22 Jul 2012

Tilting at fanboys - story continues.

It was a beautiful day in Irwine, sunny California. On my way to work I was thinking about very important meeting in R&D department. I was generally calm person, however a shadow of anxiety crawled through my mind. "Oh, I have a bad feeling about this" I thought to myself while I was about to step through the gateway of hell... I mean, the glorious company that I dreamt to work for since I was a teenager. As it turned out my prediction was right.



Receptionist throw me a fake smile as I was on my way to R&D. I didn't mind it much. Maybe because I wasn't looking at her face, my eyes were glued to huge breast emerging from unpinned shirt. "Oh the things I would've done with you...". My erotic fantasies were violently interrupted by sharp voice of Greg Street.
- You're finally here! I was expecting you a little bit earlier, after all you're about to see what we've been working on for past few years, and I assure you it's huge.

- But, sir, I know R&D are really slacky, which is not surprising, barely anyone works in this company anymore.

- Oh, will you just shut it? Follow me, I have no time for explanations, but I can tell you one thing, the stuff you've seen until now, it was just an cover up.

I had to follow him. From that moment, we travelled together, East. Always... into the East.

On the east wall he placed his hand on the wall and I've heard sinister creak coming from the underground. "Stand back from this plate, would you?" said ... I quickly jumped aside and observed how floor shuffled itself and elevator appeared.
"After you" Greg said.



I had no choice, but to enter the lift. Inferior was looking quite futuristic. Coloured buttons covered one side of this circular place. I felt drops of sweat as we were descending. The elevator has stopped on 12 levels underground. Aluminium doors finally opened. Sinister smile appeared on Greg’s face. We were walking through dark, rigid, cold corridors. Dim, teal light was stroking us. And then I've seen that no one should've seen. Cylindrical cells filled with green, glowing gel and some dark shadows. Human curiosity pushed me close to one of tanks, I wanted to examine the shadow inside of it. Suddenly misshaped head hit the tank wall.



"Oh, my fucking god" I've screamed as I jumped back away. My heart was rushing like a fastest horse in gallop, I literately felt the blood pumping in my veins, I felt dizzy and I was about to faint, unfortunately I didn't. I wish I had though. I wish I had and never woke up again. However blissful ignorance was not my destiny.

- What the hell is this?! - I yelled him.

- Pull yourself together! Stop acting like a child, this isn't mature form in here, we have more advanced forms just on the other side of this corridor.

- Are you cloning people here?! - I still could not believe it.

- Well, not really. We are creating them from the scratch, but you can call them clones if that's easier for you.

- That is insane! - I wasn't hiding my strong disapproval. - Not to mention, it's highly unmoral.

- Well that doesn't matter, as long as we are making profit, don't you know, that the single reason of corporation existence is to make profit?

- But this? This?! We were creating games, for people enjoyment, not damn clones.

- Ah, you are so short-sighted. We did not create them to sell them. We did make them to help sell our games, you see it's cheaper to actually make them, then to make a good games, at least at our current rate of wages. - Grim smiled glimpsed through his face. - With their help we can sell anything, they will provide a free advertising for us, so we can make even more profits in the long run. They will be fanatics of Blizzard, genetically engineered to fight our competition.

- But sir? Sir! Would you do this for video game, virtual reality, money? Sacrifice every bit of your human nature, sell your soul to the devil? This... this is madness, this is BLIZZARD!!



- Silence, you maggot! I am the incarnation of Grom Hellscreem, proud warchief of the Horde. We shall crush other companies the same way we've crushed the Alliance scum, no matter what it takes and what sacrifices we will have to make. Our soldiers are faithful, obedient and countless. They shall swarm every forum and comment section, stomping our competition into the ground.

They are our ultimate weapon.

They are the clones.

They are the Fanboys.

7 Jul 2012

Playing Conrad in Wrath of Heroes

Yo!

I know I wasn't active on youtube lately. Well, now it's the time to remedy that. Ladies and gentleman I bring you silliness and horrible game play, I hope you will enjoy this kind of sense of humour.

