It was way early in the morning and we were fucking with Kilroy. You may remember Kilroy del Dancefighter Estallion the Third from when I fired his ass unceremoniously from the Injun for suggesting that my output was lacking and that he had to pick up the slack. That’s just something you don’t tell the editor, motherfucker.

I had a few things to tell Kilroy. “You suck at time shadows,” I half-croaked. After all the coffee, and cigarettes, and yelling things at people, my usually impressive voice was taxed and totally punk rock. “Look, he’s sad, you fucked it up.”

“Stop failing!” shouts another friend, as Kilroy misses the puzzle piece again. I started to think that Kilroy wasn’t as much of a time travel understander as I previously thought, and decided to drag my laptop outside so I could smoke.

On the way out, I heard Kilroy say “I’m going to make this jump just to spite you guys,” followed by more screeches from the peanut gallery.

Outside was cold and colder, thanks to the constant wind that goes through the city. I sat on the yellow scooter just outside the shop, one bought for transportation that found more utility as a place to sit and smoke. Or in my case, a place to sit and smoke and write.

We spent the entire day at our home away from home, a little place on the far eastern side of the city known as Game On!, exclamation point and everything. I’m not exactly good at sitting still, and Game On! is one of the few places in town that I could actually do so for more than a few hours. We were on hour nine or so, which is extraordinary, mind-blowing, and typically Saturday behavior.

I looked through the window and watched Kilroy deftly manuever through a puzzle that I once saw him trip up on for over an hour. As he tripped up on the boss in the next level, the manager of the store yelled something I couldn’t quite hear. I wanted to, though, and I was done typing anyway, so I stomped out my cigarette butt and headed back in.

I’ve been off the gaming beat lately, folks. Yesterday marked the first time in a little while that I could actually dedicate some time to it. It’s not that I haven’t tried, it’s just that my usual raging boner for video games seems to have gone, err, soft. Seriously, this has never happened to me before, not in the nineteen years I can remember hating Bugs Bunny’s Birthday Blowout.

It’s been a nice break, though; not gaming has made me really appreciate the times I get to toss my hat in and wreck shit. I played the Brutal Legend* demo that night, and elevated its status from ‘probably one of the best games ever’ to ‘probably the most fucking important thing to ever happen to humanity, and yes I’m including the invention of the nuclear missile’. I also got to watch some people fool around on Scribblenauts, which is a joy for someone so in love with words as myself.

(the best part of that one was when mothman ended up driving an anti-air vehicle around and shooting indiscriminately at the player)

So, in the terms of cutting-edge games journalism**, I’m down but not out. I’ll be sure to sound the sirens if anything important happens, but for now I’m out living like a goddamn alive motherfucker.

*umlauts omitted on account of a raid by the Umlaut Police

**something that has never been, and never will be done on the Injun

…almost as much as talking about ourselves in 3rd person. Anyway, EPJ reports that a certain economist named Brad Setzer is jumping from the Council on Foreign Relations to work for Larry Summers at the National Economic Council. I conceded that his blog on the Council on Foreign Relations was a bunch of Keynesian crap here, so I guess there is no surprise he’s joining the US gov’t machinery.

Eu gosto MUITO da série “Bullshit!“, que é comandada pela dupla de mágicos Penn Jilette e Raymond Teller (mais conhecidos como Penn & Teller). Ok, eles são mágicos, mas a série não tem nada haver com isso, Bullshit! está mais para “Farenheit 9/11”, do Michael Moore, do que para Mister M. A minha animação pela série aumentou ainda mais quando o clip da sétima temporada foi lançado, mostrando entre várias discussões o embate de violência nos games, com a fala do impagável Jack Thompson, um dos maiores nomes do movimento anti-gamer (ou seja, o cara é, basicamente, um babaca).

Se você perdeu as rápidas palavras de Thompson, aí vai: “Grand Theft Auto é o pior ataque às crianças desde a poliomielite”. Pois é, amiguinhos, o rapaz aí comparou um game a uma das mais cruéis doenças de todos os tempos (a poliomielite causa atrofia nos ossos, além de problemas respiratórios, que no passado matava boa parte de suas vítimas). E eu reclamando do Setzer…

Jack “Without Notion” Thompson

Bom, se vocês não assistiram as outras temporadas de Penn & Teller: Bullshit! considerem-se menos afortunados… E já pra casa assistir! A nova temporada começa a ser exibida nos EUA nesta quinta-feira, 25.

