Dear internet (now interchangable with “you dumbfucks”):

Trolling is the portrayal of sensationalist behavior as legitimate opinion.  It can be done for personal or financial gain, as sport, or to launch an ego trip. Don’t know where I’m heading with this?  Here’s a spoiler: Disagreement is not trolling.  Honesty is not trolling.  Sarcasm is not trolling.  What part of the collective community’s rectum did this horror story come from?

Why am I in a pissy mood?  The thing is, Jim Sterling’s game reviews have become events.  “Come for the well-written ass-kicking, stay for the irrational fanboy meltdown!”  People bitch that game journalism is bought and paid for.  People bitch that reviewers don’t have the balls to employ the entirety of the one-to-ten game review scale.  So what happens when someone shits on a number of Triple-A titles?  He’s a fucking troll, that’s what!

Mr. Sterling got the green light to review Final Fantasy XIII, a game that’s getting grilled for embracing the worst of Japanese Role-Playing Games.  Jim Sterling dislikes Japanese Role-Playing Games.  You’d believe the man would shit a biased brainfart, but the finished product was all “Boom, headshot!”

It takes more than graphics to make a game, and Final Fantasy XIII  offers very little else other than eye candy. Ultimately, this latest addition to the Final Fantasy series is a pompous and masturbatory affair, created seemingly to promote the developer’s ego first, and the player’s enjoyment second. Every now and then its fights can approach satisfying, but mostly this is a dull, dreary affair that is too busy licking its own arse to look up and notice that everybody around it has fallen asleep. Written with all the skill of a three-year-old and paced with the eagerness of a virgin in heat, Final Fantasy XIII isn’t just bad by Final Fantasy standards, it’s pretty damn poor for the genre itself.

But it’s required by law that you’re not allowed to read the article.  So instead, everyone skipped two-thousand words of instant win and saw “4.0 — Below Average“.

As of this entry’s publication, Sterling’s review has 901 comments.  He has set off the biggest game journalism shitstorm since…his own 4.5-out-of-10 for Assassin’s Creed 2.

The hilarity is the golden goose that supposedly outs his ‘trollish intentions’.  His detractors are pointing to Sterling’s perfect score for Deadly Premonition, an X-Box 360 budget horror game that he wrote “goes above and beyond. This game is so bad, it’s not just become good. It’s pretty close to perfect.”  Somehow, his love for campy media was a declaration that Deadly Premonition was one of the greatest games ever released.

Why is it so hard to believe a cynic would reject the consensus?  If I was going to actively troll people as part of my journalism gig, I certainly wouldn’t choose one of the worst-paying, unstable outlets to do it. Want to read up on a real troll?  Hit up Armond White, a movie buff so notorious that Roger Ebert went out of his way to call the man a troll.  White would probably tell you it’s racism, which would be pretty ironic because the Cliff Notes edition of his movie reviews reads like a hate crime.

So I don’t know where this distortion of trolling began, but I’m fucking tired of it.  Yeah, the “known troll” wrote an article bitching about trolling.  Or am I trolling you?

Just troll the comment thread.

Currently in the process of reacting to Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare shitstorm, a clusterfuck drawing sentiments I can fully support.  Fan anger is currently being directed at the Twitter account of Infinity Ward’s community manager.  Twitter is involved, so it’s little surprise Commander Handsonface had to deliver a status report:

Whether Infinity Ward is trying to meet deadlines or they were nudged in a certain direction, Activision was involved.  That’s why this particular fan cancelled his pre-order for Activision’s Modern Warfare 2 and pre-ordered Activision’s more-expensive DJ Hero…to stick to it to the man.  I guess this cunning plan didn’t come with a blueprint.

Note: Edits made for general clarity.

You already made up your opinion on the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott.  I did it several months ago.  The mere premise of the boycott was bad enough.  Turns out the mere premise couldn’t make it to release day.  On Wednesday, Agent of Chaos (one half of the boycott leadership) announced on their Steam community web site that:

We have accomplished everything we can on our manifesto. We’ve been dealing with Valve ever since our group started, then we met them in-person and now we’re at the point of concluding our discussions. Our goal wasn’t to steer people away from L4D2, it was to get Valve’s attention and have them support original L4D. We succeeded and that’s where our mission ends; nothing more or less.

