What grinds your gears?

appleclock wrote:Term "professional gamer".

Playing video games is not a fucking profession, kids. Unless, of course, you're some kind of korean Starcrafter that actually makes living out of it.

Professional simply means getting paid for something, and there are indeed people who play games for a living like reviewers and testers.

Conveniently, they are called "reviewers" and "game testers", not "professional gamers".

But professional means also having a great skill in something, being expert at it. Still I find it hard to imagine that someone can be professional gamer because that would mean he's the master in every game there was.

And if we'd treat term professional as a profession, job, then I think we could say that professional game reviewers/journalists are also - in some way - professional gamers. They wouldn't call themselves like that, of course, but if it is part of our profession - gaming, that is - then it means they could be called like that.

But yeah, it proves that we live in times when meaning of the words, sometimes more than one, is forgotten, omited or mistaken.

Ever heard of Major League Gaming?

People in that get paid to play, and they go to tournaments for everything. Not just starcraft. Halo, Cod, Smash Brothers, even the original Quake.
List of Halo "professional gamers"
List of Super Smash Brothers Brawl Players

Someone can make a carreer of just playing games, but it involves a lot of travel, lack of social life, and you have to be DAMN GOOD. Like triple head shot with a sniper no scope in Halo and the shot was ricochet and you MEANT to do it GOOD, and get a Sponsor like Gatorade, or Doritos

Now on a related topic:

What grinds my gears is: Nintendo is destroying themselves.

First off, they ruined almost every franchise they has for them. Starfox Assault? Meh. Twilight Princess? Windwaker was better. Metroid: Other M? Samus went from Silent female protagonist to whiny drama queen. They cancelled the Wii's F-zero game for PIKMIN 3!?

Normally my beef is SEGA, but they 'seem' to be coming back together. Sonic for example, getting rid of the HORRID 4kids tv actors, redesigning some gameplay elements, and realizing that Sonic 4 was a mess up and was willing to give anyone who wanted it a refund (under certain qualifications). They are even starting to grow some balls and trying to bring a console into light.

Nintendo had put me down these last 4 years. I packed up my Wii after beating other M, regret selling my Gamecube (kept the games and controllers) and reconnected my SNES. Then went off to play some Bioshock on Ps3. -waiting on Infinite-

For me it sounds like a very poor excuse for millions of nerds to do nothing but play video games.

Football sounds like a poor excuse for jocks to get paid millions for throwing pigskin across a grassy field.

Or Soccer is a lame excuse for kicking a black and white ball back and forth on television.

Either way, its just how they glorify it.

Precisely.

Another thing that grinds my gears...

WHERE IS MY HALF LIFE 2: EPISODE 3!? Its been 3 years! Yes you gave us glorious games like tf2 and Portal 2 and l4d 1-2....THEY HAVE THIER SEQUALS! NOW GET TO WORK PLEASE!

Soccer takes some skill, y'know. Go to a stadium of the team you know and watch their training, it should be open to public for most of the time. One of our teams, Polonia Warsaw has very rigorous and tiresome training programme wich is longer and more difficult than a marine rise-and-shine workout.
Besides, they work in entertaiment, highly paid one, so don't blame them about the fact that their love for football or soccer gathers people starving for that kind of entertainment. Besides, most of the cash comes from wealthy sponsors.

If you'd have Coca-Cola as a sponsor for your artistic endavours someone would start saying the same thing about you again.

Don't blame the players, blame the game.

Well thats the point htough, they get paid millions for just showing some skill. That is kinda the main complaint with appleclock

"millions of nerds getting paid to play video games"

though its only 750 worldwide getting paid. Most in Korea. It still qualifies.

You need SKILL to get paid in the first place.

Like me and Speedrun competitions.

Read twice next time, please.

very poor excuse for millions of nerds to do nothing but play video games

though its only 750 worldwide getting paid. Most in Korea. It still qualifies.

Millions >> 750.

To be very clear, here the simmilar terms for me:

professional moviewatchers;
professional chipseaters;
professional fappers;
professional nappers;
professional cloudwatchers;

These are not professions. The above mentioned may be:

a movie critic
degustator
porn actress
Er...
metrologist

But no one will call the food critic "pofessional food eater" or something stupid like that.

So it means that gamers who play for cash are only gamers?

Then...

<runs on a hill, spreads his hands wide, fists clenched>

"WHO AM I?!?"

And professional nappers could be called dream analitics, matress/cushion/couch/sofa quality testers, free-time organizers... there are ton of new professions which are often very silly to some, but if there's demand...

