If my comments caused any harm or hurt to the hard working Americans who play Dungeons & Dragons, I apologize. This campaign is committed to increasing the strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma scores of every American.
Ben Smith’s Blog: Goldfarb keeps experience points – Politico.com.
We watched Sweeney Todd tonight. The kids had my tablet PC in the room, so I grabbed it and doodled a bit. Then they got ahold of it. It was a bad end for one Pokemon who got the closest shave of his life, and perhaps ended up in a meat pie.
Was a bit disappointed that “More Meat Pies!” wasn’t in there. Or this lyric, which has stuck in my head ever since some of our friends in college staged this musical as their senior project.
Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd
He served a dark and a vengeful god
He shaved the faces of gentlemen
Who never thereafter were heard from again
We’d been telling the kids for weeks about those two bits, singing them over and over…
So, why can the kids watch this with us, but not GTA? Good question. Perhaps because Rockstar just isn’t Sondheim for me yet.
Totally not safe for work.
Not sure what the distinction is between an M and an AO game these days, but one thing seems clear — Rockstar is not hiding stuff on the disc anymore. Presumably if you don’t try to hide it, you can’t be accused of hypocrisy. 🙂
On the one hand, this is clearly puerile and likely counterproductive in that it undermines what by all accounts is a stellar game with a great script and great gameplay. (I say by all accounts because I don’t have it. And I don’t have it because, well, of scenes like this, and my kids).
On the other hand, the industry does need to be able to tackle mature content, and games with this sort of content should be allowed to exist.
I just kind of wish it weren’t so gratuitous.
Richard Bartle: Gamers have won the battle against the censors | Technology | guardian.co.uk
“We’ve won. Get over it.”
Stephen King fights the censorship!
Of course, this is the same guy who wrote a short story about a man stranded on an island slowly eating himself because he had no other food. Classic last line, too: “Ladyfingers… they taste just like ladyfingers…”
Could Massachusetts legislators find better ways to watch out for the kiddies? Man, I sure hope so, because there’s a lot more to America’s culture of violence than Resident Evil 4.
What really makes me insane is how eager politicians are to use the pop culture — not just videogames but TV, movies, even Harry Potter — as a whipping boy. It’s easy for them, even sort of fun, because the pop-cult always hollers nice and loud. Also, it allows legislators to ignore the elephants in the living room. Elephant One is the ever-deepening divide between the haves and have-nots in this country, a situation guys like Fiddy and Snoop have been indirectly rapping about for years. Elephant Two is America’s almost pathological love of guns. It was too easy for critics to claim — falsely, it turned out — that Cho Seung-Hui (the Virginia Tech killer) was a fan of Counter-Strike; I just wish to God that legislators were as eager to point out that this nutball had no problem obtaining a 9mm semiautomatic handgun.