That’s correct: The goal of the Left 4 Dead 2 Boycott wasn’t to harm the sales of Left 4 Dead 2.  It was to make sure the original game continued to receive support.  This was a stark change from two months prior, when Agent of Chaos criticized the support the game was receiving.

Who is actually excited about this? Sure, I believe they’ll be well made (coming from Valve of course). BUT with a load of professional custom campaigns in the works, it’s only a matter of time this DLC would easily get overshadowed by them. Now my point is – how about something valuable that can extend L4D’s replay value in a broader way? New special infected, and weapons? 4v4 matchmaking? Bug fixes? Personally, I’d take any of the aforesaid over two new chapters anyday.

Pretty simple what happened: The boycott leaders found out that it’s much easier to make demands from behind a computer.

Last month, Valve paid out-of-pocket to ship the boycott leaders to the Valve office complex.  Assuming it doesn’t spawn copycatters looking for a tour of their dream game studio, this was brilliant.  Fucking brilliant.  Believe me: The awkward would be ramped to eleven in any room Karune and I share.  But even I profess a love for Blizzard software.  Try to look Gabe Newell dead in the eye and explain why you’re campaigning against the purchase of his games–while he takes you on an office tour to address your concerns.

Or maybe they just caught whim of the pre-order numbers:

“Based on the strength of pre-orders, Left 4 Dead 2 will be the fastest-selling product in Valve’s history,” said Gabe Newell, president of Valve. “Left 4 Dead 2 has consistently run at 300% of Left 4 Dead’s numbers.”

…

“We’ll be supporting Left 4 Dead 2’s launch with a $25 million campaign,” said Doug Lombardi, Valve’s vice-president of Marketing. “Left 4 Dead 2 has already set the record for greatest number of pre-orders in our company’s history, and we’re still over a month out from shipping.

It’s moments like these that make one fear for the well-being of Blizzard’s product quality.

I receive a lot of flak for defending the company’s business practices, but sans a few awesome individuals, I’ve never been keen on their community relations.  That’s not going to continue today.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Battle.net forums, it is one of the greatest video games of all-time.  It’s the bastard child of Final Fantasy VI, a world where ninety percent of the characters assumed Kefka’s personality disorder.  The goal of the game is to make people HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE you.

Over the last two weeks, a regular poster on the Starcraft II General Discussion Forum insisted a Blizzard employee was spilling the Starcraft II release cycle on his Twitter page.  But without a Twitter page from one “Joe Lowland”, this proved difficult to corroborate.  So naturally, another member of the forum filled in the blanks and carved out the newest member of my blogroll.

Hilarity ensued.  In the same way that Michael Jordan matured to trust his teammates, the S2GDF gathered to debate the Battle Report that currently doesn’t exist.  Thanks to their efforts, the greater Starcraft community came together to debate the veracity of Joe Lowland’s Twitter.

Naturally, Blizzard would need to address this misinformation.  They were responsible for this.  During BlizzCon, some asshole at Blizzard constructed a dam in the flow of information.  It was up to Karune (whose name is now interchangable with “The people who tell Karune what to post”) help ease the community and its sentiments.

Do you now understand why Blizzard’s community relations team launches customers into rage?  I understand corporate cultures are dictated by “the book”.  In this “the book”, everything must be done by “the book”.  In some twisted manner, “the book” indicated the best way to respond to a well-conceived troll is to justify it.

Instead of paying me seven dollars an hour to kick the crap out of the Battle.net forums, I’ll continue to laugh at the embarassments your company concocts.  For free.

While posting on a video game message board, people will disagree with your input.  Providing rebuttals to their argument is a bad idea.  They may challenge you to play them.  This is because knowledge of gameplay mechanics are directly proportional to hand-eye coordination.  Should you turn their challenge down, they’ll call you a dodger.

Pictured: The Mecca.

Too bad that’s now how a dodge works.  Since this stupidity recently became contagious on the Battle.net forums, allow me to enlighten you: A dodge is when one attempts to elevate their standing without instigation and then refuses to back it up.  It is not the act of standing up to somebody and refusing to honor a challenge, nor is it outright refusing to play them. Example:

Idiot A: lol u suck at this game
Idiot B: 1v1?
Idiot A: na i don’t play noobs

Idiot A is dodging, because he is making the point of contention.  Nearly eighty percent of Warcraft III team games end with this salvo.

Idiot A: lol u suck at this game
Idiot B: no i disagree it is you who sucks at this game
Idiot A: 1v1?
Idiot B: um, no?

