in its entirety.

I don't think some of the people posting here are actually doing much good, to be honest. Let's get real, for a minute.

I love games and gaming culture, I have done since I was about 4 (I'm 20 now) thanks to the SNES and a copy of Street Fighter II Turbo. But even I think that games can be harmful to certain people, just in the same way as something like A Clockwork Orange (one of my favourite films, by the way) or even The Matrix caused a few people to fly off the handle. Rock and Roll music was blamed for a good many crimes in the 50s and 60s. Gothic Horror novels of the 19th Century were seen as pornography in this country for a while. Moral panics about entertainment are nothing new - games are not alone in criticism.

For the record, I do think that age-restrictions on gaming is a good thing. I'm not going to lie and say that I never played a violent game before I was 18 - I did, and I'm sure that many many others have and will continue to do so. But there's always the chance that there's going to be some negative effects to at least one or two people. There just is.

A politician, I think it was Tessa Jowell, but I'm not 100% certain, said something along the lines of 'If you wouldn't let your kids watch the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, you shouldn't let them play 18+ games.' I really don't think there's any better way of putting it than that. Don't get me wrong, all this nonsense over Modern Warfare 2 is ridiculous - if it was a film rated 18+, nobody would bat an eyelid. The problem is that games are interactive, and there's no getting around that obviously. Parents really shouldn't worry - if they are, then their kids shouldn't be playing the damn thing in the first place.

Anyhow, I feel I'm being too negative. There's a great *great* deal of positive benefits that gaming can provide. I know at least two or three people who have gotten over deep-rooted depression thanks to the escapism gaming gives us. It let them get on with their lives and become better members of society than they could have possibly been without. And off the top of my head, gaming improves hand-eye co-ordination, has some links to improving mental fitness (and I'm not just talking about Brain Training, here), it has great dramatic potential, and so so many more.

Gaming is a good thing, but you can't just blindly say stuff like 'I'm 13, and I played Modern Warfare, did nothing to me.' That's only reinforcing the views of Mr. Vaz et al. I have no doubt that he, and other anti-violence in games critics (for let's not forget, he is *not* anti-games on the whole, he simply objects to minors possibly having access to violent material in games) have good intentions. But this group should be more about *proving* how and why games can offer so much more to the people of the UK.

Home Box Office, In Case You Were Wondering

Has anyone else noticed how awesome HBO is?

It's one of the things that makes me want to live in America. Even for a brief time. Because if everything on HBO is as decent as the goods I've sampled, then hell, I'll be in heaven!

Case in point - people who've seen either/both of The Sopranos and The Wire usually proclaim one or the other the greatest show ever made. Both are made by HBO.

Other great shows crafted by their (presumably) loving embrace - Six Feet Under, Band of Brothers, Flight of the Conchords, Rome, Entourage, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Sex and the City [*vomits*], and my current favourite, True Blood.

Ah, True Blood. I've waited an entire year for this show to finally air in the UK, and now that it has, I can appreciate how awesome it is. I'm only four episodes into the series, but it's undeniably brilliant.

Firstly, it has arguably the best opening sequence ever. Great song, some crazy-ass images, and, possibly best of all, the words 'Created by Alan Ball'. Alan Ball, ladies and gentleman, is the fucked-up individual who gave the world Six Feet Under, the strangest, and yet strangely awesome, series you're ever likely to see. The strangeness he brought to that clearly shows in True Blood.

- Lots of sex. Very graphic sex. This is the reason I, absolutely genuinely, have to wait for my nan to go to bed before I can watch either SFU or TB. The Sopranos was pretty graphic too, come to think of it, but it's in most episodes of, seemingly, any show with 'Created by Alan Ball' stamped on it.

- Fucked up characters. In both SFU and TB, there's basically only one or two regular cast member who could be happily classed as 'sane'. And in TB, one of those is a vampire and the other's frigging telepathic. That's hardly normal.

- Surreal humour. For instance. In the pilot of SFU, the show is often interrupted by fake ads for funeral services. So you'll have ladies dancing around in skimpy clothes advertising...embalming fluid. There's not quite so much in TB, but one stand out (up?) moment comes when Sookie's brother drinks too much vampire blood and has to have blood drained from his penis - which has been erect all day. Yep.

I could probably go on, but I won't.

Anyway, back to the point. HBO makes all these cracking programmes, stuff that, frankly, the UK channels can't even attempt to compete with. Life on Mars, as much as I love it and as close as it gets to being brilliant, just isn't in the same league. Doctor Who as well has a similar issue. We need some decent drama in this country that isn't just a simple 'whodunnit' or a standard police drama, as is the norm. Admittedly, stuff like The Bill has recently been very good indeed, but I dare you to find one person who reckons it's better than The Wire, or even CSI for crying out loud. And most of the best stuff the BBC puts out is co-produced by HBO anyway!

