Life, but nothing like it.

Another useless term.

Having a preference does not make someone entitled. Wanting to be catered to as a consumer does not make someone entitled. Seeking maximum value for one’s gaming dollars does not make someone entitled. Buying/supporting only the games you like is not being entitled.

Entitlement « In An Age.

“Entitled” is a loaded word, designed to shut down arguments in the same way “casual” and “immersion” are. No-one “wants” to be entitled (or be seen as “entitled”), so it’s an easy thing to disavow. But it doesn’t actually mean anything, at least not when dealing in the context of high-cost mass-market games in a saturated market.

Firefly still sucked, though.

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Evil, pt. 2.

[EVE has] become such an unpleasant realm that many of players simply leave, having formed deeply negative and totally preventable but at least partly justified opinions of the game and its worst representatives, opinions that haunt the game indefinitely and cripple mainstream acceptance of the game and the sandbox genre as a whole. Compounding the problem, the sociopaths among the EVE playerbase band together with their sycophants and hardcore-wannabes in large, organized, hateful, vileness-spewing collectives out of self-preservation, which further aggrandizes e-thug ideology, inculcating this culture of asshattery and locker-room one-upsmanship that seeks as its only goal to offend. A quick Google search on “harden the fuck up,” for example, conjures up a slew of disgusting EVE slang that is common even outside of the game. Rape-cage. N****r-fleet. Motarded. These are not good people. This is not funny.

Bully for you « skycandy.

The whole article is quotable. Go read it. Now.

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Fun.

Fun should never be a choice. We should get lots of fun. […] Let me choose things that matter, let me have all the options for fun because fun doesn’t make a difference.

The Grumpy Elf: 10 Reasons I am Not Excited About Mists.

Visual customisation — which is what is being referenced here explicitly — is fun. This is where I think superhero MMOs like City of Xes get things a lot “righter” than the traditional fantasy MMO model; my character should look like what I want her to look like. Why should her visual appearance be linked to her numerical stats, or (shudder) her dungeon progression?

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I spit on your graves.

But this “it’s just a game” excuse only holds up as long as we are talking about avatars doing in-game action against other avatars, with no deeper emotion involved between the players behind the avatars. That is not always the case. If you read the stated goals and announcements of the Goons, they do not just want to achieve in-game goals; they *say* they want to cause emotional damage to the opposing players. A “win” is not shooting down the enemy spaceship, a “win” is making another player ragequit in frustration.

I believe that such behavior is evil. I believe that Alexander “The Mittani” Gianturco is evil. I believe that the real person blogging under the name of Syncaine is evil. I believe that wanting to win over the opposing avatar is okay, but deliberately wanting the player behind the opposing avatar to be emotionally or physically hurt is evil. And because this wanting to hurt the *real* person behind the screen is a motivation of the *real* person committing those acts of ganking, harassment, and bullying, I do not believe in the excuse that somebody is just “playing evil”. You can have multiple identities, but not multiple sets of moral[s.]

Identity and personality [emphasis added].

Not only is this sort of activity evil, but we shouldn’t tolerate or — worse — laud it, either. We should, like Tobold, be calling it out for what it is. Because rallying your dribbling mooks to harass a real life person into real life suicide is a real life crime (at least, it is where I live), and anyone who supports, assists, condones or excuses that behavior is not only criminal but a piece of reprehensible scum I feel lessened for even sharing a planet with.

This is not okay. And if you think it is — even a little bit — then you are not okay, either.

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