In this case, Idiot B is not dodging because he did not start the fight.  Idiot A is the internet equivalent of the guy who sits outside a bar and starts fights for shits and giggles.

The exception?  When Floyd Mayweather challenges an underweight Juan Marquez and Mayweather refuses to give an equally-sized Shane Mosley an opportunity, that can be considered a dodge.  When Fedor Emelianenko was given the opportunity to fight Brock Lesnar and Fedor’s handlers botched the deal, that can be perceived as a dodge.  Know why?  When you are paid to work in a profession built on the quality of competition, it is incumbent upon talent to accept the battle.  The consumer’s money acts as a vote of long-term confidence that you will do so.  There’s a reason people can’t get behind boxing, a sport where managers cherrypick opponents in the pursuit of creating an undefeated fighter.

If this rule of dodging applied to amateur play, I would have to do battle with every Warcraft III, Guitar Hero, Tetris, Starcraft, and Imagine: Babies player to walk through my portion of the internet.  And just because you’re oblivious to the definition of a dodge doesn’t mean I have to take you up on that.

(Please post all one-versus-one requests in the comment thread.)

I hate being late for parties.

Teamliquid.net is the de-facto Starcraft journalism hub in the Western World.  Its members protect their passion for Starcraft like a first-born.  Need proof?  Teamliquid’s Hot_Bid drew up an article detailing the state of early-game Zerg in Starcraft II.  That is, thirty-six-hundred words detailing a problem that will be irrelevant in three months.

I’m not here to slam one for writing a dissertation on a non-issue.  The obvious hypocrasy would be obvious.  I’m more embarrassed over the ensuing discussion.

To summarize: Joneagle_X of SC2Forums wrote an article addressing Hot_Bid’s entry a review of each Zerg unit.  This conflicted with Hot_Bid’s point of view.  Eventually, Jon was goaded into defending himself on Teamliquid decided to interject himself into Teamliquid discussion for no reason at all. He began his defense with this:

I’m the guy whom HotBid “made look like he knows nothing.” Sometimes the ridiculousness you guys post makes it into my inbox and then I just have to respond. Feel free to read (and inevitably downplay) my review here. And in contrast to HotBid’s two days (maximum 20 hours) of playtime I’ve logged almost 60 hours on StarCraft 2.

A shitstorm predictably ensues, with Jon’s critics claiming his opinion is irrelevant because 1) he’s not good at Starcraft and 2) the entirety of Teamliquid has more Starcraft II experience than Jon does.

This is a fair time to note that I wake up every morning and wonder why people are content with being so stupid.

Early in my campaign against the Japanese Role-Playing Game, I was derided for playing one-hundred hours on a single Final Fantasy VII save file?  Why?  It wasn’t because I needed a life.  According to my detractor, I hadn’t played enough Final Fantasy VII to criticize the game.

In modern gamer culture, “years of experience” isn’t enough to validate your opinions.  Now, I’m supposed to get on my knees for the idiot who has played fifty games of Starcraft II?  And I’m supposed to respect the opinion of his critics because they’re totally awesome at the sequel’s predecessor?

You are terrible at this game.

I don’t care who you are: If you are reading this entry and Starcraft II has not been released, you are fucking garbage at Starcraft II and your opinion has no more merit than anyone else’s.  Being totally awesome at the predecessor does not change that.  1998’s best Starcraft players would be laughed out of a modern tournament.  Ten years from now, we will be talking about “Starcraft II in 2009″ the same way.

So if you’d like to get a head-start on being a complete dick, go ahead.  Just letting you know I’m calling you out on it.

Edit: Amending the record to show Joneagle was not directly responding to Hot_Bid’s entry.  Thanks, Dreadwave!

Edit Edit: Let’s try this again.

For all the flak the personal computer takes as a gaming conduit, it’s amusing what companies are willing to learn from it.

In the 1990’s, Final Fantasy brought the grandeur of point-and-click adventure to consoles, redefining the mainstream’s perception of what video games could be.  In a world that knew the medium as “save the princess, yet again”, the Playstation’s killer-app was gaming’s first “summer blockbuster”.  It was the Hollywood dream: Full-motion video, spectacular graphics, and a storyline so intricate that nobody could tell you what actually happened.

That game was the moment the industry trekked towards a climate where smash hits demanded monstrous budgets.  And why would Sony and the other giants want it any other way?  What better to shut down the mom-and-pop competitor than molding a consumer with a voracious appetite for production values?