Hello, gentle reader. As you may have noticed, I prefer to spend my time playing games rather than writing about games. This brings me to all sorts of odds with the rest of the staff of the Injun*, most of whom* spend far more time writing as many words as possible on the subject with little to no actual research**. Eventually, they* start asking questions as to why their* glorious leader and the founder of this great thing hasn’t written anything in, like, three decades.

Bastards.

So, I figured I’d take some time out of my busy schedule*** and answer a question posited by a curious individual*.

Why do people play RPGs?

Or rather,

Why do people play JRPGs?

I guess that one needed clarification. Everyone knows why people still play pen-and-paper RPGs, they’re awesome. And western-style RPGs, for the most part, riff off of that, and have since way back when, making them occasionally awesome.

But JRPGs… man. Just thinking about them brings up my horrible, tormented childhood****, a magical time when I could still believe in grand adventures and the triumph of good over evil. Eventually I became horribly jaded, and though I still have a shelf full of RPGs of all sorts, I occasionally find myself wondering why*****.

Believe me when I say that I am the best man for the job (of answering Kilroy’s stupid question).

Back in the day, there weren’t too many ways to depict a group of four people bashing on a horde of goblins and taking all their money. The best solution at the time, it seemed, was to put everything into a menu, and task the player with hitting the Attack button for all the characters and watch them beat down the goblins and take their money. And the best way to show exactly how hard you were beating the goblins, or how hard the goblins were beating you, was to use numbers.

Health measured in Hit Points. Magic measured in Magic Points. Your experience noted by how many Experience Points you’ve amassed by damaging monsters’ Hit Points with your Magic Points. Levels and so on. A lot of these things are really just throwbacks to pen-and-paper RPGs which, as I’ve mentioned before, are awesome******.

But in a pen-and-paper RPG, you end up with significant rewards******* beyond the numbers, things like entire kingdoms and magic rings that let your turn opponents into sandwiches. All JRPGs usually do is give you more numbers. Then you use those numbers to fight enemies with bigger numbers, and repeat until the game is over, the bestiary is complete, all the minigames are done, and you’ve beaten that superboss that takes seventeen hours of horrifying grind to even get close to harming.

But, uh, I guess that’s its own form of achievement? People seem to like making their numbers go up********. Some people, driven mad with numberlust, will do anything they can to make those numbers go up higher, and will play the absolute worst games in order to sate that feeling*********. Horrible, brutish creatures, in my opinion.

But eh. This all reminded me of one of the reasons I don’t enjoy MMOs that much. I’m gonna go ahead and put this one to bed and play some Final Fantasy IV. Ciao**********!

* Kilroy.
** In games at least. He does a ton of research on other stuff.
*** Busy playing Final Fantasy Tactics, mostly.
**** It actually wasn’t all that horrible or tormented at all.
***** Nostalgia, mostly?
****** Infinity Injun: Completely Impartial To Everything.
******* Well, if your GM is actually good at his job.
******** Deets, make sure to thank Kevin for having such an accurate description of RPGs handy.
********* I’ve got a lot of them on my shelf.
********** Probably doesn’t mean what I think it means.

Kristy Hammonds y Michael Setzer se filmaron en la cocina de su trabajo (Domino’s Pizza) mientras se metían queso en la nariz y ponían mocos en los bocadillos y luego lo subieron a YouTube donde el video fue visto por más de un millón de personas, luego fue retirado y los dueños de Domino’s Pizza fueron obligados a colgar una disculpa en la misma web donde habían colgado el video sus empleados.

Desgraciadamente para ellos, su sentido del humor no lo compartieron las autoridades de Carolina del Norte, que les detuvieron por manipular la comida de esta forma tan poco higiénica, según The New York Times.

Los detenidos aseguraron que la comida manipulada no fue entregada a ningún cliente, pero ya era demasiado tarde. Ambos fueron despedidos.

