Thumbing through the gaming news, as I do every day, I ran across an article talking about Wisconsin passing a Bill to tax Downloadable Content. [more info] I gnashed my teeth and tried desperately to push aside visions of the future. Then I hit an article where Stiftelsen Ungdomsvård (The Youth Care Foundation), a Swedish group that advocates active alternatives to gaming, surmised WoW to be the most dangerous game on the market, calling it "the cocaine of the computer games world". [more info] At that I clenched my jaw and twisted my fingers up into claws delivering an imaginary throttling to the entire group.

Top that off with a myriad of other stupid gaming news tidbits that make my nostrils flare while I huff and puff against continued anti-gaming bias and discrimination against gamers, and I'm half an eye twitch away from physically injuring myself as I try desperately not to damage my own computer equipment in protest.

Yes, I'm one of those folks who, at times, has lashed out at inanimate objects for issues over which they exert no actual control. I've kicked a bed post after stubbing my toe in the middle of the night. I've bitten an NES controller before hurling it across the room in a fit of gamer frustration. And I've bruised my palm smacking the side of an old CRT monior after Photoshop crashed and cost me hours of work. So, I can completely identify with thrusting your arm out so forcefully, to deliver a bird flipped in anger, that you actually feel it in your wrist or shoulder. Though I've not injured myself doing so, I have no doubt that I have flipped a bird in just such a fashion.

Truthfully, it's been a while since I've done any of that. I've mellowed in my old age. And I'm aware that I now have two small eyes focussed on my every move. So, I'm not eager to pass on the more ignorant aspects of my Irish temper or any of my bad habits. No, these days I just press the heels of my hands into my eyes, take a few deep breaths and visualize the stupidity drifting away into the distance, tapering off into nothing, then fading away out of site. Shake my hands out, refocus, and go back to reading, working, playing, whatever. I uhh... I do still lose my cool when doing dishes. But, I take a break and get back to it as soon as I can.

PS. Yes, the big guy is wearing a Charlie Brown shirt.

Did you read the one about some group of dermatologists finding a "medical condition" linked to video games? PlayStation palmar hidradenitis. Source: Telegraph.co.uk [ more info ]

At first I thought this strip was precisely about that. My opinion its just a bunch of doctors trying to make a name for themselves for discovering something when they just attempting to rename conditionally an existing condition based on the exact source!

If people in the medical field go with this, next thing will have WoWPal Tunnel and EQupsomnia.

As for the taxing thing, I'm not so sure I'm against it. Sales tax applies to everything, why not also to online stuff? I love not paying taxes for buying stuff off certain web sites, but also realize that it is sort of a loophole that should eventually be fixed.

I think everyone gets a little angry at things and the nearest inanimate object is certainly better to lash out at than the nearest person or small pet.


It always annoys me when people moan about Grand Theft Auto and ALWAYS bring up the "beating hookers to death for their money". I played every GTA game and I have never done that. Not even once. No mission has made me do it nor have I any incentive to do this. These newspapers and magazines never mention the vigilante missions in police cars or the Paramedic missions or any of the other ways that you actually do something nearly good and get way more money than any hooker is carrying. It's down to the person... do you do something difficult and challenging for a decent reward, or do you beat up innocent women for small change.

That being said... I do know some people for whom gaming has taken over their lives and not in a good way. Internet gaming can be as addictive and damaging as any other pastime that is taken to extremes. The internet isn't a nice, happy, safe playground for the masses, it's more like New York Central station. It looks safe and shiny and can take you to many places, just don't poke around in the dark corners.

Edit: Quick clarification... it's not the games that are the problem, it's how people let the games affect their lives. If that makes sense.

Good to know I'm not the only one that's bit a controller in frustration with a game. Me and my buddy could tell the difference between our ps2 controllers because mine had a few little bite marks in it from my canines :P

I've nearly injured myself a few times in frustration, my desk doesn't like me very much but now that I'm in Univ dorms and have a roomate I have to stop myself from yelling or slamming my hands down on my desk in a fit of rage.

As for taxing online purchases, seems kinda silly to me since I could buy something from an American based company and I live in Canada and have to pay the taxes to a different government than my own etc. etc.

This is just another example of selective moral outrage over something that people fail to understand. What about rampant drug use in society? What about teen alcoholism? What about a great many issues that are far more devestating and far reaching than a kid playing a video game?

I'll admit, when I used to play GTA after a long day at work, I'd hop in a car and cruise down the sidewalks until I had a 4 or 5 star wanted rating, but I was far from doing that in real life. Same with playing WoW, I play on a daily basis, but I haven't lost my job or starved my child because I've been playing.

People fail to consider that there is a small percentage of any good thing being ruined by people that have no self control.

Borus, yeah I read it a few days ago, but it didn't make me angry. It just made me roll my eyes.

The problem with taxing DLC is a series of things for me. 1. Digital items don't technically exist. 2. It's a gateway to taxing other items of "believed value". 3. It's hypocritical to consider gamers to be the bane of existance and then fill the holes in the state's budget with our income. 4. The US taxation system is broken. [If I buy a pencil, I'm taxed on the purchase, the store is taxed when they buy it, taxed on their revenue after they sell it. The company that produced the pencil is taxed on the item's sale. Their employees are taxed for their income. All of the equipment they need was taxed when it was purchased. A simple pencil made of cheap products which should cost next to nothing, now costs a buck fifty. Awesome. Any new forms of taxation are just ridiculous.]