5 Jul 2012

Bashing fan boys with heavy hammer

Fan (fanboy) is an abbreviation from FANatic. Indeed, we shall no longer fool ourselves. That is where this word is coming from. I shouldn’t remind you that fanaticism carries a burden of negative connotations and righteously so. Throughout history we’ve encountered many form of fanaticism. Fanatic can act uncritically with great zeal or passion on many different areas. Religious (God wills it, thus we shall purge heathens by holy flame), nationalistic (Germany before WW2), racial (Ku Klux Klan). In our modern society we developed new form of fanaticism: sports (which can be stretched to e-sports as well) and products, I’ll take a closer look at the last form.
 
Of course there is many kinds of products, however we won’t be discussing disputes between Coca-Cola and Pepsi (because everyone knows Pepsi is much better). Do you see what I did there?

Instead we rather focus about something we care about, which is  games.
 
In general fanboys claim they love one game or game genre and hate everything else. Is it because they just spend 60 $ and they are trying to prove before themselves and whole world they didn’t waste money on that purchase. Or it’s just “my way or the highway” thinking (which is completely wrong, because I’m not [nor is anybody else] affected in my choice of favourite games by anyone else tastes). It is not for me to judge narrowed opinions of fanboys (which seem to occupy this page as well, looking at reaction to my recent blog).
 
Despite their motives, fanboys will plague comment sections, chat rooms and forums just to prove some genre or game is better than another in every possible way. I’ll use Starcraft and League of Legends as a example of a quarrel between two groups of fanboys.
 
Both games are very well known on e-sport scene, being ones of most popular games when it comes to competitive play. However despite the fact Starcraft and LoL can coexist, some groups of people seem to think (however I’m not sure if they are capable of actual thought process) otherwise. The main argument against LoL is that it doesn’t take as much skill as Starcraft, but does it really take less PERSONAL skill then Starcraft? Certainly does. Does it take less skill in general then Starcraft? Probably yes, however communication and teamwork are very important skills and main factors deciding whenever game is won or lost. So it may seem less skilful for you, without a doubt. You may say: “I don’t enjoy it because it is not at skilful as SC2. “But do you really hate this game? It’s only a game after all and hate and love are opposite, but they are the strongest emotions human can feel. So next time when you think: I love this game, consider if it’s really love. How would you describe feelings for your family/partner/friends then? I know sometimes people tend to colloquially state: “oh, I love it”, however they don’t really mean it. Real meaning of this colloquial expression would be more like: I really enjoy it, and I think it is great. It goes the same way about hatred, it’s just the opposite. Of course you don’t even have to use word “hate” to drop shitbomb on some game (quotes from Hydramist comments): “There is nothing worse in the world than LoL” or “Hydramist covering LoL? Your heading the wrong way, this is the way of pathetic people”.  
 
If you can’t be more open minded about topics we write about, you may as well stop visiting this page, you’ll be better off without us, and we will be better off without you.
 
For example I don’t like sports and racing games, main reason being I rather play football in real life instead of doing it on computer. However I’m far from saying I hate sports games, I hate Fifa and everything connected with it. If Hydramist would start covering Fifa (it is an WCG title after all) I could:
 
a)      Skip the article, because topic doesn’t interest me at all.
b)      Read the article, because I like blogger or general Hydramist way of doing things. However I wouldn’t leave comments like: “omg, fifa sux, fire the writer, he is shit, stop covering this pathetic game” or “Omg, fifa again, I quit hydramist foreva” instead I would just remain silent or say something like “While I don’t enjoy fifa as a game, it was good read, you made interesting points/I enjoyed your coverage of recent tournament”
 
Both A and B are good option of doing things. However if you would write “shit article, I’ll never visit your page again” our reaction would be like:
a)      Bye
b)      We don’t care cause we have hundreds of thousands readers and one person leaving wouldn’t make a different
c)       We would rather enjoy smaller but smarter and more open minded community
Looks like I went a little bit off-topic here L FML
To the point then, 

It is yours and ONLY YOURS decision to like some title or not. If you are talking about it publicly try to remain civic and objective. Accept you are not the only person in the world and other people may think differently and may like different music, films and games than you. Try to find things you have in common instead of mindlessly bashing other people. And with this sentence I’m done with tilting at windmills, erm... fanboys.

Space Sokoban