Also, you can't deny that Light Yagami isn't a professional chipseater(but not so much a degustator) :

Okay, feeding my bear now.

I did that with a Pringle.

People at work, except for a fellow /b/rother knew what I was talking about.

I've pushed myself too much on the gym today, and in effect, every weaker muscle of my body(triceps, calf muscles f.ex.) are in mild pain. Bearable, yet annoying but I'm 100% positive that the sourdoughs that I'll have after I'll wake up will be killer. Or better yet, I'll have a pretty night-time wakeup by a sourdough of my calf.

Had those?

Worst wakeup ever.

I'm gonna stiffen my leg with a plank and some rope, I guess.

Also : I hate fukken cats! Especially those "singing" under my window!

There is an old lady living on the ground floor(I live on 2nd) that feeds stray cats. Thing is, stray cats aren't supposed to be fed or they'll repopulate in large numbers and that lady was warned about that by police and a vet. Yes, she was doing it since I can remember and other neighbours also didn't liked the idea of dozen fleabags swarming under their windows, so they called police and a vet. Police only gave her warnings, twice, while vet tried to catch whatever cats he could. To no avail - there are more and more cats and they're fatter than ever. They live in our basements mostly, wich kind of solves the problem of overpopulation of cats are they're dumb enough to eat rat poison, or sit under our windows and meowing from time to time.

Recently, the housing association, to wich building I live in is included, gave that lady a fine because they had to pay for cleaning up the feline carcasses from basement, because six cats ate rat poison in form of tiny balls that have less scent of a poison and more of some sort of food. And she went batshit insane on them, as I heard. Most of the neighbour think she is indeed insane and if she's gonna make efforts to "help" the cats as she puts it, a team of vets will be called and these fleabags will be put to sleep almost ASAP.

And now I'm tired, muscles tensed and I have a goddamn orchestra of felines under my window. The guy living above me with wife and baby-daughter already threw something on them, but they came back. And yes, the lady fed them.

Old crazy cat ladies. And I have to work for their retirement fund?

Wanna know what grinds my gears?

People who don't appreciate video games if they are less then 80 hours to play.

I was talking to one of my friends about Portal 2, and how I am joygasming on its upcoming release in April. My friend states how the first game of not worth it, you just solve 19 puzzles, end of game. I ask him what of the deep story, the dark humor, the characterization. The environments?

"There is no story. Its just a computer making you do puzzles." He says.
"The jokes weren't that funny anyway. I heard funnier lines blurted out by 12 year olds on Call of Duty." He continues.

What of the characters? I ask. "Your a generic girl going against a generic Ai that wants you to do puzzles and kill you. The gameplay is a hack because I beat it in 3 hours."

Just because you beat it in three hours, you don't consider it a game? I ask.

"Yep." He declares, "Any game with less then at least 30 hours of gameplay is not a game, just a plaything."

So every single Mario, Sonic, Donkey Kong, Halo, Phoenix Wright, and 90% of the games you own and love are not games.

"Yep" He smiles, "They are just toys for your television and is only worth playing once."

And he wants to be a game designer.

which leads to ANOTHER THING THAT GRINDS MY GEARS.

Game companies that release the same game over and over.

We seen it through gaming history time and time again. Mostly on Activision's part of making money.

Anyone Remember the Tony Hawk series? All 16 games? They put out the same game with new maps until it died. Now they have to add a gimmick to get people to even look at the game. Call of Duty is heading in the same direction. On their 12th game in the series (19 if you count hand held remakes) and I am surprised people buy this horrid generic game. (I bought it so I can try it that way i can complain and say i have played it, sick of people saying 'you just hate it cuz you never played it')

My friend is in on this too.
"If it sells, make it again but updated, its how I would make games."
We both go to college for video game design. I make games for creativity and experiences that you can never get in real life, he wants to make games for profit, with nothing new or design (He thinks Halo and CoD are the gods of gaming and every game should be based of their game-play. I think he only played Superman 64 growing up). I wonder who will make it in the industry?

A sad thing is I see a 12 year old play CoD and say its the best game ever designed, then I ask if he played Super Mario, Earthworm Jim, or River City Ransom, or Battletoads, and he has no clue what I'm talking about "Is that on XBox arcade?"

What ever happened to gaming?

That's the approach to selling games. Black suits from big industries creative thinking tells them that people don't want creative games.

And, seeing how these kinds of products sell, they're right. At least about the majority. And who cares about minority?