End of my rage. Guess there's not a lot I can do about it, eh? But as long as HBO and the humble DVD exists, I don't think I'll ever need to watch 'proper' TV again.

Lighting the Torch

I'm about to make a big claim, but one that's not unfounded.

Torchwood: Children of Earth, the 5-part 3rd season of the Doctor Who spin-off, is the best thing that's been on television this year (so far).

See? Told you it was quite a big claim.

I seriously believe it though. As I have said on this blog before, Doctor Who is unashamedly one of my favourite TV shows. Even when it's bad, it's usually still got a sparkle of something. But Torchwood this week was better than Who's been lately, undoubtedly.

I'm not 100% sure why, though, but I can take a stab.

Probably the biggest reason is the emotion in it, the sheer 'ohmygod' of it. Torchwood, unlike Who, has never pulled its punches when it comes to threatening major characters. In just three years, only a couple of major characters remain, the rest having been killed off. To put that in perspective, Who, in its entire 50-odd year runtime, has killed off one character permanently. Excluding The Doctor himself, of course, who's died nine times. But he doesn't count.

Children Of Earth, in particular, had a lot of danger, both for the characters and the (in-series) world at large. Usually, whenever there's something Earth threatening, the Doctor just shows up and sorts it out with a wave of his Sonic Screwdriver. Not so here. Torchwood was more or less destroyed at the start of the arc, meaning they barely had access to computers most of the time. Going into the last episode, I had no idea how they were going to wrap it up.

The ending, as it goes, was masterful as well. Captain Jack has finally stopped being, well, a bit rubbish, and jumped up to 'anti-Doctor' levels of awesomeness. Well, awesomeness is perhaps a bit too strong, but the comparison's still there. I'll not spoil the ending, just in case, but what Jack did to save the world I don't think The Doctor could have done.

Emotion came thick and fast too. Pretty much the only emotion we've been getting in Who recently has been The Doctor going all 'I'm never ever ever having another companion again (until next series)' and 'Oh Rose, how I miss thee!' Every. Single. Episode. Torchwood, in the death of Ianto, seriously nearly brought a tear to my eye. It was very well done indeed.

The structure of CoE really can't be overlooked either. The 'event' format worked brilliantly well, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Who trying to replicate it in the future (although, given the earlier broadcast of it, it would probably be tricky for the BBC to schedule). I'd be incredibly surprised if Torchwood doesn't try and do it again next year. CoE will take some beating though.

Finally, though, what really sets Torchwood apart from every other show this year is the simple fact that it's lived up to its promise. It's a proper adult science fiction drama set in the same world as Doctor Who. Before now, it's been, frankly, more childish than Who. What with all it's sex-based storylines, needless swearing and too many flashes of John Barrowman's arse for the average human to take. But now, now, it feels right. Maybe it's the format, maybe it's the lower number of characters, maybe it's the less Cardiff-centric locationing, I don't know. All I know is, he's called the Stig. No, wait, that's not right. I mean it's been the best thing on telly this year, easily the best British thing at least. Long may it continue!

'Billie Gene' [sic]

I doubt that I'm the only person who's going to write about it, but I haven't seen anyone else do it in this way. Doesn't mean it hasn't happened, obviously. Argh, blabbering.

Anyway.

I'm going to blog about Michael Jackson.

Well, I'm not really. I'm going to blog about the media furore that has exploded the Internet over the last 24 hours (or so). It has literally broken everything.

I've quite frankly never seen anything like it. You can't escape from it. Pretty much every site on the Internet has been 'touched' in some way. The more obvious ones are things like Twitter and Facebook. Twitter had to break out the good ol' whale on numerous occasions, poor thing, while the trending topics list was 9/10ths full of MJ-related posts.

Facebook was similar, but didn't buckle. Most status updates I got from friends were about him too. About an hour after it happened, I typed 'RIP Michael Jackson' into the search bar on Facebook and, lo and behold, about 10 (at least) pages of memorial groups and pages sprung up. Fast work, eh?

The news sites seemed to cope quite well, surprisingly, although there are a lot of them. The BBC, for instance, was fine. I was watching the live News 24 feed for about half an hour and there wasn't even a jot of lag. So, um, not much to say there :S

Jokes started trickling very soon, as per usual. I use the term 'joke' loosely, by the way. Most stemming from 4chan, the crap-pot of the web. Oddly enough, even that was down for the majority of the night (although I only went on for literally about 10 seconds to check reports of it's downtime), presumably under hundreds of pictures of 'pedobear' being uploaded.