Beyond that we have to look at the interstate aspect of a digital sale. iTunes are targetted specifically by bills such as this. Apple now has to spend unnecessary cash to design tools to handle the taxation (determining location, collecting the tax and turning it over to the state) specifically for buyers from Wisconsin. Again... ridiculous. It's exactly why I'm not taxed by the state for items I purchase online UNLESS they operate in the state I live in. Because who gets to lay claim to the tax?

Originally Posted by Glidden:

This is just another example of selective moral outrage over something that people fail to understand. What about rampant drug use in society? What about teen alcoholism? What about a great many issues that are far more devestating and far reaching than a kid playing a video game?

I'll admit, when I used to play GTA after a long day at work, I'd hop in a car and cruise down the sidewalks until I had a 4 or 5 star wanted rating, but I was far from doing that in real life. Same with playing WoW, I play on a daily basis, but I haven't lost my job or starved my child because I've been playing.

People fail to consider that there is a small percentage of any good thing being ruined by people that have no self control.

It has became apprent since the days when I was a teen that nothing is sacred. I meen in days of the past when T V was new something like news about a **** , child abuse and any of that sort would never been on the news or if so it would be held LATE at night.

Now a days? News fills the ignorant and biased majority with every reason to hide under their bed til their dead. I mean has any of things really risen or is it just more publisized then ever before?

What is even worse is the effect it has on those with unstable minds. I mean we know the reason sex is so abundant on TV is because it manipulates people to the agenda of what they are selling. So to sick mind, the news is promoting those so ill to go into action; promoting and sensationalizing(?) the events til they themselves wish to do such action. Thus the news gets more bad news to show off in all in horrid glory.

If games can effect those not stable in their minds into action to act like said innaproperate(?) action, how does advertising the sick people in the world not promote those sick into doing the same?

Slow-new-itis. If they don't have something 'sensational' to report, they'll make it up.

When newspapers were weeklies or even monthlies, they still made up or created 'bad things' to report when there weren't enough. Both the dawn of yellow journalism and the start of the Spanish American War are prime examples dating waaay back. (both links are to Wikipedia articles on their respective topics) When newspapers went to daily, they needed -something- to fill the pages and keep the people buying.

Now we have up-to-the-minute 'breaking news' 24 hour hours a day. Little things are trumped up to be big events just to get the viewers to tune in. Nothing sensational happening at 4pm EST? Oh wait, the president will be stepping out of an airplane sometime around then. Stop the presses, train all the cameras on the open door and wait.. while keeping the audience in breathless anticipation with the commentary. Something that would have been ignored (coming out of airplanes is something the president will do A LOT) is now "major breaking news" (there was an article on the phenomenon yesterday on NPR).

Linking gaming to thus and so is suffers from the same sort of sensational new fabrication. The editors know that "games is bad" sells views. So, like William Randolf Hurst encouraging the Spanish American War, they look for all the possible ways they can link gaming to Bad Things.

"Scientific" studies linking games to existing conditions (or variants of existing conditions) as -the- cause gets them noticed. They want their 15 minutes of fame, they learn to use the knee-jerk response crap. In the 70s and early 80s it was 'the evils of TV'. Before that it was 'the evils of movies and radio'. Before that it was 'the evils of certain books'. Und so weiter (and so on and so on)... Music, too, gets 'the treatment'. The same thing said about rock dancing was said about the waltz and the minuet before that. Scandalous they were, encouraging couples to.. touch.. and dance exclusively with one person.

Truly.

Sadly, you get the gaming news sites sensationalising all manner of 'gaming news' where a quote extolling parents to get involved with their kids becomes "linking games to academic underachievement".

Well, it does mean I get a lot of eye exercises from all the rolling.

(sorry for the soapbox, but this is one of my major pet peeves *chuckle*)

@ Borus: Naming a disease after the playstation because the person who got it "caught" it by playing too much? That's pretty much the lamest bullshit I have heard; if someone spent too much time being "intimate" with themselves (Admittedly, there'd probably be other problems first), they could get it too, according to the article. Caused by an excessive amount of sweat from the palms? The number of ways that someone could "catch" that "disease" is insane.

@ Woody: Ah, the splendors of the taxation of digital goods. Unfortunately, this was the next logical step in "things to add a tax to" in order to keep the government afloat. With Apple reporting such crazy large figures in digital sales, and only CA and the feds getting a chunk (income taxes), it was bound to happen. But yes, the logistics are the most difficult part. It's a rather similar situation to when the Federal Gov't shoes a mandate down the throats of the states; you have to do this, and we're not going to help you.

And as for Stiftelsen Ungdomsvård, they're probably doing the same thing that everyone else who has ever thrown an insult at any big popular thing; they're trying to get their message out by criticizing the biggest and baddest target around. I'm just glad that Blizzard has yet to be blamed for any of the nude addons, considering the controversy over GTA3SA. Still, these issues will persist until gamers have their own interest groups. We're basically a bunch of sitting ducks; people can insult us all they want, blame us for all of the ills of society, and we aren't organized well enough to fight back.

My 2c.

-Chaos

WoW the cocaine game? Nah. At least EQ had the nickname of Evercrack.