And after a decade, that approach has become the arms race that could tear down the industry.  We’ve stopped lauding companies that create sprawling worlds, we now expect them.  This is Vegas, a Grand Theft Auto-style Midway project that has received little press, consumed over fifty million dollars during its production.  With digital distribution building a Renaissance for the low-budget title, it’s fair to say that holes are showing in the master plan.

So, the giants are changing the gameplan.  Top-notch graphics aren’t on the way out, but they are so 2006.  Wikipedia and Youtube have become the new black.  What better to separate yourself from the lovable-but-short Indie product than a game engine that practically creates its own content?  Level editors were once seen as a way to extend the shelf life of a game.  They’ve now become another outlet for making money and building a fan base.

When ID Software released the source code for Doom, true modmaking was born.  As Quake, Half-Life, and Unreal Tournament carried the torch, the tools for creating content were being built by the consumer.  Now, when the next Counter-Strike or Defense of the Ancients hits, companies want to make sure it was forged with their Super-Awesome Creato-Tron™.

Most notably, party-platformer LittleBigPlanet was built on the premise of user-created content.  Pre-release, Sony executives hinted at an ITunes-style store where players could profit from quality creations.  Post-launch, Sony altered that plan, concocting a EULA that sold your soul to the company.

Harmonix will soon unveil the Rock Band Network.  It’s a counter-punch to Guitar Hero’s less-than-successful GHTunes, a file-sharing program for songs created with Guitar Hero’s song creation tools.  Any musician with the balls can now transform their music into Rock Band downloadable content, all in the name of giving Electronic Arts a sales cut.

Meanwhile, Blizzard is looking to swallow the modmaking vacuum pissed away by the ass-tastic Unreal Tournament 3.  Much like the Rock Band Network, Blizzard is promising an interface where premium (i.e. original) content can be sold for cash.  If Blizzard and the competition can’t convince you to pay subscription fees, they’ll just sell you new content on a daily basis.

Yup.  Starcraft 2 has been delayed until 2010.  Unsurprisingly, the Battle.net Forums have been rife with stupid posts, many more of which are expected.

Yeah!  By choosing to purchase Modern Warfare 2 instead of the sequel to Starcraft, you stuck it right down the throat of Activision-Blizzard!

Some crazy internet stalker is expecting me to live up to a deal I made in a previous entry.  Will it happen?  I’ll talk about all of this later tonight!  I now have a functional desktop that can do these amazing feats.

Commander Handsonface, status report!

A PlayStation 3 gamer has filed suit in U.S. District Court in California, alleging that SCEA suppressed his free speech rights and caused him pain and suffering by banning his account on the PlayStation Network.
In a complaint filed on July 6th, Erik Estavillo of San Jose writes that he his disabled by a variety of disorders; among these are agoraphobia, a fear of crowds[.]

…

In his request to the court, Estavillo, who appears to be unrepresented, asks that SCEA be enjoined from banning players. He also seeks $55,000 in punitive damages.

First-amendment rights don’t apply to services and property, and said first-amendment rights were likely used to be an obnoxious fuck, yada yada.  Consider the equivalent: I post on the Battle.net forums.  I have been banned from the message board over a hundred times.  During the creation of this entry, I made the following post:

Imagine Blizzard tires of this.  The company deletes my Warcraft III account, that of over three-thousand games played.  I proceed to sue Blizzard Entertainment for 55,000 dollars, claiming:

“Blizzard eliminated my ability to use the Battle.net forums as an advertising outlet for my web site.  I would like to be compensated for the revenue which I could have potentially earned as a result of this advertising. In addition, the company destroyed the significant time and effort that I put into my Warcraft III account.  They damaged my internet reputation, infringed upon my first amendment rights, and ruined my life in the process.  Thanks for ruining my life by making some of my favorite games, you tyrants!”

Yup.  Sony’s public relations team should be happy.  As of this moment, they’re no longer the biggest asshole(s) affiliated with Sony products.

Things are not good in Battle.net Forum Land.  Its citizens demand: “Where is the Starcraft II beta?”  Over the weekend, Dustin Browder surfaced a status report.  Surprisingly, it was not titled “Get Lives and/or Laid’”.  Even more surprising was a second update on the status of our beloved Starcraft II.

Thanks Dustin Browder, lead designer for Guitar Hero: Birthday Sex!