Also, don't be mean to the kids, they're allowed to be ignorant. When I was 12 I had crappy PC and Amiga 500, so I literally had to play older games than my friends who had powerhouse computers that could run any new game they wanted. I was jealous because of that, still, that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the oldies. I'm glad about my brother though, now 13 y.o. He has a mentioned powerhouse PC, wich I also sponsored in about 30% of the costs. He gets bored easily by modern games, so I often slip him some old ones, that are good in my opinion. And, while he doesn't want to admit to it(he's a no-man type of kid, totally opposite to everything I do and like), according to my parents, he mostly plays my stuff. Also, he has a friend with a g-damn weak PC, processor below 2GHz or so, but he has what I haven't when I was as old as he - internet. He searches for freeware games, abandonware, indie, etc., etc., and sometimes, when he reccomends it for my brother, I often try them on my own. Also, because of the fact that many games weren't translated to polish before 2000, he has a chance to learn english the way I did. And he's better at it than my brother.

It's hard to educate youth about historical meaning of the games, if the child is not yours or not from your family. Gaming isn't treated as a subject of academics researches, besides making them maybe, and I belive that after about 50 years of evolution of electronic games it should be one. Both on social studies, arts, economical and science oriented.

For now, games are, like I like to call it, "a side-effect of monstrous, overhyped advertising campaings".

Sorry about the kid comment.

It's just disgraceful really. Imagine your brother playing ONLY one game, or game series, calling every game you throw at him crap. Failing school because hes playing that game for 18 hours a day and doesn't get homework done. Then as he grows up he expects people to accommodate for him because he never learned any skills except how to snipe a virtual player from 300 yards without using a scope. Then when games shift from FPS to a different genre, he will be left in the dust clinging to his glory. (my brother ever since CoD 2)

I seen this happen to plenty of people. Its amazing how some people's grades dropped and attendance went down when Halo: Reach was released. The middle school here only has 150 kids. 40 were gone on Halo: Reach release, 30 were gone for the week. 10 dropped out completely. I again blame the parents. The avg GPA for the school was 3.2, after reach dropped to 2.6 then rose back to 2.9.

and your quote on over-hyped advertising campaign line. slightly true. Here in the states, unless you have a gaming channel or magazine. You see nothing about games, unless they pay to be featured, like Cod. or they get reviewed, mostly with low scores, because the company that funds them wants them to make their game look good. For example. Most magazines rated Black ops 10/10 while users labeled it 4/10 to even 1/10. Currently it is 3/10 on Metacritic.

Looking at scores though, my rant is almost being proven dead. Much to my surprise.

Starcraft 2, Amnesia, Darksiders, Civilization, Mass Effect 2, Dead Rising 2, even Lego Universe are more favored then Every final fantasy and Cod game Combined. they each average 8/10 while the latter average 2/10.

And inflicting high grades from magazines is a part of that kind of advertisment. Gaming journalism, when it comes to magazines, is now mostly in shambles. Portals like Gamespot and IGN also like to have their hands smeared with some salad. It puts a shame on modern journalism, because it shows that opinions can be shaped by journalists and reviewers that are shaped, because of "motivation" from black corp. suits. Reviewers have limited field for giving their personal opinions about hot game titles, like CoD, f.ex.
Polish biggest gaming magazine is CD-Action and one of their former reviewers quit and wrote an essay about the pressure from above on the company. It forced a major shitstorm over the polish web and for a peroid of few months sales of the magazine dropped. But it was just temporary.

And I see lot's of kids reading gaming magazines. At least they read something. I mean, girls have this girly mags about fashion, pop-music, cosmetics, how to get hot and older boyfriend(no joke here, one mag had an article, albeit not direct, but it was about how to seduce a guy 17+ age old, with money. Mind you, the mag is targeted at 10-14 years old - unoficially, of course) and stuff like that. What's left for the boys? Sports magazines and gaming magazines. Not every kid is interested in sports, but every kid is interested in games.

Thus, it's simmilar to the toy buisness. Sell b/s to the kids, and kids go baaaaw to their old folks to buy them a game they want. And parents nowdays... well, I belive you can tell what are parents these days.

God dammit, I totally belive in corporal punishment for arrogant and spoiled kids. As your example showed(about halo and kids droppin' out) it would work for their own good, so they woulnd't suck in future. Also, that example kind of explains why middle school girls try to pick older guys at the malls. Seriously. I was going around in one, picking some winter coats during normal school hours and girl, about 14 or so, though with heavy makeup came by and asked me if I'd buy her some jeans(quite expensive for my tastes) for a b-job.



