gaming

/Tag: gaming

It’s not cheating… it’s IP infringement!

The curious case of the Fortnite cheater

Is it illegal to cheat in a video game?

Here’s a question for you: is cheating in games (specifically, using third-party cheat programs that alter the game in -memory) copyright infringement?

This is, I think, what one would call a “novel” approach to combating cheating in a online game. I’m also kind of reminded of the fandom C&D days (specifically, the Harry Potter wars) of the early 2000s.

And while it’s kinda lulz to watch some 1337 h4xx0r kid get, quite literally, served in Fortnight, if the legal argument holds up (i.e. that using trainers is copyright infringement), then places that deal in single player game cheats are also at risk and, shit. That basically means I will never play a video game ever again.1

  1. “You could just not cheat!” Yeah, and you could mind your own goddamn business. ^
2018-05-14T14:56:57+00:006th November, 2018|Tags: copyright, gaming, law, video games|0 Comments
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The worst RPG.

Review of F.A.T.A.L. - RPGnet RPG Game Index

I’m sure no one had high hopes for anything called Fantasy Adventure to Adult Lechery, but oh my god does it get so much worse than you could imagine. [Massive content warning for just about everything, but specifically misogyny, sexual assault, racism, and homophobia. The dudes writing the review are also, uh, doing so In The Style of The Time, i.e. the early 00s, meaning there’s a lot of casual ableism thrown in on their end, too…]

Thought One: I’m sure that there’s a market out there for indie adult-themed RPGs that, like, aren’t racist, misogynist, cissexist, heteronormative messes. Surely these must exist, right? Like, there’s nothing inherently wrong with having an RPG that focuses on sex and the mechanics thereof; even weird sadomasochistic noncon body-horror nightmare-fuel transformation fetish sex.1 So why is it that whenever I hear about one of these games—and, yes, I’ve heard of more than one—it’s because they’re not just awful, but always awful in exactly the same way?

Haha. Yeah, that was a rhetorical question. We all know why.

Thought Two: It was coincidence that I happened to stumble across this review—months ago, by the time this posts—at the same time incel terrorism happened to be in the news, but I couldn’t help but think about the latter while I was reading the former. It’s not just the raging misogyny, either, but something about the whole… I dunno. Pungent mix of misapplied pseudo-academic bullshit and walking Dunning–Kruger cluelessness.

Thought Three: On the plus side, this review lead me to the game KULT, which, while it will not be Everybody’s Bag Baby, is definitely mine. So… there’s that, at least.

  1. Like, there is a non-negligible market for this stuff in the erotica space, that’s both written by and for women. So it’s not like it’s some exclusively male thing. But what does seem to be “exclusively male” is the whole “trying to pass off your sexual fetishes as ‘historically/biologically accurate” thing. ^
2018-05-07T14:27:58+00:001st November, 2018|Tags: gaming, rpgs, tabletop rpgs|Comments Off on The worst RPG.
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Laundry lists.

Yes, but what is your game *about*?

I’ve been meaning to write about this since I got back from ECCC, and I guess this is my first opportunity. I spent most of the time at the con hiding behind the Angry Robot table and trying …

Alex Acks on writing for games.

I think my main take-home from this is that maybe, just maybe, microtransaction-based puzzle games are not, yanno. “Story-first” experiences…

2018-03-23T13:17:45+00:0013th September, 2018|Tags: gaming, video games, writing|Comments Off on Laundry lists.
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Digital preserve.

Game industry pushes back against efforts to restore gameplay servers

DMCA exemption fight shows mistrust over limited "preservation" claims.

Video games are both an artform and a cultural artifact, which means there are various libraries out there that preserve them. So, yes. It really is someone’s job out there to collect every single game for the Fairchild Channel F and ensure they stay playable. So far so good.

Except… fast forward twenty-plus years, to the advent of online gaming. Of the sort that runs on proprietary tech held on private servers run by the game publisher. Who then shuts them down. And in this world of overreaching copyright (cough DMCA cough)… how do you preserve that? And, more importantly, as a third party, should you have a right to?

2018-03-14T07:34:03+00:0021st August, 2018|Tags: gaming, law, pop culture, tech, video games|2 Comments
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Nostalgia.

So when I was a kid, I remember really, really wanting a particular videogame, solely based on the box art. Dad, the big meanie,1 would not buy it for me.

Fast forward twenty-something years. For whatever reason, I was suddenly reminded once again of this forgotten game, and swore to track it down. Only problem? I barely remembered anything about it. I remembered I thought the art was cool, and that it was kind of that Beetlejuice-cartoonish horror-but-comedy sort of style. I remembered the title maybe had a number in it. I went scouring places like GOG looking for my Lost Game, but to no avail. People on Twitter try and help, to no avail. Eventually, I give up.

Fast forward twelve days (according to the Mastodon timestamps), where I’m watching old hbomberguy vids to procrastinate writing the final scene of the dragon book. I come across this video, talking about Dragon’s Lair—a game many people had tried to helpfully suggest as being my Forgotten Game—when…

… when…

… when he just…

… he just. Says the name. Of the game I’ve been looking for. For twenty years. And I know, just from the name, Brain Dead 13, that it’s The Game. The Forgotten Game. And so I eugooglize it, and there’s a pic of the goddamn box and… and I remember it. It’s The Forgotten Game! It’s here! It’s real! It even has a freakin’ iOS port that I can’t even freakin’ buy because it’s not available in the Australian iOS store because auuurrrghhh!

But you know what I can do? Oh, I can find a Let’s Play of this terrible, forgotten old game on YouTube. Because the internet never forgets, no matter how obscure the thing.

So here it is. The game my teenage self obsessed over. Hell, I even remember now I had a character at the time called Fritz, because I thought it was a cool name, although if I recall correctly he was more a The Maxx rip-off than related to his namesake in Brain Dead 13. But… whatever. I found it! I found the game!

Also, unnerving in retrospect: how similar the protagonist of this game is to what my husband looked like when I first met him (long red hair, worked with computers) which… is probably something best not thought about too much, y’know?

  1. This is a lie. My Dad’s great. Hi Dad, if you’re reading. ^
2018-07-31T08:31:47+00:0025th July, 2018|Tags: gaming, video, video games|Comments Off on Nostalgia.
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