“Tenemos a dos idiotas con una cámara y una terrible idea”, dijo el portavoz de la empresa, Tim McIntyre y añadió que están preparando una demanda civil.

]]> http://femiranda.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/voce-ve-o-que-voce-come/ Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:48:10 +0000 Felipe Miranda http://femiranda.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/voce-ve-o-que-voce-come/

Uma das lendas urbanas mais antigas que conheço é a de que cozinheiro, padeiros e trabalhadores do genêros usam de má fé na hora de preparem as refeições que costumamos comer, seja o pão do dia a dia ou um fast food.

Segundo a lenda eles costumam tirar caca do nariz, cuspirem e até coisa mais pesadas para colocar no meio do alimento, e nós ingerimos isso sem perceber.

Mas é sempre aquela história, eu tenho um amigo de um amigo q trabalha nessas lanchonetes e lá eles costumam fazer isso. Na verdade nunca duvidei disso, mesmo já ter trabalhado numa padaria e nunca ter visto isso acontecer, mas confesso que quando ouvi a história pela primeira vez eu ficava meio paranoico ao comer meus lanches e ficava analisando tudo o que eu comia mordida por mordida.

Mas e quando dois funcionários de uma lanchonete resolvem mostrar que fazem isso mesmo e ainda gravam e põe na maior rede de videos?! A única coisa que vem em mente é: Isso vai dar merda. Foi o que aconteceu com Kristy Hammonds e Michael Setzer após filmarem a sessão de nojeira em pleno expediente e colocarem o video no You Tube.

Devido a burrice e de que forma até agradeço por isso, os dois foram em cana, nada mais que justo não?! Pois confiamos nas higiene desse lugares que normalmente são bem frequentados

Shit.

I got a text from Kilroy a half-hour ago. All it said was “I’ll be coming over. I’m bringing Ben.”

He’s here now. We had a fun conversation. It started when he knocked on my door and said “I’ll be taking that PS3, Mazo.”

“But I bought it from you already,” I replied.

“Not… not really.”

The PS3 in question sat on the table, unused due to a lack of games. I say I bought it, but it’s more like I forcefully took it, sold off all his games, and promised him an exhorbitant sum. Now, around a half a year later, I’ve only paid a fraction of the sum, which Kilroy was now shoving into my face.

“I need it back,” he said. “I’m selling it.”

“To who?”

“My dad. He’s paying way more than you were going to pay.”

I couldn’t argue with money, not at this point. Kilroy makes money by selling vital body parts (sometimes even his own) and I just don’t make money. The Injun, despite being a paragon of tabloid game reporting, makes absolutely nothing for either of us, outside of enemies. “All right, that’s fine. But don’t you live with your dad?”

Kilroy nodded. “That’s the best part. I’ll still be able to play it and everything.”

“Well that’s pretty awesome. Too bad you didn’t bring that book you said you had two copies of.”

“Oh, wait, I did. It’s in the car.” He ran out the door and came back a minute later with a copy of Arcade Mania!

Now I have a copy. I haven’t read it yet, but it looks really nice. Smaller than I thought it’d be, though.

I forgot to mention, tonight’s the night of the most awesome thing in gaming webulogism, the Annual Infinity Injun Writers Symposium! The reason I’m saying this well into the middle of the Annual Infinity Injun Writers Symposium is that I didn’t know it was happening until I got home. I’d just beaten the entirety of Rock Band’s setlist forever and was planning on soaking my hand in the stuff they use to cool off nuclear rods, due to the immense amount of ethereal flame surrounding my bass-playin’ hand.

Unfortunately, Kilroy was at my house eating all my crap when I got home, so I never got around to it. My hand is still on fire, by the way. I just have a really good keyboard or something. But anyway, since he’s here, and the two of us compose the entirety of the Infinity Injun Infinite Writing Crew, so we’ve decided to hold our Annual Infinity Injun Writers Composium. I even wrote up a schedule!

11:30 - Composium Starts
1:30 - I start writing about the composium
2:00 - Burgers!

We’ll update as the Annual Infinity Injun Writers Composium comes along. Keep checking the Injun for the latest and greatest updates from all of the greatest writers at the Injun!