Anyway, then I went to bed. I couldn't believe what I found when I woke up. The traditional media were causing such a shit-storm I couldn't believe it. Not entirely unexpected, it must be said, but it appears, quite seriously, that nothing else of any significance has happened in the world these past 24 hours. Somewhat luckily, the event happened so late that most of the newspapers must've gone to print beforehand. Of all the ones I saw, only The Sun ran the story on the front page. There could have been more I guess, but I wasn't outside for long. Ahem.

Back on the Internet, (oh God, that sounds like a comic book panel header. 'Meanwhile, in another part of town...) Jackson's albums filled up the top 15 of Amazon's top sellers. All 15 places! I really couldn't get my head around that. I didn't even know he'd released 15 albums, to be frank. iTunes was a little more 'business as usual' this morning, with only his greatest hits occupying the top 10. Not so now. Nine albums out of ten. Honestly, the top ten, come Sunday night, is going to be broken.

And sites that have nothing to do with music have been covering the news. Like Kotaku. Kotaku, if you don't know, is a very highly regarded (and downright awesome, it must be said) gaming blog. Now, MJ's contribution to the world of videogames essentially boils down to a Moonwalker-based Mega Drive game (how the hell that ever got made I'll never know) and a rumoured contribution to the soundtrack of Sonic The Hedgehog 3. And yet 3 posts in the last 24 hours have been about MJ, in one way or another. It's a bit ridiculous.

But, at the centre of all this, we can't forget that a human being has died. Think what you like about him and his personal life, but there's no denying the fact that he contributed to a lot of peoples' lives and left an undisputable mark on the music industry that will last a lifetime. And, in death, he may well have just had a lasting impact on the new media industry as well. RIP.

Generic Title Here

E3 was held last week. You know what that is. Probably. If you don't, it's basically the world's biggest (or at least one of the biggest) video and computer gaming convention. Essentially, it's for the companies to show off their latest products with a splash of dick measuring thrown in for good measure.

Now, every single blog on the Internet has done a post about E3. Somewhat understandably. I felt like doing one too, but I thought that would be surplus to requirements. Not least because I'm, ahem, a week late. 

But unfortunately, I couldn't think of anything original.

D'oh.

So instead, here's a few things that I loved and what I hated about E3 '09

LOVED:

Microsoft. In general. Their press conference was really interesting and showed off a lot of reasons to be excited. Project Natal is the biggest, of course. If it works, it'll be amazing, if it doesn't, it'll just be an EyeToy, like what Sony made about half a decade ago, like. So not that good. Personally, though, as a massive Rock Band fan and a liker of The Beatles, my favourite announcement was The Beatles: Rock Band. Well, reveal, I suppose, given that everyone's known about it for months. It does look amazingly good though, and I can't wait to spend tons of money to pretend to be George Harrison.

Golden Sun 3. I'm not the world's greatest fan of JRPGs, but the two Golden Sun games on the GBA were damned good. Hopefully the new one can replicate the success.

HATED:

Nintendo. And Sony, actually. This makes me sound like a Microsoft fanboy. Believe me, I'm not. I own all three of this generation's consoles and play them all a fair bit. And God knows I was something of a Nintendo fanboy 'back in the day', actually. But seriously guys? Boring conferences. Nintendo's was an improvement over last year's, but a chimp playing the bongos could have been an improvement. Actually, they should make a new Donkey Konga just so they can pull off that publicity stunt. And even then, they'd still be flogging a dead horse. Mario Galaxy is over-rated, they still put far too much influence on Mario as a rule of thumb...they just seem stuck in a rut. Admittedly a rut that's making them a metric fuckton of cash though. Sony's was...OK but nothing special. PSP Go is big, I guess, and arguably could be more crucial to the future of gaming than Natal. I mean, if it pays off it could lead the way for an entirely digitally distributed future. But if it doesn't, we might have discs around for a while yet. Everything else was crummy, except for impressive demoes of MAG and Uncharted 2.

Everything Else. In general, I thought it was a really bad show this year. It's good that it's still around, and no doubt I'll be very excited when it comes round again next year but...I can't help but think the companies might be better doing an Apple, and announcing stuff at various times around the year. I know to an extent they do that already, but to a greater degree. I dunno. 

So that's it. I'll maybe try and be more original next year!

The Clash

Y'know what's been annoying me lately?

TV.

In general.

It's not because there's nothing good on though. It's the fact that there's too much good stuff on. AT THE SAME TIME.