I told her that for the price of that jeans alone I could get three godly b.j,'s from a pro and told her to go to school. I was called a dick, and she left me alone.

Seriously. Kid's Aren't Alright.

Failing school because hes playing that game for 18 hours a day

girl, about 14 or so, though with heavy makeup came by and asked me if I'd buy her some jeans(quite expensive for my tastes) for a b-job.

Where are you finding such fucked up kids? I always thought they're only existed in scary stories from the internet.

appleclock wrote:

Failing school because hes playing that game for 18 hours a day

girl, about 14 or so, though with heavy makeup came by and asked me if I'd buy her some jeans(quite expensive for my tastes) for a b-job.

Where are you finding such fucked up kids? I always thought they're only existed in scary stories from the internet.

Actually, this shit is happening more often lately. It's scary.

I've been seeing and hearing about a lot of news reports and studies on girls who do this. But what I'm thinking is, it's not just girls. There are boys who are accepting and reciprocating this behavior. Girls wouldn't be doing it if there was no one taking it.

In Poland, they're called galerianki, wich means simply mall girls. There are fewer of them nowdays because mall security has to keep an eye on them, call cops if necessary. It's like this because of the media attention on the subject.

Too risky and expensive, if you ask me. They usually don't work alone, and while you're having an r'n'r on the parking lot, they take you pics with cell phones or write down you car plate numbers. I heard stories about girl gangs doing so and then blackmailing poor suckers. But, in some schools, girls like these are quite popular folk, having sex with older guys that have money - it's a reason for them to brag about. Don't heard about boys doing so, they'd be dead meat if someone would find out about this.


Fathers - spank yer girls, or they'll be spanked by someone elese... few years too early.

Pietja wrote:In Poland, they're called galerianki, wich means simply mall girls. There are fewer of them nowdays because mall security has to keep an eye on them, call cops if necessary. It's like this because of the media attention on the subject.

Too risky and expensive, if you ask me. They usually don't work alone, and while you're having an r'n'r on the parking lot, they take you pics with cell phones or write down you car plate numbers. I heard stories about girl gangs doing so and then blackmailing poor suckers. But, in some schools, girls like these are quite popular folk, having sex with older guys that have money - it's a reason for them to brag about. Don't heard about boys doing so, they'd be dead meat if someone would find out about this.


Fathers - spank yer girls, or they'll be spanked by someone elese... few years too early.

I don`t have persons like this around here... Only girls that are just "loving" the boys that can drink the most and act the most fucked up *as in: bullying those who don`t fit in the picture of: Perfect Person... wich they don`t either*

Wich happened to me last Thursday. Dude came by and tryed to make me go aside while I was standing there for like... 10 minutes and he had like... enough space *10 meters to the football/basketballfield and another 10 on the other side of the halfpipe* to pass me. He still put his front wheel in between my leggs and commanded me to go away. When I sayd I wouldn`t, he smashed me with his bike against the halfpipe and I gave a nudge against his bike with my skates. He was enraged. Pushed me *on my skates* to the grass and started fighting. He fought like a girl. While I just wrestled. I didn`t land a single blow. He bit, scratched my face and grabbed for my jewels.

I was complicated for the fact that I didn`t fight back. Multiple times. Then a good friend of mine found it cowardly. Wich got ME enraged. Anywayz... If I fought the way I really wanted to I would most probably crushed his troath. Did I do good with not landing blows? *Didn`t see the boy yet, his friends are still "bullying" me.*

I can only tell you to not listen to your mother, psychologists, pedagogues, which would probably tell you to ignore these kind of people. It's a mistake of adult-thinking. Youth is a hormones-driven time, without any major responsibilities or without any at all, thus, it sometimes needs an outlet. Sometimes in form of bullying. The only way to discuss with that behaviour is to fight back.

No, ignoring them so they'll "go away" won't help, they won't go. Maybe they'll abuse will decrease, but you'll be mentally scarred and if you have an understanding of concept of pride, it will be wrecked.
School psychologists and pedagogues that have to deal with students problems, are mostly females. No dissrespect, but honestly - they know shit about school life of boys. And they talk shit they know from textbooks. It doesn't work. It makes the bullies act more intensly, and a school pedagogue ends up blaming the bullied for not ignoring his tormentors enough! May I quote, WTF?!

Fight back, even if you're loosing. It builds character and it shows you have your pride.

And girls like that were always around. They're just more vocal about their stuff more these days and more vulglar..