I'm assuming that you know how the US TV Seasons system works. Oh alright then, here's a re-cap. The stations in the US pretty much all start their shows in September sometime. Then they usually run until about mid-November when, for some reason that seems to defy logic, the shows go on a 'mid-season break' and vanish until January or February. When they return, after the mid-season, not only do the previously-started shows start to wrap up, but other shows start, which usually only last about 12 or 13 weeks, with a couple of exceptions. Well, I say only, but you know what I mean.

Now, in the UK, we used to get shows months after the US. Hell, in some cases we still do. Dexter, the best TV show of all time, at least for me, is currently a whole year behind the American air date in the UK. Season 4 is starting there soon (well, September I presume) and we're only a couple of episodes into S3 currently.

But anyway, recently, mostly thanks to Sky, it must be said, we've been getting the shows only a few days behind the American airdates. Which is great. I'm not complaining. Unfortunately, the UK TV system seems to have it in it's collective psyche that one American show must compete against another.

Which is why you have, on a Sunday night, Lost clashing with Supernatural clashing with Fringe. Until a week ago, on Mondays we had Heroes clashing with 24 (incidentally also clashing with Ashes to Ashes, which has gotten much better since I ripped it to shreds last year, but is British so I'm excluding it. Oh, and Law & Order UK. That shared the timeslot too). And we always used to have Heroes clashing with Prison Break as well. When it was still good. Oh, sorry, when they were still good.

Thank God Dollhouse has only just reared its head over here, or else it would've been in the uncomfortable position of clashing with Battlestar Galactica. As much as I love Joss Whedon, he wouldn't have stood a chance in that battle.

There's more! Dexter's new time of 10pm Friday clashes with 'new' (2 year old) episodes of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. I don't think The Mentalist on Thursday nights clashes with anything, mind. Except it's the only time I get to watch DVDs. But I guess that doesn't really count, does it?

So yeah, you see my dilemma. I love all of the series I've mentioned immensely, but it's getting to the point of being ridiculous now. This week's going to be a nightmare too, thanks to Britain's Got Talent being on every single bloody night. And yes, I do watch it, and enjoy it. I am not ashamed to admit it.

You know what's worse? Sky +, that genius device that lets you record things that clash. As I say, it's genius. But you can only have 2 things recording at once: one you're watching and one you're not. So had Mondays been completely stuffed with Heroes, Ashes to Ashes, 24 and Law & Order UK then we'd have been screwed. There is, of course, also repeats, but that opens up a whole new can of worms, with even more clashes, if that's possible.

And drawing it back, this is mostly thanks to the American TV system. If they didn't shove all their shows on at the same time, this predicament would go away, as we'd have quality programming through the year. Oh, and Heroes.

Cutting Brains

Two very nice things happened today.

I finally saw Star Trek first of all. Very very awesome it is too. Without a doubt the best sci-fi I've seen in ages (and I'm including the most recent season of BSG in that too), and one of the best films in general I've seen for ages. Everything seemed nigh-on perfect.

Possibly the best 15 opening minutes of any film ever to kick us off. The casting was superb, all the way through. I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Zachary Quinto, and he didn't disappoint as Spock. Although he probably could have done with a bit more brain cutting.

(That's a Heroes reference, in case you don't know. And yes, before you ask, I am more than a tad pissed off that Sylar's essentially been killed off and Hiro looks like he's heading that way too. Wayta wipe out the best two characters in the show, guys...)

Simon Pegg surprised me. I mean, I love to guy, don't get me wrong, but I never thought he'd be able to pull of Scotty. And he did. Very very successfully. Chris Pine did Kirk very nicely too. Ultimately the film lived or died by the connection Kirk and Spock shared, which they thankfully got spot on.

So overall, great film. Do see it if you've not already. One of those films that's always going to be best on the big screen rather than at home. Even, probably, on Blu Ray with 7.1 surround sound.

Number 2: Green Day's new album, 21st Century Breakdown.

I'm an unashamed fan of Green Day thanks to American Idiot, which I rank as one of my favourite albums. Certainly my most played. 21st Century Breakdown follows a pretty similar structure: it's a rock opera, although I'm stuggling to fully get the plot at the moment. Having said that, I never even realised AI was a concept album at first, so I'm a bit slow with that kind of thing...

The new album's a little more chilled out than some of their previous stuff. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of heavy repeated riffs and shouty lyrics, but a lot of the songs start off sounding a bit like Queen, actually. No worse off for it though: if you're going to emulate a band, you might as well copy the best!

That's about all I have to say tonight really. Take care, and see Star Trek :D